Why the 1920 Palmer Raids Feel...Weirdly Familiar? (with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway)

Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway are two titans of podcasting. Their ever-prescient analyses of today's political, technological, and cultural worlds have set an elevated standard for journalists across the board. Today, they help Ed analyze an event from our past that may feel eerily familiar: The Palmer Raids. Although they took place in 1919, their echoes in modern times may just give you goosebumps. Subscribe to the SNAFU YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/@SNAFUPod Buy the SNAFU book: www.snafu-book.com http://www.snafu-book.com/ See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  I wanted to do this podcast because I was hoping to establish a friendship with you because I thought you'd be really fun to party with and I'm no longer sure. No, don't stop, Scott. You seem very serious and kind of, I don't know, very highbrow, so. Sorry. Anyways, that's a bit of a disappointment. Yeah, I can deliver on both fronts. Okay, good. Trust me.

• 0:36Speaker 01

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• 2:09Speaker 06

  Hey there, I'm Ed Helms and welcome to Snafu, the show where I take my guests on a delightful romp through history's biggest screw ups in a courageous and, let's be honest, largely futile attempt to better understand the human condition. My guests today are two of the sharpest, funniest, and most brutally honest voices in tech, business, culture, and politics. Individually, they're award-winning journalists, thought leaders, and podcasters, hosting fantastic shows like On with Kara Swisher, The Prof G Pod, and Raging Moderates. But together, they co-host Pivot, a show that is highly entertaining and profoundly insightful, and basically required listening for anyone trying to navigate this insane moment that

• 2:52Speaker 06

  we find ourselves in. Welcome to Snafu, Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway.

• 2:58Speaker 07

  Thank you. You know Scott is the definition of Snafu. That's how we got started. It was a Snafu.

• 3:04Speaker 00

  That's my stage name when I'm a stripper.

• 3:06Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah. No, it's your porn name.

• 3:08Speaker 00

  Snafu. There you go.

• 3:10Speaker 07

  Snafu.

• 3:10Speaker 06

  What do you mean that you got started through a Snafu?

• 3:15Speaker 07

  It was a mistake. It was a mistake. I was, I've told the story before, but I was looking for another partner and ran into Scott in Germany, of all places where he was giving this speech about, his trend speech, which is really cool. He had all these charts and I was watching it and I kept learning things and I think I know everything, obviously, because I do. But he kept giving me insights. I was like, oh, that was smart. But he was so obnoxious onstage. He danced around. He showed off his stomach. He did all manner of things and the Germans were perplexed. But I was completely entertained and also horrified. And so I went up to him and I said, you really are a jerk, but boy, are you smart and will you come on my show? Which is, you know, that's the meet cute kind of

• 4:00Speaker 07

  thing. And he did.

• 4:02Speaker 06

  Do you see yourself as a jerk? Or is this a fair characterization?

• 4:05Speaker 07

  Jerkish.

• 4:06Speaker 00

  It was my first book, so to get on with Kara was a big deal. But just to finish her story, she called me and said, and Kara gets pretty high profile, she said, Your episode is, according to our data, the most downloaded episode in our history, and we think it's a mistake, so we'd like you to come on a second time. That was my favorite part. We're pretty sure it was a mistake, so come on a second time. Anyways, the rest is history.

• 4:31Speaker 06

  There's no conceivable reason we could, we could, uh...

• 4:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, it doesn't make sense.

• 4:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, see why you're so unappealing.

• 4:38Speaker 07

  How did you beat Elon Musk? That's exactly what I was saying to him, and it was like, perplexing, but people seem to like our little dog and pony show.

• 4:45Speaker 06

  I am one of those folks. And you guys are like a Voltron of podcasting, because you have, you're both kicking ass in your own lanes, and then you kind of stack up as this giant powerhouse on pivot. And you're so well-informed, but also clearly insanely busy. So I have been dying to ask you this. How do you keep up with the news? Like, what are your news consumption habits? What are your go-to sources? Kara, you first.

• 5:11Speaker 07

  I've lately been using Blue Sky and Threads to keep up with news. Like, I watch them, but I do read The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, when things are suggested, The New York Times, obviously. But I look everywhere. I find news everywhere. Weird stories, people, things sent, that's sent to me. But I have a pretty strong news diet. And then I watch a lot of TV and et cetera, trying to keep on cultural stuff, and read people I like, right, that are really smart, including Scott. I read his stuff that he reads, writes all the time, and No Mercy, No Malice. But I keep up with it rather actively, and I think Scott does, too.

• 5:46Speaker 00

  So my media go-tos, The Economist, the BBC, and The Financial Times. And all of that is a lie. I get all of my information, I get all of my information from Instagram, TikTok, and occasionally Threads. And I hate to say it, but I don't, I am, I am, my mind is being shaped by algorithms run by psychopaths. So...

• 6:10Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 6:11Speaker 07

  That tracks.

• 6:12Speaker 00

  I get all my news from social media now, and it wasn't that way two years ago.

• 6:20Speaker 06

  I want to get right into today's snafu because it's really a doozy and I think you're going to find some rather strikingly resonant story points here. Today, we're going to jump back to 1919 to one of the most insane and shameful chapters in US history, the Palmer Raids. Are either of you familiar with the Palmer Raids?

• 6:41Speaker 07

  I'm not. I'm not. There's so much of US history we do not learn.

