Part One: Elizabeth Dilling: The Original Candace Owens

Summary

Behind the Bastards — Part One: Elizabeth Dilling: The Original Candace Owens

Podcast: Behind the Bastards
Hosts: Robert Evans, Brett Underwood, Katie Stoll
Date: June 30, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode of Behind the Bastards explores the life and radicalization of Elizabeth Dilling, a prominent but semi-obscure far-right influencer in early 20th-century America. Brett Underwood, joined by Robert Evans and Katie Stoll, traces Dilling’s rise from an insulated, privileged upbringing to her evolution into an iconic anti-communist crusader and proto-fascist author—described as "the original Candace Owens." The hosts dissect the contradictions in Dilling's ideology, her connections to overt antisemitism, and her legacy as a forerunner to later American reactionaries.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Stage: Why Focus on Elizabeth Dilling?

• [03:00] The episode opens with Brett Underwood emphasizing the relative lack of attention given to far-right women in U.S. history and arguing for Dilling’s foundational role in American fascism:
  • “You could call [Dilling] the first Candace Owens or the first Laura Loomer... both owe a little bit to this lady.” (Brett, 02:59)
• Katie Stoll shares her unfamiliarity with Dilling, teeing up a journey into lesser-known but influential "bastards" (03:23).

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2. Early Life: Privilege and Old-World Entitlement

• [06:45] Dilling (née Kirkpatrick) was born into Chicago high society in 1894—the same city and year as the Pullman Strike but worlds apart from working-class struggles.
• Her father was a renowned surgeon and her mother came from Anglican aristocracy, conferring generational wealth and detachment from the labor uprisings Chicago was famous for.
  • “She was... entirely separate and protected from the normal world of working class people. This is happening outside her mansion gates, basically.” (Brett, 07:58)
• The hosts highlight Dilling’s family’s likely status as absentee landlords in Ireland—a source of conflict and anti-egalitarian sentiment.
• [12:00] After her father's early death, her mother ran the household, exposing Dilling to the spectacle of a woman in charge while preaching patriarchal values—a contradiction that would later echo in her life:
  • "She both comes to believe that, like, traditional values are best. And also she's used to women being in charge in her own way." (Brett, 12:12)

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3. Education and Early Contradictions

• Dilling’s privileged upbringing included elite, women-only schooling focused as much on social graces as on academics.
• She developed early interests in music and languages, but never aimed for a conventional homemaker’s path, foreshadowing her public ambitions.
  • "She's always espoused very traditional values. She's always looking for a job for herself.... She wants to do something out in the world that people are aware of." (Brett, 14:11)
• [14:30] Katie reflects on the recurring paradox of reactionary women demanding status and careers ("the Phyllis Schlafly thing").

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4. Fascist Boyfriends and the Birth of Radicalization

• [17:36] Dilling’s first ideological awakening comes via a romance with an army officer who introduced her to thinkers like Nietzsche and Hegel—while also telling her women "do not count as human."
  • "He's like, you need to read this Nietzsche, but you're a woman, so you can't read it. You're not a person. But here, you should have some Hegel."
• The hosts underscore the bleak irony of Dilling’s formative philosophical influence coming from a misogynist who demeaned her as "not a person."
  • "The fact that her ideological awakening comes courtesy of a man who does not consider her human is very telling and very bleak." (Brett, 18:43)

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5. Marriage and the Paradoxes of Gender Roles

• Dilling marries Albert Wallwick Dilling, an engineer and future city official, who is described as deferent to her leading role in their household.
  • "I defer to my man. God help him if he has an idea of his own." (Katie, 20:49)
• The couple is financially comfortable, often traveling abroad for months at a time in the 1920s/30s as the rest of the world suffered economic and political upheaval.
• Wealth enabled Dilling to operate outside the realities of the average American—and, the hosts note, gave her space to cultivate her ideological mission.

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6. Vacations Turn to Ideological Crusades

• [24:43] Dilling rationalizes her extravagant travels as “research" rather than leisure, seeking to justify her privilege with "higher purpose."
• Her disgust with post-war Europe—specifically, the lack of gratitude shown to Americans—inspires her to vow the U.S. should never again intervene to save Europe.
  • "[Europeans] weren't deferent enough to the US Navy... so she decides to stop the US from ever helping Europe in a war again." (Brett, 33:34)

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7. Encountering Communism: Anti-Left Crusader is Born

• [35:17] Dilling visits the Soviet Union in 1931, but, closely guided by Soviet officials, sees little of the actual horrors of Stalinism.
• Her revulsion centers on atheism, lack of Western luxury, churches converted to museums, and perceived sexual degeneracy (e.g., nude bathers near a church).
  • "Her hatred of the Soviet Union is not based on any of those [real] things. ... The primary things that she sees over there that are uncomfortable to her is that there aren't rich people in the Soviet Union that she sees." (Brett, 37:21)
  • "Her big issues with Stalinist Russia are nude bathers. I'm not hot." (Brett, 40:55)
• Dilling’s alienation from Soviet society is less about actual suffering than about affronts to her class, religious, and sexual sensibilities.

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8. Stateside: Spreading Reaction, Making a Name

• [43:43] Back in the U.S., Dilling begins giving increasingly popular anti-communist talks at churches, DAR chapters, and other conservative groups—a lucrative and status-elevating career move.
• She finds inspiration and support from Iris McCord at the Moody Bible Institute, harnessing evangelical support for her reactionary crusade.
  • "For the next couple of years, she starts making an okay side living, scaring her rich friends... She is an electrifying speaker in person." (Brett, 46:41)

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9. The Paranoid File System — and Overt Antisemitism

• [55:56] Dilling begins building her infamous note card catalog—hundreds of names of "communist agents" (including targeting Jews explicitly, foreshadowing her antisemitism).

  • "She began collecting over 100 file cards. ... Books about politics, history, law, philosophy, Jews, communism, organized labor..." (Brett, 56:42)
  • "Hey, Liz. Why are [books about] Jews in there?" (Brett, 56:47)

• She befriends Harry Young, a fascist anti-labor propagandist and one of the first American distributors of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion—her direct ideological inspiration.

  • “Elizabeth knew this about him when they met. In fact, it’s why she was excited to work with Young.” (Brett, 58:20)

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10. Dilling, the ‘Paul Revere’s’, and The Red Network

• [59:02] Dilling founds the “Paul Revere’s,” but bans Jewish members; racism is implicitly present as well.
  • "The only restriction ... the only kind of person who couldn't join her organization, ... Jewish people." (Brett, 59:45)
• In 1934, she publishes The Red Network: A ‘Who’s Who’ and Handbook of Radicalism for Patriots—an extensive, influential blacklist of leftist figures. It became a model for later anti-communist purges (and would be cited during McCarthyism).
  • “It’s like, almost like a phone book of leftist radicals.... Again, it’s kind of a kill list, right?” (Brett, 61:17)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the contradictions of reactionary women:
  "It's the Phyllis Schlafly thing, right? ... I don't think women should be doing any of this stuff. Also, as a woman, I would really like to have a big career." (Brett, 14:32)
• On old money snobbery:
  "[Dilling's] family basically, if you've ever heard of the Irish land wars ... her ancestors are some of the absentee landlords." (Brett, 09:07)
• On Dilling’s Soviet trip:
  "Her big issues with Stalinist Russia are nude bathers. I'm not hot." (Brett, 40:55)
• On her relationship with the DAR:
  "She'll never be that good [never be truly accepted by the DAR]. They’re snooty assholes... but so are you." (Katie, 54:38)
• On anti-communist paranoia:
  “These weak people, she argued, let communist agents infiltrate society and corrupt children with their ideals.” (Brett, 47:43)

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Important Timestamps (Content Only)

• 03:00–06:45 — Framing Elizabeth Dilling’s place in American reactionary history
• 06:45–14:30 — Dilling’s upbringing, privilege, and family influences
• 17:36–20:20 — Philosophical radicalization by misogynist boyfriend
• 24:43–28:30 — The “research vacations,” and anti-European sentiments form
• 35:17–41:09 — The Soviet trip & birth of anti-communist crusade
• 43:43–47:30 — Launching her public anti-communist speaking career
• 55:56–58:20 — File cards of the “menace,” antisemitic connections
• 59:02–61:31 — “Paul Revere’s” and the Red Network blacklist

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Tone & Style

The hosts blend dark humor, contemporary analogies (e.g., Candace Owens, Laura Loomer, Erica Kirk), and deadpan incredulity to highlight both the absurdity and enduring relevance of figures like Dilling. The mood alternates between incredulity, satire, and grim historical contextualization—delivering complex history in conversational, engaging language.

