Episode 100: The Veiled Prophet w/ Devin Thomas O'Shea!

What does the 2nd Mexican Empire, Confederate soldiers on the run, and the TV show The Office have to do with a white supremacist secret society in St. Louis? Author and historian Devin Thomas O'Shea joins us to talk about his fantastic new book "The Veiled Prophet: Secret Societies, White Supremacy, and the Struggle for St. Louis." Strap yourselves in, dear listeners, you are in for a wild ride!

Our guest: 
Devin Thomas O’Shea is the author of “The Veiled Prophet: Secret Societies, White Supremacy, and the Struggle for St. Louis,” publishing with Haymarket Books in June 2026. His writing is in The Nation, the Iowa Review, Slate, LA Review of Books, Boulevard, and elsewhere.

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Your Hosts:

Kurly Tlapoyawa is an archaeologist, ethnohistorian, and filmmaker. His research covers Mesoamerica, the American Southwest, and the historical connections between the two regions. He is the author of numerous books and has presented lectures at the University of New Mexico, Harvard University, Yale University, San Diego State University, and numerous others. He most recently released his documentary short film "Guardians of the Purple Kingdom," and is a cultural consultant for Nickelodeon Animation Studios.
@kurlytlapoyawa

Ruben Arellano Tlakatekatl is a scholar, activist, and professor of history. His research explores Chicana/Chicano indigeneity, Mexican indigenist nationalism, and Coahuiltecan identity resurgence. Other areas of research include Aztlan (US Southwest), Anawak (Mesoamerica), and Native North America. He has presented and published widely on these topics and has taught courses at various institutions. He currently teaches history at Dallas College – Mountain View Campus. 

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Transcript

Kurly Tlapoyawa (00:33)
Greetings, dear listeners, and welcome to Tales from Ostlantes, the podcast where we take you on a journey through Chicano, Mexicano, and Mesoamerican history and archaeology, and along the way, we challenge pseudo-historical distortions and confront the disinformation that too often surrounds these very topics. We are your hosts, Kurly Tlapoyawa.

Tlakatekatl (00:59)
And Ruben Arellano Tlakatekatl

Kurly Tlapoyawa (01:03)
The Veiled Prophet Society is a secret organization that was founded a century and a half ago in St. Louis, Missouri. It has been entangled in a vast array of white supremacist causes, military institutions, corporate entities, and US presidencies, heads of state, directors, university chancellors, senators, chief executive officers.

Vice presidents and circuit judges have served as members of the Prophet's Court. This book tells the story of why and how an organization like this has put so many of its members into the highest offices of American society. And that is from the introduction of the book The Veiled Prophet, Secret Societies.

White supremacy and the struggle for St. Louis. And joining us today, dear listeners, is the host, the host, the author of said book. Gonna have to change that. Or the host of said book, Devin Thomas O'Shea. Thanks for coming on the show, Devin.

Devin O'Shea (02:23)
Thank you for that introduction. Thank you for making me in charge of the podcast. ⁓ that's legally binding now. So thank you for having me, Ruben and Kurly. I'm very excited to talk. Yeah, absolutely.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (02:27)
Yes. Right.

Tlakatekatl (02:29)
Yeah.

Well, thank you for coming on the show.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (02:37)
Yeah, this book is super interesting. And I first heard about the veiled prophet. ⁓ you had done an episode of the QAA podcast. ⁓ which ⁓ full disclosure, as aside from my own podcast, that the QA podcast is like my favorite podcast. And so I'm I'm I'm always talking about it. And ⁓ that that episode in particular, I was like, Holy shit, this sounds so weird. And

Devin O'Shea (02:47)
Yeah.

yeah. Legendary.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (03:08)
I think it it really came to to the forefront in people's minds because the that actress from ⁓ The Office was associated with the ⁓ the debutante ball that was associated with the Veiled Prophet Society. Very weird stuff, fascinating stuff.

Devin O'Shea (03:17)
yeah.

Yeah, Ellie Kemper is the primary access point. ⁓ she was also Kimmy Schmidt, of course. And she had been crowned the queen of love and beauty, as you do, ⁓ in nineteen ninety nine, before sh long before she got famous, and then it came out and everybody's like, you know, she's a she's a KKK princess and she had to apologize and she hasn't been back to the ball that I know of.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (03:34)
yeah, yeah.

Tlakatekatl (03:35)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Devin O'Shea (03:56)
⁓ since so, you know, there you go.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (04:00)
Yeah. I mean

Tlakatekatl (04:00)
So wait, so the ball's

still going on? They're still doing that?

Devin O'Shea (04:03)
yeah.

Do you wanna go? It's gonna be in December. Yeah. They they kind of hide it around Christmas time so that like nobody's really paying attention and like it's sort of it's always on like December twentieth or something like that in downtown.

Tlakatekatl (04:06)
In December. Nice. Okay.

I was gonna say they they hide

it during Christmas because they're wearing white and it's a white Christmas maybe. It kinda blends in. Yeah.

Devin O'Shea (04:24)
Mm. Blending in with the snow, yeah.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (04:26)
Mm-hmm.

Devin O'Shea (04:30)
It's quite they're going to great lengths to camouflage w ⁓ the thing that used to be this like huge public event, but yeah, you know.

Tlakatekatl (04:32)
Right.

The mascots,

the snow leopard and the white elephant gift is part of the process.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (04:40)
Yeah. So let's

Devin O'Shea (04:41)
He's

Kurly Tlapoyawa (04:45)
The white elephant gift. Wonk wonk. But lest we get too far ahead of ourselves, ⁓ tell us a little bit about the origins of the veiled prophet. Like where where did this idea even come from?

Devin O'Shea (04:47)
Exactly.

Yeah, I think like the the most the easiest way of explaining like how it happened is that it's basically copying off of New Orleans Maudigras, right? There's a a long tradition going back even further than the Veiled Prophet Society of the Mystic Crew of Comas is sort of the the group in New Orleans that they're riffing off of. They even during the first parade bought on the cheap a bunch of

Parade equipment from New Orleans, and because there are a bunch of Mississippi River barge barons in the first group, they got it shipped up for free. And then the founder, who is an ex-Confederate cavalry officer, Alonzo Slayback, him and his brother were sort of the originators, and they saw there's a poem by Thomas More that uses the Veiled Prophet as the villain of this poem, a terrible

terrible despot and a warning about the dangers of expansive colonialism and imperialism. But they took that villain and were like, actually he's the champion of the city. And he also is conveniently ⁓ hooded and robed just like a clansman, but putting them ⁓ covering your face at that time was made illegal by the Grant administration to

c to crack down on the first wave of the Klan. And so by using this like literary cover plus New Orleans Mardi Gras, plus parades as like a technical power you can impose on like an urban center, they were like, well, the veiled prophet is in charge of the city and ⁓ also we're putting on this parade to crush a multiracial worker strike.

⁓ and like to commemorate the city fathers defeating the workers during the eighteen seventy seven railroad strike.

Tlakatekatl (07:01)
So th that is

that's literally what it commemorates, the defeat of the workers struggle for better pay, better wages, for better ⁓ benefits, and things like that. Now just so we're clear so that the audience, ⁓ the listeners ⁓ understand this, this is happening post civil war and is it during Reconstruction or right? Like what what year exactly does this get going?

Devin O'Shea (07:10)
That's right.

It's it's ⁓

yeah, I I think it's so interesting because it's right on the end it is the end of Reconstruction. So eighteen seventy seven, during that railroad strike, you know, that was a mul that was a ⁓ a national strike. So it was a big j like it turned into in St. Louis a general strike, but ⁓ across the board, you know, from Pittsburgh, New York, Ohio.

Tlakatekatl (07:34)
Okay. Seventy seven, right?

Devin O'Shea (07:51)
all of the rails are shut down and they actually had to have Union troops who were still occupying the south move north into those cities in order to crush and stop this strike that which is crazy. Yeah. So it's right on the edge there. inaugurating the Gilded Age, which

Tlakatekatl (08:01)
The strikes, yeah, right. Mm-hmm.

Right.

And I mean, also, I mean, this isn't the very first strike, but this is on also the cusp of the Industrial Revolution beginning to take shape. Because ⁓ you know, I'm an instructor, I teach history, and I tell my students that, you know, even though we separ in history we separate ⁓ to kind of make it make sense for the students, different eras would give names. Like for instance, you just mentioned the Gilded Age, and so we have the industrial age which it's also kind of overlaps part of the Gilded Age, and then the progressive era also.

Devin O'Shea (08:29)
Yeah.

Tlakatekatl (08:38)
And I tell students all these things are happening in tandem at the same time. So don't think of like one age is ending and another one is beginning. Like thing things are overlapping here, right? And so one of the things that that I tell students is that the industrial era is also the spark of the labor movement. And so these strikes that were taking place across the country, ⁓ with different like the railroads, ⁓ the factory workers, ⁓ in the mines and things like that, they were all

Devin O'Shea (08:44)
Yeah.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (08:46)
Mm-hmm.

Devin O'Shea (08:57)
Mm-hmm.

Tlakatekatl (09:05)
part of the emergence of the industrial age. So you cannot have the industrial age emerge without labor also, you know, being part of the conversation and demanding that they be treated with dignity and and and to be paid fairly. That's all they were asking for. And plus also like the the the the notion of having ⁓ workers' rights and and and the eight hour work week that we take for granted today comes out of this general ⁓

Devin O'Shea (09:23)
Yeah.

Tlakatekatl (09:34)
movement that is taking place at the same time, right? So just to give a little context.

Devin O'Shea (09:37)
Yeah, I mean yeah,

no, I think that's like always really important to remember that like, yeah, it's like a there's a name for this era, but it's all happening I Eric's Hobswam ⁓ has like a thing about how the structure of cities in this era too like empowered workers in the physical landscape because like you don't have an automotive-based urbanity, you have a trolley system, but most people are walking.

And a big part of the eighteen seventy-seven strike is literally filling the city with people having a big workers parade that forcibly shuts down, you know, you go from factory to factory, shutting things down, seizing up the city. I think that's like also hard to picture, you know, because we're in such a car we're in car hell, so it's hard to picture not car hell.

Tlakatekatl (10:19)
Mm-hmm.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (10:27)
Mm-hmm. And

Tlakatekatl (10:28)
Exactly. Mm-hmm.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (10:30)
⁓ the leader of this movement or or the like the primary impetus behind this movement, what a great name for a villain. Like there's no way you don't meet my name's Alonzo Slayback. It's like, you're a bad guy, obviously.

Devin O'Shea (10:38)
Yeah. Yeah.

Tlakatekatl (10:40)
Yeah.

Devin O'Shea (10:42)
Slayback. Yeah, right. You're

Tlakatekatl (10:45)
Sleep.

Devin O'Shea (10:46)
the villain

of the story, clearly. I mean, he he was he was ⁓ like you know, gangs of New York, like Bill the Butcher. Like he was that guy basically. He was like really good at riling up a mob and like, you know, going and sitting next to a voting booth and making sure, you know, you vote in the right way.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (10:51)
And

Mm.

