While traveling in Texas, Jenny Beth sat down with Tea Party Patriots State Coordinator Suzanne Guggenheim, a super activist committed to fighting for freedom. Suzanne was born in Hungary during World War II and has an incredible life story of survival, resistance, and liberation.
While traveling in Texas, Jenny Beth sat down with Tea Party Patriots State Coordinator Suzanne Guggenheim, a super activist committed to fighting for freedom. Suzanne was born in Hungary during World War II and has an incredible life story of survival, resistance, and liberation.
Twitter: @sguggenheim @jennybethm
Suzanne Guggenheim (00:00):
The French politics were much more violent than what we ever lived through in America. We could not distribute safely flyer heads door of the university without being attacked by the Maurice Group and the Communist group that would come armed with metal bars in helmets and would trace people away.
Narrator (00:27):
Keeping our republic is on the line and it requires Patriots with great passion, dedication, and eternal vigilance to preserve our freedoms. Jenny Beth Martin is the co-founder of Tea Party Patriots. She's an author, a filmmaker, and one of time magazine's most influential people in the world. But the title she's most proud of is Mom To Her Boy, girl Twins. She has been at the forefront fighting to protect America's core principles for more than a decade. Welcome to the Jenny Beth Show.
Jenny Beth Martin (01:00):
Anytime I get to feeling like things are so bad in America that all hope seems lost. I think about my next guest, Suzanne Guggenheim. Suzanne has been a leader for Tea Party Patriots since 2009, and she has an incredible life story. She survived coming into the world in war torn Europe. She survived communist and socialist regimes, and she finally made her way to America where she continues to fight for freedom. To this day, I'm so excited to introduce you to Suzanne and I hope that her amazing story will inspire you to keep fighting for the America we know and love. Today we're with Suzanne Guggenheim and we are at the Coastal bin Republican Coalition Office space in Corpus Christi, Texas. And you are the chairman of the Coastal Bin Republican Coalition, correct?
Suzanne Guggenheim (01:54):
That's right.
Jenny Beth Martin (01:55):
And I spoke here last night and it's four different groups that make up this coalition.
Suzanne Guggenheim (01:59):
Yes, we have four groups. We have a tea party group, we have the Coastal Ban Tea Party, we have conservative women. We have a Trump fan club, and we have just a coastal band republican group that formed this coalition.
Jenny Beth Martin (02:20):
Very good, very good. Now, Suzanne, you have been active basically your entire life and it seems to be in your blood. You must've inherited this from your mother, but you came into the world and have quite a dramatic story. Why don't we talk about your life, what happened the day you were born?
Suzanne Guggenheim (02:40):
So the day I was born in fact was yes a little bit first. It was an amazing day for the whole world. It was in fact D-Day and real D-Day, and I was, at that time I was born in Hungary, and the doctor in fact of announcing to my mother, it's a girl like they always do, said Americans have landed. That was my welcome to the world. My mom found that very emotional. He told her that because he knew how important that was for her. She had spent most of the World War II in France. She was originally, she was a Hungarian at that time, and she left Hungary in 1937 and spent most of the war in Paris in the resistance to the Germans. And she went back to Hungary for reasons that she didn't really care to disclose like most people who have been traumatized by the war in 1943. And I was born in on June 6th, 1944, and she was stealing the resistance to the Nazis in Germany. So the doctor knew how important it was for her almost more than having a daughter that the Americans had landed to free France and Europe. So always said, that was an old man for me, that was the first welcome to the world.
Jenny Beth Martin (04:26):
So the doctor said the Americans have landed and then later told your mom, and you have a
Suzanne Guggenheim (04:31):
Girl.
Jenny Beth Martin (04:32):
Wow. Now she was part of the resistance.
Suzanne Guggenheim (04:36):
Yes.
Jenny Beth Martin (04:38):
What happened with that?
