The Good Germans
The phrase “good Germans” refers to the Germans living in the Third Reich who enabled Hitler and his Nazi regime yet remained in denial that they were doing so. Or they did know, but they put on a show of respectability. They were “just following orders,” they’ll say, or they’ll claim they didn’t have a choice. The good Germans were liars: you always have a choice. And the “good Germans” of Trump’s America are no different.
Richard N. Ojeda, II:
What's up everybody? So here I am sitting in my car, and of course, yesterday was when we got the word that our president thinks that those who have served this country in combat–those who have died, those who have been shot down, those who have been captured–are losers and suckers. I'm going to tell you, it doesn't surprise me one bit coming from Donald Trump. The mere fact that he's only went to Dover Air Force Base four times in almost four years, and really, it was really just nothing more than a photo op. He doesn't care about those of us that have ever served this country or those that are currently in uniform, and it shows with his actions.
Richard N. Ojeda, II:
Him and his entire family should be banned from Arlington National Cemetery or any national cemetery for that matter. He should never be allowed and asked to put a wreath out for anyone. He only does these things for photo ops, he doesn't care about our military. It's time that people wake your asses up and realize that this guy is not for you. This guy is an absolute... He's the head of a criminal organization is all it is.
Sarah Kendzior:
I'm Sarah Kendzior, the author of the best selling books, The View from Flyover Country and Hiding in Plain Sight.
Andrea Chalupa:
I'm Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones.
Sarah Kendzior:
This is Gaslit Nation, a podcast covering corruption in the Trump administration and rising autocracy around the world. Today's episode is called “The Good Germans”. Over the past five years and well before that, there have been countless studies of the psychology of Donald Trump. They come from journalists, acquaintances, academics, family members. He has been a public figure for over 40 years, and his actions are easy to predict. We know he is sadistic, we know he is without conscience, we know he sees all relationships as transactional, and all human beings as disposable.
Sarah Kendzior:
This is well known and understood. What we don't understand is how people sit by and watch, and why people who could have stopped him and his crime cult and can slow it down right now have refused to do so. These people are the Good Germans of America, and you will find them in big tech, big business, the military industrial complex, the mainstream media, the intelligence community, the Vichy Democrats who refuse to use the full powers of the House, and in the GOP.
Sarah Kendzior:
Although Republicans have become overtly bad Germans for years, since they are fully on board with Trump's white supremacist crime cult. The phrase “good Germans” refers to the Germans living in the Third Reich who enabled Hitler and his Nazi regime, yet remained in denial that they were doing so. Or alternatively, they did know, but they put on a show of respectability. They “were just following orders," They'll say, or they'll claim they didn't have a choice.
Sarah Kendzior:
Fascism is about the limitation of choices. The way to prevent fascism is early, before you run out of options. Unbelievably, the US is still on the early side of fascism, though it is much farther along than we were even a year ago. That means people with power still have a choice and they are choosing cowardice, complicity and cruelty. This is a choice that they are making. They made their choice and we at Gaslit Nation made ours.
Sarah Kendzior:
The other day, someone brought up the famous quote where Trump said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose his supporters. I wrote back, “the real question of that quote though, isn't why do his followers support him? It's who gave him the gun? It's who loads the gun? It's who refuses to arrest him after the murder? It's who creates the propaganda to whitewash the murder? That's why he can shoot anyone on Fifth Avenue.”
Sarah Kendzior:
That's what we're going to talk about today. This is a conversation we have here on Gaslit Nation every week, so I'm sure we'll end up forgetting some people, but for an encyclopedia of enablers, check out our archives at gaslitnationpod.com. Andrea, what are your thoughts?
Andrea Chalupa:
Well, I was just reading about a chilling documentary that is coming out at the Venice Film Festival and I'll read from this article from The Daily Beast about this documentary called Final Account by the filmmaker Luke Holland, where he confronts the last living generation of Germans in Hitler's Third Reich. What he discovers is both shocking and terrifying.
Andrea Chalupa:
The film opens with a quote from Primo Levy, the writer and Holocaust survivor who said, "Monsters exist. But there are too few to be truly dangerous. Ordinary men are more dangerous." That's what Holland's film sets out to prove. We will link to that so you can learn more about The Final Account in the show notes. Look out for that great article, a write up about it in the Daily Beast. History has shown us how we got here. History, of course, is a mirror for us to understand human nature and to understand the utter lack of creativity when it comes to the authoritarian playbook.
Andrea Chalupa:
Sarah and I are not reading tea leaves; we're reading history. That's why we've been ahead on all these great big stories. We're not an underground dancing cauldron of witches or whatever; we study authoritarianism. We study history. That's why it was sadly easy for us to be ahead of the news and call all this stuff out, because the authoritarian playbook, it doesn't change, and authoritarians depend on complicit actors, authoritarians depend on good Germans in order to come to power, consolidate power and stay in power.
Andrea Chalupa:
So we're going to read, also, from this incredible essay that has been making the rounds during the Trump regime, and this is a 1941 essay for Harper's by the great journalist, Dorothy Thompson, who met Hitler–interviewed Hitler–and tried to warn us very early on about Hitler. In her 1941 essay, which is a game we can all play, look around our lives, look around whatever organizations we're in, and play this game. And the game is Who Goes Nazi?
Andrea Chalupa:
She imagines this dinner party. It's a night full of sparkling people. She goes to the room one by one and imagines which of these dinner guests would turn Nazi if they could. In the end of this essay, she sums it up perfectly. As you hear this, think about the people in your life that you have to deal with, whether you want to or not, who fit some of these descriptions. I know I know some of these people. If I know some of these people in real life today, I'm sure you do too.
Andrea Chalupa:
Now, from Who Goes Nazi? “It's fun. A Macabre.”–how do you say that word, Sarah, macabre?
