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FTR #1029 “The Will to Create Man Anew”: Eugenics, Past, Present and Future

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This broad­cast was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment [5].

Adolf Hitler: “Nation­al Social­ism . . . . is more even than a reli­gion: it is the will to cre­ate man anew.”

[6] [7]Intro­duc­tion: In numer­ous pro­grams, we have touched on eugen­ics and some of the out­comes of eugen­ics phi­los­o­phy, includ­ing the growth of the Nazi exter­mi­na­tion pro­grams from the Knauer case. Some of these pro­grams are: FTR #‘s 32 [8], 117 [9], 124 [10], 140 [11], 141 [12], 534 [13], 664 [14],  and  908. [15]  A look at future pos­si­bil­i­ties of eugenics–something that we dis­cuss in this program–are high­light­ed in FTR #909 [16] and AFA #39 [17].

Impor­tant book on the sub­ject include The War Against the Weak [18], by Edwin Black and The Nazi Con­nec­tion [19]by Stephan Kuhl [20]. In FTR #1013 [21], we recapped Peter Lev­en­da’s pre­scient analy­sis of the over­lap between eugen­ics and fas­cist iter­a­tions of anti-immi­grant sen­ti­ment. In this broad­cast, eugen­ics, anti-immi­gra­tion sen­ti­ment, genet­ic engi­neer­ing and the “immor­tal­i­ty-striv­ing” Tran­shu­man­ist move­ment are high­light­ed, not­ing the pro­gres­sion from the fas­cism of the 1930’s to immi­nent steps that would aug­ment the ascen­sion of a tru­ly “super­hu­man” elite, to the ulti­mate­ly lethal detri­ment of the rest of soci­ety.

We begin with prog­nos­ti­ca­tions about the future.

Pro­fes­sor Stephen Hawk­ing has pre­dict­ed [22] that gene-edit­ing tech­niques will lead to the cre­ation of super­hu­mans, who will super­sede those who do not ben­e­fit from such tech­nolo­gies. ” . . . . The sci­en­tist pre­sent­ed the pos­si­bil­i­ty that genet­ic engi­neer­ing could cre­ate a new species of super­hu­man that could destroy the rest of human­i­ty. . . . In ‘Brief Answers to the Big Ques­tions,’ Hawking’s final thoughts on the uni­verse, the physi­cist sug­gest­ed wealthy peo­ple would soon be able to choose to edit genet­ic make­up to cre­ate super­hu­mans with enhanced mem­o­ry, dis­ease resis­tance, intel­li­gence and longevi­ty. . . . ‘Once such super­hu­mans appear, there will be sig­nif­i­cant polit­i­cal prob­lems with unim­proved humans, who won’t be able to com­pete,’ he wrote. ‘Pre­sum­ably, they will die out, or become unim­por­tant. Instead, there will be a race of self-design­ing beings who are improv­ing at an ever-increas­ing rate.’ . . .”

The obser­va­tions of Pro­fes­sor Hawk­ing con­cern­ing the role of genet­ic engi­neer­ing in the ascen­sion of super­hu­mans is the Sil­i­con Val­ley-based Tran­shu­man­ist move­ment [23]” . . . . Thiel and oth­er eccen­tric, wealthy tech-celebri­ties, such as Elon Musk and Mark Zucker­berg, have tak­en the next step to coun­ter­act that inequal­i­ty – by embark­ing on a quest to live for­ev­er. . . .Thiel and many like him have been invest­ing in research on life exten­sion, part of tran­shu­man­ism. Draw­ing on fields as diverse as neu­rotech­nol­o­gy, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, bio­med­ical engi­neer­ing and phi­los­o­phy, tran­shu­man­ists believe that the lim­i­ta­tions of the human body and mor­tal­i­ty can be tran­scend­ed by machines and tech­nol­o­gy. The ulti­mate aim is immor­tal­i­ty. Some believe this is achiev­able by 2045. . . .”

Michael Anissimov–a pre­vi­ous media offi­cer at the Thiel-fund­ed Machine Intel­li­gence Research Institute–published a white nation­al­ist man­i­festo. In a 2013 inter­view. ” . . . . Thiel him­self is a Don­ald Trump sup­port­er. A one-time asso­ciate Michael Anis­si­mov, pre­vi­ous media offi­cer at Machine Intel­li­gence Research Insti­tute, a Thiel-fund­ed AI think tank, has pub­lished a white nation­al­ist man­i­festo [24]. In a 2013 inter­view [25], Anis­si­mov said that there were already sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences in intel­li­gence between the races, and that a tran­shu­man­ist soci­ety would inevitably lead to ‘peo­ple lord­ing it over oth­ers in a way that has nev­er been seen before in his­to­ry’. It doesn’t take much to guess who would be doing the ‘lord­ing’. . . .”

The iden­ti­ty of the peo­ple doing the “lord­ing” may be gleaned from the fol­low­ing: ” . . . . Zoltan Ist­van, the tran­shu­man­ist can­di­date for gov­er­nor of Cal­i­for­nia, told Tech Insid­er [26] that ‘a lot of the most impor­tant work in longevi­ty is com­ing from a hand­ful of the billionaires…around six or sev­en of them’. . . .”

Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni defined fas­cism as “cor­po­ratism,” and labeled his sys­tem “The Cor­po­rate State.” In that con­text, it is instruc­tive to weigh tran­shu­man­ism: ” . . . . You basi­cal­ly can’t sep­a­rate tran­shu­man­ism from cap­i­tal­ism. An idea that’s so enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly pur­sued by Musk and Peter Thiel, and by the founders of Google, is one that needs to be seen as a muta­tion of cap­i­tal­ism, not a cure for it.’ . . . . If those who form soci­ety in the age of tran­shu­man­ism are men like Musk and Thiel, it’s prob­a­ble that this soci­ety will have few social safe­ty nets. There will be an uneven rate of tech­no­log­i­cal progress glob­al­ly; even a post-human soci­ety can repli­cate the unequal glob­al wealth dis­tri­b­u­tion which we see today. In some cities and coun­tries, inhab­i­tants may live for­ev­er, while in oth­ers the res­i­dents die of mal­nu­tri­tion. If peo­ple don’t die off, the envi­ron­men­tal con­se­quences – from wide­spread nat­ur­al resource dev­as­ta­tion to unsus­tain­able ener­gy demands – would be wide­spread. . . . ”

These are auguries of a future-to-come. A look at the present sug­gests that these prog­nos­ti­ca­tions are not unre­al­is­tic.

Nazis/white suprema­cists are already dis­tort­ing genet­ic research [27] to suit their own ends. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, aca­d­e­mics in the field have not been enthu­si­as­tic about engag­ing them. In the past, genet­ic research has been sup­port­ive of eugen­ics phi­los­o­phy.

” . . . . Nowhere on the agen­da of the annu­al meet­ing of the Amer­i­can Soci­ety of Human Genet­ics, being held in San Diego this week, is a top­ic plagu­ing many of its mem­bers: the recur­ring appro­pri­a­tion of the field’s research in the name of white suprema­cy. ‘Stick­ing your neck out on polit­i­cal issues is dif­fi­cult,’ said Jen­nifer Wag­n­er, a bioethi­cist and pres­i­dent of the group’s social issues com­mit­tee, who had sought to con­vene a pan­el on the racist mis­use of genet­ics and found lit­tle trac­tion. But the specter of the field’s igno­min­ious past, which includes sup­port for the Amer­i­can eugen­ics move­ment, looms large for many geneti­cists in light of today’s white iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics. They also wor­ry about how new tools that are allow­ing them to home in on the genet­ic basis of hot-but­ton traits like intel­li­gence will be mis­con­strued to fit racist ide­olo­gies. . . .”

A 14-word post­ing on the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty web­site has raised eye­brows. We believe it is an exam­ple of dog-whistling by fascist/Nazi ele­ments inside of the DHS. The “Four­teen Words” were mint­ed [28] by Order mem­ber and Alan Berg mur­der get­away dri­ver David Lane. “88” is a well-known clan­des­tine Nazi salute. In the imme­di­ate after­math of World War II, using the Nazi salute “Heil Hitler” was banned. To cir­cum­vent that, Nazis said “88,” because H is the eighth let­ter in the alpha­bet.

The num­bers 14 and 88 are often com­bined [29] by Nazis.

The title of the DHS  post­ing is: “We Must Secure The Bor­der And Build The Wall To Make Amer­i­ca Safe Again.” The 14 words of David Lane are: “We must secure the exis­tence of our peo­ple and a future for white chil­dren.”

It comes as no sur­prise that Ian M. Smith [30]–a for­mer DHS Trump appointee–had doc­u­ment­ed links with white suprema­cists.

Ian Smith was not alone [31]. John Feere and Julie Kirchener–both hard line anti-immi­gra­tion activists–have been hired by Team Trump. ” . . . . Jon Feere, a for­mer legal pol­i­cy ana­lyst for the Cen­ter for Immi­gra­tion Stud­ies, or CIS, has been hired as an advis­er to Thomas D. Homan, the act­ing direc­tor of Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment, accord­ing to Home­land Secu­ri­ty spokesman David Lapan. At Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion, Julie Kirch­n­er, the for­mer exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Fed­er­a­tion for Amer­i­can Immi­gra­tion Reform, or FAIR, has been hired as an advis­er to Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion act­ing Com­mis­sion­er Kevin McAleenan, said Lapan. The hir­ing of Feere and Kirch­n­er at the fed­er­al agen­cies has alarmed immi­grants’ rights activists. CIS and FAIR are think tanks based in Wash­ing­ton that advo­cate restrict­ing legal and ille­gal immi­gra­tion. The two orga­ni­za­tions were found­ed by John Tan­ton, a retired Michi­gan oph­thal­mol­o­gist who has open­ly embraced eugen­ics, the sci­ence of improv­ing the genet­ic qual­i­ty of the human pop­u­la­tion by encour­ag­ing selec­tive breed­ing and at times, advo­cat­ing for the ster­il­iza­tion of genet­i­cal­ly unde­sir­able groups. . . .”

The Fed­er­a­tion for Immi­gra­tion Reform has been part­ly fund­ed by the Pio­neer Fund [32], one of many orga­ni­za­tions that oper­at­ed in favor of the eugen­ics pol­i­cy of Nazi Ger­many [33]. “. . . . Between 1985 and 1994, FAIR received around $1.2 mil­lion in grants from the Pio­neer Fund [34]. The Pio­neer Fund is a eugeni­cist orga­ni­za­tion that was start­ed in 1937 by men close to the Nazi regime who want­ed to pur­sue “race bet­ter­ment” by pro­mot­ing the genet­ic lines of Amer­i­can whites. Now led by race sci­en­tist J. Philippe Rush­ton [35], the fund con­tin­ues to back stud­ies intend­ed to reveal the infe­ri­or­i­ty of minori­ties to whites. . . .”

On CNN for­mer Repub­li­can sen­a­tor Rick San­to­rum thought the big sto­ry [36] of the day on which Man­afort was con­vict­ed and Michael Cohen plead guilty was the first degree mur­der charge laid against an “ille­gal” Mex­i­can migrant work­er fol­low­ing the dis­cov­ery of a deceased white Iowa col­lege girl Mol­lie Tib­betts. Can this become a ral­ly­ing cry for Trump and his anti-immi­grant and racist sup­port­ers?

