The Business Plot: When Rich Fascists Almost Took Over America

Episode Transcript
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Discover the Forest dot org, brought to you by the
United States Forest Service and the AD Council. What's overthrowing
the government? My consortium of shady financial interests? Yeah, I

(01:58):
don't know, I got no h. This is behind the
insurrections of the Find Behind the Bastards mini series about
fascist attempts to seize power. Uh. And this is our
last episode of this beautiful mini series. We did have
a seventh episode planned, but um I had some personal news.

(02:18):
That's that's gonna alter our work schedule a little bit.
But we will get to that episode at some point,
but not next week. Um My guest with this one,
as as with always on our mini series, Jason Petty
a k A. Prop What's always Alwa's property is in
a building. Now, prop, I'm gonna come right to the chase.

(02:39):
Have you heard of the business plot? No? Oh good?
Oh well. One of the things that's fun about this
is that, um, one of our characters from behind the
police is the main character of this story. Um, our
old friends Smedley Butler. Yeah, the guy who ran the
police in Philadelphia, the marine. That's that's going to be exciting. Yeah,

(03:03):
I know that guy. So the business plot is there's
a reason why you haven't heard of it. Uh. A
lot of people have put in a lot of effort
to make sure that people don't talk about this anymore. UM.
Imagine a cadre of plutocratic bankers, financiers, and media moguls
all conspired to take over US democracy and institute of

(03:24):
fascist state hidden as a fake democracy. Um, shouldn't take
a whole lot of imagination. Yeah. Um, that's what people
say to record industry is yeah, the record industry or
the way a lot of our government works right now,
Like the fact that Janet Yellen uh had financial ties
to one of the giant hedge funds that shut down

(03:45):
the game stock trading and stuff like, yeah, you know
it may sound that sounds familiar to people. Um, but
usually we're talking about it. Most people were talking about
you know when we talk about like, well, there's a
cadre of elites who control you know, the government. Um,
they meet it in sort of a deep state. Since
but there was a time where the wealthiest men in
America engaged in a very real conspiracy to have a

(04:08):
paramilitary army sees the levers of power overthrow the president
and institute of fascist state. Um. And there's people alive
today who lived through it. It happened in the thirties.
So yeah, yeah, yeah, this is this is a story
people should know. Um. I think you'll find this one interesting. Props. So, okay,
is gonna this is gonna be one of those ones

(04:28):
where I'm like, I'm actually going in. Yeah, this is
a fun one. Yes. So, our our story starts with
one of my favorite historical figures. As I told you,
Major General Smedley Butler. We're talking about old Smedley again. Um,
So we're gonna start by talking about him because he's
at the center of all this. So okay, Smedley Butler
was born in eighteen eighty one, who is the eldest

(04:51):
son of a Quaker family from Westchester, Pennsylvania. His father, Thomas,
was a congressman and his maternal grandfather was in Congress
as well, So this is a guy who comes from
a lot of privilege in power. UM. He attended the
Haverford School, which is a secondary school for rich kids
from Philadelphia, and he thrived in this upper crust, elite institution.
He became captain of the school baseball team and quarterback

(05:13):
of the football team, and he seemed to be on
the road to a career in politics or business. But
then thirty eight days before his seventeenth birthday, he left
school to enlist in the United States Marine Corps UM.
So he's on like a path to follow you into
business or into politics. And then when he's sixteen, he
leaves home to join the Marines. Now this pisses off

(05:34):
his dad, who didn't want his kid joining the Marines.
But the reason Smedley had joined is that the Spanish
American War had just started, which we chatted about of
it last week, and Smedley wanted to fight UM. So
he lied about his age to the Marines and was
commissioned as a second lieutenant. He landed in Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba shortly after it was captured, and he didn't see
any action there. His unit was sent back to the

(05:55):
mainland and he could have been cashiered out, you know,
gone back into go you know, doing a business thing.
But he decided to stay in the Marines and take
a commission as a first lieutenant and go fight in
the Philippines. Um. He was not immediately good at war.
He was initially tasked with garrison duty, which bored him
so much that he just spent all of his time drunk.
He was at one point relieved of command temporarily due

(06:17):
to something he did in his bedroom, which is all
that we know about the incident he did. He did
something with alcohol in his bedroom that made his superiors
be like, this guy can't be in charge of people
for a while. Yeah, yeah, phil phill in the blanks,
you know. Um So, in October of eighteen nine nine,

(06:40):
he saw his first combat action when he led three
Marines to conquer a town from the people who you
know lived there, right, Like, this is a colonial, brutal
colonial war. Were still colonial, got it, Like, he's he's
a he's the bad guy right there, We're we're the
bad guys in that war. Um. Yeah, and Butler fell
in love with battle and with the Marine Corps. He
just was very it was very good at fighting. Like

(07:02):
he this is a really difficult, desperate situation, and he
comports himself well, he's good at leading men in combat. Um.
And he becomes after fighting so enthralled with the Marine
Corps that he hires a tattoo artist to give him
a full from his neck to his belly tattoo of
the Marine Corps emblem like this. He's very into the Marines. Okay,

(07:28):
loves him some being a marine. Yeah, you're getting a
full day. That's that's that's some being affleck, you know.
But I think, yeah, there's I know, people, including some
Marine bets, who will argue that the Marine Corps kind
of the cultist of the of the military branches. Um. Yeah.
And some might argue that's because they're the best at
what they do. Um. But Butler is definitely drinking the

(07:50):
fucking kool aid. Right. So he gets sent to China
next as part of the U. S. Dettachment sent over
during the Boxer Rebellion. He's wounded in calm At and
despite having a bullet like one of his men gets
hurt and he runs out to get him and get
shot in the leg. And despite having a bullet in
his leg, he drags multiple men to safety while actively
under fire and bleeding. Um and again the box reveillion

(08:13):
another brutal colonial action. Um. But he's he comports himself
very well. Now, at that time, commissioned officers were unable
to receive the Medal of Honor, otherwise he probably would
have earned one. But he received some decorations for his
gallantry under fire. Smedley Butler would spend the next couple
of decades as he would grow into what was probably

(08:34):
the best soldier in the American Empire. Like he is
an exceptional imperial soldier. Um. He fights in the Banana Wars,
which were a series of police actions and intervention in
the Caribbean and in Central America made on behalf of
US business interests, killing people for He's he's killing people
for banana companies. He's killing people for United you know. Uh.

(08:55):
He fights in Honduras, where he was constantly near death
with fever and received the knickname Old Gimlet Eye because
his eye his every like he was, he looked terrifying.
He was this gaunt, scar filled monster with bloodshot eyes.
Um and like just feverish. Yeah, that's his old gimlet
eye is. Like he looks like a fucking a wraith.

(09:15):
You know. I love this guy. He's except for his
except for his colonial colonial stuff. Yeah. Yeah, he's fighting
on the wrong side, but he's objectively a badass. Um. So,
Butler racks up promotion after promotion. He enforces US foreign
policy in Nicaragua. He sent us a spy during the
Mexican American War. He sent us a spy to Mexico City,

(09:39):
or one of the wars that we fall with Mexico.
He sent us a spy to Mexico City to help
the United States gather information for the siege of Vera Cruz,
which a lot of people don't know we were doing
in the early nineteen hundreds. We like bombed Vera Cruz. Yeah, yeah,
there's a good warren Zevon song about it. Butler was
one of nearly sixty American servicemen who received Medals of

(09:59):
Honor for their service in Mexico because he fights in
in Vera Cruz as well. Uh, and virtually all of
those medals were complete bullshit, like they hand out sixty
medals of Honor for the Siege of Vera Cruz. And
they're doing it because Woodrow Wilson, the President, knows that, like,
this is an ugly colonial war, and he wants to
dress it up by making it look like by putting
out a bunch of stories of heroism and stuff. So

(10:20):
he hands out the military's highest honor like candy, and
there's actually a bunch of It's a big controversy at
the time because a lot of veterans are like, you're
devaluing the medal of honor by using it this way. Um.
And Smedley Butler receives one of these show medals of
honor and he tries to return it, arguing that he'd
done nothing to deserve it and he shouldn't get it,
but he's ordered by his superiors to keep the medal

(10:40):
and wear it on his uniform. Um. So you're seeing
he's starting he's starting to like realize, like that's kind
of messed up. Why why I I don't deserve this?
Don't give this to me? Um? Like that, Yeah, he's
he keeps me, He keeps me like imbalanced. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
you're gonna he's he's he's a growth story. Smedley. Smedley's
always Jane Jake, especially knowing because of the behind the

(11:02):
police stuff, like I know where this guy lands where
I'm just like, why am I feeling any stupidly about you? Yeah,
it's it's that's that's not even quite Yeah, well we'll
talk about it. So in Haiti. In Haiti, Butler wins
his second Medal of honor Um, and this was one
for actual fighting. His unit was sent into the country
when the president was murdered by a mob. Butler and
his troops repeatedly outnumbered by insurgents, and over a long