Sarah Kendzior:
I guess. As a Stephen King fan, I should know, macabre. I don't know. Aren't you married to a French guy? Go ask him. [laughs]
Andrea Chalupa:
I'm going to put a French twist on it: “It's fun, a macabre sort of fun. This parlor game of who goes Nazi, and it simplifies things, asking the question in regard to specific personalities; kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi. They may be the gentle philosopher whose name is in the blue book, or Bill, from City College, to whom democracy gave a chance to design airplanes. You'll never make Nazis out of them. But the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success, they would all go Nazi in a crisis.
Andrea Chalupa:
“Believe me, nice people don't go Nazi. Their race, color, creed, or social condition is not the criterion. It is something in them. Those who haven't anything in them to tell them what they like, and what they don't, whether it is breeding or happiness or wisdom or a code, however old fashioned or however modern, go Nazi. It's an amusing game. Try it at the next big party you go to.”
Sarah Kendzior:
Wow. Well, they do not make them like that anymore in journalism. Let's say that. On that note, should we start discussing the modern-
Andrea Chalupa:
Here's a montage of all the people that have gone Nazi!
Sarah Kendzior:
Not even all. If we did all, it would be like a Gaslit Nation 48 hour marathon, if we could contain it to that. So, the media is one of the biggest problems we have in this phenomenon of the Good Germans. Andrea has talked many times about Walter Duranty, the reporter-
Andrea Chalupa:
I made a film about it! Mr. Jones.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yes, and made a film about it, Mr. Jones, about Walter Duranty, the New York Times reporter who covered up Stalin's genocide in the 1930s. None of this is new. This phenomenon of reporters covering up dictatorial regimes acting as propagandas and also the sort of rare, outspoken voices–like what Andrea just read–who condemn it. We're reliving history over and over again.
Sarah Kendzior:
Now, in terms of the media, obviously Fox News is well known as an appendage of the Trump administration. But the most dangerous outlets are the ones who pretend to be on the side of objectivity or accountability, while in reality printing dangerous propaganda to enable autocrats and to justify their most violent behavior. Of these outlets, the New York Times is by far the worst of the group.
Sarah Kendzior:
The New York Times is highbrow Breitbart, which is probably why their reporters tweet Breitbart articles. You see profiteering, like reporter Michael Schmidt withholding vital national security information for his book deal, and he is hardly alone in that endeavor. The book publishing industry is full of Good Germans too, though we don't always know their names.
Sarah Kendzior:
You also have the court stenographers. The worst of these is Maggie Haberman, a palace intrigue reporter who functions as an in house PR flack for the Trump regime. Like all Trump PR flacks, she covers up crime with scandal. Her mother, Nancy Haberman, was literally a PR flack for Trump and for Jared Kushner. She helped manage their affairs at the PR firm of Howard Rubenstein. Rubinstein's clients have included not only Trump and Kushner, but Rupert Murdoch, Adnan Khashoggi, Jeffrey Epstein, and other central corrupt actors in the Trump Crime Cult, which solidified in the 1980s around the time of Iran-Contra.
Sarah Kendzior:
So again, you see the same names over and over and you see these dynastic ties. As we've said before, the glue holding together this crime cult is nepotism, and Haberman is an example of that as well at the New York Times. You don't have just her mother, but her father, long time New York Times employee and former columnist Clyde Haberman.
Sarah Kendzior:
Clyde Haberman's pieces also served to whitewash Trump, playing down the threat he and his circle post. He also wrote quite a bit about Giuliani, another key figure in the Trump Crime Cult, including a very interesting 1998 piece praising him for making World Trade Center 7 an ideal crisis center headquarters because it was, "Bulletproof and bomb-proof."
Sarah Kendzior:
In retrospect, this column comes off like a sick little in-joke. We're going to put a link to this on our Patreon page so you could read it yourself. I have a lot of thoughts on this and a lot of thoughts about 9/11, but I'm going to stop here because no good paragraph ever began with, “I have a lot of thoughts about 9/11”, plus, we have a lot of enablers to get to. So, Andrea, who are the worst enablers in media in your view?
Andrea Chalupa:
Well, obviously the New York Times helped us get here with their breathless coverage of Hillary's non-scandal email scandal even though it's since come out that Ivanka Trump and Melania Trump both use private email in their government work in official capacity, and yet that's not running on the front page of the New York Times and there's no breathless coverage of it. And of course, there's the infamous October 31st, 2016 New York Times non-investigation investigation, reassuring everyone right before the 2016 election that the FBI saw no ties between Trump and Russia. And lo and behold, here we are, all these years later.
Andrea Chalupa:
The New York Times has been reliable in terms of being on the side of abuse of power. There's just this weird normalization of violent white supremist groups. For years now, the FBI has been saying that white terrorism is the greatest threat of terrorism that we're facing today. Yet, you constantly see this normalization throughout all these years.
Andrea Chalupa:
There was the dapper Nazi pieces they were filing when Trump first won, trying to show, you know, “Nazis are just like us”. Then of course, their opinion section gave voice to a lot of nutty, far-right folks that already have Fox News that they could go to. The New York Times decided they could pay them and give them legitimacy by writing for the opinions section. I'm talking, of course, climate science denialist, Bret Stephens, and that's, of course, extremely dangerous.
Andrea Chalupa:
I want to go deeper into the white supremacy. Here's some stuff that's been caught just recently. The New York Times refers to Patriot Prayer as, "A local group that promotes Christianity and small government that regularly clashes with activists." Christopher Mathias of Huffington Post points out, "Why New York Times, why? We've gone over this so many times. You don't just take far-right groups descriptions of themselves at face value. You accurately describe Patriot Prayer as a far-right group, yes, but their sole function is Neo-fascist street violence, not promoting Christianity."
