The Martyr Made Podcast

Over the span of a handful of months, the most ancient ruling houses of Europe collapsed under the weight of deprivation and suffering brought about by the Great War. As communist revolutionaries burn Russia to the ground, their comrades preach blood and fire on the streets of Berlin, and while the Allied countries celebrate their noble victory, the starving, exhausted people of the German Reich face a new enemy more terrible than any they faced in the trenches. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit subscribe.martyrmade.com/subscribe

The First World War shattered a generation of Europeans. Killing took place on a monumental scale, as whole societies gave their all for their countries. German men who spent their young adulthood in the murderous trenches of the Great War, only to be crushed under the weight of a hostile world, would be senior officers in Hitler’s Wehrmacht, while their sons prepared for a rematch as young soldiers, sailors, and airmen. The harrowing experience of the First World War forged the men who fought the Second World War, so our story starts with that experience. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit subscribe.martyrmade.com/subscribe

Sorry for my poor audio. I got a fancy new mic and pre-amp, and apparently I don’t know how to set it up properly. I will get it fixed before the next time you’re forced to hear my voice through it. There is video, but I’m still working on it.This interview was meant as a follow-up to people who have already listened to my Epstein series, or have seen the interview I did on Tucker Carlson’s show. We start with the assumption that listeners already know the outline of the Epstein story and related cases, and we jump right into the deep end.For those who don’t know, Ryan Dawson is the OG Epstein researcher. He was making content on the topic back in the days when nobody had heard of Jeffrey Epstein - including me, and I’ve been on this story way longer than most. Ryan was banned from every platform imaginable - Facebook, Twitter, PayPal, crypto exchanges, even MySpace - for talking about this when there wasn’t even any public attention on the issue. When it comes to this topic, he’s the guy.Fair warning. Some of you might have a personal problem with Ryan because of how strident he can be when talking about Israel, whether with regard to the Gaza conflict, the State of Israel’s influence in the US, and the connections of people like Jeffrey Epstein to Israeli intelligence. He goes hard, harder than me, and maybe too hard for some of you to bear. But, though he may be an anti-Zionist, he is not an antisemite. I’ve seen and heard him argue with real deal, rootin’ tootin’ antisemites who were upset at his insistence that this is about a destructive ideology, not any race or ethnic group. Whatever you think of him, there is simply no one better on this issue.You can find him on Twitter at RyLiberty (he’s a libertarian, but I’m willing to let that go for now).He also has a Substack that you should support if you’re interested in the Epstein space because, chances are, much of the information you’ve heard or read was originally uncovered by Ryan. His Substack is: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit subscribe.martyrmade.com/subscribe

Hey everybody. Many of you will have already heard my take on the Book of Job, but I wanted to put it all together and expand on it this Easter. I hope you all had a blessed day, I mean it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit subscribe.martyrmade.com/subscribe

Hi everyone. Check out the trailer for the new Martyr Made series, Enemy: The Germans’ War.As I embark on this project, I’m more thankful than ever for your support. I’ve taken on controversial topics in the past, but as we saw from the reaction to my appearance on The Tucker Carlson Show last year, World War 2 is the ultimate third rail. The series will not be an apologia for the Third Reich, but an attempt to understand the war through the eyes of the people who lost it. Still, I know I’ll be attacked, not only by individuals, but by the same large, well-funded organizations that came after me last year. Fortunately, I have confidence that Substack means what they say about supporting free speech. They had my back after the Tucker interview, and I know they’ll have it now. But you guys are the reason I don’t have to be afraid. I work for you, and only you, and yours is the only opinion I really care about. Gratitude doesn’t begin to capture what I feel for you guys, but just know how much I appreciate it.To those of you who are not yet paid subscribers, help me weather the storm that’s coming for just $5 p/month or $50 p/year. In addition to supporting the podcast through what promise to be some heavy seas, you get access to tons of exclusive podcasts, essays (with audio versions), and more. People in my position like to say that $5 is just the cost of a cup of coffee at Starbucks, but I know from experience what it’s like for every cent to count. So if the subscription fee is tough to swing, but you’d like to subscribe, shoot me an email (martyrmade @ gmail) and I’ll get you set up. If all you’re able to give is your attention, I’m happy and humbled by it.Next episode should be ready by the end of March.Thanks everybody. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit subscribe.martyrmade.com/subscribe