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Conclusion

By the close of Part One, listeners understand Elizabeth Dilling as a “proto-influencer” whose personal grievances and privileged insulation melded into a lasting toxic cocktail of antisemitic, anti-left, and anti-feminist activism. The stage is set for Part Two, which promises to further unravel the legacy and damages left by Dilling’s crusade.

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Additional Note:
For more about Dilling's influence and the rise of anti-communist paranoia, listeners are advised to look up her infamous book The Red Network and its eventual role in paving the way for McCarthyism.

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Stay Tuned!

Behind the Bastards will return with "the rest of the story" in the next episode.

Transcript

[Robert Evans]

Call Zone Media.

[Brett Underwood]

Welcome back to behind the Bastards. This is not the first episode of the podcast we've done this year during the official summer, but it's basically the official legal Christian summer. Right, guys? Team, Isn't it? It feels hot as hell outside today.

[Robert Evans]

It's gonna, it's. But, but it, but it only for the next couple days and then it's gonna be in the 60s.

[Brett Underwood]

Oh, is it?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. And then, and then, and then Mother Nature will water my garden. And I'm thrilled.

[Brett Underwood]

Great. I'm glad that Oregon won't burn down yet.

[Robert Evans]

Yes, Katie Stoll's here. Legend.

[Katie Stoll]

Hey, everybody.

[Brett Underwood]

How hot and or on fire is it where you are?

[Katie Stoll]

Oh, yeah, both of those things. I am in the mountains, but it is an unpleasant. Well, it's 85. It's 85.

[Brett Underwood]

It's not too bad.

[Robert Evans]

It could be worse.

[Katie Stoll]

We had some 90 degree days last week, but I moved to the mountains thinking it would be cooler. And boy, was I wrong.

[Brett Underwood]

Yeah, it gets hot. It gets hot.

[Katie Stoll]

Lots of burnable brush all around me as well.

[Brett Underwood]

So, yeah, everything catches on fire out there. That's the beauty of living out in the country.

[Guest or Additional Commentator]

Yeah.

[Katie Stoll]

And they defunded one of my. They closed one of our fire stations anyway.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, that's always sorting.

[Brett Underwood]

Oh, good. It's not like California needs a lot

[Katie Stoll]

of those wild times.

[Brett Underwood]

I'm only bringing up the summer because I had my first every, every year when it gets hot again, I remember, Okay, I gotta put out sunscreen before I go run this time. And then 15 or so minutes into that first run of the year with sunscreen, I remember. Oh yeah, when you sweat with sunscreen, it burns your eyes like a son of a bitch. So if my eyes look like red and puffy, it's because I just finished a run in a shower and my entire face was on fire from sunscreen.

[Robert Evans]

I actually thought it was because you were crying.

[Brett Underwood]

No, no.

[Katie Stoll]

I was like, oh, you've been touched.

[Brett Underwood]

I would tell you if I was crying, but this is simply self inflicted friendly fire.

[Katie Stoll]

Self inflicted friendly fire. Another piece. Why are you wearing a sweater, man?

[Ad Voice - Jenny Garth]

It's.

[Brett Underwood]

It's cold in my basement.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, it's because you're cold in the basement.

[Brett Underwood]

It's the way my AC works and

[Katie Stoll]

like we're talking about summer and you're all bundled up.

[Brett Underwood]

I am wearing my. My hoodie or my, my sweater. Yes.

[Robert Evans]

Meanwhile, Katie and I are loosey goosey.

[Brett Underwood]

Yeah.

[Katie Stoll]

Oh yeah.

[Robert Evans]

I got my Lakers Luka Doncic shirt on. Shout out to my haters.

[Katie Stoll]

Okay.

[Robert Evans]

Anyways, Robert, do the job. Should we do it?

[Brett Underwood]

Yeah. Shall we do the job? Katie Stoll, how are you doing today, podcasting wise?

[Katie Stoll]

Pretty good. I'm sitting here with my old pals whom I've missed.

[Robert Evans]

We missed you.

[Brett Underwood]

I have missed you too. And I have missed talking to you about shitty people. So I wanted to give you a special shitty person today. You know, we talk a lot about old timey far right influencers on this podcast. You know, the first, the guys around the 20s and 30s and 40s, the OG American fascists, but we haven't talked a lot about, like, the history of women in the early history of women in the American fascist movement and the crucial role different, like female influencers have played in the American far right. And so today we're gonna talk about a woman who you could call the first Candace Owens or the first Laura Loomer. You can make a case she's got bits of both of those. Both Candace and Laura. Oh, a little bit to this lady we're gonna talk about this week. Elizabeth Dilling. Have you heard that name before?

[Katie Stoll]

Elizabeth Dilling.

[Robert Evans]

Do you see why I was like, we need Katie for this episode?

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[Robert Evans]

Okay.

[Katie Stoll]

I'm excited. I do not know anything about Elizabeth Dilling.

[Brett Underwood]

She's not super famous. Yeah, she is the B side to a more famous fascist that I think you will recognize from later on. But like again, because I guess of misogyny, she never quite got as famous as her male fascist counterpart. It's.

[Katie Stoll]

That's the patriarchy. Am I allowed to say fuck on Netflix?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, you can say whatever the fuck

[Brett Underwood]

you want on Netflix.

[Robert Evans]

There's no rules here.

[Brett Underwood]

If you're not, if you. You've watched net, they don't give a shit.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, you're right.

[Brett Underwood]

They barely know what's on their own network. Thanks, Netflix.

[Robert Evans]

Thanks for the money.

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[Brett Underwood]

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[Brett Underwood]

Elizabeth Eloise Kirkpatrick was born on April 19, 1894 in Chicago. Now, if 1894 and Chicago sound familiar to you, that's because that is the same year and city as the Pullman strike, which is a legendary moment in labor history, began as a local Chicago strike that became a national boycott and changed US labor law forever in the process. And that strike itself was heavily inspired by the trials of the 1893 economic panic that fractured the U.S. economy and

[Ad Voice - Veiv Healthcare]

helped fuel Eugene V. Debs creation of

[Brett Underwood]

the American Railway Union. Right. So Chicago at the time Elizabeth is born is a real hotbed for labor for this burgeoning and really exploding American left, which is, which is growing into what some might argue and probably still to this day would count as its most influential period in American history, is kind of coming up as a result of the things that are sort of happening right around the time Elizabeth is born. So it's kind of going to be important a little that she's, she's never going to adopt any of these kind of politics, but they are happening around her and, and very much in the environment that she's growing up in. Like her family is against a lot of these changes, but she's going to grow up hearing about them because they're right outside her door, you know.

