0:01

Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool

0:03

Stuff. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy

0:05

and this week I'm talking with Sharne

0:07

Shrine. How are you doing good? Actually,

0:10

I know the first time you told me, I just

0:13

said I was like basically doing bad. But after

0:15

recording the first part. I don't know

0:17

if people know that record them back

0:19

to back, but I feel much better than I did earlier.

0:22

So I feel good after hearing about all

0:24

these cool fucking people. Yeah.

0:27

Cool. And our producer Sophie

0:29

is on the line as well. Sophie, how are you? I'm

0:31

great, drinking a cream soda

0:33

Zevia, live in my best life, you

0:36

know, so speaking of

0:38

aftertastes and Nazis,

0:40

and there's this I actually don't know how to do this

0:42

segway. Um, But you are listening

0:45

to the part two of our two part series

0:47

on gay resistance to Fascism,

0:49

and so you're probably a little bit confused

0:51

if you haven't heard the episode that came out

0:54

Monday, So you should go back and listen to

0:56

it. If you haven't, you really should. It's

0:58

a really good episode and people learn about

1:00

a lot of really cool people. And this is coming from

1:02

a very big cynic. So

1:07

this is good. It's like trying to impress the cynic

1:09

is like an interesting not even about impressing.

1:11

It's like, will I still

1:13

be miserable by the end of this, you know what I mean? Like it's

1:15

like, yeah, you know what. Okay, Well this one

1:17

is going to be Oh, I don't want to spoil

1:20

it. Okay. So where we last left off, there

1:22

was like a motley crew of queers, artists and medical

1:25

students in Amsterdam who just pulled off a like heist

1:27

movie level antics to blow up a Nazi records

1:30

storehouse. And today we're going to bring

1:32

things back to Germany. So Germany,

1:36

there's a country called Germany. Vimar

1:38

Germany is the period from nineteen

1:40

nineteen, after Germany got its fucking

1:42

ass handed to it in the First World War to nineteen

1:45

thirty three, when Hitler came to power and did

1:47

the whole Hitler thing that I presume most

1:49

people are familiar with on some level. And

1:52

Vimar Germany had a lot going for it, right. It

1:55

was a republic, for one thing, which is a step up

1:57

from dictatorships and such. People

1:59

could like vote and ship, and there was free

2:01

speech, there was free assembly, there was no state

2:03

religion, some of the gay laws

2:05

weren't being enforced, although they were still there,

2:08

and the government was based out of a city called Weimar,

2:11

which is how they got the name Bimar Germany.

2:14

But Germany was completely fucked economically.

2:17

World War One left their economy and shambles. Hyperinflation

2:20

took over. Everyone was hungry and you

2:22

know, fucked, and then they had the fucking worldwide

2:24

Depression after all of that on top

2:26

of it. I mean, I think that's the reason why the

2:28

Nazis worked, you know what I mean. They had to

2:30

like kind of get the desperate,

2:33

you know what I mean, Like they had to really and

2:35

like then Hitler quotes like,

2:37

oh he can save us kind of thing. I think they had

2:39

to have the previous shitty

2:42

part in order to even

2:45

part, if that makes sense totally, because

2:47

people are so fucked they're like, I'll

2:49

try anything exactly

2:52

yeah. And then so

2:54

so most of the stuff I had been exposed to about by our

2:56

Germany, which focus on really cool stuff because

2:58

by our Germany was very in seeing artistic

3:01

time period, and mostly I've heard about

3:03

the cabaret scene, all the sort of decadent queer

3:05

artists who try to live fancy, free lives

3:07

while they're basically starving. And

3:09

all that is like true and interesting and beautiful,

3:11

but it's only one part of Germany's culture at the time,

3:13

and actually only one part of it's it's queerness

3:15

and it's queer culture. You've also

3:18

got this really messy

3:20

assortment of different organizations that

3:22

have different names but get called like the

3:24

vonder Vogel or the German youth movement

3:27

or the hiking clubs, and these go back decades.

3:29

They go back to the eighteen nineties and there's this movement

3:32

that it kind of looks like boy Scouts. Boy

3:34

Scouts was like a funk off,

3:36

huge thing that involved millions of boys and girls

3:38

both through various levels of formal

3:40

and informal organization, with weird paganism,

3:42

vegetarianism, nudism, and queerness running

3:45

out through the entire thing. So not

3:47

actually very much like boy Scouts. I

3:51

would like to be that kind of boy Scout. Okay,

3:54

well then you're gonna love our characters today. Um

3:57

So, millions of German kids formed

3:59

these hiking clubs and uh spent their

4:01

days like camping and getting in touch with nature. It

4:03

was an anti modernist movement a lot of a

4:05

lot of parts of it, and whenever people are like, oh, it was

4:08

this, it's like it's all kinds of

4:10

different things all happening at the same time. Um,

4:13

But it was kind of a lot of it was about

4:15

leaving civilization behind. A lot of it was German

4:17

nationalist, although it didn't have

4:19

necessarily an anti Semitic character as far as

4:21

I can tell, um, at least on any

4:23

systemic level. Some

4:25

of it was really middle class and some of it was really

4:27

working class, and a lot of it was just fucking

4:29

outright criminal in kind of the best

4:32

and worst ways. Um.

4:34

There's a French gay anarchist named

4:36

Daniel Gurin who wrote about the movement

4:39

in the nineteen thirties because he would

4:41

go visit nineteen thirties Germany because it was

4:43

a fucking awesome place to be a gay anarchist, and

4:46

but he found it. He found this movement increasingly

4:49

politically polarized between the communists and the

4:51

fascists. And as the whole

4:53

worldwide depression is hitting, more and more youth

4:55

are finding themselves homeless. They choose itinerant

4:57

lifestyles over staying still in one place.

5:00

So the movement keeps growing, and it keeps

5:02

polarizing and doing all kinds of weird

5:04

ship. In nineteen thirty

5:06

three, huge chunks of has come to an abrupt

5:08

end when Hitler bands all alternative youth

5:11

organizations that aren't the Hitler Youth. A

5:14

lot of the more mainstreams of these groups just basically

5:16

become the Hitler Youth, and in

5:18

nine he makes participation in the Hitler

5:21

Youth compulsory um.

5:23

And but the youth movement went a lot of

5:25

different directions. Not all of it went into Hitler Youth,

5:27

as we'll get into, but some of it did. And

5:29

so we're going to talk about gay Nazis now, these

5:31

are not the cool people who did cool stuff. Well

5:35

balance it out, I suppose. But also I'm

5:37

fascinated where where this will go. My

5:40

own experience with boy Scouts. Um,

5:42

I was a boy Scout, and uh, my

5:45

best friend and who was a boy Scout, came

5:47

out as trans like years before I did. Um,

5:51

And so I love that you know me and my best

5:53

friend because people are like, oh, they're they're letting girls

5:55

into boy Scouts now, and then like me and a

5:57

lot of other trans women are like, oh no, they always

5:59

did

6:03

but so gay Nazis.

6:06

Uh, that's that's the thing. Yeah.

6:09

So before Hitler took over completely and

6:11

the National Socialists were just like one of the parties in

6:14

Germany. They were actually the only political

6:16

party in Weimar Germany with unknown high ranking

6:19

gay member. Ernst Rom

6:21

was the leader of Hitler's essay, which are

6:23

usually called the brown Shirts, which are basically the parties

6:25

like street thugs who operate outside the law,

6:28

like you know when Trump told his brown

6:30

Shirts proud Boys to stand

6:33

by and stand back, similar sort

6:35

of organization. And and ernst

6:37

Rom was really into this hyper masculinity

6:40

thing. He's so anti

6:42

you know, if you're so anti feminine that you

6:44

don't fuck women, right, Um.