Well, that was interesting. I say “was,” even though it’s still ongoing, because I figure that being officially denounced by the White House must be the peak of an experience like this, but who knows… I’ve been surprised more than once this week. I have been very gratified that all of you have chosen to stick with me through this time, and that many of you have joined us since it happened. Martyr Made has been the #1 ranked podcast in all categories for several days now. We live in a new world. No official White House denunciation, or hit piece in a national newspapers, or rabid Twitter mob, can change the fact that I work for you guys, and only you guys. Today, more than most days, I am very grateful for that. Most of the invective lobbed my way this week has been either uninformed or simply in bad faith, but there are good faith people I respect, including some of you, who have questions, and this message is to you.This will be my final word on the matter until the first episode of my upcoming series, Enemy: The Germans’ War.When I was nearing the end of the Jonestown series, I asked a friend who is a private investigator to help me get my hands on some police reports about a certain kind of incident. I don’t know if he was allowed to do that, but he came through more than I’d hoped, and I was able to read about dozens of incidents involving someone - usually a husband or father - holding his family hostage in a standoff with police. Most of the incidents involved drugs, and the overwhelming majority of those involved methamphetamines (which is what I had asked my friend to help me find). For each incident I read about in the police reports, I found what I could in newspapers and other media reports, and for the federal cases I read whatever I could find on the PACER website. Some of the incidents ended peacefully, others ended with the death of the hostage-taking husband/father at the hands of police. But nearly half ended when the man murdered his family and killed himself. Jim Jones, as those of you who listened to God’s Socialist know, was hopped up on amphetamines pretty much every day for about ten years leading up to the murder-suicide in Guyana. I had read enough about the delusional, and often violent, paranoia caused by long-term amphetamine use, that I expected to learn something about what happened in Jonestown in 1978. And I did. I decided to tell the final episode of the Jonestown story from a different angle, because trying to tell it as an amphetamine-fueled murder-suicide of the kind I spent a month poring over in police reports was just taking too much out of me. Sometimes I still regret not pushing through and doing it that way, because I do believe that’s what happened.Anyway, there was something else that I began to see, both in Jonestown and in the various hostage reports I’d been reading. The behavior of the police during the incidents was not the same in every case. Some clearly understood the explosive and unpredictable nature of the circumstances, and did their job by trying, at every point, to de-escalate. Others were clumsy and out of their depth. But in some cases there was simply no getting around the fact that, in a standoff with a psychotic man threatening to murder his family, the police acted in ways that made the situation worse. They used threats, pressure tactics, and some even insulted or made fun of the man inside the house with a gun - maybe hoping to shake him up and get him to expose himself, or maybe just because cops are human beings, and were tired, frustrated, and angry themselves. Whatever the reason, they clearly acted in ways that made the situation worse, often with catastrophic consequences.As I worked my way toward the end of the Jonestown story, I found myself feeling a lot of bitterness and outrage at the forces aligned against Peoples’ Temple. Here was a paranoid, delusional man with his “family,” out of his mind on amphetamines and sleep deprivation, ranting about “revolutionary suicide,” and political and law enforcement officials, egged on by an often vindictive group of former members with an axe to grind, chose a maximum pressure approach that escalated the cult members’ sense of isolation and persecution, their feeling that there was no way to relieve the pressure, and no way out. In all of the books and documentaries about Jonestown, the former members who escaped before the end are held up as victims and heroes, but I do not view most of them that way. In my opinion, many of them were not victims at all, but in fact were perpetrators. They enabled, encouraged, and egged on Jim Jones, taking the reins of Peoples’ Temple themselves as Jones’ health and capabilities deteriorated. They administered the organization, they led late-night struggle sessions, they ordered the break-ins and harassment campaigns, they recruited and deceived the people who would eventually die with Jones in the jungle, and then they jumped out of the car after it was already on fire and headed toward a cliff. Some of them left for personal reasons, and many left simply because it turned out that farming in an off-grid settlement in the South American jungle was harder than they expected. Many of those who joined the group known as The Concerned Relatives were bitter toward Jim Jones and the remaining leadership group personally, and any desire to avert disaster for the hundreds of innocents stuck in Jonestown was quite secondary to their desire to take down Jim Jones. I don’t say they were all like this, but some of them were, and they were often the most energetic of the activist former members. It was at their behest that US authorities took notice of Jonestown, and it was their initiative and information that set the tone of the official response.Are they responsible for the deaths of the people at Jonestown? Obviously they did not force the Kool-Aid down the throats of anyone, so in that sense, no, of course they were not responsible. We don’t know what would have happened if the outside forces would have taken a more de-escalatory approach - it is certainly possible that Jonestown would have ended the same way. Yet whenever I think about the story, I can’t help but come away with the feeling that these people were real villains in it. Sure, Jim Jones started the ball rolling and pushed it forward at critical moments, and there is no reason to speculate about his role in the disaster - without Jim Jones, those people would not have died out there. But Jim Jones was drugged-up, out-of-his-mind, delusional, paranoid, a speed-freak father holding a gun on his wife and kids, so when I criticize the outside forces for being more interested in hanging his head on their wall than in saving the people of Jonestown, I don’t find it necessary to repeatedly add the caveat “but Jim Jones was worse.” If I criticize the escalatory actions of police during a stand-off that led to a murder-suicide, I don’t need to follow up my accusation with a ritual denunciation of the murderer inside the house. These are two different classes of offense, and only one is worth arguing about or even discussing - what is the point of criticizing someone who murders his family and kills himself?I often run into this same misunderstanding when talking about the Israel-Palestine situation. Any criticism of the behavior of the Israeli military in Gaza is met with the inevitable question: “Well, what about Hamas? How come you’re not criticizing Hamas? Why are you letting Hamas off the hook but only focus on Israel?” What is there to say about Hamas? Hamas sends suicide bombers onto buses full of women and children in the middle of the day. We know what Hamas is, and it is a waste of my breath to criticize them. The same thing happens when I criticize the role NATO and the United States played in creating the conditions that led to war in Ukraine. “Why are you a Putin apologist?” Imagine if, after the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal broke in 2004, someone had tried to divert criticism using this tactic. Why aren’t you criticizing Al Qaeda in Iraq? Why are you only focusing on what US occupation forces did, but what about Al Qaeda in Iraq? It’s absurd, and we shouldn’t be cowed by it.My statement - which I said at the time was hyperbolic and intentionally provocative - that Winston Churchill was the chief villain of World War 2 was made in the same spirit. World War 2 was perhaps the greatest catastrophe in human history, and the starting point of any discussion about it must be that, of all the possible outcomes that could have resulted from events leading up to the conflict, the