(11:24):
campaign succeeded in breaking the insurgency and establishing order for
the U S back dictatorship. Butler himself helped organize the
Haitian police, and in his own recollection, he and his
men hunted enemy rebels quote like pigs. Um. So again
this he is a brutal soldier of empire, like building
the police force for a dictator. Um. You have to

(11:47):
kind of look at but yeah, it's not great. Um,
it's not great now. Smedley was promoted to brigadier general
at age thirty seven. He was in Remains one of
the most highly decorated soldiers in the entire history of
the United States military. He's got two medals of honor. Um,
and he's he's like, you know, as a general rule,
generals don't get medals of honor, certainly not two of them. Um,

(12:09):
they don't tend to be fighting guys. But Smedley is
a fighting guy. He's not a stand back and give orders.
He'sould get stuck in kind of dude. Um. He desperately
wanted to fight in France during World War One, but
he was not assigned combat duty. This is probably because
by the later stage of his career he was seen
as politically unreliable due to the tendency he developed over
the years to say exactly what he felt. But the

(12:30):
retired in late nineteen thirty one. He ran for Senate
in nineteen thirty two, supporting prohibition, but he was defeated,
and in the late stage of his career while he's
still in the Marines. Is when he's running the police
in Philadelphia during that brief tenure. Um. So this is
you know, our story starts after he's he you know,
he took what he learned in Haiti and tried to
apply it to the Philadelphia Police. It didn't work out great,

(12:52):
but he's kind of the father in a lot of ways,
one of the fathers of militarizing the US police. UM.
And now he's he's retired. He tried to get into politics.
He's not good at it. UM And by the early
nineteen thirties, Smedley Butler, who is probably the greatest soldier
in any empire ever had um had started to change
his mind on some things. A lot of this had

(13:13):
to do with the Great Depression and a social movement
that it spawned called the Bonus Army. The gist of
it is that when the economy crashed, a bunch of
World War One veterans found themselves unemployed, in a lot
of cases homeless and starving. These guys had been given
what we're called service certificates in nineteen twenty four, which
was the government saying we will pay you a bunch
of money for what you did in the war, but

(13:34):
not yet because these were bonds, so they couldn't redeem
them until nineteen forty five. Right. It was like imaginary money,
imaginary money that like, in thirty years, this will be
enough money to maybe retire on but like not now,
but there's we're starving now, you know, like I can't
wait another fifty years. Um. So obviously in nineteen doesn't
seemed like a good deal. But after two years of

(13:55):
economic collapse, a lot of people just couldn't wait anymore. Uh.
And in June of nineteen thirty two, more than forty
veterans protested in Washington, d c UH. They called themselves
the Bonus Expeditionary Force or the Bonus Army, and they
advocated for Congress to pass an immediate soldiers bonus for
serving in World War One. Now again, we're all living
through our own version of of something similar. So you

(14:16):
know what comes next. Congress adjourned without actually doing anything.
Here we go. This pisses the Bonus Army off, and
they started getting loud and unruly, so the shot two
of them, which eventually provoked a riot. The whole massive
men set up this enormous camp in order to hold
up and wait for Congress to do something. Right, they like,
build a camp and they're like, we're not leaving until

(14:37):
you give us some fucking money. Um. The bill makes
its way into Congress, but it gets defeated Congress based
on some powerful financial interests decides it's too expensive to
pay these veterans UM, so they lose. They don't get
their bonus. But the camp doesn't disperse. Um. And when
the camp doesn't disperse, the Hoover administration announces that it's
sending in the army to evict the soldiers. Now, it

(14:58):
was at this point that General Smedley Butler visited the camp. Um.
He told the soldiers that he thought they were well
within their rights to lobby Congress corporations can why can't
Why can't people like us? You know? Um. He spent
the night there with the men, He had breakfast with them.
He told them they were good soldiers, and he was
proud of them. Um. And a week or so later
he leaves. In a week or so later, America's most

(15:19):
overrated General Douglas MacArthur disperses the crowd with a mix
of men on horseback and poison gas um. And this
radicalizes Butler. Um. Initially he just becomes very anti Herbert
Hoover and and you know, advocates for Hoover to get
his ass kicked in the election that year. And Hoover
does lose reelection that year. It turned out to maybe

(15:39):
be a bad idea. I can't turn on the people.
Broom no, no. And he's a ship president in general.
Um So, obviously Fdr Franklin Delano Rose about wins wins
the election. That year he becomes the president, he promises
Americans a new Deal, which wealthy capitalists saw as a
clear sign that Roosevelt was about to open the door
to Soviet commune is him and take all of their money.

(16:03):
Why are you also scared all the time? Man? We're
gonna talk about that. There's an interesting story there. Um. So.
One of the men who get scared by the New
Deal is a guy named Robert Sterling Clark, and he's
the heir to the singer sewing machine for fortune. Um.
Everybody's seen a singer sewing machine. That's the kind of
money this guy has, you know. That's interesting. Yeah, yeah,

(16:25):
And we're talking singer sewing machines in the thirties when
everybody uses them all the time. Actually, every house had it.
It's yeah, it's not a hobby. It's the only way
you have pants. Um. Another guy who got scared was
a Wall Street financier named Grayson M. P. Murphy, and
another was Prescott Bush, the father of President George H. W. Bush.

(16:47):
And who is it that? Yeah, yeah, he he really
doesn't like the New Deal. Um. And Prescott Bush is
an investment banker on Wall Street at the time. Um. Okay, yeah,
So these three are the best own members of what
came to be called the Business plot. And we'll talk
about them all a bit more. But before we get
into their plan to overthrow the United States government and

(17:08):
institute a fascist state, I should probably make it clear
that a lot of rich Americans in the nineteen thirties
wanted to at least see FDR thrown out on his
ask for suggesting that rich people be taxed to stop
poor people from dying in the street. Again, not surprising
to anyone that it's not It wasn't new then. Yes, Um,

(17:29):
I'm gonna read of I found a very good summary
of of kind of this situation and the American culture
at the time from a college thesis by Bradley Galka
of the University of Albany that I really recommend reading.
He does a great job of putting this all together. Quote.
William Manchester, in his book The Glory in the Dream
describes the fear which upper class Americans had of a
lower class revolt in the months before Roosevelt's inauguration. Among

(17:52):
the propertied classes, he writes, the distinction between the poor
wanting bread and a full on communist revolutionary was often
non existent. The rich would have to take their security
into their own hands. If the government could not keep order,
each man must look to his own Businessmen in a
number of cities formed committees to cope with nameless terrors,
should railroad and telephone lines be cut and surrounding highways blocked,

(18:14):
Candles and canned goods were stockpiled. A Hollywood director carried
with him a wardrobe of old clothes so that he
could disappear into the crowd on a moment's notice. In
New York, hotels discovered that wealthy guests, who usually least
suits for the winter, were holding up in their country homes.
Some had mounted machine guns on their roofs. Manchester goes
on to say that the paranoid elites were not really

(18:35):
so paranoid. The evidence strongly suggests. He writes that had
Roosevelt in fact been another Hoover, the United States would
have followed seven Latin American countries whose governments had been
overthrown by depression victims. So there is revolution in the air,
and it scares the funk out of these people their
Bolton machine guns to their country houses, you know. Um.

(18:55):
So the fears of this particular group of rich white
dudes were further confirmed by the fact that twing writers
in intellectuals were louder than ever in their anticipation of
a coming communist revolution. Things were, from the outside, at least,
looking pretty good in Soviet Russia compared to at least
the reality that a lot of Americans knew. In nineteen
thirty two, the socialist presidential candidate we used to have

(19:15):
socialist presidential candidates tripled his share of the vote from
the nine election. Um. And uh yes, so socialism is
actually doing starting to do pretty well in American politics.
Socialism was mainstream in a way that seems impossible now.
One example of how mainstream it was, Governor Floyd Olson

(19:37):
of Minnesota announced that he would not take any recruit
for the National Guard who quote doesn't carry a red card,
because he said, Minnesota is a left wing state, like
communists in the army. I'm the governor of Minnesota. What
world is this? Okay, yeah, so yeah, obviously, if you've

(20:01):
got a left wing governor of an entire state saying
Minnesota is socialist and we're raising an army, a lot
of capitalists are going to get freaked out. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah.
The right wing governor of Kansas, Alf Landon declared that quote,
the iron hand of a national dictator is in preference
to a paralytic stroke. So the right is saying we

(20:23):
need a dictator, and the left is saying we need
an army. Um. You might recognize this as kind of
identical in rhetoric to both what we were see hearing
in Portugal and Spain before those countries had Couz Right
Portugal saying like an iron chancellor. Yeah, he's saying maybe
the iron hand of a dictator, you know, yeah, same rhetoric.
Republicans were surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprisingly, willing to

(20:46):
endorse outright fascism over socialism. Senator David Reid of Pennsylvania,
a Republican, stated, if this country ever needed a Mussolini,
it needs one. Now wait wait, wait you let yeah
he let that come out of his mouth. Okay, okay,
you are not you are not thinking, you're not thinking
a long game, big homie. Okay, long game. Things turn

(21:09):
out kind of upside down for Mussolini. But that's a
story for another day. So in saying this, Senator Reid
was tapping into what was at that point more or
less an American meme, a surprising love of Mussolini. Benito
Mussolini was huge in America in this period. This is
like the twenties and thirties. People did not know that.

