Part One: The Reichstag Fire Was Not An Inside Job

Margaret tells Karl Kasarda the story of Marinus van der Lubbe, the council communist who tried to spark a civil war against the Nazis and failed spectacularly.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media, Hello, and welcome to cool People do
cool stuff. You're weekly reminder that sometimes when there's bad stuff,
there's people trying to do good stuff, even if it
goes really badly sometimes like today's story. But we're going
to get to that, but first, I'm your host, Margaret
Kiljoy and my guest is Carl.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Hi. Carl, it's so cool to be back. Every time
I get a chance to be on anything on Cool
Zone Media, I'm super excited. When I saw the invite,
I was like absolutely. People ask me like, what's the topic.
I'm like, I don't know, but I'm there, so here
I am. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Famously, I like to not tell my guests what we're
going to talk about, and that's an example. You've a
listener probably know what we're going to talk about because
it's in the title and sharene our producer Hi, Sharen Hi,
I'm here as well, also, Carl, as someone who books
the guests, your response time and enthusiasm is always appreciated.

Speaker 3 (00:55):
It's very It makes my job so easy, so thank
you for that.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
It lets you know that I'm jitimate about what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
For anyone who doesn't know Carl and his work. Carl
runs in Range TV and it's really good. Do you
want to explain what that means?

Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah, thank you, I appreciate that. So in Range TV
is ostensibly a firearms related media project, but I actually
wrote this little paragraph to like describe my channel better
because it's hard to describe kind of So I'm like
I considered a media community building project. But one of
the things that differentiates us from like a lot of
the other firearms stuff in the world is that we're
actively anti racist, pro human liberation and staunchly for LGBTQ

(01:35):
plus rights, and that kind of puts us in a
weird space in firearms land. So it's been an interesting walk.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
Yeah. One of the things that's come up over and
over again on this show is how groups of people
are disarmed before they're murdered in mass.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
So yeah, and that's the challenge I have with a
lot of people that are like not necessarily firearms people already,
especially people that are like left of center. Whatever that means,
is that we don't talk about the realities of that
that firearms have been used so many times to oppress,
but there's a lot of times where fire has been
used to liberate and we leave that out of the conversation.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
And it's complicated and kind of not what we're going
to talk about today, but it's tangentially related to what
we're going to talk about today, because well, first of
do the rest of the introductions, the auto engineering is
done by Daniel. Everyone's just to say hi to Daniel
Hi Danel Hi, Daniel, I said hi.

Speaker 3 (02:26):
Sorry, I was muted. Sorry Daniel Hi Danel.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Okay, that's right, okay, And our theme music is written
for ud by Unwoman. This week, we're going to talk
about one of the most famous and misunderstood direct actions
in history. And I want to start with a thought experiment.
Let's think about John Brown. This is not a John
Brown episode. The pop history version of John Brown is

(02:51):
that he's like a bit of a zealot who goes
to war against slavery without the support of anyone and
he loses.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
Right.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
The actual historical version of him is that he's a
bit of a zealot who went to war against slavery
with the backing of a multi racial and cross class
alliance of abolitionists. He individually lost has lost his life famously.
The media spectacle around his trial is more or less
what sparked the South to attempt secession and therefore sparked

(03:18):
the Civil War and therefore brought the end of legal
chattel slavery in one of the most powerful slave empires
the world has ever known. So John Brown died and
then won. It happens that way sometimes, right, Okay, my
thought experiment, and it's I don't want to linger on
it too long, but imagine for a moment if the

(03:39):
South had won the Civil War, Imagine how history would
look at John Brown. Probably my argument is that a
lot of people would accuse him of either being an
unwitting friend of the South, or they might accuse him
of having been an agent of the South doing like
a false flag attack, since, after all, his actions spurred

(04:00):
the growth of the Confederacy. They absolutely did. His actions
spurred the growth of the Confederacy. They just were immediately smashed. Well,
not immediately. It took a lot of work and a
lot of people died doing it. But so that's my argument.
I'm wondering if that tracks with y'all.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
But that makes a lot of sense because now when
we see John Brown, and that's actually very timely because
not very long ago. I did the whole episode series
about John Brown and got a really deep dived dove
into that conversation. And of course you see people now
that are well, not my people, but they'll say things
where they call him a terrorist and he was this
evil man that killed lots of innocent people and all

(04:38):
the things. And there's some truth to that. Of course,
he didn't kill some probably innocent people. But the fact is,
if you flip that on the side, and like you said,
if it was the other way around, then the Confederacy won. Yeah,
the narrative of him being the agent provocateur that instigated
the battle that allowed them to be victorious in their
quote unquote war for states rights would make a lot

(04:58):
of sense. He would be, yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
That's weird. I haven't thought about it, yeah, because it's
hard to think about it that way.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
Right, and it's not fun to think about it. But
there's other times in place. Okay, So other white abolitionists
did not act like John Brown. Now, plenty of black
abolitionists led slaver volts, of course, right, other white people
didn't act like John Brown because they thought in their
way that being strategic, as they understood it was more
important than doing what is immediately a moral necessity. It

(05:28):
is obvious in retrospect that it is a moral necessity
to attack slave empires with all available vigor.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
Right, Yeah, I mean I think John Brown and others
said this that were more of his mindset, which was
he didn't bring the violence. The violence was already here, absolutely,
But this idea of just financially supporting and slightly bumping
the Overton window, well maybe it would have worked over
a couple hundred years. Maybe, but how many people's lives
are ruined and how much horror happens in those couple

(05:55):
of hundred.

Speaker 1 (05:56):
Years, right, totally. And you know, there had been efforts
around the birth of the I mean, we're going to
do a whole long series about the abolitionists at some point.
We've talked a lot about on the show already. But
you know, all these points to like slowly phase it out, right, like, oh, well,
you know, they theoretically shut down the trans Atlantic slave trade,
and they like, we're like, oh, only people who are
born here can be enslaved, and then you know, and

(06:18):
then later they were like, well you can keep the
guys you already own, but then maybe their kids are
for you know, people talked about all kinds of shit,
and then a lot of people, including a lot of
enslaved people and formerly enslaved people, were like, no, we're
just going to shoot you until this problem stops. You know.
But I think people often misunderstand the difference between moral
and strategic action, and what is actually strategic is more

(06:42):
or less unknowable. You can make some guesses right in
the short term, you tend not to know. We can
look at it in retrospect and immediately know. We can
Monday morning quarterback. I'm good at sports. The other thing
I want to say is that most attacks are not
false flag attacks. Claiming that something was a false flag attack,

(07:04):
I would argue, and I'm going to explain why I'm
talking about this in a minute, but I would argue,
this is the refuge of people who are afraid to
do what they know is right. Time and time again.
Often we're like, oh, that person did a thing, and
that was a bad idea. So clearly the other side
did it as a way to excuse the fact that
they have not taken meaningful action. So all that up front,

(07:28):
I told you it's gonna be paragraphs before I would
tell you what we're talking about. I want to talk
about the biggest and most famous quote unquote false flag
attack in all of history, the one that is used
as shorthand for an attack that authoritarians used to centralize power.
Because this week on Cool People Did Cool Stuff, we're
going to talk about the fucking Reichstag Fire.

