Transcript
Rachel Maddow Presents: Déjà News
Episode 1: Riot at the gates (again)
A violent right-wing mob interrupts lawmakers formalizing the transfer of power to a new leader. But this isn’t Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021, but rather Paris on February 6, 1934. Rachel Maddow and Isaac-Davy Aronson explore that earlier event, the way it reverberates to this day and how it could help us understand what January 6 will mean for the U.S.
Rachel Maddow: The start of this story never gets any less surprising no matter how many times it resurfaces. It’s sometimes called the Business Plot. But that’s too forgettable a name. The unforgettable name associated with it is the hero of the Business Plot, a man named Smedley Darlington Butler.
Soldier: I take pleasure in introducing to you Major General Smedley Butler, retired, of the U.S. Marine Corps!
(APPLAUSE)
Maddow: In the early 20th century, Smedley Butler was not just a great name. He was a household name. He was a Marine general. He was the most decorated Marine in U.S. history at the time. And in the mid-1930s, Smedley Butler went public with this shocking claim that a shadowy cabal of rich and powerful business interests had tried to recruit him to lead a coup -- a fascist coup -- against President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Smedley Butler: I appeared before the congressional committee, the highest representation of the American people under subpoena, to tell what I knew of activities which I believe might lead to an attempt to set up a fascist dictatorship. The plan, as outlined to me, was to form an organization of veterans to use as a bluff, or as a club at least, to intimidate the government and break down our democratic institution. The upshot of the whole thing --
Maddow: That’s the real Smedley Butler. You might have seen the movie “Amsterdam” that came out last year? The plot of that movie -- or at least part of the plot -- was sort of loosely based on this story. And it was Robert De Niro who played the part of the Smedley Butler character.
Robert De Niro in “Amsterdam”: I’ve been offered money to become the self-appointed leader of the veterans. Veterans, like you --
Maddow: This story, the Smedley Butler Business Plot story, it does get sort of re-remembered every few years. And like I said, every time it resurfaces, it’s still surprising, it’s still unnerving.
And after the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol, when we all went scrambling for things that might help us understand what had just happened, the Smedley Butler Business Plot story had another one of its moments in the press.
“The Washington Post,” in particular, retold the story a week after January 6th. They said, quote, “As the dust settles after the pro-Trump attack on the U.S. Capitol, the similarities are hard to ignore.” And that’s absolutely true, for sure.
But here is something that I did not know. Inside the story of Smedley Butler and the Business Plot -- that failed coup -- there’s an echo of January 6th that’s more direct and maybe more illuminating for us now in 2023.
It’s this other part of the story about who exactly tried to recruit Smedley Butler to this plot; why they picked him as their choice to lead it; and, most importantly, why they thought it would work. Because, it turns out, the people who came to Smedley Butler and tried to recruit him to lead an army of veterans to march on the Capitol and overthrow FDR, the reason they thought this idea would work is that they had just seen it work.
They had seen -- in real life -- a mob attempt to storm the seat of a democratic government to try to block the peaceful transfer of power, to install a post-democratic, elections don’t matter anymore, far-right, fascism-friendly leader instead. They had seen a mob storm the seat of government to try to pull that off. And they’d seen it work. They had seen the mob succeed.
So, here’s a question. If something very much like January 6th has happened before, if January 6th was history repeating itself in some form, does that help us? Does that help us in our understanding of what January 6th meant and what we should do about it going forward? Would it be comforting to us to know that this really wasn’t the first time? Or would we be just even more weirded out about it?
I’m Rachel Maddow, and I’m here with my longtime producer and friend Isaac-Davy Aronson. Hi, Isaac.
Isaac-Davy Aronson: Hi, Rachel.
Maddow: Isaac, we go way, way back, almost 20 years now, which is, I guess, hard to believe -- shouldn’t be, but it’s hard to believe. We go all the way back to the late great “Air America Radio.”
Aronson: You had this 5:00 a.m. live show, where I was a producer and sometimes guest hosted. And to this this day, that holds the record for the earliest I have ever gotten up for anything in my life.