[Katie Stoll]

Sure, yeah, yeah.

[Brett Underwood]

So little Elizabeth comes into the world in a time and a place that was hugely significant in the history of American labor and the struggles of the working man against his bosses. And so it's appropriate for the person she would become that even as an infant she was entirely separate and protected from the normal world of working class people. This is happening outside her mansion gates, basically. Her father, Dr. Layet Kirkpatrick, was a famous surgeon and her mother, Elizabeth Harding, was a homemaker. But both came from very prominent families. Right. So both of their families have some degree of like, financial comfort. And her dad, at least initially, is this like famous doctor, the Kirkpatrick's. Her dad's family had been wealthy landowners in Ireland, but had fled near the end of the 1800s and settled in Virginia. Liz would later describe her father as coming from Scots Irish stock. And some Googling around has given me cause to think that her, her family basically, if you've ever heard of like the Irish land wars, this period of time in which like, there's a lot of conflict in Ireland over like, who gets to own what land. There's a lot of conflict as a result of these like, absentee landlords that piss off a lot of people. Well, her, her ancestors are some of the absentee landlords.

[Katie Stoll]

I was gonna say they're the absentee ones.

[Brett Underwood]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. Because they're like a Scottish family who winds up owning a lot of land in Ireland, you know.

[Katie Stoll]

Yeah.

[Brett Underwood]

And I don't know that the Kirkpatricks had to flee their family estate because they were brutal landlords but my research does make that seem likely. It's always a good. Yeah, yeah, we don't talk enough about Ireland's land wars.

[Katie Stoll]

Sounds like we're setting up for a family that does not learn from those lessons.

[Ad Voice - Cornhole]

Perhaps.

[Katie Stoll]

Perhaps they're here also resenting the different classes around them. I don't know not to jump in.

[Brett Underwood]

And has like a long time grudge against anyone trying to like fix things because they just see that as like, you're fucking with my big, you know, like, that's the people that she comes from. So let's talk a little about the Irish land wars because people don't often enough and it's a fun bit of history. Only about 5% of the land in Ireland from the late 1700s to the end of the 1800s was owned by Irish Catholics, despite the fact that Irish Catholics were most of Ireland. People got very angry about this and it led to successive waves of protests and even violent insurgent direct action. It is very possible then that the Kirkpatricks had to flee because they wound up on either side of this dispute. But the fact that they had a family estate and came to the US with money makes me suspect that they weren't fighting for the freedom of poor men. Right. These are probably on one specific side of the land. Pretty solid guess. Meanwhile, the Harding family, Elizabeth's mother's people, came from a long line of Anglican bishops, which also makes it likelier that her dad's people were foreign landlords at some point. Anyway, she grows up fairly well off. In a 2002 article for the Journal of American Studies, writer Christine Erickson describes her family as financially comfortable, upper middle class. Right, that's, that's, that's where they're coming from. Her parents have enough money that even though these are pretty rough times, they're able to travel fairly regularly, but they're not able to send the kids abroad with them. So Liz grows up not traveling much herself, but her mom and her aunts are always visiting Europe spending their inheritance. And so she grows up hearing about that.

[Katie Stoll]

Sure.

[Ad Voice - Cornhole]

Okay.

[Katie Stoll]

Yeah, Yeah. I mean, for the parents anyway.

[Brett Underwood]

Sounds fun. Who wants to bring your kid?

[Katie Stoll]

Sorry, kids, you had to stay. Mom and dad are off for a bit.

[Brett Underwood]

Mom and dad are off for a bit. But also in this period of time, mom and dad are off for a bit for like eight months because. Yeah, it takes a while. It's not a flight. You're going to be raised by some lady we hired. Bye. See you when you're nine.

[Katie Stoll]

Yeah, exactly.

[Brett Underwood]

Be back in A year, baby. Yeah. Be back in a year, maybe. Her father died when she was relatively young, and this was. He. He dies a sudden and surprising death and Lys leaves her mother in charge of the family. But it says a lot about their overall financial state that even though her father dies pretty early on, this never affects them financially as far as we can see. Right. They. They remain comfortable, which means they're very well off. So she's going to grow up with extremely conservative values and politics, but she's also going to grow up because her mom is the only one running things. After a while, she's going to run up, very.

[Ad Voice - Tony Ayo]

Grow up.

[Brett Underwood]

Very used to seeing a woman call the shots. Right. And this is going to have a conflicting effect on her. Right. Because she both comes to believe that, like, traditional values are best. And also she's used to women being in charge in her own way.

[Katie Stoll]

Yeah, yeah.

[Robert Evans]

That's.

[Katie Stoll]

That's kind of tough to square at that point in time. I guess I was gonna say.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, I was gonna say, as are you, Robert.

[Brett Underwood]

Yeah. Yeah. My mom is very reminiscent of this where, like, she was a very conservative person and also did not understand why men should be doing anything. Like those were two ideas that coexisted within her.

[Ad Voice - Lingokids Camper]

Yeah.

[Brett Underwood]

As Amy Dye wrote of Elizabeth in her graduate thesis for East Tennessee University, for East Tennessee State University, quote, if her father had not died, she would not have been exposed to such a strong, independent woman as her mother. Before Dr. Lafayette Kirkpatrick's death, he strongly believed the woman belonged in the home and away from both politics and business. In contrast, her brother Lafayette was encouraged to pursue a business career and at the age of 23, had acquired financial security through land development in Hawaii.

[Robert Evans]

She.

[Brett Underwood]

He subsequently traveled around the world for three years with Baron Von Zeppelin and continued to lead a privileged life until his death in 1948. Again, for any of the money she comes from. Her brother is best friends and traveling buddies with Baron von Zeppelin. It doesn't get much older money than that than Baron von Zeppelin having a road trip with the Zeppelin guy. So, yeah, they're doing fine, even with dad out of the picture. Little Elizabeth would be described during her childhood as, quote, unquote, highly emotional and an eager girl with a dramatically sculptured face, enormous brown eyes and a quick giddy laugh. Somewhat lonely and casting about in search of a career, which is also interesting. She's a very. She will always espouse very traditional values. She's always looking for a job for herself. She never is interested in just being a homemaker not, you know, no problem with that. But she's never interested in just sitting at home and raising kids. She wants to do something out in the world that people are aware of.

[Katie Stoll]

It's actually a very fascinating dynamic for somebody. I mean, we're seeing it still to this day. Yes, your mother, I guess, was this way, but this is this big push in the Conservative Party for traditional values and yet they're gonna be advocating for their own careers. It seems counterintuitive, but interesting for this woman.

[Brett Underwood]

Yeah, I mean, it's the Phyllis Schlafly thing, right. Of like, I don't think women should be doing any of this stuff. Also, as a woman, I would really like to have a big career and

[Robert Evans]

also like modern times. That' Erica Kirk.

[Katie Stoll]

Yeah, it's very Erica Kirk. That is exactly what I was thinking.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. I mean, if either of you have seen any of like the interview clips from TPUSA's like, first big, like women's event that Erica Kirk led, it's all. When people are interviewed, it's all like this where they. They're like all over the map on if they're like, well, women can have it all, but they have to do this. But women could have it all, but not those women. It's really interesting coverage just to like get an insight into that ideological thinking.

[Katie Stoll]

It's fascinating.

[Brett Underwood]

Anytime you have to be, you have that much cognitive dissonance in your belief system, it always winds up being fascinating on some level.