Suzanne Guggenheim (04:39):
So first in France, as you know, Germans had set their quarters in Paris and the French government turned over pretty much French with Amp turned France over to the Germans. My mom was part of those who resisted and helped Jewish people and others who were also in the resistance, tried to stay safe and resist to the Germans who more and more invaded France. First they were especially in the north, and then came south and all of France was invaded and the resistance kept growing. I guess that is when she felt there was a danger closing on her that she knew she had to leave Paris and decided to go back to Hungary where she went back to have the resistance over there against the Nazis that were at that time occupying Hungary. And they still were when I was born, but pretty much just after the Russians came to Free Hungary, we know that that free Hungary lasted for 30 years at least until the freedom came back there. And so my mom first resisted the Nazis, and then when the Russians arrived, it got even worse because the Russian army was extremely violent and brutal and totally uneducated. They would take the worst peasants and then send them on the cities where they would ravage the cities. So the arrival of the Russian was almost worse, as they always said, as the Nazi occupation, which was terrible. My mom was
(07:00):
Not deported, but was taken away and put in a ghetto in Hungary with me as a baby that come during the night and as they usually came to knock on your door and didn't let her take anything with her. I think she had a coat, but that was it that she could put as she was and took her baby in her arm and was taken into a ghetto and where she was beaten all night and she by miracle was able to escape the very next day with me in her arms. And was
Jenny Beth Martin (07:39):
That with the Nazis or with the
Suzanne Guggenheim (07:40):
Russians? That was with the Nazis. Nazis. And then the Russians arrived.
Jenny Beth Martin (07:46):
So your mother was essentially arrested, taken to a gulag or a ghetto, not a gulag, I guess a ghetto by the Nazis and beaten during that
Suzanne Guggenheim (07:57):
Time. During that time.
Jenny Beth Martin (07:59):
And you were with her and then she escaped.
Suzanne Guggenheim (08:01):
And then she escaped. I don't know why she did it. She never, she told me, I just walked out as if I could and nobody arrested me.
Jenny Beth Martin (08:12):
That's amazing. The Nazis were still in control at that time. And
Suzanne Guggenheim (08:18):
Then the Russian invaded two free Hungary, and that was so-called freedom that lasted several decades and my mom started to resist the communist, and as it was not getting any better, after three years, she fled for France, which again, just a baby in her arms
Jenny Beth Martin (08:48):
And was the war over when she fled to France,
Suzanne Guggenheim (08:51):
The war was over, it was 47 and the socialists were in power, but it was much better than the communist. Socialists is just, socialism is just the road to communism as we know, but it's still freedom. Whereas once you have communist in power, freedom is gone. So
Jenny Beth Martin (09:16):
When your mother first encountered Russians in Hungary, it was a pretty brutal experience
Suzanne Guggenheim (09:24):
And she was hiding as she was resisting the invasion. She was hiding hidden by nuns and they were in a cellar and the Russian found them and all the nuns were raped. She was the only one because she had a baby in her arm that did not get raped that day. So that was certainly not the first, but one of her most brutal encounters with communists. So she stayed there for a few more years going from one hiding place to another. And after in 47 she decided that it was time to leave, especially if conditions were very hard. There was very little food. She said when I was, I think I was one year old and there was no food, they thought I was going to die because there was so much malnutrition. So she crossed all over Budapest to go take me to the doctor in the middle of the winter where they say you just arrive in time to save her because of that malnutrition situation. So condition anyway for everybody were very bad. So going to France was a big relief, even though the political situation was not great, it was so much better.
Jenny Beth Martin (11:00):
So at this point, you're about three years old and you've already lived under a Nazi government, a communist government, and moved to a socialist government.
Suzanne Guggenheim (11:11):
Exactly.
Jenny Beth Martin (11:12):
What happened as you moved to Paris and was it Paris where you
Suzanne Guggenheim (11:18):
Missed? Yes, we moved to Paris and we stay, I stayed there. I was raised there and I did, in fact, I was always very aware through my mom of the effect of socialism and especially any total terrorism for sure. She had lived in her bones, the consequences of both, and she was aware of both because people in France after that, more than being aware of what the communists were doing, were still traumatized by what the Nazis did. So France became very anti-fascist and all that. And my mom always said, you cannot forget that any totalism are as bad and what the communists have done, what they have done in Russia, what they have done in China is as bad if not worse, but certainly as bad as what the Nazis have done. So any totalism, you always have to fight. So that's how I was raised, fight any totalism and my character on top of that was fight any bullies and those totalitarian people are bullies.