(21:30):
So I did not know because I spent so you know,
obviously during this time, I'm I'm in Harlem. Yeah, my
whole history is what's happening with black people right now?
You know what I'm saying. So I never even thought
about my lord, like there was Mussolini standing yeah, okay, yeah,
that's what's happening with white people at the time. They're
getting real Mussolini jazz. You know, here have been jazz.

(21:55):
You talk about Mussolini kind of fly man, that guy,
look the way he wears boots. So historian John P.
Diggins argues that a large number of American journalists in
the twenties and thirties supported Italy's fascist regime from the
March on Rome out up to the outbreak of Italy's
invasion at the Ethiopia in nine five. That's kind of

(22:15):
what like stops the Mussolini uh honeymoon period when he
gasses a bunch of people to death. Um, But up
until that point, he's really big. Diggins writes that a
large number of American journalists quote succumbed to fascist propaganda
and if you actually prop prostituted themselves in the pay
of the Italian government. So Mussolini spends a lot of money, um,

(22:39):
trying to push articles and think pieces that would give
fascism a positive reputation in the United States. He's bribing
reporters and editors to write articles that make fascism seem
good now. Historian Jeanne mcnowne uh notes that he Mussolini
spent particular effort influencing quote the financiers who needed to
be able to count on favorable future conditions for the

(23:00):
European investments. Mussolini's favorite target and his best friends in
the United States were JP Morgan and his family. You
go dropping his names, he's out of nowhere names. We're like, wait,
that guy, Like the story just turned so weird that
JP Morgan, JP Morgan loved fascism turns out wild. This

(23:24):
is when I wish I had one of those buttons
so I could do that. Yeah. Now, another big Mussolini
fan and his primary propaganda distributor was the press syndicate
run by William Randolph Hurst, Um also big fan of fascism.
So we'll talk a little bit more about Hurst in
a bit, But I want to note that there were

(23:45):
also some very good reporters at the time who saw
what was happening, what Mussolini was doing, and who spoke
out against it elucidly improperly. The Chicago Tribunes George Selds
was probably one of the best journalists for this. He
wrote quote far away Fascism has been attacked, exposed, and
denounced by the same publications which for years ran articles
lauding Mussolini and his notable backers in all lands and

(24:07):
the Hurst Newspapers, which published from nineteen thirty four to
Pearl Harbor dozens of signed propaganda articles by Dr Gebel's
Gearing and other Nazis now call them names, but no
publication which takes money from certain big business elements will
dare name the native or nearby fascists in many instances
the publications themselves are part of our own fascism, and
that selves is kind of recognizing. And it was one

(24:30):
of the few guys to be like, really try to
drum home, drive them openly. And this he wrote this
obviously after World War two started. It like, oh, yeah,
as soon as we're war, y'all are against Mussolini and Hitler.
But you let them publish fucking articles before you, before
this ship happened. Come on and you ignore. Yeah. Cels
argued that fascism, American fascism, was not just limited to

(24:52):
lunatic fringes of society, but was influential in major economic, social,
and political circles. He asserted that there were communists in
the United States who quote organized big business in a
movement against labor, signed a pact with Nazi agents for
political and economic penetration of the US, founded a million
dollar a year propaganda outfit to corrupt the press, radio schools,

(25:13):
and churches, and delayed the winning of the war through
the acts of dollar a year men looking out for
present profits and future monopoly rather than for the quick
defeat of fascism. And there's a lot of these guys,
and like, when you're looking at American corporations who directly
with their money supported fascism and funded fascist propaganda. You're
talking General Motors, you're talking the DuPont Corporation, and you're

(25:36):
talking Reader's Digest who were wig into fascism. God, dog man,
it's like, yeah, there's no ending, bro, there's just no Wow.
We don't talk about the time Readers Digest was whole
hog for Mussolini. Yeah, like again, yeah, that's number three

(25:57):
the name you never thought you'd get when a law
time you said the will you because you when the
last time any of y'all said the word Reader's dig In.
I've been published in them and I don't think about them. Yes, Roberts,
what that's funny? Yeah? But you know who won't fund
a fascist propaganda campaign to convince financiers that Benito Mussolini

(26:21):
has the right idea? Pick me, pick me, pick me.
I know the answer to the answer, and the answer
who who is it? Who won't do that? Sophie, the
Fine Products and Services that sponsor this podcast nailed it. Nay. Hi,
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(28:34):
and we finally made a podcast where we answer all
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hilarious stories like this at the end when he says,
you got some schmid on your face. I feel like
I pitched that joke. I believe that I feel like
I did. I'm not on a thousand percent I want
to say that was I tossed that one out. Listen

(28:56):
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We're back and God Almighty, I know that JP Morgan
the bank does adver throw in random adds sometimes, and
I kind of hope one came in in between as
we're talking about incredible. Uh, it's very funny, um, very funny.

(29:24):
So this is all all of this stuff that we're
talking about, is what's cooking off in the background when
a funkload of rich guys and we don't know all
of the folks involved or who they were. We'll talk
about why near the end of this. But obviously some
of them are JP Morgan, like um, William Randolph Hurst
is is almost certainly a part of it. There's a
good chance Henry Ford was, but we don't know exactly

(29:45):
who was involved. We know some of the people though,
including George H. W. Bush's dad. So at any rate,
this cabal of financiers and rich guys pick a couple
of patsy's to do the grunt work because they decide, okay,
you know, the very wealthiest men are like, we need
to find a way to take power, and we need
to do it stealthily because Americans won't stand for an

(30:05):
open fascist coup. Um, so we're going to need They
pick a couple of guys to kind of do the
grunt work of actually organizing this fascist coup. And the
dudes they pick are Gerald C. McGuire and Bob Doyle, um.
And they're these guys are bond salesman, right, their stock
traders essentially, um. And they're both veterans imaginary money again, yeah,

(30:28):
their imaginary money guys. Uh. And they're both members of
the American Legion, which had been established to support veterans
rights and activities. And they're both vets, you know, um,
which is not you know a lot of people are vets.
World War One's just ended. So these guys, like these
rich dudes, some of whom we had also been veterans, UM,
had watched what had happened with the Bonus Army in
d C. They'd seen tens of thousands of veterans march

(30:50):
on Washington, UM And obviously they hadn't supported those guys
getting any money because it would have meant taxing rich people.
But they thought there was potential and having tens of
thousands of combat hardened men march on the capitol, and
they basically started saying to themselves, what if we could
harness that kind of force and put it under the
control of a guy that we control and they trust,

(31:11):
maybe we could overthrow the government. WHOA And Americans wouldn't
be because they'd say, oh, these are our vets, you know,
they're they're coming into fix things, you know. Yeah, well there,
you know, we support our troops exactly. It's a good idea,
you know, you get to overthrow. So obviously they're looking
at who can we who can we put in control
of tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of veterans

(31:33):
who will be easy for us to control, but also
who everyone respects and loves, and who no one's going
to accuse of any ulterior motives. Oh my god, who
is it? While it's the perfect soldier of empire, the
greatest imperial warrior whoever existed? Retired General Smedley Butler. They're like,
this is the guy who can do it. And he
and they look, look at all of these all of

(31:55):
these wars that we profited from that we got America
into to make money. He fought it and ran things
like he he's already done this for us. He's perfect,
you know damn Yeah. So I'm gonna quote a right
up by Artia Publishing for what happens next. Yeah, yeah,
that's yeah, Like he's he's obviously, he's who you go with. Quote.
During their first meeting with Butler, McGuire and Doyle asked

(32:18):
the Major General to speak at a Legion convention in Chicago,
claiming they wanted to point out the various problems with
the legion's leadership. But there was at first open to
this idea, knowing that the Legion had several administrative issues
that ultimately compromised veteran benefits. So they're like, hey, the
Legions having a vote in convention to like vote on
it's its leaders. You know, we are also vets, and

(32:38):
like we you know, obviously you're you're the guy we
respect the most. Would you give a speech about some
of the problems our organization is happening? And He's like, sure,
you know, it seems like a reasonable thing to do.
He's always going to try to help out soldiers when
he can. Um. But then he as he kind of
looks through the speech that they've written, he realizes that
it says almost nothing about the American Legion leadership and
is instead entirely about the gold standard and about how