We note in this con­text that:

  1. The announce­ment of River­a’s arrest for the Tib­betts mur­der hap­pened on the same day that Paul Man­afort’s con­vic­tion was announced and Michael Cohen plead­ed guilty. Might we be look­ing at an “op,” intend­ed to eclipse the neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty from the the Manafort/Cohen judi­cial events?
  2. Rivera exhib­it­ed pos­si­ble symp­toms of being sub­ject­ed to mind con­trol, not unlike Sirhan Sirhan. ” . . . . Inves­ti­ga­tors say Rivera fol­lowed Mol­lie in his dark Chevy Mal­ibu as she went for a run around 7.30pm on July 18. He ‘blacked out’ and attacked her after she threat­ened to call the police unless he left her alone, offi­cers said. . . . It is not yet clear how Mol­lie died. . . . Rivera told police that after see­ing her, he pulled over and parked his car to get out and run with her. . . . Mol­lie grabbed her phone and threat­ened to call the police before run­ning off ahead. The sus­pect said that made him ‘pan­ic’ and he chased after her. That’s when he ‘blacked out.’ He claims he remem­bers noth­ing from then until he was back in his car, dri­ving. He then noticed one of her ear­phones sit­ting on his lap and blood in the car then remem­bered he’d stuffed her in the truck. . . . ‘He fol­lowed her and seemed to be drawn to her on that par­tic­u­lar day. For what­ev­er rea­son he chose to abduct her,’ Iowa Depart­ment of Crim­i­nal Inves­ti­ga­tion spe­cial agent Rick Ryan said on Tues­day after­noon. . . . ‘Rivera stat­ed that she grabbed her phone and said: ‘I’m gonna call the police.’ . . . . ‘Rivera said he then pan­icked and he got mad and that he ‘blocked’ his mem­o­ry which is what he does when he gets very upset and does­n’t remem­ber any­thing after that until he came to at an inter­sec­tion.’ . . .”
  3. Just as Sirhan had been in a right-wing milieu pri­or to the Robert Kennedy assas­si­na­tion, so, too, was Rivera: ” . . . . The promi­nent Repub­li­can fam­i­ly which owns the farm where Mol­lie Tib­betts’ alleged killer worked have insist­ed that he passed back­ground checks for migrant work­ers. Christhi­an Rivera, 24, who is from Mex­i­co, was charged with first degree mur­der on Tues­day after lead­ing police to a corn field where Mol­lie’s body was dumped. Dane Lang, co-own­er of Yarrabee Farms along with Eric Lang, con­firmed that Rivera had worked there for four years and was an employ­ee ‘of good stand­ing.’ Dane’s broth­er is Craig Lang, for­mer pres­i­dent of the Iowa Farm Bureau Fed­er­a­tion and the Iowa Board of Regents, and a 2018 Repub­li­can can­di­date for state sec­re­tary of agri­cul­ture. . . .”
  4. Trump cit­ed the Tib­betts mur­der in a Charleston, West Vir­ginia, ral­ly that day: ” . . . . Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump chirped in dur­ing his Tues­day address at a ral­ly in Charleston, West Vir­ginia, blam­ing immi­gra­tion laws for Mol­lie’s death. ‘You heard about today with the ille­gal alien com­ing in very sad­ly from Mex­i­co,’ he said. ‘And you saw what hap­pened to that incred­i­ble beau­ti­ful young woman. ‘Should’ve nev­er hap­pened, ille­gal­ly in our coun­try. We’ve had a huge impact but the laws are so bad. The immi­gra­tion laws are such a dis­grace. ‘We are get­ting them changed but we have to get more Repub­li­cans.’ Gov. Kim Reynolds com­plained about the ‘bro­ken’ immi­gra­tion sys­tem that allowed a ‘preda­tor’ to live in her state. . . .”
  5. As dis­cussed in FTR #1002 [37], dur­ing tri­al of a mem­ber of The Order (to which David Lane belonged), it emerged that Nazi ele­ments were seek­ing to per­fect mind con­trol tech­niques. It is also a mat­ter of pub­lic record that ele­ments of U.S. intel­li­gence are active on behalf of the GOP, and have been for many decades. The assas­si­na­tions of JFK, his broth­er and Mar­tin Luther King are but exam­ples of this.

Under hyp­no­sis, Sirhan Sirhan was able to recall [38] a con­sid­er­able amount of infor­ma­tion about “the girl in the pol­ka-dot dress”–a fig­ure report­ed by many eye­wit­ness­es to have cel­e­brat­ed the assas­si­na­tion of Robert Kennedy and appeared to have impli­cat­ed her­self and oth­ers in the crime.

The attrac­tion described by Sirhan to “the pol­ka-dot-dress” girl sounds sim­i­lar to River­a’s being “drawn” to Mol­lie Tib­betts.  ” . . . . Con­vict­ed assas­sin Sirhan Sirhan was manip­u­lated by a seduc­tive girl in a mind con­trol plot to shoot Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and his bul­lets did not kill the pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, lawyers for Sirhan said in new legal papers. . . . Wit­nesses talked of see­ing such a female run­ning from the hotel shout­ing, ‘We shot Kennedy.’ But she was nev­er iden­ti­fied, and amid the chaos of the scene, descrip­tions were con­flict­ing. . . . Under hyp­no­sis, he remem­bered meet­ing the girl that night and becom­ing smit­ten with her. He said she led him to the pantry. ‘I am try­ing to fig­ure out how to hit on her.... That’s all that I can think about,’ he says in one inter­view cit­ed in the doc­u­ments. ‘I was fas­ci­nated with her looks .... She nev­er said much. It was very erot­ic. I was con­sumed by her. She was a seduc­tress with an unspo­ken unavail­abil­i­ty.’ . . . Sirhan main­tained in the hyp­notic inter­views that the mys­tery girl touched him or ‘pinched’ him on the shoul­der just before he fired then spun him around to see peo­ple com­ing through the pantry door. . . .”

1. Pro­fes­sor Stephen Hawk­ing has pre­dict­ed [22] that gene-edit­ing tech­niques will lead to the cre­ation of super­hu­mans, who will super­sede those who do not ben­e­fit from such tech­nolo­gies. ” . . . . The sci­en­tist pre­sent­ed the pos­si­bil­i­ty that genet­ic engi­neer­ing could cre­ate a new species of super­hu­man that could destroy the rest of human­i­ty. . . . In ‘Brief Answers to the Big Ques­tions,’ Hawking’s final thoughts on the uni­verse, the physi­cist sug­gest­ed wealthy peo­ple would soon be able to choose to edit genet­ic make­up to cre­ate super­hu­mans with enhanced mem­o­ry, dis­ease resis­tance, intel­li­gence and longevi­ty. . . . ‘Once such super­hu­mans appear, there will be sig­nif­i­cant polit­i­cal prob­lems with unim­proved humans, who won’t be able to com­pete,’ he wrote. ‘Pre­sum­ably, they will die out, or become unim­por­tant. Instead, there will be a race of self-design­ing beings who are improv­ing at an ever-increas­ing rate.’ . . .”

“Essays Reveal Stephen Hawk­ing Pre­dict­ed Race of  ‘Super­hu­mans’” by Sarah Marsh; The Guardian; 10/14/2018 [22]

The late physi­cist and author Prof Stephen Hawk­ing has caused con­tro­ver­sy by sug­gest­ing a new race of super­hu­mans could devel­op from wealthy peo­ple choos­ing to edit their and their children’s DNA.

Hawk­ing, the author of A Brief His­to­ry of Time, who died [39]in March [39], made the pre­dic­tions in a col­lec­tion of arti­cles and essays.

The sci­en­tist pre­sent­ed the pos­si­bil­i­ty that genet­ic engi­neer­ing could cre­ate a new species of super­hu­man that could destroy the rest of human­i­ty. The essays, pub­lished in the Sun­day Times, were writ­ten in prepa­ra­tion for a book that will be pub­lished on Tues­day.

“I am sure that dur­ing this cen­tu­ry, peo­ple will dis­cov­er how to mod­i­fy both intel­li­gence and instincts such as aggres­sion,” he wrote.

“Laws will prob­a­bly be passed against genet­ic engi­neer­ing with humans. But some peo­ple won’t be able to resist the temp­ta­tion to improve human char­ac­ter­is­tics, such as mem­o­ry, resis­tance to dis­ease and length of life.”

In Brief Answers to the Big Ques­tions, Hawking’s final thoughts on the uni­verse, the physi­cist sug­gest­ed wealthy peo­ple would soon be able to choose to edit genet­ic make­up to cre­ate super­hu­mans with enhanced mem­o­ry, dis­ease resis­tance, intel­li­gence and longevi­ty.

Hawk­ing raised the prospect that break­throughs in genet­ics will make it attrac­tive for peo­ple to try to improve them­selves, with impli­ca­tions for “unim­proved humans”.

“Once such super­hu­mans appear, there will be sig­nif­i­cant polit­i­cal prob­lems with unim­proved humans, who won’t be able to com­pete,” he wrote. “Pre­sum­ably, they will die out, or become unim­por­tant. Instead, there will be a race of self-design­ing beings who are improv­ing at an ever-increas­ing rate.”

The com­ments refer to tech­niques such as  [40]Crispr-Cas9 [40], a DNA-edit­ing sys­tem that was invent­ed six years ago, allow­ing sci­en­tists to mod­i­fy harm­ful genes or add new ones. Great Ormond Street hos­pi­tal for chil­dren in Lon­don has used gene edit­ing to treat chil­dren with an oth­er­wise incur­able form of leukaemia.

How­ev­er, ques­tions have been raised about whether par­ents would risk using such tech­niques for fear that the enhance­ments would have side-effects. .  . .

2. The obser­va­tions of Pro­fes­sor Hawk­ing con­cern­ing the role of genet­ic engi­neer­ing in the ascen­sion of super­hu­mans is the Sil­i­con Val­ley-based Tran­shu­man­ist move­ment [23]” . . . . Thiel and oth­er eccen­tric, wealthy tech-celebri­ties, such as Elon Musk and Mark Zucker­berg, have tak­en the next step to coun­ter­act that inequal­i­ty – by embark­ing on a quest to live for­ev­er. . . .Thiel and many like him have been invest­ing in research on life exten­sion, part of tran­shu­man­ism. Draw­ing on fields as diverse as neu­rotech­nol­o­gy, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, bio­med­ical engi­neer­ing and phi­los­o­phy, tran­shu­man­ists believe that the lim­i­ta­tions of the human body and mor­tal­i­ty can be tran­scend­ed by machines and tech­nol­o­gy. The ulti­mate aim is immor­tal­i­ty. Some believe this is achiev­able by 2045. . . .”

Michael Anissimov–a pre­vi­ous media offi­cer at the Thiel-fund­ed Machine Intel­li­gence Research Institute–published a white nation­al­ist man­i­festo. In a 2013 inter­view. ” . . . . Thiel him­self is a Don­ald Trump sup­port­er. A one-time asso­ciate Michael Anis­si­mov, pre­vi­ous media offi­cer at Machine Intel­li­gence Research Insti­tute, a Thiel-fund­ed AI think tank, has pub­lished a white nation­al­ist man­i­festo [24]. In a 2013 inter­view [25], Anis­si­mov said that there were already sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences in intel­li­gence between the races, and that a tran­shu­man­ist soci­ety would inevitably lead to ‘peo­ple lord­ing it over oth­ers in a way that has nev­er been seen before in his­to­ry’. It doesn’t take much to guess who would be doing the ‘lord­ing’. . . .”

The iden­ti­ty of the peo­ple doing the “lord­ing” may be gleaned from the fol­low­ing: ” . . . . Zoltan Ist­van, the tran­shu­man­ist can­di­date for gov­er­nor of Cal­i­for­nia, told Tech Insid­er [26] that ‘a lot of the most impor­tant work in longevi­ty is com­ing from a hand­ful of the billionaires…around six or sev­en of them’. . . .”

Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni defined fas­cism as “cor­po­ratism,” and labeled his sys­tem “The Cor­po­rate State.” In that con­text, it is instruc­tive to weigh tran­shu­man­ism: ” . . . . You basi­cal­ly can’t sep­a­rate tran­shu­man­ism from cap­i­tal­ism. An idea that’s so enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly pur­sued by Musk and Peter Thiel, and by the founders of Google, is one that needs to be seen as a muta­tion of cap­i­tal­ism, not a cure for it.’ . . . . If those who form soci­ety in the age of tran­shu­man­ism are men like Musk and Thiel, it’s prob­a­ble that this soci­ety will have few social safe­ty nets. There will be an uneven rate of tech­no­log­i­cal progress glob­al­ly; even a post-human soci­ety can repli­cate the unequal glob­al wealth dis­tri­b­u­tion which we see today. In some cities and coun­tries, inhab­i­tants may live for­ev­er, while in oth­ers the res­i­dents die of mal­nu­tri­tion. If peo­ple don’t die off, the envi­ron­men­tal con­se­quences – from wide­spread nat­ur­al resource dev­as­ta­tion to unsus­tain­able ener­gy demands – would be wide­spread. . . . ”

“The First Men to Con­quer Death Will Cre­ate a New Social Order –A Ter­ri­fy­ing One” by San­jana Vargh­ese; The New States­man; 08/25/2017 [23]

In a 2011 New York­er pro­file [41], Peter Thiel, tech-phil­an­thropist and bil­lion­aire, sur­mised that “prob­a­bly the most extreme form of inequal­i­ty is between peo­ple who are alive and peo­ple who are dead”. While he may not be tech­ni­cal­ly wrong, Thiel and oth­er eccen­tric, wealthy tech-celebri­ties, such as Elon Musk and Mark Zucker­berg, have tak­en the next step to coun­ter­act that inequal­i­ty – by embark­ing on a quest to live for­ev­er.