(12:38):
So that came naturally. And while I was a kid, I did have some teachers, I remember history teacher or whatever that were obviously very biased, but they still kept it kind of toned down. It's really when I arrived in the university that I found the first truly communist and radical professors. It went to the point when I was in school of political science that one of them told me, you are a goalie, which was the conservatives in France. You will never graduate out of this school. Wow. That was very clear. So I was at that time involved with political group that was the goalies. And then I got involved in student groups and we were, there was Paris had in each university there was a student union and then there was a group that was coordinating all the university's union. So I got involved in it and I was on the board when for the first time, finally the conservatives have taken back that union. It was a time when for sure all the universities were extremely lefties. The whole professors groups were in the hands of the communities. They had very strong unions and they were controlling the education system. It was the same in the high school, but it was not as visible as it was in the universities. So during my whole university years, I was very involved in groups that would fight the communist stronghold on the universities and students. I did that until 1968. Where France,
Jenny Beth Martin (15:11):
Hold on just a minute. Let's come back to 1968 and what happened in university. But before we go to that, you were in France starting around 1947 and the war was over. What was France like during that time and as you were growing up as a child and a teenager?
Suzanne Guggenheim (15:29):
Sure. So
(15:34):
Daily life was fine. It's pretty much like it is right now. And it was still better than it. Well, it was still almost better than now because you did not have the permanent indoctrination like you have in France, all of Europe right now and even here. So we did not have that constant indoctrination. So life was rather easy, I would say. And its level of was not as high as in America. People did not, most many people did not have a refrigerator or have dishwasher did not pretty much exist in France or didn't have as many appliances, but it was still a comfortable life and a rather quiet life when you were really looking and learning the political life, of course, you could see how the socialist did slowly change and help the union take hold of all the different parts, not only of the government. The government was more the communist, in fact all along than the communist than the socialist. But they helped also all the unions in all the businesses, you had very strong unions. And as a child you don't see that because you don't live in those businesses and see what's happening. But you could see it growing and the stronghold happening, but it was in the university when you got there, you could not escape it. There was no allowance for anywhere.
Jenny Beth Martin (17:41):
And when you were there, they were rebuilding Paris and all of France at that point, correct? That's
Suzanne Guggenheim (17:46):
Right. When I arrived, they were rebuilding. There had been, of course, quite a lot of damage in the war, and France was very impoverished people for almost 10 years. People still had rationing tickets to go and buy food. So it was a slow recovery. And of course the Marshall Plan helped a lot France, like all of Europe recover. So it was a rebuilding, recovering and growing back the country.
Jenny Beth Martin (18:24):
And there were men who came home from the war and then other families like yours where your father never, you never even met your
Suzanne Guggenheim (18:34):
Father. That's right. I never met my father. He was missing in action just a few months before I was born. So I never met my father. And in France it was the same. You had a lot of people who died during the war and it left France very weakened. Of course,
Jenny Beth Martin (19:00):
Your mom sounds like she was a pretty amazing woman. She was in the resistance. She wound up having to raise you on her own. She saved your life more than once, it sounds like, by escaping horrible situations. What kind of adjectives do you use when you think of your mom, especially as a mother during that time to you?
