EPISODE 360： THE TRUE HISTORY OF ANTIFA - PT. 1
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Summary
A special edition of Human Events, a show powered by Turning Point USA, all about the history of antifa, a group that was founded in the 1930s in Germany by a soviet agent and communist leader named Hermann Talman.
Transcript
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ladies and gentlemen welcome aboard to a special edition of human events jack so big we are going
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to do this show powered by turning point usa all about the history of antifa because it occurred to
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me that i have written a book on the history of antifa and it is called antifa stories from inside
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the black block but it's been a while since we've really had a conversation about them and it's also
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been a while since i've really even discussed it because look a lot of stuff that goes on but we
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needed to take time and i know that we had time sort of over this christmas break to be able to
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drill down on some subjects that really deserve it and i think that the history of antifa is
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something that a lot of people don't understand people think that it's some group that spontaneously
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came up in 2020 or maybe even 2016 2017 folks who don't remember there are people even who don't
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remember the fact that antifa attacked trump's inauguration i was there i was there with my
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wife who was my fiance at the time tanya tay sarah my brother we were on the road where they stormed
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the highway across 395 in dc all the while their people were down on the street smashing starbucks
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smashing windows setting cars on fire all of this happened all of this was true they also went to
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our inaugural party the ball called the deplorable that we held the night before there was myself mike
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cernovich others called it the deplorable and i said well if most inaugural balls are the day of
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inauguration we should do one the night before so we held it then and we had hundreds of antifa out
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in the streets attacking people setting fires throwing things at our guests throwing things at my parents
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d batteries got this on video but people don't want to actually talk about the true history of
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communism the true history that we've lived through and so what i wanted to do in this book was also go back to
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the fact that antifa didn't even start then they started years and years before and in fact the history of
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anarcho-socialist terrorism throughout the world particularly western europe eastern europe and the united states
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goes back to the 1800s we had anarcho-socialist uprisings in the united states the haymarket riots in chicago
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where they killed police officers the wall street bombing the assassination of president mckinley that led to
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teddy roosevelt becoming our youngest president he was killed by an anarcho-socialist in buffalo new york by the name of
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leon chogash so this is a rich history but the history of communism is not taught to you it's not
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taught in schools it's not taught through hollywood movies there's no movies about it there aren't any
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mass market books about it but there is jack posovic and here's human events and we're going to tell you
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the true history of antifa now the seeds of what would become the present version of antifa
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worldwide were actually planted all the way back in 1930s germany yeah that's right the weimar republic
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the group likes to present itself as the inheritor of a tradition of fighting fascism but is this true
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well the first eponymous antifa group was antifascista action and it was founded by a
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soviet agent and a committed stalinist who's named ernst talman in 1932 in weimar germany and if you
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don't know the name ernst talman then perhaps you haven't been studying the true history of antifa
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now like many of the critical figures in germany in the 1930s he was a product of world war one
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defeated kaiser weakening the country's spiritual foundations the deterioration that was the weimar
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republic of course this is the same deterioration and collapse that led to the rise of adolf hitler
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and hitler's popular appeal in germany at the time in the weimar republic was principally based in the
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widespread belief the german communists would use the economic chaos of the depression as a vehicle
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for taking power and installing a regime like the bolshevik dictatorship that had been established in
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the ussr whereas hitler at the time was seen by many germans as more rational and less terrifying
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of it as an alternative to communism this fear was then magnified by a soviet agent who had become the
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leader of the communist party of germany what was his name ernst talman later the founder of antifa
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ernst talman working class born in 1886 in hamburg three years and four days older than hitler working
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class upbringings father was a coachman uh tended a bar down at the docks in hamburg hamburg it's a
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dock town it's a city it's a it's a water town a port town talman grew up rubbing shoulders with the
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sort of rough types that you'd expect in both locales in pre-war germany at one point both of his
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parents turned to petty crime and they were apprehended causing them to briefly break up
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so talman gets is born from broken home poor economics decides to join the military gets
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drafted fights in world war one he then fled his unit in 1917 joining a pro-communist organization
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that later became the communist party of germany talman became one of these leaders because unlike
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many others associated with the communist party certainly in the ussr and the bolsheviks talman
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actually had a working class background and when you look at lenin when you look at a lot of these
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people they don't have uh trotsky they don't have a true working class background themselves and that's
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why that's why lenin comes up with this phrase the the the vanguard of the working class the vanguard
