1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,220 Trump just tweeted that he's going to legalize weed if he gets elected president. 2 00:00:03,560 --> 00:00:09,940 And so if you don't know the story about how Prohibition basically founded organized crime today and shaped our whole world, 3 00:00:10,380 --> 00:00:12,600 this is a crazy rabbit hole you've got to know about. 4 00:00:12,780 --> 00:00:16,540 This is also the rabbit hole that keeps getting me strikes on TikTok, so I'm not even going to post this one there. 5 00:00:16,880 --> 00:00:19,760 But anyways, as usual, I'd like to show my sources. Tweet today. 6 00:00:20,300 --> 00:00:23,760 And in order to understand what legalizing weed today might do, 7 00:00:24,180 --> 00:00:29,000 you should look at the 1920s and what illegalizing alcohol did to our country. 8 00:00:29,000 --> 00:00:34,180 Prohibition was from 1920 to 1933, and at first it seemed like it was going to go great, 9 00:00:34,580 --> 00:00:40,380 but the benefits eroded over time as an organized black market developed and public support for Prohibition declined. 10 00:00:40,820 --> 00:00:45,080 I'm just going to use a lot of Wikipedia here so that it's really easy for you to go down these rabbit holes for yourself. 11 00:00:45,200 --> 00:00:48,960 There's way more than just Wikipedia here, but it's just an easy way to look at it. 12 00:00:49,380 --> 00:00:53,140 For example, one study found that organized crime in Chicago tripled during Prohibition. 13 00:00:53,140 --> 00:00:58,620 Mafia groups and other criminal organizations and gangs had mostly limited their activities to prostitution and gambling 14 00:00:58,620 --> 00:01:00,660 and theft until 1920. 15 00:01:01,100 --> 00:01:06,740 But then suddenly, this thing that everyone in the country consumes is illegal. 16 00:01:07,120 --> 00:01:11,060 And now it is supplied by illegal criminal organizations. 17 00:01:11,660 --> 00:01:14,760 Billions of dollars worth of profits suddenly on the table. 18 00:01:15,260 --> 00:01:20,300 And so what had been a dispersed system of organized crime that was just like little street gangs here and there 19 00:01:20,300 --> 00:01:26,260 doing their little rackets, suddenly they have incentive to be international shipping organizations. 20 00:01:26,260 --> 00:01:35,360 Because most of the alcohol is getting made in places like Canada by families like the Rosensteels and they have to import it through illegal smuggling operations. 21 00:01:35,760 --> 00:01:45,480 So these guys that were doing prostitution, gambling, and theft suddenly are about to become transnational criminal syndicates and that requires a whole new level of organization. 22 00:01:46,260 --> 00:01:49,960 These stats are wild too, if you want to pause and read these red stats. 23 00:01:49,960 --> 00:01:53,760 So this gave rise to the mafia and the mob getting way bigger. 24 00:01:53,940 --> 00:02:01,680 And then this guy named Meyer Lansky came along and formed an alliance amongst all organized crime syndicates that was called the National Crime Syndicate. 25 00:02:02,060 --> 00:02:05,680 Mostly it was the Italian mafia and the Jewish mob, the big dogs. 26 00:02:05,680 --> 00:02:11,880 And it would have been the FBI's job to shut them down and to maintain law and order in the United States. 27 00:02:11,960 --> 00:02:19,640 But the problem was J. Edgar Hoover, the guy in charge of the FBI for a full 48 years under eight different presidents, 28 00:02:20,060 --> 00:02:27,300 at a time when being gay was very stigmatized and Hoover contributed strongly to that stigma with the Lavender Scare, whole other story. 29 00:02:27,300 --> 00:02:34,160 Anyways, Hoover was really into these cross-dressing orgies, all-male parties at the Plaza Hotel. 30 00:02:34,260 --> 00:02:35,820 We'll come back to that in just a second. 31 00:02:36,740 --> 00:02:45,440 But he also collected possibly the world's largest blackmail collection for his own power use. 32 00:02:45,920 --> 00:02:50,720 But he probably got the idea because he was being blackmailed by the mob. 33 00:02:50,720 --> 00:03:01,440 This guy, in charge of the National Crime Syndicate, got a hold of compromising pictures of a sexual nature featuring the FBI director and his longtime aide Clyde Tolson. 34 00:03:01,940 --> 00:03:05,720 This has been corroborated by multiple primary sources and multiple documentarians. 35 00:03:06,180 --> 00:03:11,200 And one of the primary places where this blackmail was acquired, Whitney Webb goes into this in a lot of detail in her books, 36 00:03:11,200 --> 00:03:17,620 was at the Plaza Hotel at these parties hosted by Roy Cohn and liquor magnate Louis Rosenstiel, 37 00:03:17,780 --> 00:03:22,100 who had ties with the mafia from his bootlegging operations during Prohibition. 