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Radio War Nerd EP #612 — The Veiled Prophet, feat. Devin Thomas O'Shea (Patreon)

Published:
2026-06-12 02:52:43
Imported:
2026-06
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Guest: Devin Thomas O'SheaRecorded: June 10, 2026

Author Devin Thomas O'Shea joins us to discuss his wild new book, the Veiled Prophet, about the secret society that ran St. Louis from the end of Reconstruction until the end of the Civil Rights era, only to reappear as a scandal involving the ditz receptionist Erin in The Office. The Veiled Prophet has it all for the RWN set: the US Civil War, labor insurgencies, upper-class white supremacist conspiracies, murder, mayhem & remarkable heroism.

Pre-order Devin's book The Veiled Prophet: Secret Societies, White Supremacy, and the Struggle for St. Louis (Haymarket Books), out June 23rd.Follow Devin on Twitter

Episodes referenced:-EP #297 - US Civil War, Pt 2: Bleeding Kansas-EP #315 - US Civil War, Pt. 7: German '48ers, with Matt Christman

Article referenced:Mark Ames: Ferguson is our “libertarian moment,” but not in the way some libertarians want you to believe, Pando, 2014

Total time: 1:24:11Direct link to this episode's mp3 here

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Buy & review John Dolan's new book, They Should Have Been Hanged: War Nerd Essays on the U.S. Civil War

Subscribe to Radio War Nerd at patreon.com/radiowarnerd

Sound production by Telescope Audio

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Comments

Horseloverfat

Ex rich St. Louis kid here. My family was invited to participate in this event — despite their wealth, my parents were fundamentally Jews from LA, which mostly immunized them from the yellow king/eyes wide shut type upper crust ritual shit that St. Louis is absolutely lousy with, so we never participated. Grateful to Devin for bringing this nonsense to the attention of “the online left”. Always struck me as deeply sinister that a quarter of the girls at my high school would one day be presented by masked old men as “ready for adulthood”.

Aiden

Heck yeah!

Mungo Franczak

Idk how I’ve never heard of this ceremony, I love learning about secret ceremonies like this

Spooky Villages

Lifelong St. Louis resident here. I about flipped when I saw the topic on the show today. In the mid 2010's I worked for a company where I found out that the owner (he owned various companies) had "debuted" his daughter at some kind of ball for some kind of rich family group called the veiled prophets or something like that. The whole thing sounded so bizarre I figured that my boss (who worked under the owner) was lying or had his info wrong. I realized eventually that no, this stuff was true. A couple years ago my wife, who is from a different midwestern city and only moved to STL about a decade ago, told me a story about how her boss, also not originally from St. Louis (and therefore not familiar with local lore), got invited by some powerful guys to a "networking" event with this group called the veiled prophet organization. Her boss was apparently incredibly creeped out by it once he found out what it was (the event featured some wild hazing), and never went back. I've since learned a bit more about the group over the years (especially after the Elle Kemper stuff), but I've always wanted to learn more. This is a fascinating/horrifying topic and I'm looking forward to reading the book.

John Hieronymus

Count Gurowski got a shout out in an excellent book “Boss Lincoln” I think you guys would love, it’s a history of Lincoln’s political career going back to his early days as a wig, and his work as a party builder and political operator in the Midwest and Washington. Super fascinating, you all should try to get the author on

Michael Salmon

Same, I’m ashamed to admit members of my family went to it

Jason Thompson

A great episode, and/but I kept thinking of the scene in “The Office” when Elle Kepler’s secretary character brings in a whole plate of ‘ants on a log’ for Steve Carrell

Jason Thompson

The 1990s: teenage Elle Kemper is participating in some racist Klan-influenced pageant and simultaneously, my high school’s drama class is performing “Tarzan” with most of the extras in blackface ☹️ (thankfully, I had already graduated)

Matt Colston

Mark we gotta thank partially thank Ken Burns for the flattening of the real history of the war.

The Steel Harvest

why is it when catholic francophones get pushed out of power, there always seems to be a weird secret society that fills the void?

Miko

This sounds so much like a lovecraftian tale. Visit a regional city to discover they have a unique holiday, officiated by a costumed human invoking a unique being, the elites are all into it and skittish about it to outsiders. Prominent children are paraded around in fettted with the being's avatar. The rest of the country doesn't seem aware of this holiday or the local traditions. How is this real life?

Miko

I dislike having season 1 of true detective be more a documentary and less a work of cosmic horror.

Miko

See we gotta get rid of the pope with his hat, and his rituals, and his ceremonies and replace it with a guy with a hat., with some rituals, and some ceremonies.

