1
00:00:37,920 --> 00:00:40,039
Speaker 1: If you want to support the show and get the

2
00:00:40,079 --> 00:00:44,520
episodes early and ad free, head on over to Freemanbeyond

3
00:00:44,520 --> 00:00:48,280
the Wall dot com forward slash Support. I want to

4
00:00:48,320 --> 00:00:52,920
explain something right now. If you support me through substack

5
00:00:53,560 --> 00:00:57,600
or Patreon, you have access to an RSS feed that

6
00:00:57,679 --> 00:01:01,920
you can plug into any podcast your including Apple, and

7
00:01:01,960 --> 00:01:04,400
you'll be able to listen to the episodes through there.

8
00:01:05,000 --> 00:01:08,120
If you support me through a subscribe, star, gum Road

9
00:01:08,599 --> 00:01:12,000
or on my website directly, I will send you a

10
00:01:12,040 --> 00:01:14,560
link where you can download the file and you can

11
00:01:14,560 --> 00:01:18,879
listen to it any way you wish. I really appreciate

12
00:01:18,879 --> 00:01:21,879
the support everyone gives me. It keeps a show going.

13
00:01:22,159 --> 00:01:25,200
It allows me to basically put out an episode every

14
00:01:25,319 --> 00:01:28,159
day now, and I'm not going to stop. I'm just

15
00:01:28,159 --> 00:01:30,959
going to accelerate. I think sometimes you see that I'm

16
00:01:30,959 --> 00:01:36,959
putting out two even three a day, and yeah, I

17
00:01:37,079 --> 00:01:40,120
can't do it without you, So thank you for the support.

18
00:01:40,239 --> 00:01:42,560
Head on over to Freeman Beyond the Wall dot com,

19
00:01:42,680 --> 00:01:48,719
forward slash Support and do it there. Thank you. I

20
00:01:48,719 --> 00:01:52,319
want to welcome everyone back to the peaking on show. Aaron,

21
00:01:52,840 --> 00:01:53,359
what's going on?

22
00:01:53,439 --> 00:01:56,319
Speaker 2: Man? How's it going man? Thanks for having me back.

23
00:01:57,079 --> 00:02:00,799
Speaker 1: Of course, of course I don't. I can't remember who

24
00:02:00,879 --> 00:02:04,000
shared this article with me. I reached out to a

25
00:02:04,000 --> 00:02:07,920
friend of Mike, did you No, it wasn't me, But yeah,

26
00:02:08,039 --> 00:02:10,680
I finally got a chance to got around to reading

27
00:02:10,680 --> 00:02:13,599
it yesterday, and I was like, oh, this is wild.

28
00:02:13,680 --> 00:02:17,360
This is this is an insane story put out by

29
00:02:17,960 --> 00:02:20,560
an article that's you know, the Hoover Institution, which is,

30
00:02:20,800 --> 00:02:22,599
you know, we think normy land, we think, you know,

31
00:02:22,800 --> 00:02:27,159
just like Beltway kind of thing. But it's just nuts man.

32
00:02:27,400 --> 00:02:30,199
So asked you to come on and read it. What'd

33
00:02:30,240 --> 00:02:31,080
you think when you read it?

34
00:02:33,520 --> 00:02:35,719
Speaker 2: You know, I don't know as much as I should

35
00:02:35,800 --> 00:02:39,919
about the interwar period, but from this article I went

36
00:02:39,919 --> 00:02:45,120
into a rabbit hole about just how utterly insane and

37
00:02:45,240 --> 00:02:50,240
chaotic the entirety of Europe was from nineteen nineteen to

38
00:02:50,439 --> 00:02:54,120
nineteen thirty nine. Yeah.

39
00:02:54,400 --> 00:02:58,159
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was a buddy that I reached out to

40
00:02:58,319 --> 00:03:01,000
yesterday for a little help on this in a little

41
00:03:01,039 --> 00:03:04,240
background that he just told me. He's like, I think

42
00:03:04,439 --> 00:03:07,520
the word the phrase he used was shit show. Oh yeah,

43
00:03:07,599 --> 00:03:09,479
it was just a shit show.

44
00:03:10,599 --> 00:03:15,599
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean yeah, a perfect storm of what do

45
00:03:15,680 --> 00:03:18,159
you need? What are the what are the best ingredients

46
00:03:18,199 --> 00:03:24,360
for mass scale violence, but you know, not not technically

47
00:03:24,439 --> 00:03:24,879
a war.

48
00:03:28,159 --> 00:03:31,319
Speaker 1: All right, Well, I'm gonna start reading this, and I mean,

49
00:03:31,360 --> 00:03:33,719
there's gonna be plenty of places to take breaks in

50
00:03:33,800 --> 00:03:40,159
this because it's just it's wild. I'm happy that the

51
00:03:40,199 --> 00:03:43,000
people listening to this are going to hear this, because

52
00:03:43,240 --> 00:03:45,639
these aren't the kind of stories you normally hear. You know,

53
00:03:45,680 --> 00:03:50,080
you normally hear this straight kind of politics, oh policy,

54
00:03:50,360 --> 00:03:54,800
and then it's like, oh, oh, what the what the

55
00:03:54,800 --> 00:03:59,840
hell is this? All right, so it's it's titled Shooting

56
00:03:59,879 --> 00:04:03,120
the Volsheviks amid the Ruins of the Great War, and

57
00:04:03,159 --> 00:04:06,360
American camera crew filmed a shocking site. The role of

58
00:04:06,400 --> 00:04:11,080
Celuloyd has taken a strange trip through history by bertrand

59
00:04:11,879 --> 00:04:17,240
m Patignon. All Right, here we go. In the late

60
00:04:17,279 --> 00:04:20,560
afternoon of May twenty sixth, nineteen nineteen, in a field

61
00:04:20,560 --> 00:04:24,639
about thirty miles outside of Riga. Outside Riga, Latvia, a

62
00:04:24,680 --> 00:04:30,920
squad of nine German riflemen executed eighteen Latvian Bolsheviks. The

63
00:04:30,959 --> 00:04:33,920
prisoners were shot in groups of three, each victim receiving

64
00:04:34,000 --> 00:04:36,360
one bullet to the chest and two to the head

65
00:04:36,399 --> 00:04:41,959
before toppling backwards into a freshly dug Grave, quoting it

66
00:04:42,000 --> 00:04:47,720
was German efficiency at its best, wrote US Army Captain HAWL. Foreman,

67
00:04:48,199 --> 00:04:53,439
an American relief worker who witnessed the execution. What kind

68
00:04:53,439 --> 00:04:56,399
of relief worker? What kind of relief worker? Says that?

69
00:04:56,600 --> 00:04:59,040
And I mean I think relief workers were a lot

70
00:04:59,079 --> 00:04:59,959
more based back then.

71
00:05:03,120 --> 00:05:12,240
Speaker 2: You there, Sorry, yeah, just a passive observer, probably non ideological.

72
00:05:13,199 --> 00:05:17,079
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, all right. Captain Foreman was one of

73
00:05:17,120 --> 00:05:19,639
a dozen Americans whose presence on the scene may have

74
00:05:19,680 --> 00:05:23,199
influenced the operations of the firing squad that day. If so,

75
00:05:23,360 --> 00:05:26,360
this was because one of their number, Lieutenant Frank Johnson,

76
00:05:26,720 --> 00:05:30,439
happened to be a newsreel cameraman. His camera recorded the

77
00:05:30,480 --> 00:05:33,680
scene for the ages, the reading of the death sentence,

78
00:05:33,800 --> 00:05:36,800
the removal of the prisoner's boots, and the business like

79
00:05:36,879 --> 00:05:41,759
procedure of the German soldiers. In its day, johnson celluloid

80
00:05:41,839 --> 00:05:44,680
was one of the most sensational film sequences ever shot.

81
00:05:45,240 --> 00:05:48,759
Even today, after decades of atrocities recorded on film and tape,

82
00:05:49,199 --> 00:05:53,000
the choreograph dispatch that the eighteen Bolsheviks is a spellbinder.

83
00:05:54,160 --> 00:05:56,360
That piece of film is today housed at the Hoover

84
00:05:56,560 --> 00:06:01,319
Archives as part of the Hermann Axelbank Motion Picture Film Collection.

85
00:06:02,120 --> 00:06:05,040
The irony is that at its first showing in New

86
00:06:05,120 --> 00:06:09,040
York in nineteen twenty, Johnson's film sequence was associated with

87
00:06:09,120 --> 00:06:16,720
the name of Herbert Hoover. After the Armistice of November eleventh,

88
00:06:16,879 --> 00:06:22,360
nineteen eighteen, my birthday, not year, Hoover had joined President

89
00:06:22,439 --> 00:06:26,000
Woodrow Wilson and the other US diplomats serving in Paris

90
00:06:26,040 --> 00:06:30,160
with the American mission to negotiate the peace. Among Hoover's

91
00:06:30,199 --> 00:06:33,600
several roles, as head of the American Relief Administration, at

92
00:06:33,639 --> 00:06:37,199
that time a US government agency, he had the enormous

93
00:06:37,279 --> 00:06:41,360
job of coordinating American food delivery throughout Central and Southeastern

94
00:06:41,480 --> 00:06:44,720
Europe and the Near East. The delivery of food was

95
00:06:44,720 --> 00:06:48,240
complicated by the persistence of military hostilities in the scramble

96
00:06:48,279 --> 00:06:52,720
for territory that once belonged to the German, Russian, Austrian

97
00:06:53,040 --> 00:06:58,680
and Ottoman empires. Yes, like you said, ah a shit show.

98
00:07:00,240 --> 00:07:01,879
Speaker 2: You now have one hundred new countries.

99
00:07:05,199 --> 00:07:07,639
Speaker 1: In its day, this was one of the most sensational

100
00:07:07,639 --> 00:07:10,600
film sequences ever shot. A chief concern of the Allied

101
00:07:10,600 --> 00:07:13,800
diplomats in Paris was that Bolshevism would fill a vacuum

102
00:07:13,879 --> 00:07:16,160
left by the withdrawal of the German military from the

103
00:07:16,199 --> 00:07:21,399
Baltic region. The Allies thus arranged for surrendered German troops

104
00:07:21,600 --> 00:07:24,399
to remain in place and help prevent the Russian Bolshevik

105
00:07:24,439 --> 00:07:29,639
infection from spreading. In the words of the official ar

106
00:07:29,839 --> 00:07:34,720
A history written shortly afterwards, Bolshevism was the supreme peril,

107
00:07:35,079 --> 00:07:40,480
not Germany. Bolshevism was still uncontrolled and threatened the world. Germany,

108
00:07:40,639 --> 00:07:43,639
though still a danger, was beaten and could be controlled

109
00:07:44,120 --> 00:07:47,000
at whatever cost. It must be seen that Bolshevism did

110
00:07:47,040 --> 00:07:49,319
not break through these barrier states.

111
00:07:50,879 --> 00:07:55,399
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it wasn't just the Allies interest, that

112
00:07:55,639 --> 00:07:59,519
was also the German interest. What I gathered from my

113
00:08:00,399 --> 00:08:05,000
research was that, you know, these free corps were primarily

114
00:08:05,040 --> 00:08:08,800
motivated by anti Bolshevism, but when you start getting into

115
00:08:08,800 --> 00:08:11,439
the context of the Baltic states, there was still this

116
00:08:11,600 --> 00:08:16,720
national sentiment that Germany still needs to be in a

117
00:08:16,720 --> 00:08:21,600
position of influence for that region. Because remember during that time,

118
00:08:21,680 --> 00:08:25,680
this is before all the Germans got summarily executed or

119
00:08:25,759 --> 00:08:28,480
marched out.