Suzanne Guggenheim (19:26):
While I was a child, I didn't even know all what she had gone through. She never talked about it. It was much later that I started asking some question and never went very far because I could feel such a reluctance for her of talking about that time that I never wanted to push. I felt very bad and I still do. I know my husband always pushed into looking into genealogy and trying to understand, and I say, I can't. I feel like I'm being nosy and I shouldn't be doing that. If she didn't want to tell me, who am I to try to know? And so yeah, she was a very strong and dedicated woman and she dedicated all her life after I was born to raising me. She raised me alone and in difficult circumstances, but everything turned around me. There was nothing else that counted for her than my wellbeing. So
Jenny Beth Martin (20:32):
She sounds like a pretty amazing woman. So you grow up in France, you get to university and you see that they don't want any divergence of thought. You either agree or they are going to not even let you graduate. How did that make you feel when they told you that?
Suzanne Guggenheim (20:50):
Pretty bad, but pretty angry. I don't like, as I say, I don't like bullies and I don't like to back up in front of adversity. I guess I got that from my mother. And so I say I am going to graduate. So they did that year. That was in my first year in political science. They didn't let me graduate. So I got out of there. I was doing into the same time I was in two university. I was in the political school of political science, and I was in the law university. So I continued my law degrees and I went into another school that's oriental languages it was called, but that's pretty much everything east of France. That's was called Oriental. So I took the Russian and Hungarian. So I was doing those two things, and once you have a bachelor, you can come back into political science with an exam in the second year. So I did that. I'm going back. So I did that, but that's when 1968 happened. So I finished after the revolution. We passed all the exams. So I finished very well my second year. But because of everything that happened, in fact, I decided I was going to not continue political science because I wanted to go into next school. That was where
(22:30):
All political
(22:38):
Activists or who would become deputy minister and all that would graduate. But when I saw them in May 68, do the revolution with a little hat and the umbrella, I said, I cannot take that anymore. I'm going to be a full-time activist and fight what is going on. So May, 1968 arrived and that we had a real revolution in France that was pushed by China and the French Maoist. It started on May 3rd of 68, and they took to the street and started burning all the car, piling them up, removing all the pavement from the street to make walls. And when the police arrived, started throwing them on the police. And that very night they started occupying all the universities. Who was they? The Mao East. And the first night, I would say they may have been in Paris, a few hundred, maybe a thousand maximum. But it kept growing. Every night there were more people and they would continue the attack on were these
Jenny Beth Martin (24:06):
French citizens who were following that philosophy. So it wasn't like Chinese people were necessarily,
Suzanne Guggenheim (24:14):
They were financing and helping. And I'm sure they might have had people help organize, but they were not at all on the frontline. It was a French Maoist group that were on the frontline. And I was, as I said at that time, on the board of the French, the Paris coordinating group of the student union. And we had our office just next to the, which was the main university that they occupied right away. And we did the board meeting to see what are we going to do, what's going on? And as the night would go by, we had to barricade ourself because they came and started throwing rocks in our windows. So we put big desk in front of the windows. But what was quite interesting throughout the night, the board kept reducing. People would find their way to the door to escape and run incognito through the street to escape the attack.
(25:29):
I found myself the only one in the morning who had left, stayed there. So somehow I found a friend who came with me and we stayed for one whole week there and tried to sometime go out to try to see if we could get some help. But everything where we could help, every place, every single department of the government had closed down, everybody had fled, and we couldn't find any help anywhere. So we tried that for one, we got 10 days and I finally found one person that was the secretary. There was a little bit like a secretary of the president of the republic was Charles Dego, and his name was Jack Kar. He was in charge first of the president, personal affairs and Africa. He had both heads and the only one who had stayed in his office and that stayed open during that revolution.
(26:49):
So I finally arrived there and he put me in touch with three people from his cabinet and asked, what can we do to help? So I explained them the situation and what do you need? I say, well, the first thing I need is I need gas because I have a little motorbike. So I could go through Paris, but I don't have gas anymore. And because all of France was on strike, everything was closed. There was no way to get any more gas. So they say, well, we have a gas reserve, so we will refill it as you need it. And anything else. I say, yes, I need you to help me print some flyers so that we can start, try to recruit. So they say, okay, we will print them for you and you can distribute them. So we started that way and there's another group that formed that was called Committee of Resistance.