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of the proletariat talman doesn't need to be part of the vanguard talman himself he's working class
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soldier came up from nothing decided to go into the communist party it's really through that military
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so he becomes the leader of the central party the most important communist in all of hamburg
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and the communist party is on the rise because as the communist party is rising
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you've also got the national socialist workers party on the rise but both of them viewed
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their greatest enemy not as one another they viewed as their enemy the regime they viewed as
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their enemy the republic and the ruling party of the time the social democrats the social democrat
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party so in many cases you actually saw the national socialist workers party and the communist party
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working together that's right working together while targeting the regime they held strikes
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together called demonstrations together oh certainly they were rivals as well and
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certainly there were there was mass fighting but people need to understand that that the actual
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history is far more complex than any antifa member would have you believe today they would say oh
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we always opposed hitler and that's all it was and we tried to stop him and and and we eventually
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didn't and and that's the end not true not true you actually did work together we've got the proof
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we've got the documents got an entire book about it but i want to tell you we're gonna we're gonna
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get into this in the next segment about a in a group that predated antifa and it was called the red
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front the rot front aka the red front this was the original marxist street brigade of germany and it was
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founded as well by ernst talman all the way back in the 1920s now interestingly enough the red front
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rot front used military terms for arranging and training its recruits this is back in the 20s
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so they had squads platoons camaraderies regiments even believe it or not they even had a navy
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they had a paramilitary navy called the red navy this was how active this was and so people know
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of course about the hitler youth that later was established by the nazis but did you know that
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there was also a red youth roter jungström and i'm sorry i don't speak german very well
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but they they held summer camps set up for communist youth in germany for the purposes of training and
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indoctrination and also included courses on military drill ceremony and fitness now it was
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a full-fledged political tool it wasn't the same clandestine operation that antifa exists as today
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this is a huge difference huge difference but it kept with that military motif and they actually had
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to take a vow every member of the red front swore the following oath i vow to never forget that world
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imperialism is preparing the war against the soviet union so even they knew that the soviet union
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was the the country and organization that they swore allegiance to keep in mind this is only a few
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years not even a decade since the takeover of the communists in russia so communism is very new and it's
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it feels like communism is on the upswing and these groups they're funded of course of course by uh by the
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soviets talman himself was hand selected by the stalinists he flew to moscow served in the
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honor guard at the funeral of vladimir lenin and then is sent back to be moscow's man in germany
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leads the communist party sets up the red front fighting group sets up all of this directly on the
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orders of trotsky why because talman is the man that they view is going to be their candidate not only
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to run for president he does end up running in the election against hitler but he is the man that
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they view will deliver germany to them and here's the other part because talman knew to follow orders
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talman never questioned his orders and we'll get into what happened because of that
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but you can go and look at all of this in 1931 talman and hitler joining forces in an unsuccessful
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attempt to dissolve the parliament of prussia moscow ordered talman to oppose the social democrats
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even in the face of hitler's rise talman comes in third in 1932 running against hitler and running
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and then it's hindenburg who ends up winning however just before 1933 when hitler is able to solidify his
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rule and becoming chancellor that's when antifa is finally formed so the red front gets banned
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at this point because the social democrats realize that the communists are insane and it's very easy
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to paint them as foreign agents because obviously they are so they get banned so talman realizes he has
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to come up with something new a new type of group that has yet to be banned in july of 1932 talman
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inaugurated anti-fascista action antifa and he knew from the start that the word anti-fascist
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was simply a word to get around the fact that he couldn't be called communist because the communist
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fighting groups had been banned the communist brigades had already been banned at this point
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and what did he really want he wanted a way so that his fighting groups could go up against the brown
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shirts could go up against the iron front uh the fry corps so many of the other because this this
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in weimar germany weimar republic every major political group had a military wing so the original
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antifa the militant group wing of it was cut was it was the military wing of the communist party of
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germany in the weimar republic and so his attempt to bring people into this was not directly targeted and
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this is what people need to understand because antifa's propaganda misleads about the true origins
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in november of 1931 the communist party newspaper printed an open address to the nazi party calling them