one that ended up happening was the worst of all. Given that the choices made in the 1920s and ‘30s led to the worst possible outcome, it is worthwhile to ask whether different choices might have led to a better one. In recent decades, only one such counter-factual has been permitted in polite discourse, namely, that of the cop who insists that the murder-suicide could have been averted if only the SWAT team had been sent in right away. And he might be right. Once the man inside kills his family, anyone arguing that the police should have been more conciliatory will find few sympathetic ears. But the lessons we take from the last crisis inform our response to the next one, and too often the lessons we take are wrong. The lesson taken from Jonestown, for example, was that the tragedy might have been averted if US authorities had taken harsher and more decisive action, and this lesson shaped the official response to the Branch Davidian standoff in Waco, Texas fifteen years later.World War 2 has cast this spell on us for for eighty years. Virtually every war on which the US has embarked in the years since has been justified by claims that the enemy leader is “the next Hitler,” and that our only two choices are to fight him now, or to fight him later when he’s stronger and more dangerous. It’s clever rhetorical jiu jitsu that frames those advocating for peace as the ones actually advocating for a bigger and more violent war. Bari Weiss called Tulsi Gabbard an “Assad toady” on the Joe Rogan Experience, attacking her moral character and effectively accusing her of treason, simply because Tulsi advocated for a de-escalation of the Syrian civil war. When Dr. Ron Paul pointed out that Osama bin Ladin’s own words confirmed that US military intervention in the Middle East fueled Al Qaeda’s hostility toward us, Rudy Giuliani called Dr. Paul “dangerous,” and accused him of blaming America, rather than the terrorists, for 9/11. These tactics work less and less often, and most of you will have seen through the cynical abuse of language by Weiss and Giuliani in these examples, but, as we’ve seen this week, they remain powerful when it comes to World War 2, the Ur-myth of the American-led global order.My friend Gray Connolly, a well-read Australian lawyer, and staunch champion of both Churchill and the British Empire, wrote a thread on X to counter my claims about Winston Churchill’s culpability. Elon Musk, who recently recommended my interview with Tucker before deleting it once it became controversial, commented that Gray’s thread was excellent, and I agree. I like and respect Gray very much, so I re-posted and recommended his thread before even reading it, because I knew he would approach the controversy with good will. But what struck me is that Gray’s defense of Churchill did not really dispute my central claims. He pointed out that what I had said in the interview, and in my X thread fleshing it out, is nothing that hadn’t already been said decades ago by British historians like Alan Clark, AJP Taylor, and others who were trying to understand the events that led to the loss of their empire. After listing attempts to avoid a wider war in 1939 and 1940, Gray writes, “Churchill and his government - and the Empire, however - were never going to make peace. There would be no surrender. The formerly allied French fleet was sunk by the Royal Navy at Oran in July 1940 as a sign of British ruthlessness.” The crux of Gray’s argument is what follows:This was not just Churchill, though - the British Empire was not in as weak a position as made out & regardless, there were no good terms to be obtained in 1940 that made fighting on a worse alternative. Also a united Europe (esp under Nazis) is unacceptable for British security… Winston Churchill was not any villain but simply was Prime Minister, he was the head of a wartime coalition government that was - come what may - committed, as all in the Parliament were, to the see the war through, even at the destruction of our Empire… It is inconceivable in mid 1940 that any British Government could responsibly seek a peace or even armistice with the Germans. Quite apart from the Nazis themselves, British policy aimed at a divided Europe via war & economic subsidy.Well, unless I’m missing something, this is not far off from the claim I was making, except that it shifts the blame I attached to Churchill onto British Imperial Policy in general. I admit that making it about Churchill himself engages in the same unfair demonization as pinning total blame for the Iraq War on George W. Bush, rather than on the US security establishment, and I’m happy to concede Gray’s point. However, I’d note that distributing responsibility to larger groups or forces is often a tactic used to absolve the people most responsible of any accountability for their own role. In other contexts, “I was just following orders” is not considered a valid defense. Nevertheless, I am happy to concede the point that it is a mistake to focus too much on one man, and Gray’s thread will be in my mind as I work on the upcoming World War 2 series.But it leaves open the central question of whether there were off-ramps available that might have resolved the crisis by means other than the most deadly and destructive war in human history. The fact that the man inside might have murdered his family in any case is not an excuse for the police to avoid a conversation about what they might have done differently. No historian disputes the fact that Hitler and his generals genuinely wanted to avoid war with Britain and France. None dispute the fact that Germany made several peace overtures once Hitler’s bluff was called in Poland. Everyone, of course, disputes that these overtures were sincere and the idea that the British government was under any obligation to take them seriously. But that was not universally true at the time.In early October 1939, when it had become clear that Germany was not alone, but had an understanding with Italy and the Soviet Union, former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George suggested that Parliament might go into a secret session to discuss the proposals on offer. Author Nicholson Baker, in his book Human Smoke, describes a conversation between author Cyril Joad and a friend after Chamberlain rejected Hitler’s recent call for peace:(Cyril) asked D. whether he thought Chamberlain should have negotiated with Hitler after Hitler’s peace offer. “Yes, of course,” said D.: Wars should never be begun, and as soon as they were begun, they should be stopped. D. then listed off many war evils: the physical and moral mutilation, the intolerance, the public lying, the enthronement of the mob…Once a war has started, D. said, the only thing to do is to get it stopped as soon as possible. “Consequently I should negotiate with Hitler.”Joad said: “Ah, but you couldn’t negotiate with Hitler because you couldn’t trust him - Hitler would break any agreement as soon as it benefited him to do so.”“Suppose you are right,” D. said - suppose that Hitler violated the peace agreement and England had to go back to war. What had they lost? “If the worst comes to worst, we can always begin the killing again.” Even a day of peace was a day of peace. Joad found he had no ready answer for that.Before the summer of 1940 British intransigence could be justified by the fact that Western Europe remained in opposition to Germany. Once Germany conquered France and chased the British Expeditionary Force off the continent at Dunkirk, however, the terms changed in a way that highlights one of my main criticisms of Britain’s war policy. As Gray said in his thread above, the strategy of the British Empire toward Europe had long been to use a combination of financial and military means to play one nation off another in order to avoid the emergence of a continental power capable of challenging the Empire. But that strategy had run its course in the summer of 1940. There was no power left to play off against of Germany. The war was over, and Germany had won. There was no plan, and no possibility, of Britain mounting a reinvasion of Europe to change the outcome on its own. Yet Britain refused to entertain terms of peace, even when they were offered at the height of Hitler’s power. The question, then, is why would Britain insist on continuing a war she had no means of fighting? True, the hunger blockade made life hard on the continent, but it could not starve Germany into submission now that the latter had a pact with Russia. The only weapon available to the British was aerial bombing that amounted to random acts of terrorism