Chapters
0:00:00 Introduction to the History of British Parliament
0:02:17 The Fascinating Time of Troublesome Young Men
0:03:44 An Anarcho-Capitalist Perspective on Historical Events
0:05:43 The Doctor's Deadly Prescriptions
0:09:50 The Illness of Death Potion Number Nine
0:10:01 The Consequences of Blindly Following Authority
0:11:13 Frightened Compliance with Lethal Orders
0:13:47 Medicine's Darkest Hour: Death Potion Number Nine
0:14:32 The Madness of Government Actions
0:15:32 Churchill: The Aristocracy's Hitman
0:17:58 The Terror of Civilian Bombing in the 1930s
0:20:03 Democracy's Flaws and the Duchess of Athol
0:23:31 The Failure of Government Information Dissemination
0:28:06 Ministerial Office
0:28:19 Signs of Rebellion
0:28:44 Mein Kampf Revelation
0:29:32 Vetting by Berlin
0:30:21 Anti-Appeasement Stand
0:31:02 Non-Intervention in Spain
0:31:26 Campaign for Spanish Refugees
0:32:25 Expulsion from the Party
0:33:50 By-Election Declaration
0:34:18 Disreputable Electoral Campaign
0:35:31 Lack of Support from Rebels
0:36:58 Churchill's Endorsement Letter
0:38:15 Involvement in Elections
0:41:18 Lack of Information for Voters
0:44:40 Argument for Morality
0:46:05 Opposing Violence
0:47:37 Ronald Cotlin's Fate
0:48:10 Death Potion Number Nine
0:49:00 Increase of Violence
0:49:46 Reveal of Government Failures
0:51:45 Repression of Facts
0:53:06 Truth or Death
0:53:27 Corrupt Political System
In this captivating lecture, I delve into the intriguing history of the British Parliament in the 1920s and 1930s, shedding light on Prime Minister Chamberlain's failures in securing peace from dictators like Hitler and Mussolini. I challenge the mythologized image of England's victory in World War II, advocating for an anarcho-capitalist perspective to analyze historical events more clearly. Drawing parallels between a doctor's treatment of a patient and political decisions, I vividly illustrate how misguided governmental actions can lead to severe consequences, akin to the failure to prevent Hitler's rise to power.
As I navigate through the complexities of historical events and political decision-making, I critically question the traditional narrative of Churchill as a hero, suggesting that the ruling class supported him out of self-preservation rather than genuine concern for the citizens. By dissecting the failures of leadership and erroneous policies, I challenge the glorification of historical figures and urge listeners to seek a deeper understanding of historical truths beyond conventional narratives. The discussion delves into the consequences of appeasement, emphasizing the voices that spoke out against it and the tragic choices made by leaders during critical moments like the Munich Conference.
I delve into the remarkable journey of Kitty Athol, a symbol of defiance and conscience in a tumultuous political landscape, who courageously stood against Chamberlain's policies despite facing betrayal and expulsion from her party. Her story highlights the challenges faced by women in politics during that era and underscores the importance of individual conscience and moral courage. Through Athol's actions, she emerges as a beacon of integrity, challenging the status quo and speaking out against injustice despite the personal costs. The lecture also delves into the shabby electoral campaign experienced in modern British history, revealing the underhanded tactics used to undermine strong political figures like Kitty.
Lastly, I critique the nature of democracy and political power, emphasizing how personal interests often supersede moral values in politics. The discussion transitions into exploring the inherent flaws within government systems and the self-serving motives that drive individuals in positions of authority. I call for transparency and truth in governance, rejecting violence as a means of problem-solving, and advocating for a more ethical approach to political dynamics. By exposing historical instances of manipulation and malpractice, I challenge listeners to reevaluate their perceptions of authority and power, urging them to question the status quo and strive for a more honest and accountable governance system.
lecture, British Parliament, 1920s, 1930s, Prime Minister Chamberlain, Hitler, Mussolini, anarcho-capitalist viewpoint, World War II, Kitty Athol, Churchill, democracy, transparency, governance, ethical leadership
[0:00] Hello, everybody. It's Steph. Hope you're doing well. I'm going to take a bit of a detour to a fascinating part of history, at least a fascinating part of history for me, which is the history of the British Parliament in the 1920s, 1930s.
I find this to be just an absolutely fascinating hotbed and cauldron of statism and failures within statism.
[0:29] And a pretty febrile area of mythology that you have an ineffective parliamentarian, Prime Minister Chamberlain, who runs around Europe trying to secure the promises of peace from the dictators, notably Hitler and, to a smaller degree, Mussolini.
And this top-hatted civilian frou-frou fop was unable but was completely delusional with regards to his responsibilities that he came back after Munich and said, He said, well, we have secured peace in our time.
He waved a piece of paper that had been signed by Hitler, which was a supposed non-aggression pact.
And he was wrong.
[1:19] And then he started the war. And the war started after Poland, September 39.
It was a phony war until the summer of 1940 when Hitler amassed – well, Hitler conquered France in May and then amassed his Luftwaffe on the shores of France around Calais and then continued to assault – started to assault.
During the Battle of Britain, and that, of course, by that time, Churchill got into power, and the bulldog of Churchill's testosterone-laced masculinity swept the British through the war, England's finest hour, and this and that and the other.
And it is really a very, very fundamentally...
[2:03] Mythologized time in human history. I, of course, am no expert on it, but I think that I know a good deal.
I had to do a lot of research. Gosh, how much research did I have to do for my historical novel, Almost, which basically takes place during this time frame.
[2:17] And I think it's absolutely a fascinating time.
Now, I've read a book recently called Troublesome Young Men.
Lynn Olson is the the writer. It just came out, and it's about the anti-appeasement group of MPs in the 1930s, particularly leading up to the Second World War, and how it is that their sort of successes and their failures worked to, well, that they failed to overthrow Chamberlain until it was almost too too late.
And then they turned to Churchill, who then supposedly, of course, led England to victory in the Second World War, and so on, and so on, and so on.