120
00:08:29,800 --> 00:08:35,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, moving on turmoil in the Baltics. Latvia

121
00:08:35,279 --> 00:08:37,720
became the key battleground of this contest. In the spring

122
00:08:37,759 --> 00:08:41,440
of nineteen nineteen. Latvia had belonged to the Russian Empire

123
00:08:41,519 --> 00:08:44,679
until it fell to German invaders after the Bolshevik Revolution

124
00:08:44,799 --> 00:08:48,799
of nineteen seventeen. Then came a brief period of independence

125
00:08:48,799 --> 00:08:52,120
in the wake of the German surrender in November nineteen eighteen,

126
00:08:52,639 --> 00:08:55,559
followed in January nineteen nineteen by the establishment of a

127
00:08:55,639 --> 00:08:59,879
Soviet government in Riga, the capital, whose residents were subject

128
00:09:00,080 --> 00:09:05,600
to a furious Red terror. There proved to be no

129
00:09:05,759 --> 00:09:08,440
shortage of German soldiers on the scene to help stem

130
00:09:08,480 --> 00:09:11,960
the Red tide. They included a Free Corps unit that

131
00:09:12,000 --> 00:09:14,879
had been stationed in Riga until the Red advance. New

132
00:09:14,960 --> 00:09:18,399
volunteers recruited from Germany by means of vague promises of

133
00:09:18,480 --> 00:09:21,559
land in the Baltic and remnants of the German eighth Army.

134
00:09:22,320 --> 00:09:25,399
These units came together as the Iron Division under the

135
00:09:25,440 --> 00:09:31,879
command of General Rudeger von der Goltz. This force was

136
00:09:31,919 --> 00:09:38,440
supplemented by the Baltisch Landesfeher, a formation dominated by Baltic Germans.

137
00:09:39,240 --> 00:09:41,519
The Germans were successful in their efforts to drive out

138
00:09:41,519 --> 00:09:44,159
the Red Forces, yet in the process they chased the

139
00:09:44,200 --> 00:09:48,000
Latvian Provisional Government from its seat in the port city

140
00:09:48,039 --> 00:09:54,559
of Libau today Leapaya Leopaja in the Baltic and after

141
00:09:54,639 --> 00:09:57,519
Riga fell to the Iron Division on May twenty third,

142
00:09:57,600 --> 00:10:00,639
nineteen nineteen, the city became the scene of a white

143
00:10:00,759 --> 00:10:03,960
terror that rivaled its predecessor in savagery.

144
00:10:05,080 --> 00:10:11,159
Speaker 2: Yeah. I guess for a short time that Free Corps

145
00:10:11,200 --> 00:10:15,399
actually affected a coup of the Latvian government. It didn't

146
00:10:15,480 --> 00:10:19,279
last long, but I mean, for all intents and purposes,

147
00:10:19,320 --> 00:10:23,360
they had control of the Latvian state for a couple months.

148
00:10:23,399 --> 00:10:26,879
It sounds like it is crazy to think about.

149
00:10:29,279 --> 00:10:31,559
Speaker 1: At whatever cost it must be seeing the Bolshevism did

150
00:10:31,559 --> 00:10:36,240
not break through these barrier states. Hoover's American relief workers,

151
00:10:36,240 --> 00:10:40,480
demobilized officers who had served with the American Expeditionary Force

152
00:10:40,840 --> 00:10:42,960
were poised to enter the scene on the heels of

153
00:10:43,039 --> 00:10:48,120
anti Bolshevik forces and help restore a semblance of normal life.

154
00:10:48,200 --> 00:10:51,320
These Americans were scandalized by the behavior and attitudes of

155
00:10:51,360 --> 00:10:54,120
the German soldiers, who were quick to say that while

156
00:10:54,120 --> 00:10:56,360
they might have lost the war on the Western Front,

157
00:10:56,919 --> 00:11:02,399
they had won the war in the east. Yeah. The

158
00:11:02,440 --> 00:11:05,720
objective of the German forces, the Americans concluded, was the

159
00:11:05,799 --> 00:11:10,919
establishment of German supremacy in the Baltic the gateway to Russia.

160
00:11:13,080 --> 00:11:15,600
What would have what would have been if they would

161
00:11:15,600 --> 00:11:16,320
have allowed.

162
00:11:16,000 --> 00:11:20,200
Speaker 2: That, Well, we might have been able to avoid a

163
00:11:20,240 --> 00:11:21,080
major World war.

164
00:11:23,799 --> 00:11:26,480
Speaker 1: Later, after their Baltic adventure had come to an end

165
00:11:26,679 --> 00:11:29,600
and they had been forced to return to Germany empty handed,

166
00:11:29,960 --> 00:11:33,240
these German freebooters would claim that they had been stabbed

167
00:11:33,240 --> 00:11:37,039
in the back by the Weimar government. For the time being, however,

168
00:11:37,279 --> 00:11:39,639
they were doing a considerable amount of shooting in the

169
00:11:39,679 --> 00:11:43,679
head and chest. The victims numbered in the thousands, with

170
00:11:43,759 --> 00:11:47,120
the heaviest toll in Riga. The Germans classified their prey

171
00:11:47,159 --> 00:11:50,519
as Bolsheviks, but while this label was no doubt accurate

172
00:11:50,559 --> 00:11:53,159
in some cases, as often as not it was applied

173
00:11:53,200 --> 00:11:56,720
indiscriminately to target uncooperative Lotvians.

174
00:11:57,639 --> 00:12:01,559
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, what I also like learned was that in

175
00:12:01,639 --> 00:12:08,080
nineteen nineteen Latvian nationalists rose up and their goal was

176
00:12:08,159 --> 00:12:16,159
to orient Latvia to be more of a agricultural economy

177
00:12:17,519 --> 00:12:22,120
and more of a like a yeah, like an agricultural nation.

178
00:12:22,919 --> 00:12:26,759
And at first they accepted help from the German Free

179
00:12:26,759 --> 00:12:30,799
Corps because they also didn't like the Bolsheviks. But later on,

180
00:12:31,759 --> 00:12:36,159
after that after the coup, those nationalists ended up turning

181
00:12:36,320 --> 00:12:38,720
turning their guns on the Bolsheviks. At the same time

182
00:12:38,840 --> 00:12:42,840
that the Allies were pressuring the Weimar government to wrangle

183
00:12:43,159 --> 00:12:47,360
wrangle all the free corps.

184
00:12:47,240 --> 00:12:51,440
Speaker 1: Theater of the macabre. The Americans gained admissions to the

185
00:12:51,480 --> 00:12:54,440
execution near Riga on May twenty six for the price

186
00:12:54,480 --> 00:12:55,879
of a pack of cigarettes.

187
00:12:56,240 --> 00:12:59,519
Speaker 2: Yep, nothing's changed, at least.

188
00:12:59,240 --> 00:13:04,000
Speaker 1: That is a story cameraman Lieutenant Johnson. Other testimony supports

189
00:13:04,000 --> 00:13:06,639
his statement that the German officer in charge obliged the

190
00:13:06,679 --> 00:13:09,639
Americans by moving up the time of the execution so

191
00:13:09,720 --> 00:13:14,480
as to catch the afternoon light. That is, macab.

192
00:13:16,039 --> 00:13:17,879
Speaker 2: Yep, gonna get some good cinematography.

193
00:13:20,399 --> 00:13:23,000
Speaker 1: The Latvian soldiers went to their death stress in their

194
00:13:23,000 --> 00:13:26,440
military uniforms, minus their boots, because at the time shoes

195
00:13:26,440 --> 00:13:29,759
were as coveted as cigarettes. It is unclear whether the

196
00:13:29,799 --> 00:13:33,080
prisoners understood before the death sentence was read out that

197
00:13:33,120 --> 00:13:36,399
they were to be shot. Johnson observed that none of

198
00:13:36,399 --> 00:13:40,120
them ever had seen a motion picture camera before, and

199
00:13:40,159 --> 00:13:44,159
they stared at us, uncertain and bewildered as to whether

200
00:13:44,240 --> 00:13:47,080
we had brought a new form of sudden death or not.

201
00:13:49,440 --> 00:13:51,679
I have a picture here. I'll just describe it for

202
00:13:51,679 --> 00:13:56,480
those listening, says three barefoot men, face and improvised firing

203
00:13:56,519 --> 00:14:00,399
squad and lot Yatten, May nineteen nineteen, moments before shots

204
00:14:00,399 --> 00:14:03,440
to death and toppling into their grave. The stunning footage

205
00:14:03,480 --> 00:14:08,159
recorded by the American newsreel cameramen accompanying a German occupation force,

206
00:14:08,919 --> 00:14:12,240
was to make an appearance in twentieth century politics, history,

207
00:14:12,799 --> 00:14:18,600
and in a grotesque way, entertainment. One of the doomed

208
00:14:18,639 --> 00:14:22,679
men in Johnson's film, however, appears undaunted by the proceedings.

209
00:14:23,279 --> 00:14:25,440
Ordered to lie in his stomach like his comrades, he

210
00:14:25,480 --> 00:14:29,279
none less lifts his head and laughs at the camera.

211
00:14:30,279 --> 00:14:32,679
His laughter seems to be an act of defiance, or

212
00:14:32,720 --> 00:14:34,480
perhaps he had lost his grip in the face of

213
00:14:34,559 --> 00:14:39,200
looming death. In fact, this particular prisoner literally dies laughing,

214
00:14:39,600 --> 00:14:43,559
as Captain Menard Hamilton noted in his description of the execution.

215
00:14:45,159 --> 00:14:47,320
When all was ready, the officer called the name of

216
00:14:47,399 --> 00:14:51,120
the first detail. The men named immediately jumped to their

217
00:14:51,159 --> 00:14:53,759
feet and ran to the hole, took a look at

218
00:14:53,759 --> 00:14:57,480
their grave, turned faced a firing squad, and stood to attention.

219
00:14:58,440 --> 00:15:02,080
No bandages over their eyes, nothing, They just trotted into

220
00:15:02,120 --> 00:15:05,159
place like boys lining up for a Virginia reel, and

221
00:15:05,240 --> 00:15:08,120
the first one, Ashley, looked as executioners in the eye,

222
00:15:08,480 --> 00:15:12,159
threw back his head and laughed, hmmm.

223
00:15:12,840 --> 00:15:17,120
Speaker 2: Sh man, Yeah, well, foreshadowing.

224
00:15:18,080 --> 00:15:20,799
Speaker 1: A striking detail visible on the screen, but unmentioned that

225
00:15:20,840 --> 00:15:25,120
eyewitness accounts as the performance of several of the victim's hats, which,

226
00:15:25,360 --> 00:15:27,559
at the moment the bullets hit their mark, are launched

227
00:15:27,559 --> 00:15:31,759
several feet skywards before descending into the open grave after

228
00:15:31,879 --> 00:15:32,559
their owners.

229
00:15:34,440 --> 00:15:34,519
Speaker 2: This.