[Robert Evans]

And in a way, there's no way there would be an Erika Kirk without a Liz Dilling without a Phyllis athlete without a, you know, it's all she

[Brett Underwood]

had to crawl so that Erica Kirk could.

[Katie Stoll]

That's right.

[Brett Underwood]

I don't know. I don't know who's doing the whatever.

[Robert Evans]

So Erica Kirk could come out with fire, booming fireworks.

[Katie Stoll]

Yeah.

[Brett Underwood]

Behind her. So Elizabeth attends grammar school and a secondary school. She's going to nice schools. Her parents pay money to get her a quality education. She studies the concert harp at a Catholic academy and she graduates from a girls school and is noted as having an almost photographic memory. Her early interests were. And this is not a normal. Like, her education's weird because I can't graph it directly onto a normal one because she is both doing like normal primary school, secondary school, and also Catholic Academy, women's preparatory finishing school. Like, she spends years in schools that are just to like, teach you how to behave as a woman. Like, that's part of. Part of her schooling because she's like an upper class lady. Right. It takes a lot. You gotta know where all the forks go and stuff. I imagine there's more to it than forks, but forks seem like they're pretty key.

[Katie Stoll]

How to stand up straight, how to smile politely.

[Brett Underwood]

Stand up straight. That's right. How to ride sidesaddle.

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There's.

[Brett Underwood]

I know there's a certain way. There's a way you're supposed to ride as a lady. That's the polite way and there's the rude way. But maybe sidesaddle's the rude way. I don't know much about horses.

[Katie Stoll]

I really feel like sidesaddles should be reserved for men, anatomically speaking. But I digress.

[Brett Underwood]

Look, the horse girls can correct us because I don't know much about riding horses. I know there's a way you're supposed to ride and there's a way that you're not supposed to ride as an old timey woman, but I don't know which is which. Anyway, she goes to all these different weird schools. She learns how to be a lady and a good Catholic. She's interested primarily in both classical music and the French language. I don't actually know if she ever gets what you'd call a normal college degree, but during her time in Catholic school, she was made to study the Bible. And so this is kind of like knowledge and faith are always weirdly wrapped up with her. But also knowledge and like the performance of societal roles are always directly locked together. She never just gets an education. That's an education on its own. It's always an education partly in how to exist in a certain social hierarchy, if that makes sense.

[Katie Stoll]

It does make sense.

[Brett Underwood]

As Amy Dye writes in 1917, as the first US forces are getting their boots dirty in World War I, Elizabeth meets a man described as a young army officer from Arizona who, quote, introduced her to a completely new way of thinking. This is her first fascist boyfriend. So she meets this mystery army officer who starts saying, oh, you gotta read these books, right? And so he starts giving her Kant and Nietzsche and Hagal. And next quote, after introducing Elizabeth to these forward thinkers, he contradicted himself by saying women did not count as human beings.

[Robert Evans]

Oh.

[Brett Underwood]

So he's like, he's. You need to read this Nietzsche, but you're a woman, so you can't read it. You're not a person. But here, you should have some Hegel.

[Katie Stoll]

But here, read it.

[Brett Underwood]

But you're not really a person.

[Katie Stoll]

You're just a woman.

[Robert Evans]

And you're not.

[Ad Voice - Jenny Garth]

You're too.

[Katie Stoll]

You're too dumb. You're not going to get It. But here, God is dead.

[Brett Underwood]

I get the. She doesn't say this, but I get the feeling he's, like, intermittently flirting with her and yelling at her like it's one of those kind of weird guys. And she's totally into it.

[Katie Stoll]

If you had ever been flirted with by a fascist soldier from Arizona, you would know that that's part of the

[Brett Underwood]

game, that's part of the day. That's how it works.

[Guest or Additional Commentator]

Yeah.

[Brett Underwood]

Well, she gets that beautiful experience, and you can tell it completely awakens her. Right. This is where she becomes an ideological thinker for the first time. And the fact that her ideological awakening comes courtesy of a man who does not consider her human is very telling and very bleak. But what else are you gonna say?

[Katie Stoll]

Not saying I have empathy. Cause I have a feeling she's not gonna be someone I like.

[Brett Underwood]

However, it's just a. Holy shit.

[Katie Stoll]

It's pretty fucked up.

[Brett Underwood]

Yeah. You guys could check out. Just imagine trying to tell your other lady friends, like, yeah, this wonderful guy, he introduced me to all these great books. I'm really thinking in new ways about what makes a person a person. I don't think I'm one, according to him, anyway. He seems nice. Does he think he's really dreamy? At any rate, this does not last. I really wish I knew what happened with this guy. Maybe he was just too much of an incel. Or maybe he goes out and dies in World War I. I can only hope he dies in World War I. My guess, I'm hoping the old Dub Dub Uno did us a solid on that one. At any rate, not long after whatever happens with this guy ends, she continues reading philosophy and she starts thinking really hard about the underlying order of society. And as she's thinking about this, Elizabeth meets her future husband, Albert Walwick Dilling. Now, I don't think Albert Wallwick Dilling is the kind of guy who's gonna tell her she's not a person. He's the kind. I get the feeling he's very ideologically malleable. I think he's naturally more conservative, so he's comfortable with her ideology. But I also think he goes along with her a lot, you know?

[Robert Evans]

Okay.

[Brett Underwood]

And I think he gets. One of the things he gets from her is that he gets to pretend and feel like. And she will rein. That he is in charge while also being in charge of a lot. So he doesn't have to be in charge of as much. That's the feeling.

[Katie Stoll]

I get exactly what you mean.

[Brett Underwood]

You've seen these kinds of relationships right.

[Katie Stoll]

100%. She's like, I defer to my man. But she's the one that's telling him,

[Brett Underwood]

yeah, I defer to my man. God help him if he has an idea of his own.

[Katie Stoll]

I defer to my man as long as it's. He goes with what I said.

[Brett Underwood]

Exactly. So at the time he was a lawyer. He had trained as an engineer originally. He had been born in Salt Lake city back in 1892 by the time he was ready for college, and I don't think he was Mormon. I think it probably would have mentioned that she certainly is not. And I don't think she would have been cool with a practicing Mormon, given her beliefs. But I'm not really sure. By the time he's ready for college, he'd migrated to the Chicago area and he took the Illinois Bar in 1917. Now, Elizabeth Harati refused one marriage proposal by the time she met Albert. But for some reason, this guy sweeps her off her feet. And after nine months, the two are married in the romantic city of La Porte, Indiana. This would have been May of 1918. Yes, yes, the city of love itself, the city of unbridled fucking. That's what we call Laporte, Indiana. That's the city motto, actually. La Porte, Indiana. It's illegal to buy condoms here. You know, just so you know, Laporte, everybody catch the fever. And something else, because again, condoms are illegal after this point. Elizabeth Kirkpatrick, though, is now Elizabeth Dilling. And this is the name that she's going to be famous under, right? Everyone knows her as Elizabeth Dilling. That's how she becomes Elizabeth Dilling. She marries this Albert dilling guy. She's 24 years old in 1918, and after a brief honeymoon, she and Albert move to a suburb of Chicago, Wilmot, where they borrow money and buy a home. Albert claims that when they got married, he had, quote, nothing to offer but a good education, bright prospects, good help and some sizable debts. But Liz had family money of her own. In just two years, Albert was made chief engineer of the Chicago Sanitary District. And his career would continue to rise over the coming years. While he was making a career for himself as a high level engineer for one of the largest cities on earth. He would eventually become the city engineer for Union Station Development and the engineer assistant to the commission for. For public works. Liz was inheriting the money that would ensure she never needed to utilize public works herself. Her husband helps make sure that like the city's public, like transit works, and Elizabeth inherits enough money that she doesn't have to use it. Yeah, Great.