Speaker 2 (07:46):
Yeah. That's the one, ain't it. That's the one that
supposedly that's the biggest false flag of all that justified
the Enabling Act and all the things that Hitler used
to turn it into a true dictatorship. Yep.

Speaker 1 (07:59):
I'm curious what you all. I've been asking my friends
this all week, Like Carl, I suspect you you know
a bit about this topic, but coming into it, what
do you all know about the Reichstag Fire. I'm curious
both of you.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
Oh, I mean, my basic understanding is you have this
little Dutch boy, I believe his name was vander Lub.
If I'm pronouncing that properly, is that correct?

Speaker 1 (08:17):
And I have it later in my script how to
pronounce it, but I don't have in front of me.

Speaker 2 (08:22):
Well that was. If it's a mispronunciation, we'll fix that later,
but the narrative was that his zealotry towards the Nazis
would have said, his zelotry against their democratically elected government
was that he proved him so that he was that
the radicals of the left and the communists would burn
down this symbol of the nation state and their power

(08:42):
by setting fire to the Reichstag. Yeah. I think the
opposite of that would be, these are fascists and Nazis
and evil, and I'm going to burn down the symbol
of their power.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:51):
So yeah, I mean it makes sense, right, And when
you open the door to that thing, much like you
great reference to John Brown, you don't know what's coming
out of the other. Like John Brown's actions at Harper's
Ferry didn't go the way he wanted, but ultimately it worked, right.

Speaker 1 (09:06):
I mean, coming out of the gate, you know anything
about the Reichshtag fire, heard anything?

Speaker 3 (09:11):
Okay, I'm going to boldly just be honest and say, no,
I don't know anything about this great No, No that
makes sense other than it was like almost like the
first shot fire that started like at all, that's all
I really know. It was just like the Yeah, one
of those big events in history books that you learn
about and then I forget about mutually. But audience members,

(09:33):
if you are like me, feel no shame. I don't
know anything ever either.

Speaker 1 (09:39):
I mean I was like that a week ago, well, okay,
a year ago, I was like, oh, the Reichstag fire,
that thing that was famously a false flag attack that
the Nazis used. It's like all I knew, right, yeah,
and then at some point I was like, I wonder
who did that, and I like looked it up and
I was like, this isn't the story I've heard, and

(09:59):
so I had it I like to do list and yeah.
I mean, you know, it's funny because I always come
in and be like I know everything about history, and
it's like, no, I know everything about the thing that
I have just spent the past week reading books about.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
You know.

Speaker 3 (10:09):
That's fair. That's fair. What we learn in school is
so truncated, and so unless you really do your own research,
you're not going to learn much about the world.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
So yeah, I think it's a mixed bag, right. It's
truncated and it's also formulated, so it's like it's the
product of what a lot of people, over a long
time have wanted you to learn, right, But it's also
just they just leave out a lot of stuff. And yeah,
sometimes I don't know if it's a sin of emission
intentionally or just accidental, but the landscape turns into not
really what it is. When you dig into stuff, it's
like WHOA really? Wow? Exactly.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
Yeah, And I'm going to give you a little spoiler.
The reason that so many people think it was a
false flag attack is because nineteen thirties communists are a
bunch of homophobes.

Speaker 2 (10:52):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (10:53):
And I'm going to defend that thesis, although much later
in the episode, I.

Speaker 3 (10:57):
Love what Margaret defend the thesis.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:01):
No, that part was like, that was the like holy
shit moment of this whole thing for me, because most
leftist history doesn't want to talk about that part for
some weird reason. So we're going to start this story
by talking about the rise of the Nazis, because you
know what, I needed a refresher. I didn't know a
lot of it. We're going to start more recently than

(11:23):
we sometimes do. During World War One. Germany was a
strange thing. It was a constitutional empire. It had twenty
five states, four kingdoms, five duchies, seven principalities, three free
Hanseatic cities, and one imperial territory, and a partridge in
a pear tree. One of the four kingdoms was Prussia,

(11:44):
which made up about two thirds of Germany by both
population and land mass. The King of Prussia was also
the emperor, the Kaiser. This is the second Reich, right
Hitler's famously the third Reich. This is the second one.
It had a constitution and a parliament, but at the
end of the y, the Kaiser's in charge. In fact,
in nineteen fourteen, the German parliament did its first enabling act,

(12:06):
like Karl talked about earlier, and this is the first
one it did under its constitution to limit basic rights
of the populace to help the war effort. They're like, wow,
there's a war on. We can't have all those democracy
fucking things up, you know, like people only have freedom
when like I feel like it. Basically, the constitution had
a we will follow this constitution until we don't want

(12:27):
to clause, well, until the Kaiser doesn't want to. Famously,
this did not work. Germany still lost the war, the
Great War, in fact, and the empire collapsed in November
nineteen eighteen. A Republic grew up in its place. First,
they tried to have a revolution. They actually tried to
do like a kind of a communist revolution that a
bunch of anarchists were involved in. And I'll talk about
it eventually one of these days. And B Traven who

(12:50):
wrote The Death Ship and the Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Have you ever seen the movie this Treasure of Sera Madre?

Speaker 3 (12:55):
No?

Speaker 1 (12:56):
Okay, well never mind, you all didn't grow up with
an older sister made you watch old movies. But there's
this old movie called Treasure Sier Madre. The point of
this is that the guy who wrote this book, you
all don't know what I'm talking about, was an anarchist
who had fled Germany. But we'll talk about that some
other time. He lived under cover.

Speaker 3 (13:10):
Is it a good movie? Should I add it to
my letterbox?

Speaker 1 (13:12):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (13:13):
Watch list?

Speaker 1 (13:14):
You know, like, it's interesting if you like old movies.
It's fun, it has class politics. It's like weird because
it's these like white dudes who are down and out
in Mexico who want to go gold prospecting, but they're
like vagabonds living on the street and they're like hustling
all the rich white people who are there by being like, hey,
help a fellow American. Now, just buy me a cigarette,
and the guy's like, you've asked me like three times.