Devin O'Shea (11:11)
He's like a democratic mob boss also. And a crazy cavalry officer. So very cool.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (11:14)
Freaking nuts.

Yeah, like he

had a really interesting origin story kind of where

Tlakatekatl (11:23)
True Renaissance man, if I might say.

Devin O'Shea (11:25)
Yeah.

Of evil. Yeah. A pro slavery renaissance man.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (11:28)
Yeah, r the Renaissance of evil. Cause he was

part of this new Virginia colony project, which I gotta be honest with you, I didn't really know much about until ⁓ I read the book. And I mean it all makes sense, but for the listeners, basically, you know, Maximilian is in charge in Mexico, the Napoleon the Third has has imposed Maximilian as like the emperor of the second Mexican Empire, and

Devin O'Shea (11:36)
Yes.

Yeah.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (11:58)
You've got the end of the Civil War, and you have all of these former Confederates who are basically afraid that they're going to be brought up on war crimes, right? That that some bad shit's going to happen to them. So Maximilian like invites them, well, why don't you come to Mexico and take advantage of our vast resources and set up colonies here? And they called this the New Virginia colony. And

Devin O'Shea (12:09)
yeah.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (12:25)
One thing that that I thought was interesting is so there's a group called what were they called? The Knights of the

Devin O'Shea (12:32)
Knights of the Golden Circle, yeah.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (12:34)
Yeah, the night the knights of

Tlakatekatl (12:34)
Mm-hmm.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (12:36)
the golden s that also, so you got Slayback, obvious bad guy, Knights of the Golden Circle, obvious

Devin O'Shea (12:41)
Sure. No way they're doing good stuff for the community, you

Tlakatekatl (12:45)
Well, I mean

you did have a labor ⁓ union called the Knights of Labor as well that was pretty radical at the time. So there was a lot of knights and not a lot of groups that were named themselves self center, like or aristocratic and medieval kind of knighthood and things like that.

Devin O'Shea (12:46)
know.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (12:50)
Yeah.

Devin O'Shea (12:51)
That's

true.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (12:56)
Yeah.

But these guys, you know, Maximilian's ⁓ proposal, if I if I get this, if I understand this correctly, is you know, you Mexico had outlawed slavery. So they're telling the Confederates you could come here, set up colonies, but you can't bring slaves. And this Knights of the Golden Circle were like, nah, we're gonna they had their own plan in place, right?

Devin O'Shea (12:59)
Yeah, chivalry.

Tlakatekatl (13:01)
There you go, chivalry.

Devin O'Shea (13:11)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean this is like such a fascinating like Du Bois talks about how slavery, especially after the transatlantic slave system is shut down, right? And you enter into this terminal phase of like, you know, psychotic southern plantation breeding strategy of just you have to isolate the South completely from everything else and do this create this horrific environment of human chattel slavery.

And that that system was still not economically stable and it needed to vent. And so there's a big effort to have it vent through Missouri into the West. But then there's this other sort of project that was going on, especially with young, you know, conservative, ⁓ proto-Confederate men, to join these clubs, the Knights of the Golden Circle, to convince them to join basically like raiding groups that would

Tlakatekatl (14:03)
Mm-hmm.

Devin O'Shea (14:21)
cross the border into Mexico in order to like expand the South that way as a new vent. And it's called the Golden Circle because it was going to encompass the entire Gulf of Mexico. And so there's a there's like an alternate timeline that's really not that unbelievable where the South and the North draw and then the South invades South and just spreads slavery into, you know, bringing it back to Haiti, Cuba.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (14:34)
Yeah.

Devin O'Shea (14:50)
They really wanted Cuba. So there was like a a whole thing about I don't know. There's an entire history also of what's it called? It's called filibustering. ⁓ where you like round up a bunch of guys, put on boats and try to do Bay of Pigs, but like seventy years previous.

Tlakatekatl (14:53)
Problem.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Yeah. They tried in

Panama and failed miserably. It was one of the biggest places. ⁓

Devin O'Shea (15:13)
Yeah. I mean,

there's a big California one also and they're always like a guy crosses a border, slips on a banana peel, gets cholera and dies. It's like it's a familiar like

Tlakatekatl (15:17)
Mm-hmm.

Right. Yeah. Yeah, this is happening

Kurly Tlapoyawa (15:24)
Which

Tlakatekatl (15:26)
all over the place. But but also what I tell my students in class when we're going through the Civil War period is that the South wasn't just intent on maintaining its sovereignty as its own new country that it had just created for itself, but it also was definitely trying to

move out west because they understood that slavery could not just exist like you were saying if it just c was contained to the south. It needed to expand and they wanted to expand the slave empire. And what does any empire need? It needs more resources, it needs more land. So that's why empires by necessity have to invade their neighbors because they need to expand in order to continue to grow. And so the Confederates, even before the war ended, had already plans to move out west and from there

Devin O'Shea (15:55)
Mm-hmm.

Tlakatekatl (16:15)
to start, you know, going into Mexico. And as you said, Cuba was the big sort of prize that they were hoping for. So they're not waiting until after ⁓ the war is over. Like they're doing this while the war is going on.

Devin O'Shea (16:22)
Yeah.

Yeah, it's it was always sort of the long term plan. And it is it's so strange that it is such a there's such an urgent need to expand it is because if it slows down it then starts to like you know, fall apart through its own contradictions in some ways. And the the the New Virginia colony for was working there for a minute, but

My understanding is also that Maximilian had a vested interest in trying to settle parts of Mexico that he didn't have the best control over. Like I my impression from that period is just that like he's able to rule from Mexico City, but that the various interests all over Mexico are not necessarily cooperating with this imperial, you know, European appointed monarch. Who would have thought, you know?

Tlakatekatl (17:03)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (17:22)
Yeah. Who knew?

Devin O'Shea (17:23)
He seemed like such

a cool guy, you know.

Tlakatekatl (17:26)
Yeah.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (17:27)
Well, have you seen the paintings of him? The guy

Devin O'Shea (17:27)
I

I have not. Is he he ⁓ he quickly got the wall after the the New Virginia qua colony fell apart.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (17:35)
Yeah.

Tlakatekatl (17:38)
Mm-hmm.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (17:39)
He had some interesting facial hair. Let's just put it that way. Well, when the when the Knights of the Golden Circle and and these Confederates cross over into Mexico, they commemorate this by ⁓ and it's here in your book on the fourth of July, convenient, Slabak's birthday, obviously, right?

Devin O'Shea (17:41)
Hmm.

Mm.

Tlakatekatl (18:01)
Sleepek.

Born on the fourth of July.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (18:06)
They

they cross the Rio Grande at at Piedras Negras and they bury their last Confederate flag in the waters of the Rio Grande. And this prompts ⁓ Slabak to write this poem, right? The the burial of Shelby's flag. And it's not a great poem.

Devin O'Shea (18:07)
⁓ yeah.

Yeah.

Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Tlakatekatl (18:27)
Mm.

Devin O'Shea (18:27)
You didn't like it?

What didn't you like about it?

Tlakatekatl (18:30)
Come on, do his honors, Kurly. Come on, come on.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (18:32)
It's ⁓

Tlakatekatl (18:33)
Impress

Kurly Tlapoyawa (18:34)
it's just

Tlakatekatl (18:34)
us with your slam Confederate poetry here.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (18:36)
Here we go. All right, you ready? And I quote A July sun in toyed climb gleamed on an exile band, who in suits of grey stood in mute array on the banks of the Rio Grande. And this is where it gets really bad. Just the rhyming scheme here. As a fan of hip hop, this is not great.

Devin O'Shea (18:37)
Yeah. Yes.

Tlakatekatl (18:38)
Ha ha

Devin O'Shea (18:55)
⁓ god.

Yeah.

Tlakatekatl (19:01)
⁓

Kurly Tlapoyawa (19:03)
They were dusty and faint with their long drear ride, and they paused when they came to the river side, for its wavelets divide with their glowing tide, their own dear land of youth, hope, pride, and comrades graves who in vain had died from the stranger's home in a land untried. So yeah.

Devin O'Shea (19:11)
Mm.

Tlakatekatl (19:30)
Week.

Devin O'Shea (19:33)
We're snapping we're snapping, we're yeah, smoking a cigarette in the back of the Confederate beat poet lounge. Yeah.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (19:34)
Yeah. There we go.

Tlakatekatl (19:41)
There you go. Hey, that's a good name for

a spot, Confederate B Point Lounge.

Devin O'Shea (19:46)
Yeah.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (19:47)
Yeah. Well Confederate Beat

Poet Lounge was my favorite alternative rock band in two thousand four. They were really good.

Tlakatekatl (19:52)
There you go.

Devin O'Shea (19:52)
Mm-hmm. There you go. Yeah.

Yeah. That ⁓ that that shit sucks. it was really bad and it got really popular. That's like a very it was reprinted a bunch and like remixed a bunch. Yeah. And it is it I you can see it ⁓ birthing the lost cause ideology. It's just like it's trying its best and ⁓

Kurly Tlapoyawa (19:59)
Yeah.

That's insane.

Tlakatekatl (20:06)
It was remixed. It was sampled and remixed.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Devin O'Shea (20:22)
Of course, I don't know, it's just ⁓ it's funny because then Alonso gets terribly ill and has to be basically carried on a stretcher all the way to Mexico City after they bury that flag. So he was always getting really sick. Yeah. It's just carried it's sort of and then he would pop up and say something about like ⁓ a battle in Scotland from like six hundred BC or something, and like to energize everybody.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (20:35)
So the entire way in, he was just getting carried.

Tlakatekatl (20:51)
Who

was this guy, the Highlander?

Devin O'Shea (20:52)
There's also

he yeah, I mean that was the conf the ⁓ the chivalry brainworm was like, you know, ⁓ we're just like knights. We are just like, you know, these brave Englishmen. but yeah, he's ⁓ he's quite a character. I feel like he there's also a lot of stories on their way to Mexico City of just getting totally hoodwinked out of a bunch of horses.

Tlakatekatl (20:58)
Yeah.

Okay.

Devin O'Shea (21:21)
Or just like tricked out of a bunch of money. So it's like there's this very powerful, we're gonna bury the flag and carry on the cause at first, and then by the time they get to Mexico City, they're like, actually I just wanna sit down for a minute, because I'm totally broke. Yeah. They run completely out of steam.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (21:35)
It's like won won won.

Tlakatekatl (21:36)
Dang.

It's

So it's

kinda like like ⁓ bury my my heart at Wood It Knee. This is bury the flag at the Rio Grande.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (21:43)
Well

There you go.

Devin O'Shea (21:49)
Exactly.

Yeah, there it is.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (21:52)
And and thanks

to your your book, sir, I learned what a Hajira is. So I'd never it's a great word. H E G I R A. And it's like when you're you're going on a wallet, Mr O'Shea, if if you

Devin O'Shea (21:58)
That's a good word we should bring back, I think.