Andrea Chalupa:
April Glaser, who writes tech investigations for NBC News, wrote, "I don't understand how the editorial standards at the New York Times would permit calling Patriot Prayer a, ‘Local group that promotes Christianity and small government.’ And anti-fascist demonstrators, militants that launched armed violent protest. Both are factual mischaracterizations." Then you have their media columnist, Ben Smith of BuzzFeed, who attacks investigative journalist Ronan Farrow, and yet legitimizes scientific racist, Andrew Sullivan in his media column. That's a big waste of money there.
Andrea Chalupa:
As you mentioned, Michael Schmidt's book, cashing in on withholding information from the public, the whole investigation into Russia and Trump was a sham, which of course, we were pointing out in the show for so long. It would have been nice if Michael Schmidt had backed us up two years ago when we were saying all this and people were attacking us for saying it.
Andrea Chalupa:
If you're wondering, how did it get so bad? It's because of the hyper capitalism of major media corporations like the New York Times profiting off of the decline of our democracy in real time.
Sarah Kendzior:
Although, on that note, one thing I hear people say a lot when they're just looking out into this hellhole, and trying to make sense of this aversion of the media to call out obvious crimes, obvious lies, obvious authoritarianism. They say, “oh, all they care about is money and ratings”. I wish that were true. I wish it were that simple, but it's about something much darker, because the thing is, you get ratings and money for reporting about crimes just like you would if you are covering it up.
Sarah Kendzior:
With Trump and his cohort, you really have it all. You have the mafia, you have spies, you have sex crimes, you have treason. These are the classic topics that bring in mass audiences, and obviously, there's a deep hunger for this information, but you will not see them reporting it. You see them skirting the topics, fluttering around it, or revealing it only after it's too late. If they know the Mueller Probe is a deeply flawed, borderline sham of an investigation–which is what we were saying all along–they will wait until it is ended and until the damage is done to bring that fact forward.
Sarah Kendzior:
We're going to talk about other examples of that. They will bar people who have expertise and decades of experience covering these topics. During the 2016 election, David Cay Johnston, who had covered Trump probably more than anybody else in the media, except possibly Wayne Barrett, who also went through the same thing they knew about his financial crimes, they knew about his mafia ties. They were essentially unable to get works published. They would get cable media appearances canceled. I also had this happen to me, because I was talking about authoritarianism and the threat of authoritarianism and kleptocracy.
Sarah Kendzior:
We had Tim Snyder on our show a few weeks ago talking about how suddenly the New York Times would not publish anything he wrote about authoritarianism if it related to Trump, even though he's a leading expert on this topic. So there is a darker agenda here. The thing that I just wonder about is, why are you participating in this? Because again, there is a choice. You could do what we're doing, you could do what Tim Snyder or David Cay Johnston or all these other good journalists are doing.
Sarah Kendzior:
One thing I should add is that it's more productive to raise people up who are doing a good job than to endlessly talk about those who are doing a bad job. This Good Germans episode is a Gaslit Nation special, because we feel like names need to be named. But also, I want to get into the psychology of this. I just don't understand; what is the appeal? We know that they are uplifting white supremacists. We know that they are legitimizing a mafia state, and we know that these activities are bringing about the decline and probable collapse of the American Republic.
Sarah Kendzior:
So, what's in it for them? What's in it for them for the long run? That's what I wonder about is the psychology of that choice. Because with Trump, it's very obvious; he's evil, he's a psychopath, he's greedy, he wants money, he wants power, he wants immunity from prosecution after being a career criminal all his life. This isn't complicated. The rest of them, when you're handed that, you're handed this life, you're born into wealth and privilege, and this is the avenue that you are choosing. And again, it's not everyone. You brought Ronan Farrow who also was born in wealth and privilege and chose a different avenue, chose a moral avenue. But I just... I don't understand it. There's just such a depth of heartlessness to it. The bad explanation of ratings and greed isn't even the worst of what they are willing to do and what they are willing to abet, because with coronavirus, they are willing to abet mass death, and they absolutely know it, and they are fine with it. And that is why they are the Good Germans.
Andrea Chalupa:
Yeah, well, it's just simple power. When you're on the side of power, that protects your own power. It's access journalism. It's not just profiteering in real time, but it's access. They're protecting their access to all these stories. If they were to come out and blow the lid on the Mueller investigation being a sham as it was going on, there could have been a big dustup for them, that could have hurt some of the other stories they're working on. But they simply didn't want to rock the boat. That's the problem, they do not want to rock the boat. They want to continue clinging on to this sheen of respectability and being this big establishment force that they are the newspaper of record, when really they're just the newspaper of abuse of power, again and again, right?
Sarah Kendzior:
Yeah.
Andrea Chalupa:
Access journalism is extraordinarily dangerous and innocent lives–the most vulnerable–are always the ones who are at the greatest risk. I made a film about this. Mr. Jones is a cautionary tale or horrific nightmare about the very real dangers of access journalism. It's the same forces playing out today.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yep. From there–I want to make sure we get through these topics–we'll move along to a favorite topic of the New York Times which is military violence, which therefore, this is why they solicit op-eds from people like Tom Cotton, who encouraged the military to fire on American civilians. So the military–not all of them, but the leadership in many ways–have been Good Germans for Donald Trump.
Sarah Kendzior:
You may remember the mantra of “the generals will save us” and the praise for Mattis and McMaster and Kelly as the adults in the room. There were never adults in the room, there were only accomplices. This premise was idiotic to start with. All of these men had track records of inhumanity. But it is even more dangerous now. The Atlantic has published a new article that is supposed to be controversial, even though it only adds new anecdotes to a massive amount of information in the public domain showing Trump's lifelong disdain and often hatred of the U.S. military, and I stres “U.S.” here.
