Nobusuke Kishi, a war criminal rehabilitated by the U.S. occupation, leveraged CIA funding and Yakuza alliances to establish Japan's Liberal Democratic Party while suppressing leftist reforms through the 1947 Red Purge. His authoritarian push for the Anpo treaty sparked massive protests, including the fatal trampling of student Kamba Michiko, which ultimately forced his resignation despite his later influence over Shinzo Abe's revisionist policies. This narrative exposes how American Cold War interests cemented a fascist legacy in modern Japan, prioritizing security treaties and corporate power over democratic accountability and historical justice. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Behind The Bastards Intro00:03:20
This is an iHeart podcast.
Guaranteed human.
On a recent episode of the podcast Money and Wealth with John O'Brien, I sit down with Tiffany the Budginista Aliche to talk about what it really takes to take control of your money.
What would that look like in our families if everyone was able to pass on wealth to the people when they're no longer here?
We break down budgeting, financial discipline, and how to build real wealth, starting with the mindset shifts too many of us were never ever taught.
If you've ever felt you didn't get the memo on money, this conversation is for you to hear more.
Listen to Money and Wealth with John O'Brien from the Black Effect Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
You know the famous author Roald Dahl.
He thought up Willie Wonka and the BFG.
But did you know he was a spy?
Neither did I. You can hear all about his wildlife story in the podcast, The Secret World of Roald Dahl.
All episodes are out now.
Was this before he wrote his stories?
It must have been.
What?
Okay, I don't think that's true.
I'm telling you, the guy was a spy.
Binge all 10 episodes of The Secret World of Roald Dahl now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Readers, Katie's finalists, publicists.
We have an incredible new episode this week for you guys.
We have our girl Hillary Duff in here, and we can't wait for you to hear this episode.
They put on Lizzie McGuire at 2 a.m. video on demand.
This guy's playing.
2 a.m.
2 a.m.
Whatever time it is.
Lizzie McGuire and I'm wild.
Wild Battle.
It was like a first closet moment for me where I was like, you're like, I don't feel like she's hot like the rest of them.
No, no, no.
I was like, she's beautiful, but I'm appreciating her in a different way than these boys are.
I'm not like...
Listen to Las Culturistas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
Hi, I'm Iris Palmer, host of the Against All Odds podcast.
Every week, I'm sitting down with exceptional people who have broken barriers even when the odds were stacked against them.
Like chef Victor Villa of VS Tacos.
You know the taquero from the Bad Bunny halftime show?
It was great.
It was a big moment.
It was special.
And I felt like I was really representing my family, you know, my brand, my city.
I was representing all taqueros, not only of like, you know, the U.S., but of Mexico and beyond.
All the taqueros of the world.
Listen to Against All Odds on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
What?
Well, you know, the important thing about growing older and getting wiser is learning when you shouldn't make a what's ex-ing my wise joke about a series of profoundly horrific crimes against humanity.
And I've grown as a person.
So I'm just gonna go into the episode and not think at all about what it is I was going to say before I stopped myself and narrowly avoided cancellation.
This is Behind the Bastards, a podcast about the worst people in all of history, of whom I would have been one had I completed the sentence that this introduction was meant to be initially as it was originally planned.
But I didn't.
So you motherfuckers can't cancel me.
Yoshida And The Yakuza00:15:21
That's right.
I'm gonna go.
Unfortunately, this also means that you will never be installed as leader of a country by the CIA.
I don't don't say never.
Don't say never.
You never like, what do you, I mean, anybody, look, a man can dream.
Christopher, we're talking more about Manchuria today.
We just went through a lot of war crimes.
Uh, where are, where are we, where we, where, what do you, where, what do you wear?
Where what?
Where what?
Is it time?
Where what?
Is it time for the reckoning as you titled it?
Yeah, it is.
Yeah.
THE TUE The Reckoning.
Fuck yeah.
Spicy.
Let's go.
Yeah, so we are back in Japan.
We are back in 1945 and we are back in, well, I guess we are back in.
We are back in the U.S. occupation.
And okay, no, I think a pretty natural reaction to seeing the words a U.S. military occupation is to assume as going to go badly.
And it is.
But it actually didn't start out that way.
And it didn't start out that way because the first phase of the sort of Japanese occupation by the U.S. is run by a bunch of new dealers.
And these guys looked at Japan and were like, okay, so what if instead of fascism we did the New Deal?
And so they do a bunch of stuff that's like really leftist.
Like, for example, the big one that you could never do in the U.S., they do this huge land reform package where they force all the landlords who own a certain amount of land to like sell it to their tenants.
And, you know, there's like, there's like two years, you know, about 1945, 1947, where, you know, the U.S. like is actually kind of trying to make Japan like better and more democratic and less shit.
But all of that comes to an end in 1947, basically a result of the Cold War.
And this is called the reverse course.
And it signifies basically when American business interests like take control of Japan.
And, you know, like in 1950, they do this thing called the Red Purge, where they do this mass firing of suspected communists.
Yeah.
And anyone who's sort of like vaguely associated with the left decides to get fired from their jobs, both in the government and the private sector.
This is coordinated.
And if I'm not mistaken, this is kind of around the time when there's also a lot of protests against the American occupiers because a bunch of GIs are raping ladies.
Yeah, that's true.
Which is like another major thing that drives a lot of the early protests post-war in Japan.
Yeah, they're also just like shooting people.
And we'll get more into soldiers just randomly murdering people.
Excellent.
But, you know, I guess actually, speaking of soldiers randomly murdering people.
So one of the reasons why fascism is never really sort of like crushed in Japan is that the head of G2, which is the Army's Intelligence Section, is also a fascist.
And, you know, there's no way.
Yeah.
And I was like, this is not me calling Charles A. Willerby a fascist.
Like, this guy is going to go on to become like Franco's promoter in Europe.
Like, MacArthur calls him a fascist.
Wow.
MacArthur, the guy who suggested nuking cities in China to win the Korean war.
If that dude calls you a fascist, you're probably pretty fucking fashy.
You know, and this is a big issue because Willerby's job, like the actual job he is there to do is to like just completely obliterate the rest of the Japanese fascist organizations and Japanese fascist societies.
And what he does instead is he used the GTU's counterintelligence corps to do union busting and staging false flag attacks and blaming them on the Socialist Party.
