August 22, 2024 • 60 mins
Robert and Michael talk about how the US press responded to the rise of European fascism and where that leaves us today.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hashtag never again when we do this.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Podcast hashtag never again. We're never going to do this podcast.
That's where we're going with.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
We're done, We're done forever. Anyway, Welcome back to the Bastards,
a podcast where I just carried out a cunning power
play against my producer, Sophie Lifterman. She was not ready
for it at all. It came down upon her like
like the tanks of Operation Barbarossa on Michael Robert.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
How does it feel? How does it feel?
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Dad? It feels? You know, this is this is my
ensurgiment of Kiev, you know, perfect beautiful Michael, I feel
like a god.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Great, unstopped. That's the goal.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
I really, I really want to cut off the feed.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Yeah, you probably should. I am now comparing myself to
the fair Mack.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
So that's not going to Daniel Malcolm.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Could you just shut him off?
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Just replace me with an AI version asking Michael, Michael,
how are you doing today? I hear you've got a novel.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Oh boy, Oh we're doing the plug right at the top.
That's great.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
We're in the p zone. Michael.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Okay, I've had long had a fantasy of founding the
Sokel low kel kel zone zone. But that's neither here
nor there. Robert, thank you for the opportunity to push
my novel. I really really mean it. From the bottom
of my plug bag. I released my debut novel. It's
a sci fi fantasy, magical realist memoir in the sense
(01:47):
that you'll barely know that it's about my life because
there's robots and spells and shit, but it is. So
if you're interested in someone who.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Knows you, there's a lot of robots and wizards around
you at any gain.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
That's right. Yeah, that is. If you're interested in like
alcoholism or my time at Cracks, that's in there too.
In a sense, it's called the Climb. There will be
a free three hour sample coming out, probably out by
the time this drops on the small Beans feed, which
is my own podcast network. You can find that just
by pointing your podcast app at small Beans and looking
(02:21):
for the Climb, or you can get the whole thing
over at patreon dot com slash Smallbeans slash shop, where
you can find the audiobook version, which I imagine most
people will want, but there's also a pdf version and
an e reader version and all that good stuff.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Awesome, yeah, excellent, excellent stuff.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Check it out.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Michael. You and I worked at a website called cracked
dot com back in the day, and I've.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Never heard that word, and I don't know what you're
talking about.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
We worked with a guy named Tom Ryman who did
a great video once about how in the movie Jaws,
the shark is alcoholism. Right, there's no your shark. Everything
in that is explicable as a bunch of drunk people
by the ocean, like get fucking up and destroying their
own boat and whatnot. I always like that interpretation, and
(03:13):
I do now always watch movies with an eye for like,
what what thing in this could represent alcoholism, which has
made the Star Wars series a lot more energy.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Just gotta say that episode also made me realize which
I don't think they touch upon, even the famous shark death.
It's like, yeah, you put a bottle in your mouth,
you die. Yeah, it's alcoholism.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
It's all alcoholism anyway. You know what's not alcoholism? Michael,
is there already? Really that is sometimes alcoholism? God willing
if we get that. The Big jim Bean sponsors Sophy's
been clamoring for.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Yes, yeah, it sounds like me, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
What's like alcoholism? Is the addiction that the liberal own
of mainstream newspapers in the United States had with trying
to normalize and support the growth of fascism in Europe.
That is a kind of addiction. Oh that yeah, uh
huh uh huh. That is the that's the liquor of
(04:15):
fools is thinking that you can make a deal with
the fascists. Speaking of fools, you're all fools for not
knowing that this was the cold open and it's the
hot open. We're back, Michael. Are you toasty? Are you
burning up?
Speaker 3 (04:35):
I'm offended by being called a fool, but I'll get
it in time.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Have question, how do you think those people that were
supposed to go to space for eight days feel about
being stuck there? And definitely I keep saying I keep
thinking about them, and I'm like, I imagine.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
I imagine if you're if you get into space, it's
because your whole life has been geared towards.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Letting you spa sweet I would say, until it gets
to like three four months, I'd be sweet. Bonus.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
This is what it's about, dope. This has been what
my whole life is for. But I don't know these people.
Maybe they're miserable. I don't care. Wow, you go to space,
you have to accept that you're going to space. It's
dangerous up there. We're not supposed to be in space.
It's a bad place to be, and it's going to
(05:26):
be unpleasant.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
You know that space's whole thing.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Yeah, if somebody offered you a trip to space, would
you go absolutely?
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, question I'm a novel seeker.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yeah, of course, but I would not enjoy it while
I was there. Right, it would be a life changing experience,
but it's supposed to I'm sure it's deeply uncomfortable and
physically just a nightmare.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
They were supposed to go for eight days, and they're
they're saying it could be twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Maybe, Yeah, I mean, okay, that's that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
That sounds yeah, there's there's you know, you know, the
only thing less trustworthy than fascist governments in Europe in
the nineteen thirties is the Boeing Corporation today.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
So oh, I thought you were going to say it
was like, let's killing us, let's maybe try to do
you know some podcasts about some bad guys.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
You'll never say that.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
We're still here fuck them. So in some ways, the
US media responded to the rise of Hitler and Mussolini
worse than the German or Italian media had done. This
was due in a degree to simple distance. Fascism was
seen by a lot of these guys. It's a foreign ideology.
So whatever they're saying about killing journalists and whatnot, that's
(06:45):
not going to hurt us over here in the United
States because we're not Europe right now. That wasn't the
only reason why so much of the media was sympathetic
to Hitler and Mussolini a lot. In a lot of cases,
it was because the rich men who owned those media
organs were fascists, or at least fasci philo fascists, right.
They liked the fascists. Many of the wealthy men who
(07:08):
owned large published in houses saw communism as a rising
threat in Italy as a bulwark against the USSR, which,
if you just think about the military capabilities that Italy
evinced during World War Two, is extremely funny. The idea
of Italy trying to fight the Red Army, it's just yeah,
well last in about fourteen minutes. Anyway. Within days of
(07:30):
the March on Rome, the Birmingham Age Herald, a major
Alabama paper, described Mussolini as looking like a movie star. Wow,
he's really got a movie star. Good looks this fascist
who's remade the government in his own image. What a
hot guy.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Hey, that Putin looks good with his top off. Though
you got it too.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Yeah, they never stopped falling for it. Much was made
of the fact that actual movie stars found Mussolini magnetic.
In February of nineteen twenty seven, and Motion Picture Magazine
published a photo of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, both
movie stars, doing a fascist salute in honor of their
new friend Mussolini they met the year before. Yeah, yeah,
(08:14):
doug Old Doug Fairbanks doing the Mussolini salute for his
new friend. Benito. Rudolph Valentino, an Italian born star born
star known as the Great Lover by Hollywood press, was
often compared positively to Il Duce Right, Like, Wow, Valentino
and the dictator of Italy are very similar. You know,
(08:34):
good looking guys. I bet Mussolini fucks. That's journalism.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
I need to hear that sentence.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Oh, you know, Mussolini fucked Sophie.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
You know that's I don't need to hear it though.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Look that's what the US media argued, So that's the
cold open, and we got.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
It's never a cold open with Musset.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
The early obsession many Americans had from Mussolini, which transferred
to Hitler in substantial degree, was due to several interlocking causes.
Katie Hole, a lecturer in American studies at the University
of Amsterdam, argues that these reasons were the Italian corporate
state's ability to project the image that they had solved
the problems of democracy, combined with Mussolini's personal masculine magnetism
(09:25):
and the belief that fascism offered a solution to the
Great Depression. We can see a lot of the same
factors at work today in right wing idolization of strong
men like Erdowin and support for profoundly anti democratic solutions
to problems, best embodied by the coup attempt on January sixth.
The reality was that Mussolini's government was incompetent, a fact
(09:45):
that would soon be made evident with their disastrous invasion
of Ethiopia and incompetent handling of World War Two. But
many mainstream reporters in the US took the fascist government's
claims about its own success at face value. They believe
the trains ran on time because the fascist said, we've
got the trains working, even though the trains did not
run on time. That was not a real thing.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
I love when history is the exact opposite. Like I
recently learned that Lizzie Borden almost certainly didn't kill her parents,
and the media just shat on her until that became
the history so interesting.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Yeah, and as a result, you know, they really put
a black mark on all of us who have killed
people with axes, and it's just not very fair, to
be honest, you know, Like we're like, axe murder is
a legitimate American pastime, and I just.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
Only a few steps away from criminalizing the machete. And
then obviously this show.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Yeah, it's always wrong to cut people up into pieces
because you're angry.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
I just want to point it You've gifted me both
those things, which is so funny, I know.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
Yeah, because Morny whatever.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
I'm a patriotic, red blooded American Sophie, and I think
that everyone deserves the right to partake in this country's
great traditions, you know, And that's where I am that's
great acts. The Saturday Evening Post published Mussolini's autobiography as
a serial starting in nineteen twenty eight. They described the
FASCISTI movement as rough in its methods, but praised it
(11:16):
for halting the radical left. That's the Saturday Evening Post.
They're a little rough, but at least they dealt with
those radical workers trying to get fair wages. Similar tributes
came in from the Chicago Tribune. The New York Times
credited fascism with bringing Italy back to a state of normalcy.
In his study Mussolini and Fascism, The View from America,
(11:38):
John Patrick Diggins notes that out of one hundred and
fifty articles that mentioned Mussolini and new US newspapers from
nineteen twenty five to nineteen thirty two, the majority had
either a neutral or a amused positive tone. Right, there
was no sort of fear about this guy, you know.
He was just kind of exciting and look he dealt
with those men old commis, right, these evil anarchists. One
(12:02):
of the relatively few journalists to write objectively on Mussolini
for American papers in this early portion of his reign
was John Gunther, who profiled him for Harper's and his
piece is an interesting historical document for its takes on Mussolini,
but it's absolutely critical for its insights into the way
the international press functioned around Mussolini, right Gunther. Because he's
(12:26):
a guy who gets to interview in profile, Mussolini is
familiar with the process, and he sees what happens to
other journalists, the guys who are writing all of these
fawning articles that are turning Mussolini into a celebrity back
in the US. Quote interviews, Mussolini knows are the best
of all possible forms of propaganda. Thus he is so
lavish with them. Most newspapermen and their editors cannot resist
(12:49):
the flattery of conversation with a dictator or head of state.
Once they have been received by Mussolini or Hitler, they
feel a sense of obligation, which warps their objectivity. Is
very difficult for the average correspondent to write unfavorably about
a busy and important man who has just donated him
a friendly hour of conversation. I think it's a critical
(13:10):
revelation not just about how the media, even up to today,
reports on dictators and fascists, but how they report On
like guys like Peter Teel, very wealthy billionaires, guys like
Elon Musk. Right, they're so odd to be in the
presence of a celebrity and a man of power who
is dedicating time that makes them feel so important that
they become warmer and less objective towards the subject of
(13:34):
the interview.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
And if you happen to form any kind of personal connection,
like my own window into this is working for IGN
and reviewing games, and they're constantly accused of and I
think you have to be really rigorous with yourself to
avoid being like, well, the game sucked, but they all
seem so nice, and they gave me access to their
(13:56):
time and their work. I can't just give them a
four or whatever. And that's just video game reviews. So
I can't imagine being like, I'm gonna come out against
the president actually after meeting him and shaking his hand
and all that.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Yeah, it's a real problem, one that has not gotten
to be any less of a problem.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
I think that's somewhat propinquity. Good.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Yeah, yeah, that is a good word. Speaking of propinquity,
someone interested in drawing more modern parallels here might bring
up the case of Maggie Haberman. Her work for The
New York Times reporting on the Trump White House was
praised by many liberals, even though Trump's people saw her
as providing positive pr Haberman was criticized back in twenty
twenty two when she finally published a much ballyhooed book
(14:44):
about the Trump administration, which included a she quoted the
former president as promising not to leave office after his
defeat in twenty twenty. Now, Haberman didn't report on this
at the time, and a lot of people were, like,
the fact that the president said in front of you
that he would refuse to leave office after losing an
election was probably something the American people immediately needed access to.
