1056 - Prophets Unveiled feat. Devin Thomas O’Shea (7/23/26)
NOW UNLOCKED! Devin Thomas O’Shea returns to discuss his book on St. Louis’ notorious Veiled Prophet society. We look at St. Louis history as a microcosm of America, the interwoven history of labor & racial suppression, Parade Politics, the public mystification of white supremacy, and how modern secret societies forget to have a little fun with it.
Find Devin’s book The Veiled Prophet here and wherever you buy books: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2770-the-veiled-prophet
Comments (127)
Gender relations are also strained because of this affordability crisis. A majority of folks are living paycheck to paycheck, atomizing all of us into this self consuming survival state. With tech culture invading more and more of our lives, folks financially strained are trying to “optimize” everything involving money and time spent with other people
Funny this guy brought up medieval shrivery as the legacy of these supremacist matches and seemed surprised by Will's much more obvious connection to protestant supremacist marches in Northern Ireland
I work for WWT and Dave Stuart does a weekly prayer call. The veterans group also routinely posts TPUSA memes. Can't wait to join the IBEW!
Probably my favorite episode
Terrific episode
Missouri mentioned!!!
As a non American I find these episodes very fascinating, as I don’t know much about St Louis, Missouri or its history. But why would I. I’m from Brisbane, Australia.
Very interesting episode!
I listen to 400 podcasts a week and my family fucking hates me
Please do a whole episode about VP/sutherland/MLK
Charivari mentioned 👍
For real, a good bit would be to bring brace on too
I imagine in that story about John Sutherland, other than the Confederate cap he is naked, his penis completely flaccid
We need our best race scientists to get to the bottom of why every white guest in his 40s sounds indistinguishable from Derek Davison from American Prestige.
Lived in STL my whole life. Really appreciate you guys covering this. Devin really puts the contradictory thoughts I have always had about this city so damn well.
Oh boy can’t wait to hear about this guys very specific hyper fixation for the 6th time
glad Will popped off on the NUMTOT point about highways destroying communities intentionally because it's true. the Man wants you alone in a car
42:43 ...or Romper Stomper, which predates American History X, which was probably Russel Crowe's first breakout film.
I don’t know if it’s mentioned this episode, sorta wondered why there was another on the veiled prophets, but Wesley Bell’s campaign manager being a part of it is… incredible.
Love all the people bitching about him being on other podcasts talking about this recently and I'm just over here enjoying it even though I already heard him talk about it on QAA before the book was even released. I love Devin. His work is always phenomenal and a great listen.
THE HISTORICAL/RELIGIOUS/FILM EPISODES WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IS IMPROVED
Not a bad ep... Just recycled... and he was better on War Nerd
And Rex Sinquefield, hand on fuckin' heart, is the guy who offers straight-from-school scholarships and jobs to all the "higher-achieving" alumni of my Jesuit Nazi school, as long as they don't have any politics that won't translate into currency. I found out 5-6 years after we both graduated that perhaps the biggest dickhead I ever knew was/is Sinquefield's Youth Outreach Coordinator
Hold that: the possible biggest dickhead I ever knew is now Senior Fellow of Education Policy at Sinquefield's Show-Me Institute, and recently author of NEW AND BETTER SCHOOLS (Rowman and Littlefield, 2015). Guess what we should be teaching in those schools, so better, so new
Someday the country will recognize my great state for more than just bbq, and crack, and incredible fishing gear. One day they’ll recognize our wide array of freaks. One day.
Clifford Clark, along with his partner not-that-Robert Altman, is more responsible than any other person for the BCCI affair. He was the bank’s in house counsel stateside, and presided over its expansion/cross sector spending spree (from savings and loans to fracking and cable). It seems that his project to outflank organized crime by mainstreaming and massively expanding its methods dovetailed his entire career. Joe Biden was one of two senators on the Judiciary committee who was wined and dined by Clark and the bank. Jesse Jackson got the same treatment. I wonder what role this has played in amalgamating American with Gulf financial interests, and making the Democratic Party what it is today.
This is one of the interesting St. Louis - Kansas City splits: by the time KC was anything even remotely resembling STL, in terms of population, money coming through, organization of semi-automated rackets among the people who owned everything, the political necessity of pretense was pretty much dead. That rugaroux, charivari, Courir de Mardi Gras shit would've been laying it on a little goddamn thick. KC was, and remains, segregated as a motherfucker, and nobody cares about the astonishing rates of violent crime in Those Other Neighborhoods; money flowed upward from the river traffic and the stockyards, where my grandfather made his living staring at cattle, up into the coffers of the real Machine, in which banking, liquor (bootleg or not), drugs (legal or not), and the local Mob all played musical chairs for the Democratic Party, which was essentially – in aggregate – The Money Company. We dropped nuclear fuckin' bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and effectively committed genocide in Korea because one of the Pendergast Brothers thought Harry Truman was a "likeable-type fellow" who'd be of more use as a soapbox frontman than as a traditional debtor, and indeed he fuckin' was. Any of that quasi- or post-revolutionary fervor from midcentury Europe, especially socialism in Mitteleuropa – really from the 1848 leadup to the 1871 breakdown – was dead-fucking-gone by the time Kansas City mattered to anyone but literal horse-traders. Charles Olson, onetime employee of the OWI, quit the Democratic Party when Wallace was booted in 1944 and Harry entered as, like Olson said, "harbinger of all that Kansas City horseshit." There's a reason, apart from mere fact, that Scorsese put the bosses from CASINO in Kansas City. Our one-line municipal poem should be "BOSS SAID SO."