• 6:45Speaker 06

  It's basically police abuse, isn't it? Yeah, that's essentially sort of the nugget. So let's start with a little political context. The US was pulled into World War I in 1917 and the national mood was very tense, to say the least. President Woodrow Wilson was worried about internal opposition to the war. So with the help of Congress, he passed two critical laws. First, the Espionage Act of 1917, meant to stop spies and wartime sabotage, but it quickly became a catch-all for just silencing dissent. You could be jailed for criticizing the draft or handing out anti-war leaflets. Socialist leader Eugene V. Debs gave a speech questioning the war and got a 10-year prison sentence.

• 7:25Speaker 06

  Next came the Sedition Act of 1918, which made it a crime to say anything, quote, "disloyal" about the US government, the flag, or the military. Newspapers were shut down, teachers got fired, and ordinary citizens were arrested for nothing more than calling the war a mistake. So obviously, this is a bit of a middle finger to the Constitution. Carol, why do we do this? Why do we keep convincing ourselves in scary times that free speech is the problem and that maybe silencing people and banning books will somehow make our problems go away?

• 7:59Speaker 07

  Right. I think it was from the very beginning. John Adams, wasn't he? There was an involvement of another thing back then. There was whether it's seditious, you know, I think he sued a... A newspaper man for propaganda or whatever. So it's not, it's not a new thing.

• 8:15Speaker 00

  No, we always do it.

• 8:16Speaker 07

  I mean, you know, we always try to find people of dissent. And let me give you one example that people don't know about. But when the Gutenberg press was created, everyone always associates with the Bible. And then the Renaissance, you know, scientific books. But the very first book of the, of the, of the Gutenberg era was a thing called The Hammer of Witches, which was a treatise on, on women and Satan and witches. And before women were, did a lot of herbal remedies around Europe. And afterwards, they got killed because they linked them with Satan. And there was one example that he used, which is that there's these women that go around and put men's penises in a basket and put it at the top of a tree, steel penises. And we have to stop this at all costs.

• 9:01Speaker 07

  And, and there was a story in there where a man went up and got a different penis that was bigger. But it's a crazy book. And so, and then there were all these laws passed to try to stop people from being dissent. They were either women that were practicing or different, or people that were different. And so there, there was, there were all these laws passed and they were murdered, really. So I don't, I don't think this is a new thing. It just, it's such a, like, after the attack on, on January 11th, there was that, those laws passed that were really, I think, dangerous in the United States, out of fear, I guess. I don't know, Scott, what do you think?

• 9:35Speaker 00

  If you think about socialism is the pursuit of equality. Liberalism is the pursuit of liberty and certain inalienable rights at birth. Fascism, or the juice of fascism, is to convince people, usually for political means, that the enemy is within. You know, people say Hitler declared war on Poland. He first declared war on his own people. And the most hopeful thing you can take from this nafu you're talking about, it's sort of coming back from senior class or AP history. By the way, I never took an AP class. That's a lie.

• 10:06Speaker 07

  No, you didn't. I was like, what are you talking about?

• 10:08Speaker 00

  I took AP Spanish and I literally, I got two on the test, so I didn't get credits for it. But I'm, I'm a ton of fun at a Mexican restaurant, at Mimi at El Coyote when we're in LA. Anyways, don't miss La Biblioteca, Cara.

• 10:21Speaker 00

  Anyways, so fascism-

• 10:24Speaker 07

  That's the extent of his language abilities.

• 10:26Speaker 00

  Fascism is believing it's the enemy within. And the most hopeful thing we can take, a secret police, I think they rounded up and incarcerated 10,000 people, some of them-

• 10:35Speaker 06

  Hey, don't get ahead of me here. We're, we're gonna-

• 10:38Speaker 00

  But if I remember correctly-

• 10:39Speaker 07

  He's been Googling right now.

• 10:41Speaker 06

  We're gonna get there.

• 10:42Speaker 00

  Okay, so-

• 10:43Speaker 06

  I'm just wondering, it's like, right away, right out of the gate, before this even happened, free speech was just sort of thrown under the bus. Like, and, and it just, it is, to Karis' point, it's something we just keep returning to.

• 10:56Speaker 00

  But that's what's hopeful, is we've been here before, and I would like to think that America, when people, when people protest in a civil way, a peaceful protest, exercise at the voting booths, similar to the Red Scare where they discredited McCarthy-

• 11:13Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 11:13Speaker 00

  My guess is they discredit, and our democracy came back stronger. So what I tried, the only way I don't go fucking crazy and go from 10 milligram edibles to 40 every night, is recognizing that we are not, it is not the first time America has faced what is going on right now.

• 11:27Speaker 06

  Amen.

• 11:28Speaker 07

  Except Scott, during that time, the Red Scare, so many people's lives were ruined, right? And at the same time, by the way, for people that don't understand what was happening there, there was really significant Nazi propaganda that there was, there were things to fear, right? Like Hamilton Fish and all these different senators. So there is real stuff happening that then gets people to overreact to the rest of it. And so you can't ignore the real attempts by, even today, by Iran, by, by China and others to try to fuck up this country. They're, they're, they're actually real and, and something we should be concerned about.