against European civilians. The truth is, the only hope Britain had was that the United States, the Soviet Union, or both, could be pulled into the war to bail them out. Another way of putting it would be that the British strategy was to turn a war that was basically over into a global conflict that, under the most optimistic circumstances, would result in the deaths of many millions of people. And of course that’s what happened, although far from benefiting - or even preserving - the British Empire, World War 2 brought it to an end, and handed the world over to conquest by the United States and the USSR.Churchill’s refusal to even countenance Hitler’s peace overtures, and his tendency to escalate British bombing campaigns immediately after they were made, made no sense to much of the German leadership. Hitler pointed out, correctly, that a war between Germany and Britain could only end with the destruction of the British Empire, and it was widely believed by German officials that Britain’s irrational escalation of the conflict was proof that International Jewry was influencing British policy without regard for British interests. This was the view among Third Reich leaders. The worsening bombing campaigns against German civilians, even as German planes were forbidden for months from retaliating in kind, and the continuation of the hunger blockade as it began to bite the occupied civilian populations, intensified Hitler’s sense of paranoia and claustrophobia, and his sense that there were forces larger than Great Britain whose only war aim was to see Germany destroyed. You might say he was delusional, paranoid, that his own choices had brought Germany to the brink, but that is beside the point, which is that he’s the man inside the house with a gun pointed at his family.As for the atrocities that took place in the east, I certainly could have been clearer during my interview with Tucker, and I don’t blame people for raising an eyebrow given the way I put it. Part of the reason is that I am not very good at interviews - they make me anxious, and, as you heard, I jump around, leave points half-finished and open to misinterpretation. That’s why I rarely do them. The other reason is that this part of the discussion was a continuation of a discussion Tucker and I were having off-the-air, and rather than circle back to provide viewers with the full context, I dropped them into the middle of it to fend for themselves. Far from absolving the Germans, my point - and I did get to this by the end - was that even if one accepts all of the revisionist excuses and rationalizations for German behavior on the Eastern Front, even if you take them all at face value, Germany still launched an invasion with no plan to feed or care for the millions of people taken under its power. That is murder. Maybe your supply lines hampered food distribution, maybe the fighting had stopped crop cultivation, maybe you had no choice but to decide which people would eat, and which would starve. You launched the war, you took those people captive, they were your responsibility, and it was murder. Tucker knew what I was saying, and again I did actually say that in the interview, but what many people heard was “the Holocaust was an accident,” or the result of logistical problems. That is not what I said, but to those people I would still add: Even if the deaths were largely the result of resource deficiencies and poor planning, it doesn’t change the fact that Jews were targeted for death. Under circumstances that forced a choice between who would eat and who would starve, the built-in antisemitism of the Third Reich guaranteed that Jews would be among the last in line. That is not to say that Jews were not massacred. Of course Jews were massacred. Peoples of all ethnicities were massacred, and it would have been quite a mystery if the Jews were an exception - doubly so, given the Third Reich’s unique antipathy toward them. It is simply to say that even the most generous interpretation of Germany’s actions toward civilians on the Eastern Front is still a description of murder.At one point, I mentioned a letter, written by a concentration camp official back to Berlin in August 1941. I emphasized the date, and the fact that it was just two months after the invasion of the USSR was launched, to make quite the opposite point of the one being attributed to me, which was to point out that excuses about resources and logistical problems cannot hold much water if prisoners are already beginning to starve just two months into the war. That means that Germany truly went in without making any preparations for their care, which under the circumstances was the same as condemning them to death. But the fact is that the British government knew people were starving in the camps and ghettos, but rejected any and all appeals to find a way to relieve their situation. Mass starvation, though it was well-understood that it would not affect the Germany army, or even much affect German civilians, but only hurt the weakest, most vulnerable, and most despised among the occupied peoples, was considered an acceptable consequence. The letter I mentioned is perfectly genuine. It was written by Rolf-Heinz Hoppner, an SS administrator at Posen, to Adolf Eichmann. “There is an imminent danger that not all the Jews can be supplied with food in the coming winter. We must seriously consider if it would not be more humane to finish off the Jews, insofar as they are not fit for labor mobilization, with some quick-acting means… (since that) would be more agreeable than to let them die of hunger.” (Actually, I looked up the letter to quote it, and I was wrong: it was written in July, not August, less than one month after the German invasion of the USSR.) Lack of food was, at the very least, used as an excuse for murder - one which may have helped overcome the uncertainty of men like this Hoppner, who did not seem overjoyed at the prospect of mass killing. My point in bringing this up was that Churchill and the British government were warned, over and over, by many sources in many countries, that the blockade would cause mass starvation among prisoners and occupied civilians, and they chose to continue the policy anyway. Basically, British strategy after the fall of France was to carry out a campaign of mass starvation and random firebombing, both of which predictably fell almost exclusively on innocent civilians, until the US and/or the USSR could be drawn into a global war.My position is really quite simple, and if we were talking about any other conflict, it would not be particularly controversial:* The war faction in Britain refused to countenance peace with Germany, despite lacking any capability to change the terms of war on its own.* Germany’s offers to negotiate may or may not have been sincere. It is perfectly possible, as after previous confrontations, a peace deal would simply been interpreted as further British weakness, and Germany would have become even more aggressive. Nevertheless, I say the Allies had an obligation to try, so that they could at least go into the coming conflict knowing that they had done everything they could to avoid the worst outcome.* Germany could not have carried out the atrocities in the east without the cover of a world war in which millions were already being killed. There are two objections to this. First, the SS started liquidating certain classes of people almost immediately upon the invasion of Poland in 1939. Already in 1939, a dissident German general would write in his diary of Jews being rounded up into barns and shot. Poland was in trouble regardless of what happened with Britain or France, but world war was never going to change that, and in fact made Poland’s trouble immeasurably more severe. In the end, of course, Poland was saved from Germany just to be handed over to our ally, Josef Stalin, whose stack of bodies put Hitler’s in the shade. The second objection is that Hitler had always had his eyes set on the east, and would have eventually invaded regardless of what the Allies did. And that may be true. Jim Jones and the hostage-taking father may have killed their families no matter how much they were appeased. But maybe not. And, agree or disagree, that “maybe” is worthy of discussion.Well, there is probably more to say, but if I keep going I’m going to spoil the upcoming podcast series. This will be my last word on the topic until that series comes out, though I am happy to address subscribers’ questions in the comment section. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit subscribe.martyrmade.com/subscribe

