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From 1880 to 1930, life on Earth was reshaped in ways previously inconceivable. Nowhere was this transformation more total than in Florida. In a single generation, a peninsula hardly charted since the days of Ponce de Leon was molded into a testing ground for new modes of living and capital accumulation. This episode of Gladio Free Europe drains the marshy mysteries of time to understand how Florida, once the most foreign of all the contiguous territories, became perhaps the most fundamentally American state of all.

Jackson (@GraceCathedralPark) returns to the show for a deep exploration of modern Florida history, running from the noble failures of Reconstruction up through the reassertion of Confederate control and the establishment of a new society, a unique and twisted marriage of northern venality with southern barbarity. Gilded Age robber-barons like Henry Flagler took to the waters for pleasure and for profit, turning the remote Sunshine State into a secret garden for the idle rich. Railroads soon connected Florida to the American mainland north and south, bringing both well-heeled investors and threadbare farmers down the peninsula. Poor whites in particular saw Florida as a beacon of the New South, where a man could make his fortune in land sales or the orange boom. But these newcomers had little interest in sharing their wealth with the African American residents of Florida, some of whose ancestors had been working the swampy soil since the Spanish era.

Florida after Reconstruction experienced some of the worst racial terror anywhere in the United States, with an exceptionally high rate of lynchings and episodes of mass violence at Ocoee and Rosewood, where white mobs ransacked black neighborhoods and murdered dozens upon dozens. Then the swamps, once a refuge for escaped slaves and Seminole Indians, were drained out to the sea, paved over to make room for America's newest feat of social engineering: the suburb.

By the Roaring '20s, Florida's economy primarily revolved around real estate and tourism. Middle-class Americans flocked to the new neighborhoods that sprawled across the ruined wetlands, many of which were designed for cars rather than people, and most of which were racially segregated. Meanwhile significant numbers of Cuban immigarnts migrated to the Gulf port of Tampa, turning a small fishing town into a cigar city that rivaled Havana.

Transformations along these lines happened across the United States, particularly in other Sun Belt regions such as Arizona and Southern California. But nowhere else were these changes so extreme, so rapid, and so destructive... not only to the natural landscape upon which these plains were laid, but on the residents pushed aside to built this petty-bourgeois fantasy. The state has been a theme park since decades before the Mouse spread his ears. In many ways, Florida is its own kind of twisted intentional community, and perhaps America's most successful utopian experiment.

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Since the first European settlers took unsteady steps on its alien shores, America has been haunted by the Devil. Fears of Satan and his human confederates have long since lurked in our psyche, and played an overlooked role in the cultural and political development of the United States. In this week's episode of Gladio Free Europe, Liam and Russian Sam descend into the blackest reaches of American and European folklore to see how our forbearers understood the unspeakable.

This episode explores the development of satanic conceptions and imagery in American life, beginning with the emergence of the demonic beings in ancient Jewish cosmology through the spread of Christianity and the settlement of the New World. Medieval and Early Modern Europeans saw Satan everywhere, guiding the hands of sinners and unbelievers to tempt mankind and doom souls to Hell. The devil was understood to be the real ruler of this sinful earth, as proven by the encirclement of Christendom by kingdoms of heretics and heathens. European explorers in America, Africa, and Asia believed the religions they encountered were expressions of Satanism, and used this belief to justify colonial institutions of violence and subjugation. Even within Christian lands, Satan held sway through the power of his followers, the secret legions of witches.

This diabolical worldview had real implications on early American society, most notoriously in the New England Witch Trials in which hundreds of Puritans were accused of being willing agents of Satan. Though belief in witches faded across the 18th and 19th centuries, Americans still understood the Devil to be clawing at their back. In all of these periods, it was also understood that Old Scratch could be defeated at his own games. This motif is exceptionally common in American folk tales and especially folk songs, even making its way into William Dieterle's iconic 1941 film THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER.