• 12:06Speaker 06

  That is spot on. And this is what we're about to dive into is actually the first, what's referred to as the first red scare. The McCarthy era was the second red scare. Let's jump ahead now to 1919. The war has ended, which sounds great, but the national mood is actually very dark. In fact, America is basically a pressure cooker with the lid barely holding on. Factories that thrived in wartime production are shuttering everywhere. Wages are plunging, prices are soaring. Four million soldiers are limping home, wounded, traumatized, and finding themselves jobless, wondering what the hell they'd fought for. Add to all this a monstrous pandemic. The Spanish flu has torn through cities and rural

• 12:46Speaker 06

  communities alike, killing over 675,000 people, which is more than we lost in the actual war. So the whole country is basically a powder keg. And then, a spark from overseas really lit the fuse. Any guesses what that might have been?

• 13:02Speaker 07

  I don't know, a memo that was leaked?

• 13:05Speaker 06

  The Bolshevik Revolution.

• 13:07Speaker 07

  Oh, that, yes, that. Oh, yes, the Reds. I saw that movie.

• 13:11Speaker 06

  Yeah, here we go. In Russia, Lenin and his followers overthrew the czar, they executed the royal family, and declared the birth of a communist state, a government where the working class held all the state power, in theory, at least. Now, to struggling American workers, getting terrible wages and monstrous working conditions, that may have sounded kind of intriguing, like maybe a ray of hope. But, obviously, to the American elite, the power brokers, the dealmakers, it sounded like an existential threat. I see this as basically the collision of two very primal emotions. It's rage versus fear. You have the workers raging about inequality, and then, of course, elites are afraid of losing

• 13:54Speaker 06

  their status and their fancy things. Is this dynamic just baked into capitalism? Or is there a better way? Is socialism kind of trying to have both sides?

• 14:08Speaker 07

  Oh, I think, I mean, Scott, well, Scott can talk more about this because he talks about sort of the rage. But one of the things, I just interviewed Bernie Sanders, he was very, he was very good, he was very mad about the oligarchs. He has a book called Fighting Oligarchy. And, you know, so I think this isn't a new thing. But one of the things that's important to keep in mind is that it's usually preceded by an area where lots of people get really rich, like really, really rich. And we're in that. And many years ago, when this income inequality started to really, and then the tech people are the new winners, essentially, the tech moguls, when they started to get ahead, I went to one of them, and I said, we have a real problem with income inequality. You could see the numbers, the minimum wage hadn't been, hadn't been rising. And I said, you're either gonna have

• 14:51Speaker 07

  to deal with the inequality and give people a better wage, like solve it, or you're gonna have to armor plate your Tesla. And I looked at him, and I realized he wanted to armor plate his Tesla. That was okay. Like, they, they thought that they had gotten all their money by their own doing, and not by, helped by the government, etc. And they didn't care about people. And you could see that.

• 15:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, for the, if I were to try and think of one piece of data that explains the epicenter of many of our problems, it would be the following. For the first time in our 275 year history, a 30 year old American isn't doing as well as his or her parents were at 30. And that not only keeps, creates rage and shame among a young group of people who are more likely to pick up guns, specifically young men, it creates rage and shame across the household. The algorithm or the pattern you're referring to plays out over and over in a capitalist society, and it's the following. A group of very talented, very hardworking, and very lucky people gather a disproportionate amount of assets. And then we talk ourselves into believing that it is patriotic, and not a bad thing to create tax policy, legislative

• 15:58Speaker 00

  policy, and regulatory captures such that corporations can have their lowest taxes since 1939 now, such that the 26 wealthiest families in America pay an average tax rate of 6%. That is now.

• 16:12Speaker 00

  Bad news about income inequality is it always happens. The good news is it's always self-correcting. And more bad news, though, is that the means of correction are usually war, famine, or revolution. And I would argue that as revolutions take on new complexion, we're in the midst of a series of small revolutions. Black Lives Matter and the Me Too movement were both righteous movements that had real justifiable components, but they weren't going after the sexual harasser owner of a taco truck. They weren't going after someone who was racist in a small company. They were going after rich people. And at some point, when the bottom 52% of America have the same amount of wealth as Elon Musk, they figure out that the fastest way to double their wealth is to go after that person. And that's where we are. At some point, we are having a series of small

• 16:56Speaker 00

  revolutions to try and correct income inequality.

• 16:59Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 17:00Speaker 07

  Heavy.

• 17:01Speaker 06

  That's a good break.

• 17:01Speaker 07

  Heavy.

• 17:02Speaker 06

  That's heavy. It's a good breakdown.

• 17:03Speaker 07

  And people are getting it. I'm sort of shocked we haven't had much more of a revolution or anger over money.

• 17:11Speaker 06

  The crazy thing is that back in 1919, these workers were in like really horrendous conditions and still trying to make it work. But it's sort of, it's all relative, right? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what like what the actual conditions might be. It's the disparity itself that is so, that just feels so off.