(15:07):
As a journalist, you had an ethical responsibility to tell
them right away. But Haberman, a lot of people will allege,
wanted to withhold this information because if she put it out,
she would have lost her access to Trump, and she
wanted to stick with him because she wanted to get
more stuff to put in her books so that she
would get more money for it. Right The argument here
(15:30):
the criticism of Maggie is that she held off on
reporting crucial information about a threat to democracy for her
own personal financial enrichment right now. Haberman's people, for their part,
claim she shared this fact with her editors, and her
editors at the time were like, no, the fact that
the president has refused to leave office is not newsworthy,
which I do believe editors at the time would make
(15:53):
that call. But that's a bad unethical call, right, Like what.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Is dimentionally He'll say it to a bunch of evangelicals
on camera, so it'll be fine.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Yeah, I just.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
It'll come out, thank you.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Don't worry. January's right around the corner. Something's gonna happen.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Back in the thirties, New York Times correspondents made equally
problematic judgments in their coverage of our friend of the Pod,
Adolf Hitler. Perhaps the most sinister example of this was
the case of New York Times correspondent Frederick Birschell. Prior
to Nazism's final victory over by Our Democracy, Birchill had
followed Hans Schaeffer in what was called the caged Hitler theory.
(16:38):
This was the idea that if Hitler got into power,
decent conservatives and government would moderate his behavior, and so
letting Hitler win was not disastrous, right, Like it was
a brilliant plan to weigh the Nazi leader down with
busy work that would stop him from doing any damage. Right,
perfect strategy. Yeah, that's gonna work. Great, thank god, Yeah, yeah,
(17:00):
thank god. We've got this. We've got the plan. Speaking
of plans, Michael, I have a plan to sell you
some of these products and services. We're back, Michael. I
hope you have enjoyed purchasing.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
I bought them all.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
You bought them all?
Speaker 3 (17:22):
Yeah, I bought them all purely to support the economy
and therefore the state.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Yeah, you got lasick for parts of your body that
aren't even your eyes. You just use the lasers at you.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
I said, how much laser can this buy me? And
slap my wallet on the count.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
That's right, That's right. Yeah, they love They just love lasering.
You know, any any god fearing American does really anyway
back to a non god fearing American. What are you
talking about, Sophie, I'm just talking about our our man
who thinks that he's he's going to stop Hitler by
giving Hitler everything he wants.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
Now.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
Burchell was one of a few New York Times Berlin
Bureau correspondents who stayed on after the Nazis took power.
He had a major influence on how Americans perceived the
coming regime, and so it had an impact when he claimed,
in writing for The New York Times, there will be
quote no extreme persecution of Nazi opponents under Hitler's regime,
and he said the Nazis aren't going to be mean
(18:20):
to anybody who opposed them because quote, there would be
no advantage to the government in unsettling Germany's social structure. Yeah.
You really got the pulse of the Nazis there, Burchill.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
What would they have to game killing all the Jews?
That would be Meanwhile, he's doing speeches like we must
give Yeah, no, here's the deal. We let him, when
we fee let him, you know, take more rope, more rope, bring.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Him down, the whole thing, a rope over to him,
and then leave.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
You know, we see the wire. This is a five
year process.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Yeah, yeah, So the Enabling Act of March nineteen thirty
three brought the Nazis pretty much total power. Many Americans
did find this deeply unsettling, and so with the Times
a consent, Burchell took to the airwaves on CBS radio,
he avoided any mention of the anti Semitic violence that
Nazis had already been engaging in since Hitler's ascension, and
(19:26):
instead toward told millions of Americans there was quote no
cause for general alarm. He advised his audience to dismiss
from their minds any thought that there would be in
Germany any slaughter of the National Socialist Government's enemies or
racial oppression in any vital degree. The wrongest a man
has ever been, like powerful Jaco Tapper. Energy out of
(19:50):
this guy, just like the Nazis aren't going to kill anyone.
Why would you think that, calm down, everything's gonna be fine.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Quote me on that. It's almost like someone torturously trying
to figure out an opposite day sentence. Yeah, quickly, the
Nazis will spare all the Christians. This dude's wrong or lying.
This is not coming together.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Yeah. So, while Birchall was optimistic about the Hitler regime
in public, he knew that he couldn't actually like, he
knew that because he's reporting from Berlin. He knows the
Nazis are actively at the moment murdering Jews and Communists, right,
He knew that what he was saying was indefensible, but
he justified lying to make Hitler seem safe to his publisher,
(20:39):
Arthur Sulzberger. By informing Soulsburger, I conceived of the notion
of making the broadcast a bait for a real live
interview with Hitler, one which I have been vainly seeking.
He was lying to the American people about Hitler not
wanting to murder anyone, so that he could get an
interview with Hitler.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
Yeah. Great, and presumably the interview is him going like
I want to murder everybody, you know, it's just disseminating
his view. So it was.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Yeah, it's like the most poisonous access journalism has ever been.
Is this right here?
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Yep?
Speaker 3 (21:15):
And now this is officially the point in this two
episode story arc where I'm going, Okay, I see where
you're going with this in terms of modern day Yeah,
like Israeli coming to Coman.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Not just that, Honestly, like I wrote this before, you
know that had reached the global fashion. Yeah, yeah, it's
like a lot of things. You know, we've been seeing this.
This has been very evident and clear for a long time.
Although you are right, like that's part of why I
felt the need to rejigger this article in light of
what's been happening in goz It, right, is that like, oh,
(21:51):
I think there's actually a moral responsibility to draw that
comparison and make it much clearer. There was an immediate
and a massive backlash to whatchual was doing with The Times,
and it was led with particular fervor by a number
of Jewish papers. Now, none of these because these are
like small community papers, right, because you know you've got
this is still a period in which there are neighborhoods
that are like, this is the Jewish neighborhood in this
(22:13):
city or whatever, and so they'll have their paper. None
of these have the clout or the reach of The Times, though,
so none of them are able to speak to a
national audience. Really, they are rightfully yelling about what Hitler's doing,
but they just don't have the kind of mouthpiece that
The Times is. And for the next ten years, The
New York Times failed utterly to hire any men of
(22:37):
serious skill to work at Berlin Bureau. Much of this
can be traced to the owner of the paper, Adolph Ox,
who wanted his reporters to conduct themselves like quote, an
order of monks. One result of Ox's commitment to impartial journalism,
as he saw it, was that most reports from Berlin
during Hitler's rise and the early years of the regime
(23:00):
we're little more than a collection of quotes from various
German newspapers. This began became a problem when the Nazis
started banning opposition papers from taking control and taking control
of Jewish own publishing houses like Olstein. So the Nazis
run the papers, and Ox is like, we should just
most of our coverage, should just be reporting on what complications.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Yeah right, It's now also amazing because it isn't one
of their stupid arguments for killing everyone that the Jews
run the media. It's like, yeah, the projection thing. It's like, no,
you run the media.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yeah, well they've taken over now. But like, what's interesting
to me Ox, this guy who's like, you know, we
should mostly just be reporting what the German press is saying,
not being critical to the Nazis.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
It's transparents, it's fair and balanced to just transparently pass
things along.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Yeah, yes, yes, and he is he is he is Jewish.
Ox is a Jewish Man, right, But he disliked the
idea that the Times might be he's so obsessed with objectivity.
His big fear is not we're going to let a
genocide happen. It's if we're seen as sympathetic to Jews
in Germany, people might consider us an activist paper. And
(24:10):
there's nothing worse for.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
A personal mistake. And I'm that Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Yeah, like these people are disgusted by the concept of activism.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
Right.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
Arthur Hayes Solsburger, effectively Ox's air as publisher of The Times,
admitted privately that he didn't have any sympathy. Again, Sulzburger
is also Jewish. He had no sympathy for Jews suffering
under Nazism because and he this is literally what he writes,
he was quote too fortunately born right. In other words,
(24:40):
Sulzburg admitted, I just don't care about poor Jews suffering
in Germany because I'm a rich, urban Jewish man in
the United States. Why would I be sympathetic to poor, uneducated,
rural Jews fleeing from Eastern Europe? Right, he got too.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Seinfeld on Bill Maher spoken Cigars, saying Trump is not
it's funny how Trump won't really affect me. Yeah, no shit, dude,
of course, awareness beyond that.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Yeah, it's and it's just very clear. Solsburger found these
people almost like these poor refugees from Eastern Europe who
had run and flooded in the Germany as a result
of you know, pagrams during the Russian Civil War. He
found them as gross as the Nazis did, right, because
they're like poor and dirty. You know, that's this guy's attitude, right.
I'm not saying that about them, but like, that's clearly
(25:28):
what Solsburger thinks. As early as the eighteen nineties, Solzberger
and Ox had embarked on a quest to, in their
words again their words, de jewify The New York Times.
The current publisher of The New York Times, by the way,
is Arthur Greg Sulzberger. On a related note, here's a
tweet from climate reporter Kendri Pierre Lewis about the conversation
(25:51):
she had with a quote top New York Times editor.
I wonder who it was. I think about a lot
about the top New York Times editor who I told
that his story. Urians were warning, we're in a similar
period to the ramp up to the Holocaust, and maybe
we could look back and see what the New York
Times had done wrong to not repeat mistakes. He shrugged,
The New York Times didn't really cover the Holocaust, and
(26:14):
that's true. I don't know if she was talking to Soulsburger,
but whoever she was talking to at the Times had
the same attitude that Sulsberger had to the Holocaust, which
is that's not our business.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
I don't know. I haven't thought that far. I don't care.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Is it good to cover genocide? Impossible to say? What
do you have to be unbiased to do so?
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Is it perhaps why Early Man created the concept of
impartial journalism to whotos about genocides?
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Yeah, huts tutsis have different opinions on machetes. Like, it's just.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
That he's like, my families own this paper since, like
I don't know, eighteen ninety six or whatever, I'm not
going to go against the family because I'm a rich guy,
and that's what we do.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
I think it's it's they're so rich and so these
people have are generations removed from any kind of normal life. Right,
they can't feel fear, right, the only fear they can
feel is the fear that mean old socialists are going
to take some of their money. That is the only
thing that stirs any.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Sort of their dolls eyes dead.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Yes, that is how I would describe souls burger black
eyes like a doll's eye.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
Someone is coming for your money. That's the only thing
that can get get our eyes out.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
That's all these motherfuckers, right. That's why newspapers should be
a public good funded by taxes. I don't know, it's
not perfect, there's flaws with that, but it'll you know,
we've seen how our system works very well over the
course of the Second World War. The Times did it,
(27:51):
in fact cover the Holocaust, though it is fair to
say not well. One thing that's often to defend the
Times people when they they published around two one hundred
articles about the mass murder of Jews and undesirable groups
by the Nazis. Shape you know, that's state that's three
or four a week leading up to the war years
and that sounds good, right, you know, Given this, one
(28:12):
might conclude that Kindra is being unfair, but I don't
think she is. And I'm going to read a quote
from the History News Network to elucidate why at the
end of the war and for decades afterward, Americans claimed
they did not know about the Holocaust as it was happening.
How was it possible for so much information to be
available in the mass media, yet simultaneously for the public
to be ignorant. The reason is that the American media
(28:34):
in general, in the New York Times in particular, never
treated the Holocaust as an important news story. From the
start of the war in Europe to its end nearly
six years later. The story of the Holocaust made the
front page made the Times front page only twenty six
times out of twenty four thousand front page stories, and
most of these stories referred to the victims as refugees
(28:55):
or persecuted minorities. In only six of those stories where
Jews identified on page one as the primary victims while
the Holocaust was happening. Out of twenty four thousand front
page stories during the period of the Holocaust, six times
were their front page articles that identified the Jews as
a victim of Nazi violence.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Wow one per million.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Yeah, yeah, about one per million. Nor did the story
lead the paper, appearing in the right hand column, reserved
for the day's most important news, not even when the
concentration camps were liberated at the end of the war.
In addition, the Times intermittently and timidly editorialized about the
extermination of the Jews, and the paper rarely highlighted it
(29:43):
in either the week in review or the magazine section. Now,
I'm focusing a lot on The Times here, and my
focus on them is rooted in the fact that The
Times was and is dull today our nation's chief paper
of record, and as a result, we have a lot
of detail as to how its journalists and editors saw
the problem of rising Nazi power. Now, I don't think
(30:06):
that tells the whole story, because there are a lot
of there. Not only are there a lot of individual
journalists at the Times who did care about reporting on
the Holocaust, just as by the way, the Times visual
investigation desk has done crucial reporting on what's been being
done in Gaza. Right, you know, there are good people
at the Times, the editors and owners of the paper,
while the editors are a mixed bag and the ownership
(30:27):
of the paper is fucking terrible. Right. That's my stance
on the matter. It's also worth noting that again, many
local US papers, and particularly smaller Jewish papers, did a
marvelous job of spreading detailed information about the first Nazi crimes. Likewise,
there were marvelous foreign correspondence in Germany who did dogged
and courageous work exposing early Nazi atrocities. The problem was
(30:51):
that for years, influential papers like The Times refused to
take their work seriously. The fear was, as always bias.