CR

Does it cover how the creators of BLM were all assassinated while under FBI surveillance (funny how so many people under surveillance still end up murdered by unknowable suspects)? It’s okay though. BLM is fine. It wasn’t co-opted and corrupted and exploited by the people it was criticizing…

CR

Did you miss the part about the newspaper editorial boards, media owners, major advertisers/sponsors, and the intelligencia being balls deep in this?

CR

Too many conspiracies. Too little time.

CR

Miko summed it up about as perfectly as possible. Filthy prods made up their own societies because they saw the necessity of the Church and its satellites like Opus Dei, knights of Columbus, St. Thomas More Society, etc. funny coincidence about that last one (catholic lawyers)

CR

I want to highlight this without liking it because fuck that bowl haired piece of shit.

CR

JD didn’t have Nixon’s quote about Bohemian Grove at the ready? I keep thinking about how Jon Hamm was one of Ellie’s high school teachers.

Hugh Jazz

In 2006 I played college lacrosse in St. Louis and one of our practice facilities was literally a civil war armory with a turf rolled out in it lol

Zach

A+ epic here.

Manny Furious

I know it's the "War Nerd" and not the "Conspiracy Nerd" but would love to see Mark's and John's thoughts on Conspiracy stuff. Tangential, but I derived more pleasure than I should have every time Devin mentioned Pynchon knowing (I, not devin) that Mark and John don't seem to be such big fans of the guy. Great episode, though. Thanks for this.

Benj

RWN books recs pipeline goes brrrr

Slamp

I think you're forgetting Joseph Weydemeyer

CR

The boys have been on TrueAnon a bunch of times. That’s what you’re looking for.

drizzly_november

This is very similar to a central plot in Boardwalk Empire, in which a local Atlantic City elite is crowned King Neptune and picks young girls as his consorts. The ur-sin that earns Nucky Thompson’s invitation into that elite power, and condemns his soul, is when offers up a orphan girl to his boss in the parade, knowing full well what will happen to her. The whole plot of the show really spins out from that betrayal. Underrated show, one of the better explorations of how elite power functions in America at every level.

Jennifer Hammerhead

I want to ask a question related to the German immigrant tangent. I've been reading Ned Blackhawks work to complement Foners history of reconstruction (which I loved and am also rereading). What I mean by that is I'm trying to understand if at any point in US history there was a movement or (significant) portion of the population that was opposed to the core genocidal project of the US. Did anyone (like a Radical Republican or German immigrants for instance) say something like "once slavery is taken care of let's also stop killing, stealing, and destroying our way across the continent." It seems like the answer is no but I'm interested if anyone has any leads on this topic. Great episode!

CR

The U.S. is Carcosa

CR

The Commodore was not King Neptune. King Neptune was, and is, just some local celebrity or other dipshit. Same as King Neptune in Seattle and other cities that have the same celebrations, and the same as the kings and other special guests of the krewes during Mardi Gras. Nucky’s most important job as sheriff was corralling the girls for The Commodore, though, and it was bringing him Gillian that was his first official action as sheriff (although he even got that shot wrangling another girl after the sheriff finally had enough and quit).

CR

Yeah. The British Empire. They failed.

a clash of purple

The Veiled Prophet is some real life Yellow King shit. I honestly think the reason it doesn't get more coverage is that it's too disturbing for normies to handle. Epstein and the whole Spider Network are like that too. Once you realize that our powerful elites are just a gaggle of utterly deranged pedophiles... well, you have to be pretty good at compartmentalizing to continue functioning in society.

Arielle Curtin

Devin was on TrueAnon a few years back talking about this! I can’t wait to listen!!!

Hot Rod

I grew up in southern IL, while my dad lived in St. Ann for awhile. I still have cousins in the county (sunset hills, Arnold, etc). Before he died, my dad tried explaining the 90s rebrand of Fair St. Louis as woke VP Fair (“SOME people thought not having black queens were unfair”👀) I’m buying a copy of Devin’s book for my mom now that he’s dead.

Terry Dunk

BE is indeed criminally underrated and a very incisive read of US elite power as you say

Terry Dunk

Lol I was thinking that too and had to fill it in myself (quietly)

Terry Dunk

I'm very stoked to be going to the live release show for this book cohosted by True Anon next week

frequency

Interestingly, the Kempers are a powerful family in KC, too, on the other side if the state. Big modern art museum and the old minor league hockey arena (what I wouldn’t give to see the Blades play again!) both called “Kemper”.