Though most Americans no longer believe in the devil in a literal monstrous sense, more metaphysical attitudes toward Satan survive. We continue to understand evil in terms of external corruption, as a deviation from our humanity rather than the result of our lowest impulses. And across the 20th and 21st centuries, periods of distrust and paranoia have allowed true belief Satan and his witches to re-emerge in our discourse. Despite how modern and rational contemporary Americans imagine ourselves to be, the Devil has us in his clutches.

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American troops descend into a humid jungle, sniped at from the trees from an invisible enemy. Unable to discern insurgents from civilians, the army begins burning villages and destroying entire communities. After years of failures on the battlefield, and extreme criticism of the war at home and abroad, American troops withdraw battered and beaten, leaving piles of native corpses in their wake. Sound familiar? This is the Second Seminole War, one of the largest conflicts fought on American soil and the bloodiest war waged against Native Americans.

This episode of Gladio Free Europe continues our discussion on the conquest and settlement of the Sunshine State, with a focus on the violent but ultimately unsuccessful subjugation of the Seminole Nation. Though little-discussed in modern times, this brutal and genocidal struggle made Florida what it is today. The violent removal of thousands of Seminoles from Florida to Oklahoma would open up the peninsula to white settlement and the expansion of plantation slavery. By the outbreak of the Civil War, Florida would be an essential piece of the Southern economy. The circumstances of Seminole defeat, including the betrayal of Chief Osceola, would be a black stain the reputation of American military, President Andrew Jackson, and the United States at large. And while most Seminoles were deported, Seminole resistance would continue for the next century. Some reseilient Seminoles, led by people such as Billy Bowlegs, would stand their ground in the South Florida swamps until the present day. In Oklahoma, Seminoles like the black warrior John Horse would continue their struggle against colonization and and empire.

Parallel to conflicts with the Seminoles, Florida history would be shaped by many enterprising eccentrics who sought to tame this wild country as they saw fit. Liam, Russian Sam, and Jackson discuss the careers of figures like Jean Lafitte, the New Orleans pirate who had a brief thassalocracy across the Gulf of Mexico, and Zepheniah Kingsley, a bizarre and contradictory Quaker planter who proclaimed the evils of racism while holding dozens of black slaves in bondage, and apparently styled himself not as a white planter but instead as a polygamist African chief. Listen to this latest episode of Gladio Free Europe to understand just why Florida is America's strangest state.

Please forgive the audio glitches in this episode! Ending track is "Seminole," recorded by the Esso Steel Band of Bermuda in 1959.

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Over five centuries ago, fabled conquistador Juan Ponce de Leon became the first European to place his espadrille on North American soil... yet it would take three more of those centuries the steamy, sunny peninsula he claimed would be host to any permanent European society. Florida was thus the first American state to be explored, yet the last to be settled. Colonial Florida presents a compelling question: what goes on here? The answer involves fisher-kings and filibusters, pirates and planters, Muscogees and Maroons, and many, many eccentric Florida Men.

Liam and Russian Sam are joined once again by Jackson (@GraceCthdralPrk) for the first in a series on the Sunshine State — probably the most peripheral of the Lower 48, yet fundamental to American history, from the unsteady beginnings of colonialism to the ravages of Andrew Jackson and eventually the 20th-century triumph of air conditioning, swamp-draining and beachfront real estate. This episode of Gladio Free Europe examines Florida in its long early days as a permanent borderland, a place contested by shifting configurations of European authority who never had more than nominal control over its swampy ground. This unique situation allowed Native American states to have longstanding levels of autonomy, from the Calusa kingdoms of the 16th century to the multiethnic Creek and Seminole confederations of the 19th. Although Florida would experience major political and demographic changes from 1513 to 1821, it would remain the eternal frontier. From Ponce de Leon through Andrew Jackson, no conquistador could fully quash Native resistance, and all colonizers had to afford legal rights and human dignity to the large numbers of free people of color residing in Florida. Though Europeans quickly found there was no fountain of youth and no cities of gold, rumors of exotic riches and fruitful soil continued to inspire generations of swindlers and swashbucklers.

