So they didn’t prosecute a single individual in this attempt. Guess our government as always allowed insurrection go unpunished in our country. Just like Trump and his J6th people.
Even better, it allowed for a political dynasty to come from it anyways. Prescott Bush, the father of George H. W Bush and grandfather of George W. Bush and Jeb Bush, was one of the parties involved with the Business Plot, and the Bushes seemed to do a fine job carrying on his legacy.
Wow. This makes so much sense.
Stop making me sad sir! I see you reciting facts, and putting reality on full display. This only means that it doesn’t matter what we do, fascism will always be a lurking and sometimes more than lurking threat. Even if you stop it’s current plans, it’s always there, unpunished, ready to rear it’s ugly head in future generations.
STOP MAKING ME SAD, SIR!!!
No, it means next time the world goes to war with fascists, they need to finish the job.
This is utterly wrong. Fascism is not a meme. Fascism isn’t spreading throughout the Western world like a mind virus.
Fascism is the predictable result of the last 40 years of grinding neoliberalism. It is capitalism in decay.
Fascism is not a grassroots movement. It’s a false revolution, funded by the capitalist class, which leaves the capitalist class in power.
People aren’t born racists, supremisits, and bigots. Those ideas are taught.
And for the last 15+ years there’s been an enormous internet meme campaign pipelining people towards this belief. It did not come about naturally
Should’ve been executed tbh.
We’d have a much better country if they’d done that, no doubt.
If we had executed all of the traitors after the Civl War, instead of letting them return to their basically untouched power structures, we wouldn’t be in this situation.
There were no consequences for taking up arms against the United States a century and a half ago - why would there be consequences for something like a coup?
Fair point.
This whole mentality of forgiving treason so the country can move forward is a nice get out of jail free card for the rich assholes that keep getting us all killed.
The Elite of the Confederacy should have been hanged and their property distributed to former enslaved people and poor free men.
When the powerful people do it, the state will protect them while socialists got the rope for essentially shit posting because the plebs liked it a bit too much.
FDR waved prosecution in exchange for the fascist senators involved. Voting for his legislation.
Some things about the Dems never change do they?
He at least got Social Security and a few other things passed. Though they set to work immediately gutting it all. And this was before the worst of world war ii. But they didn’t learn from that and they haven’t learned since.
They didn’t prosecute anyone because there was essentially no evidence beyond the accusation of one man, and even then no-one was accused of doing anything beyond talking about it
Found a conspirator.
Although seriously, it’s mentioned in the Wikipedia article that the investigating committee said there is strong evidence of the plotting. They didn’t prosecute anyone becaus of course rich people won’t be prosecuted. I have read rumours that Franklin Roosevelt may have made some backroom deal.
He 100% did. In return for not releasing the evidence and basically scrubbing it’s from the history books. He got some of his Great Society legislation passed. Which they promptly gutted and rendered useless. Because fascists are remorseless sociopaths.
Nice try, zuck.
I love that I never learned about this until I read history books for fun as an adult. You’d think that young students, growing up in this country, should know what the wealthy class has done in full to try and keep them oppressed, whether it’s the Business Plot, the Battle for Blair Mountain, the violent government response to rail strikes, etc. etc. etc.
But no.
Schools don’t teach this stuff on purpose.
the Battle for Blair Mountain
Welp, here’s another rabbit hole on the list. See yall later 👋😀
1892 Homestead Strike and The Haymarket Affair too.
Happy rabbit holing.
It’s like the rich forgot. And while I really don’t want to see political violence I am sure that a country with more guns than people is not going to react well to a new gilded age.
I would recommend Chill Goblin’s Oliver Anthony, Welfare, and Blair Mountain.
The curriculum is written by the very class that these moments in history shades. Of course they’re not taught.
And guess who was one of the conspirator? Big daddy (Prescott) Bush.
Gods, in the span of 20 years we’ve gone from a president descended from an attempted fascist overthrow to watching the fascist overthrow happen through “legal” means.
This is why it is important to hang traitors.
Smedley Butler’s healthy distrust of those in power was developed at an early age when his parents named him Smedley.
🎶Smedley cat, Smedley cat …
Heh, sometimes you learn by seeing what wrong looks like. Well put, Squid!
took them 90 years but it worked out in the end
It worked out like 20 years later, let’s not kid ourselves. Shit, it worked out then. The government committee suspected wrongdoing but did nothing, nobody got in trouble. It’s safe to assume they found another way in. And it’s clear they did. American middle class has not improved for 50+ years.
George Carlin used to say the nazis lost the war but fascism won.
