Conspirituality - Bonus Sample: Antifascist Woodshed 3.1: The Kids are Alright
Aired: 2025-04-07
Duration: 04:58


=== Patreon Support Acknowledgment (04:55) ===

[00:00:03]  Hey everyone, welcome to Conspirituality, where we investigate the intersection of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience, and authoritarian extremism.
[00:00:12]  I'm Matthew Remsky.
[00:00:14]  We're on Instagram and threads at ConspiritualityPod, and you can access all of our episodes ad-free, plus our Monday bonus episodes on Patreon, or just the bonus episodes via Apple subscriptions.
[00:00:27]  This is a bonus episode called Anti-Fascist Woodshed 3.1.
[00:00:35]  Now, Patreon subscribers...
[00:00:53]  We want to thank you again so much for your support and feedback.
[00:00:57]  And Patreon subscribers, thank you again so much for your support and feedback.
[00:01:03]  And if you're able, please support the Patreons of all the independent media outlets you value, especially those US outlets currently under threat because they are critical of the US regime.
[00:01:15]  I've said this before, this is really the time to do it because state repression will only be ramping up.
[00:01:21]  Edelweiss, Edelweiss, every morning you greet me, small and white, clean and bright, you look happy to meet me.
[00:01:49]  If you grew up with The Sound of Music, you'll remember this.
[00:01:54]  This is the voice of a Disney voiceover crooner named Bill Lee, dubbed over a glowing Christopher Plummer playing Captain Von Trapp.
[00:02:05]  Styled in Bavarian equestrian retired military man chic and gently strumming his guitar, the captain is singing to his children in the drawing room of his manor house, while his fiancée, the Baroness von Schrader, realizes that the former nun, Fraulein Maria, played by Julie Andrews, is her rival.
[00:02:26]  The rosy von Trapp children sit in their frilly dresses and lederhosen on the oriental carpet, listening in rapt attention.
[00:02:35]  And in the second verse, the 16-year-old eldest daughter, Liesel, joins in.
[00:02:40]  Edelweiss, Edelweiss, every morning you greet me.
[00:02:51]  Small and white, clean and bright.
[00:02:57]  So I was in this musical as a teenager.
[00:03:00]  I sang that song hundreds of times.
[00:03:02]  I wanted to be cast as the captain, but I had to settle for Max, the Von Trapp family friend and scheming Jewish music promoter who eventually helps the Von Trapps escape over the mountains.
[00:03:13]  Or because it would have meant spending long hours rehearsing with an older girl, I also would have settled for playing Rolf, Liesl's charming but sexist and infantilizing boyfriend.
[00:03:25]  You're such a baby.
[00:03:26]  I'm 16.
[00:03:27]  What's such a baby about that?
[00:03:29]  You wait, little girl, on an empty stage for fate to turn the light on.
[00:03:38]  Your life, little girl, is an empty...
[00:03:48]  played Rolf, I don't think I would have thought much about the backstory and character traits that would predict his transformation into a whole-ass Nazi.
[00:04:06]  And that's because the difference between the Nazis and the von Trapps in the musical was not about morality.
[00:04:11]  It was about what flavor of nationalism is most wholesome, most authentic.
[00:04:17]  He was overly serious.
[00:04:21]  He was too attracted to marching about.
[00:04:24]  He was too easily influenced by authority.
[00:04:27]  He was that teen boy who wanted to be popular and independent, but in the end, he was too much of a conformist to show real moral character.
[00:04:36]  I was pretty well educated when it came to who the Nazis were and what they did, but not well educated enough to realize that the entire production.
[00:04:49]  was a snow job on who the Von Trapps and people like them actually were and what they were trying to protect besides their own personal wealth.