One of the best sources on early Nazi violence was
the Jewish Telegraph Agency, which had been founded by an
Austrian and provided early evidence of mass violence against German Jews.
The Times refused to report on its reporting like they
(31:15):
like they were doing. They refused to do what they
were doing with like German papers right and cover like
what the JTA was saying, because it was not neutral. Right,
It's a Jewish paper, so it can't neutrally report on
violence against Jews. So we're not going to cover that
at all.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
But as we talked about in the first episode, nothing
is neutral. That's boy never has neutral point of view
over the other. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Yeah, Now they didn't actively, they didn't reject all stories
from the JTA out of hand. When the agency happened
to interview a source, the Times considered it credible because
they were famous in this case Albert Einstein. The Times
was happy to carry a JTA wire story. Now, Einstein
is one of the most popular public in a lie
actuals of the early twentieth century. When the JTA asked
(32:03):
him for his thoughts on the nineteen thirty German elections,
he stated that the quote Hitler vote is only a
symptom not necessarily of anti Jewish hatred, but of momentary
resentment caused by economic misery and unemployment within the ranks
of the German youth. Now Einstein was extremely wrong there, right,
The Hitler vote was absolutely a symptom of anti Jewish hatred.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
Emotionally driven. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
Now that said, I will note Einstein was a consistent
opponent of the Nazis, and you can find quotes from
him that are much more direct and sensible in their
opposition to Hitler. So I think we can forgive the
statement from Einstein as a single lapse of judgment, right, Like,
I'm not trying to shit on the man's attitude towards
the Nazis, but he was wrong in this. And it's
(32:48):
interesting though that this was the thing the time that
like the Times chose to take a JTA story. This time,
when Einstein is saying don't be a The Nazis aren't racist,
you know. Even as the war years began, the Times
continued to avoid reportage on attacks by Nazi street gangs
against Jewish Germans. When the Warsaw Ghetto uprising occurred, the
(33:08):
story was buried on page ten. Even coverage of the
liberation of Auschwitz tended to avoid mentioning that the vast
majority of victims were Jewish.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
It's just in the leisure In the leisure section, they're like,
don't vacation there right now, but we won't say why.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Yeah, don't summer in Auschwitz this year?
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Yeah, Jesus.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
This is where things get a little complicated, because it
is probably fair to say that non Jewish victims of
the Holocaust are forgotten or not sufficiently discussed, due in
part to an understandable desire to compensate for the poor
coverage Sulzburger and his colleagues put out during the genocide itself.
In his Cambridge Press study about the burying the Times
did of the Holocaust, Laurel Left notes that the primary
(33:51):
reason Sulzberger refused to change his initial reaction towards reporting
on Nazi violence against Jews was an unspoken fear that
he would risk his own position in American society, often
framed as part of a broader fear that Jewish assimilation
in the US would be harmed if too much attention
was paid to the suffering of Eastern European Jews under fascism,
(34:11):
Daniel Johnson writes in an article for commentary dot org.
Above all, he was wary of any new influx of
European Jews into the United States. Assimilation, for Sulzberger was
a prize for which he was prepared to let other
Jews make any sacrifice that's good. Yeah, yeah, just a
(34:33):
nice little reminder of like what human evil is.
Speaker 3 (34:37):
You know.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
It's not just these Nazis wanting to exterminate people. It's
this guy going like I could help maybe save lives,
but you know that might endanger me being able to
go to the best parties. So let's just not do that.
Let's just not cover this, you know.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Yeah, I think that maybe the most discouraging thing for
your soul that you can witness is extreme It's like, okay,
extreme violence and cruelty is bad enough, but spectators who
laugh or yeah, treat it like it's fine, and you're
like Damn, the human being can really get dark Jesus.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Yeah, yeah, when people just aren't concerned, don't care about,
you know, what's happening, what's being done to people, right,
Like I this has always been like my frustration talking
to like some of my members, members my family who
supported the Iraq War about like stuff I saw in Iraq,
and like they they they're so bored of it, of
(35:35):
being taught, of talking about the damage that they helped
to do. It just absolutely no interest in thinking about
it and talking about it.
Speaker 4 (35:45):
You know.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
That's what the Republican Party has tried to move on to,
being like, you know, fuck the Iraq War, like like
they weren't the ones who did it, right, you know,
not that they were the only ones who did it.
There's plenty of Democrats who voted for it, but like
you guys, it was you're a thing, like you don't
get to fucking escape it because you don't want to
talk about it anymore.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
And the ring of their world, as far as those
people are terrorists, is a narrative that's still foundational to
what's going on now.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
So yeah, and I yeah, the way in which it's
interesting to me because like I think I do actually
talk about terrorism in a way that's unbiased, because, like
I'm very sympathetic to the aims of the PKK, which
is a Kurdish terrorist organization, right the fact that they
have and I'm not supportive of terrorism, but I think
(36:36):
that oftentimes in history there are groups that find themselves
resorting to that and their broad aims are still justified. Right.
I feel the same way about the anc right. Nelson
Mandela was not just tarred as a terrorist because of
a political campaign by the apartheid government. Nelson Mandela went
(36:57):
into hiding and established the arm wing of the A
and C, which bombed civilians, right like he was a terrorist.
You know, like terrorism, you can you can objectively say
all of these things are terrorism, and that doesn't mean
that like you support it when the cause is good.
It just means that you acknowledge there are terrorists sometimes
(37:20):
whose overall cause is justified. It's like looking at the IRA,
do I think, like, do I think it was evil
to like throw a bomb in a pub? Yeah, that
is evil. It's bad to bomb a pub, But that
doesn't mean the overall fight was evil, right, like you
It's just everyone everyone agrees that terrorism is fine in
certain circumstances. I don't see any moral difference.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
And they're like, this is the good kind. So we
picked a different word because this is the approved form
of domestic terrorism. We're okay with.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
Yeah, the the bombing of Western Europe by the Allies
during World War Two was one of the largest acts
of terrorism in history. It is the deliberate targeting of
civilians to frighten them and break their will. There's no
other way to describe it but terrorism. That's what it
fucking was, right, And you know, I would argue that,
(38:12):
like it actually didn't work. You can't really bomb people's
will to fight away. But I don't think actually in
World War Two we were wrong to have tried it
for a period of time because the situation was fucking
desperate and you're going to you're going to try everything
at that point, right, Like, it's just how people react
in the situations like this. Everyone does it, Every side
(38:34):
does it. I think that's actually reporting on it objectively,
you know. But the tie.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
Remember you were very pro Maquis and anti Kardassian when that.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
I am extremely supportive of Maki a do I like
chacote No as an actor. I dislike it. Sure, yeah,
I look, I support uh insurgent attacks against Cardassian infrastructure
and I always have. Yeah, but the falthy carties yeah, whoa, whoa, Michael,
(39:11):
we don't got to get all Miles O'Brien in here.
Speaker 3 (39:14):
Yes, let's go down this tangent.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
Speaking of Miles O'Brien, A lot of people would argue
the Miles O'Brien of physics was Albert Einstein, and Einstein
reached out to Sulzberger to try to help him, you know,
kind of after this point. He reaches out to Sulzburg
at one point because there's a Berlin theater critic named
Alfred Kerherr who is obviously carries a Jewish Man, and
(39:40):
the Nazis want him dead. They have a real thing
against critics. So Einstein reaches out to Sulzburgers with like, hey,
you have a lot of poll and power. Can you
help us get this guy out of Germany and into
the United States so he doesn't get murdered, And Solsburger
yells at Einstein. He says, I am disassociated from any
(40:01):
movement which springs from the oppression of Jews in Germany.
Only in this way can the unprejudiced and unbiased portion
of the Times be understood. What an insane thing to say,
I am. I will refuse to pay attention to the
oppression of Jews in Germany because that's the only way
that we can be unbiased is this isn't happening.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
That's the neutral stance is pretend.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
It's not happening.
Speaker 3 (40:26):
You know. Wow.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
So that statement is particularly ironic when we return again
to how The Times has recently covered protests against the
genocide and Gaza. I read an article recently on drop
site news by Arvind Dilawar, a freelance journalist who had
worked for The Times, reporting on an article about an
anti Zionist protest in New Jersey. The precise focus of
the protest was Israeli realtors holding an event to auction
(40:51):
off a legally seized Palestinian land arvand writes quote amid
Israel's ongoing genocide and the Gaza strip. The Times article
described the protest as contributing to escalating fear intention in
the otherwise peaceable t Neck as a pivotal example of
alleged anti Semitic activity in the area. My co author
John Leland, a Time staff reporter quoted township council member
(41:13):
Hillary Goldberg, who claimed her home had been broken into
as part of a string of abuse in response to
her vocal support of Israel and her Jewish background. I
have been threatened. I had a box truck with my
picture on it and the words liar, liar, driven around town.
My house has been broken into. I have received anti
Semitic messages, Goldberg told Leland, adding I have never felt
so afraid to be Jewish as now. And hey, look,
(41:36):
if protests had been were corresponding to surges in violence
towards Jewish people, you know that's worth reporting. But in
this case, the claim by Hillary is, so far as
we can tell, untrue. Arvind filed a record's request, and
the records he received from the police showed that police
concluded no break d was attempted at her property, right
(41:58):
that no crime at all had been attempted against Goldberg.
They had found no evidence of it. There were no
signs of forced entry. She calls them a dozen times
for follow up checks on her home, and at no
point do the police find anything indicating her claims were true.
Arvind goes on to write, believing a correction to the
time story was an order, or at least an update
(42:18):
to give readers a fuller picture. I shared the police
reports with Leland, who told me he had already gotten
them and despite the explicit contradictions, no correction would be issued.
When presented with the police reports, Management at the Times
also declined to reconcile them with its coverage. Instead, Managing
director of external Communications, Charlie Stadelander said in a statement
(42:38):
that the article was thoroughly reported, fact checked and edited
and we stand behind its publication. Goldberg did not respond
to multiple requests for comment.
Speaker 3 (42:48):
The cops are like there was a truck going around
her house with her face that said truth teller truth. Yeah,
everything's the opposite of what you're saying it.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Is yea, and look again, I don't want to pretend. Obviously,
there has been a surge in anti Semitism, and some
of it is tied. I don't blame the fact that
people are protesting against a genocide for it, but those
protests have provided cover for Nazis. Right. You can find
evidence of that, and there is evidence that likes aspects
of like far right propag anti Jewish propaganda have been
(43:19):
adopted by some.
Speaker 3 (43:20):
Folks, they're like anything to say antiges.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
Yes, of course, I yeah, exactly. That is a thing
that happens. It's a thing you have to guard against happening, right,
It's a thing you have to be aware of. But
The Times is deliberately refusing to like correct their reporting.
That makes the problem look much worse than it is.
And it's because their narrative that they want to portray
(43:46):
about these protests is helped by that inaccurate reporting, right,
And that's to them neutrality cool stuff. Back to the
nineteen thirties over in France, excellent work was done La Humanity,
the paper of the French Communist Party, which wrote unsparingly
about Nazi violence towards Jews and other targeted groups. This
(44:08):
reporting was ignored by the American press because it was
a communist paper. Now there's a great book about all this, Berlin,
nineteen thirty three, written by French media critic Daniel Schneiderman.
I found an interview with Schneiderman in The New Yorker
for back in twenty nineteen that contains a fascinating quote
on what he called activist journalism, which he argues was
(44:29):
the only journalism that responded ethically to the rise of fascism.
Activist journalism, Schneidermann writes, journalism that subordinates the quest for
truth to the quest for a truth that is useful
to its cause is the only journalism that today doesn't
have to feel ashamed about what it produced. Everything reasonable, scrupulous, balanced,
(44:50):
in my opinion, contributed to lulling the crowd to sleep.
If I had been a reader at the time, though,
I probably would have quickly stopped reading after a few days,
dissuaded by the bludgeting. So Schneiderman saying, like, the only
only these activist papers that had a clear angle angle
are the ones who accurately described the danger of the Nazis.
(45:10):
But I think if I had been reading them at
the time, I wouldn't have paid much attention because it's
just kind of exhausting to get that sort of ideological bludgeting.
And I find this compelling. I think it's actually kind
of courageous that he admits that, right, that's an evidence
of an honest thinker who was like, I can see
that these people were the only ones who did the
right thing, and I don't think I would have listened
(45:32):
to them at the time. I actually respect being able
to say that about yourself quite a lot.