And it's a, it's kind of a bothersome aspect of history for me, if that makes any sense.
It's an annoying part of history for me, and an annoying aspect of history for me, because it is just one of these areas that is so rank with with mythology, that it's really hard to try and get any kind of sense out of the entire time period.
Now, from the view of an anarcho-capitalist, which of course I've really only been for about two years-ish or so, maybe even a little less, about two years, a little over two years.
[3:32] From the standpoint of anarcho-capitalism, I think that we can have a look at this time period in history and see it with a lot, with a fair amount more clarity.
[3:44] With a fair amount more clarity. I mean, the mythology is that after a period of weakness, England roused itself and protected itself and defended the world from fascism and emerged victorious and triumphant and so on.
And this, of course, is the nonsensical propaganda that I was raised with.
And so it was It was a challenge for me to challenge it, so to speak.
But it's worth challenging. It's worth challenging because you can only believe that kind of nonsense if you look at England as an entity, as a collective entity.
If you talk about England's finest hour and the Battle of Britain and so on, then you can believe that England, you know, after a near-fatal crash, drove excellently through perilous times and, you know, emerged victorious and so on.
Like an individual almost slips when trying to climb the Matterhorn, but then catches himself and continues to climb and after great struggles reaches the top and so on.
If you look at England as a collective entity, then it's possible to believe this kind of nonsensical mythology, but it's...
[4:56] It's not true. I mean, it's fundamentally not true.
And the way that I would look at it is sort of like this, that you have a doctor, right?
So you're some guy, you have a doctor, and your doctor is charged with keeping you healthy. That's what you pay the guy for.
You don't pay him when you're sick. You pay him to keep you healthy.
You pay him for prevention, prevention, not for cure.
This is a tradition, I think, in China. You pay your doctor until you get sick.
Your doctor has to get you better in order to get money again.
I mean, this is how insurance ideally should work, the prevention and so on.
It's how it would work in a free market. It's cheaper.
But you have a doctor, and this doctor is supposed to keep you healthy.
[5:44] And your doctor gives you some advice and you're healthy, right?
You're healthy, you're 30, you're vibrant, you're whatever, right?
Lean and you've got lots of energy and so on.
And your doctor says, well, you need to start drinking X, Y, and Z.
Because although you're healthy now, if you don't start drinking X, Y, and Z potion, you're going to get sick.
And you say, holy crap, Okay, well, I'll do that, right? I'll drink X, Y, Z potion.
And he says, well, it's going to feel bad for a little while, but, you know, the alternative is much worse.
And you're like, geez, I feel healthy and not sick, don't have a cold or anything, don't have sniffles. He's like, trust me, you have to drink X, Y, and Z potion or you're going to die.
And you're like, okay, well, I'll drink it, right? Start drinking X, Y, and Z potion.
[6:37] Damn near kills you. Damn near kills you. And, like, seriously damn near kills you.
Like, puts you in hospital for two years.
And you lose all the fingers on one hand, you lose all the toes on another foot, you're walking with a limb, and you're like, oh my god, this is like the worst potion in the world.
Why did you make me drink it? Well, the alternative we see was death.
So you're crippled, mildly, but you're alive. And that's better.
Damn, I was healthy before, but now I'm like sick and crippled and weak and so on, right?
Okay, well, survived it. And now I can go back out into the world.
And your doctor then says, don't worry.
I'm going to prevent this from happening again. Don't worry.
I'm going to to prevent this from happening again.
You're like, okay, no more potion XYZ, right? No more death potion.
No, no, no more death potion. I'm going to make sure that you never get sick again.
That's what you're paying me for. Okay.
So then, a year or so goes by and you start to feel sick again.
You start to feel sick again. You're like, you know, I'm getting that same kind of tummy ache, that same kind of dizziness.
[8:00] That same kind of upset, confusion, disorientation.
All that stuff that happened much worse when I drank death potion that you prescribed to me three years ago.
So, I'm not getting any of this death potion, right? It's not in my water, it's not in my food. I'm not getting any of this death potion, right?
Damn near killed me last time. Doctor's like, no, no, don't worry.
I am vigorously prosecuting the makers of Death Potion 9, and you're not, absolutely not, having any of it in your water or drinking or anything like that. You're perfectly safe. Perfectly safe.
[8:39] Okay, you know, like, I still feel kind of uneasy. Like, I still feel, like, a little queasy.
Hands are shaking a little. But, okay, Doc, I mean, you're the expert, right? Excellent.
Time goes on, you kind of feel worse, right?
Symptoms are really beginning to approach.
The two-year hospital stay that nearly killed you, cost you fingers and toes, and you had to walk with a limp and crippled you.
Are you sure there's no XYZ potion, no death potion in my food or water? Man, do I feel bad.
Signs are like everywhere. Hands are trembling, toes turning blue, one of them's turning black, remaining toes. They're really not feeling good at all.
You'd like to go for independent testing thing if you're blind, but only your doctor. Your doctor has a monopoly on all the labs.
All the labs come back clean. There's no danger.
[9:31] Keep feeling worse. Keep feeling worse. Keep feeling worse.
Go to your doctor. Doc, feeling like hell here.
Don't worry. Tested your blood. Everything's perfectly clear.
You're never going to get sick again. I have achieved health in our time.
[9:50] Whole purpose of this last war was to make sure you, of this last illness, was to make sure that you never have to drink death potion again.
It was the death potion to end all death potions.
[10:02] And keep getting worse, keep getting worse.
Keep getting told everything's fine. Everything's fine.
Don't need to worry about it. Everything's fine. You're imagining things.
That's just defeatist sickie talk.
And then, kind of long story short, one day, you wake up, and there's a new doctor.
And the new doctor says, sorry, you've got to drink an even bigger portion of potion number nine, death potion number nine, than you did before. And you're like, why?
Why do I have to drink this potion that nearly killed me? Why do I have to drink it again?