• 17:38Speaker 00

  Well, that's a, that's a great, that's a great point. Just to interrupt you because if you, there's something to the notion, and this is true, this is a true statement. A middle-class person right now is living better than the richest person on the planet 100 years ago. And middle-class, Mississippi is our poorest state. It has a higher household income than the UK or Germany or France. So America is actually, you could correctly say a middle-class person in the US is thriving and doing really well. But that's not how the human brain works. The human brain sees 210 times a day that if they're not on a Gulf Stream or don't have a boyfriend with ripped abs, that they're failing. And also, they're living with roommates

• 18:22Speaker 00

  because they, the price of a home went from $290,000 to $420,000 during COVID because we flushed the market with so much stimulus because me, or you, or Kara getting less wealthy would be a crime, greater than a million people dying. And the natural cycle of redistributing income and destroying capital during crises that cedes economic advantage back from the capital owners to labor, we didn't allow happen. And what was most criminal about it was we used their credit card to pay for our incumbency. So these people, you know, you can understand, people say young people are entitled. No, they're not. They're entitled to be enraged. And you have just this incredible shifting of economic prosperity and they're reminded several hundred times a day on their phones that they're

• 19:07Speaker 00

  failing. So try to tell, it's like the mistake Democrats made trying to tell people inflation's not that bad. Well, okay, it feels that bad to me. And I also want to be clear, this is a bipartisan issue. What Trump has effectively done really well is like, okay, Republicans and Republican donors, I'm going to divide up TikTok, I'm going to give you AI legislation that makes you richer. And Democrats who are really rich and hold all the power, there's a really uncomfortable silence, a conspiracy that says, don't get too angry because you're going to make bank if you're a rich Democrat. And one of the most disappointing things about this is good Democrats who are in positions of powers have been fucking silent on all

• 19:49Speaker 00

  of this. Why? Because stop, stop, it hurts so good. My taxes are going down.

• 19:54Speaker 07

  I would agree. Yeah, absolutely.

• 19:57Speaker 00

  Brutal.

• 19:57Speaker 07

  And also, you know, it's often at the expense of the young toward the old. And, you know, you see it in Congress where they're, you know, antiquated, and they're making rules that would benefit the top groups.

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• 20:41Speaker 03

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• 23:12Speaker 06

  All right, I'm going to barrel through a big chunk here. Bolshevik Revolution has happened, and it's just sort of rippling through America. Strikes were breaking out all over the country, steelworkers, coal miners, even the Boston police. And newspapers are screaming of red plots and foreign agitators. Senators are thundering about a red menace. Immigrants from Eastern Europe, Southern Italy, and Russia are branded un-American. And we find ourselves smack in the middle of America's first red scare. Now, while the communist threat was wildly exaggerated in the press, agitators were still making a lot of noise from the margins. Mail bombs were sent to some of the most powerful men in America, J.P. Morgan, John D.

• 23:55Speaker 06

  Rockefeller, and even Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. Remember that name. Most were intercepted by postal workers, but one summer night in 1919, an Italian anarchist named Carlo Valdinochi blew himself up on Palmer's doorstep, badly damaging the house and shattering windows for blocks. It was part of a coordinated attack, bombs in eight cities, each accompanied by a flyer that read in part, "War, class war, and you were the first to wage it, under the cover of the powerful institutions you call order." This is wild to me. The, the, there was certainly...

• 24:34Speaker 06

  Communist sympathy kind of rippling through America, but the actual threat of a full-blown revolution, according to most historians, was greatly exaggerated. What do you think about this moment we're in? Because we're hearing a lot of chatter about civil war. I feel like sometimes I'm seeing the drumbeat in some mainstream conservative news and

• 24:59Speaker 07

  They want that. They would like that.

• 25:02Speaker 06

  Is it overblown? Or is it like, does it feel closer? Or is it sort of?

• 25:06Speaker 07

  No. Well, I don't know. You know, I'm in Korea right now. And the person I was interviewing was like, how can you let people be National Guard be on your street? We push back martial law here. And they overturn the president of Korea. They were like, why are you putting up with that? Like, kind of thing. And I'm like, well, the ones in DC are laying mulch. They're not really, right? The ICE raids, to me, is where it all surrounds, which is, most people aren't affected by it.

• 25:34Speaker 00

  I have two thoughts. The first is, I wanted to do this podcast because I was hoping to establish a friendship with you because I thought you'd be really fun to party with. And I'm no longer sure.

• 25:42Speaker 07

  No, don't stop, Scott.

• 25:43Speaker 00

  You seem very serious and kind of, I don't know, very highbrow. So anyways, that's a bit of a disappointment.

• 25:51Speaker 06

  Yeah, I can deliver on both fronts.

• 25:54Speaker 00

  Okay, good. Trust me.

• 25:55Speaker 07

  If you need a restraining order, call me.

• 25:57Speaker 00

  Okay, my second, second thought. We're actually not that divided. What we have is the most profitable companies in the world that have attached stakeholder value to dividing and polarizing us.

• 26:07Speaker 06

  Yes. Amen to that.

• 26:09Speaker 00

  That if you go out, it sounds like you travel a decent amount. I don't care where you are. You can be in deepest, reddest America. You can be in the most overly liberal place. Generally, you're going to find, no matter what side of the political spectrum you are, when you meet people, they're lovely. People are friendly. People are nice. People are courteous. People want you to win.

• 26:30Speaker 06

  Amen.