Join Gladio Free Europe to see how all of these factors contribute to the myth-making of the Sunshine State, the most desired and most disreputable appendage to America.

Ending music is Harden Stuckey's "The River St. Johns" as performed by Jake Xerxes Fussell. The diva in the episode art is the Key Marco Cat, a timeless icon of Calusa craftsmanship.

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The Pacific Ocean is not all that separates the 50th state from the American mainland. The Hawaiian islands remain a place apart, with a distinct culture and national identity borne out of the cyclone of colonial exploitation. Liam and Russian Sam are joined by Miguel (@whitejsakai) for Gladio Free Europe's first exploration of the history of Hawai'i, beginning with a look at the award-winning 2020 documentary CANE FIRE.

Taking its name from the first Hollywood production shot on the island of Kauai, filmmaker Anthony Banua-Simon uncovers chains of exploitation that link the plantation economy of Hawai'i's past to the real estate and hospitality industries of the present. Accounts of violent labor wars in pre-statehood Hawaii are interwoven with contemporary vinettes of the everyday struggles of Hawaiian workers, and exoticized images used to sell Hawai'i from the 19th century to the present. While Hawai'i represents a tropical idyll for travelers across the globe, soaring costs of living rampant housing speculation have forced thousands of residents, particularly Native Hawaiians, to flee to the mainland.

A general history of Hawaiian colonization starts at 28:24, from the ill-advised decisions of Captain James Cook in 1779 to the illegal imposition of Haole (white American) rule more than a century later. In between, Hawaiian monarchs and ali'i aristocrats established a unified nation that was the first non-European polity to be internationally recognized a legal peer by colonial contemporaries and the first country on earth to achieve universal literacy. 19th century Hawaiians had a vibrant press in their native language and made important diplomatic connections with neighboring Polynesian nations also groaning under the colonial threat. While many of these transformations were related to the growing influence of New England missionaries and other Haoles over the islands, Native Hawaiians like the missionary Henry ʻŌpūkahaʻia and the "merrie monarch" King Kalākaua were the primary actors in making contact with the world beyond the waves.

Like that of all nations, the identity of Hawai'i was carefully constructed by its aristocrats and industrialists during the development of a capitalist economy. Because while so many aspects of pre-colonial religion and culture were suppressed by missionaries and their aristocratic ali'i patrons, that which could be marketed to outsiders was preserved and promoted. Native Hawaiian leaders like Kalākaua and his sister Liliʻuokalani traveled the world to present an image of the Hawaiians as a dignified and civilized people. This was not enough to preserve Hawaiian sovereignty, but it established a romantic image of the islands that has enchanted outsiders for well over a century. Despite the violent overthrow of the islands' last queen, and the systematic disenfranchisement and ongoing of Native Hawaiians, Hawaiian culture, or at least a specific image of it, has found admirers as disparate as Elvis Presley and Chinese Premiere Jiang Zemin.

Please see below for a link to a clip of the 2025 Merrie Monarch Festival celebrating traditional Hawaiian ritual hula dance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6qOY7kze7I

Episode Art is the Portrait of Kamehameha III by Robert Dampier (1825).

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You read that right. 1800 years ago, a Roman youngster etched a taunting cartoon of a classmate raising his hand to salute a figure on a cross. This graffito, labeled "Alexamenos worshipping his god," is remarkable for two reasons: it is the oldest known artistic depiction of Jesus, and it happens to depict the Christian Messiah as a man with the head of a donkey.

This artistic choice might seem perplexing, but actually reflects an ancient pagan stereotype. In this Gladio Free Europe solo episode, Liam explores a three-thousand-year-old allegation: that Yahweh, the all-powerful God of Israel, was actually an ignoble ass. 