230
00:15:35,200 --> 00:15:39,519
Speaker 1: Yeah, This, as well as the laughing Bolsheviks hysteria literally

231
00:15:39,559 --> 00:15:41,639
on the edge of the grave, gives a sequence to

232
00:15:41,679 --> 00:15:45,960
feel of slapstick, an impression enhanced by the unnaturally fast

233
00:15:45,960 --> 00:15:50,080
speed of the thirty five millimeter film. Such thoughts may

234
00:15:50,080 --> 00:15:52,120
have run through the mind of the cameraman, who, as

235
00:15:52,120 --> 00:15:54,679
the head of a film production company in New York City,

236
00:15:54,919 --> 00:16:01,039
had some theatrical experience. I've taken lots of executions, Captain Hamilton,

237
00:16:01,120 --> 00:16:03,799
once the performance was over, but they have always got

238
00:16:03,879 --> 00:16:08,279
up and walked away afterward. Yet Johnson's final shot, a

239
00:16:08,320 --> 00:16:10,879
look down at the tangle of victims in their mass grave,

240
00:16:11,279 --> 00:16:14,679
leaves no doubt that these Latvian extras would be unavailable

241
00:16:14,720 --> 00:16:20,679
for any future performance. There proved to be no shortage

242
00:16:20,679 --> 00:16:23,080
of German soldiers on the scene to help stem the

243
00:16:23,120 --> 00:16:27,279
red tide. The US Army officers who arrived to administer

244
00:16:27,360 --> 00:16:30,159
the delivery of food relief sounded the alarm to their

245
00:16:30,200 --> 00:16:34,320
superiors in Paris about what Johnson called the ruthless advances

246
00:16:34,360 --> 00:16:38,279
of the hun In order to clinch their case, they

247
00:16:38,399 --> 00:16:41,559
rushed Johnson's execution film to the peace conference, where it

248
00:16:41,600 --> 00:16:45,080
was screened for the assembled diplomats. By several accounts, the

249
00:16:45,120 --> 00:16:48,200
scenes of the German firing squad in action helped persuade

250
00:16:48,200 --> 00:16:51,360
the peacemakers to order the immediate withdrawal of the German

251
00:16:51,440 --> 00:16:53,600
troops from the Baltic Yep.

252
00:16:54,879 --> 00:16:56,759
Speaker 2: There you go, stabbed in the back.

253
00:16:57,559 --> 00:17:02,960
Speaker 1: Yep. Picture here of Herbert Hoover, It says Herbert Hoover

254
00:17:03,039 --> 00:17:06,400
is shown in his Paris office in nineteen nineteen, coordinated

255
00:17:06,799 --> 00:17:12,240
heroic food deliveries to ravage Europe during the during and

256
00:17:12,279 --> 00:17:14,440
after the Great War. Later, he followed up by leading

257
00:17:14,480 --> 00:17:17,240
efforts to feed the lands convulsed by the Russian Revolution

258
00:17:17,279 --> 00:17:19,880
in Civil War. His work for Hungary relief made Hoover

259
00:17:19,920 --> 00:17:22,720
widely popular both in Europe and the United States, and

260
00:17:22,759 --> 00:17:26,119
led to a proposal for a documentary film showcase to

261
00:17:26,200 --> 00:17:31,119
showcase American benevolence and perhaps burnish Hoover's political prospects. The

262
00:17:31,200 --> 00:17:34,799
Latvian firing squad sequence would play an unanticipated role in

263
00:17:34,839 --> 00:17:39,640
that movie. And I will remind everybody that this was

264
00:17:39,680 --> 00:17:45,240
written by This is on the Hoover Institute's website, So

265
00:17:45,279 --> 00:17:45,720
that's right.

266
00:17:46,440 --> 00:17:48,039
Speaker 2: Yeah, he did nothing wrong.

267
00:17:48,480 --> 00:17:54,039
Speaker 1: Yeah. Ever, Johnson, a motion picture man with a flair

268
00:17:54,119 --> 00:17:56,759
for self promotion, later boasted in a story he wrote

269
00:17:56,799 --> 00:18:00,480
for the Hearst Newspapers that, thanks to its Paris screening,

270
00:18:00,759 --> 00:18:02,960
his Latvia and Horror film had proved to be a

271
00:18:03,000 --> 00:18:08,319
deciding factor in the deliberations of the greatest legislationslative body

272
00:18:08,359 --> 00:18:12,480
of modern times. Never was a more amazing motion picture

273
00:18:12,960 --> 00:18:17,319
performance given, nor will such a one ever be possible again.

274
00:18:17,680 --> 00:18:20,960
In Johnson's telling, President Wilson, watching in disbelief as the

275
00:18:21,039 --> 00:18:25,839
Latvian soldiers are laid low, turns white with revulsion. Rising

276
00:18:25,880 --> 00:18:29,480
to his fees feet. He voices outrage at the manifestation

277
00:18:29,599 --> 00:18:33,359
of German brutality and gratitudes to the Americans who captured

278
00:18:33,400 --> 00:18:37,160
it on film. Quote the gentlemen of motion pictures have

279
00:18:37,279 --> 00:18:39,119
rendered a service to humanity.

280
00:18:40,319 --> 00:18:43,039
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that's the best propaganda you could possibly

281
00:18:43,079 --> 00:18:47,200
add for any future use if Germany, you know, gets

282
00:18:47,200 --> 00:18:47,920
froggy again.

283
00:18:49,559 --> 00:18:52,799
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean. And also it's you. It's your motivation

284
00:18:52,960 --> 00:18:55,319
for everything that you're going, you're getting ready to do.

285
00:18:55,920 --> 00:18:56,240
Speaker 2: Mm hm.

286
00:18:56,480 --> 00:18:58,359
Speaker 1: It's just one of those things you can show people.

287
00:18:58,400 --> 00:19:03,279
It's like, we should cut their rations down to four

288
00:19:03,359 --> 00:19:09,880
hundred calories a day. Look at these animals. The Paris

289
00:19:09,920 --> 00:19:13,079
Peace Conference was only the first noteworthy performance of Johnson's

290
00:19:13,079 --> 00:19:16,039
notorious film sequence. The following year, it came to the

291
00:19:16,079 --> 00:19:19,400
big screen as part of the documentary film Starvation, a

292
00:19:19,440 --> 00:19:22,759
nearly two hour compilation of footage shot by a variety

293
00:19:22,799 --> 00:19:26,920
of American newsreel cameramen accompanying American relief officials throughout Central

294
00:19:26,920 --> 00:19:30,720
and Eastern Europe in those chaotic months after the Armistice.

295
00:19:31,640 --> 00:19:34,039
Starvation was at to premiere at the Manhattan Opera House

296
00:19:34,039 --> 00:19:37,240
on January ninth, nineteen twenty, and then be distributed to

297
00:19:37,319 --> 00:19:42,559
theaters across the country. The impresario behind the film was

298
00:19:42,920 --> 00:19:46,839
AR publicity chief George Barr Baker, a former magazine editor

299
00:19:46,839 --> 00:19:49,960
and longtime associate of Herbert Hoovers, who had arranged to

300
00:19:50,000 --> 00:19:53,440
send the motion picturemen into the field alongside the American

301
00:19:53,480 --> 00:19:58,640
relief workers starvation as the uplifting story of America's postwar

302
00:19:58,720 --> 00:20:03,160
benevolence would feature images of American relationship, steaming and support

303
00:20:03,200 --> 00:20:06,400
on the Baltic and Black seas, long lines of emaciated

304
00:20:06,480 --> 00:20:09,839
children and adults waiting to receive their food, children being

305
00:20:09,880 --> 00:20:12,759
fed in soup kitchens, and the obligatory scenes of the

306
00:20:12,759 --> 00:20:18,000
worst case children suffering from severe hunger and hunger related disease.

307
00:20:21,039 --> 00:20:26,880
My reading of Blockade by Anna Eisenminger, a diary of

308
00:20:26,880 --> 00:20:34,559
a middle class Austrian housewife, is uh yeah, everyone should

309
00:20:34,559 --> 00:20:36,519
read that or go listen to my reading of it,

310
00:20:36,559 --> 00:20:41,240
and you'll that help. It goes alongside this.

311
00:20:42,240 --> 00:20:45,400
Speaker 2: I mean, how selective were our relief do you do

312
00:20:45,440 --> 00:20:48,319
you know anything about that? Like how selective we were

313
00:20:48,680 --> 00:20:52,240
as far as what countries or what areas or what

314
00:20:52,279 --> 00:20:55,799
ethnicities we prioritized or deprioritized.

315
00:20:56,640 --> 00:21:01,359
Speaker 1: Well, it definitely seems like Vienna was targeted and Austria

316
00:21:01,519 --> 00:21:06,359
was targeted specifically, you know the because when you think

317
00:21:06,359 --> 00:21:08,640
about it, when you think about Wymar Okay, there were

318
00:21:08,680 --> 00:21:13,880
a lot there was. It was horrific, but it seems

319
00:21:13,880 --> 00:21:16,759
like food was available. The problem was people just couldn't

320
00:21:16,759 --> 00:21:19,799
buy it, so they had to do whatever they could do.

321
00:21:20,720 --> 00:21:23,960
Austria seemed to be a different story. Austria seemed to

322
00:21:24,000 --> 00:21:28,279
be and please somebody can somebody is going to correct

323
00:21:28,279 --> 00:21:31,519
me on this about how horrible it was in Germany

324
00:21:31,559 --> 00:21:38,000
and the big cities, But most of my reading is

325
00:21:38,599 --> 00:21:41,480
what was happening in Austria at the time, and it

326
00:21:41,599 --> 00:21:46,039
seemed like they they were specifically targeted to starve.

327
00:21:47,039 --> 00:21:50,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so all right.

328
00:21:51,200 --> 00:21:54,519
Speaker 1: None of the doom men who had seen has seen

329
00:21:54,720 --> 00:21:57,079
and stared at None of the doom men had seen

330
00:21:57,160 --> 00:21:59,160
a motion picture camera before, and they stared at us

331
00:21:59,240 --> 00:22:03,119
uncertainly well as to whether, okay, they're just repeating from

332
00:22:03,119 --> 00:22:08,839
the last last section. Starvation subtitle was the camera drama

333
00:22:08,880 --> 00:22:12,799
of a Hungry World. Yet the film's true villain was Bolshevism,

334
00:22:13,160 --> 00:22:18,599
which Baker identified as the twin brother of Starvation. This

335
00:22:18,640 --> 00:22:24,880
is sounding good. Thus, among the heartwarming images of American relief,

336
00:22:25,160 --> 00:22:29,160
room was found for Johnson's Latvia execution sequence, as well

337
00:22:29,440 --> 00:22:32,039
as well as a chilling episode captured on film by

338
00:22:32,039 --> 00:22:34,960
one of Baker's team of cameramen in the Russian city

339
00:22:35,000 --> 00:22:41,160
of Peskov, where a white Russian Army general arranged for

340
00:22:41,200 --> 00:22:45,119
the public hanging of three Bolshevik spies for the camera.

341
00:22:46,240 --> 00:22:48,920
The fact that alleged Bolsheviks were on the receiving end

342
00:22:48,960 --> 00:22:53,160
of this violence and not its perpetrators could easily be accommodated.

343
00:22:53,599 --> 00:22:57,440
The implicit message of starvation was that whatever the Bolshevik

344
00:22:57,480 --> 00:23:01,440
element is allowed to gain, that wherever the Bolshevik element

345
00:23:01,519 --> 00:23:05,279
is allowed to again a foothold, atrocity begets atrocity.

346
00:23:06,200 --> 00:23:11,640
Speaker 2: As Baker wrote, you know, it seems like naive, wishful

347
00:23:11,680 --> 00:23:15,720
thinking that the audience watching that would come to that conclusion.

348
00:23:17,319 --> 00:23:22,519
Speaker 1: I mean, especially when you consider that so many of them,

349
00:23:22,599 --> 00:23:26,799
even in the United States, were already being especially if

350
00:23:26,799 --> 00:23:32,480
you're in cities or already being fed Bolshevik propaganda.

351
00:23:33,000 --> 00:23:35,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, like you know where this film is being shown.

