E97 B. Traven and the Treasure of the Sierra Madre

2000 years ago, Roman began a campaign of suppression against the defiant sages of barbarian Gaul. Yet millennia later, these druids survive. Their memory would inspire generations of alchemists, aristocrats, alternative-spiritualists, and eventually the creators of Britain's most iconic horror film.On this week's episode of Gladio Free Europe, Liam and Russian Sam continues their survey over the druids, moving from the practices and beliefs of the ancient holy men to the generations of occultists and eccentrics who have sought to recapture their arcane knowledge. The strange road of neo-druidism winded its way to inspire The Wicker Man, the immortal 1973 picture set on an island of new-age recluses who revive their ancestral beliefs with murderous results.For over 500 years, scholars and hobbyists have pored over the scant surviving references to the pagan priests of the ancient Celts, convinced that Western Europe's first recorded wise men were key to understanding the history of modern peoples in Britain and Ireland. These scholars, looking through a kaleidoscope of ideology, all believed they could use the secrets of the druids to advance their own spiritual and political agendas. Figures like Conrad Celtis, Iolo Morganwg, William Stukely, and Margaret Murray wore the robes of the druids to advance the cause of Christianity, anti-Christianity, Jacobinism, Jacobitism, freemasonry and deism. Neo-druidic belief and ritual has been used to promote a unified British imperial identity, and to defend regional Celtic cultures against English domination. Listen to this week's episode of Gladio Free Europe to see how a half millennium of European history has shaped and been shaped by memories of the druids, the world's most enduring counterculture.

⁠Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- Unique among the barbarians of ancient Europe, the Celtic tribes of Britain and Gaul were led by a sophisticated priesthood. The druids, who left us no writing of their own, fascinated and frightened their literate neighbors in Greece and Rome. Described as both brilliant philosophers and murderous bloodletters, these ancient sages were fundamental to the classical understanding of the pagan world, and widely discussed even after being suppressed and outlawed as a dangerous cult. But the druids could not be defeated so easily, as scattered references persist until the middle ages, and they continue to captivate the minds of historians and occultists to this day. Pick up your sickle and venture into the sacred grove, and join Gladio Free Europe as we glean the secrets of the druids. Liam and Russian Sam go on a deep dive of virtually all available information on just who the druids were, from the classical texts of Julius Caesar and Pliny the Elder to medieval Irish poetry and startling discoveries in modern archaeological. Listen to this episode to learn all about Celtic human sacrifice, Indo-European horse worship, and St. Patrick's epic rap battle of history against his druid slave-masters. Because this is Gladio Free Europe, our episode could not be complete with a quick return to one of our favorite topics, the bog bodies.

⁠Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- Ready your crossbow as we venture up high into the Swiss Alps, a tyrannous bailiff might be nearby! This week we explore the William Tell, a national symbol of Switzerland, and the very real history which inspired his story. Join us as we venture back into a time before the Swiss were neutral, before they were known for their chocolate, and before they were even a state. How did this plucky assortment of cantons cohere in the first place, and how does the truth of Swiss history compare with the idyllic land imagined by Orson Welles when he quipped that in 500 years of democracy and peace they produced little more than the cuckoo clock. Through all of this, the legend of William Tell was born and reborn regularly with a new message, a new intended audience, and a new platform, but always with the same goal: the pursuit of liberty and the battle against injustice. From the Swiss Rebellion of 1654, led by the Three Tells themselves risen from hibernation, to the Napoleonic Wars when William Tell became a symbol of the Helvetic Republic, to the pan-Germanic William Tell imagined by Friedrich Schiller in the eponymous play, William Tell has lived more lives than most. Hop on our ski lift for one last look at William Tell’s winding journey, through medieval revolts, Napoleonic upheavals, and Schiller’s literary magic. Is he a flesh-and-blood freedom fighter or a cunning invention of Swiss lore? Grab your gear, the slopes are calling.

⁠Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- Every aspect of our modern lives is commodified and decimalized, from the minutes of our labor to the food upon our table. All goods and services we consume are produced and handled by professionals, who spend their lives developing their mobile arsenal of mental and tactile skills because they can outsource the production of food and shelter to other workers. Yet until 300 years ago, this way of life was completely alien to everyone outside a small population of urban merchants and artisans. Liam and Russian Sam are joined once again by Jackson @gracecthdralprk to explore the city before capitalism, when urban people were small, ambitious, and literate minority distinct from the peasants and princes who lived outside the city walls. This episode of Gladio Free Europe dives into early modern city life, and particularly the artisan system that was the engine of pre-capitalistic production. Drawing on the works of Yuri Slezkine, Sean Wilentz, and E.P. Thompson, this discussion looks at the early relationship between city and country, and the development of an artisan political consciousness, especially in the early United States. As the 19th century progressed and wage labor began to take hold across industrializing economies, the artisans recognized that their way of life was collapsing and refused to go without a fight. Artisan radicalism would fail, their early 19th century militancy laid the foundation for later working class agitation. The values and aspirations of these ambitious craftsmen would come to define the logic of the entire world.