Hey guys, anything interesting happen lately?I would like to say welcome to all the new subscribers, and to express my appreciation for the old ones. I will give you all a much fuller response to the recent kerfuffle soon, but for now I hope this clip from Fear & Loathing in the New Jerusalem is sufficient. We’ll talk soon. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit subscribe.martyrmade.com/subscribe

If you sign up for an annual subscription between today (July 4) and Sunday (July 7), you get a 20% discount ($40 instead of $50 for the year), and half of that will go to Kristina’s House of Hope, a women’s shelter in upstate New York - the only one in its area.*Note* To take advantage of the special offer, you have to sign up by following this link. It’s how Substack knows to activate the offer.KHOH is not some random charity I drew out of a hat. The house was founded and run by my best friend’s mother after experiencing the tragic loss of her daughter. She’s not rich, she’s not some businesswoman doing this as a side-project, she’s a regular person who’s thrown herself into this project full-time, and helped dozens of women turn away from the edge of the cliff and get their lives together. When people say, “we need more people like that,” this is who they’re talking about - someone who has stepped up and done the thing that we don’t have the time, or energy, or inclination to do, but we all agree has to be done. So let’s help her do it.You guys have really come through the last two years, allowing KHOH to serve more women, improve the house, and expand the services provided. And now, in large part thanks to your help, they’re on the verge of being able to open a second shelter to serve homeless men as well. We don’t always know the outcome when we click to round up to donate to cancer research at the grocery store, but I’m telling you from direct knowledge, your donations to KHOH have saved the lives of dozens of women who were staring over the edge of the abyss.After last year’s fundraiser, the ladies who’ve been helped by KHOH got together and took a group photo with a banner expressing their appreciation. It’s sitting here on my desk, and always will be because it’s probably the single thing for which I’m most grateful to have used this podcast and platform. Let’s come through for them again. Thanks guys, for this and for everything.Here’s a link to the GoFundMe I set up: https://www.gofundme.com/f/martyrmade-birthday-fundraiser-for-kristinas-house-of-hope This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit subscribe.martyrmade.com/subscribe