(13:36):
He's like cock crap. Anyway, So Betraving, one day you're
going to be the hero of this story because you
were so fascinating. That's not how we're talking about. They
become a republic after the revolution fails. They become the
Weimar Republic, and we've done a bunch of episodes about
the Vymar Republic because they're really fucking interesting and cool.

(13:57):
There's all these like queer youth groups that are fighting nuts,
and we've done episodes about the a narcosyndicalists who ran
hundreds of illegal abortion clinics, providing millions of safe abortions
in Weimar Germany. If you wanted an abortion, you were
going to either the syndicalists or the people who syndicalists trained.
The Weimar Republic was a wildly interesting place. Everyone as
hungry as fuck. The reparations that they had to pay

(14:19):
the rest of countries is crippling the economy, and a
million types of leftists and right wing folks are forming
gangs and fighting each other in the streets. People are
making all kinds of cool art. Human sexuality is being
researched for the first time in Western history, like as
like a science. And the way it worked governmentally is
like this. You have an elected president and you have

(14:42):
an elected parliament, which is called the Reichstag, which just
stands for Parliament of the Empire. Basically, the parliament meets
in a building that is also called the Reichstag. The
president then appoints a chancellor who introduces legislation to the reichstock.
So the chancellor is a poin. Everyone else is elected,

(15:02):
and theoretically the chancellor's supposed to be the Guy's always
a guy. I think the person in charge of whatever group,
whatever political party, is the most seats in parliament, it's
gonna come up. I normally kind of skim over a
lot of this shit, but I think it's important. In
this story. The president can dismiss his cabinet and his chancellor.
I asked, Okay, so there's this thing that happens. I

(15:23):
think whenever I'm reading history about like Europe and other democracies,
I'm so used to the way that the US works
that you read about things and you're like, oh, and
then they dismiss the parliament. I'm like, what the fuck, Like,
holy shit, what is that? Like, that's like crazy shit
is happening. And you're like, no, that's a this is
what they do, you know.

Speaker 2 (15:42):
Yeah, we saw actions similar like that in France just recently, right,
I mean that's what yep, So it's not this is
still going on.

Speaker 1 (15:48):
Yeah, no totally. And that's the like, so things seem
a little bit more heated than they sometimes are. I mean,
things are peeded in France right now and stuff, right,
but it's like these specific actions are not quite as
like why old as they might seem to us in
our weird two party thing. He can dissolve the parliament
and call for new elections if the parliament isn't getting

(16:08):
shit done, right, Like if you just elect a bunch
of people who all hate each other, nothing can get done.
They're like, all right, well, all you fucking go home.
We're gonna just do this again, you know. And in
national emergencies, the president has Article forty eight, which is
the right to be a dictator. So this is actually
not wait, what the right to be that's like a thing,

(16:29):
uh huh, it's in the constitution of Germany in the
Weimar Republic, because well it's kind of the same constitution
that they had in the Empire. Like when I say
all that's changed, I have not read these documents side
by side. But all that's changed is now your emperor
is elected, you know, because he's still appointing the chancellor.

(16:50):
He's still able to call himself a dictator anytime he wants.
The only difference is that he's elected again. I'm sure
there's other differences. And among all these different political groups
that's fucking around trying to take power is famously the
National Socialist Workers Party aka the Nazis. This for a

(17:10):
very long time, is a tiny minority party. Their main
claim to fame is that their leader this like shitty
artist named Adolf Hitler. Most people haven't heard of him.
He's really obscure artist. Is my best joke I have
in the whole script. Sorry everyone.

Speaker 2 (17:25):
Yeah, it's very hipster stuff. I mean, if you haven't
seen it, it's yeah, it's pretty rare.

Speaker 1 (17:29):
Yeah, he's got that weird, edgy mustache. He's got Charlie
Chaplin like, he's funny. He tried and failed to stage
a coup in nineteen twenty three. That's like all anyone
knows about the Nazis. It's like, I mean, they're like
the Proud Boys or something. People are like, what, there's
that group. I don't know. They seem to do some
bad shit. There's like ten of them, right, you know.
And the reason that they're named the National Socialists is

(17:52):
that they're a right wing party that is supernationalist. But
initially they had some anti capitalist and anti bourgeois ideas
floating round within it, much like you see in the
Modern Republican Party where RNC this week as we recorded
two weeks ago, as you're listening, they're up there being
like and fuck the elite, am I right? And then
like all the richest people in the world are like, yeah,

(18:15):
fuck us, no, some other guy Jews, I mean they
mean Jews, right, That's.

Speaker 2 (18:20):
What it always comes down to. Yeah, But see they're socialists.
They just proved their point.

Speaker 1 (18:24):
Yeah, and so they were actually borrowing some ideas from leftism,
many of which are ideas that we should analyze and
wonder how we talk about, right, because this is one
of the ways that anti Semitism creeps into some things
sometimes is when whatever all the left Nazis are gonna
get murdered soon. They're all dead. By the time everything happens,
they all get fucking killed by the other Nazis. So

(18:45):
no more left Nazis.

Speaker 2 (18:46):
The Night of the Long Knives.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
Yeah, yeah, no more gay Nazis. Whatever. After the failed coup,
Hitler was like, all right, how can I take power
in a legal way? And what he should have done
is run political ads, which we don't run on this podcast.
We have some lines, and one of our lines is
that we don't do political ads. If you hear one,

(19:08):
it is actually a mistake. Instead of usually where I'm like,
you're ad for anything bad, it's a mistake, Like, no,
everything is bad. We live in a hell world of capitalism.
But at least there's no political ads coming up. I
hope here they are the non political ads. Ooh, we're back,

(19:34):
and I'm going to vote with my dollar for gambling
whatever we sold.

Speaker 2 (19:42):
I don't know. I subsist entirely on only Hello Fresh.
It's the only way I stay a lout.

Speaker 3 (19:46):
Yeah that's right, you heard it here first.

Speaker 2 (19:50):
If a company doesn't send me a box of food
to my door, I just die. I don't know what
to do.

Speaker 1 (19:54):
Yeah, I tried one or not. I'm not gonna say
which one. I tried it, and then I felt so
bad about the waste of the like box that had
the fucking thing, and then and all of the yeah,
and then also like I live like like mail service
is not fast where I live. It's not even that
I live like so far from civilization. It's that I
live in a really underserved area because no one cares
about the people who live here because they're rural and

(20:15):
poor and so like everything takes like a week to
get here, and it's more like hello on fresh, it's
not that's not the even the one I used. That's
not the one I used. Please don't get mad at me.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
Hello, been sitting in the back of the truck sweating
for a week.

Speaker 4 (20:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:31):
So anyway, I go to the grocery store, which is good.

Speaker 2 (20:35):
Which is only nominally better, right, I mean, it's like
this sells green ones, but now it's a little wilted.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
And also all the weird packaging is not I don't
have to see it.