ayyyyy We Feed Us and tenants unions are growing in KC
Felix speaks at 1:11:29
Veiled Prophet did the same thing that ARC did. They’re just letters! The R doesn’t mean anything anymore!
The Pepper theory has the special forces snipers in position around the Lorraine, but never they never took the shot. He posits the kill coming from the overgrowth across the way by a mobbed-up intelligence asset and gun runner named Raul Pierra. (Coincidentally finished Orders to Kill by William Pepper just yesterday.)
No Jordan Walker mention 0/10
Oh y'all would love the Cotton Carnival lore in Memphis too A lot of this stuff going around
ts sounds pretty much like NOLA old money, which yeah ik they ripped debutantes from us. still weird as hell.
Vro i dont listen to 200 very different leftist podcasts so i can hear the same thing over and over again!!!! DO BETTER
We get it folks. You listen to other podcasts too.
The number of people who pay for Chapo in order to whine about it here every week is amazing. Great episode, and no it was not just a rehash of the TrueAnon interview, because talking to Brace and talking to Will is 2 different talks.
If this is interesting to you, take a minute looking at the old line krewe debutante societies that preside over Mardi Gras in New Orleans. It's exactly Veiled Prophet except there are several clubs and they basically own everything in town.
They even discuss Mardi Gras during this interview as though it is some kind of counterpoint. But the same failure to do "role reversal" described here also obtains in New Orleans. Rex, Comus, et al are also social and economic elites dressed up like kings and gods just dabbing on the rabble in the streets. All of that was invented by New Orleans Carnival societies.
Why does Will sound like he’s having dental surgery
Aa
It is very funny how fruity these guys were. A bunch of slave-owner lindsey graham type guys being like 'yo come to our secret society meeting its guys only and we're dressing up in costumes and we're gonna have a big ol gay parade and afterwards we're doing an ancient masonic ritual where i get to suck your dick'
Business Gay. Always was, always will be.
Between this and the latest TrueAnon ep, we're getting such a clear picture of how capital and militaries/law enforcement love to crush labor movements. JFC they should all have their heads on pikes.
Made me think of Matt's love for Lodge 49.
"A very rural sense of mardi gras" ass politics
Why doesn't Chapo consider which other podcasts I listen to and coordinate topics between them all so that I get my personal idealized balance of subject material?
Speaking for everyone in my camp, it has more to do with how this is not a new topic or even an interesting one. I joined this patreon in order to hear dipshits speak to me about current events in a way I understood, not to hear a drone buzz about a subject which has no bearing on a coastal elite’s experience of the current moment for the umpteenth time going back years depending which other slop you have imbibed. If you enjoy this and the hosts do also then I have my orders but things have changed is all.
I strongly endorse the Chapo boys exclusively doing history, religion, movie, tv and scripted comedy episodes until the swines in the chat have been thoroughly disciplined
Hell yeah brother!!!
Is it really much of a secret society when they've done 8,471 podcasts about it
This is like a very weak version of New Orleans carnival society and you should absolutely look into it
Wow, some of the people commenting on here are as insufferable as the people who used to post on the chapo subreddit. Go outside and calm down.
People bitching and moaning but I'm just stoked chapo is talking about St. Louis
I’ve viewed secret societies as groups of very boring people trying to invent something interesting about themselves. But with goofy costumes and elaborate handshakes.
How am I supposed to goon to this?
5 guys called the Big Cinch? Like Cinco? Makers of the Tully Toggle?
"Hitler's American Model" discusses how earlier generations of Americans saw Germans as their "cousin-race" of sorts who had their own "cast-from-Eden" story about how they all lived in a free utopia until the landlords came, but idk if anyone even knows about that today at a mainstream level
Felix begins speaking at
Damn it's not like it's been a slow news week... Was hoping to hear them weigh in on NJ or the coming second Palmer Raids
I sure am glad that nothing of import is going on in the world so we have time to hear how Midwestern Hicks are racist for the eighth time.
Absolute trash comment, half the talk has been about how it was/is ANTI-LABOR DUHHHH. Why do so many commenters obviously Pay For Chapo without actually listening to it???
I only listen to two podcasts and Devon hasn’t gone on Doughboys yet so this was a fun episode for me.