Tlakatekatl (22:00)
How do you spell it? How do you spell that word?

A T G

Devin O'Shea (22:13)
I think it's just like a pilgrimage, right? It's like a it's

Kurly Tlapoyawa (22:15)
Yeah, yeah, you're

trying to escape a really shitty situation.

Tlakatekatl (22:18)
But in what language? What is this?

Kurly Tlapoyawa (22:21)
Hajira?

Devin O'Shea (22:21)
I don't know

Kurly Tlapoyawa (22:22)
I don't know. That that's a good question. But you you note here that the ⁓ the Confederates believed that they might be a force powerful enough to overwhelm the monarchy and take the Mexican Empire in the name of the South, while others simply wanted to negotiate some form of colonization. So they had very high opinions of themselves at the at the start of this, and then it ends with them just kind of like you said.

Devin O'Shea (22:26)
Knowing them

Tlakatekatl (22:29)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Devin O'Shea (22:39)
Yeah.

Tlakatekatl (22:45)
Yeah, grandiose opinions, right?

Kurly Tlapoyawa (22:51)
We just wanna can we just sit here and rest for a while?

Tlakatekatl (22:53)
Mm.

Devin O'Shea (22:54)
Yeah.

Where they also get sort of like ⁓ Maximilian sorta delays or just doesn't like hurry up with the the colony idea and so they end up in a bunch of hotels racking up giant bills to be there too. But yeah, I think there is it should not be lost on anyone how egotistical the Confederate leadership still was after losing the war and

They're limping into Mexico and they're like, Well, we could probably knock over this empire still. It's like and then they get hoodwinked out of horses and, you know, robbed and shot at and finally make it to Mexico City and they're like, We're we don't have any more.

Tlakatekatl (23:28)
Hmm.

Well, to

to add a little bit more context to to that story, ⁓ it's it's also true that a lot of the the southern cavalry and and a lot of the infantry cut their teeth before the Civil War in the war with Mexico, the US Mexico War of eighteen forty six, eighteen forty eight.

Devin O'Shea (24:00)
Absolutely.

Tlakatekatl (24:02)
And so they already had that experience and so they knew they had already defeated Mexico once. And so here they are going into Mexico thinking, Hey, we've done it once, we can do it again. And we can claim this for the South and establish the Confederacy down here, since we couldn't establish it ⁓ in our homeland and we'll just rule from here and maybe the intention was to obviously go back to those southern states and and

Kurly Tlapoyawa (24:13)
Yeah, that's a good point.

Tlakatekatl (24:27)
kind of reclaim them back into the new Virginia w what were they gonna call this play? The new Virginia ⁓ Confederate Empire or something? I mean like what was what was the end game here?

Devin O'Shea (24:35)
I think it was just gonna be new

Yeah. I mean I think the end game, yeah, was to like it was to spread slavery it back into Mexico to make it legal again in order for all this southern money and like interest to like keep going. ⁓ and in s

Tlakatekatl (24:47)
Mm-hmm.

So more of an economic

empire as opposed to an actual sort of ⁓ traditional empire of of land ownership.

Devin O'Shea (25:03)
Yeah. And like it is really interesting too, th there's like a ton of ⁓ the Spanish American war or the yeah, the war like had a big effect in St. Louis too, because it's like kinda right up river and like a lot of weapons manufacturing was going on here, Olin ammunition and there's Chapley rifles and stuff like that. ⁓ and there was even a ⁓ revolutionary

Tlakatekatl (25:05)
Okay.

Devin O'Shea (25:31)
I had not known this until somebody published it a while ago, ⁓ about a newspaper that helped ignite the spark that led to the Mexican Revolution. This was ⁓ Mexican reformer and activist Ricardo Flores Magon. Magon.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (25:46)
Magone.

Tlakatekatl (25:47)
Magon. The Magon

the Florida's Magon brothers, yeah, they were out of that St. Louis. Yeah. Was it called Regeneracion? The pi the paper?

Devin O'Shea (25:52)
That's crazy. That's so cool.

I don't know.

Tlakatekatl (25:58)
I'm trying to think if it was regeneración.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (25:59)
I think it was called

⁓ regeneration.

Devin O'Shea (26:00)
Yes, it was.

Tlakatekatl (26:02)
Yeah.

Devin O'Shea (26:02)
Yeah. It's ⁓ it's there was ⁓

Tlakatekatl (26:05)
'Cause they were exiled

from Mexico 'cause they were they were ⁓ being persecuted by the government, obviously, because they were calling for reforms and if necessary, take up action against the government and so they had to flee. And they were anarchists as well, exactly. Yeah.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (26:14)
And they were anarchists.

Devin O'Shea (26:16)
Nice. Let's take.

Yeah.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (26:19)
Yeah, they

they're bad asses. If you want you know, you should definitely read more about the the Florida's Magon brothers 'cause those guys were freaking legit bad asses.

Tlakatekatl (26:24)
Well flows of my own brothers. Mm. Mm-hmm.

Devin O'Shea (26:28)
Really? Okay, cool. Yeah. I'm gonna add it to the list. I also looked at Maximilian's facial hair and that's like that's a true rat's nest beard, brother, you know? That's a real that's a real crazy one you got going. ⁓

Kurly Tlapoyawa (26:34)
Ha ha ha

Tlakatekatl (26:37)
Ha ha ha.

⁓ yeah.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (26:43)
So one thing I I I had done ⁓ I I work on a project down in Belize and I was totally unaware of this whole point in history, but there's this large Confederate ⁓ graveyard in Belize. And I was like, what the hell is this? And then they told me, well, like, yeah, after the Civil War, all these Confederates, they were afraid

Devin O'Shea (27:02)
Mm-hmm.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (27:11)
That they were gonna get brought up on war crimes. Like same thing, right? And a lot of them just wound up here in Belize. And I always thought that was interesting. I need to look more deeply into that because I wonder if any of them came by way of Mexico or were maybe part of that group and then just went further south. Or I wonder if there's any connective tissue there between the two groups.

Devin O'Shea (27:14)
Mm-hmm.

I would bet that there probably is, if not like all of these guys knew each other. Actually there's a story about how when they were going after burying the flag or before burying the flag, they had met at a Texas guy's house and he was like in the Knights of the Golden Circle and so like there's a chain or there's a pipeline basically of Confederates going into South America. There's the Confederados in

Tlakatekatl (27:57)
Mm-hmm.

Devin O'Shea (28:03)
Brazil also, if you look up some of the pictures where they like will have a big festival every once in a while and dress up as Confederates and so yeah, it's like the Civil War Yeah, it is. And I think their plan was to just like try to restart slavery, to try to like carry on 'cause like what is being a Confederate other than the slave economy? It's just

Tlakatekatl (28:15)
So it's like a Confederate railroad, like the underground railroad, but for Confederates.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Devin O'Shea (28:32)
There's nothing really

there. And didn't work. Sorry, dude. You lost.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (28:38)
Yeah, for

Tlakatekatl (28:39)
So this is probably

Kurly Tlapoyawa (28:40)
sure.

Tlakatekatl (28:40)
where the Nazis got their idea too, to flee from Europe after the war and and go to Central South America, mainly South America, to escape their war crimes. Yeah.

Devin O'Shea (28:48)
Yeah. To get out of there.

Yeah. It's very

Kurly Tlapoyawa (28:53)
Like we got we got homies down there.

Tlakatekatl (28:55)
Right. We got

the Confederados.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (28:58)
There you go. So how long was ⁓ Slayback in e I mean exile is how you how you term it in the in the book? A at what point did he return to the United States and ⁓ what prompted that return?

Devin O'Shea (28:59)
Yeah.

I believe he was down there for a total of four or five years and he's back in the US by eighteen seventy. So he has to be sort of bribed back to the United States by his mom, who's like, Your wife and kid really need you to come back here and he's like, I don't wanna get shot.

Tlakatekatl (29:34)
So he not only was he all that,

but he was also a deadbeat dad. Well.

Devin O'Shea (29:38)
He was a little bit of a deadbeat dad, yeah, that's right. He's doing too much sh he was writing poetry, okay? He was like the really bad poetry. He was Yeah. Yeah.

Tlakatekatl (29:44)
There you go, there you go. Pursuing his true calling in life. Family, meh.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (29:51)
Yeah, he was tearing it up on the slam Confederate poetry

circuit.

Devin O'Shea (29:56)
It's there's a ton of Alonzo Slayback poetry to rifle through if anyone wants to ⁓ dig it up. Mm yeah. That's a r wretched vibe. Yeah. It's bad. ⁓ yeah, he ⁓ he makes it back eventually and this is the you know, the great sin of the civil war is just that like

Tlakatekatl (30:03)
The golden dawn slam.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (30:05)
Have you had the Golden Dawn slam at iHop? It's pretty good.

Tlakatekatl (30:10)
⁓

Devin O'Shea (30:26)
all of that fear that the Confederates felt about being shot or imprisoned for the awful crimes they did, totally unfounded. We were perfectly willing to let everybody back into the club. You just had to recite the ironclad oath, and he quickly became a lawyer in Missouri. He was just like accredited immediately, which

Kurly Tlapoyawa (30:38)
insane.

Tlakatekatl (30:45)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Alt forgiven.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (30:48)
So they they

got pardoned, like they literally got pardoned.

Tlakatekatl (30:49)
Yeah. Pretty much. Yeah, exactly. That's basically what happened. The big part.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (30:54)
It's fucking nuts.

Devin O'Shea (30:54)
Not only that,

he also, while he was in Mexico, got Alonzo like got to know a lot of the like trade routes and sort of like what the commercial sort of side of things was looking like, especially from like stuff coming out of South America. And his brother, meanwhile, is working his way up the ⁓ New Orleans Upper Crust Societies. Charles is a financier and he is working his way through

you know, the mystic crew of Comas, the Parade Society, but there's all kinds of labyrinthian New Orleans rich people clubs. And so by the time Alonso gets back to St. Louis, you got Charles in New Orleans and you have basically a pipeline for South American goods to go up and then circulate into the country. So it's very good space.

Tlakatekatl (31:45)
What kind of goods were they involved

with? Were the where were they importing?

Devin O'Shea (31:50)
There's a lot of coffee and a lot of ⁓ like fruits, vegetable are like ⁓ another one was like nuts. Like there's a a famous nineteen thirties episode of labor history is the Funston nut strike. And a lot of the shelled nuts would come up off of come up through barges and then get unloaded, and then you know, workers would have to sit there unpicking

Tlakatekatl (32:18)
Mm-hmm.

Devin O'Shea (32:19)
Just in terrible conditions. ⁓ but it's a lot of like agricultural stuff coming up. There's still a lot of that. I mean, that's like the established route still. There's a lot of especially I I worked at a wholesale florist here and all of the flowers are all coming from Ecuador. Yeah. Tons, tons.

Tlakatekatl (32:36)
yeah. Comes from South America. Yeah, yeah.

Right.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (32:41)
Damn.