Speaker 2 (20:43):
Right, No, that's that's that's done for you. They throw
that away so you don't have to.

Speaker 1 (20:47):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Actually I shred all the cardboard and
then compost it. But that's because I am strange.

Speaker 2 (20:54):
Yeah, well, it's a good way to deal with it.

Speaker 3 (20:55):
Actually, yeah that's good.

Speaker 2 (20:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:57):
No, yeah, they used to burn it and know that.
I don't know if that's legal. I used to recycle
it all. I used to drive it to another state
to recycle it. That's what I'm going to claim. No
one here does that, absolutely, no one here does that.
They don't recycle cardboard where I live, I don't. Recycling's fake?

Speaker 2 (21:13):
Do they even know what recycling is? I mean, that's
some places, don't I know.

Speaker 1 (21:17):
They might just be a step ahead and know that
it's all fake.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
Yeah, this is an instance in which the wrong take
is the right take because they're skeptical of it. It
turns out they're not wrong.

Speaker 1 (21:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:29):
Anyway, what else people should be skeptical of is the Nazis.
There's actually no you should actually just kill them. So
they got really into party politics after their failed coup
didn't work. They were like, all right, what's the legal
way to take power again? Something that we have no
idea about people trying to do in the United States,
And so they campaigned on a platform that's like fuck

(21:51):
Commi's fuck Jews, go Germany. That's their main points of unity. Specifically,
they're like, fuck everyone who signed the Treaty of Si
they're traders. Germany should have won, should have just kept
sending boys into a grinder that no one can see.
The face I'm making, but it's not a positive one.

(22:11):
And when I say it wasn't a big deal of
a party at the time, in nineteen twenty eight, they
had one hundred thousand members. There's like sixty five million
people in Germany. They had one hundred thousand of them
and they won two point six percent of the vote.

Speaker 3 (22:23):
But then the.

Speaker 1 (22:25):
World economy fucking collapsed. Thirty percent of Germany was soon unemployed.
And when the economy is fucked, people look for easy answers.
They're looking for people to blame. By nineteen thirty, the
Nazis had eighteen point three percent of the vote and
they were the second biggest party after the Social Democrats.

(22:45):
The Communist Party also saw a huge burst of activity.
Two they're trailing at ten percent of the vote. When
Weimar the Republic first started out, they had a moderate
Social Democrat for president. This is the whole thing that's like,
really confusing because if you use any political term, you
mean a completely different thing decade to decade in country
to country. Right, a social democrat in Germany is like
a centrist. A social democrat in Germany is a kind

(23:07):
of a democrat. Now in the US, right they have
his moderate social democrat for a president, but that guy
died in office. So in nineteen twenty five, the right
all got together to run one candidate together, this guy
Paul von Hindenberg, most famous for blowing up as a limp.

Speaker 2 (23:25):
No, they named the balloon after the zeppr No, I know,
but he was a famous general that got lots of
people killed in the war.

Speaker 1 (23:34):
Yeah he was. I think he was in charge of
Germany and World War One. You know more about this,
I think.

Speaker 2 (23:39):
Yeah he was. He was pretty much like their military head,
for lack of a better term, And so the general
German war effort was Hindenburg down. Wow. Okay, I mean
you said you still had the Kaiser Wilhelm, right, but
like Hindenburg was the military arm of that.

Speaker 1 (23:55):
Okay. So this guy who had famously lost them a
war and gotten all of their kids killed. They voted
into office in nineteen twenty five and he doesn't have
a political party, which is kind of that part's impressive.
He ran as an independent, but it's because he didn't
go with one right wing party. He was all of them.
He was the voice of all the right wingers. He
actually didn't like the Nazis, even though he is absolutely

(24:17):
the one who put them into power. We'll talk about that.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
Do you mean like he kind of pulled a unite
the right.

Speaker 1 (24:22):
Oh no, no, we talk about history, completely devoid of
all things. It's a coincidence that I'm doing the Reichstag
fire episode right now. Yeah. So he's old as fuck
when he's elected, totally unfamiliar to the modern American audience.
He's like seventy nine or something when he's elected, which
is younger than by a young Chap Yeah, yeah, yeah,

(24:45):
two years younger than Biden. He didn't like the Nazis
all that much. He signs the government over to Hitler. Eventually,
we'll get to that. By nineteen thirty, parliament is divided
as fuck. It keeps not getting anything done. It's deadlocked.
Hindenburg dissolves the parliament. There's new elections. They get dead locked.
He dissolves the parliament over and over and over again.
They just try again roll the dice. Slowly, right wing

(25:09):
parties get their shit together and they are claiming more
and more of parliament. In July nineteen thirty two, the
Nazis came out on top. They had thirty seven percent
of the vote. Traditionally, the president would appoint a chancellor
from whichever party had the most seats in parliament. Originally,
Hindenburg was like, I don't want to do that. Hitler sucks.
Look at his mustache.

Speaker 2 (25:31):
Well, I think even Hindenberg considered them sort of just
like brutal, somewhat unintelligent street thugs. Yeah, it was like
the general vibe.

Speaker 1 (25:38):
Yeah, yeah, because they were, you know, because he's like
an old fashioned right wing guy. He was like, let's
have law and order in an emperor or whatever.

Speaker 2 (25:47):
You know. Yeah, no, totally. So they were just these
like street thugs that were what's the word unsophisticated would
probably be the way to put it.

Speaker 1 (25:55):
Yeah, it makes sense. And it didn't help that Hitler
had actually just run against Hindenburg for president in the
nineteen thirty two election, but Hindenburg soundly beat him. But
the right wing of the country, all the industrialists and shit,
are like, come on, appoint our guy chancellor. What could
go wrong? Look at him, He's Hitler. Look at our
fake babyface. He's an artist, he's sensitive. More specifically, they

(26:18):
were like, we must stop this Communist menace. If we
don't put Hitler in charge, will be the USSR. And
this is not what would have happened in nineteen eighteen.
The Communist Party had some teeth at this point, they're
pulling in ten percent of the electorate, but they're like
committed to party politics. They're kind of boring. But on

(26:40):
January thirtieth, nineteen thirty three, Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler as
the Chancellor of Germany. And it's worth pointing out that
people always talk about people being like, well, Hitler was
democratically elected, and I know I'm being pedantic when I
say this, but he actually wasn't. There was like later

(27:01):
a thing where he forced people to vote for him.
After we'll get to it. His party was the majority
party and he was appointed chancellor. Carl, you seem no.