Maddow: Yeah. Apart from that period in my life, 5:00 a.m. has always been late. That was the only time it’s ever been early. But yeah, this podcast that we’re doing now, this comes out of our many years of working together, not just at “Air America Radio” at odd hours of the day, but more recently, our many years of making “The Rachel Maddow Show” together on MSNBC.
And if you have watched “The Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC, you may have noticed that we often look for stories from history to help us make sense of what’s happening now. So today, Isaac is here with this story, this kind of historical antecedent for January 6th.
Aronson: And it’s not just a similar event. It happened on a similar date, the 6th, February 6th, 1934. And while this event isn’t well known in this country, it’s very well known in the country where it happened, in France.
In fact, just like our Capitol attack is just called January 6th, the assault on the French Parliament in 1934 is to this day simply known as February 6th, even almost 90 years later, which would suggest that if these events and their aftermaths really are similar, we may be living with January 6th for a long time.
Maddow: Which is reason enough for me to want to know if history can help here, if the real history of something that was very much like our January 6th can help give us smarter expectations about what’s likely to happen here next.
So, welcome. It’s good to have you here. This is “Rachel Maddow Presents: Déjà News.”
(MUSIC PLAYING)
Benito Mussolini: (Speaking Foreign Language)
Maddow: The year is 1934. In Italy, Mussolini and his fascist party have been in power for about a dozen years. In Germany, Hitler has just become chancellor.
Adolf Hitler: (Speaking Foreign Language)
Maddow: Authoritarianism is on the rise, on the march, in 1934. Democracy is on the back foot, even in places where an actual fascist dictator never takes over.
That is where Isaac picks up the story, and I’ll be back with you on the other side.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
Aronson: In the 1930s, there was a dissatisfaction with democracy spreading across Europe and the U.S. A lot of it had to do with the fact that the previous couple of decades had not been the greatest. Here’s how the journalist, Jonathan Katz, describes it.
Jonathan Katz: It seems to a lot of people on both sides of the Atlantic at this moment that liberal democracy has run its course. It didn’t work. At that point, in 1934, the track record of liberal democracy over the most recent decades were a World War and a Great Depression. And reactionary groups, far-right groups, fascists were like, okay, great. We can work with this.
Aronson: Jonathan Katz published a book last year called “Gangsters of Capitalism,” all about our friend, Smedley Butler. In “Gangsters of Capitalism,” he tells the story of what inspired the coup plotters who approached Butler. The guy who was sent to recruit Butler, he had just returned from a whirlwind tour of fascist Europe -- Italy; Germany; and, in France, he had met with a group that had just staged a brazen attack on the French Parliament.
Katz: This event, it’s still known today in France as le 6 février, February 6th, just like January 6th is January 6th. It was this sort of motley crew of different organizations. And a lot of them were veterans’ groups. And there’s one veterans’ group in particular, it was called the Croix de Feu or the Fiery Cross, the Cross of Fire.
Announcer: As night falls, cars are still coming in. Men of the Croix de Feu assemble in the glare of torches and powerful searchlights, until the field is packed with a singing, cheering army of 40,000 -- a cross-section of the 400,000 citizens who are now the Croix de Feu.
Aronson: this is a news reel from the early 1930s reporting on the rise of this group, the Croix de Feu. The Fiery Cross was made up of World War I veterans, including its leader, François de La Rocque, a decorated French Army colonel.
Announcer: Then, de La Rocque hurls his message to his Army, “Before there is a new order, we must end this order. We must restore the idea of authority. Be ready. Our hour is at hand. Tomorrow, or the next day, or within a fortnight, I may give you the order for national mobilization.”
(CHEERING)
Aronson: We must restore the idea of authority. What you see in this news reel is this giant crowd, thousands of people, all gathered at night. They’re lit by search lights and torches. It’s massive. It’s intimidating. It’s sort of well-organized in the sense that it’s clearly led. But it’s also chaotic. It’s a mob.