6:46

And he's really into authority and

6:48

discipline and obedience as are good manly

6:51

things, unlike democracy, socialism, anarchism,

6:53

fucking girls, all that weird stocked

6:56

Yeah. And this is not to say

6:58

that the Nazis were pro gay. They were just

7:01

kind of pro hypocrisy, I think. Um,

7:04

even before they came to the power, they were the most adamantly

7:06

anti gay party in politics. But

7:09

even the Social Democrats, who were the

7:11

ones who weren't enforcing paragraph on seventy five

7:13

and were part of trying to fight to get paragraph

7:16

on SV repealed. When

7:19

um they used they

7:21

used homophobic language to try and talk shot

7:23

on the Nazis. Basically they were like,

7:26

oh, Rom's gay, and so they

7:29

like published his private letters in order

7:31

to basically be like, if you support the Nazis, you support

7:34

uh pedophilia and gayness, and the

7:36

Nazis will corrupt our children, and so

7:38

no one's fucking good at this point. No

7:40

no political party is looking good. The

7:43

Nazis are clearly looking the worst. But it's just kind

7:45

of interesting to me. And

7:47

this causes us split in the gay

7:49

rights scene. Right, some groups like the Scientific

7:52

Humanitarian Committee, which is, as Magnus

7:54

Hirsh felt, the guy I was talking about a

7:56

lot last episode, he

7:59

warns the gay Zis. He's like, you

8:01

know, the fucking Nazis are going to come after you too,

8:04

right. But then the other big organization at

8:06

the time, this is really not something to be proud of. Uh,

8:09

They're like, what nah, They're not coming

8:11

after all the gay people, just those Jewish

8:14

gay people. Um

8:18

yeah, but

8:20

but spoiler alert, the Nazis are coming

8:22

after all. The case m hmm.

8:24

So On June

8:27

four, on what gets called the Night of Long Knives, Hitler

8:30

has Rom and a whole bunch of the other brown Shirt leaders

8:32

just murdered, and in public, Hitler

8:34

was like, oh, I definitely did this because Rom was

8:36

going to betray me. But it

8:39

was really transparently. Hitler was

8:41

tired of being made fun of for putting up

8:43

with gay people in the ranks. His

8:45

pal Mussolini like to make fun of him,

8:47

and they were like, ah ha, you harboring gays, you

8:50

know whatever, you know his pal Musolini,

8:52

Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. That's like the very

8:54

first no homo with consequences or

8:56

something. I don't yeah, totally. And

8:58

then it what's kind of interesting is that Hitler probably

9:00

didn't personally have a problem with Rome's

9:02

homosexuality. He just he was a fucking

9:04

people pleaser and he wanted people to like him.

9:07

Um, which has definitely never happened

9:09

again. There's never been a populist right wing leader

9:11

any time in history, certainly not in the past

9:13

ten years in the United States who

9:15

has clearly not had any problem personally

9:18

with gay people. And then no, yeah,

9:20

yeah, but greatest country in

9:22

the world, we're

9:25

the ones who beat these Nazis. Okay, so

9:28

we're the heroes of this story. Yeah, and then

9:30

fire the conductor for being gay. Um.

9:33

So in private, Hitler would either defend

9:35

or attack romes have homosexuality, depending on

9:37

the audience, right, Like, sometimes he was like, oh,

9:39

that was in his misspent youth and he's learned better

9:42

now. And other times he's like a US,

9:44

worldly men, we understand that such thing has

9:46

happened, and are fine. That's my Hitler

9:48

accent. Um, I don't

9:50

do accents. You should. Yeah.

9:52

I also don't do accents,

9:55

but I think I when I tried, I've

9:57

learned my lessons. So yeah, I'm

9:59

reasonably so that if someone

10:01

put a gun to my head and said that I had to speak

10:03

like a British person for two minutes or

10:05

I would die. I would die because

10:08

I genuinely believe that with a gun to my head,

10:10

I would not be able to talk with a British accent.

10:13

No, no, no, no no. I did a

10:15

live reading of Twilight Ones with backdel

10:18

Cast, another amazing podcast, and

10:20

I had to voice one of the characters

10:23

who was French and

10:25

for and like in the thing, he has an accent,

10:27

and so I tried before we recorded,

10:30

I was like, can I do this? And I tried to have

10:32

a French accent and I sounded like Jamaican

10:35

every time it was so I

10:38

was that was like cemented, like sharene.

10:40

Accents are not for you. This is not so.

10:43

Accents are hard. So I understand and

10:46

I don't want to do that to the audience. Okay.

10:49

So another one of the people that another

10:52

one of the gay brown Shirts that Hitler has killed, was

10:54

a guy named Edmund Hines who was actually

10:56

Hitler's cell mate after the failed cove that

11:00

Hall pusch Um and he

11:02

was one of the fucking original Nazis,

11:04

Like literally, he was number seventy eight in

11:06

the enlisting in the National Socialists

11:08

and he was gay as hell um

11:11

And when they came for him during the Night of Long Knives, he

11:13

was in bed with a lover. By

11:16

one Hitler starts suggesting the death penalty

11:18

for gay kids and the Hitler youth, and

11:20

then they passed the death penalty for gay

11:23

s S members. But what they do instead,

11:25

I mean a lot of them they kill, right, some of

11:27

those sentences get commuted to go be

11:29

cannon fodder in the war against Russia, which

11:32

I think they actually did to a lot of um.

11:34

Yeah, a lot of people end up dying that

11:37

way, get taken out of prison and

11:39

sent to go die on the Eastern

11:41

Front um or they're

11:43

sent to serve in. It's like all criminal

11:47

Durley Vanger Brigade of the s S,

11:49

which is basically a brigade

11:51

within the SS that's like all of the worst people

11:53

and the criminals. And I put worse people

11:56

in quotes, but like you know where they like go

11:58

give criminals a chance to go. I I

12:00

bring all this stuff up. Okay, do you know that

12:02

meme the I never thought leopards would eat my face,

12:05

said the person who voted for the leopards eating people's

12:07

faces. Party. No, I don't

12:09

know this is I just said, okay,

12:11

okay, okay, okay, no,

12:14

no, no, I mean, it's just basically this It's like someone's

12:16

like, but I never thought the leopards would eat my face,

12:19

the person who voted for the leopards eating people's

12:21

faces party. And that's how I feel about the

12:23

gay Nazis. Yeah. Yeah.

12:26

And the reasons to bring this up in

12:28

this like otherwise conversation about

12:31

good gay people is that I feel

12:33

like, okay, when we talk about the bad people in history who are

12:35

gay. We're usually playing into this trope that like all

12:37

of them were closeted, right, but

12:40

these gay's Nazis weren't. They were not

12:42

closeted. They were open about their interests. It

12:44

was part of their like storied tradition of right wing

12:46

homosexuality that ran concurrently with

12:49

left wing in a political homosexuality.

12:51

And it's just like internalized

12:54

homophobia or like hatred

12:57

that I tried to wrap my head around stuff

12:59

like that, like what they tell themselves to

13:01

legitimize their existence or like what

13:03

they're doing. So it's like, I

13:06

don't know, just sucking racists, you know, and

13:08

they're like, I like the Racist Party and

13:10

then they're like what the Racist Party hates you for being gay?

13:12

And you're like, well, I don't care. I'm so racist

13:14

that that's you know. It's like we see that a lot.