[Robert Evans]

I can only imagine they're. They're like 2026 dating profiles.

[Brett Underwood]

Oh, my God. These two in 2026 are definitely the weird Natalist freaks who wind up on the news every six months talking about like their 11 kids that they're having to change the world with Elon Musk.

[Ad Voice - Lingokids Parent]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Liz Dilling definitely, like puts her credit score on her dating profile.

[Brett Underwood]

Yeah. I can see her having an interview with Vanity Fair where she slaps her child at a fucking diner.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Brett Underwood]

So she receives enormous inheritances from two aunts and then in the mid-1930s from her mother. So she's very comfortably off, even though her husband is not making a lot of money immediately, but her husband, you know, is making comfortable middle class incomes. You have inherits a lot of money and a good income. They're doing quite well. And they're doing well enough that in short order, before either of them is, you know, particularly old, they're going to have enough money to do what wealthy people do in this period of time in particular, which is go on really long and elaborate vacations all the time. So from 1923 to 1939, the Dillings travel overseas 10 times. And these are all multi week or multi month excursions. We're talking like Orient Express type shit where you're on trains and in fancy boats, you've got sleeper car. Like these are not like casual vacations. You can't just jaunt somewhere quickly.

[Katie Stoll]

Right, yeah, no, this is, this is. Yeah, like her mother, months long. Also famously a bad time for the world financially to have means to just travel like this.

[Brett Underwood]

I mean, they're mostly traveling, although they are through all the 30s too, you know, so. Yeah, like a lot of it is during a really rough time.

[Katie Stoll]

Yeah, it's not the main takeaway here, but I like. Yeah, they're doing certainly fine. It says a lot about what they're doing while the rest of the world is burning.

[Brett Underwood]

Yeah, while the rest of the world is falling to fascism, they're going on like long elaborate vacations. Right. They're doing very, they're very comfortable. Their first trip overseas, they get to tour England, the Low Countries, France and then Italy, at which point they enter the Vatican City and have a private audience with them, the Pope. So they have like Pope money. Like that's how comfortable she is. Amy Dye writes that the Dillings had booked this trip in part to get a firsthand account of the aftermath of the First World War. Right. Like that's a big. That's at Least what Elizabeth wants her friends to believe that, like, we're not just doing this as a vacation. We're doing this to, like, get an eye on how Europe's handled, you know, after the war. Right? Like, that's the way that she frames

[Katie Stoll]

this, Making my eyes roll back. Okay, here's. We're just gonna go study the effects.

[Brett Underwood]

We're gonna go check it out. And I can tell you from experience, if you're in, like, an active war zone, there are often a lot of people who are eager to talk about what's happening to them right now, in part because they hope that, like, maybe international attention will, like, help their situation and, like, it's happening right now. And they want people to know about the horrible stuff. When you go to a place that has just been at war, like, a couple of years ago, they don't usually want to talk about it. They're kind of trying to forget it. So, again, this is just like, for a vacation, people. It's like 1919. People wandering around, like, don't want to talk too much of America's big. Yeah. What was the war like here in Verdun? You know, was it fun? Did you enjoy it? Like, people did not have a good time and don't want her shit.

[Katie Stoll]

Completely devastated. Trying to recover from. Yeah, no. Bad timing, babe.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Brett Underwood]

How do you think it was, Liz? Bad. And this seems to be what the Dillings encountered. People are not super eager to talk to them. As Dye's account says, quote, dilling became frustrated by the anti American attitudes that she had encountered amongst the British and the French. The former allies often gave the United States no credit for helping win the First World War and often complained that the United States had not entered the war sooner. So, yeah, I think people didn't really want to talk about the war. And, like, folks who'd lost all their money and, like, their kids didn't want to talk about how great America was for eventually getting involved, like, some fucking British family who lost everything. Doesn't it be like, yeah, thanks, guys. Really glad you got here in 1917. Right on the dot, huh?

[Katie Stoll]

Yeah. Yeah. Not surprising. Not surprising.

[Brett Underwood]

She takes this personally. She takes this as an insult to herself. On the steamship home, an English traveler sees a member of her party who's wearing, like, a sailor outfit with US Navy printed on it. And he just, like, starts shit talking like them, and he's like, ah, your Navy's a joke, you Americans. And Liz responds, I don't know if it's such a joke. It's been able to lick Great Britain twice. And I think it could do it again. And first off, Liz, the last time it beat Great Britain was 1912 like, or 1812. Like, I don't know. I don't know if we should be bragging about that in 1918. Just seems a little ahead of the eight ball. It's not been, it's been a while since we fought the British Navy. I don't know, Liz. And also, it's just like, what a ridiculous reaction to someone saying that who's clearly like frustrated that you're walking around talking about what hot shit your military is when you just kind of sauntered into the last minute of like a devastating war. I get why the Europeans are pissed at her.

[Katie Stoll]

Absolutely. This woman has no self awareness.

[Brett Underwood]

No. And this situation, this whole encounter with this rude person on the boat causes her to make a vow then and there that if another war ever came, came to Europe, she will work herself to the bone to keep the United States out of it. Because of these ungrateful Europeans. I'll make sure we never enter another war to support Europe again. You know, that's Liz's encounter here. Or take over this. It's really sad.

[Katie Stoll]

I'm not surprising. I mean, no, I'm always. Whenever I'm here, it's impossible to not draw parallels to modern day. I've already done it several times. But it's like, it's just so pathetic how easily some people get offended and vow to make that their idea of an entire place for the rest of their life anyway.

[Brett Underwood]

Yep, yep. Like they didn't even have anything to do with honestly. But anyway, you know what else is sad? Not listening to ads.

[Robert Evans]

Heartbreak.

[Katie Stoll]

You know what, you're right. It is such a heartbreak. I love ads.

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[Brett Underwood]

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[Brett Underwood]

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[Katie Stoll]

Never.

[Robert Evans]

What does that mean?

[Brett Underwood]

Sometimes I listen to extra ads, you know, sometimes I listen to ads that aren't even for podcasts. Sometimes I just fall asleep directly in front of a billboard, you know, so I can worship it.

[Katie Stoll]

Do you have an ad playlist too, for bedtime?

[Brett Underwood]

Yes, it's only an ad playlist for bedtime, to be fair. All right, so let's get back to Liz Dilling. So, yeah, Liz has just had this experience heading home from Europe, where these ungrateful Europeans were not deferent enough to the US Navy. So she decides to stop the US from ever helping Europe in a war again. I don't know if I believe that actually happened in part because Liz is going to be like anti war during World War II because she's a fascist. And I think maybe she invents this story cause it's like a more palatable truth as opposed to like, I don't want the US to get involved in World War II because I like the Nazis. She could be like, no, they're so ungrateful. After all the rudeness they showed us last time. Why would we risk our lives again for them? You know, I kind of think maybe she just makes this up after the fact. But it's possible that this actually happens. Like, I don't know one way or the other. Despite their frustrations with Europeans, the Dillings continue to book regular trips abroad throughout the 20s and the 30s. And at first this seems to have been mainly for the sake of hedonism. But I think Elizabeth's strong Catholic upbringing makes her feel guilty for just traveling to have fun. I think this is why for most of these trips there's always a second purpose. Like, oh, we wanted to explore how World War I affected them or we want to. She's going to explore communist countries at a certain point in the future. And I think part of it is that. But she feels bad about just spending her money on vacations because she's a cat. She's fundamentally a Catholic in her soul. I mean, she's an Episcopalian as an adult, but she was raised Catholic and you never get over that shit. I think there's an element of that of like this trip has to be more than just a trip, otherwise I'm not being a good person. Right.