Doctor says, well, you see, because it's been in your food and water, and it's It's been accumulating in your system.
So you have to drink more of it in order to get rid of the sickness.
The alternative is death. The alternative is always death.
But I kept asking if this stuff is in my food and in my water, and I kept telling me no. Well, they lied.
They were mistaken. Your previous doctor, he was mistaken.
He told you that this wasn't in your system, but it was growing in your system.
But if it was growing in my system, why do I need to drink more of it now?
Because the alternative is death.
[11:13] So, frightened of the alternative being death, as it always is, then dishonor.
Then you drink even more of the potion than you did before. Even more.
And damn, puts you in the hospital for three years.
And when you come out of the hospital, you have no legs and no arms.
Both of your ears have had to be cut off because they had necrotizing fascists or fascists or whatever it is.
And your one eye can't see and your tongue had to be cut out and so on, right?
[11:49] You say, you know what? When I started with this, I was healthy.
I was 30. I was healthy. healthy, had all my fingers and toes, had all my limbs, could see out of both eyes, had a tongue.
Okay, he wouldn't be saying it quite that clearly, but now, after I've been in the tender care of this doctor for a couple of years, I'm a complete and total cripple.
I'm a trunk with one eye, no tongue, no ears. I can't smell anything.
Doctors say, well, yes, but the alternative was death. Yeah, so you say.
So you keep saying. So you say all the time. If I don't obey you, you, the alternative is death.
You guys were in charge of keeping my health. First of all, you gave me a potion that nearly killed me.
Then you told me that the potion wasn't in my food and water when it was, and I kept getting sicker and kept telling you to check, and you told me, you lied, told me everything was fine.
Then I had to drink even more of this potion. It almost killed me.
And they say, yes, that's terrible. Don't worry. We've got a new doctor.
Fuck your new doctors. Sick and tired of these new doctors. Keeps getting worse.
New doctor comes along and and says, well, we know that death potion number nine nearly killed you.
First time we gave it to you, you lost all your fingers and toes, one side of your body, you had a limp forever.
And then you got more and more sick with death potion number nine.
And then we made you drink it and almost killed you. You came out with no legs and no arms, one eye, no ears, can't smell.
[13:13] But now you see we have a cure for you. Really? What's the cure?
Some magic potion can regrow my legs and arms? No! No! No, no, no, no.
That's quaint. What we're going to do, you see, is we're going to start introducing even more of death potion number nine into your food and water supply. What?
Or, with no tongue, does this seem like good medical care to you?
Does this seem like the doctor's finest hour? What?
[13:47] After prescribing and, in fact, inflicting. death potion number nine and almost killing their patient several times in a row.
And then the solution, of course, to the crippling of the patient is to feed him more of the potion that crippled him.
Does this seem like medicine's finest hour to you?
Lie to the patient you're supposed to be protecting and keeping healthy, similar to making him sicker and sicker?
Defending all of your decisions with, ah, but the alternative is death.
The alternative to voting for Ron Paul is an even bigger state. Even bigger than death.
Is this medicine's finest hour? No. It's bad fucking medicine, people.
It's bad, corrupt, evil medicine. Of course, it's no mystery that the death potion number nine is violence.
[14:33] First World War? Hey. Hey, there's a war between Serbia and some other damn country based on Archduke Ferdinand's assassination.
We've got to go fight. We've got to go fight. Why? The alternative is death.
I don't know. Because we've got fiat money and we need something to do with it, right?
The government's responsible for protecting their citizens. Responsible for the deaths of tens of millions.
The destruction of hundreds of billions of dollars worth of property.
Murder of children. Death of children.
I mean, the governments are responsible for the security of the people, right? Not so good, right? Not so good.
[15:15] The power structures, right? I mean, why did they turn to Churchill?
Why did they turn to Churchill?
[15:22] Well, for the same reason that a cornered rat gets courage.
Because they were going down. The aristocracy, right? The power structure of the government.
The parasites were going down, so they turned to Churchill. Churchill.
[15:33] But they turned to Churchill because they needed to save themselves, right?
Because the power structure had tried to save money, right?
And save money means to keep money in the government. You save money.
So you don't spend money on armaments because then it's harder to buy elections.
You don't spend money on armaments because then you're afraid people are going to call you a warmonger, right?
For five years, Churchill had been begging and cajoling and lecturing and writing that they needed to achieve air parity with Germany.
Was it that hard to achieve? No, of course not.
I mean, Germany had no air force. It was prohibited from having an air force under Versailles. No air force beginning of the 1930s.
[16:16] Hitler wrote a book saying, I'm going to take over Europe and kill the Jews.
A book, not even just a leaflet, not even a leaflet printed in German.
A book. Now, of course, when it was printed in England, and it was heavily edited, but you could get the original with some Samistad copies of the original, even translated.
People could get a hold of it. It was clear, totally clear. I'm going to become a dictator.
I'm going to kill the Jews. I'm going to invade all of Europe.
And by the way, now I'm a dictator, I'm getting all my arms ready.
Perfectly clear. The government is there to protect the citizens, right?
Tens of millions of them get murdered. More, even so, get maimed in the First World War.
[16:57] And then there's this catastrophic inflation and a catastrophic stock market run and inflation. Government's supposed to be protecting the property of the people.
[17:10] Fails to, it's not just the British government, all the Western governments, fails to protect its citizens from the rising danger, the obvious danger of Hitler and Mussolini.
And so the ruling class throws their weight behind Churchill.
Well, why? Well, for the same reason when your thief ring is about to be discovered by someone, someone's about to testify and put your thief ring into jail, you'll hire a hitman, right?
And Churchill, for all of his oratorical and writing gifts, which were prodigious and considerable, was a hitman.
I mean, he just went and shot people in the Boer War because he was told to.
[17:50] And, of course, any rational human being... Now, they did fear bombing in the 1930s the same way that we fear nuclear war.
[17:58] It was considered that the casualties would be in the millions in the first week of civilian bombing. So there was this terror. era.