(33:02):
the government needs to go back to the gold standard. Yo.
I had the clapper that because I'm like, that is
a juke. That is a really good jun Yeah, that's
that's that's a zag and Smedley. Smedley's like, wait a second,
what I thought you wanted me to help get the
American Legion working better? Why the fund? Do I care

(33:24):
about the gold standards? I care about that? Yeah? Yeah. Um.
So they were like basically the what was that The
actual case here is that all of these bankers were
scared that they had gold back loans from the government
that weren't going to be paid back in full by
the president. Um. And you know, they also kind of
wanted to get Butler used to working for them as

(33:44):
their agents and see if they could like use them further.
It's a couple of things going on here. That is
textbook rich guy man, very textbook richly, like just right
on the nose. And what they don't realize about Butler
is that he's not the perfect imperial so drew anymore.
By this point, he's he's become a socialist um and
he doesn't bite. Uh. He actually thought McGuire might be

(34:07):
mentally ill because what the guy was suggesting seems so
strange to him. And Butler's impression of McGuire didn't change
over the next few months, because the stockbroker keeps approaching
the old general with new requests to address the American
Legion for really incoherent reads what seems to Butler incoherent reasons, okay,

(34:27):
and so in August of nineteen thirty three, Butler and
McGuire meet again, and by this point Butler had started
to realize that McGuire was working for someone. He starts
to piece together there's a through line for all these
weird things he's asking me to do. There's got to
be someone pulling the strings behind this um. Now, because
McGuire was the kind of guy who only valued money,
he saw Butler's reticence and decided that like, oh, he's

(34:49):
not suspicious because I'm asking him to do weird things.
He wants to know that I have backing, So he
basically flashes a huge pile of cash, and Butler's so
so rich guy only thinks that every body thinks like
rich guys. Yeah. Butler's like, it's really weird that you
keep asking me to make all of these bizarre political
addresses to the American Legion. And McGuire's like, hey, I
got a hundred grand great, Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, but

(35:14):
what are you talking about though? Yeah? And this actually
makes Butler more suspicious because in his mind, no honest
man has access to a hundred thousand dollars. Keep it real,
but like, I'm not supposed to like you, bro, But like, day,
that's a great answer. Was like what what? Well, he's
changed at this point, but there's he goes through a
very satisfying evolution. McGuire admits that he has a backer.

(35:38):
He says like, yeah, I work as a bond salesman
for Grayson Murphy, who's a wealthy Wall Street financier who
had also been a colonel during World War One, but
not like a real like his job had been coordinating
with the Red Cross. He got a rich guy job
in the army for the war. You know. Um, So
McGuire had paid a hundred and twenty five thousand dollars
to underwrite the start of the American Legion because it

(35:59):
starts after World War One, and he thought of it
as as an investment, right, Like Murphy's putting the American
Legion together because he has a really rich guy is like,
it's probably a good idea to have an organization of
combat veterans who I can kind of direct, right, Yeah,
there's a plot going on here. Yeah. Butler and McGuire
start talking about McGuire's backers, and McGuire admits to Butler

(36:22):
that his boss, Grayson, is one of nine Richmond who
were trying to pay for a national convention of the
American Legion in d C. Now, by this point, Smedley
Butler knew something very crooked was going on, and Bradley
Galka writes quote Butler did not commit to anything, but
rather waited and listen to what McGuire had to say.
The two met at the beginning of September. When asked

(36:43):
if he had begun recruiting men to go to the
national convention, Butler said no. He told McGuire that he
would not even consider cooperating unless he was allowed to
meet with one of the principal backers of the plot.
McGuire promised to set up a meeting as soon as
was possible. Treated his word, McGuire arranged for Butler to
meet with one of the principles the following week. Man
was actually an acquaintance of the general. His name was
Robert Sterling Clark, known to Butler as the Millionaire Lieutenant

(37:06):
This is the Singer Guy. Clark had been a junior
officer under Butler's command in China during the Boxer Rebellion.
According to Butler, Clark had been a batty sort of
queer fellow who did all sorts of extravagant things. Him
a batty bad like like as in like how we
say that girls a battye or like as in battye
b a t t y like this this he's this,

(37:29):
you know. There he goes to war with this guy,
and everyone knows this kid as a millionaire and he's weird, right,
like he's a rich kid, you know. He's yeah, like wait,
what do you mean by a batty? And I was like, wait,
you call him a batty and then saying, well he
does queer stuff like you just called him a batty,
like bro, Like just okay, now I get it. Yeah

(37:50):
you know, so yeah, that's clarify that so so so
so wait so it makes sure I'm following along. So
at this point, Smedley's antennas are all like his spidy
in angling all over the place like some now right
yeah something yeah. And then he's like, and I don't
trust you rich kids like y'all never see no combat.

(38:13):
You ain't no blood on your hands, man, you I
you stayed on the porch the whole time. You wasn't
running with the wild dog. So so help me understand.
And then he goes and he meets what he's rich dude.
He's like, I remember this kid, Yeah, this fucking kid.
Yeah yeah. And he's also he's also, this is kind
of the guy that Smedley's a very intelligent man. He
thinks something is fishy and he's like, I want to

(38:34):
go up the food chain. I want to follow the
money up and I want to talk to you. I'm
gonna talk to the guy. Give any money, you know. Um.
So the General meets with Clark, this millionaire air uh.
And Clark's first question was whether or not Butler had
read the speech that that Clark had helped right for him,
and Butler was like, he says, yes, but it looks
as if it were a big business speech. There's something

(38:54):
funny about that speech. Mr Clark. Now, once it was
clear that Butler knew he was being used for some purpose,
even though he wasn't sure what that purpose was, Clark
drops the act. So Butler says that, and Clark's like, Okay,
you know something's going on. So I'm just gonna tell
you the truth. And he tells Butler this quote. You
understand just how we are fixed. I have got thirty
million dollars. I do not want to lose it. I

(39:17):
am willing to spend half of the thirty million to
save the other half. If you go out and make
this speech in Chicago, I am certain that they will
adopt the resolution, and that will be one step towards
the return of gold. To have the soldiers stand up
for it. We can get the soldiers to go out
in great bodies to stand up for it. And obviously
gold isn't the end goal here, but that's how they
want to like start things that's they're starting it. Yeah,

(39:38):
and and this guy admits like, look, I I am
trying to use you to keep my money, and I'm
willing to spend half of my money to keep the
other half. You know, That's what's important to me, is
continuing to be a rich man. Yeah. Now in uh,
there's there's some sort of like a kind of a
dark and twisted but kind of good financial advice in that,

(39:59):
like I'll spend half of this if it's gonna make
my other half double. Yeah. It's like and he said,
he's also saying like I'm I'm afraid that the decisions
being made by this government will reduce my class. All. Yeah, yeah,
that's what I'm saying. Like this is like dark, like okay,
this is this is why they're wealthy. It's like, well,

(40:21):
I'm not just sitting on this stuff and I'm not
willing to burn it all, but I'll spend on what's
gonna protect the other half and increased the other half.
You know what I'm saying, it's how rich guys think,
you know, it's how rich guys think. This enrages Butler
when when he said, like Butler is kind of barely
able to keep himself from just like flipping out at

(40:41):
this guy. Because Butler, he had been obviously an imperial soldier,
but his entire career, his focus, the thing that kept
him going was the well being of the soldiers under
his command. Right, he had risked his life repeatedly and
been wounded to protect them in under his command. And
this rich guy is saying, I want to use your
fellow soldiers for my own to keep my money, and

(41:02):
Butler's like, fuck that and fuck you, like you know,
at this point, yeah, we've done. Yeah. Now, at this point,
Smedley didn't quite realize that his entire career up to
that point had been doing the same thing in other countries, Right,
had been like risking the lives of his men to
protect the money of rich people. He doesn't quite get
that yet, but he sees that what he he understands

(41:24):
what this guy is trying to do now, right, Um,
So he gets angry and he tells the millionaire how
he feels, I took an oath to sustain democracy and
that is what I'm going to do and nothing else.
I Am not going to get these soldiers marching around
and stirred up over the gold standard. What the hell
does a soldier know about the gold standard? Um damn

(41:45):
different one. It's direct, man, when you see it like
rather than like at a systemic or like a you know, uh,
indirect way like you said, like ultimately you know you're
at least in our most recent wars, you just went
to protect somebody's money and to hold up a crooked regime,
you know what I'm saying. But if somebody couldn't. But

(42:07):
if like if your general stood up to you and
just said, hey, homie, uh, this place got oil, so
we need a kill these people to get it, like
you would be like, nothing to do that. You know
what I'm saying. I'm not gonna do that. What are
you talking about? You know what I'm saying. But like
when it's in your face the way it was with him,
He's like, no, listen, here's the thing. I'm rich and