I was riding my bicycle around St Louis one day, and a college-age country club kid in a Dodge hellcat who had been along with me for a series of traffic signals, when he got to the signal where he could get on the freeway on ramp, peeled out and yelled out get a car, fqggot! To which I yelled back, cars are stupid! But that experience makes more sense in light of the St Louis ruling class's history, And how they might view the rebellion against cars as threatening.
God dammit dude fine whatever I’ll buy the fucking book.
Respectfully, Cushvlog project update? This ep highlighted Matt’s lasting contribution to left thought.
Just a glance the RSS feed looks updated and uniform…🤞
Will sounds like he has some mighty jowls this session. Don't mean to be mean but did he get a molar pulled or something?
Damn dude how sick does your listening setup have to be to hear jowl size? I’m expecting a headphone amp with the glowing vacuum tubes at minimum
This was peak soy
Everybody complaining that Devin O'Shea is making the rounds and Chapo is behind a half a dozen other podcasts. But I, for one, have always enjoyed Devin, especially from QAA, and am glad to hear more of him!
I wanna hear all there is to be said about Peter Thiel’s secret society
Felix does not begin speaking
Good
St louis boys eating good tn
T-Rav Nation
Man, a lot of yall are greedy for that content. Let them cook every once in a while damn
I listen to 36 podcasts a week. This topic has been covered on at least three of them and I am NOT HAPPY. My wife is NEVER coming back.
I wonder if another guest canceled or Felix overslept from playing too much War Thunder
I have to imagine that Chapo listeners have already heard this exact same discussion on O’Shea’s recent appearances on adjacent pods.
Personally, IDC. STL needs this reckoning, and Devin is good people.
Veiled Prophet is from Khorasan a region of Iran and Turkmenistan I think. The Starwars planet is Coruscant
Ohhh, I've always thought Star Wars just takes place in Turkmenistan
I’ve heard this fella drone on about this subject on other podcasts going back years and I think on this one too at some point during the later Brandon imperium.
I had a boss in Saint Louis who was once the Veiled Prophet Queen. She directed the National Clearinghouse to outlaw Marital Rape.
unlike some of you fools i simply didn’t listen to any of the other pods during this guys book tour anticipating he stops at chapo eventually so to me this is full flavored slop
Snoozefest
The counter-Veiled Prophet Society already exists: the Insane Clown Posse
I'm switching to trillbillies. This show has lost its sauce.
I will warn them you are coming.
I have my vibrating panties set to Chapo drops. I’m a guy by the way 👰♂️
most of the women who post here are.
^also Chunks! Chunks! Chunks!
he was so good on True Anon (even without Liz 😔)
This is Mardi Gras
Will M. is a great interviewer.
sorry for a double comment but i thoroughly enjoyed the analysis of parades and marching bands one of my favorite interviews since DEVO
Just make this guy a freakin host already
No complaints but damn who gives a shit!
Further listening: The Dollop #483/484 (the George Pullman episodes)
do you think the Veiled Prophets taught her to give it dry and toothy?
iswydt - my girl Ellie
I already learned about this from trueanon 😪😪
And radio war nerd
Fun fact: The Anti-Mason party was created by a future Lincoln advisor named Thurlow Weed. He didn't have any problems with Freemasonry. He just wanted to blame them for a coordinated kidnapping and murder of a potential whistleblower. Then he used his multiple newspapers to try to undermine Andrew Jackson's presidential campaign. Did he succeed? You'll have to look it up yourself to find out. (No)
Devin briefly mentions the event. It's called the Morgan Affair
Whoah. Somebody talking about the ancient ruins of Saint Louis. 🙌🏻
My snout descends
When the book tour hits both TrueAnon and Chapo 🤌🤌
This summer we learned If you write 400pages for Haymarket Books, it’s the demsoc equivalent to a 3-hr Marvel movie.
Where is Matt when you need him for obscure historical facts
Fun fact: The Anti-Mason party was created by a future Lincoln advisor named Thurlow Weed. He didn't have any problems with Freemasonry. He just wanted to blame them for a coordinated kidnapping and murder of a potential whistleblower. Then he used his multiple newspapers to try to undermine Andrew Jackson's presidential campaign. Did he succeed? You'll have to look it up yourself to find out. (No) Devin briefly mentions the event. It's called the Morgan Affair
Fuck me man. Dude has already been on like 8 other podcasts talking about this shit. God forbid you guys talk about the defense bill
Fist!
Hell yeah, love me some Devin!!!
As a St. Louisan I have been waiting for this for years
What high school did you go to
Real True Detective hours.
Not first.
Is this going to be Yellow King shit?
Closer to Nic Pizzolatto "Yellow King shit" than Robert W Chambers "Yellow King shit" but yes.
we love our historyslop folks don’t we
Wow
reading the book right now!
First?
First
Early slop!