🚨 New Series! 🚨 Introducing a new kind of content from Martyr Made. *Martyr Made Unscripted* is a more conversational series that dives into current events, topics like media and communication, and Darryl’s personal experiences.  Martyr Made Unscripted is only available for paid subscribers.  If you’re already a subscriber, thank you!If you have yet to upgrade to a paid subscription, get started today to access the entire archive of subscriber-only content and get the first Unscripted episode as soon as it’s available.In addition to providing some off-the-cuff thoughts and audience interaction, these episodes will let me bring you content while I buckle down and pound out the last bit of the next Whose America. Thanks for everything! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit subscribe.martyrmade.com/subscribe

Hi everybody. This is the same short Easter message I released a year or two ago. There are a lot more subscribers now than there were then, so I thought I’d repost it for everyone. I hope you all had a blessed week, and have a blessed day. Happy Easter.The Martyr Made Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or, even better, a paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit subscribe.martyrmade.com/subscribe

Hi everybody. So, many of you will have already heard a version of this episode (called The Administration of Savagery, released about a year or two ago), but this version is updated with new information and cleaned up a bit. I thought it was worth re-upping due to the current crisis in Gaza.To those of you who are non-paying subscribers to the MartyrMade Substack, please consider supporting the podcast by becoming a paid subscriber for just $5 p/month or $50 p/year. The show is 100% listener-supported, so your generosity is the only way I’m able to keep doing this. Thanks. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit subscribe.martyrmade.com/subscribe

Hi everybody. I recently got an email from a young Palestinian girl. It was maybe the most beautiful, and most rewarding, email I’ve ever gotten from doing this podcast, and I wanted to share it with all of you. Sometimes, it seems near impossible, at a time of heightened tension and polarization, to cut through the noise and get people to see that most of the people affected by a conflict like the one between Israelis and Palestinians are normal, innocent people no different from you or me. But I’m going to keep banging that drum anyway. Thanks for listening.If you’re an unpaid subscriber, or someone just finding the Substack, please consider supporting the show by becoming a paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit subscribe.martyrmade.com/subscribe

Hi everyone. My good friend Daniele Bolelli and I recorded this when I visited a week or so before the crisis erupted in Gaza. We start off talking about paleolithic man, the invention of grandparents, tribalism and community… and then I bust out my hammer and sickle and start complaining about capitalism. Hopefully, you need a break from the news out of the Middle East as much as I do. Enjoy.If you don’t know, Daniele is the host of a top 3 history podcast, History on Fire. He and I have collaborated on episodes in the past - the short episode I did about the Japanese Red Army was part of an anthology he put out, and my My Lai episode was a two-parter with his episode on the massacre at Sand Creek. Anyway, I love DB, and you will too. Check out his Substack. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit subscribe.martyrmade.com/subscribe

Hi everyone. I know, what with all the chaos in the Middle East, many of you have been wondering where I’ve been. Life has been imposing itself on me in ways I couldn’t wriggle out of, but that’s about over now. I’ve got a couple interviews scheduled this week, and will release an expanded an updated version of The Administration of Savagery (on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from 1948-82) soon. After that, I will release another long-form episode on the post-1982 period, with a focus on Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas.In the meantime, I wanted to share this lecture by Israeli journalist Gideon Levy. I hope everyone will listen to it.Thanks again for your patience. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit subscribe.martyrmade.com/subscribe

Hey everyone. A few days ago, I posted a Twitter thread to explain a comment I had made on the topic of immigration. Essentially, I said that I thought we’d passed the threshold where any meaningful reform was really possible at the federal level, and that people would be better off focusing their political efforts on states and localities that are winnable and defensible. The thread drew the ire of immigration hawks on right-wing Twitter, and so I thought I’d bring in a few interesting guys with different perspectives to discuss it.My guests today are Lafayette Lee (Twitter handle @partisan_O, his Substack is ruins.substack.com), Dr. Ben Braddock (Twitter handle @graduatedben, his Substack is benjaminbraddock.substack.com), and Indian Bronson (Twitter handle @lndian_Bronson, his Substack is indianbronson.substack.com). Lee and Dr. Ben are both editors at IM-1776, a dissident publication I follow with interest, and Bronson is the founder of Keeper, a dating app focused on creating new families, not just new hookups.While I am still skeptical of the possibility of large-scale radical immigration reform at the federal level, the conversation left me feeling much better than I did going in, because it helps just to know there are intelligent people like these three thinking through these issues.Thanks for listening. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit subscribe.martyrmade.com/subscribe

Hey everyone, here is part 2 of the Sunday Night Story Time reading. I highly recommend listening to part 1, if you haven’t heard it, because it’s all one story and you’ll be missing a lot if you jump in here.I have a lot to do over the next few days, and I was going to hold this until Sunday to pace the release and buy myself a little time, but what the hell. I’ll release it now because I know a lot of you have already listened to part 1 and are jonesing for this.I’m gonna keep up the Sunday Night Story Time from now on. They won’t all be long like this one, but I’ll always pick stories I think you’ll really enjoy. After this one, Sunday Night Story Time will be added one of the features available only to paid subscribers.Thanks as always for your support. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit subscribe.martyrmade.com/subscribe

I’m spending most of my time working on two bigger projects, so I thought I would read you a little story tonight. In fact, if you guys like this, I might make Sunday Night Story Time a new tradition here at the Substack.All the readings are from Bryan Burrough’s great book, Days of Rage. Some of it you’ll be familiar with from God’s Socialist, but since this story takes part during the Lindsay administration shortly after the 1968 New York City teachers’ strikes, this will provide some more depth on what was going down at the time. Many of the neighborhoods mentioned also came up in the Blacks & Jews series, including Brownsville (in Brooklyn), where the school that sparked the teachers’ strikes was located, and where Norman Podhoretz had grown up back when it had been a mixed area.Thanks for listening. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit subscribe.martyrmade.com/subscribe