(27:48):
And we worked together and started to try to gather more people. And shortly after that, one day it was announced that the president of France had left France. Nobody knew where he was. So France was without a president. And after a few days, we found out that he had gone to Germany and to see the military, our military bases in Germany, to see if the army would be ready to help if needed, which obviously they must have assure him that they would. So he came back to Paris and called for a rally and made the circus. So that was almost one whole month where we had no more government, nothing. So we were the only few in the streets to resist. And then as some other groups started in other parts of France until the very end of May, when he called for that rally, people thought, nobody's going to come because you couldn't find anybody anywhere willing to resist and do something. How
Jenny Beth Martin (29:07):
Did you feel during that time? You wake up in the morning and you're the only one left from the student union, and then you're going and you're talking to
Suzanne Guggenheim (29:17):
People and people say, there's nothing we can do. Be careful. Be careful. That's all what they could say. If they were with you, they were telling you, be careful. If they were not, then they were saying, you are completely crazy. They are right. We need to change everything and to do the revolution. So it felt pretty bad because there we really felt alone and we were really alone. Luckily, after the call from the presidential of the gold, people suddenly found courage contrary to what all expectation, 1 million and a half people were on the next day and people could not believe it. Where were they coming from? Where were all those people during that whole month where nobody was doing or saying anything? So that from then on, things really turned over. One months later there were elections, the conservative want, and luckily they didn't do a very good job with their winning, but that's usual with the conservative, right?
(30:26):
We've seen that here too. So during the summer after the election, I spend my time pretty much trying to say, okay, now here we are no more under communist threat, immediate threat, but we know they're there and it's not stopping there. What can we do? So we started movement in the university that will called U N I, intern University National Union, and it still exists. It is still the strongest anti communist group in the universities. So what it had that was special, we called the tri-party right away. It had students, it had professors and people from the administration in the university and people who were already engaged in the business life and who were aware of the threat that the communists were putting on the nation and wanted to do something about it. So we started organizing and launched our movement in September of that year and got first, we worked first in Paris.
(31:58):
We had chapters in every University of Paris. They used to be just University of Paris after 1968. It was cut in certain universities, all of them except two pretty much no three maybe were in the hands of the communist, but we had still chapters in all of them because there were still some students everywhere that were not. And after 1968, they installed representation of student and professor that did not exist with election every year. That was called National Committee of the Higher Education. So we had elections for that in every university every year to send student and professor at the university committee, and then we would elect some at the national committee. So we got engaged very much in all those activities. But because those universities were in the hand of the communist and the French politics were much more violent than what we ever lived through in America. We could not, we did, but we could not distribute safely, flyer heads do of the university without being attacked by the Maoist group and the communist group that would come armed with metal bars in helmets and would trace people away. I had many of my friend end up today in hospitals, and it was a very violent time. So we needed always to ask for help of adults and people to come and protect us because we could not have states ate in front of any university.
Jenny Beth Martin (34:18):
Were you ever attacked?
Suzanne Guggenheim (34:21):
I was personally never hit. I was in a lot of, even though I was always there in the front row, but I was in a lot of situations where all my friends were attacked. I guess they were protecting me. That must be why I was never personally hurt. But in fact, I always liked better to be in the middle of the action than in the background. The worst memory I ever had of my political activities at the time in France was one day when I was asked to stay back, we were doing at night, we were things that we don't do in America. We were putting posters on all the walls of Paris where we could, Paris is covered with posters because that's a political expression. So at night we would go and glue posters on the wall, and one day I was asked to stay by the phone so that they could call me if something happened. Because again, we were always attacked at the time. It was the extreme right or the extreme left. We had both against us that would come and detect our car convoys when we were doing that. So I was by the phone to call for help from the police if something happened.
Jenny Beth Martin (35:47):
And the extreme right and the extreme left, what groups, what were those? So
Suzanne Guggenheim (35:53):
The left was a communist. So socialists did not do those attacks. The communist for that and the extreme right, you had a group that was called oxidant at that time, oxidant. And that was the extreme, right. And they both hated us equally. So if it was, and same in the university before 68, if it was not one, it was the other one. Whenever would try to distribute flyers in the university because already before 68 it was violent. So I was asked to stay by the phone and I have never been. I was there and I was shivering because I didn't know what was happening and I never did that again in my life because that was the worst experience. Being in charge and being by the phone and not being on site was the worst. So I said, I will never do that again.