Thiel and many like him have been invest­ing in research on life exten­sion, part of tran­shu­man­ism. Draw­ing on fields as diverse as neu­rotech­nol­o­gy, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, bio­med­ical engi­neer­ing and phi­los­o­phy, tran­shu­man­ists believe that the lim­i­ta­tions of the human body and mor­tal­i­ty can be tran­scend­ed by machines and tech­nol­o­gy. The ulti­mate aim is immor­tal­i­ty. Some believe this is achiev­able by 2045.

Of course, humans have long har­nessed tech­nol­o­gy, from vac­ci­na­tions to smart­phones, to improve and extend our lives. But that doesn’t admit you into the tran­shu­man­ist club. Want­i­ng to live for­ev­er, and pos­sess­ing vast sums of mon­ey and time to research, does.

The hows and whens of tran­shu­man­ism are mat­ters of debate. Some advo­cate the “Sin­gu­lar­i­ty” – a form of arti­fi­cial super-intel­li­gence which will encom­pass all of humanity’s knowl­edge, that our brains will then be uploaded to. Oth­ers believe in anti-age­ing meth­ods like cry­on­ics, freez­ing your body after death until such a time when you can be revived.

Tran­shu­man­ism is no longer a fringe move­ment either. Darpa, the US government’s research arm into advanced weapon­ry, cre­at­ed a func­tion­al pro­to­type of a super sol­dier exoskele­ton in 2014, which will be ful­ly func­tion­al in 2018, and is research­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an arti­fi­cial human brain.

“Tran­shu­man­ism doesn’t have much to say about social ques­tions. To the extent that they see the world chang­ing, it’s near­ly always in a busi­ness-as-usu­al way – tech­no-cap­i­tal­ism con­tin­ues to deliv­er its excel­lent boun­ties, and the peo­ple who ben­e­fit from the cur­rent social arrange­ment con­tin­ue to ben­e­fit from it,” says Mark O’Connell, the author of To be a Machine, who fol­lowed var­i­ous tran­shu­man­ists in Los Ange­les.”You basi­cal­ly can’t sep­a­rate tran­shu­man­ism from cap­i­tal­ism. An idea that’s so enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly pur­sued by Musk and Peter Thiel, and by the founders of Google, is one that needs to be seen as a muta­tion of cap­i­tal­ism, not a cure for it.”

Sil­i­con Val­ley is char­ac­terised by a blind belief in tech­no­log­i­cal progress, a dis­re­gard for social accept­abil­i­ty and an empha­sis on indi­vid­ual suc­cess. It’s no sur­prise, then, that it is here that the idea of liv­ing for­ev­er seems most desir­able.

Musk has pub­licly declared that we have to merge with arti­fi­cial­ly intel­li­gent machines that over­take human­i­ty in order to sur­vive. Ray Kurzweil, the inven­tor and futur­ist who pio­neered the Sin­gu­lar­i­ty, is now an engi­neer at Google. O’Connell points out that “you’d have to be com­ing from a par­tic­u­lar­ly rar­efied priv­i­lege to look at the world today and make the assess­ment, as some­one like Thiel does, that the biggest prob­lem we face as a species is the fact that peo­ple die of old age”.

On an even more basic lev­el, a tran­shu­man­ist soci­ety would undoubt­ed­ly be shaped by the ideals of those who cre­at­ed it and those who came before it. Zoltan Ist­van, the tran­shu­man­ist can­di­date for gov­er­nor of Cal­i­for­nia, told Tech Insid­er [26] that “a lot of the most impor­tant work in longevi­ty is com­ing from a hand­ful of the billionaires…around six or sev­en of them”.

Immor­tal­i­ty as defined by straight, white men could draw out cycles of oppres­sion. With­out old atti­tudes dying off and replaced by the impa­tience of youth, social change might become impos­si­ble. Arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence has already been shown to absorb the bias­es of its cre­ators. Upload­ing someone’s brain into a clone of them­selves doesn’t make them less like­ly to dis­crim­i­nate. Thiel and Musk, for exam­ple, iden­ti­fy as lib­er­tar­i­ans and have fre­quent­ly sug­gest­ed that tax­es are obso­lete and that gov­ern­men­tal mil­i­tary spend­ing needs to be curbed (and put into life-enhanc­ing tech­nolo­gies).

Thiel him­self is a Don­ald Trump sup­port­er. A one-time asso­ciate Michael Anis­si­mov, pre­vi­ous media offi­cer at Machine Intel­li­gence Research Insti­tute, a Thiel-fund­ed AI think tank, has pub­lished a white nation­al­ist man­i­festo [24]. In a 2013 inter­view [25], Anis­si­mov said that there were already sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences in intel­li­gence between the races, and that a tran­shu­man­ist soci­ety would inevitably lead to “peo­ple lord­ing it over oth­ers in a way that has nev­er been seen before in his­to­ry”. It doesn’t take much to guess who would be doing the “lord­ing”.

“The first enhanced humans will not be ordi­nary peo­ple; they’ll be the peo­ple who have already made those ordi­nary peo­ple eco­nom­i­cal­ly obso­lete through automa­tion. They’ll be tech bil­lion­aires,” says O’Connell.

If those who form soci­ety in the age of tran­shu­man­ism are men like Musk and Thiel, it’s prob­a­ble that this soci­ety will have few social safe­ty nets. There will be an uneven rate of tech­no­log­i­cal progress glob­al­ly; even a post-human soci­ety can repli­cate the unequal glob­al wealth dis­tri­b­u­tion which we see today. In some cities and coun­tries, inhab­i­tants may live for­ev­er, while in oth­ers the res­i­dents die of mal­nu­tri­tion. If peo­ple don’t die off, the envi­ron­men­tal con­se­quences – from wide­spread nat­ur­al resource dev­as­ta­tion to unsus­tain­able ener­gy demands – would be wide­spread.

It would be remiss to tar all tran­shu­man­ists with one brush. In 2014, The Huff­in­g­ton Post [42] that the mem­ber­ship of tran­shu­man­ist soci­eties and Face­book groups has start­ed to expand in num­ber and in diver­si­ty, draw­ing in young and old peo­ple of all polit­i­cal per­sua­sions and nation­al­i­ties.

It remains the case, though, that the major­i­ty of the mon­ey invest­ed in mak­ing tran­shu­man­ism a real­i­ty comes from rich, white men. As the descen­dants of a species with a ten­den­cy to exploit the down­trod­den, any posthu­mans must guard against repli­cat­ing those same bias­es in a new soci­ety. For some, poten­tial­ly in the near future, death might become option­al. For oth­ers, death will remain inevitable.

3. Nazis/white suprema­cists are already dis­tort­ing genet­ic research [27] to suit their own ends. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, aca­d­e­mics in the field have not been enthu­si­as­tic about engag­ing them. In the past, genet­ic research has been sup­port­ive of eugen­ics phi­los­o­phy.

” . . . . Nowhere on the agen­da of the annu­al meet­ing of the Amer­i­can Soci­ety of Human Genet­ics, being held in San Diego this week, is a top­ic plagu­ing many of its mem­bers: the recur­ring appro­pri­a­tion of the field’s research in the name of white suprema­cy. ‘Stick­ing your neck out on polit­i­cal issues is dif­fi­cult,’ said Jen­nifer Wag­n­er, a bioethi­cist and pres­i­dent of the group’s social issues com­mit­tee, who had sought to con­vene a pan­el on the racist mis­use of genet­ics and found lit­tle trac­tion. But the specter of the field’s igno­min­ious past, which includes sup­port for the Amer­i­can eugen­ics move­ment, looms large for many geneti­cists in light of today’s white iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics. They also wor­ry about how new tools that are allow­ing them to home in on the genet­ic basis of hot-but­ton traits like intel­li­gence will be mis­con­strued to fit racist ide­olo­gies. . . .”

“Geneti­cists See Work Dis­tort­ed for Racist Ends” by Amy Har­mon; The New York Times [West­ern Edi­tion]; 10/18/2018; pp.A1-A18. [27]

Nowhere on the agen­da of the annu­al meet­ing of the Amer­i­can Soci­ety of Human Genet­ics, being held in San Diego this week, is a top­ic plagu­ing many of its mem­bers: the recur­ring appro­pri­a­tion of the field’s research in the name of white suprema­cy.

“Stick­ing your neck out on polit­i­cal issues is dif­fi­cult,” said Jen­nifer Wag­n­er, a bioethi­cist and pres­i­dent of the group’s social issues com­mit­tee, who had sought to con­vene a pan­el on the racist mis­use of genet­ics and found lit­tle trac­tion.

But the specter of the field’s igno­min­ious past, which includes sup­port for the Amer­i­can eugen­ics move­ment, looms large for many geneti­cists in light of today’s white iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics. They also wor­ry about how new tools that are allow­ing them to home in on the genet­ic basis of hot-but­ton traits like intel­li­gence will be mis­con­strued to fit racist ide­olo­gies.

In recent months, some sci­en­tists have spot­ted dis­tor­tions of their own aca­d­e­m­ic papers in far-right inter­net forums. Oth­ers have field­ed con­fused queries about claims of white supe­ri­or­i­ty wrapped in the jar­gon of human genet­ics. Mis­con­cep­tions about how genes fac­tor into America’s stark racial dis­par­i­ties have sur­faced in the nation’s increas­ing­ly heat­ed argu­ments over school achieve­ment gaps, immi­gra­tion and polic­ing. . . .

. . . . Already, some of those audi­ences are flaunt­ing DNA ances­try test results indi­cat­ing exclu­sive­ly Euro­pean her­itage as though they were racial ID cards. They are cel­e­brat­ing traces of Nean­derthal DNA not found in peo­ple with only African ances­try. And they are trad­ing mes­sages with the cod­ed term “race real­ism,” which takes oxy­gen from the claim that the lib­er­al sci­en­tif­ic estab­lish­ment has obscured the truth about bio­log­i­cal racial dif­fer­ences. . . .

. . . . And while much of cur­rent white nation­al­ist rhetoric is framed in terms of pre­serv­ing a white cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty, experts say it relies on a famil­iar nar­ra­tive of immutable bio­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences. On a YouTube talk show ear­li­er this year, for instance, Gavin McInnes, founder of the Proud Boys, whose appear­ance set off a brawl out­side a Repub­li­can club [43] in Man­hat­tan last week, echoed the pet white suprema­cist the­o­ry that the envi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges of cold win­ters explain the sup­posed high­er intel­li­gence of north­ern Euro­peans.

4. A 14-word post­ing on the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty web­site has raised eye­brows. We believe it is an exam­ple of dog-whistling by fascist/Nazi ele­ments inside of the DHS. The “Four­teen Words” were mint­ed [28] by Order mem­ber and Alan Berg mur­der get­away dri­ver David Lane. “88” is a well-known clan­des­tine Nazi salute. In the imme­di­ate after­math of World War II, using the Nazi salute “Heil Hitler” was banned. To cir­cum­vent that, Nazis said “88,” because H is the eighth let­ter in the alpha­bet.

The num­bers 14 and 88 are often com­bined [29] by Nazis.

The title of the DHS  post­ing: “We Must Secure The Bor­der And Build The Wall To Make Amer­i­ca Safe Again.”

The 14 words of David Lane: “We must secure the exis­tence of our peo­ple and a future for white chil­dren.”

In arti­cles below, we note the inclu­sion of ele­ments in the DHS for whom such atti­tudes would be expect­ed.

“Are ‘14’ and ‘88’ Nazi Dog Whis­tles in Bor­der Secu­ri­ty Document–Or Just Num­bers?” by Aviya Kush­n­er; For­ward; 6/28/2018. [44] 

Some­times a dog whis­tle can be a num­ber, not a word. The num­ber “88” appeared in a strange con­text in a press release from Home­land Secu­ri­ty call­ing for build­ing a bor­der wall, along with a head­line that had a total of four­teen words — but until today, no one seems to have noticed.

Today, the press release, orig­i­nal­ly issued in Feb­ru­ary, is get­ting some atten­tion from jour­nal­ists cov­er­ing the “hate and extrem­ism” beat. Here is an exam­ple, from Christo­pher Math­ias, [45] who cov­ers hate and extrem­ism for The Huff­in­g­ton Post.