Speaker 3 (45:37):
Yeah, it definitely bums me out though through the climate
change lens, because a similar analog would be we're gonna die,
We're all gonna die, We're all gonna die, and eventually
you're like, look, I know, but I'm sick of hearing it.
It's really depressed they are, though, Or did you not
like this? This really is that level of problem?
Speaker 2 (45:58):
Yeah, it's uh. Yeah, Again, I like Schneiderman a lot
because he's he's kind of able to acknowledge that about
himself and all of us, like you, like, no matter
what you think, you do this about something you kind
of have to to survive, right, But that's part of
where these guys, how these guys thrive, these monsters thrive. Yeah,
(46:20):
now it is uh, you know, I find this all
especially worth pointing out because the next period in Sophie,
did we do a second ad break? Nope? You know
what the next period for all of us, Michael is
going to be to cut to ads. So have a
little have a little ad, you know, shovel some ads
(46:40):
into your face, you know, ads are as a great writer.
William Shakespeare once said the oatmeal of art, So enjoy
some oatmeal while we get ready to do more art.
We're back, Michael Maestro sway, are your fingers ready to
(47:06):
tap the ivories of talking about.
Speaker 3 (47:10):
My keyboard as easily? Google William Shakespeare oatmeal and try
to figure out what the fuck that was about.
Speaker 2 (47:16):
Yeah, I like to think he knew about oatmeal because
as a British person.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
Teeth, why not oatmeal? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (47:27):
Did he quin crocodile?
Speaker 3 (47:29):
He did?
Speaker 2 (47:30):
What a cool guy?
Speaker 3 (47:32):
Yeah, Billy shakes where I'm sure it's based on a
Greek root or something, but I like to think that
he's just saw one and he's like.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
Yeah, that's a fucking crocodile. It is one of those
you know, there's some animals like you look at a
fucking uh a marmoset, right, and like that it's not
obviously a marmoset. Other names could have worked for a marmoset.
You'll get a crocodile and you're like, yeah, that's a
fucking crocodile.
Speaker 3 (47:58):
Where you're like, you are a top That is totally Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
For sure. Every Todd I've seen has been a Todd anyway.
So the next period of American journalism regarding the fascists,
you know, the one that occurred from the late thirties
up to the start of the war. Things got a
little better, you know, quite a bit better by the end.
The rapid change in American attitudes towards isolationism in World
(48:23):
War Two is some evidence of this. But we also
see it in the response of the populace and the
mainstream media to domestic fascist groups like the Silver Shirts
and the German American bund. Here, at least, the outright
sympathy of the Italian liberal press and the frightened tremulousness
of the Weimar media were less present. When the Booned
famously rallied in Madison Square Garden in nineteen thirty nine.
(48:46):
Reporters on scene for Booned clashes with anti fascists wrote
articles with titles like Nazi advocacy of Roosevelt's death charged
and seven are injured at Nazi rally and that's like,
you know good. In an article several days after the rally,
even The Times argued that Bundists were quote determined to
destroy our democracy. The paper's editor later released a statement
(49:10):
saying the boone went to set up an American Hitler,
and this the Times was at least following in the
footsteps of the American people, who by this point had
started taking the warnings of reporters who were quite biased
against Nazis seriously. And I might argue that they only,
you know, the Times only jumps on the bandwagon of
doing that when it becomes clear that there are Nazis
in the US who might threaten them even more than
(49:33):
being sympathetic to Jews in Germany would. As US entry
to World War Two grew closer, the most influential reporting
on the Nazis came not from the unbiased, monklike reporters
valued by AUX but from foreign correspondents like William Schier
and Dorothy Thompson. Thompson's most influential article, and today this
(49:53):
is one of the most influential things anyone will ever
write about Fascism, was published in August of nineteen forty
one for Harper's Me magazine. It had the evocative title
Who Goes Nazi? And, rather than purporting to be even
handed journalism, it presents the reader with a series of
fictional characters from various backgrounds, all conversing at a dinner
party and it asks the reader to predict which ones
(50:16):
might go Nazi. I take some enjoyment in the fact
that Thompson included a character in her article who was
almost certainly based on mister Soulsberger. Right on the head
editor at the Times quote, mister Jay over there is
a Jew. Mister Jay is a very important man. He
is immensely rich. He has made a fortune through a
(50:36):
dozen directorates in various companies, through a fabulous marriage, through
a speculative flare, and through a native gift for money
and a native love of power. He is intelligent and arrogant.
He seldom associates with Jews. He deploys any mention of
the Jewish question. He believes that Hitler should not be
judged from the standpoint of anti Semitism. He thinks that
(50:56):
the Jews should be reserved on all political questions. He
considers Roosevelt an enemy of business. He thinks it was
a serious blow to the Jews that Frankfurter should have
been appointed to the Supreme Court. The saturnine mister c
the real Nazi in the room, engages him in a
flatteringly attentive conversation. Mister Jay agrees with mister C. Holy,
(51:17):
mister J is definitely attracted by mister C. He goes
out of his way to ask his name. They have
never met before. A very intelligent man, he says. And
Thompson's article today still draws a lot of hatred from
conservatives who find it very unfair and unbiased. And it
was Dorothy understood that fairness and objectivity don't fight fascism.
(51:39):
There's a good chance her pros will make you feel uncomfortable,
and it ought to. But I promise if you read
her article, you will at least feel something. Now, I'm
not half the writer Dorothy was, so rather than attempt
to wrap this piece up myself, Michael, I'm going to
leave you with one last quote from that essay. It's fun,
a Macabs sort of fun, this parlor game of who
goes Nazi? And it simplifies things asking the question in
(52:02):
regard to specific personalities. Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people
never go Nazi. They may be the gentle philosopher whose
name is in the blue book or bill from City
College to whom democracy gave a chance to design airplanes.
You'll never make Nazis out of them. But the frustrated
and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son,
(52:24):
the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by
smelling out the wind of success. They would all go
Nazi in a crisis. Believe me, nice people don't go Nazi.
Their race, color, creed, or social condition is not the criterion.
It is something in them. Those who haven't anything in
them to tell them what they like and what they don't,
(52:45):
whether it is breeding or happiness, or wisdom or a
code however old fashion or however modern, go Nazi. It's
an amusing game. Try it at the next big party
you go to.
Speaker 3 (52:58):
Yeah, accuse everyone, you did say, agree earth, Yeah. I
think it gets at the base of something that people
are wielding to great effect right now, which is it's
weird to hate people for no reason. They're weird little guys.
Speaker 2 (53:14):
Yes, Yes, And I think that recognition that, like, you
become a Nazi when there's nothing inside you but the
love of and need for wealth and power, right when
that's the only thing you've got. That's that like, it's
fundamentally a product of insecurity. And so the way to
fight these people, as we're starting to see with like
(53:35):
vance here is to make them feel more insecure, right
when you when you frame them, when you when you
either talk of them as like, well, these are just
common sult of the earth people with legitimate grievances, or
when you do what I think a lot of liberals
started to do with Trump, which is why you've got
this weird chunk of people who like, don't think he
could have been shot just like honestly as part of
(53:57):
an assassination attempt. You know, people treat them like almost
a supernatural enemy, right, like they're you know, they're they're
this kind of like uh like evil demonic force as
opposed to no, these are sad, insecure, sick little weirdos, right,
and when you when you shine that light on them,
(54:19):
when you make that clear. However you do it, if
you do it through just objective reporting, which you can do,
or if you do it through satire, right, whatever you
have to do, you have to find their points of
insecurity and stick a thumb in them, right. That is
how you That is how you fight these people without
pulling out guns. Right if you want to avoid that,
(54:42):
and I sure do, that's how you do it.
Speaker 3 (54:45):
That's how you get kicked out of Tenacious Da.
Speaker 2 (54:48):
Yeah, yeah, god.
Speaker 3 (54:53):
It is. It sucks. It's such a oh bro cod
come on man, man.
Speaker 2 (54:58):
Yeah no, but I don't know who wouldn't who wouldn't
sacrifice a thirty year friendship for the bliss that is
getting to be in the what's that fucking video game
movie that Jack Black's about to be in?
Speaker 3 (55:11):
Borderlands?
Speaker 2 (55:12):
Border Lands?
Speaker 3 (55:13):
Why God considered fucking terrible? There's already known.
Speaker 2 (55:17):
Yeah, no, no, no, nothing more valuable than getting to
be in the Borderlance movie.
Speaker 3 (55:22):
Because of an off the cuff joke that no offense.
Literally everyone thought in their head, like there's no it's whatever. Anyway, Yeah,
I think it speaks to what we're saying in terms of, yes,
in a vacuum, violence is always shocking and feels unnatural
in a way. But remember that the one context where
(55:46):
it kind of makes sense is like, yeah, but if
someone's been beating the shit out of you for eight hours, like,
there's a point, there's a point.
Speaker 2 (55:54):
There's there's a point, right, uh. And that point was
for us in the political sense of like getting dirty.
That point was like six years ago, like six to
eight years ago.
Speaker 3 (56:06):
And all right, we've held ourselves back long enough.
Speaker 2 (56:09):
Yeah, anyway, Michael, speaking of fighting back, you know what,
you can fight back against your boredom by reading Michael's novel.
That's right, will make you entertained and happy.
Speaker 3 (56:27):
It's true I plugged it at the top, but I'll
mention again. It's called The Climb. You can get a
free sample by checking out the small Beans podcast feed,
or check out the small Beans Patreon page and click
the shop tab. If you end up wanting the whole thing,
it's an audiobook and a book book. You can get
either flavor. Now, anyway, we got thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (56:50):
We got two things to plug at the end here.
Speaker 2 (56:52):
Robert, Yeah, do it so.
Speaker 1 (56:57):
I'll do the first one if you do the second one.
Speaker 3 (56:59):
Deal. Okay, it's clearly forgot the plug, sohi, no.
Speaker 1 (57:03):
I remember by the time we get there. I think
the first one is we have a new podcast that
cools on media, hosted by Molly Conger. It's called Weird
Little Guys and shows like that relate to episodes like this.
Speaker 3 (57:18):
I Stell's plugged it earlier. If I know.
Speaker 1 (57:21):
I caught that and I was like, wow, swam really
really calling it good.
Speaker 3 (57:26):
I'm loving it so far.
Speaker 1 (57:27):
Oh, thank you. Molly's amazing. And the other thing, Robert is.
Speaker 2 (57:34):
What is the other thing? Sophie, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (57:35):
I'm looking and to Robert and we go, I'm looking
at you. Other people can look at.
Speaker 2 (57:42):
You, you know what, Sophie, let me explain to you.
So about like one hundred and fifty or so years ago,
some I'm guessing they were frenchmen figured out that if
you like, put a hole in a box and run
light through it, you can kind of get images to
print essentially onto pieces of paper.
Speaker 1 (58:04):
Right.
Speaker 2 (58:05):
This led to the creation of what we're called photographs
and cameras, and eventually people recognize that if you take
a lot of these still images and you run them
in sequence, you can create the illusion of movement. And
now we at cool Zone have joined this glorious tradition
by pivoting to video ourselves, because that's never.
Speaker 1 (58:26):
Bad YouTube dot com slash at behind the.
Speaker 3 (58:31):
Back, masterfully stretched.
Speaker 2 (58:33):
Thank you, Thank you, Michael, thank you, and thank you.
Speaker 1 (58:37):
That's it. That's the episode, bye, is it? I mean,
do you have anything else you'd like to add?
Speaker 2 (58:45):
Michael, It's nice to talk No, I was just saying
it's nice to talk to you. That's what I want
to know. Yeah, yeah, yeah did you?
Speaker 3 (58:54):
Did you?
Speaker 2 (58:55):
The recent news came out that Tim Walls is a
second Dreamcast player. I think this might be what cinches
the election.
Speaker 3 (59:02):
You know, can we do another hour on that perfect blue.
Speaker 2 (59:05):
And he's a monster.
Speaker 3 (59:08):
Oh we have different attitudes, so good dude.
Speaker 2 (59:11):
I want to say Crazy Taxi was on the Dreamcast.
Speaker 3 (59:14):
One of the launch titles. I believe Dreamcast Day.
Speaker 2 (59:18):
It was really the refer yeah, the precursor to that
good GTA three energy.
Speaker 3 (59:24):
Yeah for real. I was just thinking about Crazy Taxi.
Speaker 2 (59:29):
And there was the Simpsons rip off of Crazy tax
It was pretty good too. Hit and Run, Yeah, hit
and Run, great game anyway, think about the Simpsons. Now,
folks to wear some screen huh you? Well bye.