• 26:31Speaker 00

  And the biggest tragedy of AI is that it's crawling the online world. It's not crawling the offline world. And America's not as divided as people think. What we have is an administration that wants to take on a series of actions that are so upsetting and sometimes divisive. We could have a biometric

• 26:54Speaker 00

  Technology and a clipboard and go into every business that has undocumented workers and figure out a way to very elegantly and nonviolently deport them if that's what we wanted. Of course. If if we wanted to stop, if we went into an organization and said, you're going to get fined a thousand dollars a day for every illegal immigrant here until they leave, they would leave. They're not here for our Chick-fil-A and our civil rights. They're here for money and jobs. If the jobs dry up, they'll leave. But instead, we send en masse secret police that divides us and really upsets us. In addition, forty percent of the SMP by market cap is companies that are trying to

• 27:33Speaker 00

  keep us so engaged that we don't leave our phones or our search bar or our social media platform. And unfortunately, we used to think that sex was the number one means of engaging people. Sex sells. What we found out, or the algorithms found out, unfortunately, is that even better than sex is rage. Hmm. And so they consistently try and convince us that these people are bad people and this comment is bad. Let me elevate this incendiary comment beyond its organic reach because it'll piss off people. So we we aren't actually that divided, but unfortunately, we have connected material wealth to division.

• 28:12Speaker 07

  And and these companies that polarize, what Scott was referring to is a phrase I used in my book, which was enrage equals engagement. They figured that out, right? Especially Facebook.

• 28:22Speaker 00

  We're so primal. We're such lizards.

• 28:25Speaker 07

  Absolutely. But it works. It's also but it's also addictive. It's got the addictive element and the enrage element. And a lot of it is started by bots, by the way. It's not started by people. And I when there's been lots of examples of that, like that it creates anger and then it then people like a traffic accident show up. And one of the things that's important to keep in mind is, as Scott said, it's in their financial interest to do this, however they can keep your attention. And, you know, for example, ChatGPT just announced a browser, but among other things, they also announced, you know, they had talked about how ChatGPT was going to solve cancer, that, you know, this is the marketing of it. Oh, we're going to do this. We're going to do all these high-minded things. What did they announce? An erotica service? Like, because that's the other thing that attracts people. They need to make money.

• 29:10Speaker 07

  And so whatever Mark Zuckerberg or Sam Altman or any of them can do to grab on to your your brain stem and hold it as much as you can, they're gonna do.

• 29:20Speaker 06

  I love Tristan Harris's Race to the Bottom of the Brain Stem.

• 29:24Speaker 07

  Right. The lizard brain, and it works.

• 29:27Speaker 06

  I want to really get to the juicy stuff. We're still almost, we're still in the setup.

• 29:31Speaker 07

  A bomb. We're not at the juicy stuff? Okay.

• 29:33Speaker 06

  We gotta plow ahead. So now imagine you're Attorney General Palmer, you're a pillar of the American power structure, a man of the law, a man who is already suspicious that radicals might be crawling out of every shadow, and now your home has been bombed. And how far would you go to rein this shit in? Well, it turns out really damn far, and that is where the story of the Palmer raids really begins. So, let's be clear, the bombings were acts of political terror. They're horrific and completely indefensible, full stop. Investigating them and bringing the perpetrators to justice was a worthy and just goal, but as we will soon see, and as is often the case with government overreach, reasonable and just intentions

• 30:16Speaker 06

  can very easily warp into horrendous abuse, where the original crime becomes less a wrong to be righted and more an excuse for new and far greater injustices. Now, Palmer himself is a very interesting guy, and like all of us, a barrel of contradictions. He was pro-women's suffrage and anti-child labor, which is not exactly going out on a limb of awesomeness, but it was a different time, and that was a bit progressive. He was raised as a Quaker with pacifist leanings. Palmer had actually turned down President Wilson's offer to serve as Secretary of War, but he wasn't shy about his own presidential ambitions, and he was well aware that a few high-profile wins as Attorney General could help pave the way.

• 30:58Speaker 06

  So, he declared radicals and communists public enemy number one, which, to be fair, probably wasn't too hard, considering they just bombed his actual house.

• 31:12Speaker 06

  He moved very quickly. He created a new division within the Justice Department called the General Intelligence Division, later nicknamed the Radical Division, and he tapped a 24-year-old Justice Department clerk to run it. I'm going to give you one guess each.

• 31:30Speaker 07

  Roy Cohn again?

• 31:32Speaker 06

  He's Coney, he's Cohn-esque.

• 31:36Speaker 07

  Cohn-esque, okay.

• 31:37Speaker 06

  This is a 24-year-old J. Edgar Hoover.

• 31:40Speaker 07

  Of course, yeah.

• 31:41Speaker 06

  That guy.

• 31:42Speaker 07

  Speaking of Roy Cohn, yeah.

• 31:43Speaker 06

  This new division's mandate was to gather intelligence on radical organizations and their members, and which of course was a perfect fit for Hoover, who basically fetishized the accumulation of secrets and data on people.

• 31:56Speaker 07

  What is with these closet cases? Anyway, sorry.

• 31:58Speaker 06

  Yeah. He already had a growing reputation as a meticulous bureaucrat with a strong anti-radical ideology. Now, with Hoover at the helm, things really spiraled quickly. That fall, the Justice Department began arresting suspected radicals, citing, of course, the Espionage Act and the Sedition Act. But on November 7, 1919, the second anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, which was no coincidence, Hoover and Palmer took things to a whole new level, launching a coordinated blitz across a dozen American cities, including Chicago, Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, and many others. And these raids

• 32:39Speaker 06

  were brutal. In New York City, agents stormed a building on East 15th Street known as the Russian People's House, a modest community hub that doubled as a union office, cafeteria, and school for recent immigrants. Inside, workers, teachers, and young students were finishing their day as federal agents laid siege to the building in a storm of violence. One journalist described it as, quote, "one of the most brutal raids ever witnessed in the city. Men, women, and children were beaten and dragged out into the cold. The feds took 200 immigrants from the Russian People's House that night. Nationwide, the tally varies depending on your source, but it's safe to say many hundreds and likely over 1,000 people were arrested that night." Now, here are some very disturbing details. Reports...