[Katie Stoll]

Whatever the reason, she's not being a good person anyway.

[Brett Underwood]

But she's not being a good person anyway. But she's. This is important to her. So she starts convincing her husband to let her book trips to like their yearly vacations to the communist countries which have just started to be a thing. Right? The communist revolution, you know, has just swept over what had been imperial Russia and it's starting to take other places too. So this is like the first time in which you could have gone to a communist country, right? Kind of in the 1930s, 1920s and 30s. And so she starts convincing her husband to start booking trips for these different. For like Soviet Russia. Right. Because she wants to study the impact of communism and eventually write books about it. So in the summer of 1931, her husband helps the OR books trips to Moscow and Leningrad. Now Elizabeth is later going to write a book about what she saw in the Soviet Union and she will express her horror at the nightmare she saw there at the quote, atheism, sex, degeneracy, broken homes and class hatred that she witnessed in the post revolutionary ussr. And indeed, the Soviet Union at the start of the 30s was a nation that had recently endured great horrors, a horrific civil war and was currently enduring horrors, the horrors of the Stalinist era, right. It would very soon endure even worse horrors, the horrors of the Nazi invasion. So, you know, it's a tough time. Russia in the 30s. There are plenty of things that dilling could have seen in Russia in 1931 that are horrific, right? Plenty of things that would have actually reflected badly on the Soviet government. However, it's important I let you know that her hatred of the Soviet Union is not based on any of those things. When you think about the actual bad things that were occurring in the USSR in 1931. Elizabeth isn't allowed to see any of them. She's on a vacation that she's booked through the Soviet government. They have minders. She's not traveling freely. She's only visiting the areas they're allowed to visit. And so she's not being horrified because she's like snuck through and seen some evidence of a, of a fuck up that the government was covering up of starvation. She's angry because she's seeing like churches that have been turned into art museums. And she's like,

[Katie Stoll]

she's angry at the beautiful place.

[Brett Underwood]

She's losing her mind. She's losing her mind at it, right? And she's pissed about like, oh, the people here aren't as well fed as Americans. And like, were they under the czar? Is that the Soviet Union's fault Or is that just the fact that like it's Russia in 1931. Like again, I'm not one to minimize the faults of the Stalinists there, of the Soviet Union particularly. But you can't just be like, like, wow, people aren't as big in Russia in 1931. That's just communism. Nah, Liz, that goes back further. I'm sorry, hon. Like that's, yeah.

[Katie Stoll]

The laziest possible takeaway from what she presumably saw. But okay, yeah, yes.

[Brett Underwood]

And again, the Soviet Union is very well aware that western countries are spying on them constantly. They are looking for people like Liz

[Ad Voice - Veiv Healthcare]

Dilling in these trips.

[Brett Underwood]

So again, I don't think there's any chance Liz would have seen any actual like bad things. Right. She's just making this up based on like shit she sees that's like uncomfortable to her. And the primary things that she sees over there that are uncomfortable to her is that she doesn't know there aren't rich people in the Soviet Union that she sees. Right. She notices none of the people of my class are here. Right. There's no fancy places to go, there's no high end hotels. Right. And the society is openly atheistic. And that's what she is reacting to. Christine Erickson summarizes Dylan how Dilling would later describe her trip. She noted with concern the idle crowds and abandoned children roaming the streets bordered by rundown buildings in desperate need of repair. She described in vivid detail the poor miserable workers stores where the proletariat was forced to shop what little food stocked the shelves was overpriced and fly infested. The sight of Christian churches being converted into anti religious museums and the Shock of seeing nude bathers and swim in a river under the shadow of one Moscow church, an event Dilling captured on film clearly signaled to her that Communism bred atheism and encouraged immorality. So whatever bad things are actually happening in the Soviet Union, remember when Dilling talks about the horrors of communism, she's talking about nude bathers right near a church. That's what scares her.

[Katie Stoll]

That's what scares her. Not anything else.

[Brett Underwood]

Not anything else. Not anything. Stalin, you know, not the nkvd offended

[Katie Stoll]

by poverty and atheism. Yeah, well, abandoned children.

[Brett Underwood]

They're naked.

[Katie Stoll]

Yeah, she was abandoned.

[Brett Underwood]

I'm sure there are abandoned children in Moscow in 1931 because they've just had a civil war that killed millions of people. Millions and millions of people that was vastly exacerbated by Western involvement, by the way. You know, like, yeah, you can't. Again, you can. You can't look at any of the stuff she's seeing and just be like, well, this is all the fault of Communism. That's just silliness, right? And so, ironically, while Liz is going to spend the rest of her life talking about the nightmare world that she saw, the things she's scared about are like, any effort to reduce inequality and any effort to reduce the power of the church, that's what actually upsets her. She would also complain later in her writing that Soviet men seemed to have no interest in her at all. They didn't find her hot. The bedbugs in the Grand Hotel in Moscow were wild about me. The listless waiters, not at all. Which Erickson suggests, is Elizabeth trying to display, quote, an unsettling image of Communism's power to emasculate. How could any man ignore Dilling? These men aren't even straight if they don't like me. Like, again, her big issues with Stalinist Russia are nude bathers. I'm not hot.

[Guest or Additional Commentator]

Just.

[Katie Stoll]

Honestly, babe, it just does not sound like the place for you to vacation.

[Brett Underwood]

You know, I don't think. I think you picked the wrong place to vacation. I don't think Mosc 1931 was for you.

[Katie Stoll]

Yeah, again, your timing is all off.

[Brett Underwood]

Your timing's really bad. If you'd gone to Moscow in 1917, things might have been a lot more interesting. Liz, definitely. At least from my perspective. So her call to action came during a tour of the Moscow Museum of the Revolution, where a party guide told her tour group that the world revolution which had started in Russia, had now expanded to China and would end in the United States. He then showed them an exhibit that featured a fictional map of the future world where a communist US had renamed all of its cities. And you know this is obvious propaganda, right? Like this isn't an evidence of the actual capabilities, as we all know, of the Soviet Union's ability to infiltrate the United States. But this works perfectly on Liz. This is everything she needed too, in terms of like a useful thing she could carry home for her propaganda. So when she gets home, she is eager to preach the bad words. Elizabeth claims that when she tried to tell her friends, her suburbanite intellectual friends and my own Episcopal minister about what she'd seen over there, they expressed bitter opposition to her telling the truth about Russia. Now, I don't know how much I believe that. I can't imagine people who are better informed than her saying, hey, Liz, like there's obvious issues going on over there and with that government. But it doesn't seem like you actually know anything about those issues. It seems like you're just angry that there aren't any, like, luxury stores and they don't believe in God. And maybe that's dumb. Like, I wonder if maybe that's what her friends were saying is like, Liz, it doesn't seem like you actually know anything about the problems over there. It seems like you're angry the hotels weren't nice.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, they're like, hey, Liz, are you a elitist snob maybe? Is that my happening here? Do you suck?

[Brett Underwood]

Oh, okay, this is impossible. You just suck.

[Robert Evans]

Liz, is it possible that you're kind of an asshole? Wow.

[Katie Stoll]

I am imagining her friends always being relieved when she goes on one of her big journeys. And then they're like, oh, thank God,

[Brett Underwood]

she's out for a couple months.