Sarah Kendzior:
We saw his denigration of Khizr Khan and the gold star Khan family. His vicious insults against John McCain, because of his service, and not necessarily for other reasons, it was the service itself that enraged him. We saw the cruelty with which he treated military widow, Myeshia Johnson, the wife of Sgt. La David Johnson, whose name Trump could not remember when he was supposed to make a condolence call.
Sarah Kendzior:
Back in 2018, I wrote an article for Fast Company laying out Trump's philosophy about the military and sacrifice: “For all his macho posturing and expectations about his beloved generals, Trump, a draft dodger, who referred to avoiding STDs as, ‘my personal Vietnam’, has long treated veterans and their loved ones with contempt. This contempt is not rooted in an aversion to the military as an institution, Trump bloated the military budget and has been striking the Middle East while threatening North Korea and other states. But in aversion to the concept of service to one's nation itself.
Sarah Kendzior:
“Serving one's country is a sacrifice and sacrifice terrifies Trump. The idea that one would risk oneself out of love, loyalty or duty is alien to him. Sacrifice to Trump is a sucker's bet, a gamble beyond his comprehension, but one he is all too willing to let other Americans make.”
Sarah Kendzior:
So this is just the same shit that's in The Atlantic article, right down to Trump literally using the word “sucker” to describe people who enlist in the military. There's no reason to question the veracity of that article, even though it's written by Jeffrey Goldberg, the liar who helped get us into the Iraq war. What we see in that article though, is just how far these modern Good Germans will go.
Sarah Kendzior:
In The Atlantic article, Goldberg describes Kelly and Trump standing at the grave of Kelly's son, Robert, killed at age 29 in Afghanistan when he stepped on a landmine while leading a platoon of Marines. Trump, while standing by Robert Kelly's grave, turned directly to his father and said, "I don't get it. What was in it for them?" Goldberg writes. Trump went on to call those who serve in the military “losers and suckers”. The silence of these military Good Germans, even when Trump is belittling their dead family members to their faces is deeply unnerving in its own right, but also because the military may play a key role in the chaotic months ahead, particularly after the November election in which Trump will refuse to concede and will encourage civic violence, which he is already doing.
Sarah Kendzior:
This leads us to the question of who will the military serve? The Constitution or Trump? Andrea, you have thoughts on this?
Andrea Chalupa:
The military knew what they were doing when Esper and others accompanied Trump to the church for him to do that big fascist pageantry Bible stunt where he held up a Bible. They knew what they were doing. If there wasn't a big backlash against it, we'd probably have more military leaders by his side for more fascist pageantry. I think we're all just waiting to see if we're going to have a free and fair election in November. If we don't… The military is just going to stay in line, like they have been so far. I don't see anybody... When you have authoritarian regimes, it's always the security forces that you need to pull somehow to your side. They see the situation as hopeless, so they cross over to the side of the people.
Andrea Chalupa:
But, I just think these guys are going to stay in line and they'll give some sort of statements that are going to give false hope to people, but we're going to see more of the same should Trump steal this election, I believe.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yeah, and it's just a frightening thing, because of course, a military coup–I don't even know what to call this because our country was already hijacked by a Kremlin asset and is being stripped down and sold off for parts, so I don't know if this would just be a taking back of the country. Anyway, you don't want your country occupied by the military. That's not a good idea, it's not a good solution. It's something we want to try to avoid at all means. But of course, you don't want your country to descend into full fledged autocracy.
Sarah Kendzior:
And yes, it always comes down to the military, to the security services, but also to the police. As we mentioned on previous shows, the American police, which has always been a broken institution, it's been an institution where those officers who wanted to speak out against brutality in their ranks are forbidden from doing so, heavily discouraged from doing so. The thin blue line is what creates the Good German mentality within the police system. But they've been increasingly reminding me of the Militsiya that you see in former Soviet authoritarian regimes, this kind of hybrid of what we would think of in America as a police force mixed with military components, tied to a centralized state.
Sarah Kendzior:
I know you had some thoughts on that, on the role of the police going ahead?
Andrea Chalupa:
Oh, yeah, definitely. Because this is what helped Hitler in his rise. There were Nazis in local police forces that were providing cover for Hitler's brown shirts. They're all working in tandem and we're seeing the same white terrorism play out today. From the Guardian: “White supremacists and militias have infiltrated police across the US, report says. A former FBI agent has documented links between serving officers and racist militant activities in more than a dozen states.”
Andrea Chalupa:
When you see police brutality, remember police brutality is a recruitment tool. We've always said that. The sadists join forces so they can act out their racist sadism. That's how genocides are carried out. Who else is going to carry out a genocide for you?
Andrea Chalupa:
This whole threat of white terrorism has been around, obviously, for a while now, and it's just reaching ahead. From PBS NewsHour, an article from October of 2016, just before the 2016 presidential election: “In a 2006 bulletin, the FBI detailed the threat of white nationalists and skinheads infiltrating police in order to disrupt investigations against fellow members and recruit other supremacists. The bulletin was released during a period of scandal for many law enforcement agencies throughout the country, including a neo-Nazi gang formed by members of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department who harassed Black and Latino communities. Similar investigations revealed officers and entire agencies with hate group ties in Illinois, Ohio and Texas.
Andrea Chalupa:
“Much of the bulletin has been redacted, but in it, the FBI identified white supremacists and law enforcement as a concern because of their access to both, ‘restricted areas vulnerable to sabotage.’ And elected officials or people who could be seen as, ‘potential targets for violence.’ The memo also warned of, ‘ghost skins.’–gate group members who don't overtly display their beliefs in order to, ‘blend into society’ and covertly advance white supremacist causes.