And so he finds himself back in St. Louis.

Devin O'Shea (32:47)
He's back in St. Louis and what do you know it? He gets into politics, which is what happens when you don't hang the Confederates, is that they then start to take back over. Which is also what happened in New Orleans. It's just that especially the southern cities, you know, New Orleans was like notorious for hating the Confederate general that they got ⁓ that was the wartime, you know, in charge of the city, Butler. ⁓ they

Tlakatekatl (32:54)
Right.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (32:54)
They be they become the yeah.

Tlakatekatl (33:14)
Right.

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Devin O'Shea (33:15)
made a nasty joke about how he would steal your

silverware if you invited him to dinner. ⁓ so there's an enormous class solidarity amongst these like ex-Confederate rich people. And Charles during the Long Depression exits New Orleans and comes up to St. Louis. Him and Alonzo are sort of like doing finance, business, commerce, and Alonzo is also a lawyer. And so it's a very powerful

you know, two brothers in the city. They be Charles becomes the president of the Merchants Exchange right away, which is like the Chamber of Commerce. and then of course you have the 1877 railroad strike that is also the product of this long depression that had happened just then. And ⁓ then you get the need for the rich to invent a symbol that they can all rally around, that they can like

Tlakatekatl (33:56)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Devin O'Shea (34:16)
You know, I I you get the feeling that there is still fractured hurt feelings amongst the rich people who are on the Union side versus the Confederate side and we need something that stitches everybody together, especially since as we were talking about the the knights of labor are sort of starting to gain momentum and the conditions are so bad that like spontaneous organization is happening. And so we need to counter organize and we invent

Tlakatekatl (34:34)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Devin O'Shea (34:44)
the

veiled profit for that.

Tlakatekatl (34:47)
So I I'm curious because even like before the Confederates ⁓ before the K Ku Klux Klan became the poster child for hooded individuals clad in in robes, like this is a tradition that goes back to medieval Europe, right? Of having these these robes with the pointy hats. I mean there's I'm I'm not sure if there's still that Catholic order, I forget the name of it, but there used to be a C Catholic order that that's the way that they

Devin O'Shea (34:55)
Mm-hmm.

Tlakatekatl (35:16)
dress with those pointy hats and junk. Right. And so so I want I guess what I guess what I'm trying to get at is, you know, if you're looking at it from a more sort of ⁓ if you're trying to give them credit for trying to unite both sides of of their class, those who were on the Union and those who were on the Confederate side, do you think that the choice that they made with this veiled prophet was maybe them not

Kurly Tlapoyawa (35:17)
Like at Easter, right? Didn't they have like a big parade with round Easter carrying torches?

Devin O'Shea (35:21)
Yeah.

Yep.

Tlakatekatl (35:45)
Considering hey, maybe some of my confuse this as ⁓ being a racial thing with the KKK. Maybe they were just thinking, this is part of the whole shiv chivalry aesthetic that's going on right now. We're gonna adopt this figure that's hooded and happens to have a pointy hat. What do you think about that?

Devin O'Shea (36:02)
Yeah.

He just happens to be veiled and that there's I mean, yeah, the ⁓ this is the sort of archaic ancestor of the clan is chereverie, or in England it was called a skimming, and that is chrevery means loud music in French. And so it was just like in medieval Europe, if you have a problem with somebody in town

Tlakatekatl (36:05)
Yeah. It's

right, right. Yeah.

Devin O'Shea (36:31)
they're marrying the wrong kind of person, racially, religiously, whatever, or they're kind of a you know, deadbeat on a bunch of debts or something like that. You could rile up a posse and you know, all dress up in crazy costumes and start playing really loud music and sort of parade to their house and then like threaten them. And that can be either, you know, it's embarrassing enough to have

Tlakatekatl (36:34)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Devin O'Shea (36:59)
you know, the annoying parade come to your doorstep. But they would also drag people out and sometimes maybe hang somebody or drive them out of town. It's like to enforce sort of small small bill laws within a place. And that the costuming then became very ⁓ important, especially if you were making fun of a French priest with a big meter hat on, miter hat, that's sort of where the clan

Tlakatekatl (37:02)
Great.

Mm-hmm.

Devin O'Shea (37:29)
hood comes from. That's why it's like pointed like that. And why that's like you're saying, Kurly, the weird European clan guy guys that sometimes appear during Easter. Very strange.

Tlakatekatl (37:30)
Right.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (37:43)
Mm-hmm.

Tlakatekatl (37:43)
Right.

Right.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (37:44)
Well, I I I I would like to have been at that meeting where the the rich people from the like pro union, pro Confederate got together and they're like, Look, guys, I know we have our problems, but we all fucking hate poor people, right? Like we we do hate the poor people. So we can Yeah, yeah.

Devin O'Shea (37:57)
Yeah. We had a TIFF. Right. Right.

Tlakatekatl (38:00)
W we hate the poorest.

Devin O'Shea (38:05)
These pores have gotten out of line though, you know.

Tlakatekatl (38:07)
Mm.

Devin O'Shea (38:09)
Yeah, that I mean that is kind of the eighteen seventy-seven strike was very scary. It was for an a whole week, you know, the workers in St. Louis controlled the entire city. There's a famous thing that ⁓ Eric Foner's uncle, ⁓ Philip Foner, ⁓ wrote a whole book about this strike and St. Louis is sort of the ending chapter because technically the first

American commune government gets set up during that week and they point to the fact that a sugar refinery had to ⁓ get permission from the workers' executive committee in order to operate. And they're like, that's that's governance, you know? And so there's like there's a a brief moment of like communal government and then yeah, the rich people all

Tlakatekatl (38:49)
Mm.

Right.

Devin O'Shea (39:03)
We're scared that the workers were gonna shut off water to all of their mansions. They were like fleeing the city. There's a real panic. Which some people are saying we need to bring back. Not me. I'm not saying that. I'm just a humble historian. A lot of people, I'm hearing it. Or down the street is having a trillion dollars should be sort of a a bad thing that you don't want a lot of people to talk about.

Tlakatekatl (39:16)
Mm-hmm. Right. People are saying, I'm hearing.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (39:17)
Word on the street is

Yeah, yeah. In in a in a just world. Well, if you look at that first image, I think it's the first image of the veiled prophet that they use, he's holding guns, right? Like he's and and he's going there to like as a symbol to like, let's take out these these strikers.

Devin O'Shea (39:43)
yeah. He's got he's strapped. He's ⁓

Tlakatekatl (39:53)
Mm-hmm.

Devin O'Shea (39:53)
Yeah, this

is ⁓ in reference to that one appears before the first VP parade where the trolley workers in St. Louis, especially in this era, just had an enormous amount of control over shutting down the city. And so the the strike from the previous summer keeps kind of rolling, or the spirit of it is still rolling with the trolley workers. And ⁓ he the Veiled Prophet appears with he's got one gun.

A handgun and then he's got a rifle and then there's also a third rifle behind him just in case. And then he's also got like a bowie knife on him. He's just he's ready to do violence and he's there to crush Yeah.

Tlakatekatl (40:29)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

I'm looking at this image and it's it's

⁓ it looks like it's a stock image because you you include two separate stories, one's from Illinois and the other one's from I'm guessing from St. Louis. I'm not sure. Could they're one one is 'cause one of the one story is the Ku Klux Klan of Southern Illinois. They have that image that you just described with the Vel Prophet and the hat.

Devin O'Shea (40:50)
Yeah.

Tlakatekatl (41:01)
has like it's more like a jester hat because it has those tiny squares around the the bottom like the the caps ⁓ bottom edge and then there's some at the top as well. So it kind of reminds me more of a jester hat. Right. It's decorated and then next to it you have the the Veld Prophet and it's the the same image. It's identical. So was this like a stock image that was being used to describe both the KKK and the Veld Prophet at the time?

Devin O'Shea (41:10)
Yeah.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (41:11)
Mm-hmm.

Devin O'Shea (41:15)
It's little decorated. Mm-hmm.

Tlakatekatl (41:29)
Like they there wasn't a distinction being made in the press between the two?

Devin O'Shea (41:34)
Well, that was the the big breakthrough is that for like a hundred years in St. Louis history, it's been plausibly deniable that the Veiled Prophet is a Klansman. There's no link to the Ku Klux Klan organization. The in fact the Veiled Prophets are much more like Freemasons. There's even the weird Freemasonry sect.

Tlakatekatl (41:48)
Mm-hmm.

Devin O'Shea (41:59)
called the Mystic Order of the Veiled Prophets that's totally divorced from the St. Louis one. But the yeah, it's very strange. You can get a Veiled Prophet sword from that Masonic ⁓ club though, which is cool. ⁓ I sh I need one, you know? I need a sword. I do need a sword.

Tlakatekatl (42:08)
Whoa.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (42:14)
Do you have one? You should have one. I would I would think you wrote the book, you should have the sword.

Tlakatekatl (42:17)
You do. You do. And I mean,

isn't it legal to walk around Saint Louis with your sword on on your side on your hip? That's what I hear. Yeah.

Devin O'Shea (42:26)
for sure. Yeah. Absolutely.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (42:26)
That's what

Devin O'Shea (42:28)
I've seen people, you know, walk out of their house with a machine gun before. the ⁓ but the the mystery I did that's a real thing. I was driving down Jefferson like two years ago and a guy walked out with just like a gigantic like machine gun with a huge like barrel on the bottom and got into his car and I was like, See you later, brother. Yeah.

Tlakatekatl (42:33)
Mm-hmm.

Hm. My freedoms, right?

Devin O'Shea (42:53)
Good luck for with w whatever you're doing.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (42:57)
Sounds like

⁓ Saint Louis is basically a Quentin Tarantino movie at this point.

Devin O'Shea (43:01)
it it does feel like

that, if not children of men or something a little more dark, ⁓ sometimes. ⁓ but the mystery for a hundred years was just like the direct link to the clan. And ⁓ as you were pointing out, Reuben, the like there's a four I think it's four years before the Veiled Prophet starts in St. Louis

Kurly Tlapoyawa (43:06)
Yeah.

Devin O'Shea (43:26)
There's a Illinois newspaper that covers Klan violence at the end of the first wave. And it's really horrific. It's like the this rural area that the Klansman is not a chivalry knight the way that they present themselves. They sort of are ⁓ a bruiser that you can hire to go and like do ⁓ violence to someone who owes you money, or they

Tlakatekatl (43:30)
Right.

Devin O'Shea (43:52)
break into somebody's house and commit sexual assault against somebody's daughter. They're just like becoming more and more thugs in the popular consciousness. And so Dakis, this reporter, writes this whole thing about Illinois. The newspaper was based in St. Louis. It probably had the same shelf of stamps ⁓ four years later when Alonzo Slaybeck is inventing the Veiled Prophet. And they just took the Klan stamp and then stamped it

Kurly Tlapoyawa (44:22)
⁓

Devin O'Shea (44:22)
on the Veiled Prophet

one and we're like, There we go. So it's like a direct connection of like they were intending this to be a a Klansman one way.