352
00:23:36,799 --> 00:23:42,480
Speaker 1: Yeah. The fact that alleged Bolsheviks were on the receiving

353
00:23:42,559 --> 00:23:44,720
end of the violence and not as perpetrators, could easily

354
00:23:44,720 --> 00:23:49,920
be accommodated. The implicit message of starvation, atrocity begins to trocity, YadA, YadA.

355
00:23:50,559 --> 00:23:53,640
As Baker wrote to Hoover two weeks before the film's premiere.

356
00:23:53,960 --> 00:23:56,519
The definite value of the picture is that it is

357
00:23:56,559 --> 00:24:00,680
the first anti Bolshevik document possessing any potent strength with

358
00:24:00,720 --> 00:24:04,440
the masses. No normal mother who sees it would be

359
00:24:04,559 --> 00:24:07,960
likely to tolerate talk of direct action in her home.

360
00:24:09,759 --> 00:24:12,440
Speaker 2: That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

361
00:24:13,759 --> 00:24:15,720
Speaker 1: There is a picture here. It says, weeks after the

362
00:24:15,839 --> 00:24:19,680
Armistice of nineteen eighteen, President Widrow Wilson arrives in Paris,

363
00:24:20,240 --> 00:24:27,480
where French President Raymond I think it's point care escorts

364
00:24:27,519 --> 00:24:31,599
him past cheering thongs. The victorious Allies then set to

365
00:24:31,640 --> 00:24:35,480
work crafting the peace treaty at Versai. Wilson viewed the

366
00:24:35,519 --> 00:24:38,880
lot via execution sequence while in Paris. According to the

367
00:24:38,880 --> 00:24:41,279
American who shot the film, Wilson was appauled. He condemned

368
00:24:41,279 --> 00:24:44,799
German militarism. YadA, YadA, YadA.

369
00:24:45,599 --> 00:24:49,160
Speaker 2: Yeah. Not even the President of the United States receive

370
00:24:49,279 --> 00:24:53,119
the intended message. Yeah.

371
00:24:53,519 --> 00:24:56,839
Speaker 1: And it just goes and it just goes to show

372
00:24:56,880 --> 00:25:01,680
that who can be propaganda? These are just you know,

373
00:25:01,720 --> 00:25:07,480
these are men. And I mean I think of Trump today,

374
00:25:08,480 --> 00:25:12,680
I mean who buys Trump? Who buys propaganda easier than Trump?

375
00:25:12,720 --> 00:25:12,960
Speaker 2: Does?

376
00:25:16,400 --> 00:25:19,720
Speaker 1: I mean think about it, really think about it.

377
00:25:20,440 --> 00:25:25,000
Speaker 2: A man, a man motivated entirely by gut feeling.

378
00:25:28,599 --> 00:25:32,359
Speaker 1: George H. Nash, who as Herbert Hoover's biographer, had tracked

379
00:25:32,400 --> 00:25:35,799
Baker's public relations activities and his close association with Hoover,

380
00:25:36,240 --> 00:25:39,799
considers it likely that this was, in effect a Hoover

381
00:25:39,960 --> 00:25:44,920
campaign film, designed by Baker to advance Hoover's presidential prospects

382
00:25:44,920 --> 00:25:49,400
in nineteen twenty. Hoover, who had recently returned from Paris

383
00:25:49,440 --> 00:25:53,400
to Washington, was a rising political star. There was much

384
00:25:53,400 --> 00:25:56,799
speculation that he would become a presidential candidate in nineteen twenty,

385
00:25:57,079 --> 00:26:00,599
and even though he was serving in Woodrow Wilson's Democratic administration,

386
00:26:01,160 --> 00:26:04,200
both major political parties were taking him seriously as a

387
00:26:04,200 --> 00:26:08,039
potential candidate. None of this was lost on Baker, who

388
00:26:08,079 --> 00:26:11,079
figured that Hoover's endorsement of Starvation would be a win win,

389
00:26:11,559 --> 00:26:14,519
serving to promote a film that would publicize Hoover's post

390
00:26:14,559 --> 00:26:21,119
war statesmanship and humanitarianism. On December thirtieth, nineteen nineteen, Baker

391
00:26:21,200 --> 00:26:24,559
cabled Hoover to ask that he allow his name to

392
00:26:24,599 --> 00:26:28,119
appear prominently in the announcement for the film. Although Hoover

393
00:26:28,240 --> 00:26:33,559
himself made only two brief appearances on the screen. They

394
00:26:33,599 --> 00:26:39,480
actually have a picture here of that announcement, the handbill

395
00:26:39,880 --> 00:26:44,480
announcing the film the Camera Drama of Hungry World, and

396
00:26:44,599 --> 00:26:52,880
there's a picture. Who is a Herman Axelbank hmm was

397
00:26:52,920 --> 00:26:55,880
an avid chronicler of the end of Imperial Russia and

398
00:26:55,920 --> 00:26:59,039
the dawn of the Soviet Union film enthusiasts. Launched his

399
00:26:59,119 --> 00:27:03,799
career as an office boy for Goldwind Pictures. Axelbanks sent

400
00:27:03,880 --> 00:27:06,960
camera crews to Russia to film Lenin, Trotzky and key

401
00:27:07,039 --> 00:27:09,960
moments of the post revolutionary ear and collected older footage

402
00:27:09,960 --> 00:27:13,680
of the war and the romanovs Zarz to Lenin nineteen

403
00:27:13,720 --> 00:27:16,839
thirty seven, assembled much of that footage, including the Latvia

404
00:27:16,960 --> 00:27:21,880
execution sequence, into what became Axelbank's only serious documentary project.

405
00:27:22,319 --> 00:27:27,039
Axelbank's impressive collection resides in the Hoover Archives.

406
00:27:29,640 --> 00:27:34,039
Speaker 2: So he used the same that that same footage in

407
00:27:34,160 --> 00:27:39,839
a chronicle of the rise of the Soviet Union. Mm hmm.

408
00:27:40,880 --> 00:27:44,039
Metro Goldwyn Mayer, uhh yeah.

409
00:27:44,359 --> 00:27:49,920
Speaker 1: It's it's amazing how the footage like this, because of

410
00:27:50,519 --> 00:27:52,640
how it's portrayed. I haven't seen the footage. I'm sure

411
00:27:52,640 --> 00:27:56,680
if we search we can find it how it could

412
00:27:56,720 --> 00:27:59,119
be used in so many different ways for so many

413
00:27:59,160 --> 00:28:00,559
different levels of prop Again.

414
00:28:01,200 --> 00:28:03,759
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I watch it and I think good,

415
00:28:04,920 --> 00:28:07,119
But you know, anybody else could watch it and think

416
00:28:07,160 --> 00:28:10,880
that's terrible and it's all ideological. Yeah.

417
00:28:12,519 --> 00:28:16,839
Speaker 1: Edgar Rickard, another Hoover confidante associated with American food relief,

418
00:28:16,960 --> 00:28:20,160
was skeptical warned that Baker's film, far from giving a

419
00:28:20,240 --> 00:28:24,279
boost to Hoover in the ar, might well boomerang. As

420
00:28:24,400 --> 00:28:29,160
Rickard reason, one picture of children feeding, of children's feeding

421
00:28:29,319 --> 00:28:32,000
is just like another, no matter in what country it

422
00:28:32,039 --> 00:28:34,160
may have been taken. And the only films which have

423
00:28:34,319 --> 00:28:37,880
come over, particularly Lieutenant Johnson's film, are so filled up

424
00:28:37,920 --> 00:28:41,519
with Bolshevist outrages and atrocities of the Germans that we

425
00:28:42,079 --> 00:28:46,559
could not possibly stand for them. Rickard was also sensitive

426
00:28:46,559 --> 00:28:48,720
to the mood of the American people in an election year.

427
00:28:49,519 --> 00:28:52,519
From now until November of next year, the entire country

428
00:28:52,559 --> 00:28:56,079
will be completely swamped in a presidential election, he observed,

429
00:28:56,359 --> 00:28:59,720
which meant that the American public was turning inward, especially

430
00:28:59,720 --> 00:29:06,240
at a deepening economic recession, quoting, the whole country is

431
00:29:06,279 --> 00:29:09,279
absolutely and thoroughly sick of the European war and has

432
00:29:09,319 --> 00:29:12,960
settled down to a definite fight on domestic problems which

433
00:29:13,000 --> 00:29:13,920
are very serious.

434
00:29:17,319 --> 00:29:18,640
Speaker 2: Sounds familiar.

435
00:29:19,920 --> 00:29:22,680
Speaker 1: If it meant if it meant to be uplifting, Starvation

436
00:29:22,799 --> 00:29:26,359
clearly failed. The film left one cold with an unameliorated

437
00:29:26,599 --> 00:29:31,839
terror when reviewer wrote, Baker won the argument and Hoover's

438
00:29:31,960 --> 00:29:34,680
name appeared in large print on the opening night announcement

439
00:29:34,759 --> 00:29:38,839
for Starvation. The premiere on January ninth, nineteen twenty was

440
00:29:38,920 --> 00:29:43,160
preceded by an aggressive publicity campaign carefully coordinated by Baker.

441
00:29:43,680 --> 00:29:46,960
His preparations paid off, as the chief movie review outlets

442
00:29:47,039 --> 00:29:49,440
of the day all came through in the way he

443
00:29:49,519 --> 00:29:52,759
had hoped. Variety praised the film as a record of

444
00:29:52,799 --> 00:29:56,039
America's work of humanity and also a stirring object lesson

445
00:29:56,119 --> 00:29:59,519
why America should not permit the radical element to obtain

446
00:29:59,559 --> 00:30:03,759
a whole and overthrow any of the president president governmental institutions.

447
00:30:05,160 --> 00:30:08,519
According to Photoplay, the picture is calculated to make you

448
00:30:08,640 --> 00:30:12,279
want to help feed the starving nations. It very likely will.

449
00:30:13,279 --> 00:30:16,160
Moving Picture World applauded the film for bringing to vivid

450
00:30:16,240 --> 00:30:19,519
life the story of how America erected a bulwark of

451
00:30:19,720 --> 00:30:23,240
food to stem the tide of the Bolsheviki.

452
00:30:25,839 --> 00:30:31,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's a it's very reminiscent to where

453
00:30:31,960 --> 00:30:36,279
we were, I don't know, five years ago, you know,

454
00:30:36,799 --> 00:30:41,440
like them trying to lay the rhetorical groundwork as to

455
00:30:42,599 --> 00:30:45,839
why we can't let why we can't let this this

456
00:30:45,960 --> 00:30:49,319
new generation radicalize. You know, we need to give them,

457
00:30:50,000 --> 00:30:53,920
we need we need we need to give them gibbs,

458
00:30:54,119 --> 00:30:58,720
we need to give them, you know. Except it wasn't

459
00:30:58,720 --> 00:31:01,000
even like that. It is like they wanted to give.

460
00:31:01,559 --> 00:31:04,880
They wanted to give us, like people like us, young

461
00:31:04,960 --> 00:31:08,440
white males or whatever. You want to identify yourself as

462
00:31:10,759 --> 00:31:13,759
everything that we didn't ask for in the hopes that

463
00:31:13,799 --> 00:31:14,960
we wouldn't radicalize.

464
00:31:18,119 --> 00:31:20,480
Speaker 1: What's interesting is, I don't know if you saw the

465
00:31:20,599 --> 00:31:26,880
numbers recently, but the I think it's among young evangelicals,

466
00:31:27,759 --> 00:31:30,079
less than fifty percent support the state of Israel.

467
00:31:31,200 --> 00:31:34,319
Speaker 2: Yeah, I did see that. That's trending in the right direction.