And he does one other thing that's both incredibly important to this story and important to Japanese history.
He decides he wants to start negotiating with the Yakuza in order to sort of like use them as a weapon against the left.
And in order to do this.
Yeah, it's great.
It's great.
You can see where this is going.
He goes.
I mean, versions of this happen in Italy with the mobility too, right?
Yeah.
And I think, yeah, I, I, you know, the Italian office is interesting because every once in a while, they like will back a leftist.
Like, that's like how the sort of weird Red Brigade stuff happened.
But like, the Yakuza, they're just fascist.
Like, there's no...
That's good.
Yeah, it's great.
And yeah.
And so Willerby goes to Tsukumo prison, which is like this is the giant war criminal prison where the U.S. is holding all the war criminals.
And he meets with Kishi's cellmate.
Now, Kishi's cellmate is a guy named Kodama Yoshio, who is, he's like a giant Yakuza boss.
He's involved in the drug trade.
He was also arrested for his plot, his part in the incredibly named League of Blood incident in 1932, which is this giant like fascist plot to just assassinate a bunch of business owners, liberal politicians.
And, you know, so he gets arrested for, this is 1932, and he gets arrested and then he gets released.
And then, you know, because again, the Japanese Empire is just a giant cartel with like a state attached to it.
He spends the entire war as Japan's like procurement guy, which means that he's running around like basically trading heroin for like tungsten radium guns and like other stuff to fight the war.
And so Willerby meets with this guy because he also, you know, he still has a monster Yakuza connections and he has like $175 million that he made from the war just like on him.
And so Willerby cuts a deal with Kodama that's like, okay, I'll get you out of war crimes jail if you become an American intelligence asset.
And Kodama's like, this is just all wins.
And so he, Kodama, like immediately, like basically reforms this like, I don't even, I guess you call it like the United Front of like crime and fascism.
It's like, it's this group, it's this association of like 400 right-wing like fascist and criminal organizations that Kodama just like runs.
And, you know, he, he's going to spend the next 30 years basically just running Japanese politics from the, from the shadows and being basically like the Yakuza politics guy.
Now, Kishi, how Kishi escaped the noose in 1948 is a subject of some debate.
Like, so the U.S. doesn't charge him with the sex slavery crimes or like the forced labor crimes.
What he's charged with is violating like crimes against the peace, which is like starting an offensive war.
But like even that, even if you just stick to that, like he is the guiltiest man in human history.
Like he signed the declaration of war against the U.S. Like the easiest conviction ever.
Yeah, that really also ought to like just as a rule, if you're like someone else who lives in that country and a guy is like, hey, I want to continue being influential.
You know me.
I'm the guy who helped declare war in the U.S. You would think that like everyone would be like, well, we shouldn't be listening to anything you say.
Yeah, you would think.
That didn't go very well.
You would think.
And, you know, I've seen some stories that talk about like some sort of like group of American businessmen interceded on his behalf.
I don't know how reliable that is.
The other explanation, and this is true regardless of exactly what happened to Kishi, is that like the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal just kind of gave up, like trying to actually prosecute people because it was too much work and it was like the Cold War was happening and they just didn't care anymore.
And so they do just like a bunch of absolutely half-assed proceedings and they rush like Tojo to the gallows and a few people, the people they wanted to kill.
And then everyone else just goes free.
And so on Christmas Eve, 1948, Nobusuka Kishi, the man who enslaved Mitsuri and ran the fascist war machine, walked out of prison.
And because his brother, future prime minister Ito Isaku, Sato Isaku, is the cabinet chief secretary, Kishi is immediately driven to the prime minister's house.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, he's immediately driven to prime minister's house where he traces his prison oranges for a business suit and utters the immortal words, quote, well, I guess we're all Democrats now.
Oh, God.
Ew, ew.
Gross, gross.
Not good.
Bad.
Not good.
Ew.
And thus Nobusuke Kishi, arch fascist bureaucrat, entered the new world of electoral politics.
Oh, God.
That's you love to see it.
Yeah, it's like if Werner von Braun had run for Congress.
Yep.
Yeah.
As opposed to just running NASA.
Yeah.
And, you know, okay, so initially, he starts putting together basically like the old fascist base.
So like he gets some small business owners.
He gets some like old school 1931 like fascist terrorists.
He gets, he gets, his friends at Nissan are like, yeah, we love this Manchuria shit.
Like, we're giving him all of our money.
And the other, you know, one of the other like very disturbing things about what happened after the war is that, so, you know, I talked to the last episode.
Kishi founds this thing called the Ministry of Munitions, which is just like the super, like, super, like, ministry that does all this planning stuff.
And basically all of his old like fascist reform bureaucrat buddies who are in the ministry of munitions keep their jobs.
And that whole, the ministry's just turned into the ministry of international trade and industry.
And, you know, and MIDI is, this called MIDI.
MIDI is the core of Japanese post-war development.
And it's, you know, it's all the old fascist shit that Kishi was doing before.
Except the difference is that it's now being used to sort of like it's being used to fuel the American war machine in Korea and Vietnam instead of fueling the Japanese war machine also in Korea and Vietnam.
So yeah, this is purging the fascists is going well.
And when I say going well, I mean in 1952, the U.S. just like gave up any semblance of trying to get rid of fascism and just unpurged everyone they'd purged.
We pardoned a lot of them.
We gave the others jobs.
Yep.
Yep.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, you know, and the interesting thing with Kishi, so, so the prime minister at the time is Yoshida Shigaru, who was like, this is not a good guy.
Like, he was also a fascist for the war.
But he tells the Americans, do not unpurge this guy.
Like, do not unpurge Kishi.
And it's extremely funny because, you know, as I mentioned last episode, like, Yoshida is, is, like, is related to Kishi.
Like, you know, remember that uncle that Kishi really liked who like raised him for a little bit?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that guy's daughter, like, is Yoshida's wife.
Like, they know each other.
Like, Kishi knows this guy's family.
And he's still just like, do not do this.
Do not let this guy come back into politics.
And the U.S. is just like, no, fuck it.
Well, he's back.
Kishi's back.
Yeah.
And, you know, so, so Kishi.
You may not have heard of us.
We're the United States.
Yeah.
We don't think things through.
Nope.