The whole month leading up to the attack on the parliament was super tense in France. In January 1934 alone, in just that one month, there were something like a dozen protests and riots by far-right and fascist groups in Paris. The riots and protests, they were fueled by conspiracy theories and ginned-up scandals, including one really nice one about France’s government being in the pocket of nefarious Jewish bankers.
The agitation around these scandals by far-right and pro-fascist groups in Paris, it caused enough unrest, enough disorder in the streets that the center-left government decided to make a change. By late January 1934, they were in the process of swapping out their existing center-left prime minister for a new one in the hopes that it would quell the unrest. It did not.
Instead, it gave the rioters a focal point for their energies. The formal transfer of power, when the new French prime minister was set to appear officially in parliament for the first time, was set for February 6th. The fascists saw this ceremony, this symbol of democratic government, as the perfect moment to make their biggest, perhaps decisive move.
When it became known that the new prime minister would make his inaugural address on February 6th, the Croix de Feu and all the other right-wing and fascist groups put out the word: everybody gather that day.
There was no Twitter, but through flyers and word of mouth, the message was clear: Big protest in Paris on February 6th. Be there. Will be wild.
And when the day came, on the street outside the French Parliament, all hell broke loose.
Announcer: The Croix de Feu, Crosses of Fire, 30,000-strong, they meet their first test in the riots that sweep Paris on the historic 6th of February 1934. That day brings such street fighting that France has not seen since 1871 and inaugurates a new reign of terror.
In Paris, gendarmes meet charge after charge of mad rioting mobs.
Alice Kaplan: Until 2:30 a.m., the crowds attacked police with swords, and sabers, and clubs.
Aronson: This is Yale professor Alice Kaplan, describing what went down that night as tens of thousands of rioters tried to force their way to the parliament building.
Kaplan: Trees were torn out by their roots. Fences were smashed. There was literally blood on the streets. A bus was overturned and set on fire.
Aronson: Rioters picked up rocks and pieces of paving stones and hurled them at the police who were trying to hold the line at a bridge just opposite the parliament building. Some of the rioters didn’t need to find projectiles -- they were already armed. Some even reportedly had poles with razor blades on the ends to disable police horses. This was close-quarters, hand-to-hand combat.
The American foreign correspondent John Gunther, who spent the 1930s chronicling the rise of fascism across Europe, he described the night like this, quote, “No one will agree as to who fired the first shots. Once shooting began, the crowd was uncontrollable. Crazy enough to storm the chamber and massacre every deputy inside.”
At least 15 people were killed that night, mostly rioters. Around 2,000 people were injured. Meanwhile, inside the parliament, they’re trying to formalize the transfer of power to the new leader, the new prime minister, while the lawmakers are totally under siege. They’re bracing for rioters to break down the doors at any moment.
The new prime minister is trying to make his inaugural speech, trying to show that the government will continue to do its work in the face of this mob intimidation. And you might think that facing a murderous, huge, armed mob intent on breaking into your workplace might bring everyone in the room together in common cause, at least for that moment. But that doesn’t happen.
Instead of presenting a united front of democracy against the fascist mob, inside the chamber, right-wing lawmakers start shouting down the new prime minister. They’re threatening to go out and join the rioters themselves. Fistfights break out inside the chamber between left-wing and right-wing members of parliament. The prime minister keeps trying to give his speech, but the right-wing members of parliament drown him out by singing the French national anthem over and over.
Crowd: (Singing “La Marseillaise”)
Aronson: That was February 6th, 1934. The riot at the gates was epic, and deadly, and consequential. The next morning, as Paris counted its dead and tended to the wounded in its trashed streets, the new prime minister -- the prime minister whose inaugural session of parliament was brought to a halt by a violent mob -- he quit; he resigned.
Katz: They do succeed in putting the fear of God into French politics.
Aronson: Journalist Jonathan Katz again.
Katz: This convinces a lot of people in the French establishment that people are really, really angry and they have to sort of give in. And so, the government falls. The transfer of power does not take place. And instead, a center-right government comes into power. In that sense, February 6th is immediately more successful than January 6th.