468
00:31:36,240 --> 00:31:40,720
I've also seen things about the type of person that

469
00:31:40,880 --> 00:31:48,000
is going to seminary right now is very conservative, very traditionalist,

470
00:31:49,000 --> 00:31:54,279
overwhelmingly so something like eighty plus percent of seminarians within

471
00:31:54,359 --> 00:32:01,640
the last ten years. So I hate them. Yeah.

472
00:32:02,359 --> 00:32:04,599
Speaker 1: One in four Catholic churches is going to be LTM

473
00:32:05,119 --> 00:32:05,920
in like ten years.

474
00:32:06,640 --> 00:32:09,920
Speaker 2: Yep. Yeah yeah.

475
00:32:11,279 --> 00:32:14,880
Speaker 1: These and similar reviews may have cheered Baker, but he

476
00:32:14,960 --> 00:32:18,720
knew better because he had been at Starvation's premiere and

477
00:32:18,880 --> 00:32:22,000
had seen for himself the depressing effect the film had

478
00:32:22,039 --> 00:32:25,079
produced on its audience. People were shocked by what they

479
00:32:25,119 --> 00:32:27,039
saw on the screen, but not in the way Baker

480
00:32:27,079 --> 00:32:31,119
and the filmmakers have had intended. So what do you

481
00:32:31,200 --> 00:32:34,160
do if they are looking at it one way? You

482
00:32:34,960 --> 00:32:37,200
go their way to turn in their direction.

483
00:32:37,880 --> 00:32:38,799
Speaker 2: The reviewer for The New.

484
00:32:38,839 --> 00:32:42,880
Speaker 1: York Times, echoing a complaint of many others in attendance,

485
00:32:43,319 --> 00:32:46,599
noted that while the many scenes of American mercy were heartwarming,

486
00:32:46,799 --> 00:32:51,519
the film unhappily and irreverently dragged in ghastly executions of

487
00:32:51,559 --> 00:32:56,400
Bolsheviki by German firing squads and even more excruciating hangings

488
00:32:56,440 --> 00:33:00,599
of Bolsheviki for some unnamed crimes by some unnamed enemy.

489
00:33:01,559 --> 00:33:06,440
Such scenes left one cold with an unameliorated terror.

490
00:33:09,319 --> 00:33:12,359
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, I mean a miscalculation.

491
00:33:13,480 --> 00:33:17,039
Speaker 1: Well think about it. I mean, how how would you

492
00:33:17,200 --> 00:33:18,559
know what was going on in Russia?

493
00:33:20,440 --> 00:33:24,279
Speaker 2: Yeah? No, I mean motion picture films like the newsreels

494
00:33:24,680 --> 00:33:29,240
before a movie were pretty much how people got information

495
00:33:29,359 --> 00:33:31,720
aside from the radio, you know, how they how they

496
00:33:31,799 --> 00:33:32,880
got visual news.

497
00:33:34,319 --> 00:33:39,240
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I mean there weren't who who was traveling

498
00:33:39,319 --> 00:33:44,119
there to see what was Yeah yeah. Baker recognized that

499
00:33:44,200 --> 00:33:46,519
the Times review was correct, and that he and the film,

500
00:33:46,599 --> 00:33:50,799
his film, the film producers had miscalculated. Concerned about having

501
00:33:50,839 --> 00:33:53,759
associated Hoover's name with what was shaping up to be

502
00:33:53,799 --> 00:33:56,960
a serious flop, Baker could take comfort in one sentence

503
00:33:57,000 --> 00:34:01,440
in the Time review. Times Review, these photographed through the

504
00:34:01,480 --> 00:34:05,359
assistance of Herbert Hoover, give no internal evidence of having

505
00:34:05,440 --> 00:34:10,280
passed under his eye. In their final form, more consolation

506
00:34:10,519 --> 00:34:13,039
came in the form of varieties only reservation about the

507
00:34:13,119 --> 00:34:16,039
film as a picture. It may be propaganda for the

508
00:34:16,119 --> 00:34:20,559
coming boom to secure the presidential nomination for Herbert Hoover,

509
00:34:21,320 --> 00:34:23,920
but there is so little of Hoover in the picture

510
00:34:24,000 --> 00:34:27,079
that it is propaganda for him. If it is propaganda

511
00:34:27,159 --> 00:34:30,239
for him, it is of the most subtle sol Ah.

512
00:34:30,880 --> 00:34:37,440
Speaker 2: Just everything up to the damage control was completely incompetent.

513
00:34:37,559 --> 00:34:39,800
But the damage control just seems so good.

514
00:34:42,199 --> 00:34:45,039
Speaker 1: There's a picture here, and it says in an inspired

515
00:34:45,119 --> 00:34:48,840
bit of editing for Czar to lenin the laughing Bolshevik,

516
00:34:49,000 --> 00:34:52,280
the condemned prisoner who faced death with bizarre levity, is

517
00:34:52,320 --> 00:34:54,960
among the last group of three to be shot, enabling

518
00:34:55,039 --> 00:34:59,559
the editor Max Eastman to heighten the tension. As each

519
00:34:59,679 --> 00:35:04,239
tree is executed. The red soldier is still laughing Eastman

520
00:35:04,320 --> 00:35:09,159
in tones as the prisoner, taunting his executioners, makes his exit.

521
00:35:13,000 --> 00:35:15,800
The distance between Hoover and starvation in the public mind

522
00:35:15,960 --> 00:35:18,239
was just about the only good news that Baker could

523
00:35:18,320 --> 00:35:21,960
report in his letter to Hoover of January thirteenth, four

524
00:35:22,039 --> 00:35:25,599
days and eight performances after the premiere. By then, the

525
00:35:25,639 --> 00:35:28,559
film had been recut and shortened, and it's run in

526
00:35:28,639 --> 00:35:31,639
New York's schedule to end within a few days. I

527
00:35:31,760 --> 00:35:34,679
said that I would not get you into trouble a

528
00:35:34,840 --> 00:35:37,559
chase in, Baker wrote to Hoover. I have not done so.

529
00:35:38,559 --> 00:35:41,480
The enclosed clippings indicate that the public is not led

530
00:35:41,519 --> 00:35:44,719
to believe that you have any interest in the film,

531
00:35:46,159 --> 00:35:48,440
only that your name was in big block letters.

532
00:35:51,880 --> 00:35:54,599
Speaker 2: Would this I mean, in your opinion, would you consider

533
00:35:54,679 --> 00:35:59,119
this to be mematic? I know it's a micro scale,

534
00:35:59,800 --> 00:36:03,320
but it has a memetic quality to it.

535
00:36:04,920 --> 00:36:07,880
Speaker 1: As much as you can in a print medium, as

536
00:36:07,960 --> 00:36:10,800
much as you can with newspapers and you know, and

537
00:36:11,079 --> 00:36:14,239
you know, let's face it, I mean, back in those

538
00:36:14,320 --> 00:36:17,960
days even normal people write the newspapers, regular everyday people.

539
00:36:20,079 --> 00:36:25,280
The question is is how yeah, how quickly you can

540
00:36:25,559 --> 00:36:31,559
swing and turn the narrative on its time? Apparently, you know,

541
00:36:33,480 --> 00:36:38,199
the movies put out with a narrative in mind. If

542
00:36:38,199 --> 00:36:40,760
they don't pick up on that narrative, well, what do

543
00:36:40,840 --> 00:36:45,039
you do? You have to figure and if the if

544
00:36:45,039 --> 00:36:46,880
people don't pick up on that narrative and they have

545
00:36:46,960 --> 00:36:50,280
the opposite narrative and the opposite narrative is horror, or

546
00:36:50,320 --> 00:36:53,960
what do you do? Well, obviously you're going to have

547
00:36:54,079 --> 00:36:57,159
to either pull it, hope people forget about it, or

548
00:36:58,000 --> 00:37:01,280
you apparently you're what's going to happen is what ends

549
00:37:01,360 --> 00:37:04,880
up happening is is this footage is used on multiple

550
00:37:04,960 --> 00:37:07,320
occasions for multiple purposes.

551
00:37:08,039 --> 00:37:10,400
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, yeah, that's.

552
00:37:13,000 --> 00:37:15,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, that's the mimetic part of it is that

553
00:37:15,119 --> 00:37:17,559
you can, wow.

554
00:37:18,280 --> 00:37:21,639
Speaker 2: Can adapt it, infinitely adaptable.

555
00:37:23,679 --> 00:37:27,239
Speaker 1: The footage lives on Starvation never made it beyond New

556
00:37:27,320 --> 00:37:32,360
York City. It didn't have to, It didn't have to.

557
00:37:33,920 --> 00:37:34,039
Speaker 2: All.

558
00:37:34,119 --> 00:37:36,599
Speaker 1: It just has to take it just has to take

559
00:37:36,679 --> 00:37:41,480
root in New York City, especially considering that's where most

560
00:37:41,519 --> 00:37:43,519
of the people financing the Bolsheviks lived.

561
00:37:46,800 --> 00:37:49,519
Speaker 2: What an unfortunate premare location.

562
00:37:52,719 --> 00:37:55,440
Speaker 1: Startvation never made it beyond New York City. No print

563
00:37:55,440 --> 00:38:00,559
of the film survives, although Johnson's execution sequence was salvaged

564
00:38:00,599 --> 00:38:03,519
and eventually landed in the Hoover Archives. It may not

565
00:38:03,599 --> 00:38:06,400
be the first execution ever captured on film, but it

566
00:38:06,519 --> 00:38:10,039
may well be the oldest surviving such footage. It has

567
00:38:10,079 --> 00:38:13,239
appeared in numerous documentary films about World War One and

568
00:38:13,360 --> 00:38:17,519
the Russian Revolution over the years, often improperly identified as

569
00:38:17,599 --> 00:38:22,239
visual evidence of white slaughtering reds during the Russian Civil War.

570
00:38:25,920 --> 00:38:29,360
In you whatever you need it to be, I mean, seriously, uh,

571
00:38:30,119 --> 00:38:33,199
there is no doubt duing large part to Max Eastman,

572
00:38:33,880 --> 00:38:38,039
the socialist writer and former associate of Leon Trotsky, who,

573
00:38:39,119 --> 00:38:42,559
in editing the nineteen thirty seven documentary from film Zar

574
00:38:42,639 --> 00:38:46,880
to Lenin, identified the executioners as soldiers of the white

575
00:38:47,159 --> 00:38:51,599
Russian Army under Admiral Alexander Koltchek.

576
00:38:56,239 --> 00:38:57,280
Speaker 2: Totally accidental.

577
00:38:59,039 --> 00:39:02,000
Speaker 1: Eastman also tried to heighten the drama of the sequence

578
00:39:02,039 --> 00:39:06,239
by manipulating the images instead of taking his place, Instead

579
00:39:06,239 --> 00:39:08,599
of taking his place among the first trio of victims.

580
00:39:08,639 --> 00:39:12,599
The laughing Bolshevik, after nine of his comrades have been

581
00:39:12,679 --> 00:39:15,440
shot dead, is shown looking up from the ground and

582
00:39:15,599 --> 00:39:17,960
cackling in what is meant to be a spine tingling

583
00:39:18,119 --> 00:39:22,719
cutaway shot. Thanks to the editor's handiwork, the laughing Bolshevik

584
00:39:22,840 --> 00:39:27,239
exits last, taunting his executioners to the end, as narrator

585
00:39:27,320 --> 00:39:35,320
Eastman in tones the red Soldier is still laughing. Thank you,

586
00:39:35,519 --> 00:39:36,440
mister Eastman.

587
00:39:38,119 --> 00:39:41,679
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean brilliant. Yeah.