Well, I mean, you know, I would say this, this works out great for the U.S.
Oh, good.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's great.
Yeah.
And, you know, and Kishi, so Kishi runs this electoral federation thing in 1952.
And it just gets like destroyed.
Like, because 1952, everyone's like, we don't like this guy.
And he has a, like, he has a lot of money.
He has like hundreds of millions of yen.
So they get like whacked.
And so Kishi starts like wheeling around the political scene going, okay, like, what can I latch on to?
And like, he, he almost joins the right wing of the socialist party, which would have been the single weirdest pit of it I've ever seen in my life.
But his brother convinced him to join this, the, the ruling sort of center-right liberal party instead.
And, you know, like, this is Yoshida's party.
And Yoshida like doesn't like Kishi, but the Liberal Party is also falling apart.
So he's like, okay, we need Kishi's support.
And so in 1953, Kishi joins the part, joins the party and wins a seat in the diet.
Now, Yoshida, Yoshi is getting help from a lot of places in that election because 1953 is the first post-war election after the American occupation.
And if you know anything about elections that happened in fascist countries immediately after the end of World War II, you know that Yoshida is being backed by the CIA.
Yeah.
If you know anything that happened about elections that happened in these countries after World War II, you know that they didn't.
Yeah.
Well, you know, yeah, this is interesting because it's like, I think this story is weirder than like the Italian stories.
Like, you know, and this, I mean, you know, I guess we're, so, so the way this is funded is that at the beginning of the Korean War, like the U.S. needed a bunch of tungsten and American intelligence basically was like, we need to keep the socialist party from literally ever taking power, like at all costs.
And so they talked to Kodamo, who's that Yakuza guy from before the war who Willerby had like broken out of jail.
And they get him to smuggle a bunch of tungsten that had been left over from Japan's World War II stockpiles to the U.S.
And then they like, they pay him $10 million and the CIA throws in $2.8 million of their own.
And that money is like, that money is how the Liberal Party wins 1953 elections.
It's great.
It's great.
I mean, it's going to get worse.
Kish is fine.
I bet we did good stuff with all that tungsten.
Yeah, we absolutely bombed the ship of Korea.
We didn't get fired into multiple countries worth of civilian.
It's great.
Okay.
Anyway.
Yeah.
Now, yeah.
So, so, you know, Kishi gets elected as part of the Liberal Party, but, you know, Kishi is a backstabbing son of a bitch.
And he immediately turns on Yoshida and like starts denouncing him.
Yoshida kicks him out of the party, but Kishi is able to get this like breakaway faction to join him.
And he forms something called the Democratic Party.
And through a lot of incredibly complicated electoral bullshit, they're able to oust Yoshida as prime minister.
And then Kishi has this giant plan to reunify the two wings of the like basically reunify the two wings of the of the right.
There's like his wing is Democratic Party and there's a liberal party and he has to reunify them.
And the reason he wants to do this is because he wants to control it.
But the other reason that the reason it actually happens is that the socialist party had split in like 1948 or something.
In 1955, they come back together.
And that just like freaks all the conservatives out.
And they're like, okay, okay, fine.
Like we'll, join this new party.
And the new party they formed is called the Liberal Democratic Party.
Now, this is important.
The reason I spent so much time talking about this is that the LDP is the single most important party in Japanese politics.
In the 66 years since they were founded in 1955, the LDP has been out of power for six.
They were in power for the other six.
Jesus Christ.
Yeah.
Japan is almost a one-party state.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's unbelievable.
And, you know, and this is, this is Kishi's party.
Like, he is the guy who single-handedly built this party.
This party would not exist if Kishi had not gone into the Liberal Party, like tore them apart and then forced them to join his breakaway faction.
And, you know, like, he's the reason why it exists.
And this, this party, like, this is the party that's the basis of the entire modern Japanese political system.
Cool.
Yeah, it's great.
Kishi, you know, he makes himself the general secretary of the party and wins, you know, and in his first election, he wins an absolute majority in the diet for the LDP.
But, you know, instead of becoming prime minister himself, he spends his time sort of biting, like sort of building up American support for him.
Now, you know, we talked about this.
The CDP, I mean, the CIA had been heavily involved with the Liberal Party and they've been heavily involved with Liberal Democratic Party like from the start.
I mean, this is from a New York Times article.
We financed them, said Alfred C. Ulmer Jr., who ran the CIA's Far East operations from 1955 to 1958.
We depended on the LDP for information.
He said the CIA had used the payments both to support the party and recruit informants from it from its earliest days.
And so the CIA, like, they're working with the LDP on like a candidate by candidate basis.
Like the CIA has their own electoral guys, and the electoral guys will like go to a candidate and go, we need you to win this seat.
Kishi's Fascist Schemes00:08:31
And they'll personally hand them money.
And so, you know, this is where you get the first of the Dolus brothers entering the sort of political arena.
Hell yeah.
And then the C, and then it, like, actually, I saw that before, is in 1955, you also get the second Dolis brother, Secretary of State, John Foster Dolas, who like basically just straight up.
Yeah, like he just like straight up 1955 is like the liberal, like he's like, tells the Japanese, like the Liberal Party will unify with the Democratic Party.
And like, if you don't, like, vague threat insert here.
And so John Foster Dolis directly responsible in many ways.
Both the Dolus Bullets are responsible for Kishi like forming the most important political party in the history of Japan.
And all of this ends with Kishi becoming prime minister in 1957.
And he, he just immediately starts doing crime.
So he's...
Yeah.
I mean, what else are you going to do?
For sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, like this, Kishi's, Kishi's like a, Kishi's an incredible money launderer from his time in Manchuria.
Like, you know, and he devises a scheme to like make some money off of the reparations payments that Japan had to pay to like the countries that it invaded after the war.
And so basically, what he does is he negotiates to have these reparations payments like paid in Japanese goods and services.
And so he buys those Japanese goods and services with state money from his own corporate political allies.
And then he turns, yeah, it's great.
It's great.
He's using the reparations payment to like pay off his like fascist buddies.
And then he does the exact same thing to like the Japanese foreign aid like projects.
It's also all just Kishi's like buddies paying themselves.
And, you know, Kishi, he also like he develops this system of like, so Kishi like constantly rotates through cabinets in the time that he's prevention, like constantly.