Speaker 2 (27:13):
I mean, I was just thinking. I actually made that
statement early on as we were recording the podcast, and
you're right, I think I don't know if i'd use
the word pedantic. But he was appointed, but appointed through
a system in which his party held the great majority,
so therefore it was still common and therefore by electing
the party to their highest percentage, they sort of have
indirectly democratically elected Hitler. How's that?

Speaker 1 (27:35):
I think that that's true. But it's also worth understanding
that it was a plurality, not a majority. Not to
be like the German people were great, right, like clearly
not one of the shining moments of democracy right here
is when it put Hitler in power and German people
didn't have a civil war over it.

Speaker 2 (27:52):
Right, So what was the percentage you said they held?
They held like thirty six percent of parliament or something.

Speaker 1 (27:56):
You said, yeah, thirty seven Yeah, So thirty seven.

Speaker 2 (27:59):
Percent is still a minority of the majority of people.
So Hitler getting to chancellorship is still not the will
of the greatest amount of people, right, It's just the
greatest majority of people who voted, right.

Speaker 3 (28:12):
Well, okay, I so is the only reason Hindenburgh gave
in an appointed him chancellor because of that growing numbers?

Speaker 2 (28:17):
Like?

Speaker 3 (28:17):
Is that the only reason?

Speaker 1 (28:19):
Like?

Speaker 3 (28:20):
Why did he change his mind on the guy?

Speaker 1 (28:22):
I think it was the pressure from the industrialist convincing
him that the Communists needed to be stopped, that Hitler
was the best chance of stopping the communist menace. That
is my best read on it, but I have only
read maybe four paragraphs about that particular thing. You know, fair, No,
that makes sense. Yeah, So Hitler now in power. I

(28:42):
swear we're going to get to fun arsen and shit.
Although it goes really badly, but it's interesting at least
as part of Hitler's attempt to be appointed, he was like, Hey,
I'm only going to want two ministers from my party, right,
because like Hindenburg is like, oh, the Nazis gonna try
and take over the Council or whatever, which is like
the thing that advises the that isn't the parliament, you know.

(29:02):
All I want is the Interior minister. And then I
want this guy Goring, who is the president of the
Nazis in the Reichstag, like he's the main guy there.
But I want him to be a minister without portfolio,
and I want him in charge of the Prussian cops,
which is the majority of the cops in the country.
So Hitler gets to be Chancellor and he hits the
ground fucking running. This is a January nineteen thirty three.

(29:26):
He is hitlering write out the box. On February twenty second,
the Nazis created the essay the storm Troopers, made up
of fifty thousand Nazis, to be an auxiliary police force
under direct fascist control, and the new cabinet got the
president to dissolve the Reichstag again, and they were like,
all right, we're going to get this time. You're going
to dissolve the parliament. We're going to vote in to

(29:47):
write people. And so they call for an election on
March fifth, nineteen thirty three. Along the way back in
nineteen thirty two, the year before, non Nazi right wingers
had written this kind of Remember earlier I was saying,
there's an article forty eight that like, hey, you can
just be a dictator if you want. Thing mm hmm.

(30:09):
They also wrote this thing. It's kind of in a
case of emergency, break glass decree that is the decree
of the Reich President for the Protection of the People
and State. And it basically was like, hey, if the
communists try to have a revolution, here is the plan
by which we will declare martial law. We will centralize
all authority. We will suspend the constitution, we will suspend

(30:32):
free press, free assembly, free speech, all that kind of stuff.
It allows for up to three months of protective custody
of anyone suspected of doing crime. And so they just
like write this and then they like sit on it.
And the fun thing about giving more power to the
state is that even though this wasn't the Nazis who
wrote this, you're giving power to whoever comes after you too.
Like the Nazis, people.

Speaker 2 (30:53):
Always forget about that the thing you do today you
think is cool, might have really bad ramifications later.

Speaker 1 (30:58):
Yeah, let's make more laws with which to criminalize people.
That's going to go really well.

Speaker 2 (31:03):
And even if your guys okay right now, the next
guy might not be.

Speaker 1 (31:07):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (31:07):
It's also interesting to note this is off a little
off topic, but when you talk about that act that
allowed them to like essentially centralize and control the state
in the case of an emergency, that similar law was
the well a law similar to it was what they
tried to use an Operation Valkyrie plot, uh huh to
overthrow Hitler almost exactly the same sort of thing. There
was this protection plan. They were going to say that

(31:28):
Hitler was dead, and therefore all power must be centralized,
and they were just going to take over the state
from within, very similar attempt. It just didn't work.

Speaker 1 (31:36):
No, it makes sense. I mean, like, you know, you're
creating levers for the state and you're going to use
it all kinds of ways. There's like all sorts of
things later about how maybe some of these laws that
the Nazis did were unconstitutional that therefore is used to
like vacate people's or whatever. So the Nazis are like, Okay,
we're going to keep this little piece of possibility around, right,

(31:56):
We want this document around in case something happens, and
there are I need to act in case something happens.
One of their key electoral strategies is to summon up
the boogeyman of the Communist Party to claim that the
Communists are planning a revolution. As far as I can tell,
the Communists were not planning a revolution. There is this
thing where like no one tells the truth about communists,

(32:17):
The communists don't tell the truth about communists, the anti
communists don't tell the truth about communists. I read like
eight things being like the Communists were not planning a revolution,
but like some of those were on like Workerspaper dot
org or whatever, right, you know, and like, Okay, I
wouldn't be mad at them if they were. I mean,
I would be right because I hate tankies, but like,

(32:38):
you know, like they're better than not whatever.

Speaker 2 (32:39):
Anyway, Yeah, it's like you almost have to take it
on vibes.

Speaker 1 (32:43):
Yeah, yeah, And I agree with the overall consensus that
the vibes was that they were not planning a revolution.
And part of that is that on February twenty fourth,
nineteen thirty three, the Nazis raided the Communist Party headquarters anyhow,
in the middle of an election cycle, transparently trying to
interfere with the election. And two things happened that make
me think the Communist weren't planning a revolution. One, they

(33:05):
kind of rolled over and took it. Two, the Nazis
didn't find anything that was like, hey, we're planning a revolution,
you know. And then on February twenty seventh, three days later,
a Council Communist which is different than a Communist party
and oh we're going to get into it, set the
Reichstag on fire and everything changed pretty much for the worst.

(33:27):
And now we're going to back up and tell you
the story of a young Dutch council communist, this week's
cool person who did something that turned out very badly,
Marnus vonder Luba. And you know what Marnus vonder Luba liked.
He liked buying stuff. He did not he had no money,
His life was shit. He was a working class person

(33:48):
who suffered greatly on the job multiple times, who was
actually really cool and interesting, and he would have no
interest in what we're about to advertise. But here it
is anyway, and we're back.