(42:29):
I'm might lose it, so I need you to go
get my money. Yeah. And this is this is a
bit of a spoiler. This It being this direct for
him is what helps him realize what the rest of
his career had been. Like this really is We're not
quite there yet, okay. McGuire, Like Butler's like, I am

(42:52):
not going to do this thing for you. I'm not
gonna go fucking put my neck on the line for
the gold standard. And McGuire's like, all right, I'll right,
and he's like, can I use your phone? And while
Butler listens, McGuire gets on the phone, uh in Butler's
house or not McGuire. Uh. Sterling gets on the phone
in Butler's house and he calls McGuire, the guy who
had was his gopher um and tells him that Butler's

(43:15):
not coming to the American Legion convention. And Sterling tells
McGuire to use forty five thou dollars that he'd given
him to flood the convention hall with telegrams urging a
return to the gold standard. And that's exactly what happens
at the convention. The telegrams flow in and the result
solution is passed condemning like the move away from the
gold Standard. And you know, Sterling kind of does this

(43:36):
to show off to Butler, like, Okay, well, if you're
not going to do this, let me show you what
I can accomplish. I can just pay forty five grand
to get fucking flyers put up and like will flood
them with propaganda and make it happen. And Butler takes
this as the lesson that it is right that these
are powerful men, and this is like they do have
the ability to to make this ship happen. Um. So

(43:58):
for a little while, that's kind of all is. It's
this weird thing over the gold Standard, and Butler it
feels off to him, but he doesn't think much more
about it until the next year, August of nineteen thirty four,
when Gerald McGuire comes up to his house again and
he and Butler meet and McGuire tells the general quote
the time has come to get the soldiers together, and McGuire,

(44:18):
who's a veteran himself, is referencing the Bonus Army. He's
basically coming up and being like, hey, you know, the
things are still hard for veterans. Why don't you and
I work out something where we can get another group
of soldiers together and maybe march them on Washington um.
And Butler's like willing to have this conversation, right, He's
not willing to do the gold Standard thing, but like, oh,
you're talking about getting people together because veterans need some money.

(44:39):
Absolutely that's my whole thing of money. Yeah. But then
the conversation turns. McGuire tells Butler that he'd just gotten
back from an overseas trip and it was on It
wasn't a vacation, but his wealthy backers were paying him
to go scouting. And this is what McGuire says, quote.
I went abroad to study the part that the veteran
plays and the various setups of the governments that they

(45:00):
have abroad. I went to Italy for two or three
months and studied the position that the veterans of Italy
occupy and the fascist set up of government, and I
discovered that they are the background of Mussolini. They keep
them on the payrolls in various ways and keep them
contented and happy, and they're his real backbone, the force
on which he may depend in case of trouble to
sustain him. But that setup would not suit us at all.

(45:20):
The soldiers of America would not like that. I then
went to Germany to see what Hitler was doing, and
his whole strength lies in organizations of soldiers too, but
that would not do. I looked into the Russian business.
I found the use of soldiers over there would never
appeal to our men. Then I went to France and
I found just exactly the sort of organization we are
going to have. It is an organization of super soldiers.

(45:42):
And what he's talking about, you remember the cross of
Fire that we talked about last episode in France, that
French veterans organization. You got five officers, a thousand officers
and n c o s and they control the votes
of five million men, and they're very, very far right right,
and they have a role in the insurrection that happens
over in France, which has just happened at this point.

(46:03):
So these rich guys watch what happens in France and
almost succeeds and are like, oh, you know, that's that's
not a bad idea. Why don't we set up a
veterans organization like that? Uh yeah, So that's what McGuire
is like, we need to build the same thing that
they have in France, because if we can get five
million votes or so, like a coalition of five million votes,
we can win any election we want. We can get

(46:25):
rid of you know, Roosevelt, or we can march them
on the capitol. You know, if we have half a
million soldiers so Butler said, all right, like, I'm not
I'm not against this idea. If you want to organize
a bunch of veterans to to to make political changes,
act as a voting block, that makes sense to me
because I care about veterans issues. Um, but what do

(46:45):
you want to use them for? Right? Why are you?
Why are we building this because he's still suspicious of
this guy over the Golden State? Do yeah? And McGuire
shares them, like, no, they're going to support the president.
That's what we want them to do, is to kind
of support the president and his efforts to fix the economy.
And Butler points out when McGuire says this, Butler points
out that like, well, in all these speeches you wanted
me to give earlier, you would have me. You wanted

(47:07):
me to oppose all of FDR's policies. So why are
you trying to make a veterans organization to support FDR now?
And McGuire responds, don't you understand that the setup has
got to be changed a bit? Now we have got him,
we have got the president. He has got to have
more money. There's not any more money to give him.
Eight percent of the money now is in government bonds,
and he cannot keep this racket up much longer. He

(47:28):
has got to do something about it. He has either
got to get more money out of us or he
has got to change the method of financing the government.
And we are going to see to it that he
does not change that method. He will not change it.
They're worried about him, like going into debt and devaluing
the dollar and stuff. Um. So Butler sees where this
is going and he asks McGuire straight up, the idea
of this great group of soldiers then is to sort

(47:49):
of frighten him, is it. McGuire lying said that no,
they don't want to scare FDR. They just want to
support him. And then he introduces a new idea. He
tells Butler, you know, the president's overworked, and he's he's
an old man, he's not healthy. Wouldn't it be nice
if we could give FDR an assistant president. We can
use this big armed group of veterans to convince the

(48:10):
President to create a new cabinet position, Secretary of General Affairs,
and this person will do all of the actual work
of the president, and he'll institute policies that my rich
backers nowhere going to fix things for the American people.
F DR will still be president, but he'll just be
ceremonial and will be controlling things, and this big armed

(48:30):
group of veterans will make sure that everybody plays nice.
That right up under our noses. Bro. So McGuire tells
Butler that this is all necessary because the president is sick,
and even if it's not true that he's unable to
do the job anymore, the American people will believe them
if they say he's sick, because quote, we have got

(48:53):
the newspapers. He's talking about the fact that William Randolph
Hurst is one of the guys involved in this plot.
Like whatever, whatever we need the American people to believe,
they'll believe because we control the newspapers. So all we
need to do is organize this body of men. So
in suggesting this, McGuire's rich backers were looking to treat
FDR kind of the same way Mussolini treated the King

(49:13):
of Italy or Hitler treated Hindenburg in his last months.
Of course, McGuire didn't point this out to Butler, but
he asked, would you be interesting and heading up this
super organization of veterans that we're going to use to
take power. So he's all on the table now, like
we're going to take over the government. We're going to
do it in a way that's not obvious. We're going
to use the newspapers to make sure people don't know

(49:33):
that we've just stopped FDR from having any power, and
we're if things are going to be run by the
rich um and but so he's like, do you want
to be the guy who leads this army of veterans
into the capital to demand these things? And Butler response,
I'm interested in it. I'm interested in this veterans organization,
but I don't know about heading it. I am very

(49:53):
greatly interested in it, because you know, my interest, my
one hobby is maintaining a democracy. If you get these
five a thousand soldiers advocating anything smelling a fascism, I'm
going to get five thousand more and lick the hell
out of you and we'll have a real war right
at home. He's a direct man. Yeah, I love It's like, look,
maybe I mean wars I fought. You think I'm scaredy you? Yeah?

(50:16):
Like yeah, like and this like if you do this
and I think you're trying to create a fascist state.
I'll raise an army and I'll win. Like you don't
know about the actual war vet, like I actually know
the veterans. Yeah. Yeah, So this makes McGuire backped a
little bit. He's realized he's maybe like gone, he was
maybe a little bit too open about what they were
planning to do. And he insists like, no, we're not

(50:37):
trying to overthrow. We just want to support the president.
We're not trying to take power. We want to support him.
And Butler says, well, if that's the case, you're gonna
need a lot of money, right, This is not going
to be a cheap thing to do. And McGuire is like, well,
we've got three million dollars on hand, you know, money
and a problem. We get access to three hundred million
dollars if necessary, And so Butler again it's like, who
in the funk is putting up this money? Honest, men

(50:59):
don't have three million dollars to throw around. And so
he's like, where are you getting all of this money?
And I know it's not just Clark Um or Sterling,
the guy that I had met earlier. And McGuire says,
you know how Clark told you he would spend half
of his uh fortune to save the other half. Well,
there's a lot of other rich guys who feel the
same way, right, Prescott Bush and JP Morgan and all

(51:20):
these all these other rich dudes feel the same way.
So Smedley Butler meant what he said. He was absolutely
committed to American democracy and he never actually considered helping.
But he knew the danger of what he was hearing
and he wanted to be able to expose it, and
to do that he was going to need a corroborating witness.
So his goal now too becomes, I need someone else
credible to be witnessed to the whole plans that we

(51:42):
can go testify to Congress just in case, dude, dog
this dude's antenna's are like they are a tuned because
to be like you can't just be like f you
and storm the room because these people don't need you.
Don't find somebody else, you know what I'm saying. And
it's like the understanding that like just that power play.