588
00:39:43,559 --> 00:39:47,480
Speaker 1: Baker, together with Rickard, would help get Herbert Hoover elected

589
00:39:47,599 --> 00:39:50,199
to the White House in nineteen twenty eight. By then,

590
00:39:50,280 --> 00:39:53,079
he had recovered from the considerable financial loss he took

591
00:39:53,119 --> 00:39:56,079
as a result of starvation, a total of nearly eleven

592
00:39:56,159 --> 00:39:59,880
thousand dollars. He never recovered his enthusiasm for movie man,

593
00:40:00,639 --> 00:40:02,920
as he wrote a New York State Tax Auditor a

594
00:40:03,000 --> 00:40:06,400
few years after his cinematic debacle, my advice to a

595
00:40:06,480 --> 00:40:09,039
young man about to risk money and a motion picture

596
00:40:09,480 --> 00:40:10,800
is no.

597
00:40:14,159 --> 00:40:14,719
Speaker 2: And that's it.

598
00:40:16,159 --> 00:40:19,880
Speaker 1: Short, short little article that I cannot remember who shared

599
00:40:20,000 --> 00:40:23,159
with me. But when I read it, I was like, oh,

600
00:40:23,599 --> 00:40:28,239
this has everything in it. This is I mean, this

601
00:40:28,400 --> 00:40:30,760
is what the two thousand words less than two thousand words,

602
00:40:32,079 --> 00:40:35,679
and there's so much in it. You have history, you

603
00:40:35,800 --> 00:40:40,239
have you have not only history, but you have a

604
00:40:40,360 --> 00:40:42,760
look at how propaganda was being used at the time,

605
00:40:43,400 --> 00:40:48,960
a look into just how fucked up you know, the

606
00:40:49,519 --> 00:40:58,519
uh the midwar years were, how just who knew and

607
00:40:58,639 --> 00:41:04,320
when you when you're at the mercy of filmmakers and

608
00:41:04,440 --> 00:41:11,239
newspapermen and propagandists, and you can't do you know how

609
00:41:11,559 --> 00:41:13,920
people put stuff on Twitter all the time and like

610
00:41:14,519 --> 00:41:18,719
within what you can within fifteen minutes, somebody could be debunking.

611
00:41:19,719 --> 00:41:23,000
It's'd be like, yeah, this is no sorry, nice tribe,

612
00:41:23,000 --> 00:41:27,800
but no, yeah, this is this is literally makes it

613
00:41:27,960 --> 00:41:30,440
halfway around the world before the truth comes out.

614
00:41:31,239 --> 00:41:34,159
Speaker 2: It's it's a good contrast too. I mean, you see

615
00:41:34,199 --> 00:41:38,559
the ideological battle playing out in Europe with executions and

616
00:41:39,519 --> 00:41:44,280
just mass violence, chaos, and then you see the ideological

617
00:41:44,360 --> 00:41:49,480
battle in the United States, which was was untouched by

618
00:41:49,519 --> 00:41:54,320
the war, playing out in much more subtle, much more

619
00:41:55,519 --> 00:41:59,079
I guess, cerebral ways. Well.

620
00:41:59,079 --> 00:42:02,199
Speaker 1: I think in many ways this can play as a

621
00:42:02,920 --> 00:42:06,280
propaganda piece at home too, because you know a lot

622
00:42:06,360 --> 00:42:08,760
of a lot of men did not come back from Europe,

623
00:42:10,519 --> 00:42:14,400
and by showing something like this and just showing the

624
00:42:14,519 --> 00:42:18,039
brutality of everything that went on there and starvation, things

625
00:42:18,119 --> 00:42:22,039
like that, you can actually sell to widows and to

626
00:42:22,280 --> 00:42:28,719
orphans that you know they died for something. Yeah, yep, yeah,

627
00:42:30,000 --> 00:42:33,199
as terrible as the you know, this one piece of

628
00:42:33,280 --> 00:42:39,519
film is you know you that can be a selling

629
00:42:39,599 --> 00:42:43,039
point too. Look, we know these are the people we

630
00:42:43,119 --> 00:42:45,760
were dealing with, These are the people we went over there.

631
00:42:46,920 --> 00:42:50,360
This is part of the remnant that's left over. And

632
00:42:50,639 --> 00:42:54,920
also think about it. It's the perfect it's the perfect setting.

633
00:42:54,960 --> 00:42:56,960
This setting the stage where what comes, you know, twenty

634
00:42:57,039 --> 00:42:57,480
years later.

635
00:42:58,639 --> 00:43:02,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, as far as you know, we know now that

636
00:43:03,079 --> 00:43:06,039
the German Free Corps for the most part were motivated

637
00:43:06,079 --> 00:43:09,719
by national sympathies and then a lot of them eventually

638
00:43:10,840 --> 00:43:13,800
ended up in the in the in the German high command,

639
00:43:14,000 --> 00:43:16,360
if not you know, just the Nazi Party in general.

640
00:43:18,639 --> 00:43:21,159
So I mean, it couldn't have worked out better for

641
00:43:22,000 --> 00:43:23,599
those particular film producers.

642
00:43:24,719 --> 00:43:28,599
Speaker 1: Well, another thing that's interesting is a book that a

643
00:43:28,679 --> 00:43:34,480
buddy of mine referred me to about this was about

644
00:43:34,480 --> 00:43:35,440
the inter war years.

645
00:43:35,599 --> 00:43:41,159
Speaker 2: Is how so many like it.

646
00:43:42,239 --> 00:43:44,960
Speaker 1: There are people in the Free Corps who were former communists,

647
00:43:45,599 --> 00:43:49,480
and they were like going back and forth. They were ideology.

648
00:43:49,679 --> 00:43:55,079
It it seems like ideology was only useful to some

649
00:43:56,400 --> 00:43:58,119
in that they were going to have power and they

650
00:43:58,159 --> 00:43:59,480
were going to be able to control.

651
00:44:00,440 --> 00:44:05,199
Speaker 2: Yeah, and each Free Corps seemed like its own little incubator.

652
00:44:05,719 --> 00:44:08,199
Like reading up on it, you know, there were multiple

653
00:44:08,239 --> 00:44:11,440
Free corps. They had multiple different you know, they were

654
00:44:11,519 --> 00:44:17,280
in different places, they were fighting different different enemies, but

655
00:44:17,480 --> 00:44:21,000
each one was you know, you had like some monarchist

656
00:44:21,599 --> 00:44:25,760
leaning ones, you had some obviously some nationalist ones, some

657
00:44:25,920 --> 00:44:31,039
more motivated mostly by just anti Bolshevism. Each one was

658
00:44:31,119 --> 00:44:36,400
like its own little incubator. It was pretty wild. Yeah, and.

659
00:44:38,199 --> 00:44:40,800
Speaker 1: It really did seem like it was like, how was

660
00:44:40,920 --> 00:44:46,559
nationalism going to win? Was Bolshevism gonna win? You know,

661
00:44:46,679 --> 00:44:50,480
which would be globalism was going to win? Was you

662
00:44:50,599 --> 00:44:56,599
know the I mean beyond nationalism, you know, caring for

663
00:44:56,719 --> 00:44:59,920
your own people like an ethno, like more of an

664
00:45:00,079 --> 00:45:05,519
ethno kind of you know and more of an ethno

665
00:45:05,760 --> 00:45:08,320
kind of looking for the word I can't, but you

666
00:45:08,400 --> 00:45:13,360
know what I'm talking about. M Yeah, So when you

667
00:45:13,519 --> 00:45:16,400
have you know, that's why people people are like, well,

668
00:45:16,440 --> 00:45:20,119
why did they call themselves socialists, so well, obviously they

669
00:45:20,159 --> 00:45:23,800
were socialists, they were national socialists, they were leftists because

670
00:45:23,840 --> 00:45:28,599
they called themselves socialists. People were calling themselves all sorts

671
00:45:28,639 --> 00:45:31,679
of shit back then. Yeah, it was just what was

672
00:45:31,920 --> 00:45:34,599
you know, I think I think Thomas has said basically,

673
00:45:34,639 --> 00:45:37,039
if you didn't call yourself a socialist in the twenties

674
00:45:37,079 --> 00:45:39,480
and you were a revolutionary group, no one was taking

675
00:45:39,519 --> 00:45:40,119
you seriously.

676
00:45:41,119 --> 00:45:45,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems like, okay, what is the next sentence

677
00:45:45,320 --> 00:45:48,199
out of their mouth after they described themselves as socialists?

678
00:45:48,840 --> 00:45:54,159
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah, we can get and go down that

679
00:45:54,280 --> 00:45:56,880
rabbit hole. And Thomas and I have gone downe that

680
00:45:57,000 --> 00:46:00,320
rabbit hole times of you know, people are like, oh, well,

681
00:46:00,400 --> 00:46:05,480
you know, and what it always once? You like explain

682
00:46:05,719 --> 00:46:08,519
that to people or show you know, like in nineteen

683
00:46:08,639 --> 00:46:12,400
thirty eight, what you know what Adolph said that socialism

684
00:46:12,599 --> 00:46:15,199
was how he described it. And you're like, okay, so

685
00:46:15,320 --> 00:46:18,400
what do you disagree with here? Well, that's not what

686
00:46:18,519 --> 00:46:20,360
he that's not what he meant, that's not what I

687
00:46:20,440 --> 00:46:25,519
asked you. Yeah, taking these words on their face, what

688
00:46:25,639 --> 00:46:28,320
do you disagree with here? And what I can tell

689
00:46:28,360 --> 00:46:31,159
you is there are a lot of people who will

690
00:46:31,280 --> 00:46:32,360
not answer that question.

691
00:46:33,360 --> 00:46:36,960
Speaker 2: Well, it's exactly the same as showing them a speech

692
00:46:37,000 --> 00:46:40,920
by Vladimir Putin when he explains, you know, his motivations

693
00:46:41,000 --> 00:46:43,039
for why he does, why he's doing what he's doing

694
00:46:43,159 --> 00:46:46,320
right now. I mean, show me something that you disagree with, Like,

695
00:46:46,559 --> 00:46:50,000
what is he saying that is unreasonable if you're capable

696
00:46:50,039 --> 00:46:54,559
of empathizing with Russia's position, which you should empathize with

697
00:46:54,639 --> 00:46:59,320
all countries' positions. What is he saying that paints him

698
00:46:59,360 --> 00:47:03,239
as this man, man, lunatic, all bent on rolling over Europe.

699
00:47:03,800 --> 00:47:06,440
And uh, they won't even look at those speeches. Well

700
00:47:06,440 --> 00:47:09,480
you can't trust anything because he's crazy. Well, okay, you're

701
00:47:09,559 --> 00:47:10,599
just not a serious person.

702
00:47:12,599 --> 00:47:15,960
Speaker 1: If we had if we had given or if it

703
00:47:16,239 --> 00:47:19,079
just came down to it through a series of treaties

704
00:47:19,320 --> 00:47:23,239
or any kind of strife, if the northern half of

705
00:47:23,480 --> 00:47:27,840
Washington State had been surrendered to Canada or Canada took

706
00:47:27,880 --> 00:47:32,199
it or something, and it's all Americans living there, but

707
00:47:32,280 --> 00:47:35,760
they're living in part of Canada now, and Canada started

708
00:47:35,960 --> 00:47:41,039
killing them like targeted bombings and things like that, And

709
00:47:41,239 --> 00:47:46,719
there was a president who was like, well those are

710
00:47:46,760 --> 00:47:51,880
our people, and you know there, we do have interests

711
00:47:52,000 --> 00:47:57,360
up there. We we like the Seattle area, and we're

712
00:47:57,360 --> 00:47:59,639
going to We're going to take it, you know, we

713
00:47:59,760 --> 00:48:03,719
think we think it would be beneficial for us to

714
00:48:03,800 --> 00:48:06,960
have it. And we went in there and we invaded

715
00:48:07,000 --> 00:48:09,679
it to stop the killing and also take back what

716
00:48:09,880 --> 00:48:13,119
was ours. What's the problem there?