Tlakatekatl (44:24)
Let's see.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (44:32)
Mm. It's it's it's an overt lineage that they were they were getting to.

Tlakatekatl (44:32)
Mm-hmm.

Devin O'Shea (44:38)
with just enough deniability

to be like, mm well, he's a different kind of guy. But there's but there's also what's really fascinating is ⁓ Elaine Parsons' book about the first wave of the clan is really remarkably good because it it's totally different from the second wave where you have birth of a nation and standardized uniforms and we have photography from it and stuff like that.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (44:44)
Yeah.

Devin O'Shea (45:07)
The first wave is chaotic and there's just like, you know, the clan violence is committed by guys who are putting on women's dresses and putting a like potato sack over their head with eye eyes cut out in it. And then they're so each uniform is or each costume is like different. They call themselves the ghosts of Shiloh. They say that they are, you know, ⁓ men from the moon, or sometimes they'll say they're from

Tlakatekatl (45:30)
Mm-hmm.

Devin O'Shea (45:37)
you know, a faraway land in the Middle East. So there's an orientalist element to their cosplaying basically. It's very strange.

Tlakatekatl (45:42)
Right.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (45:48)
So this organization, the order of the veiled profit.

immediately I mean, is it immediate? Like how how quickly does it start to attract the the movers and shakers of of St. Louis?

Devin O'Shea (46:05)
The that's a great question because it does oscillate. So like at first it is the club. It's like the coolest club to be in. ⁓ all of the richest guys in town are in the club in the eighteen seventies and into the eighteen eighties. It's just like popping off. ⁓ but then towards the eighteen nineties, especially as you're creeping closer to this huge St. Louis history thing, the nineteen four World's Fair, the club is sort of

Bankrupt and losing momentum and they're not really sure if they want to keep going because all of the veiled profit guys are also organizing the world's fair. So they invent basically ⁓ or you know, they have the ball every year, but they only have a bell of the ball. And so they in that period of crisis, they invent the queen of love and beauty to get more of the women to want to participate in the group. And then they also get a big fundraising ⁓

Tlakatekatl (47:01)
Mm-hmm.

Devin O'Shea (47:04)
bonus and sort of skirt through into ⁓ then it really takes off in like the nineteen twenties and thirties. There's a big rejuvenation of ⁓ debutante balls ⁓ across the country. And then it gets really, really, really popular in the forties, fifties and sixties. That's when it's like the apex. But yeah.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (47:28)
And so what's the impetus

for these women to participate in these balls? Like a is there a cash prize or is it just the title? Is it ⁓ just the prestige?

Devin O'Shea (47:40)
It's I think it's mostly the prestige and like the ⁓ especially at like the height of the queenship, you were a minor celebr like you were a celebrity in Saint Louis. Like ⁓ the queen would like go to hospitals and like go and see patients like a celebrity doing a make a wish thing. Exactly, exactly. Like getting a free, you know

Kurly Tlapoyawa (48:01)
You're doing ribbon cuttings at the local safe way or

Tlakatekatl (48:02)
Yeah.

Devin O'Shea (48:09)
Going in and getting a free appetizer from the restaurant. yeah. Fantastic. ⁓ but I think it's mostly prestige and it's a beauty contest and it's a popularity contest. I think all of those are very potent ⁓ things. I think that's part of the macro level thing in the book is to sort of illustrate a club and how it works in order to show that like rich people need a lot of

Kurly Tlapoyawa (48:14)
There you go.

Devin O'Shea (48:38)
structure in order to like each other and that they also need like they need to be like corralled into sort of like associating with one another because they won't do it naturally. ⁓ and that the the the debutante thing, yeah, is like the especially 'cause the queen also has a court and so her like best friends get to also dress up and be special and there's yeah, it's a pr a small prestige economy.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (48:52)
That's interesting.

Tlakatekatl (49:07)
Mm-hmm.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (49:09)
So this group, I mean, all white male, right? All wealth wealthy ⁓ politicians, businessmen, lawmakers. ⁓ so what what effect does this organization like how far is their reach into not only locally in St. Louis, but nationally? Like what what influence, how how far they they stick in their hands?

Devin O'Shea (49:15)
Mm. For sure.

Yeah, I mean, so we just talked about like the World's Fair, that's a big thing, but really what puts Missouri on the map is the Truman presidency. You get a Missouri president and that opens a big corridor for people, guys in Missouri to get into Washington DC. In the book I go through, Clark Clark Clifford, who's like invented being a lobbyist, basically, ⁓ is one of the most successful advisors to the president.

Big veiled profit guy, huge like everybody's very proud that Clifford is you know, Truman's right hand man. He got very powerful because he organized the president's poker games every week. Which is like that's very important. It's sort of like being the Diet Coke guy for the current president, right? It's like that's a that's an important job, brother. You know, you gotta yeah.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (50:24)
Nice. Yeah, I mean

Tlakatekatl (50:25)
That's important. Yeah.

Hmm. There you go.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (50:31)
Yeah.

Tlakatekatl (50:35)
It's on it's on your resume, right? Like it's

Kurly Tlapoyawa (50:37)
Going on the C V

Devin O'Shea (50:39)
It's very

Tlakatekatl (50:39)
top of the list.

Devin O'Shea (50:40)
important.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (50:41)
Says right

here, ⁓ Diet Coke bitch. What w would you mind explaining that?

Devin O'Shea (50:44)
You're it's kind of dykook bitch.

Was that a growth opportunity for you or yeah. so there's you know, ⁓ direct pipeline into DC politics, but also, you know, all of these CEOs of I think the classic St. Louis companies, Anheiser Busch, McDonnell Douglas was a big aerospace manufacturer that now got swallowed up by Boeing.

Tlakatekatl (50:51)
The one, boy.

Devin O'Shea (51:14)
Monsanto Chemical is here and their CEO, of course, was unveiled in nineteen seventy-two by a civil rights activist. He was a veiled prophet. He was the vice president. So maybe the president was it washed but he was vice president at the peak of production for Agent Orange. ⁓ which like the most evil part of Monsanto's history.

Tlakatekatl (51:21)
Hmm.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (51:22)
He was a veiled prophet.

Okay.

Tlakatekatl (51:37)
Mm-hmm.

Devin O'Shea (51:43)
Arguably. They're certainly trying to top themselves all the time. ⁓ but like, yeah, you get that. There's also William Webster who became director of the FBI and then the CIA and then Homeland Security. So all part of the same club. There's a certain amount of like, you know, there's a certain amount of the club does that. It like is supposed to select.

Tlakatekatl (51:55)
Right. Yeah. So it was part of the same club.

Devin O'Shea (52:11)
guys who are gonna be good at positions of power, that is like sort of the social function of those things.

Tlakatekatl (52:17)
So the

way that you describe it, its transition from its origins to what it became, it's it kinda reminds me l a lot of like the skull and bone society in a way, where it's like this club of uber rich and a certain class of people in this country that are connected, have money and are able to make their way into politics because they have the right connections.

Devin O'Shea (52:26)
Yeah, for sure.

Tlakatekatl (52:40)
And so is there like a comparison ⁓ there between the two groups? Are are they in competition? Are th is there overlap between these two groups, or what do you think about that?

Devin O'Shea (52:49)
I don't know. I it would be interesting to know if I bet there are some Yale guys, especially at the peak of the Veiled Prixties, Fifties and Sixties. I bet there were Yale guys. But I think they're very analogous, especially because at the core of the skull and bones thing is like drinking from the skull of Geronimo is like the that's the skull in the skull and bones. And so there's like a bedrock of like horrible white supremacists, you know, conquering our

Tlakatekatl (53:02)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Devin O'Shea (53:19)
non-white enemies in embedded in these things. And that the other thing I think that's interesting is that both these are both secret societies that everybody knows about, you know? Right? It's so it's such an eye ⁓ a paradox of just like the the secret society needs everyone to know about it and to like witness its mechanations.

Tlakatekatl (53:20)
Mm-hmm.

Knows about, yeah.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (53:33)
Yeah.

Devin O'Shea (53:46)
Sometimes it needs so the the veiled prophets have a big parade and a huge debutante ball, but the the guy is always anonymous and secretive. And so you have to very deliberately construct a void that y like people want to know. It like creates intrigue and that's like where the power comes from.

Tlakatekatl (53:56)
Right.

Right.

So so being I think a lot of people misunderstand what it means to be a secret society. It's not that they're not known by the public because otherwise we wouldn't be talking about them. The secret lies in the fact that they have secret rites and passages and for instance, the secret of the veiled prophet, who is it? ⁓ you know, man of mystery. ⁓ that's where the where the secret lies, and that's the allure, right? If you're a part of a certain society of a certain class and you want in and you want to be part of that club.

Devin O'Shea (54:16)
Right.

Yeah.

Tlakatekatl (54:34)
then you want to be able to know what those secrets are and you have to go through this process ⁓ to be admitted into the club, right? So that's the secret part of it, is what the the on the in and and and outs of and what's going on in the club. That's the secret part. Not that the club exists necessarily, right?

Kurly Tlapoyawa (54:50)
Yeah, yeah, it's not that nobody knows about it.

Devin O'Shea (54:51)
Yeah.

Have you guys ever come across ⁓ this book, The Power of Ritual in Prehistory by Brian Hayden?

Kurly Tlapoyawa (55:00)
Y

I've just heard about it. and I it sounds really interesting.

Tlakatekatl (55:01)
I have not.

Devin O'Shea (55:04)
I think you would like it.

I think this would be a ⁓ the gist of it, and I'm not sure I'm I am reading it with a grain of salt because I will admit that archaeology is not my my forte, but the the gist is that secret societies in tribes, especially in the Pacific Northwest, functioned very much in this way, that like it is a very ⁓ a group of guys as I mean Hayden argues that as as soon as there's a

Tlakatekatl (55:09)
What is the gist of it of the book?

Devin O'Shea (55:36)
surplus being generated through an amount of agriculture or systemic sort of settlement that a group of people within the tribe say, actually the woods are full of spirits, and if you don't trust that we know how to control them, ⁓ that are we have to we'll leverage the fact that we know how to control the spirits in the woods in order to like attract more wealth, get a better ⁓

like position in the tribe, that kind of thing. It's ⁓ it's on shaky ground, I think, especially 'cause it's like, dog, how do you know about any of this? What are you talking about? But really interesting.

Tlakatekatl (56:07)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (56:16)
Yeah.

Yeah, I'd I'd heard ⁓ somebody was talking about it on a podcast and that's what turned me on to the book. It was some archaeology podcast that I was listening to, but it definitely sounds

Tlakatekatl (56:19)
Hm.

Devin O'Shea (56:28)
It gets passed around

in like parapolitics people also 'cause it's sort of like it's basically I think doing a good job of explaining what Ruben was just saying of like, well the thing about a secret society is that it has a social function and that like the secret part is not how you how it really works, you know.