What is hap­pen­ing, for those need­ing a trans­la­tion, is this: The num­ber “88” is code for Heil Hitler. And 14 is white-suprema­cist short­hand.

“One of the most com­mon white suprema­cist sym­bols, 88 is used through­out the entire white suprema­cist move­ment, not just neo-Nazis. One can find it as a tat­too or graph­ic sym­bol; as part of the name of a group, pub­li­ca­tion or web­site; or as part of a screen­name or e‑mail address,” the ADL’s hate sym­bol data­base [46] notes.

Most of the press release, titled “We Must Secure The Bor­der And Build The Wall To Make Amer­i­ca Safe Again,” uses per­cent­ages, as do many sta­tis­ti­cal reports.

But the sec­ond-to-last line is what is draw­ing atten­tion on Twit­ter, because it has this curi­ous word­ing: “On aver­age, out of 88 claims that pass the cred­i­ble fear screen­ing, few­er than 13 will ulti­mate­ly result in a grant of asy­lum.”

That’s odd. Nor­mal­ly, a report might say some­thing like “less than 15 per­cent ulti­mate­ly result in a grant of asy­lum.”

It may just be coin­ci­dence, and on a day when jour­nal­ists are shot, every­one with a con­nec­tion to media is under­stand­ably on edge. But there is one oth­er fac­tor to con­sid­er, say those who hear a dog whis­tle: what if this “88” is read in con­junc­tion with the head­line, which has 14 words?

The 14-word thing is its own sig­nal. As the ADL hate sym­bol data­base explains in its unpack­ing of 88:

The num­ber is fre­quent­ly com­bined with anoth­er white suprema­cist numer­ic code, 14 (short­hand for the so-called “14 Words” slo­gan: “We must secure the exis­tence of our peo­ple and a future for white chil­dren”) in the form of 1488, 14/88, 14–88, or 8814.

That slo­gan can be under­stood as some­thing not very far from the press release head­line: “We Must Secure The Bor­der And Build The Wall To Make Amer­i­ca Safe Again.”

Coin­ci­dence? Maybe.

But a numer­i­cal sys­tem of inter­pre­ta­tion can be a way for a group to com­mu­ni­cate with itself. In Jew­ish tra­di­tion, gema­tria is one sys­tem of Bib­li­cal com­men­tary. Each let­ter in the Hebrew alpha­bet has a numer­i­cal val­ue, and some com­men­ta­tors use this sym­bol of num­bers to arrive at addi­tion­al mean­ings. Some see pro­found mean­ing in this, oth­ers have always dis­missed it as mere coin­ci­dence.

In the case of the DHS press release, it may be coin­ci­dence — or it may be more, a sig­nal to those who know the sys­tem of codes.

What can be said for sure is this: It is unusu­al to use the sta­tis­tic “13 out of 88.” It could, of course, be a typo. And the head­line bear­ing the req­ui­site “14 words” is not sooth­ing for any­one who has spent time with hate data­bas­es.

But right now, those are the only def­i­nite take-aways.

In a time of fear and anx­i­ety, it is impor­tant to take extra care before draw­ing con­clu­sions. Still, from now on, it may be wise to watch the num­bers, not just the words.

6. It comes as no sur­prise that Ian M. Smith–a for­mer DHS Trump appointee–had doc­u­ment­ed links with white suprema­cists.

“Emails Link For­mer Home­land Secu­ri­ty Offi­cial to White Nation­al­ists” by Rosie Gray; The Atlantic; 08/28/2018 [30].

In the past two years, lead­ers of an embold­ened white nation­al­ism have burst into the fore­front of nation­al pol­i­tics and coa­lesced around a so-called alt-right sub­cul­ture as they have endeav­ored to make their ide­ol­o­gy part of the main­stream. Recent devel­op­ments have shed light on pre­vi­ous­ly unknown con­nec­tions between white-nation­al­ist activists and the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. Now, the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty has denounced “all forms of vio­lent extrem­ism” fol­low­ing the res­ig­na­tion of a pol­i­cy ana­lyst who had con­nec­tions with white nation­al­ists, accord­ing to leaked emails obtained by The Atlantic.

The emails show that the offi­cial, Ian M. Smith, had in the past been in con­tact with a group that includ­ed known white nation­al­ists as they planned var­i­ous events. On one of the email threads, the address of the alt-right white nation­al­ist leader Richard Spencer is includ­ed, as well as Smith’s. Anoth­er group of recip­i­ents includes Smith as well as Jared Tay­lor, the founder of the white nation­al­ist pub­li­ca­tion Amer­i­can Renais­sance, who calls him­self a “white advo­cate.”

The mes­sages, giv­en to The Atlantic by a source to whom they were for­ward­ed, paint a pic­ture of the social scene in which white nation­al­ists gath­ered for an “Alt-Right Toast­mas­ters” night in 2016, and orga­nized din­ner par­ties and vis­its from out-of-town friends. And they pro­vide a glimpse into how a group that includ­ed hard-core white nation­al­ists was able to oper­ate rel­a­tive­ly incog­ni­to in the wider world, par­tic­u­lar­ly in con­ser­v­a­tive cir­cles. The rev­e­la­tion of these mes­sages comes amid increas­ing scruti­ny of white nation­al­ists’ ties to the admin­is­tra­tion; a White House speech­writer, Dar­ren Beat­tie, left the admin­is­tra­tion after CNN report­ed [47] ear­li­er this month that he had attend­ed a con­fer­ence with white nation­al­ists in 2016. The Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed [48]last week that Peter Brimelow, the pub­lish­er of the white nation­al­ist web­site VDare, had attend­ed a par­ty at the top White House eco­nom­ic advis­er Lar­ry Kudlow’s house. Kud­low told the Post he was unaware of Brimelow’s views and would not have invit­ed him had he known about them.

After being reached for com­ment about The Atlantic’s report­ing, Smith said in an email: “I no longer work at DHS as of last week and didn’t attend any of the events you’ve men­tioned.” Nei­ther he nor DHS dis­put­ed that it is him on the emails in ques­tion.

White nation­al­ists have an affin­i­ty for the pres­i­dent, who they believe shares some of their pol­i­cy pri­or­i­ties [49]. After the coun­ter­pro­test­er Heather Hey­er was killed at a white-nation­al­ist ral­ly in Char­lottesville, Vir­ginia, in 2017, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump remarked that there were “very fine peo­ple on both sides” who attend­ed the ral­ly. After hear­ing the president’s state­ment, Spencer told The Atlantic he was “real­ly proud of him.” [50]

Accord­ing to sources with knowl­edge of Smith’s role at DHS, he was a pol­i­cy ana­lyst work­ing on immi­gra­tion. He used to work for the Immi­gra­tion Reform Law Insti­tute (IRLI), an anti-immi­gra­tion legal orga­ni­za­tion asso­ci­at­ed with the right-wing Fed­er­a­tion for Amer­i­can Immi­gra­tion Reform (FAIR). From 2014 to 2017 he wrote a num­ber of columns on immi­gra­tion for Nation­al Review [51]. (The NationalReview.com edi­tor Charles Cooke didn’t imme­di­ate­ly respond to a request for com­ment).

Smith’s pub­lic writ­ings show­cased a right-wing per­spec­tive on immi­gra­tion, such as oppos­ing [52] the Immi­gra­tion and Nation­al­i­ty Act of 1965, which end­ed race-based restric­tions on immi­gra­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly from coun­tries in Asia and Africa, and which Smith argued was respon­si­ble for the “bare­ly gov­ern­able sys­tem we have today,” oppos­ing sanc­tu­ary cities [53], and applaud­ing [54] the con­tro­ver­sial S.B. 1070 anti–illegal immi­gra­tion law in Ari­zona.

In an inter­view [55]with the web­site FOIA Advi­sor in 2016, Smith said he “was born just out­side Seat­tle, grew up in Van­cou­ver, British Colum­bia, and lived in Bei­jing, Hong Kong, and Syd­ney, Aus­tralia for many years.” In that inter­view, he described his role at the IRLI thus­ly: “I work at a non­prof­it law firm that rep­re­sents peo­ple harmed by the government’s fail­ure to reg­u­late immi­gra­tion.”

Dale Wilcox, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the IRLI, said in a state­ment: “Ian Smith was an inves­tiga­tive asso­ciate at IRLI, as an inde­pen­dent con­trac­tor for two years and an employ­ee for less than a year between Jan­u­ary 2015 and Octo­ber 2017. How our employ­ees fill their time out­side of the office, or the pri­vate rela­tion­ships they pur­sue, are not issues of IRLI’s con­cern. It is not any organization’s respon­si­bil­i­ty to track their employ­ees after hours activ­i­ties or peer into their employee’s pri­vate lives. For the record, IRLI and FAIR have no asso­ci­a­tion with the indi­vid­u­als men­tioned and we repu­di­ate their views. Fur­ther­more, if it would come to our atten­tion that any employ­ees are asso­ci­at­ed with indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions that hold nox­ious views on mat­ters of race and eth­nic­i­ty, that may be grounds for ter­mi­na­tion. Final­ly, it must be not­ed that sim­ply appear­ing on someone’s email list should nev­er be inter­pret­ed as a blan­ket endorse­ment of that individual’s point of view.”

After describ­ing the emails involv­ing Smith in detail to DHS spokes­peo­ple on Mon­day, The Atlantic learned on Tues­day that Smith had resigned from his posi­tion.

A DHS spokesper­son, Tyler Q. Houl­ton, said: “The Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty is com­mit­ted to com­bat­ing all forms of vio­lent extrem­ism, espe­cial­ly move­ments that espouse racial suprema­cy or big­otry. This type of rad­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy runs counter to the Department’s mis­sion of keep­ing Amer­i­ca safe.”

Sev­er­al emails obtained by The Atlantic show Smith includ­ed on threads with peo­ple asso­ci­at­ed with white nation­al­ism, such as Mar­cus Epstein, a for­mer Tom Tan­cre­do aide who entered an Alford plea in 2009 [56]for assault­ing a black woman in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., in 2007, and Devin Sauci­er [57], an edi­tor (under a pseu­do­nym) at Amer­i­can Renais­sance. Epstein declined to com­ment; Sauci­er did not respond to a request for com­ment.

On June 3, 2016, Epstein emailed a group includ­ing Smith, Sauci­er, Tay­lor, and oth­ers to invite them to an “Alt-Right Toast­mas­ters” event. “We are hav­ing our much delayed fol­low up meet­ing on Mon­day June 6 at 7:00 PM. A cou­ple of out of town guests will be there. Please RSVP and if you want to invite any­one else, please check with me,” Epstein wrote. “I’m going to give a short pre­sen­ta­tion on ‘The Pros and Cons of Anonymi­ty’ at 8:00 fol­lowed by dis­cus­sion.” In a pre­vi­ous email on the sub­ject, Epstein had said he was tim­ing the event for a vis­it from Wayne Lut­ton [58], the edi­tor of the white-nation­al­ist pub­li­ca­tion [59] The Social Con­tract. Accord­ing to a source who was there, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, Smith attend­ed this event.

On Decem­ber 17, 2015, Sauci­er and Epstein emailed a YouTube link, which is now defunct, to a group of address­es includ­ing Smith’s and Spencer’s. Reached by phone, Spencer said, “To my knowl­edge, I’ve nev­er met Ian Smith. I get roped in to all sorts of email con­ver­sa­tions, I receive too many emails every day for me to respond to.”

Though the emails don’t show Smith and Spencer inter­act­ing, some of the mes­sages indi­cate a famil­iar­i­ty on Smith’s part with Spencer’s projects. In anoth­er email, sent on March 7, 2015, Smith refers to an event held by “NPI,” the acronym for the Nation­al Pol­i­cy Insti­tute, Spencer’s white-nation­al­ist non­prof­it, say­ing he had missed it because he was out of town. And in anoth­er, on May 9, 2016, Smith rec­om­mend­ed some­one for a job at a promi­nent, Trump-sup­port­ing media out­let, say­ing that the per­son was “cur­rent­ly work­ing in devel­op­ment at LI” (the con­ser­v­a­tive train­ing group the Lead­er­ship Insti­tute) and “writes for Radix, Amren, VDare and Chron­i­cles under a pseu­do­nym.” The word Amren refers to Amer­i­can Renais­sanceRadix is Spencer’s pub­li­ca­tion. “Chron­i­cles” appears to refer to Chron­i­cles Mag­a­zine, anoth­er pub­li­ca­tion asso­ci­at­ed with this move­ment [60], which has pub­lished Lut­ton and Sam Fran­cis, the late edi­tor of the Coun­cil of Con­ser­v­a­tive Cit­i­zens’ newslet­ter. Smith also wrote that the per­son he had rec­om­mend­ed “helps Richard and JT with their web­sites,” appear­ing to refer to Spencer and Jared Tay­lor.