But as far as things like the invasion of D-Day, really necessary? No, of course not.
Didn't need to invade the Soviet Union in order to have it fall, right? I mean, you don't need to do these things.
Nobody needed to have a full frontal assault on Rome during the time of Rome's greatest strength.
Just wait for the Christian and socialist rot to eat the empire apart. pot.
Same way nobody needs to invade America to bring down the military-industrial complex.
You just need to drain the treasury with the welfare-warfare state.
If bin Laden can bring down the US without invading, was there really no other option than to throw away tens of thousands of men's lives in D-Day?
If the Soviet Union can be brought down through a war in Afghanistan?
Was it really necessary to beat Hitler with invasion?
Of course not. Of course not. But the man was immersed in the military glory and fantasies of heroic virtues of the soldier and all this kind of nonsense. citizens.
[19:18] England gave loans to Germany. England gave loans to Germany, right?
The wild incompetence of the governments that are supposed to protect their citizens in the 20th century should give anyone pause about how well governments protect their citizens.
Sheer madness, not England's finest hour? It was the aristocratic despotism.
The parasitical host terrified that... Sorry, the parasite was terrified that the host was going to die, and so put Churchill in charge.
It had nothing to do with wanting to save and protect people.
[19:58] To save and protect people. It's madness. I'm going to read you a little bit here. You can let me know what you think.
[20:03] This is how democracy works. This is how democracy works.
There is a duchess. What's her name here?
Kitty Athol. Let's hear a little bit about Kitty Athol.
She was after Munich. Munich was where... Oh, gosh, let's touch on this very briefly. So Czechoslovakia was sort of this mutant mongrel country created after World War I in the Treaty of Versailles.
And it included German-speaking and Czech-speaking and other Slovaks and so on.
Just a mongrel, right? And on the western part, in the Sudetenland, it was mostly Germans.
It was hived off, if I remember rightly, from Germany at the end of World War I.
[20:49] And it had a huge army. It was the only democracy in Eastern Europe.
It had a huge army. It had, I think, the largest armaments factory in Eastern Europe, a massive prize for Hitler.
And England had given assurances that it was going to protect, right?
So after they annexed the, was it the Rhineland? I can't remember. Sorry.
They grabbed something. Memory fails me just at the moment.
And the French, when they first marched into the, I think it was the Rhineland, the French did not respond. And Hitler knew that if the French did respond, he would lose power, his generals would revolt, and it would all be over.
And it would have been bloodless, Hitler said, when they marched into this area.
He didn't sleep for two days, because he was just terrified that somebody was going to respond, kick him out, and it would all be over. But nobody lifted a finger.
Nobody lifted a finger. Could have all been ended, according to Hitler.
And I think Hitler knew what his generals were about, what they were thinking. Okay. And...
[21:55] Then he started turning his sights eastward, and he began manufacturing all this nonsense about how the Sudetenland Germans were being oppressed by the Czech government, and were begging, crying out for aid and succor from Germany, and so on.
And his fellow Germans, they felt obligated to go and help their brothers in need. All the same sort of nonsense that goes on.
It's a preamble to every war. Lies, mythology, fantasy.
[22:16] And all of the fortifications were in the west, right? All the fortifications for Czechoslovakia were in the west.
The natural mountains and the lines. So, So, I mean, if the West was swallowed up, if the Sudetenland was swallowed up, Czechoslovakia had no protection whatsoever left. Just roll over.
And so in Munich, Chamberlain and I can't remember the French guy, Deladier, I think that was later.
They just had a secret agreement where they just basically said, go take it.
Totally sold out Czechoslovakia. And as Churchill said, appeasement is the hope that the crocodile will eat you last.
Maybe it'll be full by that time. or maybe it will just have more energy because of its earlier meals.
And so they sold out Czechoslovakia, which meant Germany could occupy the Sudetenland and then rolled into the rest of Czechoslovakia without opposition from anyone, of course, because the British Air Force was still pitiful. The Navy was strong. The army was pitiful.
100,000 versus 3 million Germans or something like that. It was ridiculous.
They hadn't done anything to prepare for it. and of course this was all after the Treaty of Versailles wherein the victorious governments most notably England and France.
[23:32] Don't worry, we've crippled Germany. We'll keep an eye on it.
And in England, for sure, I don't know about France, but in England, for sure, there was virtually no free press.
I mean, the press was completely allied with the government.
BBC was completely allied with the government.
We'd regularly vet stories past. I mean, British people could not get the information, right? They couldn't get foreign newspapers, at least not very easily.
And there was no internet, of course. So they could not get the information on what was happening.
They kept being told Germany is contained. Everything is safe.
There is going to be no war. This is what they want.
They've agreed that they just take the Sudetenland and that's it.
And we're saying yes to them to keep the peace, not because we don't have a military.
We're on parity, right? People just kept lying to the British people.
[24:14] Try lying to your patient as a doctor. See how far you get when it's just one person who might get sick or die.
Tens of millions, though, you're called heroic and noble.
So I'm just going to read a little bit from this book here, which I think is quite interesting.
Nothing in Catherine Athol's background or temperament suggested her emergence in the aftermath of Munich, the betrayal of Czechoslovakia, as the boldest Tory rebel of all.
Her marriage to the Duke of Athol made her a ranking member of Britain's aristocracy.
Her husband was one of Britain's biggest landowners, and the couple lived in a white stone castle in the Scottish Highlands.
A Canadian cruise ship, the Duchess of Athol, was named after her.
Before her marriage, she had studied at the Royal College of Music in London and was widely acknowledged as a gifted pianist and composer.
A diminutive woman with large, expressive blue eyes, Kitty Athol, was cultured, diffident, and unworldly, but little interest in calling attention to herself.
In 1921, Prime Minister David Lloyd George, noting her extensive work with local and national charities, suggested, she stand for Parliament. For the Duchess, it was a startling idea.
She had opposed the British suffragette movement and had no interest in a political career. career.