And the reason he's doing this is because it's basically a way to buy off his political allies.
So like, you know, you, you, you give an ally a cabinet minister and then they get a loot a bunch of money.
And then once they've taken enough money, you put in the next person, they put in the next person, they put in the next person.
And, you know, he's also just like, he's not only doing this with like sort of politicians and like businessmen, he's doing this with the Yakuza.
So one of the, you know, he makes like a sworn Yakuza guy, like his Ministry of Agriculture.
And then there's the wonderfully named Bambuko Ono, who Kishi is like.
It's a cool name.
Yeah, it's amazing.
And he, he, Kishi makes this guy the secretary general of the Liberal Democratic Party.
And he's, and he stays in that position until Ono dies in 1965.
And Ono is wonderful because he gives a speech to 2,000 Yakuza members in the 60s where like he just straight up says, like, yeah, I'm Yakuza, but I do it by being a politician instead of being a criminal.
It's like, it rules.
And so, and, you know, the other thing that's happening is that Kishi's, she's so, you know, Kishi's connected to sort of Kodama and Kodama's like whole like Yakuza American intelligence network.
And so when Lockheed Martin is trying to get the Japanese Defense Force to buy their like F-104 Starfighter over North of Grumman's F-11F, their guy in Japan who just happens to be an old G2 intelligence guy is like, I know a guy, and the guy that he knows is Kodama, who he pays like millions of dollars in bribes to.
They give him like a $600,000 commission on every plane they sell to get this sold to the Japanese government.
And so Kodama goes to his Yakuza connections in the government, which is, you know, his Yakuza buddy and newly mentioned LDP Secretary General, Bamuko Ono, and his good friend Nobusuke Kishi.
And Kishi buys the starfighter and Locky just like keeps Kodama on retainer for like the next 30 years.
And, you know, I want to give people a sense of like how embedded this like intelligence fascist Yakuza network is in the LDP.
Because it's not like this is a thing that's only Kishi and it goes away.
Like in the 1970s, Kodoma gets hired again by Locky to do exactly the same thing.
And he pays out like several million dollars in bribes.
Like he bribes the prime minister again.
And this time he gets caught.
And, you know, he and he took so much money from like the Americans and bribes many people that like he managed to piss off both the far right and the far left.
And so, you know, they start protesting his house.
And on May 23rd, 1976, a fascist porn star named Masua Maneo, who'd been a huge Kodama fanboy, rents a- Boy, that shit didn't exist.
Oh, yeah, yeah, it's great.
It's great.
It's going to get better.
Yeah, so he rents a plane.
He like circles Kodama's house, like shouting pro-imperial slogans into a microphone.
And then like he screams bonsai and flies the plane into his house.
Like this is, this is in 1976.
Kodama's house is kind of rad, to be honest.
That's that's you know what you gotta give it up sometimes.
That critical support.
Very cool.
Undeniably rad move.
Kodama lives through this.
Yeah, but a guy kamikaze house in 1970s, like a fascist porn star kamikaze house, and he lived through it.
Yeah, I mean, that is basically the end of him in politics, but it's like, it's great.
It's great.
Yeah, that is a flex.
Yeah, it's a, this is, yeah, this is a, this is a profoundly fascist party with profoundly fascist people in it.
And yeah, so, yeah.
So, so back in 1957, uh, Kishi's dealing with like his first real political scandal, which is that a on January 30th, 1957, a U.S. soldier named Gerard, like, basically just for fun, shot an empty grenade cartridge out of a grenade launcher at a Japanese woman who was like collecting shell casings in a military base sell for scrap, and she dies.
Oh, God.
Yeah.
And, you know, and this, this pisses off everyone in Japan.
And, you know, I mean, especially like, she's, it's revealed later she's a mother of six and everyone just loses their mind.
And Eisen, you know, and there's this huge fight over it.
And Eisenhower wants to like try him in an American court.
And Eisenhower is like literally forced to like try him in a Japanese court because like if he tried to do it in an American court, like people would have literally like brick by brick dismantled every American military base in the islands.
And so Kishi's main concern here is that this is going to like fuck up his political stuff.
And so he develops this plan and where he's going to go to Eisenhower and make a bunch of demands about this US-Japan security treaty.
And this thing, this is like one of the other things that's been causing protests is that this treaty is like signed in 1951 originally.
And it's really weird.
Like it lets the U.S. like send troops into Japan to put down quote internal riots or disturbances, which is yeah, there's like in terms of like a peace treaty.
And the other thing is it lets him in, it lets the U.S. involve itself in civil wars.
And like, you know, a bunch of Japanese commentaries point out like, there's like no precedent for this.
Like there's never been a peace treaty that like between two free nations that allows this.
And so, you know, and you get these massive protests.
Like people, people like build giant wooden fortresses and man them for like 40 years in the middle of American artillery ranges.
Like there's all of this stuff.
And, you know, Eisenhower meets with Kishi and is like, and Kishi just goes, like, you have to revise this tree.
And Eisenhower is like, okay.
And so Kishi like stakes basically his entire political career on revising this U.S.-Japan security treaty, which becomes known as Anpo.
And, you know, like, it really looks like he's going to like pull this off.
He's going to get treaty revisions.
He's going to be incredibly popular.
Until Kishi just like Kishi just, Kishi just got like that extra bit too fascist.
And that extra bit too fascist was he tried to pass something called the police duties execution law, which is like...
Sound good.
Yeah, like that's, that just already seems like we're on a bad start.
Yeah, yeah.
Like, like, this is, this is a police law so fascist that like his other fascist hardliner buddies like in the LDP are like, we won't let you pass this because you'll get, you'll get eaten alive.
Yeah, it basically like what it does is it lets it lets the Japanese, it would have let the Japanese police do warrantless searches and seizures.
Police Duties Execution Law00:05:15
Oh, cool.
Yeah.
And, you know, and everyone's like, okay, so this is just like, this is, this, this is, this is pre-war fascism again.
So, you know, and you know, you know, I think he thinks they can get away with this because he's done a bunch of other like fascist culture war sort of stuff.
Like he, he, he does this thing where he makes everyone take these like moral lessons and like all his students take like moral lessons and has these like evaluations of teachers because he thinks there's like they're too communist and wants fascist propaganda like taught instead.