Tlakatekatl (56:51)
Mm-hmm.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (56:51)
Yeah. Well at the ⁓ the parade and the ball, is there an individual portraying the character of the veiled prophet present at both of them or just one of them? And do we know if it's the same individual? Like do they get to do both? Do

Devin O'Shea (57:07)
yeah.

He gets to, I think you the attractive thing, at least ⁓ from what I have read, is that if you become the veiled prophet, you all the guys in the club have to treat you as infallible. So congratulations. You are the perfect specimen ⁓ for the year that you're the veiled prophet. And so you do the ball and the parade. I think that later on, as sort of like interest is lagging.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (57:27)
Ha ha.

Okay.

Devin O'Shea (57:40)
And sort of like we're going through we're having trouble with recruitment. Multiple years the Veiled Prophet is just the same guy. ⁓ but it does it is supposed to alternate.

Tlakatekatl (57:52)
Well, see, to me, that that that just sounds uninteresting because I I expect some kind of sacrifice at the end of that year. I mean, you've been treated well for a full year, you've been given these special privileges and treated like a god on earth almost for for lack of a better way of explaining it. And yeah, what do you give back? There's there's gotta be some reciprocity here, exactly. So

Devin O'Shea (57:59)
Right, exactly.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (57:59)
Yeah.

Yep.

Devin O'Shea (58:05)
Yeah.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (58:09)
Yeah, what do you give? Where's the reciprocity?

Devin O'Shea (58:11)
Right. Yeah.

We should at least

make like, yeah, you should get ⁓ I don't know, you should have to be the servant of the group for the next year after that, you know, like a karmic balance or something. ⁓ but there's an also, you know, in the later back half phase of the Veiled Prophet Society, especially after the a horribly embarrassing thing with the VP fair that happens, there's a big integration effort.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (58:28)
Something.

Devin O'Shea (58:45)
Also as William Webster is being confirmed ⁓ to head the CIA, he has gets asked some very pointed questions by the Senate. ⁓ and they're like, Okay, we have to diversify. And so they let ⁓ I think the first one is three black doctors from St. Louis get to join the Veiled Prophets and

Tlakatekatl (58:49)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (59:05)
So the

Senate in the the hearing actually talk about the Veiled Prophet, the Veiled Prophet Society.

Devin O'Shea (59:11)
yeah.

It's inscribed in the record of ⁓ history that they they had the civil rights protest group action ⁓ that went up against the veiled profit, they had Jacqueline Bell testify about like who these guys are and how they're auctioning their daughters off. Yeah. Exactly. Our her point was like our Percy Green is like the big head of action and

Tlakatekatl (59:15)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Let us in. Let us in.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (59:31)
Uh-huh.

Devin O'Shea (59:40)
As soon as they were trying to integrate it, he's the the line is just like, Why would you want why don't you just take the thing and go away? Like go to the Chesterfield or way out west and do your thing. Don't make it associated with the city. Very silly.

Tlakatekatl (59:51)
Right.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (59:55)
So this organiz you you just mentioned them, Action. ⁓ they started actively protesting against this the Veiled Prophet Society. ⁓ like how were they like what were they doing? Were they showing up at the parade and you know, trying to raise awareness of what's going on, the you know, the the origins of this group, the f the reach of this group?

Devin O'Shea (59:59)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, there's a very interesting underground understanding of the Veiled Prophet. So like in Saint Louis history, if you're reading a book from the fifties, the Veiled Prophet is a guy everybody loves and is amazing. but that's before the African American voice enters Saint Louis history. And as soon as like the black community in the city is gets a chance to speak, it's like that guy's a clansman.

And we were really uncomfortable by having the parade and just doing it in general. ⁓ action, this also came up in the nineteen thirties with the worker movements. There's a a there's a pamphlet about the strike and how the veiled prophet is a capitalist and he's the boss. ⁓ so there's always this like working class proletarian understanding of what's being symbolized. Action is an an amazing

Tlakatekatl (1:01:13)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Devin O'Shea (1:01:18)
interesting group because they are a guerrilla theater ⁓ protest group. And so they would exactly, as you were saying, Kurly, interrupt the parade. But then there would be somebody that would have society labeled on them and they would f lie down in the street and then a doctor that said like justice on him would come and revive him. And so there's like a little play that's happening to convey what is why we're protesting and what's going on here.

Tlakatekatl (1:01:37)
Mm-hmm.

Devin O'Shea (1:01:47)
That's perfectly made for like television, which is getting really popular, and newspapers. So they were very savvy about manipulating media in order to spread their message, which was essentially an economic message that, you know, the reason for targeting the veiled profit is because, as Percy Green said, there was no better way to get in front of every capitalist in the city than to go to the Veiled Profit ball and make a big stink about something. It's just all the guys are in one room.

So that eventually culminates in the seventy two unveiling escapade, ⁓ which is very cool, you know.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:02:25)
And what went down exactly? Like how did they wind up unveiling him?

Devin O'Shea (1:02:30)
There's still a mystery as to how they got the tickets. There's like a secret handoff from probably a wealthy wife or daughter or son, gave action members three tickets to the ball. Three of the women ⁓ show up and they go up into the balcony, two of them cause a big ruckus and they throw a bunch of pamphlets down into the main ⁓ where the ball is happening, or not the ball, but the procession.

How you have to be presented to the prophet and he's up on a stage. And then Jenna Scott takes a power cord that is hanging from the ceiling and rapples down onto the floor. It it breaks. It breaks midway. It did not hold ⁓ yeah, it was not good enough to hold her weight and it broke. She like broke a rib when she landed. So there's this big commotion happening. She like pops up.

Tlakatekatl (1:03:00)
Mm-hmm.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:03:10)
Badass.

Tlakatekatl (1:03:14)
I was gonna say did it did it hold her? Like

Yeah.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:03:25)
Damn.

Devin O'Shea (1:03:29)
And then like runs around past somebody and is like, I gotta get a phone call, and then appears on stage behind the prophet, unveils him. It's Tom K. Smith, vice president of Monsanto. She gets dragged away, kicking and screaming, and it's a huge victory, except that the St. Louis media, many of the editors of the Globe Democrat or the Post Dispatch are, if not in the club, they were at the ball.

There's photography every or there's cameras everywhere, photographers everywhere. We do not have a picture of Tom K. Smith. No one took a picture.

Tlakatekatl (1:04:04)
No one took a picture or they took it, they

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:04:05)
Damn.

Tlakatekatl (1:04:07)
they censured it, banned it, or confiscated it, the film. So what what you were describing with with the way that the group was operating ⁓ in the street doing the street theater kind of reminded me of Teatro Campesina with the farm workers out in California. ⁓ that's kind of what they were doing as well to poke fun at the growers when they were on strike and ⁓ and you know, you would have ⁓ one

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:04:09)
Yeah, those those photos exist somewhere. They they're in a safe. They're in a safe somewhere.

Devin O'Shea (1:04:10)
Exactly. Probably. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Tlakatekatl (1:04:32)
person who would be playing ⁓ one of the ⁓ the growers representing all the growers, right? And they would have the the in big letters, the grower or and and or the scab would be labeled and and you know it's it was kind of like that. So it it kind of reminded me of of that ⁓ to an extent. But what I wanted to to ask you is do is there with with ⁓ the rise of in the sixties and seventies of people

Devin O'Shea (1:04:37)
Right.

Tlakatekatl (1:05:01)
questioning and contesting this group. ⁓ was there a a conflict between people who were looking at it from a racial aspect and those who are looking at it from more of a labor sort of almost communist perspective, you know, where a race isn't really a a part of the conversation. And, you know, it's like it's about the worker, not about the race, right? Was there a conflict between those two groups?

Devin O'Shea (1:05:05)
Uh-huh.

Right. ⁓

for action, Percy is like his politics w were always about the economic plight happening in North St. Louis, which was where predominantly the African American community was redlined into North St. Louis and then starved economically. ⁓ and so there was always the economic worker first components, especially since action comes out of

the Congress for Racial Equality and the the you know Martin Luther King civil rights push, especially in St. Louis. I mean, King was assassinated in Memphis. St. Louis is this river city with this kind of racial worker history. ⁓ so it was actually pretty cohesive at the moment. Although there was also there's a strain of protest against the Veiled Prophet.

Tlakatekatl (1:05:52)
Mm-hmm.

Devin O'Shea (1:06:21)
Where it's like, well, we're gonna have the black veiled prophet. And that was also a action counter protest. But even before that, there was just like, well, we're gonna have a parallel, similar structure, and have instead of the queen of love and beauty, it's the queen of human justice. And ⁓ so there's like a little bit of cause then there's also the velvet plastic ball, which was like the hippies spoof

Tlakatekatl (1:06:25)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Devin O'Shea (1:06:49)
Wall

and so there is like a divide between the hippie movement and the civil rights movement in that era. Yeah. W the v

Tlakatekatl (1:06:54)
Right, right, right. Okay. But there wasn't like

a concerted effort to sort of bridge that gap between these two various ⁓ approaches to a call for action, you think, or was it a little bit of an overlap here and there, but not like a grand narrative statement from both into one?

Devin O'Shea (1:07:18)
I think like in St. Louis's like labor history, it's always been that intertwined with proletarian politics is the African American community because it's such a it's a southern style city where when people in St. Louis have developed such a acute and specific racism because poor people are associated with being black and to fight for

Tlakatekatl (1:07:30)
Mm-hmm.

Devin O'Shea (1:07:47)
better wages or a ri a raise in the minimum wage that is always coded as African American in general. And so there's like ⁓ it's always sort of or at least my impression of it is that the yeah, the fighting for poor people is always coded as fighting for African Americans. But that is also, you know

Tlakatekatl (1:07:55)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Devin O'Shea (1:08:13)
Not the case anymore. The the chain the it's totally shifted now that like St. Louis has ⁓ its own David Stewart is a African American billionaire CEO of worldwide technology and he's just as much of an asshole as all these other guys and like

Tlakatekatl (1:08:25)
Mm-hmm.

Right. Money changes

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:08:30)
Mm-hmm.

Is is he a veiled prophet? Yeah, right.

Tlakatekatl (1:08:32)
people's psyche for some reason.

Devin O'Shea (1:08:35)
well yeah, for some reason. ⁓ I don't think that David is a prophet because ⁓ this is another part of the end of the book is just like you don't need a club anymore because billi individual billionaires in St. Louis exact way more power than ⁓ like a club full of guys. Yeah. There's like a crazy libertarian billionaire here named Rex Singfeld, and then there's the the Cargill agricultural

Tlakatekatl (1:08:47)
Mm-hmm.

A group. Mm-hmm.

Devin O'Shea (1:09:04)
woman is worth billions of dollars also. And they between the three of those people can they're they don't need any other they don't need to socialize with the other rich people, which I think is a f a weakness in rather than ⁓ a show of strength. I think so. Cause then you're you're beholden to ego and you know, I think that there is some something to watch there.