(52:03):
When you're in a role with people that wealthy, they
always feel like they're in charge, but that but that
power is given to them. But if you don't, if
you don't give a shit about their money. You know
what I'm saying. Then, been the power don't matter, you
know what I'm saying that, Then you realize really what's
happening here. It's like, oh wait, y'all got all this
money and you still need this meeting with me. So

(52:25):
there's some you know what I'm saying, So like he
had his antenna's enough to be like, I need to
make sure because it's not like these people can't put
me away. I need somebody over here to watch all
this happening because they wielding all his power and I
am you know what I'm saying, like right now, I'm
in their good graces right now, they're still hungry for me.
So let me make sure I'm playing this is Antenna's

(52:46):
are art? I love it? Yeah? You know he's he's thinking,
he's thinking. He's thinking that right up by Arcadia Publishing
again for What Happens Next. Having previously worked as the
police captain of Philadelphia, Butler reached out to a Philadelphia
record writer, Paul Calmly French, who agreed to meet with
McGuire as well. During this meeting, McGuire told French that
he believed a fascist state was the only answer for America,

(53:08):
and that Smedley was the ideal leader because he could
organize a million men overnight. So French, the very skilled journalist,
comes in and kind of on the guys of like, yeah,
you want the press on your side, let's talk about
what you're trying to do. And he's like, French is
clearly a good interview and gets McGuire to admit, like, yeah,
I want to we want to make a fascist state.
It's the only way forward for America, and Butler's the

(53:29):
best guy to do it. So French takes detailed notes
after all of these meetings, he would later tell Congress. Quote,
during the course of the conversation, he continually discussed the
need of a man on a white horse, as he
called it, a dictator who would come galloping in on
his white horse. He said that was the only way,
either through the threat of armed force or the delegation

(53:50):
of power and the use of a group of organized
veterans to save the capitalistic system. Speaking of capitalistic systems,
speaking of capitalism, you know who won't inside a fascist revolution?
I mean, hopefully, hopefully fingers crossed. I have something to

(54:10):
tell you at this ad break that just broken the news.
But I guess I'll tell you now. Jeff just stepped
down at CEO of Amazon. What the funk is happening.
He's transitioning to an executive chair role. Something's about to
go down. Yes, I have some theories. That's big. Take
this break, taketah. Yeah, yeah, we're We're all, what are

(54:33):
your theories? Something's fucking happening. So here's my theories. I
think there was two things going on here. I think
uh one is he's like, I would like the money
without the headache, So let me just let somebody else
had a headache, says All. Says this is from obviously
the Washington Post because he owns it. Basis will step

(54:55):
down from the role after founding the company more than
twenty years ago. I'll sharing a new era for the
e commerce merchant giant currently current Amazon Web Services chief
and Jassy will take on the mantel of CEO. So
I don't like our word mantle first of all. Yeah, yeah,
but I think the money from the like from the

(55:17):
from the web support platform services is now outpacing the products,
so they like we need to move that way. Number
one and number two I'm positive they're gonna break the
company up. They're gonna break this up because it's yeah,
and he's like, I better get out now. They're gonna
break this ship up. I really hear. Um, Yeah, it

(55:40):
should be broken up. It's too much of the business.
You can't be the grocery store and the groceries. I
think he just wants to go off into the moon
and just spend the rest of this to no one.
I want all the money without the headache. No reasonable
person would be worth a hundred billion plus dollars and

(56:02):
want to keep doing a job. Why do you keep working? Yeah,
go fill an island with I don't know, no more,
no more rich guys with the islands. I always do
have to say, yeah, it's like, you don't make a
hundred million dollars to keep working. He'll he'll never spend
this You will never spend this money. It's the only

(56:24):
bi who's ever made sense to me is one of
the Google founders who like spent hundreds of millions of
dollars making a house blimp. And it's like, yeah, that's rad, Like, yeah,
I'm gonna a blimp, Like I can never you can't
even give it away. There's not enough, There's not enough
hours in the day. You know you're not gonna live

(56:44):
enough years to spend this, Yeah you couldn't. Yeah, uh,
all right. What grows in the forest trees? Sure you
know what else grows in the forest? Imagination, a sense
of wonder, and our family bonds grow too, because when

(57:05):
we disconnect from this and connect with this, we reconnect
with each other. The forest is closer than you think.
Find a forest near you and start exploring. I Discover
the Forest dot org, brought to you by the United
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(57:25):
from foster care is a topic not enough people know about,
and we're here to change that. I'm April Dinuity, host
of the new podcast Navigating Adoption, presented by adopt us Kids.
Each episode brings you compelling, real life adoption stories told
by the families that lived them, with commentary from experts.
Visit adopt us Kids dot org, slash podcast, or subscribe
to Navigating Adoption presented by adopt us Kids, brought to

(57:49):
you by the U S Department of Health and Human Services,
Administration for Children and Families and the ad Council. Conquer
your New Year's resolution to be more productive with the
Before Breakfast podcast. In each bite sized daily episode, time
management and productivity expert Laura Vanderkamp teaches you how to
make the most of your time, both at work and
at home. These are the practical suggestions you need to

(58:12):
get more done with your day. Just as lifting weights
keeps our body strong as we age, learning new skills
is the mental equivalent of pumping iron. Listen to Before
Breakfast wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. Uh what
a great what a great time. So uh we're talking

(58:33):
about Yeah, this guy Butler brings in this journalist French
who gets Who gets these guys to throw down some
dirt right and admit what they're actually looking to do? Yeah?
Um now? In his right up on the business plot,
Bradley Galka notes quote. McGuire also discussed this group's intended
solution to the national employment crisis. He said they were

(58:53):
inspired by Adolf Hitler's policies in Europe, that the solution
would be the institution of labor camps and barings and
a mayor I could to mobilize the unemployed. You said,
you said it out loud. You're not supposed say that
out loud. Bro this head. The guy has some good ideas.
I'm just saying, like, we could save you. Hear me,
hear me out. We could save capitalism, We could save

(59:16):
cap What if we put the par in camps and
make them work for us. They're not doing anything right.
They're not doing anything right. Shouldn't be voting. They just
gotta vote to take our money. But I'm in camps. Uh.
Such an initiative, McGuire insisted, would solve the problem overnight.
He also revealed that the plotters would force all suspected
radicals across the country to register their movements with the government.

(59:38):
That way, said McGuire, the new regime could stop a
lot of these communist agitators who were running around the country.
McGuire ended by insisting that another economic crash was inevitable
and would come when bonds reached five percent interest. When
that time comes, he said, the soldiers must prepare to
save the nation. Now. It's worth reiterating two important takeaways
from McGuire's interacttions with Butler and French. First, during McGuire's

(01:00:02):
meeting with Butler at the Bellevue Hotel in Philadelphia, McGuire
claimed that he and the plotters have got the newspapers.
He told Butler that whatever cover story his boss has
decided to put in the papers would be accepted by
the dumb American people who would fall for it. In
a second, damn it not wrong, not wrong, not wrong,
and is right up of this is very good, it's
and it's free. So I really recommend it for folks. Now.

(01:00:23):
At this point, Butler decided he had enough information to
go to Congress. On November ninety four, he appeared before
the Special Committee on Unamerican Activities. Before the Committee and
its lawyers, General, Butler laid out the details of the
whole sordid scheme, providing Congress with French is corroboration and
the detailed notes that he himself had taken of every conversation.