Aronson: It was a left-wing prime minister -- a center-left leader -- who was supposed to take over the government, who was supposed to be sworn in on February 6th. Instead, after the fascist riot, the replacement prime minister and cabinet that lawmakers installed in reaction to the violence were a who’s-who of the French right -- including Marshal Pétain who, in just a few years’ time, would lead what was called the Vichy government, which actively and enthusiastically collaborated with Hitler and the Nazis after Germany invaded France in World War II.
Maddow: February 6th, 1934. It’s a crazy story, right? I mean, our rioters -- the rioters in the United States on January 6th, 2021 -- they didn’t stop the transfer of power. Joe Biden is president. But February 6th is what it looks like when it works, basically.
Now, we’re only a couple years out from January 6th. We don’t know what long-term effects it will have in our country. But what we do know is that in France, 90 years after their experience with this sort of thing, there are still people today who celebrate February 6th. Literally, people celebrated it just a few months ago on February 6th of this year.
And that may tell us something helpful about what to expect here going forward. That’s all ahead when “Déjà News” continues.
Kaplan: So, I was in France on January 6th, watching TV. And you know that Washington, D.C. is built on a model of Paris, with these broad avenues leading to monuments. So for starters, the social space felt very similar.
Maddow: This is Yale professor Alice Kaplan describing her own experience on January 6th, 2021. As someone who specializes in the literature and history of 20th-century France, she says her mind went immediately to the February 6th, 1934 attack on the parliament in France.
Kaplan: They gathered on the Place de la Concorde. They were facing the -- the national assembly, the French House of Representatives. That felt familiar. They were protesting a new prime minister on the day he came to present himself to the assembly. That felt familiar.
Maddow: Jonathan Katz, who wrote the Smedley Butler book, “Gangsters of Capitalism,” he says that on January 6th, he also felt like he was watching some kind of horrible replay.
Katz: As I’m doing my final sprint of research on the Business Plot, which included the le 6 février, the riots in France -- literally, at that moment, Trump was trying to, you know, stage a coup. And I actually wrote a newsletter about Trump’s plot to seize the White House and like, who will be our Smedley Butler, on January 4th. So then on January 6th, I was like, oh God, this metaphor -- you guys are taking this way too far.
(LAUGHTER)
Maddow: So, since these two events are so similar -- February 6th, 1934 and January 6th, 2021 -- what can the first help us understand about the second, especially now that we have the benefit of almost 90 years of hindsight?
Isaac, I’m going to hand it back over to you for a minute. You’ve been immersed in this story as we’ve been working on this podcast. How has it added to your understanding of what happened to us on January 6th?
Aronson: Well, here is one thing I was surprised to discover. Just like people here argue about what exactly happened on January 6th, a couple of years ago; in France, the history itself of February 6th is still contested ground even now, almost 90 years later.
There are disagreements among historians over whether there was really a plan to storm the parliament or whether it was -- in a phrase we recognize today -- a protest that got out of hand. And that difference may seem academic, but not to Jonathan Katz.
Katz: A lot of French historians, just like American historians and -- and a lot of Americans, France has a very proud and long tradition of democracy, right, going back to 1789. And there’s a lot of yada, yada, yada-ing past Napoleon and Charles the 10th in the same way that we have to yada, yada, yada past, you know, Jim Crow and the Confederacy.
But like, nonetheless, there are a lot of French people who, not wrongly, are like, we have a long tradition of -- of democracy. Germany, now, that was a place that was ruled by a kaiser. It had a very, very short-lived experiment in -- in democracy with -- with the Weimar Republic before Hitler came to power. We have nothing to do with that. We -- we look nothing like those guys. So, this couldn’t possibly be fascism. It couldn’t possibly have been a coup.
Aronson: There’s a vein of this same kind of thinking in some of the more dismissive reactions to the January 6th attack. Some people feel that taking January 6th to seriously means you have no faith in American institutions.