13:17

Yeah. Yeah, And like the modern far

13:19

right in the United States there are like, you

13:22

know, gay members of it, and you're

13:24

just like, what are you fucking doing? They

13:26

hate you and will laugh at you and show you at the first

13:28

opportunity, and they're like, no, they

13:31

like me. You know, you know, I just

13:33

thought of it's probably

13:35

power that changes it, you know what I mean, Like

13:37

if you feel like you're a little bit not

13:40

untouchable but like protected, you feel

13:42

more able

13:45

to be a hypocrite. I feel like,

13:47

right, yeah, no, that that actually

13:50

makes sense, honestly, Like almost everything comes

13:52

down to power at the end. M wompomp

13:56

Okay, ready okay. And

13:59

so the other is gonna bring all this up is that, um,

14:02

I think that we we forget that a lot of this ship

14:04

has like really high stakes, the way that we talked about sex

14:06

and sexuality and gender. And I

14:08

would argue that we should be on the lookout for when

14:11

some segment of oh, I don't know, feminism or

14:13

gay politics starts making common cause with the

14:15

right wing, which obviously

14:17

would never happen now, No feminists

14:20

would just start making common cause with the right wing

14:22

at all. No, no,

14:24

no white

14:28

feminism here. Yeah exactly.

14:30

Oh god, I just thought I was I

14:32

wanted to make like a really subtle Harry Potter

14:35

reference, but I went fast enough, and

14:37

so I just went with that the most obviously.

14:40

But you should know a listener that I

14:42

was trying to uh talk about Jay,

14:44

Yeah, me too, That's what I was thinking

14:47

of. To Yeah.

14:49

Okay, so so you've got the gay Nazis. They don't

14:52

last very long, fuck them

14:54

whatever. Um, But now I want

14:56

to talk about gay pirates. Hell

14:58

yeah, let's do Yeah.

15:00

I want to talk about the edl wise pirates, who are

15:02

so much fucking cooler, and they're on the opposite

15:05

side of all this. So all

15:07

the youth from the what

15:09

I was saying, when they're all itinerant doing all this crazy

15:12

ship they're running around in these like it gets a million

15:14

names buns or bands or clubs or clicks

15:16

or whatever, and they're coming out of the vonder

15:18

Vogel and all these related movements and the

15:20

whitewashed version of history that I had run across

15:23

primarily before doing this research honestly

15:26

has them like wandering around the pristine

15:28

German countryside, like singing camp songs

15:30

and thinking about like marrying their heterosexual sweethearts

15:33

monogamously and popping up pure

15:35

arian babies and all that ship. Right, But like

15:37

this could not be further from the truth.

15:40

Uh, this, this growing culture of vagabond

15:42

is um and has a desire for change

15:46

because they're all fucking broken, hungry, and mainstream

15:48

societies completely failed them. And more

15:50

and more of them. We're living in camps and again

15:53

totally unfamiliar to people today's you know whatever.

15:56

Um, A lot of the clubs

15:58

are gangs. They were the wild gangs,

16:00

and they were in a war against civilization and everything

16:02

boring. Every winter they would

16:04

like disband in every easter, they would celebrate

16:07

their click or their gang's rebirth.

16:10

Their their camp songs where parodies of

16:12

the Hitler youth songs. They told dirty jokes,

16:15

They got into fist fights with the Hitler youth. Um,

16:18

basically with all the men off to war, the

16:20

Hitler youth were acting like the police and a lot of

16:22

German cities and so they

16:24

and they lived criminal lives and they

16:27

fucked and oh my god, did they

16:29

fuck. And it was anything but straight,

16:31

anything but monogamous. Like it's it's like queer enough

16:34

to like maybe even get me a little bit like,

16:36

oh my may that's not the right way

16:38

to go about these things, you know. Um,

16:41

So these are not the assimilationist gays. These

16:43

are street fighting, forest fucking,

16:45

sex working, Nazi robbing criminal queers.

16:48

Yeah. It's like the anarchy of gay Yeah.

16:50

And and they're called the They have a lot

16:52

of different names, and but the

16:55

one I'm going to use now is the wild Fry,

16:57

which means the wild free, which

16:59

was one of their mottoes. And they would

17:02

have like things emblazoned while I'll get to that,

17:04

um. And they they live up

17:06

to the name. History mostly remembers like a

17:08

subsect of them called the Edelwise Pirates.

17:11

And and I've got yeah

17:14

it's a flower. Oh interesting,

17:16

Okay, I think I know, right. Yeah,

17:21

So so I've got information kind of about two

17:23

generations of the Wild Fry, and one

17:26

chunk comes from about and one chunk

17:28

comes from the early forties. And so I'm kind

17:30

of doing my best to give an honest

17:33

like the way that these two connect.

17:35

But there isn't a lot of information about that because

17:38

all of the ship is so heterowashed um.

17:42

But so it's an important I'm

17:44

gonna do an imperfect job, but I'm gonna do the best I can

17:46

and quote original sources and all that ship. And

17:48

because people when they mentioned Edlwise Pirates, they present

17:50

the sort of like generic working class

17:52

youth subculture who ruled and we're bravest

17:54

fuck and they like fought Nazis. There's a movie about

17:57

them called I think it's called Edowise

17:59

pirates um

18:01

but has taken out Yeah,

18:03

totally, and it doesn't talk about their origins

18:06

and it definitely doesn't talking about gay fucking and um.

18:09

So so Daniel Garon, who's the

18:12

French anarchists who wants to go hang

18:14

out with gay folks in Germany. So does. He describes

18:16

a run in with them in his book called the Brown

18:19

Plague, which is a doesn't translate

18:21

well now, but means that it's critical

18:23

of the rising tide of fascism.

18:26

Okay, one Sunday on the outskirts

18:28

of Berlin, we met by chance a strange troop

18:30

on the road. Needless to say, neither

18:33

they're short pants, their bare calves which disappeared

18:35

under their long wolf vests, the bulky and

18:37

sundry loads swain on their backs, nor their enormous

18:40

hiking boots distinguished them from ordinary vagabonds.

18:43

But they were very much toughs. They

18:45

had the depraved and troubled faces of hoodlums,

18:47

and the most bizarre coverings on their heads, black

18:50

or gray chaplinesque bowlers,

18:52

old women's hats with the brims turned up

18:54

in amazon fashion, adorned with ostrich

18:56

plumes and metals, proletarian

18:58

navigator caps created with enormous

19:01

edel wise above the visor, handkerchiefs

19:04

or scarves, and streaming colors tied any

19:06

which way around the neck, bare chests

19:09

bursting out of open skin, vests with broad

19:11

stripes, arms scored with fantastic

19:14

or lewd tattoos, ears hung

19:16

with pendants or enormous rings, leather

19:19

shorts surmounted by immense triangular

19:21

belts, alsho of leather, both

19:26

daubed with all the colors of the rainbow,

19:28

esoteric numbers, human profiles,

19:31

and inscriptions such as wild fry

19:33

or rude ber bandits around

19:36

their wrists. They wore enormous leather bracelets.

19:39

In short, they were a bizarre mixture

19:41

of virility and feminacy. Wow,

19:44

that's a sentence, that is That

19:46

is amazing, I know. And uh,

19:48

and you two can buy all of their costumes

19:50

from our sponsor, the Pirates

19:53

Store UM, which is a nonprofit

19:55

again because we're going full pure wholesome with the ads.

19:58

Here is a nonprofit store. Uh

20:00

yeah, what you said in blazon.

20:03

The first thing I was like they have merch you

20:05

know, like you know, this is that's

20:07

one way to spread the word. Yeah, totally,

20:11

Um and we too. I actually don't think we

20:13

have merged at the time of this recording, but we we do

20:15

have advertisers, and some of them are hopefully

20:17

the Pirates Store. Yes, we're manifesting.

20:20

Yeah, here's some ads and

20:27

we're back. So the Wild

20:29

Fry they're there. They're self organized,

20:32

right, they don't have this like overarching structure, but

20:34

they do sometimes form into these larger coalitions,

20:36

sometimes not. There's thousands

20:38

of these bands and they all have fucking

20:41

weird, fantastic names. Some

20:43

of them are Black Love, Red

20:45

Oath, Fear Not Death, Bloody

20:48

Bones, Dirty Guys, Forest

20:50

and Field Sleepers, Tortoises,

20:53

Brandy Frush, Black Flag,

20:55

Forest Pirates, or the Northern

20:57

Lights. Well. I

21:00

love that it's like the

21:03

Legends of the Hidden Temple, like the team names.