In one email exchange at the end of Octo­ber 2015, Ben Zapp, a real-estate agent who has in the past been pho­tographed [61] with mem­bers of this scene, invit­ed a group includ­ing Smith; Sauci­er; Epstein; Tim Dion­isopou­los, a Media Research Cen­ter staffer; and Kevin DeAn­na, the for­mer Youth for West­ern Civ­i­liza­tion pres­i­dent, to his apart­ment for din­ner, stat­ing that he wasn’t going to that weekend’s NPI con­fer­ence. (The 2016 con­fer­ence of NPI is where Spencer was caught on video [62]lead­ing a “Hail Trump” chant while audi­ence mem­bers gave Nazi salutes.) Zapp, Dion­isopou­los, and DeAn­na did not respond to requests for com­ment.

Epstein replied to the thread say­ing he wasn’t going to NPI either but was plan­ning to social­ize with peo­ple who were, and that “I can’t speak for every­one, but this is prob­a­bly not the best time.” Zapp respond­ed, “It’s a din­ner, not a party—thus the hav­ing to get out by 9:30 or 10 at the lat­est. I would imag­ine this would start on the ear­ly side, like 7:00 or even ear­li­er. So it’s settled—we know my home shall remain juden­frei.” Juden­frei is a Ger­man word mean­ing “free of Jews,” which the Nazis used to describe areas from which Jews had been expelled or killed.

Smith respond­ed to the group: “They don’t call it Fre­itag for noth­ing,” using the Ger­man word for “Fri­day,” and added, “I was plan­ning to hit the bar dur­ing the din­ner hours and talk to peo­ple like Matt Par­rot [sic], etc. I should have time to pop by though.” Matt Par­rott is the for­mer spokesman for the neo-Nazi Tra­di­tion­al­ist Work­er Par­ty, which flamed out ear­li­er this year after its leader, Matthew Heim­bach, had an affair with Parrott’s wife, lead­ing to the two falling out [63].

And in an email from 2014, Smith jok­ing­ly calls “spoon­ing dibs” on Jack Dono­van dur­ing a vis­it from Dono­van, a “mas­culin­ist” writer who has ties to mem­bers of the alt-right and is heav­i­ly involved in Wolves of Vin­land [64], a neo-pagan group entwined with the white-nation­al­ist move­ment. Sauci­er had emailed sev­er­al peo­ple to dis­cuss sleep­ing arrange­ments for Dono­van, telling them that, “There was some mis­un­der­stand­ing about how Jack Dono­van would arrive down in Lynch­burg for fes­tiv­i­ties this week­end”; the Wolves of Vin­land are based out­side of Lynch­burg, Vir­ginia.

7. Ian Smith was not alone. John Feee and Julie Kirchener–both hard line anti-immi­gra­tion activists–have been hired by Team Trump. ” . . . . Jon Feere, a for­mer legal pol­i­cy ana­lyst for the Cen­ter for Immi­gra­tion Stud­ies, or CIS, has been hired as an advis­er to Thomas D. Homan, the act­ing direc­tor of Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment, accord­ing to Home­land Secu­ri­ty spokesman David Lapan. At Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion, Julie Kirch­n­er, the for­mer exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Fed­er­a­tion for Amer­i­can Immi­gra­tion Reform, or FAIR, has been hired as an advis­er to Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion act­ing Com­mis­sion­er Kevin McAleenan, said Lapan. The hir­ing of Feere and Kirch­n­er at the fed­er­al agen­cies has alarmed immi­grants’ rights activists. CIS and FAIR are think tanks based in Wash­ing­ton that advo­cate restrict­ing legal and ille­gal immi­gra­tion. The two orga­ni­za­tions were found­ed by John Tan­ton, a retired Michi­gan oph­thal­mol­o­gist who has open­ly embraced eugen­ics, the sci­ence of improv­ing the genet­ic qual­i­ty of the human pop­u­la­tion by encour­ag­ing selec­tive breed­ing and at times, advo­cat­ing for the ster­il­iza­tion of genet­i­cal­ly unde­sir­able groups. . . .”

The Fed­er­a­tion for Immi­gra­tion Reform has been part­ly fund­ed by the Pio­neer Fund [32], an orga­ni­za­tion that oper­at­ed in favor of the eugen­ics pol­i­cy of Nazi Ger­many [33]. “. . . . Between 1985 and 1994, FAIR received around $1.2 mil­lion in grants from the Pio­neer Fund [34]. The Pio­neer Fund is a eugeni­cist orga­ni­za­tion that was start­ed in 1937 by men close to the Nazi regime who want­ed to pur­sue “race bet­ter­ment” by pro­mot­ing the genet­ic lines of Amer­i­can whites. Now led by race sci­en­tist J. Philippe Rush­ton [35], the fund con­tin­ues to back stud­ies intend­ed to reveal the infe­ri­or­i­ty of minori­ties to whites. . . .”

“Hard-Line Anti-Immi­gra­tion Advo­cates Hired at 2 Fed­er­al Agen­cies” by Maria San­tana; CNN; 4/12/2017. [31]

Two hard-line oppo­nents of ille­gal immi­gra­tion have obtained high-lev­el advi­so­ry jobs at fed­er­al immi­gra­tion agen­cies in the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty.

Jon Feere, a for­mer legal pol­i­cy ana­lyst for the Cen­ter for Immi­gra­tion Stud­ies, or CIS, has been hired as an advis­er to Thomas D. Homan, the act­ing direc­tor of Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment, accord­ing to Home­land Secu­ri­ty spokesman David Lapan.

At Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion, Julie Kirch­n­er, the for­mer exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Fed­er­a­tion for Amer­i­can Immi­gra­tion Reform, or FAIR, has been hired as an advis­er to Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion act­ing Com­mis­sion­er Kevin McAleenan, said Lapan.

The hir­ing of Feere and Kirch­n­er at the fed­er­al agen­cies has alarmed immi­grants’ rights activists.

CIS and FAIR are think tanks based in Wash­ing­ton that advo­cate restrict­ing legal and ille­gal immi­gra­tion. The two orga­ni­za­tions were found­ed by John Tan­ton, a retired Michi­gan oph­thal­mol­o­gist who has open­ly embraced eugen­ics, the sci­ence of improv­ing the genet­ic qual­i­ty of the human pop­u­la­tion by encour­ag­ing selec­tive breed­ing and at times, advo­cat­ing for the ster­il­iza­tion of genet­i­cal­ly unde­sir­able groups.

Dan Stein, pres­i­dent of FAIR, not­ed in a 2011 New York Times arti­cle that Tan­ton did not hold a lead­er­ship role in the orga­ni­za­tion any more and was no longer on the board of direc­tors. He is still list­ed as belong­ing to FAIR’s nation­al board of advi­sors.

New aides and their con­nec­tions

Kirch­n­er worked as exec­u­tive direc­tor of FAIR from Octo­ber 2005 to August 2015. She then joined the Don­ald Trump pres­i­den­tial cam­paign as an immi­gra­tion advis­er before being appoint­ed to Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion.

While at CIS, Feere pro­mot­ed leg­is­la­tion to end auto­mat­ic cit­i­zen­ship for US-born chil­dren of undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants. He argued that bear­ing a child on US soil pro­vides an immi­grant access to wel­fare and oth­er social ben­e­fits, which has spurred a rise in what he calls “birth tourism,” the prac­tice of for­eign­ers trav­el­ing to the Unit­ed States to give birth to add a US cit­i­zen to the fam­i­ly.

The non­par­ti­san fact-check­ing web­site Poli­ti­fact has most­ly debunked those claims, con­clud­ing that US-born chil­dren do lit­tle in the long term to help their immi­grant par­ents. Cit­i­zen chil­dren can­not spon­sor their par­ents for cit­i­zen­ship until the young per­son turns 21 and any social ben­e­fits would be giv­en to the child and not their undoc­u­ment­ed par­ents, who would not qual­i­fy. The Pew Research Cen­ter also has found that the num­ber of babies born to unau­tho­rized immi­grants in the Unit­ed States has been declin­ing steadi­ly in recent years.

Feere also has been a strong crit­ic of Deferred Action for Child­hood Arrivals, the pro­gram enact­ed by Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma via exec­u­tive action that has grant­ed pro­tec­tion from depor­ta­tion to young immi­grants brought to the coun­try as chil­dren.

In one arti­cle pub­lished by CIS, Feere ques­tioned whether chil­dren brought to the Unit­ed States at an ear­ly age were suf­fi­cient­ly assim­i­lat­ed or loy­al to this nation to be grant­ed any type of legal sta­tus.

In a 2013 inter­view with The Wash­ing­ton Post, Mark Kriko­ri­an, exec­u­tive direc­tor of CIS, wor­ried about grow­ing “mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism” and con­tend­ed that a “lot of immi­gra­tion push­ers don’t like Amer­i­ca the way it is” and want to change it.

Stein, the pres­i­dent of FAIR, defend­ed in a 1997 inter­view with the Wall Street Jour­nal his belief that cer­tain immi­grant groups are engaged in “com­pet­i­tive breed­ing” to dimin­ish Amer­i­ca’s white major­i­ty.

“CIS has pub­lished arti­cles that labeled immi­grants ‘third world gold dig­gers’ and that blamed Cen­tral Amer­i­can asy­lum seek­ers for the ‘bur­geon­ing street gang prob­lem’ in the US, while Dan Stein has said that many immi­grants that come to the US hate Amer­i­ca and every­thing the coun­try stands for,” said Hei­di Beirich, direc­tor of South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter’s Intel­li­gence Project, which over­sees the cen­ter’s year­ly count of anti-immi­grant groups. “We take these des­ig­na­tions very seri­ous­ly, and CIS and FAIR are far-right fringe groups that reg­u­lar­ly pub­lish racist, xeno­pho­bic mate­r­i­al and spread mis­in­for­ma­tion about immi­grants and immi­gra­tion.”

Through­out the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign and since he’s tak­en office, Don­ald Trump’s immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy has mir­rored details found in CIS reports. In April 2016, for exam­ple, CIS pub­lished a list of “79 immi­gra­tion actions that the next pres­i­dent can take.” The list includ­ed such mea­sures as with­hold­ing fed­er­al funds from sanc­tu­ary cities, elim­i­nat­ing the “Pri­or­i­ty Enforce­ment Pro­gram,” which pri­or­i­tized the depor­ta­tion of the most seri­ous crim­i­nals dur­ing the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion, and reduc­ing the num­ber of wel­fare-depen­dent immi­grants liv­ing in the Unit­ed States.

Many of these rec­om­men­da­tions have already been enact­ed, pro­posed or dis­cussed by the admin­is­tra­tion, and some were includ­ed in Trump’s exec­u­tive order on immi­gra­tion issued in Jan­u­ary.

“The cam­paign and the admin­is­tra­tion have used oth­er mate­r­i­al of ours so I’m delight­ed that they are using that immi­gra­tion actions list,” Kriko­ri­an said. “But there’s a dif­fer­ence between using CIS’ mate­r­i­al as source of impor­tant research and CIS actu­al­ly hav­ing a direct oper­a­tional link to the admin­is­tra­tion.”

Kriko­ri­an declined to com­ment on Feere’s job at ICE.

Feere, Kirch­n­er, act­ing ICE Direc­tor Homan and act­ing Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion Com­mis­sion­er McAleenan declined requests for inter­views.

Kirch­n­er and Feere’s advi­so­ry roles at Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion and ICE have rat­tled some immi­grants’ rights advo­cates, who say they are con­cerned by the new­found pow­er and influ­ence far-right nativist groups have gained with­in the gov­ern­ment since Trump came into office.

“These groups have spent 20 years look­ing for ways that they could hurt immi­grants and now they’ve been giv­en the keys to the king­dom,” said Lynn Tra­monte, deputy direc­tor of Amer­i­ca’s Voice, a pro-immi­grant advo­ca­cy group based in Wash­ing­ton whose goal is to cre­ate a path­way to cit­i­zen­ship for undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants.

Some pro-immi­grant advo­cates already sense a grow­ing break­down in their abil­i­ty to effec­tive­ly get infor­ma­tion from ICE.