• 33:23Speaker 06

  From the time indicate that the feds had very few actual warrants during the raid. Moreover, roughly 75% of those arrested were not even related to organizations under surveillance, nor had they committed any crime. They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. And sadly, of course, many couldn't speak English to defend themselves. Now, once captured, the detainees faced a complete breakdown of due process. Many were severely beaten, interrogated with torture, and packed into filthy overcrowded cells where they were held for weeks or months without charges, access to lawyers, or contact with family. What began as a legitimate hunt for very real bad guys quickly devolved into

• 34:07Speaker 06

  a broad system of indiscriminate, lawless abuse. At that time, people were relying on newspapers to kind of learn about these things, and newspapers were, of course, beholden to some of the major power brokers of the day. Now, we see videos of ICE raids online before the agents are even back in their cars. Does that kind of instant visibility, do you think that enhances accountability, or does it just feed the noise machine, the outrage machine that you're talking about? Are we more informed or just more inflamed?

• 34:41Speaker 07

  I think it can become like, you know, outrage porn, right? I mean, it's a version of like staring at it and also numb you to it. But you know, all those videos of people of color getting beaten by cops didn't seem to change the equation, right? We're sort of back where we started. I mean, ultimately, if you're inundated and flooded with information, you become numb to it. Average people become numb. That said, the civil rights movement, I think, was changed by a lot of those photographs and a lot of those videos of people being attacked by hoses and dogs and stuff like that. I think that made a difference, but that was in a wholly different information environment where it was shocking. Like, it

• 35:23Speaker 07

  was shocking to see that in your information diet. And, you know, it takes journalists to do that and get it out there.

• 35:29Speaker 06

  Absolutely. I still check X every once in a while, but every time I go into X, I'm just flooded with the most violent stuff.

• 35:40Speaker 00

  Well, it's engagement. And an example, there's a couple of examples. And some of it's good, some of it's bad. The naked girl running from a napalm bombing or Agent Orange, that probably expedited our withdrawal from Vietnam. That imagery is incredibly important. We get it faster now, but the problem is, we pay a huge price for fast, and that is slowing it down and fact checking things, and deciding what's responsible reporting. And traditional media, which is in the business of slowing shit down and having an editorial voice around what is worth reporting, and not algorithmically elevating beyond its organic reach of value, that business is wildly unprofitable and a shitty business.

• 36:21Speaker 06

  When America sort of weaned itself off of cigarettes, it was like, it was like a great victory for, for the, for sort of like, general health of the population. But now we're in this situation where so many people, including kids, are ready to wean themselves off of their phones, but we can't because we have to use them for so much stuff. It's like if you were trying to quit cigarettes, but you had to, you had to like, use a pack of cigarettes to do your online banking. It's so-

• 36:51Speaker 07

  We all worked for RJ Reynolds. Remember, they all had a smoke during, when they worked there.

• 36:56Speaker 06

  We just got through the first wave of the Palmer raids. We're about to jump into the second. With the encouragement of Palmer, in January of 1920, came the mother of all raids. Federal, state, and local agents swept through more than 30 cities, arresting between 3 and 10,000 people. Again, mostly without warrants, and again, jail cells overflowed, the mistreatment continued, and due process eroded even further. Palmer claimed that these arrests were obviously critical and just the tip of the iceberg, that there were 300,000 communists still out there they needed to chase down. But by now, fortunately, even his own government was starting to recoil from this stuff.

• 37:36Speaker 06

  Acting Labor Secretary Louis Post reviewed the deportation files and found most of them completely baseless, overturning more than 70% of the 1,600 cases. By spring of 1920, the horror stories of beatings and illegal detentions were headline news, and the- tide was turning against the raids. And then came the nail in Palmer's professional coffin. He had been warning and using this as justification the whole time that on May 1st, 1920, the communists across the country would rise up, torch cities and topple the government. So on that day, the country braced itself like for a revolution.

• 38:20Speaker 06

  Police nationwide were on high alert, troops were on standby, headlines were screaming the apocalypse. And then, of course, nothing, like zero, no uprisings, no riot, just a traditional lovely May Day with parades and picnics.

• 38:34Speaker 07

  The Antifa uprising or the caravan, right? We've had that. The caravan's headed our way. Antifa's gonna invade my town, this and that, you know.

• 38:44Speaker 00

  Wasn't last weekend supposed to be a Hamas rally, violent criminals?

• 38:48Speaker 07

  Hamas, yeah, the Hamas rally, yeah. You know, they try it. They try to scare people and then they're wrong. And when they're wrong, they go, well, it's because we talked about it that it prevented it.

• 38:57Speaker 08

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• 39:27Speaker 03

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• 40:01Speaker 09

  She'd throw things, wander, and started hoarding. Mom's Alzheimer's was already so hard. But then we found out she had agitation that may happen with dementia due to Alzheimer's disease. And that was a different kind of difficult. So we asked her doctor for more help.