Despite being outright false, the idea that Judaism and Christianity had something to do with the worship of donkeys was a strong conviction of many ancient writers, even capable scholars like Tacitus and Posidonius. In fact, this myth goes back incredibly far into ancient history, with roots in Egyptian mythology and the cultural memory of the Hyksos, a Bronze Age dynasty of Levantine origin who appear to have actually included onolatry into their practice.

The story of ass worship, as an allegation and a practice, is as nearly as old as the history of civilization, with unexpected connections to Greek mythology, gnosticism, and the beginnings of Mesopotamian Kingship. Listen to this episode of Gladio to see why maybe the dutiful donkey really does deserve some veneration after all!

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At the dawning of the modern era, Spain was the most Catholic country on the planet. Desite the turbulence of the Reconquista, the conquest of America, the invasion of Napoleon, and the loss of every New World colony from California to Cuba, the Roman Catholic Church remained the foundation of solid yet stultifying social order. As the people of the kingdom began to struggle against these ancient bonds, the unspeakable question was posed: could there be a Spain without the church? For generations of Spaniards, this matter was so grave that it was worth the blood of innocents, the destruction of priceless chapels and relics, and a civil war that would split Iberia, and the world, into the camps of secular Republicanism and merciless Nationalism.

Longtime collaborator and Catholic correspondent James @gommunisd returns to Gladio Free Europe to explore the spiritual front of the Spanish Civil War, a complex and poignant conflict that in many ways prefigured the flames of despair that would consume nearly the entire planet in World War II. We begin with a look at the long history of anticlericalism in the Spanish Kingdom, as generations of Spaniards of all social classes rejected control of the church for various reasons and by various means. From the establishment of public schools rather than parish schools, to the violent destruction of monasteries and even killings of clergy, this had been a major part of Spanish history for a century before the Civil War. But as economic and intellectual transformations brought a semi-medieval Spanish society into the modern era, objections to this marriage of church and state became too loud to ignore. After the ruination of the Spanish American War and the despair of the Depression, the contest between a new Spain and an Old Spain boiled over an armed conflict that ended with over 200,000 innocents dead and the kingdom in the clutches of history's most successful fascist state.

In the second half of the episode, James explores international religious reactions to the war in Spain. Although American Catholics were mostly Democrats within Franklin Roosevelt's progressive New Deal coalition, church institutions overwhelmingly supported the nationalist clique despite the US policy of neutrality. As evidence of right-wing atrocities mounted, the American Catholic community found itself torn apart in its own sort of civil war. Meanwhile in the United Kingdom, Catholics and Protestants alike took part in delegations to Spain, gathering vital information about the conflict as it was happening. The Spanish Civil War was a test of integrity to civil and religious institutions across the western world: When atrocities are committed in your name, do you speak up? Or do you shut your eyes as children are killed in the name of God and country?

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In the winter of 1817, a caravan of half-starved Swabians crossed through miles of frozen forests to find their promised land: Ohio. In accordance with their egalitarian ethos and inspired by apocalyptic prophecy, these men and women rejected private ownership and held all things in common. This radical commune, which they called Zoar, would be the most successful intentional community in American history and one of the most enduring socialist experiments, lasting several years longer than even the Soviet Union.

Gladio Free Europe's Ohio correspondent Jern (@realJernfer) returns for another stirring story of the Buckeye state. Founded by Pietist refugees from the German state of Wurttemberg, Zoar put into practice the same kinds of radical ideas discussed previously among the Anabaptists, Quakers, and Shakers. Unlike most other communes, including Robert Owen's enlightenment dream of New Harmony, Zoar was stable and prosperous. Succeeding where so many others failed, the commune held together across multiple generations and even developed an early industrial economy. It attracted the envy and admiration of many other communities, including the controversial free-love society of Oneida.