“There is this gen­er­al, very harsh sense with­in the non­prof­it advo­ca­cy com­mu­ni­ty that we are being entire­ly shut out on every­thing from engage­ment on pol­i­cy all the way to indi­vid­ual immi­grant cas­es, and just very basic infor­ma­tion that ICE should be trans­par­ent about, like how many deten­tion cen­ters are cur­rent­ly in oper­a­tion around the coun­try,” said a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from a pro-immi­grant orga­ni­za­tion who, along with some oth­er col­leagues, request­ed anonymi­ty in order to speak freely.

ICE adds groups to stake­hold­er meet­ings

This marks what some say is a dras­tic change in the rela­tion­ship between ICE and pro-immi­grant advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tions. Dur­ing the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, a coali­tion of pro-immi­grant groups known as the ICE-NGO Work­ing Group start­ed hold­ing con­fi­den­tial, closed-door stake­hold­er meet­ings sev­er­al times a year with high-rank­ing immi­gra­tion offi­cials as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to express con­cerns and ask spe­cif­ic ques­tions about enforce­ment pol­i­cy, the rights of immi­grants and their treat­ment while in deten­tion.

The Amer­i­can Immi­gra­tion Lawyers Asso­ci­a­tion, the Amer­i­can Bar Asso­ci­a­tion’s Immi­grant Jus­tice Project and the Nation­al Immi­grant Jus­tice Cen­ter are among the advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tions that make up the ICE-NGO Work­ing Group.

In Feb­ru­ary, at the first such get-togeth­er under the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, mem­bers of the work­ing group felt blind­sided to dis­cov­er that some anti-immi­grant, pro-enforce­ment groups also were in atten­dance.

In addi­tion to CIS and FAIR, invi­ta­tions were extend­ed to the Immi­gra­tion Reform Law Insti­tute, which is the legal arm of FAIR, Num­ber­sUSA and Judi­cial Watch. These groups sup­port stricter enforce­ment of immi­gra­tion laws, reduc­ing over­all immi­gra­tion lev­els and the increased deten­tion and depor­ta­tion of undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants.

“We are frus­trat­ed and angry that what felt like a pro­duc­tive con­ver­sa­tion and an exchange of ideas and infor­ma­tion about how to ensure the safe and fair treat­ment of immi­grants in their (ICE) cus­tody has mor­phed into a meet­ing with orga­ni­za­tions whose mis­sion is to restrict immi­gra­tion and per­pet­u­ate hate against immi­grants,” said one pro-immi­grant advo­cate who attend­ed the Feb­ru­ary meet­ing.

Pro-enforce­ment, pro-immi­grant groups debate

Lead­ers of the pro-enforce­ment orga­ni­za­tions argue, how­ev­er, that as clear stake­hold­ers in the immi­gra­tion debate they have every right to be at the ICE meet­ings.

“We were inten­tion­al­ly exclud­ed from the meet­ings under the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion, but with the new man­age­ment, ICE invit­ed some oth­er groups, too, and it’s long over­due,” said Kriko­ri­an, who acknowl­edged he does not remem­ber being invit­ed to these meet­ings.

Pro-immi­grant advo­cates have told ICE they would pre­fer if the agency met with those groups sep­a­rate­ly, which ICE has declined to do. Some advo­cates said they don’t take issue with peo­ple who have oppo­site views on immi­gra­tion, but believe these groups have con­sis­tent­ly spread ver­i­fi­ably false infor­ma­tion to demo­nize the immi­grant com­mu­ni­ty and its allies.

“There’s obvi­ous fear in the com­mu­ni­ty because of the anti-immi­grant rhetoric com­ing from this admin­is­tra­tion, but hav­ing Jon Feere, who came from CIS, in a lead­er­ship posi­tion at ICE and now these anti-immi­grant groups show­ing up at stake­hold­er meet­ings for the first time in 14 years, it has also cre­at­ed this real­ly deep-seat­ed fear in the advo­ca­cy com­mu­ni­ty,” said an immi­grants’ rights activist who teared up recall­ing how one advo­cate felt she could no longer par­tic­i­pate for fear of expos­ing her­self to ICE.

“Many immi­grants’ rights advo­cates are immi­grants them­selves, some are DACA recip­i­ents, and they are now afraid to even show up at the stake­hold­er meet­ings because they may be tak­en into cus­tody while at ICE head­quar­ters. These are smart, pro­fes­sion­al, well-edu­cat­ed advo­cates that are now scared to do their jobs,” said the activist.

As a result, immi­grants’ rights orga­ni­za­tions have since noti­fied ICE that they have dis­solved the ICE-NGO Work­ing Group and will no longer par­tic­i­pate in the quar­ter­ly gath­er­ings.

ICE will keep meet­ings going

In a state­ment ICE said the meet­ings will con­tin­ue:

“ICE is com­mit­ted to trans­paren­cy with all inter­est­ed stake­hold­ers — not just those of one opin­ion on immi­gra­tion enforce­ment issues and poli­cies. ICE appre­ci­ates con­struc­tive and diverse view­points from a wide spec­trum of orga­ni­za­tions inter­est­ed in immi­gra­tion enforce­ment. The agency con­tin­ues to expand engage­ment with stake­hold­ers and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers. Our goal is to make sure all mem­bers of the pub­lic ful­ly under­stand what we do and what we don’t do.”

Peter Rob­bio a spokesman for Num­ber­sUSA, a group that also scored its first invi­ta­tion to the stake­hold­er meet­ing, described this as the best rela­tion­ship the orga­ni­za­tion has had with any admin­is­tra­tion in 21 years.

Said FAIR’s Stein: “Pres­i­dent Trump under­stands the immi­gra­tion issue from the larg­er view of the nation­al inter­est and has tapped a strong bench of peo­ple who bring exper­tise on the issue — some who are in the admin­is­tra­tion, some who are not.”

If pro-immi­grant groups are unhap­py about that, said Tom Fit­ton, pres­i­dent of Judi­cial Watch, they bet­ter get used to the new real­i­ty.

“I’m sure these left-wing groups are used to being able to con­trol the debate and con­trol the room, and I’m sure they would love to be able to con­tin­ue to do that, even dur­ing the Trump admin­is­tra­tion,” Fit­ton said.

The pro-enforce­ment groups are enjoy­ing the unprece­dent­ed input to shape immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy and hope to con­tin­ue attend­ing the stake­hold­er meet­ings with ICE.

“We should be encour­ag­ing more of these meet­ings,” Fit­ton said. “I know the lib­er­al left is afraid to con­front the argu­ments of their oppo­nents and want to be able to talk to the gov­ern­ment with­out any­one hold­ing them to account, but we are not opposed to par­tic­i­pat­ing in them with the oth­er groups.”

Not quite, says the oth­er side.

“This isn’t exact­ly the same sit­u­a­tion as hav­ing Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans, con­ser­v­a­tives and lib­er­als, both in the same room,” coun­tered one pro-immi­grant advo­cate. “The fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ence is that their agen­da is dri­ven by a nativist white suprema­cist approach to pol­i­cy. So, to sit togeth­er in a room, not only does it have a chill­ing effect, but I think that many of the advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing ours, fear that we would be nor­mal­iz­ing the nativist agen­da as it gets into the halls of our gov­ern­ment.”

6. An arti­cle cit­ed, but not excerpt­ed, in the audio por­tion of the pro­gram notes the role of the scape­goat­ing of immi­gra­tion in the rise of neo­fas­cist par­ties. The dev­as­ta­tion from the mid­dle East wars–Syria in particular–has dri­ven large num­bers of des­per­ate refugees to Europe. This plays beau­ti­ful­ly into the polit­i­cal agen­da of so-called “pop­ulists” who cite them as the rea­son for the imple­men­ta­tion of what is essen­tial­ly a xeno­pho­bic plat­form.

What this arti­cle does NOT men­tion is that one of the Swe­den Democ­rats [65]’ most promi­nent finan­cial backer is Carl Lund­strom [66], who was also the main finan­cial backer of the Pirate Bay web­site [67] that host­ed Wik­ileaks.

“How the Far Right Con­quered Swe­den” by Jochen Bit­tner; The New York Times; 9/6/2018. [68]

To under­stand why Swe­den, a bas­tion of social democ­ra­cy, might end up with a far-right par­ty in gov­ern­ment after nation­al elec­tions on Sun­day, you need to take a walk with Ahmed Abdi­rah­man.

An Amer­i­can-edu­cat­ed Soma­li immi­grant who works as a pol­i­cy ana­lyst at the Stock­holm Cham­ber of Com­merce, Mr. Abdi­rah­man grew up and now lives in the sub­urb of Rinke­by-Ten­s­ta, where some 90 per­cent of res­i­dents have a for­eign back­ground, rough­ly 80 per­cent live on wel­fare or earn low incomes and 42 per­cent are under age 25. It is a vio­lent place: Six­teen peo­ple were killed there in 2016, most­ly in drug-relat­ed con­flicts, an unheard-of num­ber in this typ­i­cal­ly peace­ful coun­try. As we walk along one of its main streets at 7 p.m., shop­keep­ers pull down the met­al shut­ters in front of their win­dows, while young masked men on scoot­ers start speed­ing through the streets. A police heli­copter hov­ers over­head.

The seg­re­ga­tion and vio­lence of Rinke­by-Ten­s­ta, and the like­li­hood that the far-right, anti-immi­grant Swe­den Democ­rats par­ty will win the most votes in this weekend’s nation­al elec­tions, are both the result of the country’s long-run­ning unwill­ing­ness to deal with the real­i­ties of its immi­gra­tion cri­sis.

For decades, Swe­den, once a racial­ly and cul­tur­al­ly homo­ge­neous coun­try with an expan­sive social wel­fare sys­tem, insist­ed that it could absorb large num­bers of non-Euro­pean migrants with­out con­sid­er­ing how those migrants should be inte­grat­ed into Swedish soci­ety.

As they did in cities across West­ern Europe, migrants tend­ed to clus­ter in low-income neigh­bor­hoods; fac­ing poor job prospects and ram­pant employ­ment dis­crim­i­na­tion, they nat­u­ral­ly turned inward. More young women have start­ed wear­ing the hijab recent­ly, Mr. Abdi­rah­man tells me, and more young men “inter­nal­ize the oth­er­ness” — reject­ed by their new soci­ety, they embrace the stereo­types imposed upon them. This can lead to a point where they reject gay rights or lib­er­al­ism as “white, West­ern ideas,” and even attack fire­fight­ers because they rep­re­sent the state.

As we walk around, Mr. Abdi­rah­man, who is sin­gle and child­less, con­fess­es: “When I came here in 1998, to me this place was par­adise. Today, I wouldn’t want my chil­dren to grow up here.”

Mr. Abdi­rah­man says he was lucky: His moth­er encour­aged him to con­tribute to soci­ety and get a good edu­ca­tion. He earned a degree in inter­na­tion­al stud­ies in New York, then worked in Gene­va and with the Unit­ed States Embassy here before going to work with the cham­ber of com­merce. Not all immi­grants get the same push at home, he says; some par­ents dis­cour­aged their young­sters from going to the city cen­ter to mix. Swe­den, he is afraid, has entered a vicious cir­cle of immi­gra­tion, seg­re­ga­tion and grow­ing mutu­al hos­til­i­ty.

The sit­u­a­tion grew worse with the lat­est mass influx of refugees, in 2015, after which a num­ber of sub­urbs became almost exclu­sive­ly migrant. Con­sid­ered “no go” areas by some Swedes, these neigh­bor­hoods are known to out­siders only from hor­rif­ic head­lines. What peo­ple don’t get to see, Mr. Abdi­rah­man wor­ries, is the bus dri­ver or the clean­ing lady work­ing them­selves ragged to get their chil­dren into a uni­ver­si­ty.

None of this is new, and yet the gov­ern­ment, dom­i­nat­ed by the tra­di­tion­al­ly strong Social Democ­rats and the cen­trist Mod­er­ate Par­ty, did far too lit­tle. That left an open­ing for the Swe­den Democ­rats, until recent­ly a group rel­e­gat­ed to the racist fringe of Swedish pol­i­tics. In the past few years, the par­ty has recast itself; just like the pop­ulist Alter­na­tive für Deutsch­land par­ty in Ger­many and the Five Star Move­ment in Italy, it has repo­si­tioned itself as anti-estab­lish­ment and anti-immi­grant. The Swe­den Democ­rats accus­es all oth­er polit­i­cal actors and the media of “destroy­ing” Swe­den, calls for a sus­pen­sion of the right to asy­lum and pro­motes an exit of Swe­den from the Euro­pean Union.