Jenny Beth Martin (36:49):
What were you feeling during that time? It was the worst. But what was it like?
Suzanne Guggenheim (36:54):
It was expression, the impression I was feeling that they were in danger and therefore I could not physically shivering because I felt they were in danger and I couldn't do anything. Not that I would be able to save them. I was the shortest and the youngest. But it was just that feeling of being incapable of helping.
Jenny Beth Martin (37:23):
Helpless or defenseless,
Suzanne Guggenheim (37:25):
Exactly. So I was safe because nobody knew where I was, but I was helpless because I couldn't help them.
Jenny Beth Martin (37:34):
Wow. That would be knowing your personality. I think I would feel about the same way. I can imagine how you were feeling that had to be terrible. Experience continued.
Suzanne Guggenheim (37:49):
So I continued the activity with uni, and we did that for many years. We started, as I say, in Paris, and then we had chapters throughout France, and there still are all in every University of France pretty much. We had a chapter and we had a lot of professors. And during the years where the goal or then the next ministers were in power, which were Pompidou first and then esta, we even had not only, we had a lot of deans of the university who got elected, but we also had chancellors of the university because there is one chancellor per big academy. There was one for Paris, but then one for each big city. And we had many that those were nominated. So we had many nominated by the government. So we did increase our presence quite a lot. And we always had a representative in that coordinating committee of all the elected from the different university. So we were not the majority, but we were the biggest conservative group in France. And we could at least try to at least spread the word on what was going on and help fight it. So after maybe about 10 years after we started, well, there's still just to show the violence of the university. And there was one episode that happened I think our second or third year of activity.
(39:54):
We had elections. So every year to elect students and professors and people from the administration. They had all three in those councils, university council. And my husband was a candidate in the University of Science. He was not my husband at that time. So he was a student candidate. And during the election, they were verifying that they had the right ballots at every position. And the dean of the university was in the voting place and suddenly there's a group of 30 Mauis that arrive with the helmets and the metal bath as always and kidnapped him. This is your future husband? My future husband. And in front of the dean. So they started saying, stop, stop. But they for sure did not care. And so they just took him. And I got a call a little while later from the dean who say, I am sorry, we don't know what happened, but Ellen Guggenheim has been kidnapped and we don't know where he's, this is what happened.
(41:12):
So we started calling the police. And in France, the police is not allowed to enter university, just like they could not enter churches. So it was a refuge. And so my husband released about two or three hours later, they kept him in a freight elevator beating him up, trying to make him say, who else is involved in this? And what do you do what you have? Someone wanted to throw him in the University of Science. They had a big tower and they were in the elevator of that tower. So some wanted to go on top and throw him from there. Luckily there were some who thought it was a little bit risky, so they'd better just keep beating him up. And they had those rubber sticks that don't leave the same tracks but hurt your insides more than your outside. So he got beaten up really bad until they suddenly threw him out of the freight elevators a few hours later.
(42:24):
So we were able to come and get him, but the police still could not do anything. So the police stayed in front of the university for over a week until finally Sam came out thinking they were safe. And two of them were arrested, who later became not prime minister, but one of them became minister. And by the way, the teacher who told me that I would never graduate from political science became the Minister of Defense and wow. So that's a little bit just to tell you the state of those universities. So after 10 years when Ellen Finney, we got married in the meantime, and when he finished his military service, his first, he asked for his first job to be overseas because we thought if we don't leave Paris, we will never have a life because that's what we were doing 24 7, both of us. So we say if we want one day to have a life, we need to get out of Paris. And
Jenny Beth Martin (43:43):
How did you meet your husband?