Speaker 2 (34:05):
I bet if vander Luba had some of that stuff
we just heard about, he wouldn't have been a communist.

Speaker 1 (34:10):
I know he would have been like, I can just
do this instead. This is so much better than I mean. Okay,
if you're listening to this and you're not currently half
starving and disabled from workplace accidents, which might be you,
because that is people who are still alive and exist today,
then you had it better than Marnus. Marnas vonder Luba

(34:32):
was born on January thirteenth, nineteen eleven, in the city
of Leiden in the southern Netherlands. He was born to
a sort of classic working class family at the time
in that it was all fucked up. His father was
a traveling salesman who ditched the family pretty much right off,
like right after he was born. His mother worked hard
as fuck. She was already a divorced woman with six

(34:53):
kids before she had her little Marinus, so he has
got two full siblings and four half siblings I think,
and she worked running a little shop despite being an asthmatic.
With the aforementioned seven children and no husband and no money,
she's fucking impressive for a little while. She couldn't handle
the burden, and Marnus was placed in a boarding school

(35:14):
for poor kids and orphans. I think he gets back
out of that at some point. He did well in school.
His mother died when he was fucking ten years old,
and he immediately has to start caretaking his three younger
nieces who are also part of the picture. And by
the time he's fourteen or actually I think substantially younger
than that based on some of the other timing of
some other events. But people why be accurate when whatever

(35:37):
I cross reference like eight articles and they don't agree
with each other about dates. At least by fourteen, if
not younger, he is working to help his half sister
bring in money to support all the kids all the
while he's doing this. This man is impressive. This boy
is impressive. He keeps himself in school. He works as

(35:58):
an apprentice mason during the day and then takes evening
classes at night like a thirty year old would, except
he is fourteen years old and like whatever, and for
some weird reason he didn't like how the economy worked.
His fellow workers started teaching a Marxism, and soon enough
he's in this group called the Sewer, which is a
youth organization of the Dutch Communist Party. But he doesn't

(36:22):
like authority, he never did and he never will, so
he's not always going to sit easily in the Communist Party,
and he keeps teaching himself on his own. He goes
to the library. In addition to taking evening classes and
working all day and supporting this family when he's a child,
he also goes to the library and is like constantly

(36:42):
there and reading books like he's sixteen, reading Marx and
Henry Ford.

Speaker 2 (36:47):
Like so you're saying he's pulling himself up by his bootstraps.

Speaker 1 (36:51):
Yeah, kind of.

Speaker 2 (36:51):
I mean, like.

Speaker 1 (36:53):
He is not drowning the way that society wanted him
to you know.

Speaker 2 (36:57):
Right, yeah, this guy should be destined for utter failure,
right yeah.

Speaker 1 (37:02):
At some point while he's a young mason, like I
read that this happened when he was thirteen, and then
another thing was that he whatever you've already heard me
complain about this. At some point he is very young
and a group of fellow workers play a practical joke
on him. I think they were bullying him. They dump
a bucket on his head. Quicklime from the bucket gets

(37:22):
into his eyes. He has to go to the hospital.
He has left with thirty percent vision in his left eye.
What a fun prank a hah, we sure showed you.

Speaker 2 (37:31):
Yeah, the worst form of the ice bucket challenge.

Speaker 3 (37:34):
But also like calling a bullying a joke, like been there,
done that?

Speaker 2 (37:39):
You know what I mean?

Speaker 3 (37:39):
Like, oh, it's just a joke.

Speaker 1 (37:41):
Uh No, they actually I think it's because these articles
are written in like the seventies, you know, they're like, ah,
so sad joshing around right exactly, yeah, just boys boys, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (37:53):
Yeah. A famous quote from Robert E. Lee about the Klan,
that's what he called the Klan. When the Klan was
first active, he was like, oh boys.

Speaker 3 (38:00):
Yeah, are you serious? Yep, I had no idea.

Speaker 1 (38:04):
And that's why boys should be a pol I mean, anyway,
I'm doing my part anyway. So oh my god, Mark,
thank you, thank you. That's my best joke. It just
wasn't written into my script.

Speaker 3 (38:17):
That was the best one so far.

Speaker 1 (38:18):
You're right, yeah. A few years later, so he's got
thirty percent vision in his left eye. A few years later,
he's sixteen years old. And when you hear like apprentice Mason,
whenever I hear apprentice, I'm like, oh, you know, he's
like there with like an old man who has a
beer and his like son, this is how you use
a trowel, right, Like, No, he's like fucking dangerously building

(38:40):
buildings and getting hurt and like being fucked over. When
he is sixteen years old, a job injury happens where
rubble drops into his eye, his other eye. He is
in the hospital for months and his right eye is
permanently damaged. At this point and for the rest of
his life, his vision isn't about where he can recognize

(39:00):
who someone is when they're about a meter away. And
so I mean I think that the word for that
is blind. But I'm not one hundred percent certain. A
lot of articles refer to it as half blind. He
might be like legally blind. Whatever. He is disabled, and
he keeps fucking going, partly because he has no money,
right and he has to. He gets some disability payments,

(39:20):
but it's not enough to support him or his siblings
and his nieces and shit, so he keeps working every
odd job he can get. He as a teenager, he
is a grocery clerk, a waiter, a sailor, and of
course a guy who sells potatoes in the street, all
while he's blind enough that he can only recognize people
a meter away. In his free time. I don't know
how I have his free time. He has two things

(39:42):
he does all the time in his free time. I
think he just doesn't sleep. He swims and is into sports.
It's like thing comes up where like there's this challenge
where if you swim the channel, which I think is
the channel between like England and the mainland or whatever,
the first dutch Man to do it is going to
get five thousand unit of money. That is a meaningless
thing to Margaret, probably guilders, but I don't know, because

(40:02):
I didn't write down and now I'm completely off my script,
so I'll just go back to my script. So he's
like into sports and he wants to go swim it.
But both years he's gonna do it, it's like the
weather's too dangerous and he's like, I'm gonna do it anyway,
and they're like, no, you're not allowed. We will not
give you the money if you go swim right now.
The other thing he does with is copious free time
is he is super active in communist groups, and the

(40:24):
cops fucking hate him. He is at every demonstration and strike.
He is supporting unemployed workers. He is constantly arguing with
the Communist Party because he doesn't actually like party politics
and he believes in democratic workplace, self management and direct action.
He has briefly the chairman for the local party because
he's like really active, and then the other guy goes
away for a while, and then he starts a radical

(40:47):
choir and there's like feeder and shit that he puts on.
He's fucking like twenty two or some shit, but he's
been an adult since he was like ten, so you know,
by nineteen twenty nine he has resigned from the party
four different times, and he keeps drifting towards another position,
keep teasing you with but I'm not gonna talk about yet.
I know you are at the edge of your seat,
wanting to hear what Margaret's to say about council communism.