That argument goes something like, Oh, big whoop. Some hooligans got into the Capitol. You think the QAnon shaman and his Viking helmet is going to bring down hundreds of years of democracy?
But if you find yourself tempted to dismiss January 6th as a blip that won’t ultimately matter, consider the place that February 6th holds in French politics to this day. Alice Kaplan described to me how it lives on.
Kaplan: I do think it’s important for us now and then to distinguish between the reality of an event and the myth of an event. So, February 6, ‘34 is taken up by the far-right as a kind of memory site. Right? A set of images that evokes the martyrdom of the extreme right, the nobility of the veterans’ leagues and -- and the dream of a French fascism.
Aronson: As the American right plays around with mythmaking around January 6th -- that January 6th defendants are political prisoners, that they were set up somehow, that their actions were heroic and patriotic but they were just made to look bad by bad actors and the deep-state -- just as the revisionist history of our January 6th is being written now in our country, the far-right has long done the same with February 6th in France.
After World War II, a fascist writer named Robert Brasillach was executed for collaborating with the Nazis. But before he died, Brasillach became one of the chief mythmakers of February 6th, and the February 6th mythology he created long outlived him.
Kaplan: He liked to say that his enthusiasm for fascism was inseparable from the memory of February 6th, 1934. And he used to go to the Place de la Concorde every February 6th to commemorate the event.
He said, quote, “If February 6th, 1934 was a failed plot, it was an instinctive and magnificent revolt, a night of sacrifice that remains in our memory with its odor, its cold wind, its pale running figures, its people gathered on the sidewalks, its invincible hope of a national revolution.” You can’t get much grander than that.
Renouveau Français Rally Crowd: (Chanting in French)
(MUSIC PLAYING)
Aronson: This is a YouTube video uploaded by a far-right group. It’s the sound of a rally commemorating the fascist attack on parliament on February 6th, 1934, which they’ve spruced up with a punchy soundtrack and some video editing.
Far-right groups hold these rallies every year, in Paris and cities around France. It’s decades and decades later, but there they are again, chanting with their flaming torches. They see February 6th as a legendary triumph. They celebrate those who were killed attacking the parliament as martyrs to a cause they’re still fighting for, today.
Far-right groups gather at Robert Brasillach's grave every February 6th. This year, just a few months ago, police responded when a large group of far-right activists turned up at Brasillach’s grave. They confiscated a bunch of weapons from them at the scene.
But it’s not just the armed fringes of their politics. You can trace a direct line from that February 6th mythology to their last presidential election.
Jean-Marie Le Pen: (Speaking in French)
One of Brasillach’s biggest fans is Jean-Marie Le Pen, the holocaust denier and antisemite who founded the French far-right political party, the National Front. Le Pen is a household name in France. He has run for president multiple times.
Jean-Marie Le Pen produced a series of vinyl records that were basically audio books of Brasillach’s writings from jail when he was locked up for collaborating with the Nazis before he was executed.
Marine Le Pen: (Speaking in French)
Now, Le Pen’s daughter, Marine Le Pen, leads what used to be her father’s party. In the French presidential election last year, Marine Le Pen won over 40 percent of the vote.
Marine Le Pen: (Speaking in French)
(APPLAUSE)
Maddow: Isaac, this may be asking too much, but is there a slightly more optimistic note that we might be able to end on here?
Aronson: I think there might be. It all depends on where on the historical timeline you look. So, the mob attack on the parliament, which effectively deposed the center-left elected government and installed a far-right government instead -- so that took place in 1934. And it was just a few years later, in 1940, when Nazi Germany invaded France.
But in between, something really fascinating happened.
The center-left and the left-left, they looked at what had just happened on February 6th and decided that desperate times called for desperate measures. Whatever had separated various groups on the left and in the center before, those disagreements were nothing compared to the fascist threat menacing everyone from the far-right.
And so, they put aside their differences and came together in this broad-based, unified, explicitly anti-fascist coalition. Everybody welcome, as long as you are against the fascists.