⁠Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- Brains. Rot. A shambling gait. Everyone knows the tropes that make up zombie, but how did this strange cocktail come to be? Liam and Russian Sam paddle through dark and torrid waters in this week's episode of Gladio Free Europe to chart the origins of the zombie from Afro-Caribbean folklore to today's Hollywood monstrosities. Possibly the most enduring creature of the classic era of horror cinema, zombies continue to petrify moviegoers in ways that mummies and wolfmen and even vampires do not. But unique among this pantheon of monsters, the zombie is rooted in African religious traditions that crossed into the Americas through the transatlantic slave trade. In fact, the word "zombie" first appears as an appellation of a slave rebel centuries before it was associated with the undead. But by the 19th century, the term reemerged among practitioners of vodou, the unique religion of Haiti that blends Catholicism with traditional West African religions. In the context of vodou, a zombie came to mean the most horrible product of black magic: an empty corpse brought back to life by being filled with the soul of another, always in order to do that person's bidding. Modern movie zombies have little in common with Haitian folk religion, drawing as much from European stories of ghosts and vampires as from vodou. But elements of vodou and the folk memory of the brutality of slavery survive in unexpected ways in zombie lore. The fear of zombies may be so resilient because they remind us of the brutal domination of man over man. The act of zombification thus represents a fear that lurks in all of our hearts, and a fear that became reality for millions of Africans in the colonial era: that a simple change of fortune could strip of us our will and personhood, and that we could be forced to exist with our humanity stripped away.

⁠Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- Humans have been consuming alcohol for as long as we've been human, yet the identification of alcoholism as a chronic addiction is startlingly modern. The history of alcoholism, and the various ways to solve it, provide a great look at the shifting social attitudes around addiction. Many of these disparate ideas come together in the controversial 12-Step Program made ubiquitous by Alcoholics Anonymous. Liam and Russian Sam are joined once more by their good friend Jon to discuss the past 10 million years of alcoholism, beginning with the earliest known consumption of fermented fruit by our simian ancestors and moving through the 18th century gin crisis and the Victorian temperance movement. Across the 19th century, physicians and preachers clashed over the concept of addiction as a medical condition or a personal moral failing. While the former understanding is now taken for granted, moralistic interpretations steeped in Protestant theology survive in many addiction treatments, including the 12-Step Program. Jon walks us through the origins and practice of this program, laid out in the 1930s by the enigmatic "Bill W," an alcoholic who turned to both Carl Jung and Lutheranism to help with his addiction. As his program mushroomed into a global movement, his eccentric ideology became scripture for millions of people seeking treatment. Jon describes his own experiences with this philosophy and recounts some of the more controversial aspects of Bill W's life 12-Step Programs writ large. Jon's Substack: https://dfg.substack.com

⁠Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- The United States has a fairly long and established history for a state, long enough that the country is approaching its 250th anniversary in just a few years. Much has changed in that time, while other things have failed to progress far enough. To look at this history of continuity and change, we decided to dive into the American centennial and bicentennial celebrations, as well as the history surrounding them. Although 1876 and 1976 seem distant, the two years actually have a fair bit in common. Civil rights, nefarious government overreach, economic downturn, labor militancy and more were in the forefront of American minds during both periods. Whether in the Gilded Age or in the period dubbed by some "American Glasnost," the United States continued to battle demons along similar lines, and the powers that be hoped that the festivities surrounding the country's birthday would bring to mind the glorious past and future rather than the lackluster present. But whether the celebrations in Philadelphia were framed by the World's Fair or a giant concert, whether they were presided over by Emperor Pedro II of Brazil or Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain, the celebrations could not drown out the grittiness of lived experience. Join us as we put that grit under a microscope and explore the bacteria found within.

Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- Many podcasts were conceived during the pandemic, but few have proved as long-lasting as our humble broadcasts. After over three years of honing the craft and sharing so many stories, the whole gang reunites to assess our body of work. Liam, Abram, and the Sams have an engaging chat about what Gladio has meant to us and recall some of our favorite episodes. A special shout-out goes out to our listeners. You have given us the resolve to keep putting these out and I hope that you find our work engaging and entertaining. Here's to a hundred more episodes! Mentioned Episodes: E01 Yegor Letov and the National Bolshevik Party E03 Wag the Dog E09 S1m0ne ft. Pam E13 Migration and Memory E14 Les Rallizes Dénudés ft. Zach E28 Quo Vadis ft. Maggie E41 Spiritualism in the 1800s E47 Dirty Harry E57 The Golem E58 Cyrus Teed and Koreshanity E60 Legendary Ancestry Claims E67 The Bog Bodies E67.5 Even More Bog Bodies E84 The Ainu Before Japan E87 The Meiji Restoration and Hokkaido ft. John Bellamy Poster

Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- Liam and Russian Sam continue their exploration of the fall of the Roman world, as described by revolutionary historian Henri Pirenne. Writing between the world wars, the great Belgian scholar used cutting-edge research methods to analyze changes in the economy and society of the 6th century, describing a Roman world in Western Europe that lumbered on without Rome. According to Pirenne, the greatest shock to this unstable system was the rise of the Islamic Caliphate in the early 7th century, which broke off contact between east and west, turned the Mediterranean into a "Muslim lake," and gave the Eastern Roman Empire a challenge far greater than the Goths or Persians of old. Across the next 200 years, the once-Roman world would adapt to this great new change. The ensuing turbulence in the west would lead to the rise of the Carolingian Franks and the new Empire of Charlemagne, which would bring Western Europe out of antiquity and truly into the Middle Ages. This episode of Gladio Free Europe is a roller-coaster across the 7th and 8th centuries, featuring colorful personalities such as the gold-nosed Byzantine Emperor Justinian II and the legendary feuding queens Fredegund and Brunhilda. Come listen to see how arcane questions of the nature of Jesus led to bloodshed across the Mediterranean, and decide for yourself whether or not the fall of Rome happened with the collapse of the Roman empire in 476, or the birth of a new empire on Christmas Day, 800. Further Listening: ⁠E13 Migration and Memory⁠ ⁠E15 The Last Kingdom⁠ ⁠E33 Late Roman Empire⁠ ⁠E36 The Franks ft. Natasha⁠ ⁠E49 The Arab-Norman Civilization (Part 1)⁠ ⁠E50 The Arab-Norman Civilization (Part 2)

Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- On September 4, 476 the barbarian general Odoacer deposed the last Roman emperor in the West and proclaimed himself king of Italy. After 500 years of existence, the Western Roman Empire was gone. But if you were living there at the time, would you have even noticed anything had changed? Liam and Russian Sam return to one of their favorite historical subjects, an area that has energized and terrified generations of scholars for 1500 years: the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire. Considered to mark the end of classical antiquity and the start of the middle ages, this event was traditionally understood to be the fundamental cataclysm of the history of Europe, perhaps even the history of the world. But on the eve of the Second World War, aging Belgian historian Henri Pirenne proposed an alternative view: that the collapse of the Roman Empire and the rise of the barbarian kingdoms only amounted to a change in management. The real transformation of the Roman world into the medieval world would not happen until centuries later, when the empires of the Muslims and the Carolingian Franks built new political and economic systems that replaced what had been left by Rome. This is the key argument of Mohammed and Charlemagne, Pirenne's most famous work published posthumously in 1937 and one of the most revolutionary texts in medieval history. Still hotly debated today, Pirenne's thesis upended a seemingly adamantine tradition of scholarship established by the Italian humanist Petrarch in the 14th century, and elaborated by later historians such a Edward Gibbon, which viewed the medieval period as a detestable Dark Age that had to be redeemed by the discovery of Roman glory. While not rejecting outright the notion of an early-medieval Dark Age, Pirenne put forward a strong argument for continuity across the 4th, 5th, and 6th centuries, interrupted not by the invasions of barbarian peoples but instead by the later rise of the Muslim caliphate. New religious divisions severed the arteries of trade and communication that united the Mediterranean world. And when a new Roman Empire emerged in the west the following century, Pirenne argues that this realm of Charlemagne did not restore Roman civilization as once was believed, but instead created a new imperial system just like their Arab contemporaries. Listen to this week's Gladio Free Europe to decide for yourself if the end of the Western Roman Empire did or did not mark the end of the Roman world. Further Listening: E13 Migration and Memory E15 The Last Kingdom E33 Late Roman Empire E36 The Franks ft. Natasha E49 The Arab-Norman Civilization (Part 1) E50 The Arab-Norman Civilization (Part 2)