[Katie Stoll]

She's gonna bring out the photo album again.

[Brett Underwood]

She's gonna want to tell us about it. I don't know, just pretend you're horrified or whatever. I do wonder how much of this is them having an issue just cause they know she's full of shit. And I suspect even more it's just like, oh, shit, I don't want to see Liz's vacation P. You want to see that video of people swimming in Moscow? I don't really care. Like, who wants to watch this shit again?

[Robert Evans]

I went swimming, but then they didn't have caviar for me afterwards. It was a hardship.

[Brett Underwood]

Hell. Hell. And Liz sees the fact that her friends do not find these stories entertaining evidence of their own suicidal blinkered blindness. The kind that would lead her very class to march to its own extermination if it wasn't careful so she became a woman on a mission to ensure her fellow citizens understood the extent of the communist menace and particularly the infiltration of leftist agents at every level of American society and government. In one of her early pieces, Elizabeth expressed her belief that good Christian women did not have the right to sit at home and avoid conflict as a fire burns in the nation's basement and radical political subversives fill the platforms with their dirt and anti American ideas. So she's very pissed at her fellow rich friends for nothing, you know, doing more to stop this, to stop the spread of communism.

[Katie Stoll]

She sounds like a joy. A joy to have at a dinner party.

[Brett Underwood]

She sounds like so much fun. Just a hoot. Yeah. Again, you could. If she'd had Twitter, she would be non. She would have left all of her friends and family behind to tweet non stop. Like, you know this person today we've seen her 1000%.

[Katie Stoll]

We know several of them.

[Brett Underwood]

So initially, Elizabeth wrote letters to newspapers and spoke up in local meetings. But she found little purchase for her ideas until she befriended Iris McCord. Iris is a teacher at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. Now mbi, as it is, also known as a private evangelical college that had been founded by a wealthy businessman turned evangelist named DWight Moody in 1886. Moody seems to actually mostly been an okay guy. He sided with the union during the Civil War, which, you know, so he gets some ups there. His whole big thing was that in the wake of the Civil War, he decided that, like, evangelical Christianity needed to train what he called gathering men. Right. These were men who would stand between the laity and the ministers. So people who aren't like just normal civilians, but they aren't like professional men of faith either, who are trained to do like, city mission work, who can, like, go and reach people in the cities and stuff. So that's Moody's idea. And that's where the Bible College comes from. Right, okay. And it's important, you know, MBI starts as a college before Christianity is political in the United States. That's not entirely accurate. There are left and right wing politicians who use Christianity, but no one would say Christianity is definitely more a left wing or a right wing thing in this area. You couldn't clearly say that yet. The religious right is not a thing in this point in time, really.

[Katie Stoll]

That's a more modern thing.

[Brett Underwood]

Right. But there are religious conservatives and religious hardliners. Right. Who are conservative, and Iris is one of them. And so is Elizabeth Dilling. And the fact that Iris taught there and love Dilling's Reactionary rants says something about where many of Moody's staff sat politically, even in those days. So Iris used her connections to get Elizabeth invited to speak at numerous local churches about the communist threat to the American way of life. And this helps put Elizabeth's ideas in front of a bunch of different women, some of whom are pretty influential, who have, like, spots in the dar, you know, and these other groups, you know, the Daughters of the American Revolution and the like. And so she, for the next couple of years, she starts making an okay side living, scaring her rich friends, right? And she becomes, she realizes she's actually really good at public speaking. She's got the gift of, like, entertaining and capturing an audience. She is an electrifying speaker in person. She's able to get a lot of these people to be just as scared and crazy about communism as she is. And her success earns her enough attention that she begins getting invitations all across the United States, not just from churches, but from civic organizations now. And the DAR starts inviting her to speak at a bunch of its local chapters. The American Legion starts inviting her to speak at different local, you know, events. And she's soon making enough money doing this to support her efforts and ensure she doesn't have to mooch off of her husband or her inheritance to have a career. I think she didn't believe good women ought to have anyway.

[Katie Stoll]

Must be really hard for her to square those bones. It's gotta be filled with guilt, okay?

[Brett Underwood]

To just to go from dilettante to a professional, like, media rabble rouser in a year or so. Yeah.

[Katie Stoll]

How shameful.

[Brett Underwood]

Must be hard for her. So, yeah. The rapidity with which Elizabeth had gone from penning her little essays to addressing crowds around the country clearly went to her head. So she decided to write a book, the Red Do We Want It Here? In this book, she railed against parlor pigs who were broad minded but didn't judge people based on their political tendency. These weak people, she argued, let communist agents infiltrate society and corrupt children with their ideals. Right? It's these broad minded parlor pinks who aren't like, hostile enough to socialism. That's how they sneak in. That's how they get your society.

[Katie Stoll]

Oh, okay, okay, yeah.

[Brett Underwood]

And you know who's going to destroy our society?

[Katie Stoll]

I. Donald Trump.

[Brett Underwood]

Well, maybe, maybe. But perhaps it'll be the products and services that support this podcast. We can all hope. We can all hope. You know, that's my dream.

[Katie Stoll]

Fingers crossed.

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[Brett Underwood]

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[Brett Underwood]

So we're back. The Daughters of the American Revolution in particular, loved her work. And if you're not an American or you just don't know, the DAR is like one of the oldest groups of like rich ladies in America. Rich white ladies.

[Katie Stoll]

Okay, if you've got an American, you just have to watch Gilmore Girls.

[Robert Evans]

That's exactly what I was going to say.

[Katie Stoll]

Gilmore Girls. Every time you Huge plot. Gilmore Girls. Emily Gilmore is a daughter of the American Revolution.

[Brett Underwood]

It means your relatives date back as far as they can in the history of the United States while not being like indigenous, obviously.

[Robert Evans]

Remember there's that fantastic episode of Gilmore Girls, Katie, where it's Rory's 21st birthday and she's become friends with all of her grandmother's friends from the dar. And Luke goes up to them and they keep saying, oh, we know Rory from the dar and he goes, what's the dar? And they all laugh in his face.

[Katie Stoll]

I remember.

[Robert Evans]

It's great. It's great.

[Katie Stoll]

It's great.

[Robert Evans]

And for the. The listeners that also get that you're really enjoying the story. If you're Robert and have no idea what you're talking. What I'm talking about. You seem very baffled and confused.

[Brett Underwood]

I. I didn't watch the Gilmore Girls, but I. You should also. Yeah, I don't think I will, but I will talk more about the dar.

[Katie Stoll]

Robert, you will love it. It was written for you.

[Brett Underwood]

Okay, I don't think that's accurate. So the DAR in particular loved Elizabeth's work. And they purchased 10,000 copies of the Red Do We Want It Here? And distribute it to their local chapters. Elizabeth became a major name in the world of reactionary agitation. And she became increasingly well known among blue bloods like the ladies of the dar. This was a scene she considered herself basically part of. Because these are the ladies she wants to be friends with. She really wants to be a DAR lady. But her family, again, they're pretty recent immigrants, I think on both sides.

[Katie Stoll]

Got a killer that they came.

[Brett Underwood]

So it's death to her. She hates it.

[Katie Stoll]

She'll never be a dude.

[Brett Underwood]

She'll never be that good. They don't. They'll never gonna like you. Your family hasn't been here that long. And they're snooty assholes who don't have souls. Like they're dead already, but so are you.

[Katie Stoll]

I'm gonna guess that that doesn't radicalize her to have empathy with people that have less than her.