And, you know, I want to make it clear, there is no parallel between this and anything that is happening in the U.S. right now.
Go back to sleep.
There's nothing here.
Everything's going to be fine.
It's like, yeah, no one in the U.S. is raging a bunch of political campaigns about what teachers are teaching in school because they think it's too leftist.
No, that has not happened.
But you know what does happen in the U.S.?
Products and services?
That's right.
That's, God willing, the only thing that will ever happen in this country in the future going forward.
Because when you get right down to it, what else do we need?
But products, services, and of course, the blissful, gooey, moist, sticky, cum-drenched products of products and services.
Stop it.
Stop it.
Well, let's just go to ads.
Gosh.
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Ah, we're back.
People's Council Uprising00:12:29
Okay, Chris, please continue.
Yes, Chris, please continue.
Sophie's angry at me because she doesn't like it when I say come drenched while leading into an ad.
Not at all.
I don't think anybody enjoyed that.
And if you did, please don't tell us.
I think our sponsors enjoy it, Sophie.
Oh, no.
All right.
I mean, it could be Nissan.
We could make it sponsor on this episode.
Yeah, it could be Nissan.
I do.
Yeah, absolutely inappropriate.
So Kishi, yeah.
So Kishi's gotten a bit too fascist.
And he also, he does this thing where...
So, so the way that like the norms of the Japanese political system worked was that like you're supposed to, before you pass a bill, you're supposed to talk to the opposition about it.
And then there's supposed to be a debate.
And Kishi's just like, yeah, fuck that.
Like, he just like snap introduces it without like, he basically, he takes a snap vote to extend the diet and just like snap forces everyone to try to vote on it.
And this is like maximally bad politics by Kishi.
Like, you know, I say it's like the norms of democracy are like actually important to Japan.
And they're important because this is a country that was a decade and a half ago literally fascist.
And Kishi's trying to pass this bill that is bring fascism back.
And so, you know, everyone gets pissed off.
Like three of his cabinet ministers resign.
And this also pulls the whole left together.
And they form something called the People's Council.
And they start, they start a general strike, drop the bill, and Kishi and Yon and they win.
And Kishi's forced to pull the bill.
And it, you know, it makes him way weaker politically.
And when he tries to get his security, like onpo, the security treaty ratified by the diet, those same groups form this even larger group called the People's Council for Preventing Revision to Security Treaty.
And this thing is massive.
It's got 134 different organizations in it.
You know, the biggest of them are the Japanese Socialist Party, the General Council of Trade Unions in Japan, who are a very powerful trade union federation.
And then there's Zengokuren, which is the Japanese radical student movement, who we will talk more about in a little bit.
Yeah, the Japanese Communist Party is also sort of involved in this, but like they don't want to let them join for political reasons initially.
But the other thing about this, it's not just like leftist orgs.
Like Japan's Professional Association, Association for Thespians is in this coalition.
Yeah, there's, you know, there's a lot of people who are like, there's a lot of groups that are like not inherently political groups that are in this.
Interesting.
Yeah, yeah.
And it's, you know, this is basically, this is the product of like all the stuff the left has been doing for the past, basically since the war like ended.
And so, you know, and these guys point out that, you know, so Kishi is able to get the clause out about the U.S. interfering to suppress riots and civil wars, but there's still a clause that says the U.S. is allowed to send troops to deal with, quote, all threats to Japan's peace and security, which, you know, yeah.
Threats to peace and security, like people doing politics we don't agree with.
Yep.
Yep.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
This is going to end well.
Sure.
Yeah.
It's, yeah.
So the People's Council starts staging these like enormous protests.
And, you know, they go on for a few months and doesn't really do anything until Zingokuren, who's the radical student organization, goes rogue.
And the important thing about Zagokuren is that like, so A, they're not directly tied to any of the parties.
And B, they are like way more willing to fight the cops than anyone else here.
And so the People's Council is planning this like massive series of protests.
But Segokuren looks at like, you know, this is like their eighth giant protest.
And Sagokuren goes, okay, well, those did nothing.
So this one's not going to do anything either.
So they form a plan to storm the Japanese parliament building.
And, you know, the People's Council like finds out about this plan and they're like trying to stop Sugokuren from doing it.
But Sagokaren like negotiates with like the Tokyo's like trade unions and they're able to just do it anyways.
So you know, 500,000 people across Japan and like 80,000 people in Tokyo show up to this protest.
And like in the middle of the march, Segokuran just like charges the police barricades, beats back the police and like forces their way into the diet and takes control of it.
And, you know, they hold it for like a day and they leave.
And people, people do not like this.
Like the, you know, like the, even like the socialists and Japanese Communist Party like condemn them for it.
And, you know, public opinion turns against them.
And there's this whole like disaster.
And, you know, and Segokuran gets like a lot of shit for this because, you know, like they, they stormed, they stormed the diet building.
But, you know, it's worth remembering that like everyone else, like everything else the more moderate faction was doing just like didn't work.
And what Sagokaren did here was drew an enormous amount of attention to the movement.
And this is it.
And, you know, that's actually, that's a vital part of like what happens next.
And what happens next is that the socialist party, the socialist party does like, I think like the funniest set of political tricks I've ever seen in my life where, you know, like they, they have that, they have this whole thing they want to do where they're trying to just like, they're trying to delay the vote because I think if they delay the vote fast enough, like long enough, Kishi will just like get like kicked out of the private sectorship by his own party.
And, you know, and this, they're able to drag this on until like 1960.
And Kishi, like, you know, like, Kishi's own party won't let him do a floor vote on the bill because like they're mad at him.
And so on April 4th, 1970, he creates the Onpo Special Measures Committee from loyal LDP members, which was called nicknamed the Onpo Kamikaze Squad, which is, you know, this is his attempt to try to figure out like how to like get through all of like get this like treaty through before his support collapse and like the diet session ends.
And like literally the day the session is going to end and he's going to lose his opportunity to force his vote through, he starts doing his plan.
And the socialist party like knows something's bad is going to happen.
So they hire a bunch of like quote unquote secretaries who they hire them and they bring them in the building and they barricade the office of the speaker of the lower house to keep him from leaving his office.
Which like, I wish like our politicians were like, it's like, man, our politics is like our parliament's so boring.
Like nobody's barricading the speaker of the house like in their office.
Yeah.