21:07

Yeah, it's like, well, I'll get to why

21:10

it sounds like fantasy in a second. It's one of the things I

21:12

love about it. Um Okay. They also

21:14

they all had their own distinct styles of dress,

21:16

which um and they basically

21:18

the basic idea was take some idea

21:20

from fantasy literature and just fucking run

21:23

with it. Just basically like, try to

21:25

live like you're in a fantasy novel um,

21:27

they're like, what's the what's the cult? Uh,

21:30

what's the thing. When you're role playing, it's

21:32

like LARPing. LARPing,

21:35

it's like laping. It's like laping. Yeah,

21:37

but but for really very creative and

21:39

yeah. And so they and

21:41

unlike a lot of the rest of the Vondervogel movement,

21:43

which was fairly middle class, almost

21:45

all of these are working class kids. And basically

21:48

they're like, well, a fantasy life that sounds better than starving,

21:50

right, And so some of them would dress up as

21:52

like American frontiersman. Others would

21:54

dress up like pirates, somewhere in stereotypical

21:57

German garb and like leader hosen and ship. Others

21:59

were like sader knights um.

22:02

Some were caricatures of indigenous Americans.

22:05

All of them wore at a wise flowers, the

22:07

single symbol that like united all of them

22:09

and gave them the eventual name the Oedowise Pirates,

22:12

and they were into tattoos, including

22:14

on their genitals. Girls

22:17

and boys both wore earrings and

22:19

when the various gangs, this is one of my favorite details. I

22:22

ran Chris, one of various gangs would meet

22:24

up together, though instead of all wearing their like different

22:27

colors from their different clicks. They all wore

22:29

like top hats and tailcoats and like the

22:31

finest, like fancy clothes

22:33

that I'm sure they stole. And

22:35

I want to look up when wise flower

22:38

looks like because I want I want to

22:41

visualize their merch. Oh

22:46

wow, oh that's a really

22:48

it's like a starfish. Oh yeah, huh

22:51

yeah, they're like for anyone's listening

22:53

there, they're pretty white flowers with like

22:55

yellow I don't know anything

22:57

about biology botany. I

23:00

definitely never seen one before. It's very unique

23:02

looking, but okay, cool. I have a visual

23:05

um the most influential fantasy

23:08

author for them, which is it's kind of funny. Is

23:10

this guy named Carl May. Who is this nineteenth

23:12

century adventure novel author who's you

23:16

know I'm going with this, no,

23:18

no, oh yeah,

23:20

this is Hitler's favorite author, favorite

23:23

author. May

23:25

yea did not know

23:28

that there's a hole behind the Bastard's episode

23:30

about about Hitler and about how

23:32

he loves uh Carl May.

23:36

Wow, old friend,

23:38

I don'd how Carl felt. Oh

23:40

man, this is like, I mean, you know,

23:43

Robert describes Carl May as the J. K.

23:45

Rowling of their day. Oh

23:47

interesting, That's all I need to know. That's all I

23:49

need to know. But I want to know because I think

23:51

of like I'm in a metal band that takes

23:54

a lot of inspiration from Tolkien, and so are

23:56

a lot of Nazi metal bands, right,

23:59

and so I think of it like that, you know, But

24:01

I haven't read any Carl May um. But

24:05

anyway,

24:09

so these Carl may LARPers who

24:11

like rob people into sex work. Hey,

24:15

a few years ago a modern queer

24:17

sex worker focused radical publishing project

24:19

called Underbelly translated some of their songs

24:21

from German. And so I'm

24:23

not gonna sing it unfortunately, I'm sorry everyone,

24:26

um dar, but my

24:28

my favorite is just making fun of the Hitler youth

24:30

for being too masculine and NORMI and

24:33

it's called short hair, big ears,

24:36

Such short hair, such big ears. That means

24:38

the Hitler youth must be here, grow

24:41

long hair, tango nights. There's no Hitler

24:43

youth in sight. Oh ho oh ho. And

24:45

one hears the words on every street. There's

24:47

no Hitler youth. I'd like to meet o ho o

24:50

ho. And they're

24:52

fucking poets. Come on, that's

24:54

amazing, amazing, um.

24:57

And most of them are like fourteen eighteen. I'll get into

24:59

that more. Uh, but that's the age

25:01

where you kind of feel like invincible, right, Like, that's

25:03

the damn

25:06

I would have been all over that. Yeah.

25:08

Um. They made their living as delivery drivers

25:11

in various unskilled positions, petty

25:13

crime, non petty crime, sex

25:15

work, especially at various gay bars throughout

25:17

the city. And honestly, one

25:20

of the reasons I love them so much as they just sound like my friends.

25:22

That's just like a description of what my friends do. Um,

25:25

and especially when we were younger.

25:27

Um. And then they would pull all their money and then

25:29

use it to pay off all their criminal finds

25:32

that they incur or to support their arrested

25:34

friends, and they go to juvenile

25:36

detention and jail and ship constantly,

25:38

and they break out of juvenile detention constantly,

25:42

Like the study. The study I read of

25:45

fifty wild fry who had been held in detention,

25:47

almost all of them had broken out at least once,

25:49

and six of them had broken out of detention centers

25:52

more than twenty times individuals.

25:55

That is incredible. Well yeah,

25:59

yeah, I

26:01

know. And the more

26:04

they faced repression, the more they just resent

26:06

mainstream society. This is even before the Rise of the nazis

26:09

a lot of this stuff. They just resent mainstream society

26:11

and they retreat further and further into their fantasy worlds.

26:14

Um in the city column where the movement

26:17

is strongest. They coordinated all their gangs,

26:19

which they called guilds into of

26:21

course, they're called guilds, yeah, of course, right,

26:23

yeah, And they coordinate them into

26:26

rings, which are coalitions of each guild

26:28

of guilds by district. And then each

26:30

guild had a had a leader called

26:32

a gang bull, and the bulls

26:35

of each guild would together elect the ring

26:37

bull. And to be a

26:39

bull, you had to prove that you're strong, brave,

26:41

good at crime and down to

26:43

fun down to fun, like good

26:48

at criming down to fun. Yes, all

26:51

kinds of weird ways. Um. And

26:53

at least one gang, the Eagles of the Mountains,

26:55

everyone in it was a bull because they were like no leaders,

26:58

I guess, um.

27:00

And each bowl had a queen, which I think

27:02

might have been of either sex, but I'm not entirely

27:04

sure. All male gangs had a beloved

27:07

who is expected to be sexually available to everyone

27:09

in the gang. Um. Since some

27:11

gangs didn't let girls in, girls formed

27:13

their own all girl gangs. And

27:15

then some boys wanted to join the all

27:17

girl gangs, and so the girls let them in. And

27:20

I appreciate that because that would have been me.

27:22

I would have been the boy being like can I join

27:24

the girl gang? Though? Yeah,

27:27

I mean girls are nicer

27:30

than yeah, yeah man.

27:34

But I also was thinking, like just guilds

27:36

and all these little factions and stuff. This is like

27:38

I r L World of warcraft,

27:40

you know what I mean, This is just like factions

27:44

and battle and like whatever, like wow,

27:46

that's art is life and

27:48

life are I suspect

27:51

these kids weren't bored very often, you know,

27:54

um and okay,

27:57

So each new member, when they would

27:59

join, was initiated through bizarre

28:02

and ceremonial baptisms, which were elaborate

28:04

rituals of violence and sex. Uh.