717
00:48:14,000 --> 00:48:18,039
Speaker 2: There's there's story, There's about one hundred other things you

718
00:48:18,079 --> 00:48:20,599
could add in there to make your point, you know,

719
00:48:20,760 --> 00:48:26,119
even even more crystal clear than than the Russia Ukraine analogy.

720
00:48:26,800 --> 00:48:32,840
But people just refuse to refuse to empathize because putin

721
00:48:32,920 --> 00:48:36,840
bad Pootler bad. Yeah.

722
00:48:37,079 --> 00:48:41,519
Speaker 1: I mean, we really have gotten to the point where, Yeah,

723
00:48:41,800 --> 00:48:44,880
I've I say this a lot, and I'm sure people

724
00:48:44,880 --> 00:48:47,440
are sick of hearing me say it is I think

725
00:48:47,559 --> 00:48:49,519
one of the biggest problems that we have, and I

726
00:48:49,599 --> 00:48:52,880
think we may be getting back to this, but is

727
00:48:53,079 --> 00:48:56,840
the average person, and especially the average male, has never

728
00:48:56,960 --> 00:48:58,840
been punched. It has never been punched in the mouth.

729
00:48:59,679 --> 00:49:04,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep. I think we need to take a look

730
00:49:04,000 --> 00:49:11,400
at maybe re examining what the word free speech means. Yeah.

731
00:49:12,199 --> 00:49:15,559
I know, we spent the last like fifteen years on

732
00:49:15,679 --> 00:49:20,079
a free speech propaganda kick, and now that we have it,

733
00:49:20,159 --> 00:49:24,719
I think it's time to move on to the next step. Yeah.

734
00:49:25,719 --> 00:49:29,519
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, honestly, the worst part of this post

735
00:49:29,599 --> 00:49:33,599
war consensus is is that there's really only one country

736
00:49:33,679 --> 00:49:35,599
in the world that's allowed to take land.

737
00:49:37,440 --> 00:49:37,679
Speaker 2: Yeah.

738
00:49:38,400 --> 00:49:40,920
Speaker 1: Well that's the whole history of the fucking world.

739
00:49:42,159 --> 00:49:42,360
Speaker 2: Yeah.

740
00:49:42,519 --> 00:49:46,039
Speaker 1: Is you your neighbor has something that you want and

741
00:49:46,079 --> 00:49:47,960
if you're stronger than them, you take it.

742
00:49:49,079 --> 00:49:50,880
Speaker 2: Are people going to die? Yeah?

743
00:49:52,119 --> 00:49:57,039
Speaker 1: Okay, that's this is our fucking history. This is who

744
00:49:57,119 --> 00:50:02,079
we are, This is who we still are. We just

745
00:50:02,199 --> 00:50:05,079
suppressed it and you can't, you know, and if you're like, well,

746
00:50:05,159 --> 00:50:07,079
fuck you. You know, it's like, I mean, I don't

747
00:50:07,079 --> 00:50:09,719
particularly like what's going on with bomb and the Huthis

748
00:50:09,760 --> 00:50:12,079
and everything, because I know the only reason they're bombing

749
00:50:12,079 --> 00:50:14,599
the Huthis is for Israel, and I consider Israel to

750
00:50:14,679 --> 00:50:20,159
be our ultimate enemy, you know, the zion Zionism Is

751
00:50:20,679 --> 00:50:24,639
is the number one enemy. Yeah, but I mean I

752
00:50:24,800 --> 00:50:28,920
understand why they're doing it. Oh yeah, I may I

753
00:50:29,039 --> 00:50:30,480
might do it too if I was president.

754
00:50:30,800 --> 00:50:35,920
Speaker 2: The fuck knows. Well. I mean, it wasn't until fairly

755
00:50:36,039 --> 00:50:39,400
recently where I kind of realized. I realized probably through

756
00:50:39,559 --> 00:50:41,679
uh actually, I think it was through one of your

757
00:50:41,760 --> 00:50:47,400
episodes that one of the primary motivating factors as to

758
00:50:47,480 --> 00:50:50,519
why we support Israel with all this money and arms

759
00:50:50,639 --> 00:50:56,239
and just propaganda is uh that if we don't, then

760
00:50:56,960 --> 00:51:00,960
they'll start a nuclear war. So we better pay up

761
00:51:01,679 --> 00:51:04,119
or they're going to get antsy and then they're going

762
00:51:04,199 --> 00:51:08,960
to start launching nukes. Yeah, I mean that that that

763
00:51:09,159 --> 00:51:11,039
is quite a relationship dynamic.

764
00:51:12,760 --> 00:51:15,239
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean in the in the post war era,

765
00:51:16,880 --> 00:51:19,920
you have a bunch of countries that have nukes, and

766
00:51:20,000 --> 00:51:22,519
they have treaties and they have inspections.

767
00:51:23,119 --> 00:51:23,480
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.

768
00:51:23,679 --> 00:51:28,320
Speaker 1: There's one country that's not allowed, that has nukes that

769
00:51:28,440 --> 00:51:32,239
we're not even sure how many it is, and they

770
00:51:32,280 --> 00:51:35,360
don't have to sign any treaties and they threaten to

771
00:51:35,559 --> 00:51:38,760
use them all the time. Why do why do we

772
00:51:38,840 --> 00:51:39,679
put up with cutter?

773
00:51:40,760 --> 00:51:44,880
Speaker 2: It just it just doesn't bode well when any country,

774
00:51:45,159 --> 00:51:49,360
any any nuclear country doesn't have a no first strike policy.

775
00:51:49,440 --> 00:51:52,199
I know that that's bullshit, but it just, you know,

776
00:51:52,840 --> 00:51:58,119
at least have the decency to lie about it, like, sure,

777
00:51:58,199 --> 00:52:01,119
we're not gonna we have a no first strike policy. Okay,

778
00:52:01,119 --> 00:52:04,079
at least we know that you're you know, somewhat sane,

779
00:52:04,280 --> 00:52:08,360
somewhat in line with the First World I mean, we

780
00:52:08,480 --> 00:52:12,440
know it's bullshit, but come on, make us feel good.

781
00:52:13,800 --> 00:52:19,559
Speaker 1: India and Pakistan hate each other. India and Pakistan have nukes, yes,

782
00:52:20,039 --> 00:52:22,400
and I have to assume that we control both of

783
00:52:22,480 --> 00:52:25,000
them because the fact that they haven't, that they haven't

784
00:52:25,039 --> 00:52:27,480
blown each other off the map yet, it makes no sense.

785
00:52:28,440 --> 00:52:35,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, god, that would be amazing.

786
00:52:37,400 --> 00:52:42,440
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, India's once you start going down the

787
00:52:42,480 --> 00:52:46,480
India rabbit hole, you're just like, we can they just

788
00:52:46,519 --> 00:52:50,280
stay there? I mean just that I don't want one

789
00:52:50,400 --> 00:52:51,880
to leave like one.

790
00:52:51,960 --> 00:52:52,599
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't care.

791
00:52:54,519 --> 00:52:56,599
Speaker 1: They're gonna cure cancer. Let them sell it to us.

792
00:52:56,639 --> 00:52:57,679
They don't have to come here.

793
00:52:58,360 --> 00:53:03,000
Speaker 2: Oh it's that what is his name, Giant something, Giant

794
00:53:03,039 --> 00:53:07,679
Bandari yep, watching his watching his speech at the Property

795
00:53:07,719 --> 00:53:08,239
and Freedom.

796
00:53:09,079 --> 00:53:14,280
Speaker 1: Uh uh, that's brutal, man, It's brutal.

797
00:53:15,239 --> 00:53:17,280
Speaker 2: And just just having it all laid out to you

798
00:53:17,360 --> 00:53:21,760
as to why exactly they are completely incompatible it is jarring.

799
00:53:21,960 --> 00:53:25,360
And then going out into the world and like seeing them.

800
00:53:28,599 --> 00:53:31,159
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I've said this over and over again.

801
00:53:31,199 --> 00:53:33,239
I'm sure people are sick of it. The one thing

802
00:53:33,320 --> 00:53:37,480
that he said in that episode that not everybody picked

803
00:53:37,519 --> 00:53:39,239
up on, but the people who did pick up on them.

804
00:53:39,559 --> 00:53:43,920
It shook them. He said, the Americans haven't met the

805
00:53:43,960 --> 00:53:44,960
average Indian yet.

806
00:53:45,800 --> 00:53:47,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, I.

807
00:53:47,840 --> 00:53:51,280
Speaker 1: Mean that should shake you to your core. And anyone.

808
00:53:52,320 --> 00:53:57,360
Speaker 2: Well, my brother went to India with a mission and

809
00:53:58,159 --> 00:54:00,480
I forget I don't know what what area he was in,

810
00:54:00,760 --> 00:54:03,360
but he ended up he stayed. He was there a

811
00:54:03,440 --> 00:54:07,360
couple of weeks, was absolutely horrified at the conditions. But

812
00:54:09,360 --> 00:54:12,920
he ended up having to get basically metavaced to the

813
00:54:13,639 --> 00:54:17,119
to the closest embassy because he got dangy fever and

814
00:54:17,280 --> 00:54:21,079
like almost died, like he they had to. It took

815
00:54:21,159 --> 00:54:23,199
him like three days to get to the hospital in

816
00:54:23,280 --> 00:54:26,039
Hawaii to finally get the treatment that he needs, and

817
00:54:26,119 --> 00:54:27,639
he was like on death's doorstep.

818
00:54:29,760 --> 00:54:33,599
Speaker 1: And the worst part of it is if somebody here

819
00:54:33,679 --> 00:54:38,760
in the United States falls ill, even if you don't

820
00:54:38,920 --> 00:54:42,599
know them, you're doing everything that you possibly can to

821
00:54:42,679 --> 00:54:43,039
help them.

822
00:54:43,760 --> 00:54:45,760
Speaker 2: Mm hmm yeah yep.

823
00:54:46,719 --> 00:54:50,800
Speaker 1: And there the attitude there is, well, if he dies.

824
00:54:50,639 --> 00:54:54,639
Speaker 2: He dies, yeah, somebody clean him up. Yeah.

825
00:54:54,719 --> 00:54:57,159
Speaker 1: No, one's going to have a sense of urgency that.

826
00:54:57,559 --> 00:54:59,920
Speaker 2: Life is cheap. It's like that in most of those kinds,

827
00:55:00,119 --> 00:55:04,199
his life is cheap, you know. That's that's like the

828
00:55:04,239 --> 00:55:07,360
whole bug man thing. They're just bugman. That's how they

829
00:55:07,400 --> 00:55:08,320
think about themselves.

830
00:55:10,199 --> 00:55:14,400
Speaker 1: Oh man, that's just it's fucking brutal man.

831
00:55:14,639 --> 00:55:16,559
Speaker 2: I think we need infinity of them.

832
00:55:18,119 --> 00:55:21,559
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, well, I mean there's so much better workers.

833
00:55:21,159 --> 00:55:24,000
Speaker 2: Than you and I. Yeah, yep. They make the line

834
00:55:24,039 --> 00:55:25,119
go up, let him in.