It's very sad.
You know, and this, and the speaker like tells them to move and they don't.
And so he calls the police to remove the socialist diet members by force.
And this is a huge deal.
Like this is, this is the second time ever that the police have ever entered the diet chamber.
And it's the only time before since they've ever like physically removed diet members.
And so, you know, this whole thing's being being like broadcast on live TV and there's, there's the police just like dragging these like parliament members out of this building, like kicking and screaming.
And like, you know, and they, they, they catch like the speaker like fighting his way to the rostrum and he calls a vote to extend the diet session like two minutes before it's supposed to end.
And like he wins the vote.
And there's the camera.
The camera is like, it show it pans.
It shows all the LDP like ministers clapping.
And then it pans and it pans to the other half of the diet.
And in their half of their diet, every single person in the opposition is gone.
There's none of them are there.
And because the opposition is completely gone, Kishi makes this like unexpected snap vote to force a treaty through with no debate.
And, you know, because of some like legal bullshit, he's able to figure out a way that like the treaty will still go into effect even without the upper house approving it as long as they just stay in session.
And the Japanese public, like, just, they're unbelievably pissed off.
Like, even the pro-treaty people look at, like, the ex-fascist guy, like, removing the opposition party by force and holding a previously unknown snapboard debate.
Yeah.
Like, like, like, they, they watch, like, all of this is just on TV.
And it, like, like, it sets off three general strikes.
And, you know, at this point, the protests basically become an anti-Kishi movement.
And, like, everyone in the country, like, including like the conservative newspapers are calling for Indo resign.
The business leaders turn on him to the point where, like, they start funding Zengokuren.
Like, they start funding the communist student movement through like weird organized crime people because they're like, Sengokuren's mainstream faction is anti-Kishi.
Like, yeah, that's how like wild this.
And, you know, and like, the other thing is, like, ordinary people just, like, start showing up the protests.
And so, like, like, 30 million people, which is like a third of the total population, shows up to like anti-Kishi protest between 1959 and 1960.
Jesus Christ.
Yeah, it's like it, it pisses off.
And this is, this is like, this is the defining event of like the sort of like the immediate post-war generation.
Like, this is the thing they remember.
Like, so we'll get to this in a little bit, but Shinzo Abe, who was the longest-serving Japanese prime minister, he, he came out of office like last year.
So he's Kishi's grandson.
And he talks about like, yeah, he learned politics like while he was on Kishi's knee and Kishi was telling him about what was happening in the streets.
Oh, it was fine.
Yeah, it's, yeah, it's not great.
And you know, this part, though, is extremely funny.
Like, there's, there, there's a great story about just like this kindergartner on the street who asked the famous political scientist Ishida Takashi, why doesn't Kishi just resign already?
Like he's lost the kindergartners.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, you know, the other thing, the other thing that's happening with this is that, so Eisenhower is supposed to show up in Japan on the 19th so he can be there for the 21st, which is supposed to, he's going to this giant visit that is supposed to be like the 100th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the US and Japan.
And this is also the treaty goes into effect.
And so, you know, on June 4th, there's the largest general strike in Japanese history.
And then on the 15th, there's another general strike that has 6.4 million people in it.
And at this strike, you know, a bunch of like street performers, artists, and writers like go to like give a petition to the, to the, to parliament.
And they all get attacked by this like giant fascist mob with like wooden poles with nails in them.
And the mobs is chanting, we will kill you and beat them dead.
Jesus.
Yeah.
Like 80 people are injured.
And again, like these are like, these are like theater actresses.
Yeah.
Classic fascism stuff.
Yep.
It's like, ah, yes, we will beat these theater actresses and poets.
And this will make us strong.
Yeah, that scans.
Yeah.
And so 11 people are injured and 11 and sorry, 80 people are injured and 11 people get hospitalized.
And meanwhile, Sengokuren is like, we're going to storm the diet again.
And, you know, seems like it worked the last time.
Yeah.
Well, but the funny thing is, this time it does work.
And it works because, so they fight the cops for a long time and it's kind of a stalemate.
And the cops do this counterattack.
But in this counter-attack, they trample a Tokyo University undergrad named Kamba Michiko to death.
And that, yeah, that causes the crowd to just like go wild because, you know, the police just trampled a child to death.
Yeah.
And so 4,000 students storm the diet and they hold it until 1 a.m. in these like running street battles with the police.
And this is where like everyone turns on Kishi.
Yeah.
Like the combination of the cops like murdered a girl and they beat up a bunch of theater actresses is just too much.
And at this point, it becomes clear that, you know, if Eisenhower comes to Japan, they won't be able to keep him safe because they can't hold the streets.
Yeah, that could be a little bit of a faux pas for Japan.
You know, and you know, and Kishi, Kishi, like, really wants this to happen because, like, the Eisenhower visit in the treaty, like, this is, this is like all, this is, like, this is, this is everything he's been working for since he became prime minister.
And so, he has this plan to, like, mobilize the self-defense forces, which is what the Japanese army is called because euphemisms.
Uh, yeah, but so he tries to like, he has this plan to, like, mobilize an entire division of, like, the army and march them through the streets to clear the streets and get Eisenhower in.
And even like, he's like, his defense chief and the head of the national police is like, you can't do this.
Like, there will literally be an uprising.
And so, Kishi is like, Kishi undeterred is like, okay, so I'm going to, I'm going to go to my Yakuza contacts.
So, he goes to Kodama and he has, he has this plan to get 18,000 like Yakuza hardliners, like 10,000 guys who work for Yakuza, like street vendors and 10,000 like veterans cult members to clear the streets.
And like, he's going to give them like, the government's going to give them like trucks and like food and first aid teams and like command posts and $2.3 million and like airplanes and helicopters.
Oh, that couldn't end badly.
Sure.
Yeah.
Well, even his cabinet is like, Kishi, you can't do this.
Like, you're going to start a civil war.
Again, a lot of fascists being like, boy, seems like that's too much fascism.
Twisting The Fascism Dial00:04:46
Yeah, yeah.
Kishi is like, yeah, Kishi is the fascist that other fascists are like, whoa, hey now, like, this is too much fascism.
But you know what's not too much fascism, Chris?
Unless it's a Black Rifle coffee ad, then.