Suzanne Guggenheim (43:45):
How did you meet him? So I met him, in fact, at uni, our group, because his dad was on our board of directors, and Helen was coming as a volunteer. He was at the time finishing, well, he was starting his higher education school, but in special schools that don't exist in France. But he was in, and he was also doing his first year at the University of Science. So he came as a volunteer and got very active. So he was in charge of helping us raise money, and he was also our tech guru. So it was a time when we were still printing. We had big Siri machines, which were printing machines, so we were printing big posters by hand. You would print them one by one. So we spent our nights doing that before going to put them on the walls of Paris. And then we were the first one to have bumper stickers. We had series of bumper stickers that were amazing on every single topic, and we covered all the university with them and the walls of Paris. So we would at night print thousand of them first just for Paris, and then we would send them also all over our France to our different chapters, but it was all a handwork at that time. So a few years later we started printing professionally. And so he was in charge of getting us all the machine and keep improving them and maintaining them. So that's how I got to meet him.
Jenny Beth Martin (45:45):
Wow. Now before we move on to you, his military service, your mom was part of the resistance during World War ii, and then you were in the committee of resistance or on resistance during this Maoist revolution. That's
Suzanne Guggenheim (46:04):
Right.
Jenny Beth Martin (46:05):
Today and during the Trump administration, there were a lot of women, especially in America who were saying resist Trump and thought they were part of some amazing resistance movement. What do you think of what they were fighting when they were fighting against Trump versus what your mom and you were facing fighting against communist and actual fascists? Nazis. That's right, the real Nazis.
Suzanne Guggenheim (46:35):
That's right. It's really this happening to see people misuse vocabulary, but we've got used to it all these last years and inverse their meaning because you have those women who are at ease, who do whatever they want, who say whatever they want, and publicly, and nothing ever happened to them, right? They don't get beaten up, they don't get put in jail, they don't get their family taken away. And they talk about resistance. What are they resisting? They're resisting that some people dare to have a different opinion. That's what they call resistance. And that's a zero tolerance to
Jenny Beth Martin (47:23):
Think differently,
Suzanne Guggenheim (47:24):
To difference. So it's very disheartening because people have no idea, and luckily America has been protected so far from any invasion. So America does not know what it is to be invaded and to have to resist because that's what resistant is, is when somebody comes want to take what is yours and want to submit you to their will and not allow you to ever express anything different. So I'm glad, and we will fight always that they still keep that freedom. But don't come talk to me about resistance because that's not what it is. You have a different opinion. We are glad you can express it.
Jenny Beth Martin (48:16):
You and I both have heard this even within the Tea Party movement and the conservative movement. So you've got the people on today's left who think they're part of the resistance, and we have people on the right today who think that America's just over and lost, and there's a fear that it might become over and lost. And yet they're saying this and on both sides, and they're expressing outrage of whatever is happening. The left doesn't want the divergent thought, and the right thinks that the country is lost and no one's listening to what they have to say, but they both think everything's lost. So the country is falling apart, and yet they go back home to their home. They're not going to jail, they're not watching. They have
Suzanne Guggenheim (49:01):
Food, they
Jenny Beth Martin (49:02):
Shelter, they have food, they have shelter, they have the opportunity to work. It's not rationed food. They're not watching people who are protecting them be raped. They're not being kidnapped and beaten in elevators it. Now that might actually, there might have been a bit of that kind of brute force in Seattle and in Portland as Antifa.
Suzanne Guggenheim (49:31):
That's right. That's the cruise we have ever gotten here in America to what it is.
Jenny Beth Martin (49:38):
But in the people who were doing that in Seattle and Portland, that's the kind of people you were actually truly resisting and that your mom was resisting.
Suzanne Guggenheim (49:47):
Absolutely. But here, in fact, they never got anything for what they were doing. They were protected, and they still are. And they did what they did in all impunity. And I know they started again in Chicago not long ago. They are there. They have raised a lot of money from those who should never have given them a penny. When you see how all the big, big companies, big tech, have given them millions and supported them to do what they do. And they have never paid the price for their destruction, for their physical attacks against people. They've done it all in all impunity and with the support and help from government and those who should be fighting them. And that's where we feel that we are in a very dangerous situation because as you know, very few people have the courage to stand up and to help those on the conservative side that are ready to resist and do something.