835
00:55:27,119 --> 00:55:29,440
Speaker 1: You know, I think back to my days and you know,

836
00:55:29,559 --> 00:55:34,679
working working, when I worked a regular job and all

837
00:55:34,800 --> 00:55:39,480
of the promotions that I turned down because I was

838
00:55:39,559 --> 00:55:42,679
just like, I'm just happy where I am. I was like,

839
00:55:43,159 --> 00:55:46,400
I don't want any more. Happy with the money I'm making,

840
00:55:46,920 --> 00:55:50,880
I don't want any more responsibility. I don't want to

841
00:55:50,920 --> 00:55:53,599
be on call twenty four to seven stuff like that.

842
00:55:54,320 --> 00:55:54,599
Speaker 2: I don't.

843
00:55:55,760 --> 00:55:59,880
Speaker 1: I don't want that. And because we don't do that,

844
00:56:00,559 --> 00:56:02,039
they may import somebody who will.

845
00:56:03,239 --> 00:56:08,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, Like what I see happening. Is this aversion

846
00:56:08,719 --> 00:56:14,320
to you know, the Protestant work ethic, Like that's for suckers.

847
00:56:14,519 --> 00:56:17,320
You know, we're Americans. We don't we shouldn't have to

848
00:56:17,400 --> 00:56:20,000
work like fifty sixty hour weeks. And they're absolutely correct.

849
00:56:20,400 --> 00:56:24,800
On a forty hour work week, on a regular job,

850
00:56:25,039 --> 00:56:28,920
you should be able to in a functioning country and

851
00:56:29,000 --> 00:56:31,400
a society that actually gives a shit about its people.

852
00:56:31,920 --> 00:56:34,079
They should be taken care of on a forty hour

853
00:56:34,159 --> 00:56:36,920
work week. You should that should be like the baseline.

854
00:56:37,400 --> 00:56:40,039
You know, let's say a two or three bedroom ranch.

855
00:56:40,119 --> 00:56:42,679
You should be able to do that, a decent car.

856
00:56:43,440 --> 00:56:47,639
It's when you but it's it's when you get into

857
00:56:47,719 --> 00:56:50,599
that fifty sixty hour work weeks of actually doing work,

858
00:56:50,679 --> 00:56:57,480
actually being productive, you know, actually actually I don't know,

859
00:56:57,639 --> 00:57:04,880
directing production, take and and being accountable. That's when you

860
00:57:05,000 --> 00:57:08,159
should be able to be compensated more than say the

861
00:57:08,320 --> 00:57:11,800
two or three better maratche and uh, I don't know.

862
00:57:12,039 --> 00:57:15,679
Like a lot of people that I like, they don't

863
00:57:16,960 --> 00:57:19,039
I don't know what they think about that. It's like

864
00:57:19,280 --> 00:57:30,000
it's for stuckers. And that's that's an Indian attitude. Did

865
00:57:30,079 --> 00:57:30,519
I lose you?

866
00:57:32,880 --> 00:57:35,880
Speaker 1: Rams? I was muted. Ramaswani would say, oh, they'll come

867
00:57:35,960 --> 00:57:38,239
here and they'll work eighty hours a week. First of all,

868
00:57:38,400 --> 00:57:40,880
no one is fucking working. I mean, the amount of

869
00:57:40,880 --> 00:57:44,480
people that are working eighty hours a week is please stop.

870
00:57:45,920 --> 00:57:48,920
But yeah, I mean it's oh, well, because Americans don't

871
00:57:48,960 --> 00:57:51,440
want we shouldn't have to, man, you know, It's like

872
00:57:52,320 --> 00:57:57,000
there was a fucking time before you know, infinity printing

873
00:57:57,119 --> 00:58:00,719
money that you know. I remember reading these stories about

874
00:58:00,760 --> 00:58:05,960
how like black families in Detroit and like nineteen fifty eight,

875
00:58:06,079 --> 00:58:09,400
nineteen fifty nine, the dad was working at like Ford

876
00:58:09,599 --> 00:58:13,360
or Dodge or somewhere like that. It was he owned

877
00:58:13,360 --> 00:58:17,159
the house, he had a car, his family, and they

878
00:58:17,199 --> 00:58:18,199
were doing perfectly fine.

879
00:58:18,920 --> 00:58:19,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was.

880
00:58:22,119 --> 00:58:22,719
Speaker 1: They could do that.

881
00:58:23,840 --> 00:58:25,400
Speaker 2: We could do that. That's the baseline.

882
00:58:26,480 --> 00:58:29,199
Speaker 1: But it's like, okay, so what what happened between now?

883
00:58:29,519 --> 00:58:30,440
Between then and now.

884
00:58:32,800 --> 00:58:35,760
Speaker 2: On who you talk to? Yeah, I mean back when

885
00:58:35,800 --> 00:58:37,400
I was a libertarian, I would have said, well, it's

886
00:58:37,440 --> 00:58:40,199
the money, and to a certain degree it is, but

887
00:58:40,320 --> 00:58:41,400
it's the culture.

888
00:58:41,920 --> 00:58:44,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's definitely the money, but it's also the culture.

889
00:58:45,239 --> 00:58:47,079
It's all. And I'm not even I'm not talking. I

890
00:58:47,280 --> 00:58:50,280
just used I just use a black family just to

891
00:58:50,400 --> 00:58:54,719
show that that's that was the baseline. It was like,

892
00:58:55,199 --> 00:58:58,280
you know, a black family who had just hadn't moved

893
00:58:58,280 --> 00:59:01,599
from their family, hadn't moved from the South, hadn't had

894
00:59:01,639 --> 00:59:03,719
been in the South, and hadn't been in the North

895
00:59:03,840 --> 00:59:08,800
very long, could do that. But white families, American families

896
00:59:08,840 --> 00:59:12,039
heritage American families. Why can't they do that anymore?

897
00:59:13,079 --> 00:59:17,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, yeah, I mean I grew I was always

898
00:59:17,880 --> 00:59:20,599
taught that when you're at work, you work. I mean,

899
00:59:20,920 --> 00:59:24,280
have fun, bullshit, make friends, whatever, But like you're there

900
00:59:24,360 --> 00:59:27,880
to produce. So you have a baseline of forty hours

901
00:59:27,920 --> 00:59:31,719
a week to produce. That should be able to get you,

902
00:59:32,559 --> 00:59:35,199
you know, that two or three bedroom ranch with a

903
00:59:35,440 --> 00:59:39,039
decent car, and you know, maybe date night on Friday

904
00:59:39,800 --> 00:59:43,079
and have a couple of kids, and you know, when

905
00:59:43,119 --> 00:59:45,960
you start getting into that fifty sixty hour work week,

906
00:59:46,079 --> 00:59:49,679
upper management, lower director level, then you can get like

907
00:59:49,800 --> 00:59:52,280
the four or five bedroom colonial on the cul de Sac,

908
00:59:52,639 --> 00:59:54,679
you know, with the with the Chevy suburban and have

909
00:59:54,840 --> 00:59:58,000
three or four kids. Like that should be the baseline

910
00:59:58,039 --> 01:00:02,639
for that. It's just I don't know, call me crazy.

911
01:00:02,800 --> 01:00:04,800
Maybe I'm just a maybe I'm a work cock. I

912
01:00:04,840 --> 01:00:05,119
don't know.

913
01:00:05,880 --> 01:00:08,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know. You just know when you talk about

914
01:00:08,920 --> 01:00:11,599
stuff like that, people just went, oh, you're just a commie.

915
01:00:11,639 --> 01:00:16,079
You want you want everything handed to you. No forty hours,

916
01:00:16,119 --> 01:00:16,800
I fucking go home.

917
01:00:17,639 --> 01:00:20,840
Speaker 2: I will admit that, Like, yeah, I I am probably

918
01:00:21,320 --> 01:00:24,880
a workaholic. I enjoy my job. I enjoy the people

919
01:00:25,039 --> 01:00:31,679
I enjoy seeing the fruits of my efforts. Owner.

920
01:00:31,840 --> 01:00:34,159
Speaker 1: You also have not an ownership steak, but you have

921
01:00:34,280 --> 01:00:36,320
a sharing steak, So that's that's.

922
01:00:36,360 --> 01:00:38,639
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a little oh no, it's I I have

923
01:00:38,760 --> 01:00:41,480
a I mean I have an ownership stake too, and yeah,

924
01:00:41,719 --> 01:00:44,760
you know that's that's like also my retirement, so I

925
01:00:44,840 --> 01:00:49,920
am heavily motivated to you know, maybe spend a couple

926
01:00:50,039 --> 01:00:54,239
more hours a week than than a wage guy. Yeah.

927
01:00:55,079 --> 01:00:57,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, tell everybody where they can find you.

928
01:00:58,480 --> 01:01:02,719
Speaker 2: You can find me on dot com at bt w

929
01:01:03,039 --> 01:01:05,159
A underscore returns.

930
01:01:06,280 --> 01:01:08,800
Speaker 1: Cool and Timeline Earth every week.

931
01:01:08,760 --> 01:01:11,519
Speaker 2: Right, every single week, without fail.

932
01:01:12,760 --> 01:01:14,400
Speaker 1: And if people want to get in touch with you

933
01:01:14,519 --> 01:01:16,599
in d ms, they do they have to know, uh,

934
01:01:17,159 --> 01:01:18,480
they have to know the code word right.

935
01:01:19,320 --> 01:01:21,719
Speaker 2: Ask around. You'll find out people will be more than

936
01:01:22,239 --> 01:01:24,239
call you. The password.

937
01:01:25,679 --> 01:01:25,960
Speaker 1: Was that it?

938
01:01:27,119 --> 01:01:31,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's it. Now feel free to DM me. You know,

939
01:01:31,400 --> 01:01:33,920
my whole shtick is that I I know that I'm retarded.

940
01:01:34,039 --> 01:01:36,519
I'm not I'm not an intellectual. I don't have time

941
01:01:36,599 --> 01:01:38,960
to read books. So I come on Peach Show and

942
01:01:39,039 --> 01:01:41,519
I end up learning more more with you in this

943
01:01:41,719 --> 01:01:44,719
last hour than I have, you know, in the in

944
01:01:44,840 --> 01:01:50,159
the last year trying to learn things on my own. Well,

945
01:01:51,159 --> 01:01:52,679
there are many such cases like.

946
01:01:52,760 --> 01:01:56,320
Speaker 1: Me, well, yeah, yeah, that's what that's what we're trying

947
01:01:56,320 --> 01:01:58,119
to do here. People ask me all the time. They're like,

948
01:01:58,280 --> 01:02:00,559
if you go to talk about a subject, why don't

949
01:02:00,559 --> 01:02:05,079
you have an expert on? I was like why It's like, yeah,

950
01:02:05,159 --> 01:02:08,320
I mean I can't have experts on. Sure they'll come

951
01:02:08,400 --> 01:02:10,840
on this show, but it's like, how do you have

952
01:02:10,920 --> 01:02:15,679
a discussion with an expert? How do you how do

953
01:02:15,760 --> 01:02:18,960
you flesh out new ideas? What if like if you

954
01:02:19,039 --> 01:02:23,159
were to the expert knows what he knows, and if

955
01:02:23,199 --> 01:02:25,119
you want to be like, oh you know, well this

956
01:02:25,320 --> 01:02:28,360
is what I see in it, and do you see

957
01:02:28,400 --> 01:02:30,559
this in it? Ninety nine percent of the time the

958
01:02:30,599 --> 01:02:31,719
persons can be like I don't see that.

959
01:02:34,360 --> 01:02:39,000
Speaker 2: All right, let's wrap it up, all right, man, have

960
01:02:39,119 --> 01:03:00,400
a good night. Thanks man. H