(01:00:44):
He swore under oath that this was all true and
that a cabal of bankers and industrial magnates were plotting
to overthrow American democracy. So he goes to Congress and
he puts it all out on the line, and the
story hits the news media. Soon after, The New York Post,
which at this time is a liberal newspaper, publishes the
first report, which is written by French himself. It outlines

(01:01:05):
the details of the plot accurately. The Post also publishes
a second, shorter piece which provides the accused plotters with
an opportunity to give their denials. Now, The Post coverage
here was both responsible and vital, but McGuire had not
been lying when he said that his secret backers controlled
much of America's print media. A second wave of coverage
bursts from conservative hearst Own newspapers. These papers tended to

(01:01:27):
provide only the barest details of the actual plot and
spend most of their time publishing denials by the accused magnates.
One popular columnist, Arthur Brisbane, who worked for the hearst
owned San Francisco Examiner, suggested that somebody may have been
deceiving General Butler. He portrayed the business plot as more
or less a practical joke and wrote mockingly that those
wicked and bad and outrageous Wall streetman were the ones

(01:01:50):
who actually had the most to fear from a fascist dictatorship.
Adam Yeah, a flim flamboy, Yeah, flim yeah. This dumb
general he just he just he got took in by
a practical joke. You know, listen, he doesn't understand, you know,
Doug and I man, I imagine even like how you

(01:02:12):
stand in front of Congress and like this, I don't know,
like if you have this this like sinking feeling when
you're trying to say something that you know is true
and you're positive to people in front of you don't
believe you, and you're like, uh, damn, this ain't gonna
I'm stuck, ain't I you know what I'm saying, Like,
I wonder if I don't know why. As he was talking,

(01:02:34):
that was like the moment I pictured when he was
like he went to Congress to tell them that, like
he's snitching, but it's like a good type of snitch
to where I'm like, no, I'm trying to tell you
the truth. This is what these people are doing. Yeah,
I don't know, because it's like even coming out of
his mouth, he was probably like, do I sound crazy?
I might sound crazy, but I'm trying to tell you
this what they're doing. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So Adam Ox,

(01:03:00):
writer for The New York Times, wrote an article about
the business plot, and again it's not just herst papers.
The New York Times gets in on this ship. He
writes an article titled Credulity Unlimited, which also mocked Butler
and painted him as a crank. What can we believe,
apparently anything to judge by the number of people who
lend a credulous ear to the story of General Butler's
five hundred fascists and Buckram marching on Washington to seize

(01:03:22):
the government. Details are lacking to lend versabilitude to an
otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. The whole story sounds like
a gigantic hoax. Yeah, yeah, yeah, this guy's crazy talked
to him. No, this silly old man thinks that the
popular rich dudes, we're just saying it's fine. And there is.

(01:03:46):
One of the things that really does corroborate that the
story is true is there's a massive and very organized
media campaign to discredit Butler. And it's not just journalists.
Will Rogers, the former Cowboy actor who like half of
l A is named after. Yeah, I was like wait, wait, yeah,
yeah that Will Rogers, publishes an article in the New
York Times. He gets to write a column for The Times,

(01:04:06):
and this article both mocks Smedley Butler and in the article,
after making fun of Butler for being an idiot. Will
Rogers volunteers to lead a fascist army in his stead.
If Smedley Butler don't take that job of marching down
Pennsylvania at the head of Wall Streets fighting Brigade, I
would like to get my application in. I got the
Gray Horse. It won't be such a novelty as people think.

(01:04:28):
This is clearly bullshit. But if it's not, I'd lead
a fascist army on behalf of you. Man. Katie Perry
tried to buy his house out here. Oh yeah, it's
a nice house. It's a very nice house. Went on
a field trip once anyway. Yeah. New York City Mayor
Fiorello LaGuardia called the business plot a cocktail push, by

(01:04:50):
which he means he thought Butler had heard the plans
at a part as a joke at a party and
run away with the idea. Um, that's a great you.
The more I hear their defense, that's a great cover story,
it's a great coverage. They were just joking. Dude, we're
just drinking. It's like the guy got to this party.
He don't really wrong with us. He don't know how
we don't know how you work. We're just playing around. Yeah, yeah,
it's not It's not dumb, right, These aren't idiots. Now.

(01:05:12):
The Committee, the Congressional Committee, the House An American Activities Committee,
continues their investigation though, and they find additional evidence of
the plot. Concerted digging revealed that a number of the
men implicated in the plot had recently formed a conservative
lobbying group called the American Liberty League. Its members included
JP Morgan Jr. Irene DuPont, the CEO of General Voters,

(01:05:34):
the CEO of General Foods, and other industrial leaders controlling
roughly forty billion dollars in assets, which in modern terms
is three quarters of a trillion dollars. All of the
richest guys and that like, these are the dudes behind
it now. This digging also turns up the fact that
Prescott Bush, who was heavily involved in with the Nazi government,

(01:05:55):
right he's working with them on the Hamburg America Lions
and stuff. Um that Prescott Bush, under the proposed American
fascist government would have acted as a liaison between the
American dictatorship and the Nazi government. So George W. Bush's
grandpa volunteered for the job of liaison between a fascist
American state and the Nazis was like, oh, I love

(01:06:15):
the Nazis. I'd be perfect at this job. Yeahs so,
and then gave birth to presidents, two of them. Well,
his wife gave birth to presidents. Let me clear that up. Sorry, ladies,
he didn't give birth to nobody yet. Okay, he donated
genetic material that led to two presidents, both of whom
were trash. So the committee, after its investigation, never releases

(01:06:41):
an official report on the business plot, but they do
give a report to Congress, and in it they say
that they quote trash. Oh it's about to get trasher
before it's trash. The committee goes to Congress and they
say everything we checked out that Butler said, we were
able to verify. They say that they quote had received
evidence that certain persons had made an attempt to establish

(01:07:04):
a fascist organization in this country. There is no question
that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have
been placed in execution win and if the financial backers
deemed it expedient. The names of the individuals involved, they said,
would have to be kept secret until they could be
investigated and their complicity verified. So they're like, we we
we looked this up. And we found a lot of

(01:07:25):
evidence that it was true, but we can't confirm anything yet,
and we're not going to give the names of the
individuals we found evidence about because we haven't finished the investigation, right,
which sounds reasonable, that's how it's supposed to work. But
they never finished the investigation, oh man, after saying hey,
yeah this, Yeah, we've collaborated everything you said. Okay, cool,

(01:07:49):
And we don't know why the investigation doesn't get finished.
There are some theories, and I'm gonna quote the Washington
Post for one of them. According to journalist John Buchanan
speaking to the BBC in two thousand seven, this was
probably because Roosevelt struck a deal with the backers of
the plot. They could avoid treason charges and possible execution
if they backed off their opposition to the new deal.

(01:08:10):
Sally Denton, an author who wrote a book about the
business plot, thinks the press may have ignored the report
at the urging of the government, which didn't want the
public to know how precarious things might have been. So
the government that like was threatened by this may not
have wanted it to be super public knowledge, right, just
like the I don't think it's a good idea for
people to know how quickly they came close, they came

(01:08:30):
to overthrowing us. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you shouldn't notice. Yeah,
And and FDR probably sits down with these rich guys
and it's like, look, we can hang you, and it
will be ugly for everybody, Like there will be consequence,
it will suck for me, Like listen, or you shut
the funk up and let me do the new deal.
You know, I love it man, the brand. Listen, this
is a bad this is bad for everybody. Everybody loses.

(01:08:52):
I'm gonna cut your head off. But like, let's just
I love it. Good job, FDR. Yeah, I mean it
was probably like I don't know, I'm not I say
it was the right thing. I think it would have
been better to prosecute these guys. But totally, he's in
a rough position. He does what it seems like the
best thing to do at the time. Now, based on
her research, Sally Denton believes that had Smedley Butler gone
along with the plot, it would have succeeded, and he

(01:09:15):
might have been the only person capable of leading that
fascist coup who also would have refused to do it.
It is hard to overstate. How lucky we are that
he was the man they went to write, like the
one guy who had that kind of respect among veterans,
who had that kind of talent and that kind of experience,
and also doesn't give a funk about money, right, like

(01:09:37):
the perfect Yes, the perfect combo yeah down, because he
could if he even wanted it, and and cared about money.
He could even extort these dudes, Yeah yeah, he could,
and saying they're promisingly, we'll take care of your family.
Your kids are never right. You're gonna take care of
my family, Joe said, take care of my neighbor's family,
and to take care of my children, the children, You're

(01:09:57):
gonna take care of us until the pies. But he
instead decides, the thing that I swore an oath for
was to defend democracy, and that's what I'm going to
fucking do. Um And for his part, the business plot
seems to have been the final straw in Butler's radicalization.
He realizes, after having been these rich guys trying to

(01:10:19):
use him as a pon, that that's all he'd been
doing his entire career as a soldier. He'd been upon
a banbridge uh in nineteen thirty six, he votes for
the socialist presidential candidate UM In nineteen thirty five, he
publishes a short book based on a series of speeches
he delivered. He starts traveling around the country delivering speeches,
a speech titled war is a Racket, and I'm going

(01:10:39):
to read you a summary. Butler wrote of his own
book that kind of explains where this goes. War is
a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest,
easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is
the only one international in scope. It is the only
one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and
the losses in lives. A racket is best to scribed,

(01:11:00):
I believe, as something that is not what it seems
to the majority of the people. Only a small inside
group knows what it is about. It is conducted for
the benefit of the very few, at the expense of
the very many. Out of war, a few people make
huge fortunes. And he's there's a lot of good quote
from Butler in general. That is good when he say

(01:11:22):
the losses are in lives, but the profits are in dollars.
Yeah god, yeah, good god. That's a bar. And he
is truly unsparing. Like another quote of his that I
love our boys were sent off to die with beautiful
ideals painted in front of them. No one told them
that dollars and cents were the real reason they were

(01:11:44):
marching off to kill and die. Got dog dude, Yeah,
I have a homeboy the music. He's a friend, but
he's an incredible represents Bamboo. Yeah from Filipino dude. Uh
uh boy, he's from l A who lives in the Bay.
His wife, Rocky Rivera. Both amazing artists. Uh. Their whole
label be Rock There all these like left wing guerrilla

(01:12:05):
warfare like super revolutionary dudes. But he was he was
an l A dude, got in trouble with the law
and then, you know, like any other brown kid, you
go to the military to try to like you know,
get out of jail and kind of the same scenario.
He came out of that so radicalized, so ready to

(01:12:25):
be like this is all bull and I would never
send another child, you know what I'm saying. He's not
at all a pacifist, Don't get me wrong. Like the
brother got a collection of like ancient island weapons, let
alone guns. You know what I'm saying. So he ain't
no pacifist, but he's like, I'm not dying for someone
else's pockets. Yeah. It's like, yeah, this is crazy. Yeah.