The par­ty has clocked up to 20 per­cent in the lat­est polls, enough to make a coali­tion gov­ern­ment between the Social Democ­rats and the Mod­er­ate Par­ty unlike­ly — and rais­ing the chances that one of those par­ties will have to enter into a gov­ern­ment with the Swe­den Democ­rats. “If the major par­ties had been able to read the majority’s con­cerns, things would have been dif­fer­ent,” Mr. Abdi­rah­man says.

Sim­i­lar sto­ries have played out across West­ern Europe, from the Nether­lands to Aus­tria. But Swe­den always imag­ined itself as some­thing dif­fer­ent, a soci­ety bound by its unique brand of togeth­er­ness. But that self-sat­is­fac­tion jus­ti­fied a myopic approach to the very com­plex prob­lem of how to inte­grate vast num­bers of for­eign­ers. If you believe in giv­ing every­one a state-of-the-art apart­ment, social wel­fare and child ben­e­fits, then it’s unlike­ly you will tack­le the hur­dles of the high­ly reg­u­lat­ed Swedish labor mar­ket.

The anti-estab­lish­ment Swe­den Democ­rats prof­it from the fact that they were often the first to point to the down­sides of immi­gra­tion. Yet as much as they despise wish­ful think­ing, they replace it with sim­plis­tic think­ing. No mat­ter what prob­lems there might be in Swe­den — hous­ing short­ages, school clos­ings, an over­bur­dened health care sys­tem — in the view of the Swe­den Democ­rats, it is always one group’s fault: migrants.

Andreas Johans­son Heinö, an ana­lyst with the think tank Tim­bro [69], believes that many Swedes will vote for the Swe­den Democ­rats on Sept. 9 even though they see through the party’s crude think­ing. He sees sim­i­lar­i­ties to the Unit­ed States, where a con­sid­er­able num­ber of peo­ple say they vot­ed for Don­ald Trump not because they liked him but because they liked the idea of change.

Even if the Swe­den Democ­rats win big on Sun­day, the elec­tion might be a force for good. The Mod­er­ate Par­ty, which is like­ly to take sec­ond place, might split over the ques­tion of whether to rule with them. And the Social Democ­rats, already under pres­sure to move to the left, might like­wise fall apart. Sweden’s par­ty land­scape, in oth­er words, might be blown to pieces.

If the coun­try is lucky, some parts from this explo­sion will bind togeth­er as a new force — one that takes seri­ous­ly the need for real­ism on immi­gra­tion and inte­gra­tion, with­out falling for the siren song of right-wing pop­ulism.

7. On CNN for­mer Repub­li­can sen­a­tor Rick San­to­rum thought the big sto­ry [36] of the day on which Man­afort was con­vict­ed and Michael Cohen plead guilty was the first degree mur­der charge laid against an “ille­gal” Mex­i­can migrant work­er fol­low­ing the dis­cov­ery of a deceased white Iowa col­lege girl Mol­lie Tib­betts. Can this become a ral­ly­ing cry for Trump and his anti-immi­grant and racist sup­port­ers?

We note in this con­text that:

  1. The announce­ment of River­a’s arrest for the Tib­betts mur­der hap­pened on the same day that Paul Man­afort’s con­vic­tion was announced and Michael Cohen plead­ed guilty. Might we be look­ing at an “op,” intend­ed to eclipse the neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty from the the Manafort/Cohen judi­cial events?
  2. Rivera exhib­it­ed pos­si­ble symp­toms of being sub­ject­ed to mind con­trol, not unlike Sirhan Sirhan. ” . . . . Inves­ti­ga­tors say Rivera fol­lowed Mol­lie in his dark Chevy Mal­ibu as she went for a run around 7.30pm on July 18. He ‘blacked out’ and attacked her after she threat­ened to call the police unless he left her alone, offi­cers said. . . . It is not yet clear how Mol­lie died. . . . Rivera told police that after see­ing her, he pulled over and parked his car to get out and run with her. . . . Mol­lie grabbed her phone and threat­ened to call the police before run­ning off ahead. The sus­pect said that made him ‘pan­ic’ and he chased after her. That’s when he ‘blacked out.’ He claims he remem­bers noth­ing from then until he was back in his car, dri­ving. He then noticed one of her ear­phones sit­ting on his lap and blood in the car then remem­bered he’d stuffed her in the truck. . . . ‘He fol­lowed her and seemed to be drawn to her on that par­tic­u­lar day. For what­ev­er rea­son he chose to abduct her,’ Iowa Depart­ment of Crim­i­nal Inves­ti­ga­tion spe­cial agent Rick Ryan said on Tues­day after­noon. . . . ‘Rivera stat­ed that she grabbed her phone and said: ‘I’m gonna call the police.’ . . . . ‘Rivera said he then pan­icked and he got mad and that he ‘blocked’ his mem­o­ry which is what he does when he gets very upset and does­n’t remem­ber any­thing after that until he came to at an inter­sec­tion.’ . . .”
  3. Just as Sirhan had been in a right-wing milieu pri­or to the Robert Kennedy assas­si­na­tion, so, too, was Rivera: ” . . . . The promi­nent Repub­li­can fam­i­ly which owns the farm where Mol­lie Tib­betts’ alleged killer worked have insist­ed that he passed back­ground checks for migrant work­ers. Christhi­an Rivera, 24, who is from Mex­i­co, was charged with first degree mur­der on Tues­day after lead­ing police to a corn field where Mol­lie’s body was dumped. Dane Lang, co-own­er of Yarrabee Farms along with Eric Lang, con­firmed that Rivera had worked there for four years and was an employ­ee ‘of good stand­ing.’ Dane’s broth­er is Craig Lang, for­mer pres­i­dent of the Iowa Farm Bureau Fed­er­a­tion and the Iowa Board of Regents, and a 2018 Repub­li­can can­di­date for state sec­re­tary of agri­cul­ture. . . .”
  4. Trump cit­ed the Tib­betts mur­der in a Charleston, West Vir­ginia, ral­ly that day: ” . . . . Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump chirped in dur­ing his Tues­day address at a ral­ly in Charleston, West Vir­ginia, blam­ing immi­gra­tion laws for Mol­lie’s death. ‘You heard about today with the ille­gal alien com­ing in very sad­ly from Mex­i­co,’ he said. ‘And you saw what hap­pened to that incred­i­ble beau­ti­ful young woman. ‘Should’ve nev­er hap­pened, ille­gal­ly in our coun­try. We’ve had a huge impact but the laws are so bad. The immi­gra­tion laws are such a dis­grace. ‘We are get­ting them changed but we have to get more Repub­li­cans.’ Gov. Kim Reynolds com­plained about the ‘bro­ken’ immi­gra­tion sys­tem that allowed a ‘preda­tor’ to live in her state. . . .”
  5. As dis­cussed in FTR #1002 [37], dur­ing tri­al of a mem­ber of The Order (to which David Lane belonged), it emerged that Nazi ele­ments were seek­ing to per­fect mind con­trol tech­niques. It is also a mat­ter of pub­lic record that ele­ments of U.S. intel­li­gence are active on behalf of the GOP, and have been for many decades. The assas­si­na­tions of JFK, his broth­er and Mar­tin Luther King are but exam­ples of this.

“Promi­nent Iowa Repub­li­can Fam­i­ly which Owns Farm where Mol­lie Tib­betts’ Alleged Killer Worked say he PASSED Gov­ern­men­t’s Migrant Back­ground Check as the 24-year-old Is Charged with Her Mur­der after Admit­ting to ‘Chas­ing Her Down while Jog­ging’” by Ben Ash­ford, Chris Pleas­ance, Jen­nifer Smith and Han­nah Par­ry; Dai­ly Mail [UK]; 8/21/2018. [36]

The promi­nent Repub­li­can fam­i­ly which owns the farm where Mol­lie Tib­betts’ alleged killer worked have insist­ed that he passed back­ground checks for migrant work­ers.

Christhi­an Rivera, 24, who is from Mex­i­co, was charged with first degree mur­der on Tues­day after lead­ing police to a corn field where Mol­lie’s body was dumped.

Dane Lang, co-own­er of Yarrabee Farms along with Eric Lang, con­firmed that Rivera had worked there for four years and was an employ­ee ‘of good stand­ing.’

Dane’s broth­er is Craig Lang, for­mer pres­i­dent of the Iowa Farm Bureau Fed­er­a­tion and the Iowa Board of Regents, and a 2018 Repub­li­can can­di­date for state sec­re­tary of agri­cul­ture.

Dane’s state­ment said: ‘First and fore­most, our thoughts and prayers are with the fam­i­ly and friends of Mol­lie Tib­betts.

‘This is a pro­found­ly sad day for our com­mu­ni­ty. All of us at Yarrabee Farms are shocked to hear that one of our employ­ees was involved and is charged in this case.

‘This indi­vid­ual has worked at our farms for four years, was vet­ted through the gov­ern­men­t’s E‑Verify sys­tem, and was an employ­ee in good stand­ing.

‘On Mon­day, the author­i­ties vis­it­ed our farm and talked to our employ­ees. We have coop­er­at­ed ful­ly with their inves­ti­ga­tion.’

The E‑Verify site allows employ­ers to estab­lish the eli­gi­bil­i­ty of employ­ees, both US or for­eign, by com­par­ing a work­er’s Employ­ment Eli­gi­bil­i­ty Ver­i­fi­ca­tion Form I‑9 with data held by the gov­ern­ment.

The employ­ee is eli­gi­ble to work in the US if the data match­es. If it does­n’t, the work­er has only eight fed­er­al gov­ern­ment work days to resolve the issue.

Despite the Lang fam­i­ly using the sys­tem, police say Rivera had been in the US ille­gal­ly for between four and sev­en years.

Inves­ti­ga­tors say Rivera fol­lowed Mol­lie in his dark Chevy Mal­ibu as she went for a run around 7.30pm on July 18.

He ‘blacked out’ and attacked her after she threat­ened to call the police unless he left her alone, offi­cers said. 

Rivera was iden­ti­fied by sur­veil­lance footage obtained in the last cou­ple of weeks from some­one’s home.

It showed him fol­low­ing the stu­dent in his car and Mol­lie run­ning ahead of him.  It is not yet clear how Mol­lie died. 

Ear­li­er Mon­day a mem­ber of the Lang fam­i­ly which runs Yarrabee Farms told DailyMail.com he was a per­son­al friend of Mol­lie and her broth­ers and was ‘dev­as­tat­ed’ by the news of her death.

It’s under­stood the com­pa­ny hires around 15 migrant work­ers, most of whom are believed to be Mex­i­can.

Rivera is believed to have lived with a num­ber of oth­er migrant work­ers on a seclud­ed farm­house in Brook­lyn owned by their employ­er.

Work­ers asso­ci­at­ed with the farm told DailyMail.com that they bare­ly knew Rivera but con­firmed that he lived there with a girl­friend named Iris Monar­rez and their baby.

They said Iris had gone to stay with her moth­er after Rivera was arrest­ed in Mol­lie’s mur­der.

Neigh­bors told DailyMail.com they had seen a black Chevy Mal­ibu just like the one Rivera was dri­ving when he abduct­ed Mol­lie reg­u­lar­ly dri­ving to and from the prop­er­ty for the past cou­ple of years. 

Mol­lie’s autop­sy is planned for Wednes­day but the results may not be released for weeks.

Rivera told police that after see­ing her, he pulled over and parked his car to get out and run with her. 

Mol­lie grabbed her phone and threat­ened to call the police before run­ning off ahead. The sus­pect said that made him ‘pan­ic’ and he chased after her.

That’s when he ‘blacked out.’  

He claims he remem­bers noth­ing from then until he was back in his car, dri­ving. 

He then noticed one of her ear­phones sit­ting on his lap and blood in the car then remem­bered he’d stuffed her in the truck. 

Rivera drove her then to a corn field where he hauled her body out of the truck and hid her beneath corn stalks.

He was arrest­ed on Fri­day after police honed in on his vehi­cle by view­ing sur­veil­lance footage obtained from a pri­vate res­i­den­t’s home sur­veil­lance cam­eras.

‘He fol­lowed her and seemed to be drawn to her on that par­tic­u­lar day. For what­ev­er rea­son he chose to abduct her,’ Iowa Depart­ment of Crim­i­nal Inves­ti­ga­tion spe­cial agent Rick Ryan said on Tues­day after­noon. 