(51:04):
And when you see the left, all the help they have, whether it is from all those foundations that are there just for that, which is why I would always oppose all tax loopholes because I think they only benefit the left. Even the churches I think should not have them because the only thing it does, it allows them to take cover saying, oh, we cannot do and say anything because we would lose our tax protection then lose it and do your job. So yes, we have a very dangerous situation where those who want to resist don't get help. And even when you see the Republican party, when you compare the help and support financially that they get has nothing to do with what the left does. And that's why it's a totally unequal fight.
Jenny Beth Martin (52:07):
It is an unequal fight, and I am not dismissing the concerns that people on our side of the aisle have. We're facing unprecedented actions from the Biden administration when it comes to the indictment against Trump and from the city of New York. And I'm not sure when this podcast will air, but either about to happen or will have happened from Fulton County, Georgia. So there is a lot of, it is still brutal, but it's not violent. It is a brutal force locking down and preventing dissent and preventing difference of opinion, difference of a vision for the country. And I will even say that some of the people who are on the left, I don't agree with them, but I can put myself in their shoes and I can imagine that when they hear what they are hearing about the changes because of the Dobbs decision from the Supreme Court, they think, oh no, the government is going to do something terrible, terrible. And they're very, very worried and feel like they must fight against that. So we're right at a precipice. It's very dangerous. And we may be right over the precipice pulling our way, climbing back to prevent that, but it's still, we're not going through what you have gone through and what your mom went
Suzanne Guggenheim (53:40):
Through. And that's true, but you can still see the difference. We have come now to a time in our history where the intolerance has become visible and physically you can feel it in everything. There is really a growth of intolerance and hate that we have never seen in the country because yes, I can also understand that some people in all good faith get scared by what they hear, but that does not excuse the intolerance and the hate, whether it is in our schools, whether it is in the political life, whether it is in businesses, there has become the norm that people who are conservative cannot express themself in any of those different areas.
(54:42):
First, it was just politically incorrect, so you had to be careful about what you said, but now it's way worse. It is not tolerated, whether it is in a business where people can get fired because they posted something on the social media that was not even awful, but that was just different of the mainstream ideas, what they call them, mainstream ideas. So there is an intolerance that has never been in America, and it becomes people lose their jobs. Kids are threatened to be and are being expelled for what they do. There is no more tolerance of anything else than the official left ideas. Whether it is a teacher who dare to say that he doesn't want to use new genders, that they will lose their job. Whether it is kids that refuse to or forget, even just forget to use the politically correct wording, will be accused of sexual harassment because they forget to use the right new genders.
(56:00):
We have never seen that, and it is growing, but it is growing. Without the media, the mainstream media never talk about those things. So most don't believe it really exists if they don't have a child in the school that has been a victim of those things or the kids don't talk about it, if they have somebody in their company that has been a victim of it, people don't know and don't want to know because knowing is uncomfortable if you know might have to do something. So nobody's really trying to dig in what the media does not feed them. And that's why it becomes very dangerous because you feel those that care and that want to do something, feel now that they are the minority. They're not the minority of Americans that feel the correct way or what I consider the correct way, but there are very few that they express it, and that's where the situation is becoming dangerous.
Jenny Beth Martin (57:11):
In the next episode of the Jenny Best Show, we'll pick up with the rest of my conversation with Suzanne Guggenheim. Be sure to like and subscribe to the podcast so you'll know as soon as part two is released where we'll learn about the terrifying moments that finally pushed her and her husband to flee to the United States.
Narrator (57:29):
The Jenny Beth Show is hosted by Jenny Beth Martin, produced by Kevin Mohan and directed by Luke Livingston. The Jenny Beth Show is a production of Tea Party Patriots action. For more information, visit tea party patriots.org.