Tlakatekatl (1:09:18)
Mm. Which is in our favor, I mean, I think. So shh right. ⁓

So this is just kind of an an aside that I just picked up on. So you're so to me, when I think of St. Louis, I think of the gateway to the West, right? and so it's it's not that I was ⁓ ignorant of the fact, but I just find it striking that it's kind of like here in Dallas, right? Here in Dallas, ⁓ because we're so far up north in Texas and Fort Worth models itself as also kind of a gateway to the West in a in a sense here in Texas.

Devin O'Shea (1:09:40)
Yeah.

Tlakatekatl (1:09:59)
And Dallas has always straddled this this line where are we part of the South? Are we part of the West? Are we like what are what's Dallas? So Dallas has always had this kind of schizophrenic identity crisis that I like to refer to. And it seems to me like there's something similar going on in St. Louis because are you part of the South? Are you the West? I go, What's going on here? Can you say anything about how that plays into this Ville Profit narrative at all?

Devin O'Shea (1:10:00)
Yeah.

Yeah. I

I mean, I think that's exactly right. Of just like in Dallas is very similar, I think too. St. Louis is also right. It it's the last slave city before you exit the South, and it's the first one you go to when you're headed are you're headed south from the north. So it's two Southerners were a bunch of Yankees.

Tlakatekatl (1:10:44)
When you headed in. Yeah. From the north, yeah.

Devin O'Shea (1:10:52)
And then to somebody in Chicago, we're a bunch of Southerners. ⁓ to people in New York, we're like the far west. And then we're also kind of on the edge of the Midwest. And then we're also at the last we're the last note on like the Rust Belt chain, you know? And I think that that has ⁓ that combined with the westward expansion, you know, manifest destiny, chauvinism.

Tlakatekatl (1:10:55)
That's funny.

Mm-hmm.

Right, right, right, right. Yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Devin O'Shea (1:11:22)
Creates I don't know, there's like a desire for ⁓ monumental things. I think Dallas has this too. Like glittering pillars in the desert, you know. And then like

Tlakatekatl (1:11:27)
Right. yeah, yeah, we do. Mm-hmm. Everything has to be brand new.

In fact, right now we're having a conversation about whether or not to save City Hall this very unique piece of architecture that was built in the seventies and it's over fifty years old now. And so there's talk about well, we need to remodel it, but the remodels gonna take like millions of dollars to do it right. And so the mayor and a lot of

Devin O'Shea (1:11:51)
Of yeah.

Tlakatekatl (1:11:56)
you know, ⁓ people in the city who like new and shiny, they're all advocating for, you know, not necessarily demoing it, but moving City Hall out of that place and building the whole brand new one. And what ends up happening is that Dallas doesn't have a good history of preserving its past. It's always demo, demo, demo and build new and up and and so yeah, the prospects of that old city hall ⁓ surviving the next five years are very low.

Devin O'Shea (1:12:09)
Yeah.

Right.

It's it's a shame because I think that I St. Louis has a very similar especially with urban renewal and just running interstates through everything. It the the most valuable thing in the city is the ancient architecture that is here, the like stuff that was built in the eighteen nineties that needs to be cared for and preserved and makes it unique. And yeah, there's it's a very similar mentality of like, well, what if we get bogged down and like

Tlakatekatl (1:12:42)
yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Devin O'Shea (1:12:54)
⁓ redesigning the logo of the city or something and then knock down a bunch of shit and you know.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:12:57)
Well, speaking

Tlakatekatl (1:12:58)
⁓ jeez.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:13:01)
of icons, ⁓ the arch, right? The the big arch of St. Louis. we were talking before we started recording the the the Society of the Veiled Prophet had a little a little bit of a hand in in some of the stuff around there. Can you can you touch on that a little bit?

Devin O'Shea (1:13:21)
Yeah, I mean the story of the arch is like a story of urban renewal where the most ancient or the most like historically important structures in the city were right there on the riverfront because that's where all the steamships had to unload. That is like the central connecting economic space. And of course, as soon as the railroads eclipsed that and the interstate highways went in, we don't give a shit about the riverfront anymore. They demolished

hundreds of buildings in order to clear this huge space and then build a giant parabola, possibly a gateway to the underworld. We're not really sure. It was designed by a Finnish yes, exactly. If you go in right at the right time at midnight, ⁓ you'll transition into a new world. it was also designed by Erosarinen, who is a Finnish OSS officer. So there's like

Tlakatekatl (1:13:57)
Hm. To the to the upside down.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:14:00)
Yeah.

Devin O'Shea (1:14:19)
military intelligence also in there. ⁓ and there's a big Manifesto Destiny museum underneath it too. ⁓ very cool. ⁓ but yeah. The so Percy Green's big claim to fame was when they were building the arch. He and Richard Daly climbed half of it in order to protest the fact that this was a big federal project that n had no black laborers a part of it.

Tlakatekatl (1:14:26)
Yeah. Right. Right.

Mm. Yeah.

Devin O'Shea (1:14:48)
It was a completely white crew.

And so the arch, as people have said, Percy Green turned the arch into a civil rights monument or into a symbol for the civil rights movement. And that that is the preferred that's my preferred way of looking at it as opposed to what it insists upon, which is that it's the gateway to manifest destiny land and

Tlakatekatl (1:15:05)
⁓ looking at it that way. Hmm.

Manifest

destiny. Yeah, yeah.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:15:14)
Mm.

Devin O'Shea (1:15:15)
Yeah, which has always been a that's a theme of the Veiled Prophet Society is that is communicating these like the parades every year are specifically designed floats to telegraph messages to working class audiences. Very famously in like I think it's the nineteen twenties, there was a float of like progress or like pe

Tlakatekatl (1:15:31)
Mm-hmm.

Devin O'Shea (1:15:42)
People literally shoving Native Americans into the Pacific off the West Coast on one float of just like that is the it was afloat, yeah. It's like driving them and the buffalo into the ocean. And then it's like, yeah, that's just one of the floats that I take my kids to see. Cool.

Tlakatekatl (1:15:50)
That was afloat.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:15:52)
God damn the fuck.

Tlakatekatl (1:15:54)
Praying.

Jeez.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:16:02)
Fucking hell.

Tlakatekatl (1:16:03)
You know what this reminds me

of? Here in Texas in San Antonio, every year in April they do the Fiesta Texas or whatever it's called. And it's basically a big parade with week long celebrations. And the parade originally it goes back to like the late 1800s, maybe early nineteen hundreds. And it was to by the the the the rich people, the the wealth the the d owner class in San Antonio. It was a way for them to ⁓ project their power, their wealth and their dominance of the land.

Devin O'Shea (1:16:10)
Uh-huh.

Tlakatekatl (1:16:32)
By the Anglos against the Mexicans and the natives. And so over time, and there was there was the same thing they had, they have a queen of the of the parade, and it's very similar, right? And and over time, you know, in the 70s, a lot of activists were protesting the messaging, and so they sanitized it and updated it. And by the 80s, it just became like a way to celebrate San Antonio and it's multi diversity of cultures, blah, blah, blah. But it's still like the core.

Devin O'Shea (1:16:41)
really? Yeah.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:16:56)
Uh-huh.

Tlakatekatl (1:16:58)
root of of that celebration is, you know, Anglo dominance over the land and and its native inhabitants, right? So

Devin O'Shea (1:17:05)
Yeah,

there's like no better ⁓ especially when you're talking about like, you know, nineteen twenty. Like for a rich person, ⁓ the ultimate flex is to have a f a parade float. It is a big giant thing that requires a lot of money to make and artisans to like design and stuff. It's totally useless. Like it you use it once. Yeah, it's a total peacocking display of wealth and power and power over the streets.

Tlakatekatl (1:17:21)
Yeah. Right.

Right, it's look at me, look at me.

Mm-hmm.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:17:37)
Well, we have something similar here in New Mexico. We have the the entrada, ⁓ which is the the big parade where people dress up like conquistadors and Franciscan priests and they march through the streets to commemorate the peaceful, bloodless reconquest of New Mexico following the Pueblo revolt. But

Tlakatekatl (1:17:50)
right, right.

Devin O'Shea (1:17:51)
damn.

Tlakatekatl (1:18:00)
Mm.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:18:04)
I mean, it's it's horseshit. One, it was not bloodless, it was not peaceful, but they insist on having this thing every year. And it's always met with opposition. There's always people out in the streets protesting against it. You know, we have nineteen Pueblos here, plus the Navajo Nation, the Apaches, and people show up in force to to protest this, and they just continue they insist upon it. And

Tlakatekatl (1:18:30)
Mm. It's tradition,

Devin O'Shea (1:18:32)
Yeah.

Tlakatekatl (1:18:33)
Kurly. Mm-hmm.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:18:33)
It's the same thing. They have a queen of of

Devin O'Shea (1:18:34)
Yeah. Really.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:18:36)
of the fiesta and they even have the reenactors will go excuse me, the reenactors will go into public schools and tell this like totally fucked up version of New Mexico's colonial history that erases all the bad shit, right? Yeah, which is very on on brand just for the

Devin O'Shea (1:18:45)
Mm.

Oof.

Tlakatekatl (1:18:54)
You mean like Thanksgiving?

Devin O'Shea (1:18:56)
Yeah.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:19:00)
the rewriting of history that we're seeing in the United States right now, where they're going to all the monuments and just like removing all of the offensive language, anything that casts the United States in a bad light. So it's just part of that. Well, in in twenty twenty one, is that when it came out that the the actress from The Office was ⁓ is that when it it made headlines

Devin O'Shea (1:19:11)
Yeah.

That yeah, I think it was twenty twenty one. It's sort of like a year into the pandemic and the George Floyd protests and ⁓ I think it's it was sort of in the consciousness that Ellie Kemper was involved with it, but it just like really sparked and blew up for f whatever reason that summer. ⁓ and she, you know

Tlakatekatl (1:19:47)
Mm.

Devin O'Shea (1:19:50)
Course came out and apologized and said I didn't really know what I was doing when I was 19. My line on this is always like, yeah, I I kind of don't you can't blame the debutante teenagers for the like structure of it or like the history that is not readily accessible. ⁓ but I I mean you can blame them a little bit for sure, but it's like the parents, the parents who like know better and are.

insisting upon this thing that the club has been protested for literally half of its existence now. So like you really can't say that you didn't know that like black people in St. Louis don't like that this is happening. We're just like, you know, there's no plausible deniability for yeah, Yeah, right. The amnesia society.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:20:38)
I had no idea.

Tlakatekatl (1:20:39)
It's part of the secret society that you don't know that people are protesting about it. Hmm.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:20:41)
Yeah. So where does

where does the the order of the veiled prophet stand like right now?

Devin O'Shea (1:20:51)
Well, a couple years ago, I think it was two years ago now, they came out and said, actually VP doesn't stand for anything. It's just letters. So we got rid we got rid of the veiled prophet. Okay. Interesting. And then they renamed the guy ⁓ the Grand Oracle. So he's not the Veiled Prophet.

Tlakatekatl (1:21:00)
Mm-hmm.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:21:04)
Good grief.