(41:11):
He's a strong orator, but he's also mostly just strong.
He will do things like climb up lamp posts to
get a better vantage point with which to shout about
workers organization. Soapbox. Fuck a soapbox, I'm a lamp poster.
He's fucking cool. I really like this guy.

Speaker 2 (41:28):
I mean, and he's doing this mostly blind. As you said,
it's it's pretty wild.

Speaker 3 (41:32):
Yeah, I mean, anyone that the cops hate like, that's
that's my guy, you know, I know he's onto something.

Speaker 1 (41:37):
Well, here we go.

Speaker 2 (41:38):
That's a recurring theme, right, you look back in history
and if the cops hate the guy, there's probably something
cool going on.

Speaker 1 (41:43):
Yeah, true, Yeah, totally. At one point, a cop tells
him that he can't sell communist newspapers in the street,
so he throws the cop through a window.

Speaker 3 (41:53):
Wow, that's the sickest thing I've ever heard. That's great.

Speaker 1 (41:57):
Yeah, the imbligation is like picks up and throw. But
who knows so.

Speaker 3 (42:01):
He's really that strong.

Speaker 1 (42:03):
He is, like his nickname is the name of some
like boxer that's around at the time. He's like he's
like heavy set and strong and like fucking works out constantly,
I think, and throws cops through windows for fun.

Speaker 2 (42:15):
Yeah, there's some strong nestor mock no vibes here. It's
like gunfights over book clubs, cops through windows over no pamphlets, right,
really similar vibes, honestly.

Speaker 1 (42:23):
Yeah. And he goes to jail for two weeks for
doing this. To be fair, if it was only a
two week crime in the United States, I think a
lot more cops would go through a lot more windows.

Speaker 3 (42:33):
Oh in a heart beat, if I could throw anybody,
it would be a cop through window and I get
two weeks of jail.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
Yeah, totally. I'm like I could do two weeks. Yeah. See,
I would just retire on that, right, I'd be like,
I just become a podcaster. I'd be like, oh, yeah,
welcome to cool people did cool stuff.

Speaker 2 (42:50):
My name is MARYA.

Speaker 1 (42:51):
Kilder. You might know me from having thrown a cop
through a window fifteen years ago.

Speaker 3 (42:55):
That's all you need.

Speaker 1 (42:56):
How I got this gravelly voice. Yeah, Meanwhile, he's starting
to realize he doesn't have much of a future in
the Netherlands because he keeps getting kicked out of the
party that he's part of. And he also the cops
keep putting him in jail for things, because I think
it must be some weird Dutch law where you're not
allowed to beat up cops, because that's not the only
time he does it. There's a bunch of times that
he's like in a brawl with cops and he goes
to jail.

Speaker 3 (43:16):
I feel like it's a lot most places.

Speaker 1 (43:18):
Though, No, huh, you're not allowed to assault Officers's weird.
We pay their salary.

Speaker 2 (43:23):
I thought it was okay in Ohio or something. Yeah,
okay in Ohio.

Speaker 1 (43:27):
Oh probably if you're listening to this in Ohio. Wait, no,
never mind, it's himself now, all right. So, even though
he's like starting to get disillusioned with communism and socialism
as like a or he loves socialism, he's starting to
get disillusioned with like party communism. He really wants to
go to Russia. It's the country of socialism. And he's

(43:47):
also the other thing that he's like really concerned with
is he's concerned about the rising tide of fascism in
neighboring Germany. So in April nineteen thirty one this part
I have read two accounts of, and neither one makes
sense and both poorly translate. He tried to get his
local communists to help him get a bunch of propaganda
postcards that he could sell to fund his trip, and
they were like, nah, we're good, We're not gonna help

(44:08):
you do that. So he is done with the party forever.
He's like, you're not gonna fucking help me make postcards.

Speaker 2 (44:13):
Fuck you.

Speaker 1 (44:14):
That seems to be the final straw here. I've read
that it's propaganda postcards. I've also read that it's like
photo postcards, and so it might be that he was
like trying to get equipment and maybe he's like selling
pictures of like himself. I don't know either way. You know,
he's a poor vagabond who wants to do whatever he
can do to get some money.

Speaker 2 (44:32):
Yeah, I know, I just crossed my mind. It was
early OnlyFans.

Speaker 1 (44:35):
Yeah, No, I mean I genuinely think that that as
a possibility here, I am.

Speaker 2 (44:39):
Not certain sure, Yeah, we don't know.

Speaker 1 (44:41):
Yeah, And there's a lot of like we're gonna talk
about his sexuality and whether or not I did sex work
later on. So he's never again a member of the
Communist Party, and he leaves and he goes to Berlin
and he tries to get a visa to Russia and
they're like, oh, that costs a bunch of money, and
he's like, wait, really, but I haven't any money, and
they're like, sucks to be you. The whole thing, he's
just like walking. I think he's also hitchhiking, but he's

(45:03):
just like he walks everywhere. At one point, he like
sets off. He's like, I'm gonna even walk to China.
I've always wanted to go to China, and I don't
know else to get there. I'm poor, so I guess
I'll just walk there, you know. And so he can't
go to Russia. He can't get a visa, so he
turns around and like walks back to the Netherlands again.
I think he hit shikes. He gets arrested at the
border for illegally selling Communist postcards and he spends ten

(45:24):
days in jail. He's not above a little bit of
pettiness and a little bit of vandalism. At one point,
in I think Leiden. He goes to the Bureau of
Aid to the Unemployed, like a social workplace, you know,
and he's like, hey, can I get funds to start
a library for workers in the unemployed and they're like, no,

(45:44):
we don't do social projects. And so he was like,
I'm gonna break your fucking windows. I don't know if
he said it, but he did it. And they send
him to three months in prison for this, and he
was like, what if instead of going to prison, I
just go bagabond to Europe. So he skips town. Doesn't
want to go to prison for some weird reason.

Speaker 2 (46:04):
So these are windows he did not break with a
cop because he only would have gotten two weeks for that.

Speaker 1 (46:08):
Yeah yeah, no, totally yeah right right yeah yeah, rock
through a window, like you might hurt the rock. You know,
people care about rocks.

Speaker 3 (46:16):
I will say. His responses to things are pure gold, like.

Speaker 1 (46:20):
Yeah, I love it. And he's on team always carry
a boulder, throw that boulder through the window.

Speaker 3 (46:25):
Classic strong guy. Shit will he was carrying a boulder.

Speaker 1 (46:29):
Yeah, And so he kind of vagabounds around through Europe.
He sleeps where he can. At one point he tries
to convince a sex worker to quit or drob to
marry him, and she's like, no, I'm good, I want
to know more about that part.