[Brett Underwood]

No, no, she just desperately wants these rich ladies who are even richer than her to like her. Right. Because she doesn't have any famous enough ancestors. For a time, getting asked to speak at DAR events and having them reprint her work seemed like it was at least her getting her foot in the door. But Liz is always going to be an outsider to this crowd. However, she's now an outsider who's making a full time living trying to scare people about communists. She started telling anyone who would listen that her cause kept her working until midnight, seven days a week. She's always talking about how hard she works. So she's never. She's a little bit Alex Jones there where she's constantly lying about. I'm up to my. My neck in stacks of papers, documents that prove this extent of the communist menace. I never rest right. Although with her she might be telling the truth. Because I do think she's like a

[Katie Stoll]

compulsive workaholic, or at least obsessed with this, like, looking for the right word. Just feeling like she has to do this.

[Brett Underwood]

She's completely empty as a person. There's nothing else to her besides this. She's given up.

[Katie Stoll]

I would caution that she also was bored when she became, you know, caught up in this. Like, she was bored of an outlet

[Brett Underwood]

when she found this. And this is the only thing that's ever made her feel full. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's healthy. So she starts preparing for an even more influential book that she wants to publish. And I'm going to quote from Amy Dye's thesis again. Here, here. Dilling began collecting over 100 file cards. Each note card contained the name of a person with pro communist affiliations. These file cards sparked her to purchase a large library of books about politics, history, law, philosophy, Jews, communism, organized labor, economics, revolution, and foreign policy. Hey, hey, Liz. I get why you're interested in, like, books of history and law and about, like, organized labor and why are Jews. Hey, hey, Liz. Why are they in there?

[Katie Stoll]

Why are they.

[Brett Underwood]

Hey, Liz, we know.

[Katie Stoll]

Can you explain that a little bit more?

[Brett Underwood]

We know why Jews are in there.

[Katie Stoll]

I think.

[Brett Underwood]

We do.

[Guest or Additional Commentator]

We do.

[Robert Evans]

We know why.

[Brett Underwood]

Liz also does. Yeah, yeah.

[Katie Stoll]

Okay. I Googled her, and I saw an image that I won't reference right now because I want to see where this is going. Yeah.

[Brett Underwood]

Oh, fun. I'm interested in what that image is. So Liz also did a lot of gumshoe work infiltrating local communist organizations in Chicago by convincing them she wants to join and asking for exclusive inside information. Now, in reality, she was just getting essays and notices about upcoming meetings, but she always treated this as if she was receiving highly dangerous military intel, because that makes her sound cooler. Her inspiration in a lot of this work was a guy named Harry Young, who was the director of the American Vigilant Federation. Now, there's not a lot that remains about Harry, but I found an entry for him on fascipedia which describes the Vigilant Intelligence Federation as, quote, an attempt to track radicalism among labor union members. After three days decades of monitoring radicals and their organizations in America, it has been said his files exceeded a million names. Yang is keeping track of anyone who's in the labor movement. Right. He's keeping a death list ready just in case anyone wants to go kill these people. Young is also one of the first Americans to distribute the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion in the United States. And it's said that he received his copy from three white Russians fleeing their Failed counter revolution. So he is one of the first people to spread anti Semitic propaganda in an organized way in the United States. That's her direct inspiration.

[Katie Stoll]

Perfect.

[Brett Underwood]

Yeah. Young is the guy who turns the Protocols into a movie for the first time, which helps to create a groundbreaking work of anti Semitic propaganda that's referenced by Nazis to this day. Elizabeth knew this about him when they met. In fact, it's why she was excited to work with Young. As Amy Dye writes, Young agreed to help Dylan by letting her look at any of his files that she deemed important to fight the communistic threat. Later, both Young's films and research came into the hands of the federal government. The Department of Justice deemed Young's work as un American, as it featured several racial prejudices that offend most American citizens. So that's her, like, model. That's the guy that she loves. Yeah.

[Katie Stoll]

Yeah. Okay. Good work, Liz.

[Brett Underwood]

Good judgment, Liz. Yeah. You have great judgment in people. We can certainly say that about you. In the early 1930s, Dilling also helped to found an organization, the Paul Revere's, which she claimed was a patriotic organization to uphold Americanism in opposition to all administration other isms, such as socialism and communism. Interesting. Fascism isn't spelled out there. She lists several isms.

[Robert Evans]

Not fascists. Not.

[Katie Stoll]

Yeah, she conveniently forgot that ism.

[Brett Underwood]

Yeah, I'm sure if you pressed her, she said, oh, yeah, that too, of course. But she didn't want to bring it up unless you did. Now, the only restriction the Paul Revere's had for new members. You want to guess? The only kind of person who couldn't join her organization, the Paul Revere's of patriotic Americans. What kind of person would she exclude the attention?

[Katie Stoll]

Think Jews or black people.

[Brett Underwood]

It's Jews. No, it's actually not. I. I bet black people weren't allowed, actually. But that, that's not what we know, that they were welcomed, but they weren't explicitly banned the way Jewish people were. Although we have to assume they weren't welcome. Right?

[Katie Stoll]

I. I do. I absolutely assume that.

[Brett Underwood]

Yeah. But I can also see them only stating outright that Jews are not allowed in part because they maybe just wouldn't have assumed any black people would ever try to join. They may have just been like, really? Yeah, like you might have been joined the Paul Revere's as a black person, as sort of a, like, like an air bud situation, where it's like, well, no one put this in the rules. Like, we clearly.

[Katie Stoll]

They might not have even considered that

[Brett Underwood]

they are not conceive of this as a Possibility. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Too racist to have a race baby entry requirement. Yeah. So in 1934, Liz published what would have become her most influential book, the Red A who's who and Handbook of Radicalism for Patriots. This beautiful book which you'll be seeing on your screen now. It's gorgeous, red cover, embossed, you know, nice, very, very basic font, but effective. The Red A who's who and Handbook of Radicalism for Patriots. This collected all of Elizabeth's research, all of these note cards about these individual people that she's declared commun. This is like almost part of. It's like, almost like a phone book of leftist radicals. Again, it's kind of a kill list, right?

[Katie Stoll]

Like McCarthyism. Pre McCarthyism. McCarthyism.

[Brett Underwood]

You've anticipated one of this book's book?

[Katie Stoll]

Did I anticipate?

[Guest or Additional Commentator]

Yes.

[Brett Underwood]

Tailgater Joe loves this fucking book. This will make it into the McCarthy hearings, as it happens. Yeah.

[Katie Stoll]

Oh, wow.

[Brett Underwood]

Good stuff. So we'll be hearing a lot more from this book and hearing a lot more from it about Liz, but that's all for part one. Katie, you got any plugable to plug at the end here?

[Katie Stoll]

Yeah, oh, sure. I got pluggables to plug. You can find me over at Some More News with Cody Johnston. We got some more news. We've got even more news. They're both on the same channel. Got a Patreon.

[Brett Underwood]

Excellent. All right, everybody check their Patreon out. Check their channel out.

[Katie Stoll]

Yeah.

[Brett Underwood]

And check us out in like a day or so when we return with the rest of the story about Elizabeth.

[Katie Stoll]

Yeah, I'll be in this spot for the next two days waiting.

[Brett Underwood]

Perfect, beautiful, patiently, glorious.

[Robert Evans]

Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Full video episodes of behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix. Netflix dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit remind me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode. For clips in our older episode catalog, continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel, YouTube.com behindthebastards we love about 40% of you. Statistically speaking.

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[Katie Stoll]

Want the full story?

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[Brett Underwood]

Presented by the Hyundai Ioniq 5. Goodbye AI is taking over the Internet made up fact technology thinking for you.

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