In August 1921, 10,000-20,000 armed coal miners marched on Mingo County, West Virginia to lift the martial law imposed there, free their jailed brethren, and avenge the assassination of one of their local heroes. At least 20,000 more wives, young boys and other civilians followed the army providing medical, logistical and other services. Before it was over, they would storm a mountainside under fire from entrenched machine guns, and while being bombed from the air. It was the largest and most serious armed insurrection in US history since the Civil War. This episode is going to discuss the West Virginia Coal Mine Wars, and The Battle of Blair Mountain.Here’s the link to Jocko’s company, Origin, that I mention in the intro. Go there and check out the high-end clothing, boots, jiu jitsu gis, hunting gear and more, all hand-made in the United States.Here’s a link to Daniele Bolelli’s History On Fire podcast (also available wherever you get your podcasts). This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit subscribe.martyrmade.com/subscribe

Thought I’d go ahead and stick these together for anyone who wanted to listen to them all at once.*Correction* A few people have informed me that my description of how a hedge fund manager calculates his cut is off in Episode 1. I meant to correct it in the show, but forgot. The general point remains, however: there is no way Jeffrey Epstein made the kind of money he was showing by managing one guy’s accounts over the years. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit subscribe.martyrmade.com/subscribe

I would like to continue releasing most of this content for free, so if you enjoy it and can spare a few bucks, please consider becoming a paid subscriber for just $5 p/month or $50 p/year. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit subscribe.martyrmade.com/subscribe

I would like to continue releasing most of this content for free, so if you enjoy it and can spare a few bucks, please consider becoming a paid subscriber for just $5 p/month or $50 p/year. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit subscribe.martyrmade.com/subscribe

Since some of you only rarely check the Substack page, and instead follow via the podcast feed, I decided to start releasing audio versions of the posts and essays so you can get the content that way.This is the audio version of the recent post A History of Violence (length: 19:26).I would like to continue releasing most of this content for free, so if you enjoy it and can spare a few bucks, please consider becoming a paid subscriber for just $5 p/month or $50 p/year. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit subscribe.martyrmade.com/subscribe

Hi everybody. Here’s another installment of my ongoing long-term project exploring ideas from James Poulos’s great 2021 book, Human Forever: The Digital Politics of Spiritual War.I decided to put this episode out for everyone, because I really want everyone to hear what James has to say. He has a unique and valuable perspective on implications of digital technology, and how we can win the war to remain human as those technologies take over our world.If you are not already a Substack paid subscriber, please consider signing up. It’s just $5 per month or $50 per year, and it’s how I put food on the table and kibble in the kitty bowl. Behind the paywall, you’ll find more discussions like this one, and last week’s discussion with former UFC heavyweight champion Josh Barnett, as well as episodes with just me discussing questions and issues that don’t quite make it into the history show.James Poulos is the editor of American Mind at the Claremont Institute, as well as the Founder and Editorial Director of RETURN at New Founding.Please check out his book. It is only available on the blockchain, a decision we discuss in the episode, but if crypto is a barrier for you, it’s time to climb over it. It was certainly a barrier for me, but one way or another, whether we like it or not, it’s a technology with which we’re all going to need a basic familiarity in the trials ahead.The book is available on the blockchain at Canonic. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit subscribe.martyrmade.com/subscribe

I had a very interesting conversation with Luke Burgis, whose book Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life had a very good effect on me recently. We talk about Rene Girard, Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, scapegoating, and how technology accelerates mimetic conflict. I hope you enjoy this discussion.ANNOUNCEMENT: With this episode in the rearview, I am now going to be focusing 100% on putting the finishing touches on the first episode of the next Martyr Made history episode. Should be about 1.5-2 weeks more work, but it’s going to be a banger. So if something comes to mind, I might record an episode for Substack, but otherwise I’ll be buried in my cave working on that.Luke Burgis is Entrepreneur-in-Residence and Director of Programs at the Ciocca Center for Principled Entrepreneurship at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. After a brief career in investment banking and private equity, he started his first company at age 23 and was named a “Top 25 Entrepreneur Under 25” by Business Week for growing it into one of the most innovative food access businesses in the country.Luke is also the founder of two more startup companies that he led as C.E.O. to high growth and sustainability. Fit Fuel, the e-commerce company that he founded, has been recognized as having an outstanding company culture. He formed a close partnership with Zappos.com.Luke is co-author of the book Unrepeatable: Cultivating the Unique Calling of Every Person. He is also a recognized expert in René Girard's mimetic theory and author of the book Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life (St. Martin's Press, 2021). He has a B.S. from the Stern School of Business at New York University and an S.T.B. in Sacred Theology from the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit subscribe.martyrmade.com/subscribe

Hi everybody. I had another episode ready for Easter, but at the last minute the person I did it with decided he did a bad job and asked me not to publish. He’s wrong, he did a great job, but I get it, I know the feeling. So I decided to just jot down a few thoughts and here they are. Happy Easter. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit subscribe.martyrmade.com/subscribe