28:07

They would start off with fist fights and knife

28:09

fights and then turn into public sexuality

28:11

like fucking everyone in the gang, or

28:13

masturbating in front of everyone, or getting

28:16

off during sex fast enough, like literally someone

28:18

sending a stopwatch and you've like get

28:20

off fast enough. So it's like hazing,

28:23

but like for

28:25

badass yeah yeah totally.

28:28

Um, it's like way more like you're

28:33

cool enough to be cool. Yeah,

28:36

and it's hard for me to imagine the frat where

28:38

the haziness. Now you've got to funk all

28:40

of us. Um,

28:43

but you know whatever, also

28:46

a mixed gender frat um

28:49

and they would all descend into drunken orgies

28:51

every time someone knew was baptized. And

28:54

there's actually there's I should

28:56

have saved them in a file to make them easily available, but there's

28:58

actually photos of some of these um.

29:01

Some of the like weird likeness, like people dressed

29:03

like pirates with knives and all kinds of weird ship

29:06

and they would they lived in the forests and in squats

29:08

in the cities. They would like each each

29:10

crew would have it each each guild would have its

29:13

own squad basically um

29:15

addicts or sellers or on unused

29:17

storage rooms and they would put a single bed in

29:19

the middle and they called it the fucking sofa

29:21

and that was like the only sleeping space.

29:23

I mean, I'm sure they slept on the floor, but and

29:26

they would just like I would not

29:28

if I wasn't on this podcast, I wouldn't think

29:30

this was true. No, I know, and like and so so

29:33

I'll say that my main source of this is Daniel

29:35

Garin's account of talking to of the

29:37

more like crime sex stuff is

29:40

talking to a sociologist a social

29:42

workers sorry at the time, who did

29:44

a study on these people, and that study

29:46

is replicated in a book, The Brown

29:49

Plague. Um. But yeah, like because

29:51

a lot of the later stuff that we hear about otherwise, pirates

29:54

just doesn't talk about their drunken orgies

29:56

at all, um, But stuff

29:59

gets raised all the time, right, like as

30:01

we've learned from this podcast and

30:03

just life. Yeah, totally

30:05

okay. So they would like, like one account I

30:07

was reading, they like they would steal and

30:10

sell cars, and then they would like in their

30:12

stolen car, they would like drive around and

30:14

like I don't remember exactly, was like the guy

30:16

who steals the car, he's like known his like a

30:18

car guy that's like his name or whatever, you

30:20

know. Um, And then they like go around

30:22

and rip off payphones. I didn't even know they had

30:24

payphones back then, but they would like go and

30:26

like rip off payphones and then try and get all

30:29

the money out that they couldn't throw them in the river or whatever.

30:31

Um. And they would fence all their stolen goods

30:34

through bartenders in exchange for alcohol and

30:36

this gets and this leads a lot of them. A

30:38

lot of them end up like in debt

30:40

to these bartenders, and then like when they age

30:42

out of the wild fry, they just

30:44

enter like a more mainstream life of crime, for

30:47

better or worse. I don't even consider

30:49

that they would age out. Actually, now that you say

30:52

that out loud, I know, you

30:54

can't stay a wild fry

30:56

if you're not a small fry. You have to be fire

31:00

self committing crime all of a sudden. I don't

31:02

know, yeah, I

31:05

know, I know. And it's like because one of the things

31:07

that this reminds me so much of when I was like a teenage

31:09

squatter. Um, but

31:12

I did most of that one was like nineteen and twenty,

31:14

and so I'm a little bit like, oh, I would have been too old to be

31:16

you know. Yeah, And that's funked up. That's not fair.

31:18

Yeah, it's like Harry Peter Panty

31:21

lost boys about them, you know what. I'm totally

31:24

yeah, it is just Peter Pan's army.

31:26

Yeah. Okay. So the Nazis

31:29

come to power and they refused

31:31

to disband, and in a lot of cities they're

31:33

powerful enough that they completely just challenge

31:35

the hedgemony of the Hitler youth. In some cities

31:37

they outnumber the Hitler youth UM.

31:40

And one of the slogans that they had at the time

31:42

was eternal war against the Hitler

31:44

Youth. And yes,

31:47

yes, And so they did resistance in a lot of ways

31:49

right like um, just by existing. They continuing

31:52

to like hike and camp and wander their resisting

31:54

Nazi era um

31:56

travel restrictions. But they they

31:59

weren't hent with only doing that, and

32:01

so it wasn't long before they go from like street fights

32:03

with the Nazi the Hitler youth to distributing

32:05

propaganda, like when the Allies

32:08

would drop leaflets on the city, the wild

32:10

Fry would run around and like stick the leaflets

32:12

through people's doors and ship um

32:15

they help people desert from the Nazi army.

32:17

They would rob Nazi warehouses and

32:20

uh, you know eventually started like killing Nazis

32:22

who needed a good killing. Um.

32:24

And actually what you're talking about, like aging out. I think

32:26

that I think that the war like Fox

32:29

up the best I can tell the war like Fox

32:31

up there, you know, sort of like their

32:33

specific organizational structure, it becomes

32:35

a lot looser and so some of the people

32:38

that you know who get hanged and stuff for this

32:40

activity are like formal edelwise pirates

32:42

and shipped like that right, um,

32:44

And so they're still hanging out with like sixteen year olds doing

32:46

all these crimes together. Um,

32:50

And a lot of them get caught

32:52

and get sent to concentration camps

32:55

on November, thirteen

32:58

of them or thirteen people six them who

33:00

are teenagers and some of them are formal otherwise

33:02

pirates get executed

33:04

without trial and cole and I believe for

33:07

for theft, murder and planning to blow up

33:09

a Gestapo headquarters. This is

33:11

the like most known

33:14

thing that that they were doing. Forgive

33:17

me you mentioned this, But like demographically

33:20

what are most of them? Are they just

33:22

like mixed like ethnicity wise? Oh

33:24

okay, they do so they are both

33:26

Aryan and Jewish, or

33:28

at least they specifically refused

33:31

to disallowed Jews. I could not tell you

33:33

what percent of the movement

33:35

was Jewish. Um. Probably

33:38

I don't know. I know that historically they allowed

33:40

in Uh. That was like a thing that distinguished

33:42

them from a lot of it is that they were like what funk all that? Um?

33:45

It was like kind of started I would assume by

33:47

like Aryan people, but that that were good,

33:50

probably, but I couldn't tell you. I

33:52

couldn't tell you about Jewish proticipation in the beginning.

33:54

I was just trying to imagine them for whatever reason,

33:56

when imagine something badass and doing stuff, They're

33:58

not white, so I have to rerange. Yeah,

34:01

totally. Yeah,

34:04

we're considering like the overwhelming

34:06

majority of Germans at this point are

34:08

not like really doing their best, you

34:10

know. Um, so

34:12

like I see my prejudice

34:15

now, I'm just gonna um,

34:19

I think that's fair. Yeah

34:22

yeah, and um and so so plenty

34:25

of historians. So they run into this problem where they're not seen

34:27

as political, uh, which

34:29

in a sense it's true, right, because

34:31

they were not friends of polite society, any

34:33

polite society. They were criminals under the Weimar

34:35

Republic. There were criminals under the Nazis,

34:37

and they continued to be criminals when the Allies liberated

34:40

the country. The wild fry and Soviet

34:42

controlled areas were treated really harshly. In many

34:44

of them were sentenced to twenty five years in prison. Um.

34:47

And because they're working class criminals,

34:49

they were never acknowledged their

34:51

anti fascist work until two thousand eleven,

34:54

when and the families of the Edelwise pirates

34:56

who are killed never received like

34:58

reparations from the German and state on like other

35:01

partisans. Um.