But at that time, not many women in Britain had envisioned a future in politics that had only been three years since they'd won a limited right to vote and stand for parliament.
[25:34] Lacking of her husband, Kitty finally gave in to Lloyd George's urging, and in 1924, she won election as a conservative from the rural Scottish constituency of Kinross and West Perthshire.
[25:48] Only the third woman to win election to the House of Commons, Kitty Athol found herself in an institution considered, quote, the best men's club in London, where many, if not most, of her male colleagues regarded the advent of women members with horror.
In a very real sense, women had been invisible in the House until their admittance as MPs as late as 1917.
The women visitors were forced to sit like cloistered nuns behind a grill in the ladies' gallery.
Lady Astor recalled that when she became the first woman in Parliament, men who I had known for years would not speak to me if they passed me in the corridor.
One of them was Winston Churchill, whom she and her husband had often entertained at Cliveden, their country estate in Berkshire.
When she asked Churchill why he was so rude to her, he reported, because I find a woman's intrusion into the House of Commons as embarrassing as if she burst into my bathroom, when I had nothing with which to defend myself, not even a sponge.
By the 1930s, late 1930s, the number of women in the House had increased only slightly to nine, and chauvinism was still rampant even among the anti-appeasement rebels, most of whom considered themselves liberal-minded.
There is no place in the House of Commons for women, Duff Cooper declared, and women cannot excel there any more than they can on the football field.
Although women MPs were entitled to use all the facilities of the Commons, there remains an unwritten rule that they were to stay out of Parliament's most exclusive male bastion, the Member's Smoking Room, where whiskey was drunk, cigars puffed, and deals cut.
[27:13] Would never have dreamt of invading that sanctum, nor would she ever challenge any other parliamentary convention to keep women in their place.
When she was told after her election that many male Tory MPs had not yet reconciled themselves to having women as colleagues, she replied that if I could do anything towards smoothing over matters, I felt my duty was to try.
Unlike the iconoclastic, shark-tongued Lady Astor, the Duchess was regarded as unthreatening by the Tory leadership and rank and file.
Her usual attire, long tweed skirt, wool jacket, and a A single string of pearls reflected her personality, modest, decorous, and highly conventional.
[27:48] Ironically, in the light of what happened later, it was Neville Chamberlain who emphasized Kitty's dependability when he suggested to Prime Minister Baldwin in 1924 that she should be given a junior minister's post as parliamentary secretary to the Board of Education.
That appointment, it was hoped, would help the Tories with women voters, and Kitty, unlike Lady Astor, could be counted on to never rock the boat.
[28:07] Baldwin agreed that the party loyalty of the Duchess of Ethel was unquestioned, Thus it was that Kitty Athol became the first woman Tory MP to hold ministerial office.
A decade later, however, she was showing distinct signs of rebellion.
[28:20] She joined Churchill and other Tory hardliners in opposing the government's bill to grant India limited self-rule because, in her view, the Hindu majority would victimize the Muslim and untouchable minorities.
Then, in late 1935, she picked up a copy of Mein Kampf in the original German.
As she read Hitler's outline of his political philosophy, she was appalled by its hatred and bigotry, but most of all, by its explicit blueprint for German aggression against much of the rest of Europe.
[28:44] Never can a modern statesman have made so startlingly clear to his reader his ambitions, she later wrote.
An English translation of Mein Kampf entitled My Struggle had been published in the autumn of 1933 by Hurst and Blackett, a small subsidiary of Hutchinson, one of Britain's most prominent publishing houses.
[29:02] Translation had been done by Edgar Dugdale, a wealthy gentleman scholar and translator who was married to Baffy Dugdale. These names were great.
A few months before the book's publication in Britain, Dr. Hans-Wilhelm Durst, a London correspondent for the official Nazi newspaper Volkische Bewerb, informed Hurst and Blatchett that Dugdale's translation would have to be approved by the German government before it could be published.
Concerned that it might lose the rights of the book if it didn't agree to the demand, Hurst and Blatchett reluctantly agreed read to the vetting by Berlin.
[29:32] The result was a watered-down, boulderized version of the Führer's Manifesto, totaling only 297 compared with 781 in the German original, and omitting a number of Hitler's most inflammatory statements, particularly his expressions of hatred for Jews.
[29:47] Kitty Athol sent to Churchill both the German edition and the English translation, along with copies of passages that had been left out of the English version.
Sometimes the warlike character of the original is concealed by mistranslating, she said, in an accompanying note.
She also sent Churchill some extreme passages from Hitler's speeches that had not been circulated to the foreign press.
Churchill read Mein Kampf with great attention, writing in his memoirs that no book deserved more careful study.
For Kitty Athol, Mein Kampf served as a call to battle, no longer the docile backbencher who had wanted to smooth things over.
She became an unspoken foe of appeasement.
[30:21] She again joined forces with Churchill, this time in his campaign to awaken Britain to the dangers posed by Hitler and the need for rearmament.
Like Churchill, she received confidential information from knowledgeable sources about the rapid pace and size of German rearmament, which she passed on to him and to officials at the Foreign Office.
But she parted company with Churchill and other anti-appeasement Tories in her fervent opposition to all fascism, not just Nazism.
She did not, for example, share the real politic view that Mussolini must be placated so that he would not ally himself with Hitler.
[30:52] When the Spanish Civil War erupted in 1936, neither Churchill nor the other Tory rebels expressed much concern about the fascist general Francisco Franco's revolt against the democratically elected Republican government in Spain.
[31:03] Nor did they speak out when both Hitler and Mussolini sent troops, planes, and other aid to Franco.
Indeed, most of the Tory dissidents backed Chamberlain's policy of non-intervention in Spain on the grounds that it was a sideshow to the main event in Germany.
Kitty Athol did not share that view either. On a fact-finding mission to Spain, and she had seen the damage done by German bombers.
Whole neighborhoods destroyed, hundreds of civilians maimed and killed.