Zoar saw itself as a refugee from the sinful and venal world outside, taking its name from the town that sheltered the Biblical Lot after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Yet the community's influence over Ohio trade and finance meant the outside world could not be kept away. Ultimately, Zoar would be a victim of its own success, as its wealthy residents decided to dissolve the commune and divvy up their belongings into private hands.

Despite ultimately failing in its mission to secede from the world of material things, Zoar is an inspiring story of what it looks like to build the New Moral World. And although its founders were sectarian socialists from the Holy Roman Empire, who spoke little English and had even less interest in the broader national project, the undaunted ambition of Zoar makes this small commune a quintessential chapter of American history.

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The story of the Haitian Revolution is well-known. From the oath at Bois Caiman to the large-scale slave revolt which birthed the nation and subsequent war against the Napoleonic invasion force, the revolution is filled with cinematic moments of great poignancy. But what happened next?

Usually the story ends with Jean-Jacques Dessalines taking power, but with the help of our Haitian-born and raised friend Sebastian, we take the story further, and explore just what happened to this Caribbean nation for the remainder of the 19th century. We take aim at Haiti's troubled economics , political system, and internal racial politics.

The story is told through the lens of the many colorful personalities who took the reins of power while styling themselves monarchs. From Henri Christophe to Faustin Soulouque, Haitian history is filled with figures who sought to emulate French political forms despite the antagonistic relationship between these two countries.

The imperial moniker was partly a signifier intended for foreign consumption, but it had a ring of truth to it as well, as these rulers built palaces through corvee labor, minted aristocrats, and sought to impose their authority over their Spanish-speaking neighbors in what is today the Dominican Republic.

So what went on in Haiti? Listen to the episode to find out.

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See Sebastian's Substack Kaskad for more contemporary Haiti analysis.

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"And all that believed were together, and had all things common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need." King James Bible, Acts 2:44

"And when they found them not, they drew Jason and certain brethren unto the rulers of the city, crying, These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also." King James Bible, Acts 17:6

Liam and Russian Sam are joined by once again by Jackson (@GraceCathedralPark) for a two thousand summary of American radicalism and the utopian tradition. Since ancient times, religious and moral conviction has compelled the most pious among us to leave this sinful world behind.

Jewish groups like the Essenes and the Ebionites were joined by the earliest Christian monks in their complete rejection of secular society, preferring to live in intentional communities organized toward complete observance of religious commandments. These groups, who may have included the first followers of Jesus, held their property in common and believed they could lead mankind by their example toward a new moral world.

By the European Middle Ages, Christian institutions had taken on all the venal and violent obligations of the state. Reformers seeking to challenge the worldly power of the church were met by centuries of brutal oppression. By the 16th century these contradictions had become too much to bear, with the eruption of the Protestant Reformation and the flowering of idealistic sectarians. Some of these groups, like the Anabaptists and the Diggers, sought to upend the material hierarchies of man and make all equal before God. When these groups were also hunted down, even by their fellow Protestants, the dream of a new beginning survived across the sea.

Religious settlers like the Puritans and Quakers saw the wild American lands as a blank slate for their moral dreams, while more materialistic colonists used the New World to engineer new systems of extraction and domination unimaginable back home. Many of these groups created communes in the wilderness, some surviving for months and others for centuries. As Enlightenment writers argued for the equality of man based on reason rather than scripture, and the American and French Revolutions called all political secular communitarian projects also began to emerge. Most significant of all of these was New Harmony, the utopian experiment of reformed capitalist and lifelong idealist Robert Owen. Though New Harmony would not be a particularly long-lived commune, it cemented Owen as one of the most famous men of the early 19th century and a father of the socialist movement. Like many parents, Owen would see some of his children turn away from him, yet his lifelong agitation would lay the groundwork for more enduring transformative projects. While we now understand the utopian movement to have failed, Owen and his two thousands years of forebears succeeded in inspiring mankind to build a new moral world.

Listen to the end of this one to hear about Jackson's own radical utopian dream: BYU for Owenism.