Andrea Chalupa:
“At least one white supremacist group has reportedly encouraged ghost skins to seek positions in law enforcement for the capability of alerting skinhead crews of pending investigative action against them, the report read. Problems with white supremacists and law enforcement have surfaced since that report. In 2014, two Florida officers including a deputy police chief were fired after an FBI informant outed them as members of the Ku Klux Klan. It marked the second time within five years that the agency uncovered an officer's membership in the KKK. Several agencies nationwide have also launched investigations into personnel who may not be formal hate group members, but face allegations of race-based misconduct.”
Andrea Chalupa:
Ugh. So, tes, this crisis has reached a tipping point, and you see it, the wider culture and how there's no justice for the victims of police brutality. As Joy Reid pointed out on Twitter, Breonna Taylor's ex was offered a plea deal in July, no jail time if he would accuse Breonna of being part of an organized crime syndicate. This is a blatant, breathtaking attempt to justify her shooting death and exonerate the police involved.
Andrea Chalupa:
More recently, Joshua Potash on Twitter wrote, "Can't really think of a clearer example of police collaborating with the far-right than Proud Boys”–a far-right white supremist hate group–”illegally covering their license plates in Oregon, then getting on the highway, driving for miles and assaulting people in Salem." Meanwhile, a report found that 93% of Black Lives Matter demonstrations were peaceful. As we've said before in Gaslit Nation, Black people are being very, very patient given the crises they're being hit with right now, and it's the white terrorism, it's the police brutality, which is a recruitment tool for these white terrorists to consolidate their power.
Andrea Chalupa:
Whether we pull off a miracle and we have a free and fair election, and Biden wins and gets sworn in as president, we're still left with this white terrorism.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yeah. No, I was going to say the same. Part of the crisis in this, of course, is that white supremacist violence is big business and it's intractable from the dark money crisis and from all the other crises that we discuss on the show of transnational organized crime, of the GOP seeking to have a one-party state autocracy.
Sarah Kendzior:
You see this, really, in the NRA, which has functioned as a dark money machine, basically allowing Russian mafia money to be circulated through its coffers and then deposited into the campaigns of Republican candidates, who may or may not know its original source, but it’s certainly one of the reasons they didn't want an investigation. We're finally seeing some pushback against the NRA, but it created a culture. It didn't create a vigilante culture, but it helped bring what had always existed as an American vigilante culture into the mainstream and into big business.
Sarah Kendzior:
I've been watching this. In 2016, this was something I worried a lot about then, because I would go to Trump rallies as a journalist and talk to or overhear supporters. They would talk about the expenditure they made in buying all this weaponry, all this equipment and how they were waiting for Civil War II so that they could have the chance to let loose.
Sarah Kendzior:
This is a financial investment. There's this tendency of publications, especially like the New York Times– people living in these very elite, urban enclaves–to portray the gun toting pickup driver as like salt of the Earth, as just a poor woebegone citizen. It's not. It’s people, much more along the lines of Donald Trump Jr. It's people who... or Eric Greitens. It's people who are pumping a lot of money into having that image and into creating a culture of violence, where violence is supposed to be ranked to a rugged individualism that's not that at all. It's part of a broader corporate apparatus that's backed by the Right Wing and the Republican party and dates back many decades.
Sarah Kendzior:
I feel like we should move on to you, first. Do you want to talk about the role of big tech? Because that also ties into this.
Andrea Chalupa:
Exactly. My goodness. Big tech, more like, big Good Germans. Where do we even start?
Sarah Kendzior:
Zuckerberg! Sorry.
Andrea Chalupa:
Obviously. A lot of companies made money off of the Nazi regime and the Soviets, and Facebook is carrying on that tradition as we've seen. So are companies like Google. I'm going to read some highlights here. April Glaser, again of tech investigations for NBC News, points out: “Google has drastically rolled back its diversity work due to fears of being perceived as anti-conservative. Sources say employees have been pushed out, programs cut and workers have been discouraged from even using the word diversity anymore.” We will link to her great reporting on that in the show notes for this episode.
Andrea Chalupa:
Her reporting goes on to point out that “Facebook's excuse that it kept calls for violence in Kenosha up because Facebook's moderators weren't aware of how militias operate is hard to buy. Facebook has been providing space for far-right militia activity for a while. I reported this over a year ago.” Then The Guardian is warning us of another white terrorist threat which is the xenophobic mass murdering mafia state of the Kremlin. From the Guardian: "Russian agency created fake left-wing news outlets with fictional editors. Facebook says Internet Research Agency also hired real unwitting freelance reporters, an operation Facebook has removed.” So Facebook's trying to get some good PR for itself by taking care of an obvious scourge,b ut it's really not enough given how the far-right is a forest fire on their platform and Kremlin bots are all over that, just like they were in 2016.
Andrea Chalupa:
The New York Times: "FBI warned Facebook and Twitter that the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency set up a network of fake user accounts and a website." Facebook doesn't get points for finally listening to the FBI here. Really, it does not. Now, Kyle Rittenhouse–who if he were black, he would not be alive today. Kyle Rittenhouse was decked out with an assault rifle. He shot two protesters, and he and his white terrorist buddies were preparing for this on a Facebook page posting a call to arms to drive over to Kenosha with this purpose, essentially.
Andrea Chalupa:
All of this has been known for years, for several years, right? We've known about the white terrorist threat for at least a decade now that authorities have been warning us and big tech has been acting like they see nothing, like Hogan's Heroes, that's how big tech's been, "I see nothing." From the Washington post, from 2018: “Several incidents in recent years have shown that when online hate goes offline, it can be deadly.
Andrea Chalupa:
“White supremacist, Wade Michael Page posted in online forums tied to hate before he went on to murder six people at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin in 2012.” Okay. “Prosecutors said Dylann Roof self-radicalized online before he murdered nine people at a black church in South Carolina in 2015. Robert Bowers, accused of murdering 11 elderly worshippers at a Pennsylvania synagogue in October, had been active on Gab, a Twitter-like site used by white supremacists.”