38 00:03:22,540 --> 00:03:27,520 Because it was during Prohibition that all of these massive networks of crime formed. 39 00:03:27,520 --> 00:03:30,740 And then after Prohibition, when all of that was legalized again, 40 00:03:31,100 --> 00:03:35,400 suddenly the ties are crossed from the black market into the white markets. 41 00:03:35,480 --> 00:03:40,600 And now legitimate businesses have lifelong ties to organized crime and vice versa. 42 00:03:40,600 --> 00:03:44,340 Another great example of this is Las Vegas, like the whole fucking city. 43 00:03:44,660 --> 00:03:49,460 The entire gambling industry in America was mostly built on mob and mafia money. 44 00:03:49,660 --> 00:03:51,720 And they used casinos to launder their money. 45 00:03:52,220 --> 00:03:53,300 Maybe they still do. 46 00:03:53,500 --> 00:03:58,880 And so despite casinos being theoretically good, upstanding businesses, 47 00:03:59,240 --> 00:04:02,740 there's almost always secret deals happening in back rooms. 48 00:04:03,260 --> 00:04:06,380 You know, weird things happening at Mandalay Bay hotels. 49 00:04:06,800 --> 00:04:07,300 Who knows? 50 00:04:07,300 --> 00:04:11,980 Both Hollywood and the music industry are two other really good examples of this. 51 00:04:12,040 --> 00:04:17,160 Of legitimate business industries that were built on mob and mafia money with black market ties 52 00:04:17,160 --> 00:04:19,120 that still hold those ties to this day. 53 00:04:19,720 --> 00:04:21,280 Like Diddy, for example. 54 00:04:21,280 --> 00:04:26,060 This also led to the intelligence agencies and the U.S. government getting in bed with organized crime 55 00:04:26,060 --> 00:04:29,600 during World War II and certainly never after. 56 00:04:29,980 --> 00:04:32,900 Because now these smuggling networks have control over all the ports 57 00:04:32,900 --> 00:04:35,860 and the U.S. government needs them to help them secure the ports. 58 00:04:36,040 --> 00:04:36,640 True story. 59 00:04:36,760 --> 00:04:38,100 Look up Operation Underworld. 60 00:04:38,660 --> 00:04:42,320 And so right from the founding of the CIA and the U.S. intelligence apparatus, 61 00:04:42,760 --> 00:04:47,800 they realized that their job was to sort of wade in the black market waters a little bit 62 00:04:47,800 --> 00:04:49,360 and to do things covertly. 63 00:04:49,580 --> 00:04:53,700 And a great way to get funding is to engage in the black markets. 64 00:04:53,700 --> 00:04:59,900 And we know for a fact that the CIA has been involved in the drug trade of illegal drugs 65 00:04:59,900 --> 00:05:03,240 since its founding, along with their organized criminal buddies. 66 00:05:03,620 --> 00:05:05,580 The Iran-Contra affair is a great example. 67 00:05:06,280 --> 00:05:09,880 Gary Webb famously wrote the series and book called Dark Alliance, 68 00:05:10,380 --> 00:05:14,840 which alleged with lots of evidence that the CIA was essentially facilitating 69 00:05:14,840 --> 00:05:17,560 and protecting the cocaine trade into America 70 00:05:17,560 --> 00:05:20,880 that was fueling the entire crack cocaine epidemic in the 80s. 71 00:05:21,240 --> 00:05:25,300 Yeah, Gary Webb got the Journalism Integrity Award of committing suicide 72 00:05:25,300 --> 00:05:27,480 via two gunshot wounds to the head. 73 00:05:28,620 --> 00:05:29,720 Death ruled a suicide. 74 00:05:30,220 --> 00:05:34,280 But don't worry, the CIA investigated themselves and submitted three reports, 75 00:05:34,420 --> 00:05:37,240 all of which found no evidence to support the claim. 76 00:05:37,340 --> 00:05:43,020 No evidence to support the claim that the CIA had anything to do with drug smuggling, obviously. 77 00:05:43,020 --> 00:05:47,580 Then there's this whole other crazy rabbit hole around this crazy secret CIA document 78 00:05:47,580 --> 00:05:51,100 about Vietnam War in the 70s that I've gone into a lot of depth on. 79 00:05:51,320 --> 00:05:53,540 It's called Operation Eagle II and the Five Star Trust. 80 00:05:53,640 --> 00:05:58,560 This one's harder to find, but quote, this is from an FBI official document, quote, 81 00:05:58,960 --> 00:06:03,340 the master plan called for the CIA to enter into the drug smuggling business 82 00:06:03,340 --> 00:06:05,960 in a total and complete fashion. 83 00:06:06,280 --> 00:06:09,080 This involves Bush Sr., Richard Helms, director of the CIA, 84 00:06:09,400 --> 00:06:11,640 and even the Rothschild banking empire at the time. 85 00:06:11,640 --> 00:06:13,640 This is a whole crazy story. 