[31:27] With several other women MPs, she launched a campaign to help Spanish refugees, and she criticized Chamberlain and his ministers for refusing to sell arms to the Spanish government.
The fact that the Spanish Republicans were backed by the Soviet Union did not bother her.
She had long opposed communism. She condemned all forms of totalitarianism, except for the aristocracy, I might add.
But she regarded fascism as the worst of the perils facing Europe at that time.
To the Duchess, cruelty was cruelty by whoever committed it, and it was an an evil not to be tolerated.
In supporting aid for the Republican government, however, she was allying herself with the British communist socialist trade union leaders and so on and other groups considered anathema by the Conservative Party.
Many Tories in her constituency, which contained more than its share of aristocrats, landed gentry and retired military officers, were outraged.
A duchess of all people sharing rally platforms with communists regarded as a traitor to her class, she was openly referred by some of her constituents as, quote, the Red Red Duchess.
The Prime Minister and the Tory whips were equally furious with her.
[32:25] In April 1938, she wrote to Chamberlain, suggesting she might have to withdraw her support from the government because of its stand on Spain.
In a pre-emptive strike, Chamberlain wrote back that he was withdrawing the whip from her, meaning that he was expelling her from the party.
She would remain an MP, but unless her party membership was restored, she would not have official Tory support.
At the next election, no other Tory rebel had received such severe punishment.
[32:48] At the time of the Munich conference, Kitty Athel was in the United States on a lecture tour. She was not present for the Commons debate or vote.
When she returned home in October, her husband, worried that she would get into even more political trouble, urged her to support the government, I guess regarding Munich.
But when she was summoned to appear before the officers of a constituency association, she told them she strongly opposed what Chamberlain had done, selling out Czechoslovakia.
To make sure there was no doubt about her views, she also published them in a pamphlet, which she distributed widely to her constituency.
[33:17] All the Tory whips needed. For months, James Stewart, the whip who handled Tory affairs in Scotland, had been urging the Duchess's constituency association to adopt a new candidate for the next election.
He pressed even harder now, and in November, that association did it as he asked.
It selected a wealthy local farmer, William McNair Sneddon, to stand in the Duchess's place.
With that, she resigned her seat and declared that she would stand as an independent candidate in the by-election to follow.
Several people close to her, including Churchill and her her husband pleaded with her not to take such a drastic step.
To the Duchess, however, it was a matter of honour and conscience.
[33:50] She meant to make the by-election a referendum on the government's appeasement of the dictators hoping to awaken public opinion to the dangers facing the country.
For their part, Chamberlain and his men, who saw the by-election in Scotland as a referendum on their policy, were determined to do everything in their power to defeat the Duchess and to send an unmistakable message to the other rebels about the dangers of dissent.
[34:12] Thus began one of the shabbiest, most disreputable electoral campaigns in modern British history.
[34:19] Night after night, cabinet ministers and other pro-appeasement Tory MPs came to Kitty's constituency to speak against her while pamphlets denouncing her and praising Chamberlain were sent to every voter.
Tory canvasses warned residents that if they voted for the Duchess, there will be a war and your sons will be killed. The alternative is always death, I say.
Rumors circulated that she was getting money from the Communist Party, and she was sent fake telegrams signed Stalin with the message, Greetings from Moscow.
Shortly before the December 21st election, workers on a number of estates in the area reportedly found unexpected bonuses in their pay envelopes, along with notes from the estate's owners urging a vote for the Duchess's Tory opponent.
[35:00] Landowners who opposed her notified their tenants of reductions in their rent, accompanied by cards that read, Vote for Snadden.
The word went around local pubs and other gathering places that workers who supported Kitty might find themselves out of a job.
To combat such tactics, Kitty appealed to other Tory rebels to come to her aid. None of them did.
When Violet Bonham Carter, actually I think the grandmother of the actress, one of her staunchest supporters asked Anthony Eden, when he was planning to go to Scotland to speak for her, he replied that he was not planning to campaign for her at all.
[35:31] Lady Violet, whose Liberal Party had ordered its candidates in the by-election to withdraw in favour of the Duchess, was astonished.
If ever Eden was going to show courage, she wrote later, quote, it surely should have been that election in which a member of his own party who was risking her political existence for a course for which he stood.
In response to Kitty's appeal for aid, Harold Macmillan, later Prime Minister, wrote that he was too busy and was sorry that it couldn't help.
[35:55] Bob Boothby, who did at first volunteer to come and speak on her behalf, later shamefacedly retracted his offer.
He wrote Kitty that James Stewart had threatened to withdraw the whip from him, if he actively campaigned for her, and his own association chairman, who had earlier helped save him from Tory wrath over Munich, had threatened to resign.
Boothby would be happy, he said, to send her a public letter of support instead.
[36:18] The Duchess tightly refused the offer, saying Boothby's resignation of the whip would have been far more helpful.
Churchill, who of all the Tory rebels was closest to the Duchess, also considered campaigning for her when the by-election was announced, telling the chairman of his constituency association that he felt he ought to support her if she wanted it.
But he, too, soon came under intense pressure from Stuart and from Tory stalwarts in his own constituency, and in the end he decided not to speak.
He did send a letter of endorsement, which the Duchess's supporters circulated throughout the constituency.
You are no doubt opposed by many conservatives, as loyal and patriotic as yourself. self.
But the fact remains that outside our island your defeat at this moment would be relished by the enemies of Britain and our freedom in every part of the world, Churchill wrote.
[36:59] It will be rightly accepted as another sign that Great Britain no longer has the spirit and willpower to confront the tyrannies and cruel persecutions to darken this age.
The lack of active support for the Duchess was obviously not one of the rebels' finest moments.
When they came to write their memoirs, few mentioned their reluctance to brave the wrath of the whips in their own and constituency association to go to her aid.
But their decision likely was affected by factors other than party pressure.
Macmillan, for example, campaigned hard for an anti-Munich independent candidate in an Oxford by-election held at about the same time.
Kitty Athol's real problem was her gender, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, so she...