Andrea Chalupa:
And just a few weeks ago, again, this article is from 2018, “a 30 year old D.C. man, who described himself as a white nationalist was arrested on a gun charge after concerned relatives alerted police to his violent outbursts, including saying that the victims at the synagogue deserved it. Police say the man was online friends with Bowers. ‘The influence of the internet in fostering white supremacist ideas can't be underestimated’, said Shannon Martinez, who helps people leave extremist groups as program director of the Free Radicals Project.
Andrea Chalupa:
"’The digital world gives white supremacists a safe space to explore extreme ideologies and intensify their hate without consequences," she said. ‘Their rage can grow under their radar until the moment when it explodes in the real world.’”
Sarah Kendzior:
Yep, and they're often rewarded for it. I think Rittenhouse at this point has raised something like $100,000. We've seen similar things in cases where officers have murdered an unarmed Black teenager or Black man–this happened with Darren Wilson and Michael Brown–there's an incentive and then of course you have the mainstream media apparatus contributing to that incentive, demonizing victims and sanctifying, often, these white men who kill, no matter how blatant they are, no matter how evil they are.
Sarah Kendzior:
I used to think the way to change that is, you change the industry. But honestly, I feel like the industry is so, so deeply broken, so deeply immoral, that the thing to do is back independent media. It's pack up your bags and leave and start your own thing and I've seen a lot of journalists doing this. Actually, I extend this to any industry. I think if you're unwilling to critique your own industry then you're going to end up complicit in these crimes, and that's what we see across the board. We see it in tech, we see it in politics, we see it in the police force, we see it in the military; it's silence. It's silence as violence and as complicity.
Sarah Kendzior:
Eventually, one day, as these horrors accumulate, you will wake up and your conscience will be eating away at you, and you will be more vulnerable than you were before these atrocities began. Because when you see people turn on each other, when you see people sanction this kind of overt, relentless cruelty and violence, you're not actually protecting yourself by joining their side. You might think so at the time, but look at the history of these regimes, at the Nazi regime, at Milošević's regime, at Mussolini, I mean it just... every example ends in collapse, ends in mass violence, ends badly for nearly everyone, except for a few profiteers.
Sarah Kendzior:
It is absolutely necessary to be brutally honest, to tell the truth, to not have blind loyalty or blind allegiances to parties or industries or prestige or what have you, that's hollow. When things collapse at this rate, when institutions are as untrustworthy as they are, what you're left with are your morals. What you're left with is your conscience and the way you treat people, and that is your choice.
Sarah Kendzior:
When I talked about everyone has a choice in the beginning of the episode, that is what I mean, because they can take everything else from you. They can take your material possessions, they can try to destroy your career, your livelihood, what have you, but they can't take who you are as a human being. They can't take how you treat people and they can't take away what you will stand up for and what you will stand up against. That's up to you, no matter how difficult that process is, and it's not easy at all, though it is easier when you find a good friend, which is why we have the show and why we have worked together and encouraged other people to kind of do some soul searching, figure out what they stand for and then fight for what they see as the side of good.
Sarah Kendzior:
I have stuff to say about evil people, but, did you have anything to add?
Andrea Chalupa:
Yeah, I want to say, use your power of free will, because you are always free even under fascism. Under tyranny, your mind remains free. There's a lot of beautiful stories of resistance from the Soviet Union. People smuggling art and novels and that exists, of course, under the Nazi regime. No matter what happens in America, it's going to exist here. Your mind will always be free, and never forget that, and always fight to remind yourself of that.
Andrea Chalupa:
Go use the power–your immense, unlimited power of your free will–to go to gaslitnationpod.com and check out our 2020 Survival Guide. Look down at that list. It’s your checklist of how we're going to fight back, especially turn your attention to local state races, because that is where we're going to pull out this fascism by the root. You want to go to the bottom of the 2020 Survival Guide, where we list all these local state races, turning Pennsylvania blue. I'm talking about the local government there, making it a blue trifecta. Same with North Carolina, Iowa, Texas. This could really happen if we put our support towards these local state races.
Andrea Chalupa:
Understand that we have a lot of power in our hands right now to confront this menace, and we're going to do it by going to the 2020 Survival Guide on gaslitnationpod.com. You can find it on our homepage. I want to add, a really proud Good German is Tucker Carlson on Fox News, that led the rehabilitation tour for murderer Kyle Rittenhouse. That was just lockstep with each other, how that big pushback, and a big surge of support, which was just absolutely gut wrenching, sickening. That's what we're talking about in terms of this fever dream of brown shirts consolidating their power through their terrorism.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yep, exactly. He is part of this apparatus of right-wing extremists that have increasingly consolidated their power and not just through business, but through media. There are a few key families that have been gutting the US for 40 years that are the GOP's biggest donors and are key to this endeavor. Among them are the Koch brothers, the DeVos' and Prince family, which includes, of course, Betsy DeVos, the Secretary of "Education"–or the gutting of education–and Eric Prince, her relative who is a mercenary, very much a pioneer in the mainstreaming of militia organizations and of paramilitary troops and just an all around evil actor.
Sarah Kendzior:
The Mercer family, the patriarch of whom thinks that nuclear radiation has health benefits, so, great that he's advising Trump. Sheldon Adelson and his family which are basically buying the Trump admin foreign policy and so on and so forth. Jane Mayers' book, Dark Money, is probably the best source on this. There have been other authors who have covered this. Citizens United helped make it much worse in terms of our politics.
Sarah Kendzior:
As I said before, these kinds of families don't quite fit the "Good German profile",when they're so openly and proudly evil. They're laying this out as a platform. They're telling you what they're going to do. They used to kind of hide behind a veneer of respectability, of tradition, of being part of a Republican lineage. They don't quite anymore.