Speaker 4 (59:47):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
Eight
Also media.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hashtag never again when we do this.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Podcast hashtag never again. We're never going to do this podcast.
That's where we're going with.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
We're done, We're done forever. Anyway, Welcome back to the Bastards,
a podcast where I just carried out a cunning power
play against my producer, Sophie Lifterman. She was not ready
for it at all. It came down upon her like
like the tanks of Operation Barbarossa on Michael Robert.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
How does it feel? How does it feel?
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Dad? It feels? You know, this is this is my
ensurgiment of Kiev, you know, perfect beautiful Michael, I feel
like a god.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Great, unstopped. That's the goal.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
I really, I really want to cut off the feed.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Yeah, you probably should. I am now comparing myself to
the fair Mack.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
So that's not going to Daniel Malcolm.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Could you just shut him off?
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Just replace me with an AI version asking Michael, Michael,
how are you doing today? I hear you've got a novel.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Oh boy, Oh we're doing the plug right at the top.
That's great.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
We're in the p zone. Michael.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Okay, I've had long had a fantasy of founding the
Sokel low kel kel zone zone. But that's neither here
nor there. Robert, thank you for the opportunity to push
my novel. I really really mean it. From the bottom
of my plug bag. I released my debut novel. It's
a sci fi fantasy, magical realist memoir in the sense
(01:47):
that you'll barely know that it's about my life because
there's robots and spells and shit, but it is. So
if you're interested in someone who.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Knows you, there's a lot of robots and wizards around
you at any gain.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
That's right. Yeah, that is. If you're interested in like
alcoholism or my time at Cracks, that's in there too.
In a sense, it's called the Climb. There will be
a free three hour sample coming out, probably out by
the time this drops on the small Beans feed, which
is my own podcast network. You can find that just
by pointing your podcast app at small Beans and looking
(02:21):
for the Climb, or you can get the whole thing
over at patreon dot com slash Smallbeans slash shop, where
you can find the audiobook version, which I imagine most
people will want, but there's also a pdf version and
an e reader version and all that good stuff.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Awesome, yeah, excellent, excellent stuff.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Check it out.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Michael. You and I worked at a website called cracked
dot com back in the day, and I've.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Never heard that word, and I don't know what you're
talking about.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
We worked with a guy named Tom Ryman who did
a great video once about how in the movie Jaws,
the shark is alcoholism. Right, there's no your shark. Everything
in that is explicable as a bunch of drunk people
by the ocean, like get fucking up and destroying their
own boat and whatnot. I always like that interpretation, and
(03:13):
I do now always watch movies with an eye for like,
what what thing in this could represent alcoholism, which has
made the Star Wars series a lot more energy.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Just gotta say that episode also made me realize which
I don't think they touch upon, even the famous shark death.
It's like, yeah, you put a bottle in your mouth,
you die. Yeah, it's alcoholism.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
It's all alcoholism anyway. You know what's not alcoholism? Michael,
is there already? Really that is sometimes alcoholism? God willing
if we get that. The Big jim Bean sponsors Sophy's
been clamoring for.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Yes, yeah, it sounds like me, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
What's like alcoholism? Is the addiction that the liberal own
of mainstream newspapers in the United States had with trying
to normalize and support the growth of fascism in Europe.
That is a kind of addiction. Oh that yeah, uh
huh uh huh. That is the that's the liquor of
(04:15):
fools is thinking that you can make a deal with
the fascists. Speaking of fools, you're all fools for not
knowing that this was the cold open and it's the
hot open. We're back, Michael. Are you toasty? Are you
burning up?
Speaker 3 (04:35):
I'm offended by being called a fool, but I'll get
it in time.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Have question, how do you think those people that were
supposed to go to space for eight days feel about
being stuck there? And definitely I keep saying I keep
thinking about them, and I'm like, I imagine.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
I imagine if you're if you get into space, it's
because your whole life has been geared towards.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Letting you spa sweet I would say, until it gets
to like three four months, I'd be sweet. Bonus.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
This is what it's about, dope. This has been what
my whole life is for. But I don't know these people.
Maybe they're miserable. I don't care. Wow, you go to space,
you have to accept that you're going to space. It's
dangerous up there. We're not supposed to be in space.
It's a bad place to be, and it's going to
(05:26):
be unpleasant.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
You know that space's whole thing.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Yeah, if somebody offered you a trip to space, would
you go absolutely?
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, question I'm a novel seeker.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yeah, of course, but I would not enjoy it while
I was there. Right, it would be a life changing experience,
but it's supposed to I'm sure it's deeply uncomfortable and
physically just a nightmare.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
They were supposed to go for eight days, and they're
they're saying it could be twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Maybe, Yeah, I mean, okay, that's that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
That sounds yeah, there's there's you know, you know, the
only thing less trustworthy than fascist governments in Europe in
the nineteen thirties is the Boeing Corporation today.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
So oh, I thought you were going to say it
was like, let's killing us, let's maybe try to do
you know some podcasts about some bad guys.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
You'll never say that.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
We're still here fuck them. So in some ways, the
US media responded to the rise of Hitler and Mussolini
worse than the German or Italian media had done. This
was due in a degree to simple distance. Fascism was
seen by a lot of these guys. It's a foreign ideology.
So whatever they're saying about killing journalists and whatnot, that's
(06:45):
not going to hurt us over here in the United
States because we're not Europe right now. That wasn't the
only reason why so much of the media was sympathetic
to Hitler and Mussolini a lot. In a lot of cases,
it was because the rich men who owned those media
organs were fascists, or at least fasci philo fascists, right.
They liked the fascists. Many of the wealthy men who
(07:08):
owned large published in houses saw communism as a rising
threat in Italy as a bulwark against the USSR, which,
if you just think about the military capabilities that Italy
evinced during World War Two, is extremely funny. The idea
of Italy trying to fight the Red Army, it's just yeah,
well last in about fourteen minutes. Anyway. Within days of
(07:30):
the March on Rome, the Birmingham Age Herald, a major
Alabama paper, described Mussolini as looking like a movie star. Wow,
he's really got a movie star. Good looks this fascist
who's remade the government in his own image. What a
hot guy.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Hey, that Putin looks good with his top off. Though
you got it too.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Yeah, they never stopped falling for it. Much was made
of the fact that actual movie stars found Mussolini magnetic.
In February of nineteen twenty seven, and Motion Picture Magazine
published a photo of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, both
movie stars, doing a fascist salute in honor of their
new friend Mussolini they met the year before. Yeah, yeah,
(08:14):
doug Old Doug Fairbanks doing the Mussolini salute for his
new friend. Benito. Rudolph Valentino, an Italian born star born
star known as the Great Lover by Hollywood press, was
often compared positively to Il Duce Right, Like, Wow, Valentino
and the dictator of Italy are very similar. You know,
(08:34):
good looking guys. I bet Mussolini fucks. That's journalism.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
I need to hear that sentence.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Oh, you know, Mussolini fucked Sophie.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
You know that's I don't need to hear it though.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Look that's what the US media argued, So that's the
cold open, and we got.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
It's never a cold open with Musset.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
The early obsession many Americans had from Mussolini, which transferred
to Hitler in substantial degree, was due to several interlocking causes.
Katie Hole, a lecturer in American studies at the University
of Amsterdam, argues that these reasons were the Italian corporate
state's ability to project the image that they had solved
the problems of democracy, combined with Mussolini's personal masculine magnetism
(09:25):
and the belief that fascism offered a solution to the
Great Depression. We can see a lot of the same
factors at work today in right wing idolization of strong
men like Erdowin and support for profoundly anti democratic solutions
to problems, best embodied by the coup attempt on January sixth.
The reality was that Mussolini's government was incompetent, a fact
(09:45):
that would soon be made evident with their disastrous invasion
of Ethiopia and incompetent handling of World War Two. But
many mainstream reporters in the US took the fascist government's
claims about its own success at face value. They believe
the trains ran on time because the fascist said, we've
got the trains working, even though the trains did not
run on time. That was not a real thing.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
I love when history is the exact opposite. Like I
recently learned that Lizzie Borden almost certainly didn't kill her parents,
and the media just shat on her until that became
the history so interesting.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Yeah, and as a result, you know, they really put
a black mark on all of us who have killed
people with axes, and it's just not very fair, to
be honest, you know, Like we're like, axe murder is
a legitimate American pastime, and I just.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
Only a few steps away from criminalizing the machete. And
then obviously this show.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Yeah, it's always wrong to cut people up into pieces
because you're angry.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
I just want to point it You've gifted me both
those things, which is so funny, I know.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
Yeah, because Morny whatever.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
I'm a patriotic, red blooded American Sophie, and I think
that everyone deserves the right to partake in this country's
great traditions, you know, And that's where I am that's
great acts. The Saturday Evening Post published Mussolini's autobiography as
a serial starting in nineteen twenty eight. They described the
FASCISTI movement as rough in its methods, but praised it
(11:16):
for halting the radical left. That's the Saturday Evening Post.
They're a little rough, but at least they dealt with
those radical workers trying to get fair wages. Similar tributes
came in from the Chicago Tribune. The New York Times
credited fascism with bringing Italy back to a state of normalcy.
In his study Mussolini and Fascism, The View from America,
(11:38):
John Patrick Diggins notes that out of one hundred and
fifty articles that mentioned Mussolini and new US newspapers from
nineteen twenty five to nineteen thirty two, the majority had
either a neutral or a amused positive tone. Right, there
was no sort of fear about this guy, you know.
He was just kind of exciting and look he dealt
with those men old commis, right, these evil anarchists. One
(12:02):
of the relatively few journalists to write objectively on Mussolini
for American papers in this early portion of his reign
was John Gunther, who profiled him for Harper's and his
piece is an interesting historical document for its takes on Mussolini,
but it's absolutely critical for its insights into the way
the international press functioned around Mussolini, right Gunther. Because he's
(12:26):
a guy who gets to interview in profile, Mussolini is
familiar with the process, and he sees what happens to
other journalists, the guys who are writing all of these
fawning articles that are turning Mussolini into a celebrity back
in the US. Quote interviews, Mussolini knows are the best
of all possible forms of propaganda. Thus he is so
lavish with them. Most newspapermen and their editors cannot resist
(12:49):
the flattery of conversation with a dictator or head of state.
Once they have been received by Mussolini or Hitler, they
feel a sense of obligation, which warps their objectivity. Is
very difficult for the average correspondent to write unfavorably about
a busy and important man who has just donated him
a friendly hour of conversation. I think it's a critical
(13:10):
revelation not just about how the media, even up to today,
reports on dictators and fascists, but how they report On
like guys like Peter Teel, very wealthy billionaires, guys like
Elon Musk. Right, they're so odd to be in the
presence of a celebrity and a man of power who
is dedicating time that makes them feel so important that
they become warmer and less objective towards the subject of
(13:34):
the interview.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
And if you happen to form any kind of personal connection,
like my own window into this is working for IGN
and reviewing games, and they're constantly accused of and I
think you have to be really rigorous with yourself to
avoid being like, well, the game sucked, but they all
seem so nice, and they gave me access to their
(13:56):
time and their work. I can't just give them a
four or whatever. And that's just video game reviews. So
I can't imagine being like, I'm gonna come out against
the president actually after meeting him and shaking his hand
and all that.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Yeah, it's a real problem, one that has not gotten
to be any less of a problem.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
I think that's somewhat propinquity. Good.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Yeah, yeah, that is a good word. Speaking of propinquity,
someone interested in drawing more modern parallels here might bring
up the case of Maggie Haberman. Her work for The
New York Times reporting on the Trump White House was
praised by many liberals, even though Trump's people saw her
as providing positive pr Haberman was criticized back in twenty
twenty two when she finally published a much ballyhooed book
(14:44):
about the Trump administration, which included a she quoted the
former president as promising not to leave office after his
defeat in twenty twenty. Now, Haberman didn't report on this
at the time, and a lot of people were, like,
the fact that the president said in front of you
that he would refuse to leave office after losing an
election was probably something the American people immediately needed access to.