Now we get to contrast both approaches and assess what we’ve doomed ourselves to. Future historians will appreciate this case study.
Man, Smedley Butler underwent a hell of an arc. From being a proud soldier of American imperialism, to becoming the father of modern police forces, to foiling a fascist plot to overthrow the country and becoming an outspoken anti-war advocate. He went from one end of the political spectrum to the other.
He also won the Congressional Medal of Honor twice.
Great Behind the Bastards episode on smedley
I listened to an audiobook about him.
I’m not sure I e ever been so impressed by the conduct and ethics of any other individual on earth.
Major General Smedley Butler seemed like a fairly respectable guy. He was like the worst choice the Wall Street plotters could’ve picked. The man had already been denouncing capitalism and Wall Street, so of course he testified to Congress when rich people tried to get him to overthrow democracy.
Very strange indeed to pick Smedley. But actually like with many secret plots, if you go into the details, the conspirators can be surprisingly inept. The December plot to overthrow the Russian tsardom and replace it with a republic comes to mind. It failed because of lack of coordination, communication, and one of the major co-conspirators lost his nerve at the last minute and thus did not add numbers to the troops of rebels. There was plenty of idealism but it lacked the nerves and good plan execution.
I remember learning about this as a kid from, of all places, a 1976 detective show called City of Angels (starring Wayne Rogers). Ten-year-old me thought it was so cool they would even broach such a topic on TV. As ways to become radicalised go …
Huh that’s really interesting. I had heard of Smedley Butler but was unaware of the plot until I watched the movie Amsterdam. It doesn’t pretend to be an accurate depiction, even the names are changed but the coup attempt is the same
Margot Robbie, Christian Bale, and John David Washington, were in a movie about that plot, Amsterdam(2022).
Thanks, I thought there was a movie but I was having trouble finding the name.
I can’t believe I had to scroll down this far to find someone mentioned this. THANKS
Interestingly nobody was prosecuted for this, even though the House of Reps determined that it was real. Apparently “conspiracy” isn’t always the crime it’s supposed to be.
In light of the final outcome of Jan 6, it seems to be exactly what one should have expected.
We really need better laws and an independent law enforcement agency to enforce them. A modern day group of untouchables.
I think what we need is to take away money’s influence on politics. The most effective way I know to do that is by capping wealth.
Don’t you know? IOKIYAAR
Ingrate Ostriches Kill in Yosemite Antique Auction Rehearsals. Jesus Christ, someone should do something about this
It just took the another 90 years or so.
Took them damn well long enough but they finally saw it through
This story all comes down to how much you trust Smedley, which, having read his biography, I’m not sure that I do.
Why not? He’s a pretty decorated war hero.
I mean, his early life was riddled with fucked up actions (mostly carrying out orders to create Banana Republics), but it’s exactly why he turned around on the government and called them out on the bullshit. There is very real evidence the plot existed, but those responsible escaped trial most likely due to Roosevelt’s interference (strange how robber barons suddenly got quiet about his New Deal).
Smedley was a G, and the committee who looked into basically found wrongdoing but did nothing about it.
TIL the acronym FDR
I know more about FDR than I do about the last president of turkey. Who the fuck was president before Erdoğan? Seriously it’s been 25 years of Erdoğan
TIL: Abdullah Gül
Though I find the predecesor before Gül even more interesting: Ahmet Necdet Sezer. Apparently he was the last secular president of Turkey. “During receptions at the presidential palace, Sezer refused to allow women wearing the headscarf to attend citing the laws on the separation of religion and state at the time; this resulted in the wives of Abdullah Gül and Erdoğan, Hayrünnisa Gül and Emine Erdoğan respectively, being barred from attendance. Erdoğan later said in public that he had ‘suffered a lot’ from Sezer.[3]” So he refused the wives of who would be his successors.
“During the 2014 presidential election, won by Erdoğan, Sezer openly refused to vote, citing the lack of a secularist candidate as his reason” Turkey has a strong secularist tradition and I really hope it returns sometime. Atatürk is still being celebrated, but do people still believe in his secular ideals?
Atatürk is being used as a political gateway to Islamism… Somehow.
There are people who thoroughly believe in kemalism, but the modern CHP isn’t even kemalist themselves
Turkey also is weirdly prejudiced nowadays
If you’re not Muslim you’re mocked. Converting from islam is even worse. And the ‘Progressives’ in center left parties got a weird case of being prejudiced and homophobic
And every 5 years there is a new Kurdish leftwing party, they keep banning them for cooperating with terrorists or whatever the real reason is