Unless it's another Black Rifle coffee head or an ExxonMobil ad or one of those weird Christian cult ads we've been kind of getting.
Oh, yeah.
Or an ad, or there was a literal ad for the California Highway Patrol.
Yeah, definitely an ad for chips.
That's fascism.
So I don't know.
There could be fascism, but it's not a fashion.
I've lost the point that I was trying to do.
I'm trying to endorse the fascist ads, but it's time for ads and we're sorry if it's something random we didn't select and it's horrifying.
We do apologize.
We live in an engine of pain.
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Ah, good stuff.
Tojo Shrine Controversy00:07:58
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All right, I want to hear how this all gets resolved now that this guy's been like, what have we, what if we, what if we, what if we twist that fascism dial up to 11?
And all of his friends were like, that kind of seems a little bit high because it seems like we've pissed everybody off with all of the violence we've been doing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, it ends, I'm not going to say well, but, you know, Kishi eventually backs down and is just like, okay, Eisenhower, like, if you come, we can't protect you.
And so Eisenhower cancels his visit.
And on the day of the tree is supposed to be ratified, 300,000 people show up around the diet in Tokyo.
But, you know, they can't actually stop the treaty from being ratified.
And so, you know, because the treaty being ratified automatically, there's nothing they can do.
And so they sort of, they stand there and, you know, it's this very sort of grim scene.
Everyone's wearing black armbands and like black bandanas to celebrate, you know, to sort of mourn like the death of the protester.
But, you know, there's nothing they can really do.
Like the next day, there's this general strike and there's like some more protests the day after.
But Kishi, Kishi has the final document he needs to sign, like smuggled to him in a candy box so it couldn't be stolen by protesters.
Nice.
Yeah.
And so he signs it.
And, you know, like the next month on July 15th, Kishi is forced to resign and the movement just collapses.
So, you know, it's a mixed bag.
Like on the one hand, they got Kishi.
This is the only consequence that Kishi is ever going to face in his entire life.
That's not quite true.
It's one of exactly two consequences he's ever going to face in his entire life.
And he survives both of them.
And but, you know, on the other hand, like this treaty still went through.
And, you know, the sort of left that had built out to stop this becomes incredibly demoralized and they sprit and they splinter and fragment.
And yeah.
And Kishi, you know, because this is the end of Kishi's like mainstream political career.
But, you know, he doesn't go away.
He still, he sort of stays around behind the scenes as this like it's kind of like this fixer.
And, you know, and he does, he does a few more things at the end of the war.
End of the war.
He sounds like he's kind of nixoned a little bit, where he's, he's, he's got some, he's got some soft influence, but also nobody wants to really be seen in public with the guy.
Yeah.
Well, okay, I will say that there are a few people who do want to be seen in public with this guy.
And the biggest of those is called the Unification Church, which is this like...
Oh, shit.
Yeah, yeah.
Fanatically anti-communist religious race.
Yeah, that allegedly kidnaps and brainwashes children.
Allegedly.
Allegedly.
Yeah, and Kishi, like, so Kishi, Kishi is the guy responsible for bringing these people like into the LDP's base.
Like, like, the head of this guy, this party is a guy named Moon.
And he, like, he gets evicted, like convicted of tax fraud in, like, the 90s, or if anything, in the 80s and 90s.
But, you know, there's a thing in Japan.
He gets convicted in the US.
And there's a thing in Japanese law where if you've been convicted of a crime, you can't enter the country.
Now, so this should have stopped Moon from coming to Japan.
But like the vice president, even in the 90s, like the Moonies are still so firmly embedded in the LDP that even in the 90s, the vice president of Japan personally intercedes and allows him to enter the country illegally.
And it's, yeah, it's great.
This is what Kishi's doing in his sort of like last days.
Yeah.
And, you know, one other thing, one very weird thing happens at the very end of this, which is that the day before he resigns, Kishi's at this like dinner gala and this dude stabs him like six times.
And then he gives this extremely weird quote that was like, like, it's something like, well, yeah, I stabbed him six times, but if I was trying to kill him, he would be dead.
And there's all this, and nobody actually knows why he tried to assassinate Kishi or didn't try to assassinate him.
Instead, just stabbed him six times.
There's a lot of theories.
Like, the guy was like an old fascist from like the 30s.
He was like 60 at this point.
And, you know, his stated response was that he talked to the family of like the girl that had died.
But like, that doesn't make any sense because like this guy's a fascist.
And there's another theory that like this is a Yakuza hit because Bamuka Ono like was pissed off that Kishi wouldn't help him be prime minister.
So he was just like, okay, I'll send a guy to stab you.
I don't know.
Yeah, there's a lot of very weird theories about this, but it's sort of unclear what happens.
And Kishi survives this.
And even though the LDP is now Kishi-less, quote unquote, the structures and political organizations that he put in place are, you know, they're still here to this day.
And that brings us to Kishi's grandson, Shinzo Abe, the longest serving prime minister in Japanese history, who finally left office last year because of an ulcer in his rectum.
Which, you know.
Critical support to his rectum ulcer.
Yep.
Oh, gosh.
Didn't know.
It's not good when I laugh in unison with Robert.
Sometimes good things happen to good people.
Yeah.
Fair enough.
Now, Abe is a member of a group called Nippon Kagai, which is a fascist group that, according to a U.S. congressional report, believes that, quote, Japan should be applauded for liberating much of East Asia from Western colonial powers, that the 1946 and 1948 Tokyo war crimes tribunals were illegitimate, and that the killings by Japanese troops during the 1937 Nanjing massacre were exaggerated or fabricated.
And they also openly call for a restoration of the monarchy and the institution of Shinto as a state religion.
And Abe himself has like repeatedly stated that Japanese military sex slaves, you use the term comfort women because the euphemisms help him do denialism, but he, you know, he like has said on multiple occasions that these sex slaves were never forced to be raped.
Oh, good.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Cool dude.
Yeah, no.
Bad guy.
Yeah.
You know, and he's also, he's also a big champion.
He's like the champion of like...
So one of Kishi's other signature issue when he was a politician was rearming Japan because he was pissed off that like Japan couldn't still be a like when I say rearming it home in Defense Force like he wants like he wants Japan to have an effective military that can invade shit.
Yeah.
He wants it he wants them to be an empire again.
And Abe is also like a giant rearmament person.