35:03

And the last known surviving

35:05

at a Wise pirate was a woman named Gertrude

35:07

Cook. Uh coach, I don't know who

35:10

died at the age of ninety

35:12

two. Well it's a long life.

35:15

Yeah, you know who else survives?

35:17

The people who drink tap water and

35:19

eat potatoes? The sponsors

35:22

of this show you will live forever.

35:25

And this is especially funny because now I've been learning

35:27

about the more about potatoes because

35:29

I listen to buying the bastards, which I feel terrible

35:31

to admit on this show. Um,

35:34

how could you? I know? And I'm learning people

35:36

only what a hack podcast?

35:41

I wonder who produces that show. But

35:50

anyway, here's some ads from tap water, potatoes

35:52

and whatever else gets mixed in there. And

35:59

we are back and we are talking about

36:01

pirates. Yes, when

36:03

you first started with the pirates, I

36:06

don't I've never heard of the otherwise pirates. But

36:08

I was curious what definition

36:10

of pirate you're going to use, like the actual

36:13

like people that were pirates on you know what

36:15

I mean? Because yeah, exactly

36:17

or like just but it's just really funny that

36:19

they're just like dress like pirates and they

36:22

do pirty things. It's all like they're

36:25

I don't know, it's just kind of funny to see

36:27

it all come together totally imagination.

36:29

Yeah yeah, I mean they lived really similar

36:31

lives to like Golden Age pirates, but they

36:33

like we're doing it in costume,

36:37

you know, yeah, which fucking

36:39

rules honestly, Like it's it's it's

36:41

yeah. It's like, especially at the time,

36:43

it's like if the world is going to ship, just

36:46

you live once, you know, like that's the I

36:48

don't know, it's it's I like the

36:51

uninhibited nature of their life. Yeah,

36:54

I do too, jesus.

36:56

Yeah. And then one

36:58

of the things I like about them is like it doesn't seem

37:01

like it was like a a gay culture

37:03

as in, like some of them are gay, and some of them

37:05

are heterosexual, and some of them are by

37:08

it was just fucking weird, Like

37:10

I don't think any of them knew their sexuality. Some

37:12

of them probably cared, and some of them probably didn't.

37:15

And like they

37:17

definitely weirdos unite, right sorry

37:19

yeah, yeah, no, no, no, no, I mean

37:21

just like weirdoes all unite. Right, So

37:23

it's like when you're in high school, the

37:26

outcast are altogether, whether they're like people

37:28

of color or gay or whatever. Like that's what happened

37:30

to my experience anyway. Or like when

37:32

you're Yeah, if you're what's

37:34

the word, um,

37:37

marginalized, marginalized exactly,

37:40

if you're marginalized and you're

37:42

fucking weird, you will unite because

37:44

you want a weird community and weird. Honestly,

37:46

I think it's a great thing. You should be weird

37:49

being a normy, boring, you know, so

37:52

stay weird. Hell yeah, totally.

37:55

And then okay, so the So these aren't

37:57

the only queers fighting the Nazis within

37:59

German any um. Far from it. I'm gonna

38:01

tell you about some more some more of them.

38:04

There's a gad Beck who

38:06

was a gay part Jewish Berliner who

38:08

in two he borrows a Hitler

38:11

youth uniform and he marches into the pre deportation

38:13

camp where his lover man Fred, is

38:15

being detained. So he shows up

38:17

in his uniform and he goes to the commanding officer

38:19

and he's like, oh, I need I

38:22

need to borrow this guy for a minute on a construction project.

38:25

And so the request is granted, and the you

38:27

know, when he starts out the camp with with his lover

38:30

Manfred, but then Manfred stops

38:32

and he says, I can't leave my

38:34

family basically, and he he

38:36

goes back into the back into the

38:38

camp. He dies him and his family. Um.

38:41

But he basically said, you know, if

38:45

I will never be free if I'm not free with my family.

38:48

Um. But so then gad Beck spends

38:50

the next three years helping Jews escape

38:52

before he gets betrayed by a

38:54

fucking a Jewish spy for the Gestapo.

38:58

Um and he gets arrested. But he survives

39:00

the war. So this is gonna be another

39:02

one of those like who lives, Who dies? Yeah,

39:08

little list of me just

39:10

listening intently until the very end. It's

39:12

like, okay, yeah, well not of the next

39:14

one. Maybe the next one we better Yeah, well then

39:17

this, you know, so this guy survives the war and he spends

39:19

his lover doesn't but he does.

39:22

Well it's nice that like, even after his lover doesn't

39:25

go with him, he's actually true,

39:28

like you know what I mean, he keeps doing fighting the good

39:30

fight totally. He doesn't just sunk off, which would

39:32

be exactly perfectly fair. I am not judging

39:34

anyone who sucks off out of a place is trying to murder

39:37

them, you know, yeah, exactly. And

39:39

he he lives to be eighty eight and he spends the last

39:41

thirty five years of his life with his partner. Um.

39:44

So I like when that's a good ending,

39:46

Yeah, thank you others yeah

39:49

okay. So then there's a Count Albrecht von

39:51

Bernstaff who's a gay aristocrat

39:54

and he's this. He's a short balding man.

39:56

He's always impeccably dressed, and he

39:58

wastes mostly war years sitting around

40:01

cafes hitting on waiters. Or

40:03

that's what he wants people to think. I

40:06

mean, he he does. He is these things. He's a short baulding,

40:08

well dressed man who hits on a lot of waiters.

40:11

But he's actually he's he's playing up

40:13

the like foppish aristocratic gay

40:15

man stereotype, um

40:17

to draw attention from his actual work, which

40:19

is he's running an underground railroad helping Jews

40:22

and other dissidents get themselves out of Germany.

40:25

Um that's genius, I know.

40:27

And like that does take like front

40:29

and center, you know, like put the gay

40:31

out front and then let me do my secret

40:33

good job. Yeah, totally. Um,

40:36

this one could keep him distracted. Yeah, he's

40:38

like, oh, I'm just a creepy, harmless old gay

40:40

guy, you know. Like uh. And

40:43

and he's so aristocratic and I kind of love

40:45

him for this. He's so aristocratic that he figures like,

40:48

alright, I'm doing something that is obviously illegal,

40:50

being being gay, but

40:52

I'm so rich that everyone puts up with it.

40:55

Yeah, exactly. Power. I think it was the last episode.

40:57

Maybe it was, Yeah, it was last, but like or

41:00

you can you can get away with more? Yeah, totally

41:03

uh and yeah, because because and

41:05

money, power and money. Sorry, Like I have a lot

41:07

of inside thoughts that are just I think, and they

41:10

say it out loud, even if it's like not even my

41:12

right timing. But I think that's the point of a podcast.

41:14

Why my podcast cast, because otherwise

41:17

it would be me talking to myself and that would be

41:19

half as interesting. But

41:21

no, money and power. That's

41:24

how you hack life, unfortunately, I know.

41:26

And it's like all across history,

41:29

if you're poor and gay, you're fucked, And if you're

41:31

rich and gay, you're just eccentric, you know, Yes,

41:34

very true, like Oscar Wilde. Yeah, totally,

41:36

although it only sort of works out for him

41:38

different points. Yeah, but still

41:41

but that was a bad example whatever, No, no, no, no, it is.

41:43

It is a good example because like he's

41:45

able to exist in that way at all

41:47

because of that kind of exactly Yeah, who was accepted

41:50

as what he was versus

41:52

Yeah. Anyway, Um,

41:54

so the so the so Count Albrecht he

41:57

he coordinates with gay resistance groups in the

41:59

Netherlands And to quote

42:01

an anonymously written article that's coming from

42:03

an upcoming issue of a magazine called Batten that

42:06

the author let me read before, Count

42:09

Albrecht had warned his contacts in Holland

42:11

about the Nazi invasion before it began, so

42:13

they could prepare themselves. In one

42:15

instance, members of a gay society took measures

42:18

ahead of the German invasion. In preparation for the catastrophe.