In the next elections, in 1936, they ran on that anti-fascist platform. Don’t let February 6th happen again, basically. They presented themselves as running not just against the government in power but against the fascist movement of the Croix de Feu and its leader, Colonel de la Rocque.
Announcer: Communists and socialists, forgetting their differences in the face of a common enemy, join forces as the Front Populaire, on Bastille Day parade 200,000-strong through Paris, shouting, “Hang de la Rocque!”
Aronson: And they won, big time. Just a resounding victory. France got its first socialist and first Jewish prime minister, Léon Blum.
Léon Blum: (Speaking in French).
Aronson: And his government instituted enormous social benefits, including the 40-hour work week, paid time off, increased wages, a big public works program -- which, of course, had a mirror image across the Atlantic in FDR’s New Deal.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt: I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people.
(APPLAUSE)
Aronson: As fascism spread across Europe and fascist plots were hatched in the U.S., part of what both Léon Blum and FDR were trying to do was to prove that liberal democracy works, it delivers; which is a theme that President Biden returns to repeatedly today.
Joe Biden: Autocrats think that democracy can’t compete in the 21st century with autocracies because it takes too long to get consensus. We have to prove democracy still works, that our government still works, and we can deliver for our people.
Aronson: So, Rachel, I’m not sure if optimism is the right word, but I do think that understanding what happened in France helps us be, maybe, realistic. A crisis event can make it clear that democracy is under threat, but it doesn’t tell us for certain what the state of democracy will be in a year, or five years, or a decade.
Maddow: There is a little bit of clarity, though, right? I mean, save democracy. Unity versus fascism. Will be wild!
Aronson: Will be wild!
(LAUGHTER)
Maddow: So that’s going to do it for our first episode of “Déjà News.”
Isaac, what do you got for us next week?
Aronson: Well, next week, instead of looking at another country, we’ll look at a whole other universe -- the state of Florida.
Maddow: Oh, boy.
(LAUGHTER)
Aronson: Governor Ron DeSantis is acting like he has found some new political formula in his attacks on schools, and anti-racism, and the LGBTQ community. But he’s actually just repeating a formula Florida’s government has tried before. And it did not go well for them the last time.
Maddow: Well, that’s next time. That’s next week on “Rachel Maddow Presents: Déjà News.”
(MUSIC PLAYING)
Maddow: “Rachel Maddow Presents: Déjà News” is a production of MSNBC and NBC News.
Aronson: It’s executive produced and written by me and Rachel.
Maddow: Our associate producer is Janmaris Perez.
Aronson: Our audio producer -- and our former “Air America Radio” compatriot -- is Tim Einenkel.
Maddow: Our technical director is Bryson Barnes.
Aronson: Our senior executive producers are Cory Gnazzo and Laura Conaway.
Maddow: Our web producer is Will Femia.
Aronson: Archival tape wrangling by Holly Klopchin and Johanna Cerutti.
Maddow: Our thanks to Jonathan Katz, whose great book on Smedley Butler is called “Gangsters of Capitalism.”
Aronson: And to Yale professor Alice Kaplan, who pointed us to all kinds of great anecdotes and archival material.
Maddow: Have you had a “Déjà News” moment? Seen something in the news that feels like history repeating, or at least history rhyming? Well, we want to hear about it. Drop us a line at dejanews@msnbc.com.
Aronson: And you can find out more about this series along with news reel video of February 6th, 1934, at our website: msnbc.com/dejanews.
Maddow: And I know you know this -- I am not trying to be weird -- but just for the record, it’s msnbc.com slash D-E-J-A-N-E-W-S.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
Announcer: Now, almost daily in martial review through the streets of Marseille, Strasbourg, Lille, Pouançay (ph), Calais, Paris, pass the grim, purposeful legions of the Croix de Feu. The movement captures the imagination of the finest young men in the land. Republican France at last realizes that here is a powerful, well-disciplined army of 300,000 led by a determined figure who wears the look of a dictator.
Crowd: (Singing “La Marseillaise”)
END