Sure.
Baby R baby.
Yeah.
And he also he visits something called a shrine called the Yasukune Shrine, which is this shrine to like soldiers who died serving the Japanese emperor.
And, you know, this shrine has this thing called the Book of Souls, which like has the name of like everyone who died, like serving for the emperor or whatever.
There's like two million people in it.
Now, in this book are a thousand 68 people who were convicted of war crimes and also the 14 class A war criminals who died or were executed, who are also considered martyrs.
And this includes Tojo.
It's, yeah.
And, you know, now for very obvious reasons, China and Korea, and both the Koreas, this is like one of the few things both Koreas really completely agree on is that they get absolutely pissed off about prime ministers visiting the shrine, visiting, you know, a shrine to the people who enslaved, raped, and murdered tens of billions of their people.
But, you know, Abe did it anyways because modern Japan is Kishi's Japan.
Despite the protests, despite the strikes, despite a third of the country taking to the streets, he won.
The only thing he didn't get was rearmament.
And so, you know, the mass rapes in Korea and Vietnam will be left to the Americans, not the Japanese.
But we all now live in the world that Kishi created.
Nicholas Cage Hair Smells00:06:30
Cool.
Yeah.
All right, Rob.
What a happy story you told us.
Yeah.
You know, I promise at the end at the beginning of this episode that at the end of the episodes, I would ask you, is this the worst rehabilitation of a fascist war criminal?
In terms of like the actual amount of power he got, probably.
Yeah, I think probably.
Because yeah, you've got like guys like von Braun, but like Von Braun was bad and it's fucked up that he got rehabilitated, but the thing he went on to do wasn't bad.
It was putting, helping to put a man on the moon, which is like fine.
And you've got, I don't know, there was that Nazi general who the CIA used to set up a spy ring, and he did some fucked up stuff, but I think had certainly had less geopolitical influence than this guy.
Yeah, I think this is definitely...
I'm racking my brain, but I'm not coming up with one to top it.
Yeah.
Should have started this episode with what's rehabilitating my fascists.
That would have been better.
That would have been a prope.
And it turns out the what is my government.
You love to see it.
You love to see it.
Well, Chris.
Is that the entire thing?
What do you, what do you, what are you, Chris?
I don't feel good about that, to be honest.
What are you donating?
What do you, what do you, what do you think Nicholas Cage's hair smells like?
Nicholas Cage's hair.
Yeah.
What do you think his hair smells like?
I've been looking at a picture of him for the last three hours.
That explains so much.
Chris, I have a guy.
I don't think it smells very good.
Isn't Nicholas Cage smells good?
Well, because isn't he constantly doing bad movies because he needs money for his like, is it like an elephant to have it?
He has like some weird stuff.
No, he's addicted to buying dinosaur skulls.
Yeah, that's what it is.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, I think his hair smells like nail polish remover with a hint of poop.
See, I was going to say fake apples, but like the specific fake apple smell that they put in like agricultural products, like medicine for horses, like ivermectin fake apples.
That's fair.
Hint of poop.
I don't know.
We'll see.
If you've smelled Nicholas Cage, hit us up on social media.
Let us know.
Tell us who's right.
One of us has to.
I think you might be right, though.
I think it might smell like that really bad apple-flavored like alcohol.
Also, yeah, a little bit of that.
A little bit of that.
Hint of poop.
All right.
Well, we'll see.
We'll see.
Someone out there has smelled Nicholas Cage's hair, and they'll let us know who's right.
Let us know.
Let us know.
That's really, really what we're doing.
That way, we're not just.
I've been staring at a photo of Nicholas Cage for three hours.
Let's get back to that.
Because it's been a long day, Sophie.
Everybody needs something to, you know, perk them up.
The halfway point.
Look, at the midway point of the day, some people have another cup of coffee.
Some people stare wordlessly at a photograph of Nicholas Cage while their friend talks about war crimes for three hours.
Chris, where can people follow you?
Yeah, you can follow me being extremely depressed about this at it mechr3 on Twitter.
If you want to read a slightly less depressing thing that I wrote, I wrote a piece for Lao San that's like about Tiananmen, which I swear is less depressing than this, if only sort of marginally.
Yeah.
And yeah, I also, I work, I work for CoolZone now, so I'm on a lot of other things.
Yeah.
You can't get rid of me now.
Nope.
So have a good day.
And remember, tell us what Nicholas Cage's hair smells like.
On a recent episode of the podcast Money and Wealth with John O'Brien, I sit down with Tiffany the Bajanista Alicia to talk about what it really takes to take control of your money.
What would that look like in our families if everyone was able to pass on wealth to the people when they're no longer here?
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If you've ever felt you didn't get the memo on money, this conversation is for you to hear more.
Listen to Money and Wealth with John O'Brien from the Black Effect Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
Readers, Katie's finalists, publicists, we have an incredible new episode this week for you guys.
We have our girl Hillary Duff in here, and we can't wait for you to hear this episode.
They put on Lizzie Maguire at 2 a.m. video on demand.
This guy's 2 a.m.
2 a.m.
Whatever time it is.
Lizzie McGuire and I'm Wild Back to A.
It was like a first closet moment for me where I was like, you're like, I don't feel like she's hot like the rest of them.
No, no, no.
I was like, she's beautiful, but I'm appreciating her in a different way than these boys are.
I'm not like, listen to Las Co Triistas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
You know the famous author Roald Dahl.
He thought up Willy Wonka and the BFG.
But did you know he was a spy?
Neither did I. You can hear all about his wildlife story in the podcast, The Secret World of Roald Dahl.
All episodes are out now.
Was this before he wrote his stories?
It must have been.
What?
Okay, I don't think that's true.
I'm telling you, I was a spy.
Binge all 10 episodes of The Secret World of Roald Dahl now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, I'm Iris Palmer, host of the Against All Odds podcast.
Every week, I'm sitting down with exceptional people who have broken barriers even when the odds were stacked against them.
Like chef Victor Villa of VS Tacos.
You know the taquero from the Bad Bunny halftime show?
It was great.
It was a big moment.
It was special.
And I felt like I was really representing my family, you know, my brand, my city.
I was representing all taqueros, not only of like, you know, the U.S., but of Mexico and beyond.
All the taqueros of the world.
Listen to Against All Odds on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.