42:21

The editor of their paper, Levin Strict, burned

42:24

the organization's mailing list. Another

42:26

comrade, Aren't Vin saut Hoorst,

42:29

committed the entire list to memory so that they

42:31

could find one another afterwards. And

42:33

I really like that because I like because

42:36

when I first started doing this, like everyone's like keeping these

42:38

records and it keeps getting them all in trouble,

42:40

right, and so I'm like, what do you what do you fucking do and burn

42:43

your fucking records? Right, But then

42:45

the guy who memorizes it all makes reminds

42:47

me that I'm like, well, it was so

42:49

hard for them to find each other in

42:51

the first place. That like losing

42:54

that is losing something really important,

42:56

you know. Yeah, memorizing

42:59

in that's what. That's a great solution

43:01

if you're able to do that, you know, totally mohammed

43:05

of the profit of mom. He memorizes the Koran

43:07

you know how to read it rite, so it works.

43:10

Look at him now he's

43:13

done. Well, yeah, I've heard of him,

43:15

you know. Praise.

43:18

Yeah. So eventually Count Albrett gets

43:20

gets found out, and he gets arrested, and

43:23

he gets into a series of concentration camps and

43:25

he gets really horrendously tortured.

43:27

Um. But his his fellow inmates, they

43:29

remember him based on how he kept everyone's

43:32

spirits up. Like he would he'd be sitting

43:34

around in the concentration camp and he'd be like, we're

43:36

all going to have a most fabulous party at my

43:38

house when this is all done. You are all invited.

43:41

Everyone's coming over, Like, I'm you

43:43

know, break out all the finest stuff,

43:45

best party ever and um,

43:49

and he he didn't survive the camps. He died

43:51

in the camps. Um, But I

43:53

don't know. Hundreds of people,

43:55

at least Jews and gays and gay

43:58

Jews and at least two different countries survived

44:00

the war because of his efforts and him

44:02

disguising himself himself as a fop, you

44:04

know, and playing into the like being

44:07

like, oh, yes, homosexuals are cowards, we would

44:09

never do anything bad, you know, use

44:12

the stereotype to your benefit, just like

44:14

you know what I mean, it's or like that benefit

44:16

but like your advantage. Yeah

44:18

uh yeah, Well what a guy. I

44:20

know, I like him. Um

44:23

okay. And one of the things that it's kind of dark that I ran

44:25

across in a lot of this research, a lot of the

44:27

gay men who survived the concentration camps get

44:30

immediately re arrested because

44:32

they're gay, because you're

44:34

not allowed to be gay, whether it's Nazi Germany

44:37

or Soviet Union. While East Germany

44:39

at least the Soviet Union had more complicated Oh

44:41

yeah, right, I think Hitler had re I know

44:43

that, like Lenin made homosexuality legal, and

44:45

then Stalin was like j K all you.

44:48

Um. But um,

44:50

anyway, one guy, for example, that I was reading

44:52

about, I don't have his name in front of me. Um.

44:55

He wasn't as much of a a resistance fighter, although just

44:57

existing his resistance. I'm not trying to like knock

44:59

him. Um. He retold his

45:01

experience where he was taken back literally in

45:03

front of the same judge that had sentenced him

45:05

to a concentration camp previously, because they

45:07

didn't actually get rid of the fucking Nazis, they just

45:09

like cut off the head of it. Yeah.

45:13

Um, so he gets sent back to the same judge he's like

45:15

you again and then sentences him right

45:17

back to prison. Um.

45:20

That makes me so mad. People empower

45:22

stay in power ultimately. Yeah,

45:25

Okay, I want to end with with one last short

45:28

story about a queer poet named

45:31

Robert desns and he was Yeah,

45:34

he was heavily involved in the French surrealist scene.

45:37

Um, and he joins the resistance

45:39

of Germany. Once you know, francis

45:41

under occupation and like our Dutch

45:43

heroes from last episode or last

45:46

Monday whatever I know how to say, is this a new episode?

45:48

Is this just the different half of the same episode. I

45:50

don't understand the taxonomy of my own job. It's

45:53

a two part Okay. In the last

45:55

part of this two part episode, um

45:57

perfect, thanks, thanks, I'm

45:59

good at my job. So

46:02

uh. He works as a counterfeiter and he

46:05

makes fake I d s. And he also does a

46:07

ton of other stuff. He actually works for

46:09

a collaborationist newspaper as

46:11

a spy, and he passes along all the information

46:13

he learns by working for a shitty

46:16

pro German newspaper. He passes

46:18

it along to to the Resistance.

46:20

He also wrote for underground papers under

46:23

a ton of different names, and

46:25

he gets caught and he gets sent to a series of concentration

46:28

camps. But at heart,

46:30

right, this guy's a surrealist. So one

46:33

day, according to Holocaust, Holocaust

46:35

survivor named a debt and it's relayed. This

46:37

story is relaid through a writer named Susan Griffin.

46:40

So Robert's waiting in line for the fucking gas

46:42

chamber and and he just jumps

46:44

up and runs up to a man who's ahead of him

46:47

in line, and he just gets really excited

46:49

and he starts reading the man's palm

46:52

and he's like, look

46:54

here, look at your lifeline. You're going to live a

46:56

long life, and you're gonna have three children,

46:59

and his absurd as them, right, because they all know

47:01

what's happening, all right. I think it's

47:03

his absurdism is so contagious that everyone's

47:05

just like breaking out laughing,

47:08

and it confuses the guards so

47:10

completely that the guards sent them

47:12

back to their barracks

47:14

because they don't know how to handle these

47:17

people who are supposed to just be like totally

47:20

given up, who are like riotlessly

47:23

riotously, who are laughing very

47:25

hard, uncontrollably,

47:28

and wow, that's so fascinating.

47:30

And he he doesn't die

47:32

in a gas chamber. Um. He

47:35

used the phrase unexecuted

47:37

in your script. Everyone

47:40

gets sent back to the barracks unexecuted, as the

47:42

way I wrote it. Yeah, and

47:46

he technically survives the war,

47:48

but he caught typhoid I believe, in the

47:50

concentration camp, and he dies within a month

47:52

of liberation. Um.

47:55

But again that doesn't seem right. I

47:57

know the

48:00

thing, okay.