(15:07):
As a journalist, you had an ethical responsibility to tell
them right away. But Haberman, a lot of people will allege,
wanted to withhold this information because if she put it out,
she would have lost her access to Trump, and she
wanted to stick with him because she wanted to get
more stuff to put in her books so that she
would get more money for it. Right The argument here
(15:30):
the criticism of Maggie is that she held off on
reporting crucial information about a threat to democracy for her
own personal financial enrichment right now. Haberman's people, for their part,
claim she shared this fact with her editors, and her
editors at the time were like, no, the fact that
the president has refused to leave office is not newsworthy,
which I do believe editors at the time would make
(15:53):
that call. But that's a bad unethical call, right, Like what.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Is dimentionally He'll say it to a bunch of evangelicals
on camera, so it'll be fine.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Yeah, I just.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
It'll come out, thank you.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Don't worry. January's right around the corner. Something's gonna happen.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Back in the thirties, New York Times correspondents made equally
problematic judgments in their coverage of our friend of the Pod,
Adolf Hitler. Perhaps the most sinister example of this was
the case of New York Times correspondent Frederick Birschell. Prior
to Nazism's final victory over by Our Democracy, Birchill had
followed Hans Schaeffer in what was called the caged Hitler theory.
(16:38):
This was the idea that if Hitler got into power,
decent conservatives and government would moderate his behavior, and so
letting Hitler win was not disastrous, right, Like it was
a brilliant plan to weigh the Nazi leader down with
busy work that would stop him from doing any damage. Right,
perfect strategy. Yeah, that's gonna work. Great, thank god, Yeah, yeah,
(17:00):
thank god. We've got this. We've got the plan. Speaking
of plans, Michael, I have a plan to sell you
some of these products and services. We're back, Michael. I
hope you have enjoyed purchasing.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
I bought them all.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
You bought them all?
Speaker 3 (17:22):
Yeah, I bought them all purely to support the economy
and therefore the state.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Yeah, you got lasick for parts of your body that
aren't even your eyes. You just use the lasers at you.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
I said, how much laser can this buy me? And
slap my wallet on the count.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
That's right, That's right. Yeah, they love They just love lasering.
You know, any any god fearing American does really anyway
back to a non god fearing American. What are you
talking about, Sophie, I'm just talking about our our man
who thinks that he's he's going to stop Hitler by
giving Hitler everything he wants.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
Now.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
Burchell was one of a few New York Times Berlin
Bureau correspondents who stayed on after the Nazis took power.
He had a major influence on how Americans perceived the
coming regime, and so it had an impact when he claimed,
in writing for The New York Times, there will be
quote no extreme persecution of Nazi opponents under Hitler's regime,
and he said the Nazis aren't going to be mean
(18:20):
to anybody who opposed them because quote, there would be
no advantage to the government in unsettling Germany's social structure. Yeah.
You really got the pulse of the Nazis there, Burchill.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
What would they have to game killing all the Jews?
That would be Meanwhile, he's doing speeches like we must
give Yeah, no, here's the deal. We let him, when
we fee let him, you know, take more rope, more rope, bring.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Him down, the whole thing, a rope over to him,
and then leave.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
You know, we see the wire. This is a five
year process.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Yeah, yeah, So the Enabling Act of March nineteen thirty
three brought the Nazis pretty much total power. Many Americans
did find this deeply unsettling, and so with the Times
a consent, Burchell took to the airwaves on CBS radio,
he avoided any mention of the anti Semitic violence that
Nazis had already been engaging in since Hitler's ascension, and
(19:26):
instead toward told millions of Americans there was quote no
cause for general alarm. He advised his audience to dismiss
from their minds any thought that there would be in
Germany any slaughter of the National Socialist Government's enemies or
racial oppression in any vital degree. The wrongest a man
has ever been, like powerful Jaco Tapper. Energy out of
(19:50):
this guy, just like the Nazis aren't going to kill anyone.
Why would you think that, calm down, everything's gonna be fine.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Quote me on that. It's almost like someone torturously trying
to figure out an opposite day sentence. Yeah, quickly, the
Nazis will spare all the Christians. This dude's wrong or lying.
This is not coming together.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Yeah. So, while Birchall was optimistic about the Hitler regime
in public, he knew that he couldn't actually like, he
knew that because he's reporting from Berlin. He knows the
Nazis are actively at the moment murdering Jews and Communists, right,
He knew that what he was saying was indefensible, but
he justified lying to make Hitler seem safe to his publisher,
(20:39):
Arthur Sulzberger. By informing Soulsburger, I conceived of the notion
of making the broadcast a bait for a real live
interview with Hitler, one which I have been vainly seeking.
He was lying to the American people about Hitler not
wanting to murder anyone, so that he could get an
interview with Hitler.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
Yeah. Great, and presumably the interview is him going like
I want to murder everybody, you know, it's just disseminating
his view. So it was.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Yeah, it's like the most poisonous access journalism has ever been.
Is this right here?
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Yep?
Speaker 3 (21:15):
And now this is officially the point in this two
episode story arc where I'm going, Okay, I see where
you're going with this in terms of modern day Yeah,
like Israeli coming to Coman.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Not just that, Honestly, like I wrote this before, you
know that had reached the global fashion. Yeah, yeah, it's
like a lot of things. You know, we've been seeing this.
This has been very evident and clear for a long time.
Although you are right, like that's part of why I
felt the need to rejigger this article in light of
what's been happening in goz It, right, is that like, oh,
(21:51):
I think there's actually a moral responsibility to draw that
comparison and make it much clearer. There was an immediate
and a massive backlash to whatchual was doing with The Times,
and it was led with particular fervor by a number
of Jewish papers. Now, none of these because these are
like small community papers, right, because you know you've got
this is still a period in which there are neighborhoods
that are like, this is the Jewish neighborhood in this
(22:13):
city or whatever, and so they'll have their paper. None
of these have the clout or the reach of The Times, though,
so none of them are able to speak to a
national audience. Really, they are rightfully yelling about what Hitler's doing,
but they just don't have the kind of mouthpiece that
The Times is. And for the next ten years, The
New York Times failed utterly to hire any men of
(22:37):
serious skill to work at Berlin Bureau. Much of this
can be traced to the owner of the paper, Adolph Ox,
who wanted his reporters to conduct themselves like quote, an
order of monks. One result of Ox's commitment to impartial journalism,
as he saw it, was that most reports from Berlin
during Hitler's rise and the early years of the regime
(23:00):
we're little more than a collection of quotes from various
German newspapers. This began became a problem when the Nazis
started banning opposition papers from taking control and taking control
of Jewish own publishing houses like Olstein. So the Nazis
run the papers, and Ox is like, we should just
most of our coverage, should just be reporting on what complications.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Yeah right, It's now also amazing because it isn't one
of their stupid arguments for killing everyone that the Jews
run the media. It's like, yeah, the projection thing. It's like, no,
you run the media.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yeah, well they've taken over now. But like, what's interesting
to me Ox, this guy who's like, you know, we
should mostly just be reporting what the German press is saying,
not being critical to the Nazis.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
It's transparents, it's fair and balanced to just transparently pass
things along.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Yeah, yes, yes, and he is he is he is Jewish.
Ox is a Jewish Man, right, But he disliked the
idea that the Times might be he's so obsessed with objectivity.
His big fear is not we're going to let a
genocide happen. It's if we're seen as sympathetic to Jews
in Germany, people might consider us an activist paper. And
(24:10):
there's nothing worse for.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
A personal mistake. And I'm that Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Yeah, like these people are disgusted by the concept of activism.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
Right.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
Arthur Hayes Solsburger, effectively Ox's air as publisher of The Times,
admitted privately that he didn't have any sympathy. Again, Sulzburger
is also Jewish. He had no sympathy for Jews suffering
under Nazism because and he this is literally what he writes,
he was quote too fortunately born right. In other words,
(24:40):
Sulzburg admitted, I just don't care about poor Jews suffering
in Germany because I'm a rich, urban Jewish man in
the United States. Why would I be sympathetic to poor, uneducated,
rural Jews fleeing from Eastern Europe? Right, he got too.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Seinfeld on Bill Maher spoken Cigars, saying Trump is not
it's funny how Trump won't really affect me. Yeah, no shit, dude,
of course, awareness beyond that.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Yeah, it's and it's just very clear. Solsburger found these
people almost like these poor refugees from Eastern Europe who
had run and flooded in the Germany as a result
of you know, pagrams during the Russian Civil War. He
found them as gross as the Nazis did, right, because
they're like poor and dirty. You know, that's this guy's attitude, right.
I'm not saying that about them, but like, that's clearly
(25:28):
what Solsburger thinks. As early as the eighteen nineties, Solzberger
and Ox had embarked on a quest to, in their
words again their words, de jewify The New York Times.
The current publisher of The New York Times, by the way,
is Arthur Greg Sulzberger. On a related note, here's a
tweet from climate reporter Kendri Pierre Lewis about the conversation
(25:51):
she had with a quote top New York Times editor.
I wonder who it was. I think about a lot
about the top New York Times editor who I told
that his story. Urians were warning, we're in a similar
period to the ramp up to the Holocaust, and maybe
we could look back and see what the New York
Times had done wrong to not repeat mistakes. He shrugged,
The New York Times didn't really cover the Holocaust, and
(26:14):
that's true. I don't know if she was talking to Soulsburger,
but whoever she was talking to at the Times had
the same attitude that Sulsberger had to the Holocaust, which
is that's not our business.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
I don't know. I haven't thought that far. I don't care.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Is it good to cover genocide? Impossible to say? What
do you have to be unbiased to do so?
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Is it perhaps why Early Man created the concept of
impartial journalism to whotos about genocides?
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Yeah, huts tutsis have different opinions on machetes. Like, it's just.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
That he's like, my families own this paper since, like
I don't know, eighteen ninety six or whatever, I'm not
going to go against the family because I'm a rich guy,
and that's what we do.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
I think it's it's they're so rich and so these
people have are generations removed from any kind of normal life. Right,
they can't feel fear, right, the only fear they can
feel is the fear that mean old socialists are going
to take some of their money. That is the only
thing that stirs any.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Sort of their dolls eyes dead.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Yes, that is how I would describe souls burger black
eyes like a doll's eye.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
Someone is coming for your money. That's the only thing
that can get get our eyes out.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
That's all these motherfuckers, right. That's why newspapers should be
a public good funded by taxes. I don't know, it's
not perfect, there's flaws with that, but it'll you know,
we've seen how our system works very well over the
course of the Second World War. The Times did it,
(27:51):
in fact cover the Holocaust, though it is fair to
say not well. One thing that's often to defend the
Times people when they they published around two one hundred
articles about the mass murder of Jews and undesirable groups
by the Nazis. Shape you know, that's state that's three
or four a week leading up to the war years
and that sounds good, right, you know, Given this, one
(28:12):
might conclude that Kindra is being unfair, but I don't
think she is. And I'm going to read a quote
from the History News Network to elucidate why at the
end of the war and for decades afterward, Americans claimed
they did not know about the Holocaust as it was happening.
How was it possible for so much information to be
available in the mass media, yet simultaneously for the public
to be ignorant. The reason is that the American media
(28:34):
in general, in the New York Times in particular, never
treated the Holocaust as an important news story. From the
start of the war in Europe to its end nearly
six years later. The story of the Holocaust made the
front page made the Times front page only twenty six
times out of twenty four thousand front page stories, and
most of these stories referred to the victims as refugees
(28:55):
or persecuted minorities. In only six of those stories where
Jews identified on page one as the primary victims while
the Holocaust was happening. Out of twenty four thousand front
page stories during the period of the Holocaust, six times
were their front page articles that identified the Jews as
a victim of Nazi violence.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Wow one per million.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Yeah, yeah, about one per million. Nor did the story
lead the paper, appearing in the right hand column, reserved
for the day's most important news, not even when the
concentration camps were liberated at the end of the war.
In addition, the Times intermittently and timidly editorialized about the
extermination of the Jews, and the paper rarely highlighted it
(29:43):
in either the week in review or the magazine section. Now,
I'm focusing a lot on The Times here, and my
focus on them is rooted in the fact that The
Times was and is dull today our nation's chief paper
of record, and as a result, we have a lot
of detail as to how its journalists and editors saw
the problem of rising Nazi power. Now, I don't think
(30:06):
that tells the whole story, because there are a lot
of there. Not only are there a lot of individual
journalists at the Times who did care about reporting on
the Holocaust, just as by the way, the Times visual
investigation desk has done crucial reporting on what's been being
done in Gaza. Right, you know, there are good people
at the Times, the editors and owners of the paper,
while the editors are a mixed bag and the ownership
(30:27):
of the paper is fucking terrible. Right. That's my stance
on the matter. It's also worth noting that again, many
local US papers, and particularly smaller Jewish papers, did a
marvelous job of spreading detailed information about the first Nazi crimes. Likewise,
there were marvelous foreign correspondence in Germany who did dogged
and courageous work exposing early Nazi atrocities. The problem was
(30:51):
that for years, influential papers like The Times refused to
take their work seriously. The fear was, as always bias.