But it’s still unclear what the motive behind the killing was, Rahn said.

Rivera told police he had seen her in the area before. She is friends on Face­book with the moth­er of his daugh­ter but it is not clear if he and Mol­lie knew each oth­er.

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump chirped in dur­ing his Tues­day address at a ral­ly in Charleston, West Vir­ginia, blam­ing immi­gra­tion laws for Mol­lie’s death.

‘You heard about today with the ille­gal alien com­ing in very sad­ly from Mex­i­co,’ he said. ‘And you saw what hap­pened to that incred­i­ble beau­ti­ful young woman.

‘Should’ve nev­er hap­pened, ille­gal­ly in our coun­try. We’ve had a huge impact but the laws are so bad. The immi­gra­tion laws are such a dis­grace. 

‘We are get­ting them changed but we have to get more Repub­li­cans.’

Gov. Kim Reynolds com­plained about the ‘bro­ken’ immi­gra­tion sys­tem that allowed a ‘preda­tor’ to live in her state.

‘I spoke with Mol­lie’s fam­i­ly and passed on the heart­felt con­do­lences of a griev­ing state,’ Reynolds said. ‘I shared with them my hope that they can find com­fort know­ing that God does not leave us to suf­fer alone. Even in our dark­est moments, He will com­fort and heal our bro­ken hearts.’

At 3pm on Mon­day, law enforce­ment arrived at the farm­house where Rivera worked, accord­ing to a neigh­bor.

FBI agents were still search­ing the house and a num­ber of near­by trail­ers on Tues­day after­noon.

Neigh­bors said the build­ing housed a ‘revolv­ing door’ of hired migrant work­ers but that they had nev­er caused any prob­lems.

FBI agents attend­ed anoth­er near­by prop­er­ty belong­ing to the farm overnight Mon­day to quiz River­a’s co-work­ers, most of whom claim only to under­stand Span­ish.

‘There was a pan­ic when they arrived because they thought at first that it was ICE launch­ing a raid,’ a local source told DailyMail.com.

‘A lot of these peo­ple arrive with forged doc­u­ments. But it turned it was the FBI and it was about Mol­lie.’

Accord­ing to pub­lic records the prop­er­ty being searched is owned by Mary and Craig Lang, whose fam­i­ly own the near­by Yarrabee Farms.

Mol­lie was stay­ing alone overnight in her boyfriend’s home the night she went miss­ing and was last seen going for a jog in the neigh­bor­hood at around 8pm but what hap­pened after­wards has remained a com­plete mys­tery for weeks. 

Her boyfriend opened a Snapchat pho­to­graph from her at 10pm which appeared to sug­gest that she was indoors but it is not known what time Mol­lie sent it.

In his arrest war­rant, police describe River­a’s chill­ing con­fes­sion.

‘Rivera admit­ted to mak­ing con­tact with the female run­ning in Brook­lyn and that he pur­sued her in his vehi­cle in an area east of Brook­lyn. Defen­dant Rivera stat­ed he parked the vehi­cle, got out and was run­ning behind her and along­side of her.

‘Rivera stat­ed that she grabbed her phone and said: ‘I’m gonna call the police.’

‘Rivera said he then pan­icked and he got mad and that he ‘blocked’ his mem­o­ry which is what he does when he gets very upset and does­n’t remem­ber any­thing after that until he came to at an inter­sec­tion.

‘Rivera stat­ed he then made a u‑turn, drove back to an entrance to a field and then drove into a dri­ve­way to a corn­field.

‘He noticed there was an ear piece from head­phones in his lap and that this is how he real­ized he put her in the trunk.

‘He went to get her out of the trunk and he noticed blood on the side of her head.

‘He described the female’s cloth­ing, what she was wear­ing includ­ing an ear phone or head phone set.

‘He described that he dragged Tib­betts on foot from his vehi­cle to a seclud­ed loca­tion in a corn­field.

‘He put her over his shoul­der and took her about 20 meters into the corn­field and he left her cov­ered in some corn leaves and that he left her there, face up.

‘The Defen­dant was able to use his phone to deter­mine the route he trav­eled from Brook­lyn.

‘Rivera then lat­er guid­ed law enforce­ment to her loca­tion from mem­o­ry,’ the affi­davit con­tin­ues.

River­a’s arrest and the dis­cov­ery of the stu­den­t’s body brings an end to five weeks of tire­less inves­ti­ga­tion by the FBI, the Iowa Divi­sion of Crim­i­nal Inves­ti­ga­tion and local sher­iffs.

River­a’s ini­tial court appear­ance is sched­uled for 1pm Wednes­day in Mon­tezu­ma.

If con­vict­ed of first-degree mur­der he faces a manda­to­ry sen­tence of life in prison with­out parole.

Last week, the FBI said it believed she had been abduct­ed by some­one she knew.

They warned that the per­son was ‘hid­ing in plain sight’ and had even attend­ed vig­ils held in her hon­or but no arrests were made.

A $400,000 fund for her safe return was estab­lished but it did not pro­duce any leads either.

Greg Wil­ley of Crime Stop­pers of Cen­tral Iowa said her fam­i­ly and inves­ti­ga­tors would ded­i­cate their resources to catch­ing her killer ‘once they catch their breath’.

The Iowa Depart­ment of Crim­i­nal Inves­ti­ga­tion refused to share details of the dis­cov­ery on Tues­day when con­tact­ed by DailyMail.com.

The only per­son who had been vis­i­bly scru­ti­nized by police after she went miss­ing was pig farmer Wayne Cheney.

He was grilled by offi­cers more than once and had his prop­er­ty searched twice after search crews found a red t‑shirt that was sim­i­lar to one owned by the stu­dent near his land.

It was nev­er estab­lished if the t‑shirt did in fact belong to Mol­lie.

Mol­lie’s father Rob went back to Cal­i­for­nia, where he lives, last week for what he called a much need­ed ‘break’ from the inves­ti­ga­tion

He said he had been urged by author­i­ties to do so and that it was a ‘half way’ point in the inves­ti­ga­tion.

Rob was not in the state when his daugh­ter dis­ap­peared.

Her boyfriend, Dal­ton Jack, was away for work when she dis­ap­peared as was his old­er broth­er Blake.

The young­sters lived togeth­er in a home in Brook­lyn with Blake’s fiancee who was also cleared.

As the hunt for her inten­si­fied,  author­i­ties set up a web­site that was ded­i­cate to find­ing her.

It pro­vid­ed a map detail­ing five loca­tions police con­sid­ered to be sig­nif­i­cant. The web­site also offered a tips page which gen­er­at­ed hun­dreds of clues about what may have hap­pened to her.

The news of her death shook the small town of Brook­lyn where most res­i­dents are known to each oth­er.

The Rev. Joyce Proc­tor at Grace Unit­ed Methodist Church said she’d been pray­ing for Tib­betts’ ene­mies ‘to do the right thing... and release her.’

Sad­ly that nev­er hap­pened.

Proc­tor, who said she heard Tib­betts ‘was a won­der­ful young lady’, said peo­ple were in shock their lit­tle town isn’t as safe as they first believed it was, the Des Moines Reg­is­ter [70] report­ed.

‘I told the ladies at our prayer group this morn­ing that if it’s not safe in Brook­lyn it’s not safe any­where,’ she said. ‘And I think that’s been a hard thing to real­ize for a lot of peo­ple here.’

7. Under hyp­no­sis, Sirhan Sirhan was able to recall [38] a con­sid­er­able amount of infor­ma­tion about “the girl in the pol­ka-dot dress”–a fig­ure report­ed by many eye­wit­ness­es to have cel­e­brat­ed the assas­si­na­tion of Robert Kennedy and appeared to have impli­cat­ed her­self and oth­ers in the crime.

The attrac­tion described by Sirhan to “the pol­ka-dot-dress” girl sounds sim­i­lar to River­a’s being “drawn” to Mol­lie Tib­betts.  ” . . . . Con­vict­ed assas­sin Sirhan Sirhan was manip­u­lated by a seduc­tive girl in a mind con­trol plot to shoot Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and his bul­lets did not kill the pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, lawyers for Sirhan said in new legal papers. . . . Wit­nesses talked of see­ing such a female run­ning from the hotel shout­ing, ‘We shot Kennedy.’ But she was nev­er iden­ti­fied, and amid the chaos of the scene, descrip­tions were con­flict­ing. . . . Under hyp­no­sis, he remem­bered meet­ing the girl that night and becom­ing smit­ten with her. He said she led him to the pantry. ‘I am try­ing to fig­ure out how to hit on her.... That’s all that I can think about,’ he says in one inter­view cit­ed in the doc­u­ments. ‘I was fas­ci­nated with her looks .... She nev­er said much. It was very erot­ic. I was con­sumed by her. She was a seduc­tress with an unspo­ken unavail­abil­i­ty.’ . . . Sirhan main­tained in the hyp­notic inter­views that the mys­tery girl touched him or ‘pinched’ him on the shoul­der just before he fired then spun him around to see peo­ple com­ing through the pantry door. . . .”

“Con­victed RFK Assas­sin Says Girl Manip­u­lated Him” by Lin­da Deutsch [AP]; yahoo.news; 4/28/2011. [38]

Con­vict­ed assas­sin Sirhan Sirhan was manip­u­lated by a seduc­tive girl in a mind con­trol plot to shoot Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and his bul­lets did not kill the pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, lawyers for Sirhan said in new legal papers.

The doc­u­ments filed this week in fed­eral court and obtained by The Asso­ci­ated Press detail exten­sive inter­views with Sirhan dur­ing the past three years, some done while he was under hyp­no­sis.

The papers point to a mys­te­ri­ous girl in a pol­ka-dot dress as the con­troller who led Sirhan to fire a gun in the pantry of the Ambas­sador Hotel. But the doc­u­ments sug­gest a sec­ond per­son shot and killed Kennedy while using Sirhan as a diver­sion.

For the first time, Sirhan said under hyp­no­sis that on a cue from the girl he went into “range mode” believ­ing he was at a fir­ing range and see­ing cir­cles with tar­gets in front of his eyes.

“I thought that I was at the range more than I was actu­ally shoot­ing at any per­son, let alone Bob­by Kennedy,” Sirhan was quot­ed as say­ing dur­ing inter­views with Daniel Brown, a Har­vard Uni­ver­sity pro­fes­sor and expert in trau­ma mem­ory and hyp­no­sis. He inter­viewed Sirhan for 60 hours with and with­out hyp­no­sis, accord­ing to the legal brief.

San­di Gib­bons, a spokes­woman for the Los Ange­les Coun­ty dis­trict attor­ney, said pros­e­cu­tors were unaware of the legal fil­ing and could not com­ment.

The sto­ry of the girl has been a lin­ger­ing theme in accounts of the events just after mid­night on June 5, 1968, when Kennedy was gunned down in the hotel pantry after claim­ing vic­tory in the Cal­i­for­nia Demo­c­ra­tic pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry.

Wit­nesses talked of see­ing such a female run­ning from the hotel shout­ing, “We shot Kennedy.” But she was nev­er iden­ti­fied, and amid the chaos of the scene, descrip­tions were con­flict­ing.

Through the years, Sirhan has claimed no mem­ory of shoot­ing Kennedy and said in the recent inter­views that his pres­ence at the hotel was an acci­dent, not a planned des­ti­na­tion.

Under hyp­no­sis, he remem­bered meet­ing the girl that night and becom­ing smit­ten with her. He said she led him to the pantry.

“I am try­ing to fig­ure out how to hit on her.... That’s all that I can think about,” he says in one inter­view cit­ed in the doc­u­ments. “I was fas­ci­nated with her looks .... She nev­er said much. It was very erot­ic. I was con­sumed by her. She was a seduc­tress with an unspo­ken unavail­abil­i­ty.” . . .

. . . Sirhan main­tained in the hyp­notic inter­views that the mys­tery girl touched him or “pinched” him on the shoul­der just before he fired then spun him around to see peo­ple com­ing through the pantry door.

“Then I was on the tar­get range ... a flash­back to the shoot­ing range ... I didn’t know that I had a gun,” Sirhan said.

Under what Brown called the con­di­tion of hyp­notic free recall, he said Sirhan remem­bered see­ing the flash of a sec­ond gun at the time of the assas­si­na­tion. With­out hyp­no­sis, he said, Sirhan could not remem­ber that shot.