[37:37] Defeated, but by fewer than 1,400 votes. Oh, on the day of the by-election, more than 22,000 voters in Kinross and West Perth sure braved a heavy snowfall to cast their votes.
While those voting for the Duchess had to find their own way to the polls, a fleet of cars dispatched by the Tory central office ferried Sneddon supporters to vote.
In the end, she was defeated by fewer than 1,400 votes.
So, anyway, we don't have to go any further into that. This is just a very interesting, interesting, I think, thing to note, right?
I mean, my skepticism towards the virtues of democracy doesn't come out of nowhere.
[38:15] A friend of mine, actually sort of recently, he's a professor in the States, he got involved.
We had this crazy English teacher who wanted to run for office and kept running for office, but nobody was interested because he was mad.
And anyway, we don't have to get into that, but he was very eloquent and a very good public speaker.
So my friend was involved. This is, gosh, 20 years ago at least, maybe more, a little over 20.
And there was an Indian candidate, Murad Velshi, who was running for, I think it was the Don Mills Riding or something like that.
[38:48] And it was complete not, it was complete farce, right? barely anybody showed up for the speeches.
But what did happen was the Indian community came out in full force.
And so I was down there during this day of voting, and they had these cars rolling up with tottering grandmothers coming out in full sari garb who couldn't even speak English.
I asked some of them if they needed any help.
And, of course, they were there to vote for why. Vote for the Indian guy.
Just vote for the Indian guy.
[39:22] I mean, why not? It's not like the whiteys don't vote for the whiteys, right?
But this is pure nonsense, right? I mean, it just had nothing to do, it was just a flesh count, right? Nothing to do with values or virtues or anything like that.
And I mean, this kind of cultural bias is just what goes on generally in the realm of politics.
And so, when you have a look here, we don't like the Vatican for covering up the pedophilia of the priests in the United States. It's pretty bad, right?
Pedophilia, evil though it is, is still better than, say, a world war.
And so covering up information that the British people needed to be able to understand the war and the need for war and the danger that they were facing, sacrifices that might need to be made in order to prevent Germany from becoming as dominant as it did, they didn't get the information. They didn't get the information.
Newspapers wouldn't print it because they were beholden to the government in the same way that newspapers don't print anything now that's sort of fundamentally anti-statist because they're beholden to the government.
And you can see what happens is that if you do something that the party disagrees with.
[40:36] Then they'll just toss you out your career is over and you're toast, and they'll do dirty tricks they'll lie about you they'll smear your name I mean this is this is the way that politics works right?
This is the mechanism that people hope is going to free us This base, violent, vicious, abusive, controlling, dictatorial, brutal, founded-on-violence system, this is what people hope is going to free us?
[41:13] There's just too much money in it. Right? There's just too much money in it.
[41:19] You could have, I mean, if you told the British people in the 1930s about the dangers that they were facing, what would have happened?
I mean, the real dangers, right? What would have happened?
Well, I mean, it's conceivable, of course, that people would have made the sacrifices and they would have accepted a lowered standard of living or raised taxes in order to pay for the armaments and so on.
But that's never how it works. The reason that the government can't act in any kind of nimble fashion is because they owe all the money in the treasury to the people who got them elected last time.
The reason that there was no spending on arms in the 1930s was that the arms manufacturers had not funded any elections.
The government is always at least four years behind.
I shouldn't say that. At least two years behind the times, but closer to four.
[42:14] The people who had gotten Chamberlain elected were not the arms manufacturers and so there was no possibility that, Chamberlain was going to divert money towards arms because he already owed all the money in the treasury to other people who had gotten him elected, and this is why I say it's just madness to think that we're going to vote somebody in who's going to turn this thing around A libertarian or minarchist politician has nothing to offer anyone.
Nothing to offer anyone in a political context. Nothing.
[42:57] I mean, Ron Paul is not that much of an exception, in the practical sense.
Ron Paul gets government money for his district like everybody else.
Can you imagine campaigning on the following? I'm going to replace the fiat currency with a gold standard, which will wipe out most of your savings.
[43:19] I'm going to repudiate the national debt, which will cause a good number of financial institutions to fail and will likely get us invaded or something.
I'm going to cut off welfare.
I'm going to cut off defense spending. I'm going to cut off Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, right?
And the benefits are going to be kind of diluted across everywhere and everyone, and they're going to be a couple of years down the road, seems like.
Hey, I'll cut some taxes at the same time.
Well, as we all know, the imbalance of benefit is why politics always goes haywire, why the government always grows.
Those who get, get tangible stuff. Those who lose, lose tiny little intangible things. things.
If somebody gets $1,000 from 1,000 people in the neighborhood, he really wants $1,000. He's got a big incentive to fight for it.
If people in the neighborhood lose $1, they don't have that much incentive to fight it.
[44:29] It's like death by mosquito bites. You don't know who to swat, who to fight.
When 1,000 people are taking $1,000 from you, you toast. But each one of them, you can't oppose. You can only oppose the system.
[44:40] So who's going to who's going to vote for him nobody who's interested in economic efficiency is going to vote for him because the rich are already benefiting the middle class won't take the risk and the poor are benefiting, nobody would fund this guy you say ah well when the majority of people understand how evil the state is well when the majority of people understand how evil the state is the state will be long gone the majority of people would vote for Ron Paul because they believe that violence is evil, it's already gone gone.
It's already gone. You can trust the argument for morality. I'm telling you.
I'm telling you, you can trust the argument for morality.
It will achieve what it is that we want to achieve.
Keep pointing out the gun in the room, keep stripping away the mythology from the brutality, and people will recoil from it instinctively.
The way that you get rid of the government is you openly disapprove of violence and identify it accurately. That's all you need need to do?
I know that sounds easy. It's really not.
The way that you get rid of the military is you refuse to support soldiers.
You correctly identify them as hopefully ignorant hitmen.
But that's how you get rid of the army.
[45:54] Philosophy undoes violence. Words cannot not guns.