• 40:16Speaker 10

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• 40:51Speaker 09

  I'm glad I asked for help.

• 40:53Speaker 10

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• 41:58Speaker 06

  Well, Palmer's credibility evaporated overnight. His presidential ambitions collapsed. By summer, newspapers that once hailed him as a patriot were now mocking him. Palmer's grand crusade had collapsed under the weight of his own paranoia. And he basically is done for as a political figure, which is a little bit reassuring, I must say. Like, it's nice that to see that credibility built on fear and panic might actually be quite fragile. I will say, Trump seems to be proving otherwise.

• 42:32Speaker 07

  Well, it's not going to be Trump. It's going to be Bondi. It's going to be all his minions that get the shaft when this is over. It's not him. He'll sail away or die, you know?

• 42:42Speaker 06

  Yeah, you're right. Well, guess who sneaked away from this whole affair squeaky clean?

• 42:48Speaker 07

  Hoover.

• 42:49Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yep. Palmer's downfall left zero stink on J. Edgar Hoover, who was truly the organizer of these raids. He would soon become the head of the Bureau of Investigation, which of course would become the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where Hoover would spend the next half-century perfecting the art of collecting secrets, intimidating enemies, and rewriting the rules to suit himself. The Palmer raids faded from headlines, but their DNA certainly lived on. It reemerged in McCarthyism, in COINTELPRO, in the Patriot Act, and in basically every "emergency measure justified by fear." Enemies come and go, right? But the playbook stays the same.

• 43:32Speaker 06

  It's manufacture panic, suspend rights, call it patriotism.

• 43:36Speaker 07

  The only thing is here, it's a pervasive, on-steroids media system that's very different. That's different. And these people, as Scott pointed out, make money from it.

• 43:47Speaker 06

  There are so many parallels, obviously, to this modern moment. They were just coming out of a pandemic. We have COVID right behind us. The targeting of immigrants, the, as Scott was pointing out, the kind of targeting of the other. We're not mad at foreign, sort of, states abroad that might be... Threatening us, we're just mad at ourselves internally. There's a breakdown of due process that we're seeing in these ICE raids. The detainment in poor conditions we're seeing, alligator Alcatraz getting a lot of terrible press. They're so heinous. But I have to say, I think what's most striking about the Palmer Rays isn't how much they resemble today, it's how much they don't.

• 44:32Speaker 06

  Because in 1919, America's paranoia was at least tethered to an idea, right? The specter of communism, Bolshevism, and this global ideology that was challenging capitalism. But today, there is no grand ideological struggle. We're just living through something pettier and, I don't know, smaller. And it's the weaponization of one man's ego, right? Trump's not offering like an alternative worldview here. He's just offering pure, unfiltered grievance as a political identity. That's for sure.

• 45:09Speaker 00

  I think one of the unfortunate things is that we're a victim of our own prosperity and blessings, and that is back then, people remembered the robber barons, World War I, the Depression. And so many people had sacrificed so much for the country. I mean, effectively, our generation, you know, civil rights, prosperity have all gone up into the right over the medium and long term for us. And our prosperity has been extraordinary. And none of us have had to go to war. None of us have really had to sacrifice. We haven't served in the same uniform. I'm not saying things haven't been hard for special interest groups, but generally speaking, things have just, there's never been a place or a period in history where things got this

• 45:54Speaker 00

  much better this fast. And we've gotten used to that pattern. And we don't acknowledge or are not willing to make the sacrifices and don't even recognize when all of a sudden, overturning Roe v. Wade was the first time, I think, in history that rights had been taken away by the Supreme Court in our country. And we're just not used to it and also aren't used to sacrificing for it. We didn't have to go to war. I think we forget how many people have sacrificed so much to give us the rights we have, and we have come to believe that these rights are inalienable. And no, they can be taken away.

• 46:31Speaker 00

  Since Japanese families were interned in World War II, I feel like we haven't had this sort of existential threat to the Constitution, and we're a bit flat-footed as to how to deal with it. Because, I mean, to summarize my TED Talk here, we've become fat and happy as it relates to not only food and calories, but to rights. We're under the impression America's going to get better, even if we don't have to, even if we continue to not sacrifice for it.

• 46:59Speaker 07

  Yeah, 100%.

• 47:05Speaker 06

  There is a bit of a silver lining that emerged that, from all of this.

• 47:10Speaker 07

  J. Edgar Hoover died, finally.

• 47:13Speaker 06

  50 years later.

• 47:14Speaker 07

  Scott always says, "Biology is undefeated. It wins in the end."

• 47:18Speaker 06

  That is accurate. In the wake of the Palmer raids, we saw the emergence of the American Civil Liberties Union, which formed in 1920. The ACLU began as a scrappy band of lawyers and journalists determined to defend free speech, due process, and together with the National Popular Government League in May of 1920, they published a remarkable letter, which I want to read to you. This was written by 12 prominent lawyers of the day, and it was called "The Report Upon Illegal Practices By the United States Department of Justice." Here's the letter. "For more than six months, we, the undersigned lawyers, whose sworn duty it is to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States, have seen with growing apprehension the continued violation of that Constitution