(01:12:49):
And and Butler, Butler is that. Butler's not a fashion
or not not pacifist, and he's not anti military. He
loves the military, he hates what it's used for. And
he when he's delivering these speed which is he's trying
to get Americans on board with a complete reformation of
the military. Um, he believes that it should only ever
be defensive in nature, and in order to make it that,

(01:13:09):
he thinks the Navy should be limited to operating within
two d miles of the coastline and the Army restricted
from ever leaving the confines of the continental United States. UM.
Yeah now that same yeah. Yeah, that he's he's trying
to like, he thinks we need a military. It just
we have to find a way to stop bankers from
being able to use it to fight wars for profit.

(01:13:33):
That's the problem. Um. In that same year, nineteen thirty five,
Butler gives an interview to common Sense magazine where he
tells the nation, quote, I spent thirty three years and
four months in active military service, and during that period,
I spent most of my time as a high class
muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers.

(01:13:54):
In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I remember that quote, Ye remember that quote from the
police one. Yeah, he was just like, man, I'm just
a goon. I was just a goon. Yeah, just muscle,
just a goon. And man, this needs to be in
dog I wish there's a reason it's not in your
history textbooks, you know, every history book. You know what

(01:14:16):
I'm saying, because yeah, because the reality is we don't have.
Like I was as you were talking, I was like,
do is there any figure in America now that could
do that? And I'm like, I don't know, only the
imaginary one, Like who's the movie The American Sniper? Was
that movie? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that dude's imaginary. You

(01:14:40):
know what I'm saying. The real the real person that
he was was like a lunatic, like dangerous, like murderer
and a liar. Yeah yeah, and he couldn't lead up
dash this insurrection. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. But
like if if if the guy that that was portrayed
was a real person, and maybe, but we ain't got
one in real life, what I'm saying. But the one

(01:15:01):
that did exist came out of the other end, going, Yo,
these wars were crap, and I was just out there
getting y'all's bags. Kitness is ridiculous. I was a fucking gangster.
Got He spent the rest of his life giving speeches
and trying to radicalize veterans and mourning in public that
he and his comrades had only ever fought for, in

(01:15:23):
his words, the benefit of millionaires and billionaires. He insisted
that he had named names to the committee, that he had,
that he had given the names of the people involved,
but that those names had been removed from his testimony
before it was made public. In a radio of an interview,
he insisted, like most committees, it has slaughtered the little
and allowed the big to escape. The big shots weren't

(01:15:44):
even called to testify. Yeah, if that ain't the Straights,
broy it's very And it's not for nothing that he
names himself as a gangster. You know, he recognizes like
it's exactly why. Yeah, I'm saying the little, the little
cornerboy doing fifteen years, you know what I'm saying. But
nobody go to the You know what I'm saying, that

(01:16:05):
the Russian oligarch that got him fifteen bricks, you know
what I'm saying, Like he's living nice in the Hollywood Hills.
They don't even he's not even in the testimony, you
know what I'm saying. That's crazy, And it's fucking one
of the things that is because there's so much that's
a bummer about this story, right that they just get
away with it. But there is there's hope in it too.
And and the hope, I think is in the story

(01:16:26):
of Smedley Butler, this guy who could not have been
a more dedicated soldier of imperialism and realizes he was
wrong and spends the rest of his life fighting against you.
You can't, you can't. You know, there's no time machine.
You can't go back and undo what you did to
freaking Haiti and Costa Rica and the Banana Wars. You

(01:16:47):
can't go back and redo that. But I can do
the best, my best to pay it forward. That's good man. Yeah,
it's it is a It's a real story of of redemption,
of redemption, and of a man who was had a
You gotta respect the amount of self knowledge to be
able to admit I spent thirty three fucking years as
a gangster. My friends died in a gang war over money,

(01:17:09):
you know, liken ours, but we don't even get to
collect Big Sean on it. Last record was like, dude,
John dying over street corners you don't even own, like
and it's like, yeah, that like that where you just like,
we don't even oh we don't even own these projects.
We'll own these property. Dang, that's crazy. Yeah, anyway, that's

(01:17:30):
the business plot. So it happened here. It happened here.
Uh and the only reason it didn't happen all the
way is that there happened to be one really good
man in the middle of it. Dang, that is crazy. Yeah,
So thanks Smedley Butler. Right, we appreciate you one good dude. Yeah,

(01:17:56):
And I will say I think that's maybe another one
of the optimistic things take out of it is that
it is a story of sometimes a single person with
the right who is willing to make a moral stand
can be the difference between calamity um and and and
not calamity. You know, yeah, wow, any proper you got

(01:18:23):
some plug doubles to plug as we as we roll
out of behind the insurrections. This has been You can't
say a pleasure, can you? But it it was. I
enjoy every time I get to like work with you
all and here about the most horrible things in the world.

(01:18:44):
They're always just They're a great time of my day.
Although it takes me like an hour to recoup after
we do this. Um, but yeah, thank you so much
again for having me prop hip hop dot com. Uh
if this as of the day that you're hearing this, um,
which is Thursday, right is Thursday one. Yeah, I will

(01:19:04):
be dropping new music the next day Friday morning, new video,
new music. So uh, please go to proper pop dot com.
You can subscribe to the YouTube, get on Spotify of
a ton of new music. Um a new coffee drop
into yeah, propit pop dot com. I gotta get you
a bean man, Yeah you do, Yeah, you do. Gotta

(01:19:25):
get you on poor Gummy Fridays too. Man, you're not
on Instagram? Well, yeah, I do have an Instagram. I
only follow one guy so far, and he's the guy
who's making knives for me. You have an Instagram. I
feel betrayed. I wanted to look at knives. I mean
I forgive that part, but but I could. I could
add I could have coffee and knives be my Instagram things.

(01:19:45):
What about Sophie and Anderson? I get I talked to
you on signal. This is true, this is heartful. But
I feel you. I feel you. Either way, We're going
to figure it out. Yes, I do you if you're
a fun follow. Wait, maybe you log into the Bastards
pods Instagram and I've never posted or whatever it is
you do on Instagram. Do you post? Yeah, you post? Yeah,

(01:20:10):
I could add you. All right, Well, don't find me
on anyway, grand because I'm not going to tell any
action there. You'll find me prop on Instagram. No one
else I will find yes, um and yeah, Well we'll
be back next week for something different. Um. It'll be
fun uh and a little bit of a break, and

(01:20:30):
then we'll probably get back to talking about genocides pretty soon.
Won't be long genocide every month. That's the behind the
Bastards promise. That is our promise. I have a good one. Byewses.
After thirty years, it's time to return to the halls

(01:20:51):
of West Beverly High and hang out at the peach pit.
On the podcast one O MG visit Jenny Guards and
Tory Spelling for a rewatch of the A series Beverly
Hills nine O two one oh. From the very beginning,
we get to tell the fans all of the behind
the scenes stories to actually happen, so they know what
happened on camera obviously, but we can tell them all

(01:21:11):
the good stuff that happen off camera. Listen to nine
O two one O MG on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. You always
had the feeling that there's something strange about reality. According
to the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast, there is.
On the show, post Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick examine
neurological quandaries, cosmic mysteries, evolutionary marvels, and much more. Prosthetics

(01:21:35):
are true testaments to not only human craftsmanship and ingenuity,
but also to the plasticity of the human brain. Listen
to Stuff to Blow Your Mind on the I Heart
Radio app or wherever you get your podcast. Brought to
you by dot dot go. Protect your privacy online for
free with dot dot go. On April four, Dr Martin
Luther King was shot and killed in Memphis, a petty
criminal named James Earl Ray was arrested. Case closed right

(01:22:00):
James Sylvay was a pawn for the official story. Some
of the evidence, as far as I was concerned, did
not match the circumstances. This is the MLK Tapes. The
first episodes are available now. Listen on the I Heart
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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Business Plot: When Rich Fascists Almost Took Over America