Tlakatekatl (1:21:05)
VP, okay.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:21:07)
It's the

VP now. Okay.

Tlakatekatl (1:21:15)
The grand horror of the

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:21:17)
Which is way less creepy, right?

Devin O'Shea (1:21:19)
Right?

That that doesn't sound like, I don't know, Grand Wizard or like it's really cl it's actually closer to the clan. Yeah. The and also, you know, the vi the Grand Oracle has been a sub moniker for the Veiled Prophet since the beginning of it. So they're not even really trying that hard. But as we said, you know, Ruben, if you want to come up.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:21:23)
Yeah.

Tlakatekatl (1:21:24)
Right. The grandiose prophetic oracle

Devin O'Shea (1:21:45)
for the debut ball and gonna be in December again. Yeah. They're still I got they're still around. Like the ⁓ but they're mostly, I think, you know, they just don't have the heavy hitters that they had in like seventies or eighties. Like those were legitimately Percy Green, when he was going up against them, he was going up against some very scary guys. Like some very well connected

Tlakatekatl (1:21:48)
Yeah. December, all right.

Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Devin O'Shea (1:22:15)
you know, military industrial complex, CEOs, you know, very scary people. And now it's, you know, there are plenty, ⁓ there's plenty to worry about because of how many lawyers are in the Veiled Profit Society, but they just don't have the same ⁓ aura. They don't have the same gump there I think that they're struggling a little bit to recruit new members, especially since there's so much negative attention about it.

Tlakatekatl (1:22:28)
Mm-hmm.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:22:40)
Yeah.

Tlakatekatl (1:22:40)
⁓ I see. I see.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:22:44)
Yeah.

Tlakatekatl (1:22:44)
But

isn't that across the board though? I mean, I've been hearing that since the pandemic, even before the pandemic, that a lot of these social clubs across the country have been struggling to not only maintain members but recruit new younger members that'll keep the organization going into the future. And I wonder if some of that also plays into what's going on with that group as well. Bad press and also the fact that young people just don't really care about these kind of old school social groups anymore.

Devin O'Shea (1:23:05)
Yeah.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:23:06)
Yeah.

Yeah,

and you know, nobody wants to join our racist club. We can't figure it out.

Tlakatekatl (1:23:14)
Mm-hmm.

Devin O'Shea (1:23:15)
come on, what if we made it more races?

Or less? I don't know. What do you want? ⁓ yeah, I think no, I'm not invited. ⁓ they there is a protest. Usually there's people who show up and just sort of watch what happens because you never know who's gonna go to it if like, you know, ⁓ the mayor ends up at the Veiled Profit Ball. That's like an important thing to know about.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:23:20)
Have you have you attended the the ball?

Tlakatekatl (1:23:39)
Mm.

Devin O'Shea (1:23:43)
She d has not attended. but I wonder if that also that problem with recruitment is a similar thing of like the another capstone part of the book is just that like I think St. Louis specifically as a Rust Belt city and in our economic position has been totally destroyed by corporatization and the conglomeration of ⁓ power in the economy where like

Tlakatekatl (1:24:08)
Mm-hmm.

Devin O'Shea (1:24:13)
The Veiled Profit guys used to own every one of these gigantic businesses. A B, you know, McDonnell Douglas, Purina, all of these giant they were locally owned. The guy was in town and he was in charge of it. All of those. Purina is owned by Nestle. McDonnell Douglas is owned by Boeing. A B is owned by Imbev. That so it's caused this huge amount of corporate flight. And it's like a collapse in the patriarchy that like

Tlakatekatl (1:24:29)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Devin O'Shea (1:24:42)
What is a young businessman in St. Louis supposed to do? Like all you have to go somewhere else in order to be in the center of things. And so why would you trust this you know, in a big way the Veiled Private Society betrayed all of the young people by giving up control over these companies? And I think that's more why they're suffering.

Tlakatekatl (1:24:46)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Mm-hmm. There's no

there's no benefit to anyone, even if they had the means or want to join it, to join it anyway, because there's no benefit from it. Yeah, I get it.

Devin O'Shea (1:25:13)
Yeah.

Unless it's just to network or it's to build your brand. But even then it's like, well, why do you need to get hazed and like initiated into the veiled profit society? Like, do you have to do, you know, there's a whole ritual of ⁓ you know, pledging and stuff like that, just like a fraternity. That's a lot to ask for somebody, I think, who's looking at the economy that we're looking at and is like

Tlakatekatl (1:25:35)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Mm. The winning economy. that's what I've been hearing.

Devin O'Shea (1:25:43)
you know, mm yeah,

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:25:44)
Yeah.

Devin O'Shea (1:25:45)
mm but w

we just can't stop winning. It's huge.

Tlakatekatl (1:25:48)
Winning.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:25:49)
So

I assume that you are pretty well known ⁓ in St. Louis as a critic of or an i an exposer of the the veiled profit society. Have you ever felt ⁓ I don't know, unsafe or like people were going to try to try to get at you for for talking all this shit?

Tlakatekatl (1:26:02)
Mm-hmm.

Devin O'Shea (1:26:14)
Talking shit. ⁓ I think that I feel pretty s I, you know, there's always the chance that like, you know, some I probably can't get hired at like certain places. But for the most part, those guys don't want to talk to me or think about me or even engage with this at all. And I think that the the stakes are just like really low. So like

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:26:16)
Yeah.

Devin O'Shea (1:26:41)
My my line on this is that like Percy Green really was risking his life and like was doing a really brave, you know, thing. Those action protesters were being very, very brave. Jenna Scott had her car firebombed after she unveiled the veiled prophet. They broke into her apartment and messed it up. Like that was bad. Yeah, to try to check, you know, ⁓ anybody who's trying to be critical.

Tlakatekatl (1:26:47)
Mm-hmm.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:26:58)
God damn.

Tlakatekatl (1:27:03)
Trying to send a message there, right?

Devin O'Shea (1:27:10)
And now it's like this is much more of a like, okay, here's the last chapter of St. Louis history. Why don't we learn about it so that we can build a better chapter going forward? Like those guys aren't in control anymore. We have the chance to start new and develop different systems, more working class systems, big robust public goods systems. That's kind of what I'm hoping the book.

Tlakatekatl (1:27:21)
Mm-hmm.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:27:22)
Absolutely.

⁓

Devin O'Shea (1:27:38)
And I think those guys just don't wanna they don't wanna talk.

Tlakatekatl (1:27:40)
So basically

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:27:40)
Yeah.

Tlakatekatl (1:27:41)
at this point, besides doing the annual parade for the Velled Prophet or what what are they calling it now? The Grand Wizard or what is it?

Devin O'Shea (1:27:48)
⁓ yeah, the grand ⁓ this is the problem, yeah. The grand oracle.

Tlakatekatl (1:27:50)
The Grand

Oracle. I mean, besides doing the this parade, I mean, what else is the group doing? I mean, is there any anything else?

Devin O'Shea (1:28:02)
They don't even do

they don't even do the parade anymore. They ⁓ got totally unincorporated from Fair St. Louis. They just it's just a ball. They have a clubhouse and they have a warehouse. ⁓ but ⁓ I would exactly. There's I mean that is I do think about that sometimes because it's like

Tlakatekatl (1:28:06)
really?

So they just do the ball. Is it just like a ball now? Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:28:20)
Is that where the Ark of the Covenant is kept in the in the failed profit warehouse?

Tlakatekatl (1:28:23)
A clubhouse.

Devin O'Shea (1:28:30)
those guys do have a list of everybody who's been the veiled prophet and it would be really interesting to look at who those guys were. Like did ⁓ you know ⁓ L Charles Limberg ever get to be the Veiled Prophet or something like that or like ⁓ probably not, but so they have a bunch of archival material that would be interesting to look at. ⁓ in general they're just like a f you know, kind of the Freemasons for a certain kind of racist guy in town.

Tlakatekatl (1:28:44)
Mm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Devin O'Shea (1:29:00)
Racist

mid level real estate guy.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:29:03)
Yeah. Well with with that being said, what would you like to see become of that organization?

Devin O'Shea (1:29:10)
I mean, I think that they should just take all that stuff and give it to the History Museum and just say, like, okay, we're done. There's really there is no reason I mean, ⁓ I think what you were saying earlier about the ⁓ the parade of just like well they insist upon it. It's like a meaningful thing. There's some of that happening with them too, of just like why this gets so much bad press for St. Louis. It makes us look so backwards.

Tlakatekatl (1:29:14)
Mm. We're done, yeah.

Devin O'Shea (1:29:39)
And so ⁓ evil, you know? ⁓ so why don't we like cut that out and just you we can have the Saint Louis debutante ball and just like do it that way and just get rid of the guy and they but they love it. They insist upon the guy.

Tlakatekatl (1:29:51)
Mm-hmm.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:29:52)
Yeah.

Tlakatekatl (1:29:56)
Mm-hmm.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:29:56)
D they wanna keep beating that dead

racist horse.

Devin O'Shea (1:29:59)
I need to put the costume on. I need to feel infallible. Which is okay. Okay, brother. Calm down. You know.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:30:07)
Well, Devin

Thomas O'Shea, thank you so much for joining us. ⁓ I r really enjoyed the book. Once again, The Veiled Prophet, Secret Society's White Supremacy and the Struggle for Saint Louis, written and hosted by Devin Thomas O'Shea. is is the book out? Like it's available for purchase right now, right?

Tlakatekatl (1:30:12)
Yeah, thanks a lot, man. This is great.

Devin O'Shea (1:30:15)
Absolutely.

Tlakatekatl (1:30:24)
And

Devin O'Shea (1:30:26)
Ha ha.

Tlakatekatl (1:30:28)
And hosted and hoisted as well.

Devin O'Shea (1:30:29)
Host it.

It's available for pre order still, but I think they're getting if you order one now, it's gonna get there pretty quick. It comes out on June twenty third officially. Right around the corner. We're gonna go do a true anon event in New York. We're gonna go to Baltimore, Philly. Yeah. It's gonna be sick.

Tlakatekatl (1:30:42)
Mm.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:30:43)
Okay. Yep, right around the corner.

Tlakatekatl (1:30:44)
That's just right around the corner.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:30:51)
hell yeah.

Awesome, man.

Tlakatekatl (1:30:56)
And so where can people find you if they wanted to follow you?

Devin O'Shea (1:31:00)
I am at Devon T. O'Shea on everything. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on Tales from Atlantis. This has been a true honor Atlantis. Sorry. Atlanta is. Yeah.

Tlakatekatl (1:31:04)
Okay.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:31:09)
Aslanthus and tales from Atlanta.

Tlakatekatl (1:31:11)
Tales from Atlanta. We're renaming it.

Devin O'Shea (1:31:17)
And until next time, remember, the truth is like medicine. It doesn't always taste good, but it is always good for you.

Kurly Tlapoyawa (1:31:27)
Timo itase.

Tlakatekatl (1:31:29)
Right on.

Devin O'Shea (1:31:30)
That's a beautiful

one.