The truth does set you free.
[46:06] You don't oppose the state. You oppose violence.
You don't fight the military. You speak the truth.
[46:17] You get rid of the government is to consistently call it evil and non-existent.
So as you can see from these examples from England in the 1930s, the people who are in Parliament, the people who have political power, are there because they want political power.
And of course, people want them to have political power, to get goodies, and to steal from the general trough.
And so asking people people who get political power to risk losing political power for the sake of solitary defeat that won't change anything?
Well, it's not going to happen. People say, well, I'm going to stay in politics because I can do some good.
If I'm in the room, I can do some good. No, it's not true. It's not true.
If you're in the room, you can't do any good. That's why you're allowed in the room. It's because you won't do any good.
If you're trying to do good, you're out of the room. You're out of the room.
[47:14] And that's why I think it's just so important to close your heart to political solutions. No. Not going to work. Not going to work.
The motives and self-interest are exactly the same in politics now as they were in ancient Athens, ancient Greece, ancient Rome, House of Commons in the 1930s.
The cowardice, the compromise, the eternal shifting of the burden to the innocent.
[47:37] Why Ronald Cotlin, one of the anti-appeasers, did end up getting killed, before the Dunkirk evacuation. Shot in the head. And so I guess, you know, he paid.
But the ruling classes, they didn't. As a structure, they didn't pay.
They never pay. It's the blood of others.
It's the blood of the children. It's not the blood of those who actually wield the power.
[48:11] So, to return to our earlier analogy, death potion number nine keeps every time you take it, you get sick.
Hey, I got an idea. Stop taking it. Stop using violence to solve problems.
And what do you know, we'll be healthy again. Thank you so much for listening.
I look forward to your donations. I'll talk to you soon.
[48:28] Oh, sorry, just one or two little postscripts. I realized that I had forgotten to close up a few, just a few logical loops in that.
And the reason that I said that in the metaphor of death potion number nine, that after you've lost your arms and legs and can't smell both ears and your tongue and whatever, that people say, well, we need to increase your dosage, is because, of course, socialism came in in the post-war.
It was coming in before the Red 30s, but socialism came in in the post-war period in England, right?
[49:00] So if violence is the problem, then an increase of the dosage of violence, death potion number nine, is what occurred in England in the post-war period.
That's what I meant about that.
The other aspect was, as a government, you either act very early and avert the issue, in which case you don't need to give the population any bad news.
So if they dealt with Hitler when he occupied the Rhineland, then Hitler would have fallen.
There would have been no Second World War. there would have been no need for them to go to the British people with bad news.
But by the time you have to go to the British people with bad news, you've already screwed up catastrophically.
Government is the only place you can hide problems. Government is an infinite quarry in which to hide the bodies.
[49:47] So, if by the time of Munich...
[49:52] Would have gone to the British people and said, you know what, we totally fucked up. Sorry, dude, we totally fucked up.
A, we told you we were going to watch them and make sure they wouldn't rearm, and then we let them rearm and we didn't tell you.
Oh, and we gave them money to help them rearm and didn't tell you.
Oh, and, you know, we've been telling you that Hitler is a reasonable guy that we can do business with, and he's not. He's a sociopath who's totally evil.
Oh, we told you that he really wasn't full of hatred for the Jews, but he is and he's been killing them.
Oh, we also suppressed all of the news of his concentration camps and wouldn't allow them to be published in the press.
Oh, you know what else we did was that we put a lot of pressure on the BBC and the public newspapers and the newspapers as a whole to not print any papers.
Papers, I'm sorry, any letters or articles that revealed the truth.
Ooh, says Chamberlain, you know what else I did?
Let's, you know, hey, while we're getting it all off our chest, let's be clear about the whole hog.
[50:56] Every time that somebody asked me a difficult question during question answer period, particularly related to German armament and so on, I basically ratted that guy out to his boss and made sure that he got fired or his career was hobbled.
So kind of did that.
I guess in hindsight could have been a better way of dealing with it, but that's what I did.
Oh, another thing. Yeah, I guess we're becoming clean.
Another thing that I did was when I had anybody in my party who threatened to go to you, the British population, with the truth, I got them fired, or I came up with trumped-up charges against them, refused to support them, brown-beat them, bullied them into being quiet, so you guys never really So, you could sort of go on and on about all this kind of stuff, right? You really could.
[51:46] And, of course, there's, you know, hundreds and hundreds of these kind of completely amoral or immoral examples of brute repression of facts and so on, right? So...
[51:55] The ruling class can't do that. I mean, even Churchill took Chamberlain into his cabinet.
Guy only died from stomach cancer. He only died in harness. It's the only way that he got out, right?
Almost none of the anti-appeasement crowd ended up with any substantial posts in Churchill's cabinet nor government.
So by the time you've screwed up in the government, you can't go to the people because you've already lied to them for years and years.
Like, actively, immorally thoroughly suppressed information that people need to know in order to make good judgments.
[52:30] So how are you supposed to? This is the kind of terrible lockstep that governments get into.
This is how problems don't get solved. Either you solve them up front, which governments never do, but at least then you wouldn't have to go to the people and say, oh, listen, by the way, I got to really raise your taxes because I've been lying to you about Germany's rearmament moment for the past couple of years.
Sorry, I guess that's it. I have actively been suppressing information that you need to know in order to make effective and intelligent decisions as voters.
The whole system's a goddamn scam.
You don't have the information that you need. Your votes mean nothing.
You're just pawns. You're livestock, right?
[53:06] The only time that you tell the truth to the people is do this or die.
I mean, that's the only time.
You don't go and tell the truth to people that you have lied to them and tried to fool them and succeeded in fooling them.
There's no conceivable way that you could do that in a political system.
[53:27] This again, this is the system that people want to save us from violence.
This is the violent system and corrupt system that people want to save us from violence and corruption.
Anyway, I just wanted to sort of put that one at the end. I'll keep it brief.
Thank you so much for Well, thank you so much.
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