48:04

But the reason I want to end on that note is because

48:06

I think people look at some of this history

48:08

wrong, at least like queer history. Um,

48:11

because they're like, oh, did they succeed, Like

48:13

a lot of the stuff I would read being like, oh, they didn't succeed

48:15

because they died, or they didn't succeed because

48:18

they only blew up eight hundred

48:20

thousand records instead of three million

48:22

records or whatever. Right, um,

48:24

but they it's to me,

48:27

it feels like they succeeded, right. They they

48:30

chose resistance and a lot of them, most

48:32

of them didn't survive the war. But they say fucking

48:34

thousands of people, and I don't

48:36

know they died fighting, you know what I mean, like

48:39

if they did die in a way

48:41

that they shouldn't have, Like it's

48:43

just a testament to like, I

48:46

don't know, caring more about

48:48

the world and yourself and like I don't

48:50

know, I don't know where I'm going. I don't know what the

48:52

end when I started. Um,

48:54

but I think it's pretty badass. I

48:56

think that they like they basically

48:59

they proved a fucking lot and they certainly

49:01

proved like our man

49:03

Willem said at the beginning that homosexual

49:06

is not a fucking synonym for a week, which

49:08

is what people used to treat it as um

49:10

And and no one can say that they were cowards,

49:13

you know, no one. Yeah, definitely

49:15

not. That's the last thing would be. I

49:18

was thinking though not to like yes

49:21

and but yes, and it uh

49:24

like the vast majority

49:26

of these people that we learned about are

49:28

our men, correct, So

49:31

it is interesting just to think, like how many

49:33

more people there were that maybe didn't get like

49:36

attention or history and about them, or

49:39

that were who were I mean, there's a there's a spattering

49:41

of women wore in there, for sure, But it

49:43

does make me wonder if again

49:46

it goes back to power. As a man, you have more

49:48

power, right, and maybe that's why you're able to accomplish

49:51

more especially I mean back to that, and now

49:53

what am I saying? But it's interesting

49:55

to think about who

49:58

gets written about, even like alt history,

50:01

because as I'm

50:04

a filmmaker, I want to say

50:06

in quotes, but come on, I should like me whatever imposters

50:09

ENDM one oh one, but imposter

50:13

syndrome is real. And but

50:17

I was reading about like writing like

50:19

scripts and movies and stuff, and how we're

50:22

so used to just pretending that Western

50:24

story structure is like the default way

50:27

to tell stories and we forget that like so

50:29

many cultures have different ways of telling stories,

50:31

and like it's like Bollywood films

50:33

are structures, so differently than ours, and

50:36

we just we assume ours is the right

50:38

default way. And I think that's the same with

50:41

just everything. That's all. You didn't mention that

50:43

this is the westernized version

50:46

of it, But it just makes me wonder what else is

50:48

out there, because I know there are more amazing

50:50

people out there. Maybe maybe we

50:52

don't have to know about them. Just to know they existed

50:55

is enough. I don't know if that made any

50:57

sense. No, No, I think that that actually

50:59

gets at something really important. Um.

51:02

One of the things that I kept running across with this is like I

51:04

think I feel

51:06

certain that there was as many you know, lesbians fighting

51:09

against the Nazis right as there were gay men. And

51:11

most of the people with names that are coming up with

51:13

are gay men, and I think partly

51:16

that's because they get written about for being

51:18

gay in a way that a lot of the women aren't

51:20

being written about. Um.

51:22

And then like it's actually telling that the Edlwise

51:24

pirates who were a mixture

51:27

of boys and girls, right, Um,

51:29

they that's not a story

51:31

full of names. You

51:34

know, there are some names we have for that, but

51:37

mostly you have these like anonymous

51:39

masses of like mixed

51:42

group of queer kids who are like, all right, let's

51:44

sunk up these Nazis and they don't get fucking

51:46

remembered except kind of collectively.

51:49

And you know, I don't know whether that's

51:52

better or worse or different or whatever, but

51:54

it does it. You're right, it leads

51:56

to this, like you know, the

51:58

which stories get told absolutely

52:00

exactly. No, yeah, I think about

52:02

this stuff all the time because

52:05

I mean I don't know even like, yeah,

52:07

the history stories or whatever, like what

52:10

what we've even gotten as a civilization about

52:13

like what we've learned and from our past centuries

52:15

of existence, Like even that is curated,

52:17

you know what I mean. It's like it just

52:20

we just live in a matrix and it's

52:22

real. But um,

52:26

but no, I I'm really happy to

52:28

have learned all of this stuff from you today

52:31

and on Monday

52:33

two days ago because we're

52:35

not recording at the same time. But

52:40

but no, I I hope it makes other

52:42

people think about this kind of stuff too, because

52:45

it doesn't have to be like this default way of thinking

52:47

of like, oh, this is just the way things are because this

52:49

is the way they are. Is it the way they are because this is

52:51

how they always have been because certain people

52:53

make it this way if that makes sense. So

52:55

it's I don't know, just using your

52:57

brain to philosophize. I think

53:00

sometimes a good thing and like

53:02

do some shrooms or something. Every

53:05

other podcast about them like shrooms.

53:07

But if you're able to it's

53:10

I think it's the cure for things

53:13

or just seeing the world in a different way. Can I shut

53:16

up? Good?

53:25

Okay, I'm shutting up though. Um yeah,

53:27

when I when I saw shrooms, I saw the void.

53:30

It was really bad and dark for months.

53:33

But okay, I stay correct, but

53:35

my experience is not the I'm

53:38

certainly not anti people messing around

53:40

with this kind of stuff. You know, I

53:42

gave it multiple shots. I shouldn't

53:44

have made a blanket. You're right, No, No,

53:46

I mean, but people should. I don't

53:49

know. There's all kinds of blankets

53:51

better dangerous. You know. All I meant

53:53

to say was like, expand your mind and like

53:55

I like that. I'm leaving

53:58

this recording being like, you, what,

54:00

maybe we're not so bad? Hell yeah?

54:05

Would you say that there's cool people who did

54:07

cool stuff? You know? I

54:09

would say that there are cool people that

54:12

did cool stuff. Mentioned

54:14

it, but

54:17

thank you for having me letting me ramble

54:20

to no end. This was really

54:22

fun. Oh thanks so much for being on. Come

54:25

back again, please please, I would love

54:27

to come back and learn more good things

54:31

about good people, cool cool things about

54:33

what am I doing. I'mussing get all up, cool things

54:35

about cool people who happened to be good doing

54:38

good. I'm doing it again. I'm gonna stop

54:40

talking. This is the end of my sentence.

54:42

Now Sharene

54:46

before we send you off. Is there anything you would

54:48

like to plug? Yeah, I'm Sharene.

54:51

You can follow me on the internet if you want. Twitter

54:54

Shiro Hero six six six and Instagram

54:56

is just Shiro Hero Um.

54:59

I make films, write poetry. I

55:01

have a couple of poetry books out that I self

55:03

published. What's the newest one called um

55:07

Archives. Yeah, it's

55:09

basically just emo diaries I've decided

55:11

to publish. It's very personal. Uh

55:14

but yeah, that's just my I'm

55:17

honest to a fault. And if

55:19

you want to follow along, great. If you don't

55:21

like me rambling, good because I'm going to stop

55:23

now. Margaret plugs

55:26

anything. You can also follow

55:28

me on Twitter at Magpie

55:30

kill Joy, where I try to

55:32

be clever because Twitter is just this awful

55:35

competition. It's like an arena of people

55:37

trying to um

55:40

acquire enough clout to not starve

55:42

by being clever and having all the right

55:44

takes. And I always always

55:48

but were you were you? Were you on Twitter when

55:50

it was just like a place to like say your thoughts out

55:52

loud. I looked at and

55:55

the dumbest ship. It's like Facebook status

55:58

is or like whatever where it's just like I'm

56:00

hungry, Yeah, I'm going

56:02

to fail my test. And now it's just instead

56:04

of being like a random thought catalog.

56:07

It's definitely this one upping the arena

56:10

of death. Yeah, speaking

56:12

speaking of death, can I can I uh

56:15

plug? Jamie Loftus is Ghost Church

56:17

that's on cool Zone Media as well.

56:20

That will be will be out by

56:22

the time this this episode drops,

56:24

So check that out. Ghost Church by Jamie

56:26

Loftus, Queen future

56:29

guest of this podcast, Jamie Future

56:32

Guests of this podcast, Jamie Loftus. I

56:34

also produce that one, so check

56:36

it out. Sophie produces all podcasts

56:39

I think you've already heard me say. Yeah,

56:41

legally all podcasts are mine, except

56:44

except for once again, the Joe Rogan Podcast

56:47

actually a YouTube show. Yes legally

56:49

distinct, Yes, yes, thank

56:51

you, and we'll be back Monday

56:54

Right, Margaret yea Next Monday,

56:56

Forever until the heat death of the universe. Cool

57:00

by Cool

57:04

People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production

57:07

of cool zone Media. For more podcasts

57:09

on cool zone Media, visit our website cool

57:11

zone media dot com, or check us out on

57:13

the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

57:16

or wherever you get your podcasts.