Well, this was one of the scarier discussions I’ve had in recent memory, and you do not want to miss it. In this episode John Robb and I discuss the ongoing total war between Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and the open-source networked insurgency that has emerged to do battle with him.John Robb is a former Air Force special operations pilot, an astronautical engineer, a tech founder who helped invent RSS, as well as a defense & global affairs analyst & consultant. His book Brave New War was well ahead of its time when he released it in the mid-2000s, and has guided much of my thinking about fourth- and fifth-generation warfare and the networked insurgencies that now seem to dominate physical and ideological battlefields. John is the creator of the Global Guerillas Report, in which he provides deep analysis of the strong underlying trends and forces that are driving the events we see on the news. Over the years, his framework has helped me to avoid being blindsided by emergent events, and I’m very excited to have him on the show.Follow him on Twitter @johnrobb. You do not want to miss this episode. Enjoy. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit subscribe.martyrmade.com/subscribe

Hey everybody. Many of you have asked for my thoughts on the crisis in Ukraine, so here they are. I re-recorded the episode because the audio on the first one was trash.Here are some links I mention in the show:The Snipers Massacre On MaidanHow the West Sowed the Seeds of War in Ukraine, by Pedro GonzalezMy Twitter thread on the Rand Corporation’s strategy white paperScott Horton’s recent speech on the Ukraine crisisThanks for listening. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit subscribe.martyrmade.com/subscribe

Hey everybody. Many of you have asked for my thoughts on the crisis in Ukraine, so here they are. I am away from home, and away from my normal recording setup, so please forgive the less than stellar audio (it’s not as bad as when it’s really bad, though).Here are some links I mention in the show:The Snipers Massacre On MaidanHow the West Sowed the Seeds of War in Ukraine, by Pedro GonzalezMy Twitter thread on the Rand Corporation’s strategy white paperScott Horton’s recent speech on the Ukraine crisisThanks for listening. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit subscribe.martyrmade.com/subscribe

In this and the next episode, I will go over the evidence that notorious child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was a foreign intelligence agent. The follow-up episode will be a little too spicy for public release, so it will be available in about a week, for paid subscribers only. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit subscribe.martyrmade.com/subscribe

My mostly-unfiltered thoughts on the Jacob Blake police shooting, the riots in Kenosha, WI, the shootings involving Kyle Rittenhouse, and the subsequent trial.Happy to discuss in the comments. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit subscribe.martyrmade.com/subscribe

This is the first of a series of explorations jumping off from an upcoming book by author James Poulos, called Human Forever: The Digital Politics of Spiritual War.I recently wrote a short review, - the review really doesn’t touch the meat of the book - some of which I drew on in this episode. Sorry for the delay, been a crazy week.More to come. This is a topic I am going to be exploring with interviews and more individual podcasts, and I would love you guys to participate. Get in the comments, suggest readings, ask questions… This is a very difficult and complicated topic, but a very important one, I think.Poulos’s book, btw, will be out soon, and is very good. Highly recommended. You’ll hear from the author himself in the next week or two.(Hope you paid subscribers will let me off the hook for making this one public. I want as many people as possible to hear about James’s book.) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit subscribe.martyrmade.com/subscribe

This is a special announcement from The MartyrMade Podcast. I have been doing this podcast for several years now, and I think we probably have between 80-100 hours of material up. The kind of podcasts I do take a lot of work. I don't have research assistants, I don't have editors (obviously), and I don't have anyone helping with the back-end, website, sound, or business operations (such as they are). This is a one-man show. For years, I was using pretty much every free moment I had - before work, during lunch, waiting for meetings to start, and late into the night - to work on these episodes. Well, recently I made the plunge to start doing this full-time. I left behind a very secure job with good benefits and a solid retirement plan, and I am officially out in the wild. That means I am going to be able to do a lot more things than I've been able to do in the past, but it also means that it's time to professionalize this operation. Podcasting doesn't come with health insurance or a retirement plan, and so my future and the future of this podcast is now a matter of my relationship to all of you. And so to that end, here is the announcement:I am going to be moving over to Substack, and will use that website as my one-stop shop for podcasting, writing, and listener interaction. The regular podcast feed will be available on all the normal platforms, free of charge, same as always, but I'm going to be doing a lot of subscribers-only content at Substack. There will be regular, subscribers-only podcast episodes, as well as written content from myself and some (carefully curated) guest writers. The subscriber-only episodes will come in all shapes and sizes - segments based on notes that don't make it into a regular episode, commentary on current events and social issues, answering listener questions, as well interviews (also carefully curated). Subscribers will also get a discount on all MartyrMade t-shirts and other gear. Oh, and subscribers will be able to comment on posts, and I'm going to be moving a lot of my online activity away from social media and into the Substack comments and other tools.If you'd like to help support the show, it is just $5 p/month, or $50 p/year, BUT anyone who signs up by October 31 will pay only $4 p/month or $40 p/year forever. That's not a first-month, or first-year offer, you will pay the lower rate as long as you keep your subscription. I know the world is a crazy place right now, and not everyone can contribute. I also know that there is a mountain of amazing content available for free on the internet. I even know that, probably, someone will pirate the subscriber-only episodes and post them somewhere you can find them with a little work. I understand all of these things, and yet nevertheless, if you can manage it without trouble, and if you've enjoyed this podcast up to now, I hope you'll consider subscribing. If you do, and it's before October 31, don't forget to use the special offer link in the show notes. I'll also put it on the website, and on Twitter and Facebook. If you don't care about the $1 p/month discount, you can just head over to martyrmade.substack.com and sign up there.Link to subscription discount: https://martyrmade.substack.com/ce198d71 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit subscribe.martyrmade.com/subscribe