Speaker 2 (46:42):
That's a movie. That's the premise for a movie right there. Yeah, movie.

Speaker 1 (46:46):
I know. His whole life would be a movie if
it weren't for the way he got done dirty by
every single political actor in Europe a couple of years
from now. Because he gets done dirty and he's like
all right, and he keeps wandering and then he throws
down and strikes everywhere he goes. He's like wandering around
Budapest and shit, and he's doing seasonal labor everywhere he

(47:08):
can go, and he's sleeping on, you know, in barns
and shit, I think. And then he's arrested for trying
to sneak into Russia from Poland. The Polish police catch
him and they send him back to the Netherlands. After
he spends like two weeks in jail again, and then
they send him back to the Netherlands and they're like,
you got three months for throwing rocks through windows, coming buddy,
And so he goes to jail for like three months.

(47:28):
At some point, I think while he's in jail, he
goes on hunger strike and then and he publishes a
paper for the unemployed after he gets out, and just
to make him a single complete cool people bingo card
all on his own are a tinerant potato salesman who
has escaped imprisonment, gets to merculosis at the age of

(47:50):
twenty four in his eyes and at this point he
is like, fairly certain he's going to go completely blind.

Speaker 2 (47:58):
His eyes did something really wrong past life, I know.

Speaker 1 (48:02):
Yeah, And it's at this point he actually has a
conversation with one of his friends, a communist friend of his.
I think he is a council communist, where he's saying
something like, hey, I don't understand why people would kill themselves.
He should just kill Hitler instead, you know. And then
his friend is like, nah, I blow up the Reichstog,
and uh, that probably sat in him at some point,

(48:23):
you know, But he's left the Communist party. What he
does after that, where he finds his political home, and
how he tried to start a civil war to beat Hitler,
we'll talk about on Wednesday. So you're gonna have to
wait two whole days to hear Margaret talk about counsel.
I know you all care more about the arson. But
before you can hear Margaret talk about council communism, that's Martis.

(48:43):
What do y'all think of him so far?

Speaker 3 (48:45):
I love him?

Speaker 1 (48:47):
I know, I know, I love him. Let's all look
at a picture of him.

Speaker 3 (48:50):
Oh, I would love to see a photo of him.
It just makes me sad that like someone, I mean
like people, people have hard lives, and it just makes
me depressed.

Speaker 1 (48:58):
I know, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (48:59):
Well, what's sad about this is like exactly where this
episode is, or at least part of this episode's discussing is
like the basic how many people have never heard of
his name? Right? They might even not even know about
the rex Dog fire. But even someone who is pretty
well versed in this, I didn't know all these details
about this man. I knew that he was essentially accused
of the false flag operation at the Reichs Dog and

(49:21):
that he started a fire, and that bad things happened
to him as a result. But that's all I knew, right,
like this depth of how and why he became the
person he became, and frankly, the obvious reasons people become
the people they are for so many things that happened
to them and a society that doesn't care isn't part
of the general narrative because of the way it was
narrated after the fact.

Speaker 1 (49:43):
Yeah, no, and if you hear his actual life, you
kind of can't believe he was a Nazi agent. And
we'll get into why. I feel very confident about saying
that more in the next episode. But Shrank, can you
see did the screen sharing work? Can you see Marnus?

Speaker 3 (49:58):
Yes, I see Marnus that I say his name probably
is Yeah, and I also see the day he dies
a spoiler alert for me.

Speaker 1 (50:06):
Oh yeah, uh huh. But he wasn't getting out of
this one alive.

Speaker 3 (50:10):
No, it's that makes me sad.

Speaker 1 (50:12):
But he lived a very full life for how old
he was when he died. But yeah, but yeah, no,
he's a handsome and broad man with a I am
a criminal and fine with it look on his face
in his mug shot, it does look very strong.

Speaker 2 (50:26):
Yeah, he does have that look. I must say, like,
and I bet you like not getting out of this alive.
None of us are technically, but like my guess is
considering like things like, well, I someone shouldn't commit suicide,
they should just kill Hitler. That kind of stuff. I
don't think he ever thought he was going to anyway,
that's my guess.

Speaker 1 (50:42):
No, I don't think he did either. We'll talk more
about his motivations and shit on Wednesday, but first we're
going to talk about you, Carl and the stuff you do.
Oh cool.

Speaker 2 (50:54):
Thanks. Yeah. So, as we talked about very basically at
the beginning, I run a media effort sometimes I refer
to as a YouTuber, but it's more than that. In
range TV. You can find my website inrange dot tv,
and I'm distributing my content about multiple different distribution points
because you should and decentralize everything as much as you can,
because YouTube do anyways. And we also run events that

(51:17):
we call brutality matches, which are an actually inclusive space
for people who are interested in acquiring better skills with
firearms or just building community or having a good time
amongst people they know they're going to be safe around. Ironically,
even though it's a shooting event.

Speaker 4 (51:30):
Can call brutality, Yeah, call brutality, but I know the
irony of things, right, But like, I run those as well,
and so it's really a multi tiered effort and hopefully
bringing things to the table about not just guns but the.

Speaker 2 (51:43):
Sociological impact of those items in our societies, whether for
good or for bad, and try to take that concept
and talk about it and understand it in broader scope
than just nuts bolts and like trajectories or ballistics.

Speaker 1 (51:57):
Hell yeah, hell yeah. I have a book. It's called
The Sapling Cage. It is amazing. It's the best thing
that's ever been written by anyone, or at least by me.
And I've written a bunch of stuff and it's the
best thing I've written, so Matt, obviously, it's very good.
It comes out September twenty fourth from Feminist Press. Is
currently available for pre order in the United States. You
can pre order it from Firestorm Books. I mean, you

(52:19):
can pre order from pretty much anywhere, but if you
get from Firestorm Books, you get it signed by me.
I'm going to have to sign many book plates in
the very near future. My publisher was like, do you
want to put a cap on the number of book
plates that you have to sign? And I was like, no,
what a good problem to have. And we'll see how
I feel about this decision in approximately three weeks. But

(52:41):
it's called The Sapling Cage, out September twenty fourth from
feminist press Sherean you got anything you want.

Speaker 3 (52:45):
To plug, not particularly go buy or pre order markets book.
I want everyone to do that, so.

Speaker 1 (52:52):
Go do it, okay, and go listen to Shreen's episodes
If it could happen here if you want to keep
up with things that are actually currently happening instead of
just things that happened hundred years ago that I make
vague references to how they relate to the current events.
All Right, see you all Wednesday. Cool People Who Did
Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media.

Speaker 3 (53:13):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.