One of the best sources on early Nazi violence was
the Jewish Telegraph Agency, which had been founded by an
Austrian and provided early evidence of mass violence against German Jews.
The Times refused to report on its reporting like they
(31:15):
like they were doing. They refused to do what they
were doing with like German papers right and cover like
what the JTA was saying, because it was not neutral. Right,
It's a Jewish paper, so it can't neutrally report on
violence against Jews. So we're not going to cover that
at all.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
But as we talked about in the first episode, nothing
is neutral. That's boy never has neutral point of view
over the other. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Yeah, Now they didn't actively, they didn't reject all stories
from the JTA out of hand. When the agency happened
to interview a source, the Times considered it credible because
they were famous in this case Albert Einstein. The Times
was happy to carry a JTA wire story. Now, Einstein
is one of the most popular public in a lie
actuals of the early twentieth century. When the JTA asked
(32:03):
him for his thoughts on the nineteen thirty German elections,
he stated that the quote Hitler vote is only a
symptom not necessarily of anti Jewish hatred, but of momentary
resentment caused by economic misery and unemployment within the ranks
of the German youth. Now Einstein was extremely wrong there, right,
The Hitler vote was absolutely a symptom of anti Jewish hatred.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
Emotionally driven. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
Now that said, I will note Einstein was a consistent
opponent of the Nazis, and you can find quotes from
him that are much more direct and sensible in their
opposition to Hitler. So I think we can forgive the
statement from Einstein as a single lapse of judgment, right, Like,
I'm not trying to shit on the man's attitude towards
the Nazis, but he was wrong in this. And it's
(32:48):
interesting though that this was the thing the time that
like the Times chose to take a JTA story. This time,
when Einstein is saying don't be a The Nazis aren't racist,
you know. Even as the war years began, the Times
continued to avoid reportage on attacks by Nazi street gangs
against Jewish Germans. When the Warsaw Ghetto uprising occurred, the
(33:08):
story was buried on page ten. Even coverage of the
liberation of Auschwitz tended to avoid mentioning that the vast
majority of victims were Jewish.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
It's just in the leisure In the leisure section, they're like,
don't vacation there right now, but we won't say why.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Yeah, don't summer in Auschwitz this year?
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Yeah, Jesus.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
This is where things get a little complicated, because it
is probably fair to say that non Jewish victims of
the Holocaust are forgotten or not sufficiently discussed, due in
part to an understandable desire to compensate for the poor
coverage Sulzburger and his colleagues put out during the genocide itself.
In his Cambridge Press study about the burying the Times
did of the Holocaust, Laurel Left notes that the primary
(33:51):
reason Sulzberger refused to change his initial reaction towards reporting
on Nazi violence against Jews was an unspoken fear that
he would risk his own position in American society, often
framed as part of a broader fear that Jewish assimilation
in the US would be harmed if too much attention
was paid to the suffering of Eastern European Jews under fascism,
(34:11):
Daniel Johnson writes in an article for commentary dot org.
Above all, he was wary of any new influx of
European Jews into the United States. Assimilation, for Sulzberger was
a prize for which he was prepared to let other
Jews make any sacrifice that's good. Yeah, yeah, just a
(34:33):
nice little reminder of like what human evil is.
Speaker 3 (34:37):
You know.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
It's not just these Nazis wanting to exterminate people. It's
this guy going like I could help maybe save lives,
but you know that might endanger me being able to
go to the best parties. So let's just not do that.
Let's just not cover this, you know.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Yeah, I think that maybe the most discouraging thing for
your soul that you can witness is extreme It's like, okay,
extreme violence and cruelty is bad enough, but spectators who
laugh or yeah, treat it like it's fine, and you're
like Damn, the human being can really get dark Jesus.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Yeah, yeah, when people just aren't concerned, don't care about,
you know, what's happening, what's being done to people, right,
Like I this has always been like my frustration talking
to like some of my members, members my family who
supported the Iraq War about like stuff I saw in Iraq,
and like they they they're so bored of it, of
(35:35):
being taught, of talking about the damage that they helped
to do. It just absolutely no interest in thinking about
it and talking about it.
Speaker 4 (35:45):
You know.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
That's what the Republican Party has tried to move on to,
being like, you know, fuck the Iraq War, like like
they weren't the ones who did it, right, you know,
not that they were the only ones who did it.
There's plenty of Democrats who voted for it, but like
you guys, it was you're a thing, like you don't
get to fucking escape it because you don't want to
talk about it anymore.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
And the ring of their world, as far as those
people are terrorists, is a narrative that's still foundational to
what's going on now.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
So yeah, and I yeah, the way in which it's
interesting to me because like I think I do actually
talk about terrorism in a way that's unbiased, because, like
I'm very sympathetic to the aims of the PKK, which
is a Kurdish terrorist organization, right the fact that they
have and I'm not supportive of terrorism, but I think
(36:36):
that oftentimes in history there are groups that find themselves
resorting to that and their broad aims are still justified. Right.
I feel the same way about the anc right. Nelson
Mandela was not just tarred as a terrorist because of
a political campaign by the apartheid government. Nelson Mandela went
(36:57):
into hiding and established the arm wing of the A
and C, which bombed civilians, right like he was a terrorist.
You know, like terrorism, you can you can objectively say
all of these things are terrorism, and that doesn't mean
that like you support it when the cause is good.
It just means that you acknowledge there are terrorists sometimes
(37:20):
whose overall cause is justified. It's like looking at the IRA,
do I think, like, do I think it was evil
to like throw a bomb in a pub? Yeah, that
is evil. It's bad to bomb a pub, But that
doesn't mean the overall fight was evil, right, like you
It's just everyone everyone agrees that terrorism is fine in
certain circumstances. I don't see any moral difference.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
And they're like, this is the good kind. So we
picked a different word because this is the approved form
of domestic terrorism. We're okay with.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
Yeah, the the bombing of Western Europe by the Allies
during World War Two was one of the largest acts
of terrorism in history. It is the deliberate targeting of
civilians to frighten them and break their will. There's no
other way to describe it but terrorism. That's what it
fucking was, right, And you know, I would argue that,
(38:12):
like it actually didn't work. You can't really bomb people's
will to fight away. But I don't think actually in
World War Two we were wrong to have tried it
for a period of time because the situation was fucking
desperate and you're going to you're going to try everything
at that point, right, Like, it's just how people react
in the situations like this. Everyone does it, Every side
(38:34):
does it. I think that's actually reporting on it objectively,
you know. But the tie.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
Remember you were very pro Maquis and anti Kardassian when that.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
I am extremely supportive of Maki a do I like
chacote No as an actor. I dislike it. Sure, yeah,
I look, I support uh insurgent attacks against Cardassian infrastructure
and I always have. Yeah, but the falthy carties yeah, whoa, whoa, Michael,
(39:11):
we don't got to get all Miles O'Brien in here.
Speaker 3 (39:14):
Yes, let's go down this tangent.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
Speaking of Miles O'Brien, A lot of people would argue
the Miles O'Brien of physics was Albert Einstein, and Einstein
reached out to Sulzberger to try to help him, you know,
kind of after this point. He reaches out to Sulzburg
at one point because there's a Berlin theater critic named
Alfred Kerherr who is obviously carries a Jewish Man, and
(39:40):
the Nazis want him dead. They have a real thing
against critics. So Einstein reaches out to Sulzburgers with like, hey,
you have a lot of poll and power. Can you
help us get this guy out of Germany and into
the United States so he doesn't get murdered, And Solsburger
yells at Einstein. He says, I am disassociated from any
(40:01):
movement which springs from the oppression of Jews in Germany.
Only in this way can the unprejudiced and unbiased portion
of the Times be understood. What an insane thing to say,
I am. I will refuse to pay attention to the
oppression of Jews in Germany because that's the only way
that we can be unbiased is this isn't happening.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
That's the neutral stance is pretend.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
It's not happening.
Speaker 3 (40:26):
You know. Wow.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
So that statement is particularly ironic when we return again
to how The Times has recently covered protests against the
genocide and Gaza. I read an article recently on drop
site news by Arvind Dilawar, a freelance journalist who had
worked for The Times, reporting on an article about an
anti Zionist protest in New Jersey. The precise focus of
the protest was Israeli realtors holding an event to auction
(40:51):
off a legally seized Palestinian land arvand writes quote amid
Israel's ongoing genocide and the Gaza strip. The Times article
described the protest as contributing to escalating fear intention in
the otherwise peaceable t Neck as a pivotal example of
alleged anti Semitic activity in the area. My co author
John Leland, a Time staff reporter quoted township council member
(41:13):
Hillary Goldberg, who claimed her home had been broken into
as part of a string of abuse in response to
her vocal support of Israel and her Jewish background. I
have been threatened. I had a box truck with my
picture on it and the words liar, liar, driven around town.
My house has been broken into. I have received anti
Semitic messages, Goldberg told Leland, adding I have never felt
so afraid to be Jewish as now. And hey, look,
(41:36):
if protests had been were corresponding to surges in violence
towards Jewish people, you know that's worth reporting. But in
this case, the claim by Hillary is, so far as
we can tell, untrue. Arvind filed a record's request, and
the records he received from the police showed that police
concluded no break d was attempted at her property, right
(41:58):
that no crime at all had been attempted against Goldberg.
They had found no evidence of it. There were no
signs of forced entry. She calls them a dozen times
for follow up checks on her home, and at no
point do the police find anything indicating her claims were true.
Arvind goes on to write, believing a correction to the
time story was an order, or at least an update
(42:18):
to give readers a fuller picture. I shared the police
reports with Leland, who told me he had already gotten
them and despite the explicit contradictions, no correction would be issued.
When presented with the police reports, Management at the Times
also declined to reconcile them with its coverage. Instead, Managing
director of external Communications, Charlie Stadelander said in a statement
(42:38):
that the article was thoroughly reported, fact checked and edited
and we stand behind its publication. Goldberg did not respond
to multiple requests for comment.
Speaker 3 (42:48):
The cops are like there was a truck going around
her house with her face that said truth teller truth. Yeah,
everything's the opposite of what you're saying it.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Is yea, and look again, I don't want to pretend. Obviously,
there has been a surge in anti Semitism, and some
of it is tied. I don't blame the fact that
people are protesting against a genocide for it, but those
protests have provided cover for Nazis. Right. You can find
evidence of that, and there is evidence that likes aspects
of like far right propag anti Jewish propaganda have been
(43:19):
adopted by some.
Speaker 3 (43:20):
Folks, they're like anything to say antiges.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
Yes, of course, I yeah, exactly. That is a thing
that happens. It's a thing you have to guard against happening, right,
It's a thing you have to be aware of. But
The Times is deliberately refusing to like correct their reporting.
That makes the problem look much worse than it is.
And it's because their narrative that they want to portray
(43:46):
about these protests is helped by that inaccurate reporting, right,
And that's to them neutrality cool stuff. Back to the
nineteen thirties over in France, excellent work was done La Humanity,
the paper of the French Communist Party, which wrote unsparingly
about Nazi violence towards Jews and other targeted groups. This
(44:08):
reporting was ignored by the American press because it was
a communist paper. Now there's a great book about all this, Berlin,
nineteen thirty three, written by French media critic Daniel Schneiderman.
I found an interview with Schneiderman in The New Yorker
for back in twenty nineteen that contains a fascinating quote
on what he called activist journalism, which he argues was
(44:29):
the only journalism that responded ethically to the rise of fascism.
Activist journalism, Schneidermann writes, journalism that subordinates the quest for
truth to the quest for a truth that is useful
to its cause is the only journalism that today doesn't
have to feel ashamed about what it produced. Everything reasonable, scrupulous, balanced,
(44:50):
in my opinion, contributed to lulling the crowd to sleep.
If I had been a reader at the time, though,
I probably would have quickly stopped reading after a few days,
dissuaded by the bludgeting. So Schneiderman saying, like, the only
only these activist papers that had a clear angle angle
are the ones who accurately described the danger of the Nazis.
(45:10):
But I think if I had been reading them at
the time, I wouldn't have paid much attention because it's
just kind of exhausting to get that sort of ideological bludgeting.
And I find this compelling. I think it's actually kind
of courageous that he admits that, right, that's an evidence
of an honest thinker who was like, I can see
that these people were the only ones who did the
right thing, and I don't think I would have listened
(45:32):
to them at the time. I actually respect being able
to say that about yourself quite a lot.
Speaker 3 (45:37):
Yeah, it definitely bums me out though through the climate
change lens, because a similar analog would be we're gonna die,
We're all gonna die, We're all gonna die, and eventually
you're like, look, I know, but I'm sick of hearing it.