Sarah Kendzior:
The question again becomes about enablers and accomplices, and we do not see those strictly on the GOP side at all. We are seeing them throughout the leadership, and especially throughout the donors of the Democratic Party. And I'm just going to give one example–maybe you have your own–which is Michael Bloomberg, who of course came crashing into the 2020 election to bulldoze the chance of Progressives enforcing accountability should they take office. He is an accomplice to this GOP crime cult. He is a billionaire who pretends to be a Democrat in order to stop the people who are looking out for average Americans so he can protect the interests of billionaires like himself.
Sarah Kendzior:
He has lied about donating to help democrats win the 2020 election. His real goal was to get rid of people like Warren and Sanders, who wanted to enact a wealth tax that, had it been implemented, he would have barely noticed. Biden, to his credit, is also proposing some variation on this tax on the ultra wealthy which we desperately need in the time of pandemic, in a great depression level economy. Should by some miracle Biden get into office and actually manage to stay there, he needs to be pushed hard to keep that promise and to make it much more along the lines of what Warren and Sanders had been proposing, just for the survival of our nation and for the survival of individual people whose life depends on being able to pay their rent, to buy food, and all these other things that we were already having difficulty doing before the pandemic, before Trump, but now we're really at a critical juncture.
Sarah Kendzior:
This is a cruel person, Michael Bloomberg, who is regularly excused by the Democratic elite, invited to give speeches at the DNC where candidates who champion the interests of the impoverished, like Julián Castro, are left out. It's disgusting. Michael Bloomberg is a Good German.
Andrea Chalupa:
Given the massive rate of income inequality today, there's a lot of Good Germans across the business sector. Jeff Bezos, you could argue, given what he pays in taxes and given how much he earns. Basically, all the billionaires that became even bigger billionaires during this horrific crisis. We're reaching depression level, we're at depression level unemployment, and it's only going to get worse. Yeah, those guys are raking it in and income inequality is a human rights crisis. That's what we have to remember. All those super billionaires are most definitely Good Germans for sure.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yeah, and with Bezos, it's really notable that he has struggled against the Trump administration in terms of threats to his personal safety, in terms of being blackmailed, of being threatened by the Saudi regime, who we really should be discussing more given some of the new revelations about 9/11. But anyway, if Jeff Bezos is having trouble warding off this transnational crime syndicate–as he discussed in a Medium article that came out, I don't know, about a year, a year and a half ago–what is the average person going through? What is, say, Alexander Vindman going through? Marie Yovanovitch? All these... Reality Winner.
Sarah Kendzior:
All of these people who have stepped forward, who come from much more modest means, have fewer resources. What are they going through? That's the question that doesn't excuse the inaction of all of these people in positions of power who we've mentioned, because like we said, there's a choice. Alexander Vindman makes one choice, and John Kelly, fellow military official, makes another terrible choice. There's a choice to be made, but damn, I feel like that's one of the more under-reported aspects of them, is that literally the richest person in the world can nearly be held captive by Trump and his crime syndicate. That's why I never want to hear anything about incompetence or stupidity or “they don't know what they're doing”. They know exactly what they're doing and they're honestly the best in the world at doing evil things.
Sarah Kendzior:
You know, it is a coalition of corruption. It is the absolute worst and most brutal people–oligarchs, plutocrats, dictators, mercenaries–gathered together in a time of climate change and a time of a pandemic, where we are more vulnerable than before, to pilfer and profiteer and bring the world into a network of linked autocratic mafia states. That's what they're doing. That's what we told you they're going to do unless you stood up early and fought it hard and didn't deny that it was happening.
Andrea Chalupa:
Sarah and I like to say the Good Germans also include all the people who like to write to us and say, "I thought you were nuts."
Sarah Kendzior:
Oh my God.
Andrea Chalupa:
"Turns out, you were correct." Yeah, you guys are Good Germans, too.
Sarah Kendzior:
Think about this when you write it. We get this every day. We get, "Oh my God, I thought you were this raving lunatic conspiracy theorist who had no idea what she's talking about. But it turns out you have a 100% track record of accuracy on everything." Andrea and I came in with decades of expertise. We didn't just suddenly switch to studying autocratic regimes, or studying the former Soviet Union. I have a PhD. I devoted a decade–more, a decade and a half of my life–to focusing on Uzbekistan. You don't do that when you have some sort of careerist ambition. No one makes a killing off of–a monetary killing–off of Uzbekistan. I did it because I care about this issue, and it deeply troubled me.
Sarah Kendzior:
The rise of autocracy had deeply troubled me. That's what I'd studied as my career, and I had also had experience in New York tablet journalism. I live in the impoverished Midwest, so on and so forth. Obviously, I know what I'm talking about. Andrea spent, like, a decade and a half of her life writing a movie about Stalin. Again, you don't do that for fun or for profit. You do that because you care. You do that because you understand the threat of dictatorship and you understand the social and political conditions that create it.
Sarah Kendzior:
So when we saw it on the rise in 2016, of course we knew what we were talking about. We had been not anticipating this moment our whole lives, but prepared for it–mentally prepared for it–because we had read so much and seen so much with our own eyes in authoritarian states over our lifetime as democracy began to crumble. So you have to think, well, why were we doubted? One, these media outlets we mentioned before put out a barrage of hit pieces against us. Everywhere from Jared Kushner's Observer to The Atlantic to The New Republic, it was just ridiculous, in which all of our credentials, experience and track record of accuracy was played down.
Sarah Kendzior:
But one thing that I keep thinking about is that if it's this hard for me as a white woman with a PhD, and a book–The View from Flyover Country, about the decline of American institutions, and expertise on the exact subject at hand–to be listened to by power brokers, because I do feel like the American people have always listened to me. Their response has always been favorable. It's these power brokers who either look the other way or denigrated and insulted me.