• 48:03Speaker 06

  and breaking of those laws by the Department of Justice of the United States government. Under the guise of a campaign for the suppression of radical activities, the Office of the Attorney General, acting by its local agents throughout the country and giving express instructions from Washington, has committed continual illegal acts. Wholesale arrests of both aliens and citizens have been made without warrant or any process of law. Men and women have been jailed and held incommunicado without access to friends or counsel. Homes have been entered without search warrant and property seized and removed. Other property has been wantonly destroyed. In support of these illegal acts and to..." Create sentiment in its favor. The Department of Justice has also constituted itself a propaganda bureau and has sent to

• 48:47Speaker 06

  newspapers and magazines of this country quantities of material designed to excite public opinion against radicals, all at the expense of the government and outside the scope of the Attorney General's duties. We know, we make no argument in favor of any radical doctrine as such, whether socialist, communist, or anarchist, none of us belong to any of those schools of thought, nor do we now raise any question as to the constitutional protection of free speech and a free press. We are concerned solely with bringing to the attention of the American people the utterly illegal acts which have been committed by those charged with the highest duty of enforcing the laws. Acts which have caused widespread suffering and unrest have struck at the foundation

• 49:28Speaker 06

  of American free institutions and have brought the name of our country into disrepute.

• 49:33Speaker 07

  Wow, where are those guys today? That should go right to Pam Bondi from the Bob Igers and the law firms that keep, and the university presidents and the, all of them should be writing letters like this to the Justice Department, but they want their things.

• 49:47Speaker 06

  Isn't that incredible?

• 49:48Speaker 07

  Yeah, it is, because they want their gimmies. And we have a coin-operated president who, if you put a coin in, you get what you want out of it, or get more. So, you know, it's all about money, Ed, in the end, for this group of people, for sure, don't you think, Scott?

• 50:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, look, the delta between, I was thinking, I think, I think we're older than you, Ed, and Kara's much, much older than both of us. But when I was a kid, where did you grow up, Ed?

• 50:17Speaker 06

  Atlanta.

• 50:18Speaker 00

  Okay, you're in Atlanta. My dad's boss had a Thunderbird, we had a Torino. He had a bigger house, but lived in the same neighborhood. They had more money, but not much more money. The delta between having money or not and being middle-class, of which was the pick and the python, it was the biggest part of our economy and most people he knew were middle-class, and the difference between quote-unquote wealthy people was not that great. The incentives are all fucked up here, and we aren't rewarding people for being good, you know, good men and good Americans.

• 50:51Speaker 07

  Citizens, and writing a letter like that. You aren't going to see it from these people, and you're definitely not going to see it from tech people. I mean, I always use this phrase with Scott and all over the place, is they're so poor, all they have is money. They don't want to help you and they don't care. And they've shown it again and again by the lack of safety on their platforms, introducing products that are dangerous and having no strictures because they paid off our legislators. And so they're not, this has got to come from below. Like it's not going to come from these people. They will not, you will not see a letter like that from any of them anytime soon.

• 51:28Speaker 06

  Well, Kara Swisher, Scott Galloway.

• 51:33Speaker 06

  No, I, this is, yeah, this, this kind of, this episode took a bit of a-

• 51:36Speaker 07

  Jack GPT erotica is very good.

• 51:38Speaker 06

  It's super fun.

• 51:39Speaker 07

  We're such dumb asses. We're so stupid.

• 51:42Speaker 06

  I promise next time I, I'll, I'll, I'll bring the, the, the silly a little more, Scott, for us. But yeah, because this episode got a little heavy. I thought this was going to be like Hot Ones without Helms or something. This was not what I was expecting.

• 51:56Speaker 07

  He's a brainy guy.

• 51:57Speaker 06

  I don't know. I, I sort of, yeah, I dipped back and forth and for some reason I really wanted to like, like dig into your brains a little bit and I'm so glad that, that you came on.

• 52:07Speaker 07

  So everybody get on your inflatable animal suit and get out there and protest. That's what I say.

• 52:12Speaker 06

  There it is. Thanks so much for coming on. I hope to see you soon. Cheers.

• 52:16Speaker 07

  Thanks, Ed.

• 52:18Speaker 06

  Snafu is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Snafu Media, a partnership between Film Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company. Our post-production studio is Good Egg Audio. Our executive producers are me, Ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Glenn Basner, Andy Kim, and Dylan Fagan. This episode was produced by Alyssa Martino and Tori Smith. Our managing producer is Carl Nellis. Our video editor is Jared Smith. Technical direction and engineering from Nick Dooley. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Logo and branding by Matt Gosson and The Collected Works. Legal review from Dan Welsh, Megan Halson, and Caroline Johnson.

• 52:59Speaker 06

  Special thanks to Isaac Dunham, Adam Horn, Lane Klein, and everyone at iHeart Podcasts, but especially Will Pearson, Carrie Lieberman, and Nikki Ator. While I have you, don't forget to pick up a copy of my book, Snafu: The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest Screw-Ups. It's available now from any book retailer. Just go to snafu-book.com. Thanks for listening and see you next week.

• 53:34Speaker 03

  The scariest part of Halloween isn't the full moon or a chainsaw starting up in the distance. It's running out of Reese's Cups. Because when you open the door to four princesses, six superheroes, and three Draculas all reaching for your Reese's Cups, things can get scary fast. Especially when you were kind of counting on some leftovers. So this Halloween, buy extra. Because your neighbor Jeff dressed like a kangaroo? That's scary enough. Running out of Reese's Cups doesn't need to be.

• 54:04Speaker 13

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