It's really depressed they are, though, Or did you not
like this? This really is that level of problem?
Speaker 2 (45:58):
Yeah, it's uh. Yeah, Again, I like Schneiderman a lot
because he's he's kind of able to acknowledge that about
himself and all of us, like you, like, no matter
what you think, you do this about something you kind
of have to to survive, right, But that's part of
where these guys, how these guys thrive, these monsters thrive. Yeah,
(46:20):
now it is uh, you know, I find this all
especially worth pointing out because the next period in Sophie,
did we do a second ad break? Nope? You know
what the next period for all of us, Michael is
going to be to cut to ads. So have a
little have a little ad, you know, shovel some ads
(46:40):
into your face, you know, ads are as a great writer.
William Shakespeare once said the oatmeal of art, So enjoy
some oatmeal while we get ready to do more art.
We're back, Michael Maestro sway, are your fingers ready to
(47:06):
tap the ivories of talking about.
Speaker 3 (47:10):
My keyboard as easily? Google William Shakespeare oatmeal and try
to figure out what the fuck that was about.
Speaker 2 (47:16):
Yeah, I like to think he knew about oatmeal because
as a British person.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
Teeth, why not oatmeal? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (47:27):
Did he quin crocodile?
Speaker 3 (47:29):
He did?
Speaker 2 (47:30):
What a cool guy?
Speaker 3 (47:32):
Yeah, Billy shakes where I'm sure it's based on a
Greek root or something, but I like to think that
he's just saw one and he's like.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
Yeah, that's a fucking crocodile. It is one of those
you know, there's some animals like you look at a
fucking uh a marmoset, right, and like that it's not
obviously a marmoset. Other names could have worked for a marmoset.
You'll get a crocodile and you're like, yeah, that's a
fucking crocodile.
Speaker 3 (47:58):
Where you're like, you are a top That is totally Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
For sure. Every Todd I've seen has been a Todd anyway.
So the next period of American journalism regarding the fascists,
you know, the one that occurred from the late thirties
up to the start of the war. Things got a
little better, you know, quite a bit better by the end.
The rapid change in American attitudes towards isolationism in World
(48:23):
War Two is some evidence of this. But we also
see it in the response of the populace and the
mainstream media to domestic fascist groups like the Silver Shirts
and the German American bund. Here, at least, the outright
sympathy of the Italian liberal press and the frightened tremulousness
of the Weimar media were less present. When the Booned
famously rallied in Madison Square Garden in nineteen thirty nine.
(48:46):
Reporters on scene for Booned clashes with anti fascists wrote
articles with titles like Nazi advocacy of Roosevelt's death charged
and seven are injured at Nazi rally and that's like,
you know good. In an article several days after the rally,
even The Times argued that Bundists were quote determined to
destroy our democracy. The paper's editor later released a statement
(49:10):
saying the boone went to set up an American Hitler,
and this the Times was at least following in the
footsteps of the American people, who by this point had
started taking the warnings of reporters who were quite biased
against Nazis seriously. And I might argue that they only,
you know, the Times only jumps on the bandwagon of
doing that when it becomes clear that there are Nazis
in the US who might threaten them even more than
(49:33):
being sympathetic to Jews in Germany would. As US entry
to World War Two grew closer, the most influential reporting
on the Nazis came not from the unbiased, monklike reporters
valued by AUX but from foreign correspondents like William Schier
and Dorothy Thompson. Thompson's most influential article, and today this
(49:53):
is one of the most influential things anyone will ever
write about Fascism, was published in August of nineteen forty
one for Harper's Me magazine. It had the evocative title
Who Goes Nazi? And, rather than purporting to be even
handed journalism, it presents the reader with a series of
fictional characters from various backgrounds, all conversing at a dinner
party and it asks the reader to predict which ones
(50:16):
might go Nazi. I take some enjoyment in the fact
that Thompson included a character in her article who was
almost certainly based on mister Soulsberger. Right on the head
editor at the Times quote, mister Jay over there is
a Jew. Mister Jay is a very important man. He
is immensely rich. He has made a fortune through a
(50:36):
dozen directorates in various companies, through a fabulous marriage, through
a speculative flare, and through a native gift for money
and a native love of power. He is intelligent and arrogant.
He seldom associates with Jews. He deploys any mention of
the Jewish question. He believes that Hitler should not be
judged from the standpoint of anti Semitism. He thinks that
(50:56):
the Jews should be reserved on all political questions. He
considers Roosevelt an enemy of business. He thinks it was
a serious blow to the Jews that Frankfurter should have
been appointed to the Supreme Court. The saturnine mister c
the real Nazi in the room, engages him in a
flatteringly attentive conversation. Mister Jay agrees with mister C. Holy,
(51:17):
mister J is definitely attracted by mister C. He goes
out of his way to ask his name. They have
never met before. A very intelligent man, he says. And
Thompson's article today still draws a lot of hatred from
conservatives who find it very unfair and unbiased. And it
was Dorothy understood that fairness and objectivity don't fight fascism.
(51:39):
There's a good chance her pros will make you feel uncomfortable,
and it ought to. But I promise if you read
her article, you will at least feel something. Now, I'm
not half the writer Dorothy was, so rather than attempt
to wrap this piece up myself, Michael, I'm going to
leave you with one last quote from that essay. It's fun,
a Macabs sort of fun, this parlor game of who
goes Nazi? And it simplifies things asking the question in
(52:02):
regard to specific personalities. Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people
never go Nazi. They may be the gentle philosopher whose
name is in the blue book or bill from City
College to whom democracy gave a chance to design airplanes.
You'll never make Nazis out of them. But the frustrated
and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son,
(52:24):
the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by
smelling out the wind of success. They would all go
Nazi in a crisis. Believe me, nice people don't go Nazi.
Their race, color, creed, or social condition is not the criterion.
It is something in them. Those who haven't anything in
them to tell them what they like and what they don't,
(52:45):
whether it is breeding or happiness, or wisdom or a
code however old fashion or however modern, go Nazi. It's
an amusing game. Try it at the next big party
you go to.
Speaker 3 (52:58):
Yeah, accuse everyone, you did say, agree earth, Yeah. I
think it gets at the base of something that people
are wielding to great effect right now, which is it's
weird to hate people for no reason. They're weird little guys.
Speaker 2 (53:14):
Yes, Yes, And I think that recognition that, like, you
become a Nazi when there's nothing inside you but the
love of and need for wealth and power, right when
that's the only thing you've got. That's that like, it's
fundamentally a product of insecurity. And so the way to
fight these people, as we're starting to see with like
(53:35):
vance here is to make them feel more insecure, right
when you when you frame them, when you when you
either talk of them as like, well, these are just
common sult of the earth people with legitimate grievances, or
when you do what I think a lot of liberals
started to do with Trump, which is why you've got
this weird chunk of people who like, don't think he
could have been shot just like honestly as part of
(53:57):
an assassination attempt. You know, people treat them like almost
a supernatural enemy, right, like they're you know, they're they're
this kind of like uh like evil demonic force as
opposed to no, these are sad, insecure, sick little weirdos, right,
and when you when you shine that light on them,
(54:19):
when you make that clear. However you do it, if
you do it through just objective reporting, which you can do,
or if you do it through satire, right, whatever you
have to do, you have to find their points of
insecurity and stick a thumb in them, right. That is
how you That is how you fight these people without
pulling out guns. Right if you want to avoid that,
(54:42):
and I sure do, that's how you do it.
Speaker 3 (54:45):
That's how you get kicked out of Tenacious Da.
Speaker 2 (54:48):
Yeah, yeah, god.
Speaker 3 (54:53):
It is. It sucks. It's such a oh bro cod
come on man, man.
Speaker 2 (54:58):
Yeah no, but I don't know who wouldn't who wouldn't
sacrifice a thirty year friendship for the bliss that is
getting to be in the what's that fucking video game
movie that Jack Black's about to be in?
Speaker 3 (55:11):
Borderlands?
Speaker 2 (55:12):
Border Lands?
Speaker 3 (55:13):
Why God considered fucking terrible? There's already known.
Speaker 2 (55:17):
Yeah, no, no, no, nothing more valuable than getting to
be in the Borderlance movie.
Speaker 3 (55:22):
Because of an off the cuff joke that no offense.
Literally everyone thought in their head, like there's no it's whatever. Anyway, Yeah,
I think it speaks to what we're saying in terms of, yes,
in a vacuum, violence is always shocking and feels unnatural
in a way. But remember that the one context where
(55:46):
it kind of makes sense is like, yeah, but if
someone's been beating the shit out of you for eight hours, like,
there's a point, there's a point.
Speaker 2 (55:54):
There's there's a point, right, uh. And that point was
for us in the political sense of like getting dirty.
That point was like six years ago, like six to
eight years ago.
Speaker 3 (56:06):
And all right, we've held ourselves back long enough.
Speaker 2 (56:09):
Yeah, anyway, Michael, speaking of fighting back, you know what,
you can fight back against your boredom by reading Michael's novel.
That's right, will make you entertained and happy.
Speaker 3 (56:27):
It's true I plugged it at the top, but I'll
mention again. It's called The Climb. You can get a
free sample by checking out the small Beans podcast feed,
or check out the small Beans Patreon page and click
the shop tab. If you end up wanting the whole thing,
it's an audiobook and a book book. You can get
either flavor. Now, anyway, we got thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (56:50):
We got two things to plug at the end here.
Speaker 2 (56:52):
Robert, Yeah, do it so.
Speaker 1 (56:57):
I'll do the first one if you do the second one.
Speaker 3 (56:59):
Deal. Okay, it's clearly forgot the plug, sohi, no.
Speaker 1 (57:03):
I remember by the time we get there. I think
the first one is we have a new podcast that
cools on media, hosted by Molly Conger. It's called Weird
Little Guys and shows like that relate to episodes like this.
Speaker 3 (57:18):
I Stell's plugged it earlier. If I know.
Speaker 1 (57:21):
I caught that and I was like, wow, swam really
really calling it good.
Speaker 3 (57:26):
I'm loving it so far.
Speaker 1 (57:27):
Oh, thank you. Molly's amazing. And the other thing, Robert is.
Speaker 2 (57:34):
What is the other thing? Sophie, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (57:35):
I'm looking and to Robert and we go, I'm looking
at you. Other people can look at.
Speaker 2 (57:42):
You, you know what, Sophie, let me explain to you.
So about like one hundred and fifty or so years ago,
some I'm guessing they were frenchmen figured out that if
you like, put a hole in a box and run
light through it, you can kind of get images to
print essentially onto pieces of paper.
Speaker 1 (58:04):
Right.
Speaker 2 (58:05):
This led to the creation of what we're called photographs
and cameras, and eventually people recognize that if you take
a lot of these still images and you run them
in sequence, you can create the illusion of movement. And
now we at cool Zone have joined this glorious tradition
by pivoting to video ourselves, because that's never.
Speaker 1 (58:26):
Bad YouTube dot com slash at behind the.
Speaker 3 (58:31):
Back, masterfully stretched.
Speaker 2 (58:33):
Thank you, Thank you, Michael, thank you, and thank you.
Speaker 1 (58:37):
That's it. That's the episode, bye, is it? I mean,
do you have anything else you'd like to add?
Speaker 2 (58:45):
Michael, It's nice to talk No, I was just saying
it's nice to talk to you. That's what I want
to know. Yeah, yeah, yeah did you?
Speaker 3 (58:54):
Did you?
Speaker 2 (58:55):
The recent news came out that Tim Walls is a
second Dreamcast player. I think this might be what cinches
the election.
Speaker 3 (59:02):
You know, can we do another hour on that perfect blue.
Speaker 2 (59:05):
And he's a monster.
Speaker 3 (59:08):
Oh we have different attitudes, so good dude.
Speaker 2 (59:11):
I want to say Crazy Taxi was on the Dreamcast.
Speaker 3 (59:14):
One of the launch titles. I believe Dreamcast Day.
Speaker 2 (59:18):
It was really the refer yeah, the precursor to that
good GTA three energy.
Speaker 3 (59:24):
Yeah for real. I was just thinking about Crazy Taxi.
Speaker 2 (59:29):
And there was the Simpsons rip off of Crazy tax
It was pretty good too. Hit and Run, Yeah, hit
and Run, great game anyway, think about the Simpsons. Now,
folks to wear some screen huh you? Well bye.
Speaker 4 (59:47):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
Eight
Behind the Bastards News
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Robert Evans
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