Sarah Kendzior:
If it's that hard for me, how hard is it for Muslims and Latinos and Black Americans and Native Americans, these direct targets of the Trump administration who from the very beginning, just like we were, were screaming about what was coming and that their lives were at risk, their families were at direct risk, and again, not taken seriously?
Sarah Kendzior:
Their warnings, which were founded on knowledge, on personal knowledge and history, but also on research, were dismissed. It was like, "Oh, you're being emotional because Trump's a racist." It's like, well, yeah, you're fucking emotional! He encourages white supremacists to murder people. You get emotional about that. But that's also, this is knowledge. This is wisdom that should have been utilized by people in power. They also were not taken seriously.
Sarah Kendzior:
If you want to come and praise the track record of accuracy that Andrea and I have, which is not something that we enjoy. We did not want to be right. We very much wanted to be wrong. Go ahead and do it, but you don't need to throw in these misogynist insults–because they're often very misogynist, hysterical, shrieking, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All that shows is incredible groupthink conformity. I'm glad that you left that mode of thought. That's encouraging, you know, but, man, when you get 100 of those messages a day, it's a bit much.
Andrea Chalupa:
Yeah, I made a movie about the dangers of conformity. It's called Mr. Jones. Check it out. I just want to point out my first tweet about Putin's operative, Paul Manafort, the smoking gun of Russiagate, dates back to 2013, all right? So, we've been on this for a long time.
Sarah Kendzior:
It's been a long seven years. I mean that's the other thing is like, the information was in the public domain and yes, we had an advantage, in that we knew where to look because we were familiar with these people, we are familiar with this part of the world. But good God, anyone with will and hard work and determination could have found the same things we did and many others did. It's not like we were the sole lone voices out there. There were other journalists, many of whom ended up having their work suppressed. Nonetheless, they existed, but it's a refusal to act.
Sarah Kendzior:
There's a difference between knowing about an atrocity, whether ongoing or impending, and acting to protect people and to save people from suffering. And those who had a choice, whether it was Comey or Mueller, or the court system, or Nancy Pelosi, the head of the Vichy Democrats, they all had that choice and they all chose wrong. This was not necessarily a straight line to autocracy. There are all sorts of bumps in the road that could have been put in place, all sorts of side paths we could have gone down and possibly a U-turn that we could have made had people acted early.
Sarah Kendzior:
But instead, you just get denial, denigration of expertise, complicity, complacency. At some point, those two things are the same, and that's where we are now, 60 days to the day that's going to... On which the fate of the world hinges, and I'm not overstating that. People have to stand up. I mean I sometimes just think to myself, my God, this would be so easy in a way, if people would just tell the truth. If people would just be willing to name the obstacles in the road.
Sarah Kendzior:
That's what we've been doing with this episode. We're not going to be vague, and we're certainly not going to kiss anyone's ass. But when I see people like good Democrats, Democrats who are actually trying to solve these problems, who are trying to enforce accountability, tweeting that they would like to use some power of the House–say inherent contempt, but they're blocked–not naming Pelosi as the individual blocking them from this power, not explaining how this directly impacts the public and how the public could be protected to a greater extent if this power were allowed to be used, because they fear her, and they fear the donor network behind her, and they fear these billionaires.
Sarah Kendzior:
But, you know, we don't have time for timidity anymore. All we need right now is just brutal honesty. So for God's sake, if you feel like you can't do anything else, tell the truth and stand up for the vulnerable. If you can do nothing else, at least try to do those two things.
Andrea Chalupa:
I want to end our Good German conversation with a shout out to one of the biggest Good Germans on the Supreme Court, which is John Roberts, whose court gutted the Voting Rights Act. And now, according to a report from Reuters, southern US states have closed 1,200 polling places in recent years. That is all on you, Good German, John Roberts.
Andrea Chalupa:
Let's not forget who appointed him, the Bush Crime Family, those warmongers. From The Guardian in 2004: “George Bush's grandfather, the late US Senator, Prescott Bush was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany. The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that affirm of which Prescott Bush was a director, was involved with the financial architects of Nazism. His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave laborers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.
Andrea Chalupa:
“The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy.” So the Nazis have always been among us, and that's how we got these Nazis in the White House. We're going to end up with even more Nazis if we don't force some accountability, and if those in a position of power–like Sarah said, the Vichy Democrats among us–if they don't use forcefully and with integrity and stand in their truth, use the power that we entrusted them with to protect us from actual Nazis in the White House, actual Nazis in police forces across America. It is time for all of us to step up and take back our country.
Andrea Chalupa:
Our discussion continues and you can get access to that by signing up on our Patreon at the truth teller level or higher.
Sarah Kendzior:
We want to encourage you to donate to your local food bank, which is experiencing a spike in demand. We also encourage you to donate to Direct Relief at directrelief.org, which is supplying much needed protective gear to first responders working on the frontlines in the US, China and other hard hit parts of the world.
Andrea Chalupa:
We encourage you to donate to the International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian relief organization helping refugees from Syria, donate at rescue.org, and if you want to help critically endangered Orangutans already under pressure from the palm oil industry, donate to the Orangutan project at theorangutanproject.org. Gaslit Nation is produced by Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa. If you like what we do, leave us a review on iTunes, it helps us reach more listeners and check out our Patreon, it keeps us going. Also subscribe to our new YouTube channel.
Sarah Kendzior:
Our production managers are Nicholas Torres and Karlyn Daigle Our episodes are edited by Nicholas Torres and our Patreon exclusive content is edited by Karlyn Daigle.
Andrea Chalupa:
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Sarah Kendzior:
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Andrea Chalupa:
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