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the united front of the proletariat who carried out their revolutionary duty just before antifa was founded
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the communist party held a large meeting in may of 1932 with the nazi party that included a nazi speaker
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and hundreds of nazi participants then in november of 1932 nazis and communists took part this is after
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the founding of antifa took part in a transportation strike at the street level they both viewed themselves
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as enemies of the system in fact there's a term uh that that arose because of this and that's called
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beefsteak nazi and what was a beefsteak nazi the idea was that you're brown on the outside red on the inside
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get it beefsteak so former members of the communists who later became members of the brown shirts so at
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at the street level you had people that were switching sides all the time because they both
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viewed themselves as the vanguard of the proletariat and these are marxist ideals and socialist ideals
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however and and at some level it's just street toughs that are looking for an excuse to fight
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looking for an excuse to get rowdy but that's why you see this tie over now of course there's the
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double flag symbol of antifa originally it was two red flags now you have a black flag and a red flag
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originally the two red flags were simple because this was communism now you see the black flag and
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the red flag together that's the addition of anarchism to communism and that's what antifa stands for
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today but remember it was moscow and stalin who specifically ordered ernst talman and the original
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antifa not to focus on hitler not to focus on the rise of the nazi party but to work with him
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to undermine the weimar republic it was those orders that he was directly called upon to follow
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but then of course we know what happened we know that hitler does come to power because they do
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destabilize the country because antifa's purpose was the destabilization of the traditional system
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or at least the established system in this case but who comes to power not them they used to have a
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phrase for this they would say first hitler then us well guess what the us never happened because when
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hitler comes to power who do you think are the very first people that he arrests it's the communists
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it's the people who thought that they were working with their friends and talman he gets dimed out
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by his own communist buddies we'll explain what happened to him in the next segment
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so ernst talman march 3rd 1933 gets arrested gets imprisoned was informed on by his own neighbor
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his own buddy one of his other communist friends so he does get arrested
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and then for 11 years ernst talman is held in prison
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he eventually gets sent to the concentration camp at buchenwald
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so so his wife spends those 11 years trying to get him out and if folks remember that towards the
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end of the 1930s and certainly 1939 just prior to the invasion of poland in the carve-up of poland
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by russia the soviet union and germany there was an agreement signed between the soviet union
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nazi germany that was called the molotov-ribbentrop non-aggression pact and believe it or not
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one of the slogans during that time was long live comrade talman the ussr was promoting this
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and talman was seen as sort of a revolutionary prisoner in fact even in the spanish civil war
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the international brigade of the night of the spanish civil war the brigade that all the foreigners
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came into support the communists to support the anarchists when communists and anarchists and
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writers and journalists all arrived in spain to fight for the communists and their failed communist
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takeover of spain do you know what the name of the brigade was because that was fought while he was
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imprisoned the name of the international communist brigade in spain was the ernst talman brigade founder
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of antifa so you need to understand how how big how powerful he was at this time
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this guy goes on to be a cause celeb but here's the problem even during and i just i just want to show
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the honor of the communists right a little bit of sarcasm there they never get him released they never
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even go to the nazis even door even under molotov-ribbentrop they don't ask for him to come back
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and why is this because here's what happens when rosa talman is giving these letters and these these
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pledges and imploring the other communists to help get her husband out of jail
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to talman prior to his arrest if you know the history walter ulbricht goes on to be the communist
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dictator of east germany throughout the cold war
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and ulbricht knows that if this massive communist hero gets released then he'll retake his position
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at the head of the communist party so what does ulbricht do he ignores the requests completely
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ignores all of them and so talman stays in jail he stays in jail the entire time
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this was his reward for following the orders of stalin for following the orders of moscow for
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following the orders of leon trotsky the founder of antifa where he actually kind of gets forgotten
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by hitler in the midst of world war ii and everything else that's happening but at one point
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and throughout these these 11 years he's always held in solitary confinement the entire time
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and there's a there's a story there's a rumor that she got pregnant but she would have been her 50s so
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it is what it is like everything else in that in that era
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they could have implored him they could have said hey this is a big guy
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if you want us to make this deal with you we need him out