86 00:06:14,100 --> 00:06:17,740 And obviously, I would never insinuate that there's crimes happening today 87 00:06:17,740 --> 00:06:20,520 in our modern CIA and all that. 88 00:06:20,740 --> 00:06:23,400 It's just a weird coincidence that we went to Afghanistan 89 00:06:23,400 --> 00:06:26,020 where all the world's opium production happens. 90 00:06:26,240 --> 00:06:29,300 We kicked the Taliban out that had burned all the opium. 91 00:06:29,520 --> 00:06:32,640 And then suddenly we have this opioid epidemic all over the United States. 92 00:06:32,680 --> 00:06:36,220 And American pharmaceutical companies are making insane amounts of money off of opioids. 93 00:06:36,220 --> 00:06:40,540 It's just weird that now we have this open border and all this fentanyl trafficking happening 94 00:06:40,540 --> 00:06:43,820 and our own officials are trying to pretend like there's no open border. 95 00:06:44,180 --> 00:06:47,660 It's like, I'm sure it's just a coincidence, but it's just weird. 96 00:06:48,060 --> 00:06:52,200 Like the two biggest things that regular Americans are not taught in school for a reason 97 00:06:52,200 --> 00:06:55,440 is the history of organized crime and the history of intelligence agencies. 98 00:06:55,440 --> 00:06:59,460 And actually, the fact that the two are pretty damn similar because they're buddies. 99 00:06:59,580 --> 00:07:00,560 They always have been. 100 00:07:00,800 --> 00:07:05,700 And so there's actually a lot more depth than you might realize to Trump talking about legalizing 101 00:07:05,700 --> 00:07:10,860 weed nationwide because marijuana is one of those sort of like mostly harmless drugs 102 00:07:10,860 --> 00:07:14,720 that tons and tons and tons of people use, regardless of whether it's legal or not, 103 00:07:14,720 --> 00:07:21,420 that creates a huge amount of cash flow for organized crime, for gangs, for cartels in Mexico, 104 00:07:21,600 --> 00:07:22,740 trans border smuggling. 105 00:07:23,320 --> 00:07:25,800 It just gives money to the bad guys. 106 00:07:25,800 --> 00:07:30,740 That's not to mention all the ways that the health benefits of various parts of marijuana 107 00:07:30,740 --> 00:07:35,560 might threaten the pharmaceutical industry, allegedly, hypothetically. 108 00:07:35,640 --> 00:07:40,280 And when you look at the history of the war on drugs, obviously it's just a conspiracy theory 109 00:07:40,280 --> 00:07:44,780 and you're kind of kooky for thinking it, but it just, it looks sometimes, just looks like 110 00:07:44,780 --> 00:07:51,540 it sometimes, that maybe the war on drugs was not actually designed to stop drug use. 111 00:07:51,540 --> 00:08:00,020 And whatever it was designed to do, it certainly happened to produce a fuckload of profits for 112 00:08:00,020 --> 00:08:03,260 criminal organizations that were running all those drugs. 113 00:08:03,800 --> 00:08:08,560 So anyways, I just wanted to remind us all that sometimes historical context recolors your 114 00:08:08,560 --> 00:08:10,220 understanding of what's happening today. 115 00:08:10,400 --> 00:08:13,960 And it's important to remember that we've been lied to about history. 116 00:08:14,080 --> 00:08:15,460 History was written by the victors. 117 00:08:15,580 --> 00:08:20,380 History is written by the establishment and taught in schools in a very specific way to get 118 00:08:20,380 --> 00:08:24,420 us all to think about what we're supposed to think about, which is basically nothing, 119 00:08:24,420 --> 00:08:30,900 and to not think about the important complex ways that our world has tied together to create 120 00:08:30,900 --> 00:08:33,600 this corrupt system that we all live in today. 121 00:08:33,780 --> 00:08:37,100 They don't teach you how Wall Street works because they don't want you to notice that 122 00:08:37,100 --> 00:08:38,640 it's all corrupt criminal bullshit. 123 00:08:38,980 --> 00:08:42,780 They don't teach you how intelligence agencies work because they don't want you to know that 124 00:08:42,780 --> 00:08:46,220 they've been working with organized crime since the very first year they were founded. 125 00:08:46,220 --> 00:08:51,020 They don't teach you how food and health works because they make a lot more money off of 126 00:08:51,020 --> 00:08:53,160 you if you're sick than if you're healthy. 127 00:08:53,580 --> 00:08:59,140 And everything we're seeing happening this year is deeply rooted in a complex historical 128 00:08:59,140 --> 00:09:07,520 context of how things got as bad as they are and who's incentivized to feed which side of 129 00:09:07,520 --> 00:09:08,140 that equation. 130 00:09:08,400 --> 00:09:13,360 And the more you learn about history, the more complex it gets, the more fascinating it is, 131 00:09:13,360 --> 00:09:16,480 and the less you realize you actually know.