Lis­ten: Side 1 | Side 2

1. This broad­cast sup­ple­ments an on-going series that dates to Decem­ber of 1998.

2. The title of the pro­gram is derived from a key pas­sage in the Nazi tract Serpent’s Walk (Ran­dolph D. Calver­hall; soft­cover, National Van­guard Books, copy­right 1991, ISBN# 0–937944-05-X.) Mr. Emory believes that the book, sup­pos­edly a novel, is a blue­print for the strate­gic pol­icy Nazi ele­ments are cur­rently pur­su­ing. In this regard, it would resem­ble The Turner Diaries, also pub­lished by National Vanguard–the pub­lish­ing arm of the National Alliance, the most impor­tant Amer­i­can Nazi orga­ni­za­tion. The Turner Diaries was the model for Tim­o­thy McVeigh & Co. in the Okla­homa City Bomb­ing, as well as the Nazi group The Order.

3. In Serpent’s Walk, the descen­dants of Hitler’s SS take over the United States in the mid-21st cen­tury, after going under­ground, build­ing up their eco­nomic strength, and gain­ing con­trol over the Amer­i­can media. This process is described in one of the book’s key pas­sages. “About ten years ago, we swung a merger, a takeover, and got vot­ing con­trol of a super­corp that runs a small but sig­nif­i­cant chunk of the Amer­i­can media. Not openly, with bands and trum­pets. . . . but qui­etly, one huge cor­po­ra­tion cud­dling up to another one and gen­tly munch­ing it up, like a great, gub­bing amoeba.” (Serpent’s Walk, p. 42.)

4. By way of under­scor­ing the impact that “opinion-forming media” can have on peo­ple, FTR-275 begins with dis­cus­sion of attacks by Nazi skin­heads on anti-fascist youth and bands in Rus­sia. (“Rus­sia: Moscow a Skin­head Bat­tle­field” by Mina Sod­man; Search­light; #308; 2/2001; p. 34.)

5. Obvi­ously, pop­u­lar music exerts a pro­found influ­ence on youth around the world. FTR-274 (among other broad­casts) high­lights the grow­ing influ­ence of the Ber­tels­mann firm in the music indus­try. (Ber­tels­mann is one of the cen­tral focal points of this ongo­ing series.) Avail­able evi­dence strongly sug­gests that Ber­tels­mann is part of the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion.  When con­sid­er­ing Ger­man cor­po­ra­tions, it is impor­tant to remem­ber that they are con­trolled by the Bor­mann Orga­ni­za­tion. This insti­tu­tion has per­pet­u­ated its power in an effec­tive, clan­des­tine, and deadly, Mafia-like fash­ion in the years since World War II. Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tions are dri­ven by the profit motive, and coor­di­nate poli­cies on labor, envi­ron­men­tal, mar­ket­ing and tax­a­tion issues–they are oth­er­wise rel­a­tively apo­lit­i­cal. In con­trast, Ger­man cor­po­ra­tions (under con­trol of the Bor­mann group) func­tion as coor­di­nated ele­ments of inter­na­tional eco­nomic and polit­i­cal con­trol, not unlike the divi­sions in an army. Although they, too, strive to make money, profit is sub­or­di­nate to the goal of Ger­man national hegemony.

6. Next, more of the sce­nario pre­sented in Serpent’s Walk. High­light­ing the impor­tance of the Nazi-controlled media in revis­ing his­tory dur­ing the 21st cen­tury, the pro­gram under­scores the denial of the Holo­caust and the shift­ing of blame for World War II away from the Third Reich. (Serpent’s Walk, p. 43.)

7. In par­tic­u­lar, the pas­sages quoted stress the reshap­ing of the image of the Third Reich. “. . . we have media psy­chol­o­gists, ad agen­cies, and behav­ior mod­i­fi­ca­tion spe­cial­ists work­ing on image changes. . . . Hard to get peo­ple to love death camps. . . . We don’t try. . . . We play those aspects down and stress the pos­i­tive ones instead: the effi­ciency and orga­ni­za­tion, the ded­i­ca­tion, and the hero­ism. Peo­ple will buy that.” (Ibid.; pp. 42–43.)

8. That young peo­ple are open to per­ceiv­ing “pos­i­tive aspects” of the Third Reich is evi­denced by the next item of dis­cus­sion. (“Young Ger­mans See ‘Good Side’ to Nazis” by Toby Helm; Daily Tele­graph; 2/8/2001; accessed at www.lineone.net.)

9. “Image changes” effected by the work of the “media psy­chol­o­gists, ad agen­cies and behav­ior mod­i­fi­ca­tion spe­cial­ists” may, in fact, be tak­ing hold. In par­tic­u­lar, a num­ber of young Ger­mans (faced with the prospect of unem­ploy­ment) have pos­i­tive feel­ings about the Third Reich’s employ­ment poli­cies. (The prob­lem of unem­ploy­ment is par­tic­u­larly acute in the for­mer East Ger­many. It should be noted that Aus­trian fas­cist Jurg Haider has lauded Nazi Germany’s “full employ­ment” policies.)

10. A recently pub­lished book indulges in a sub­tle form of his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism. (“Book on Holo­caust as a Shake­down Starts Ger­man Storm;” New York Times; 2/8/2001; p. A13.)

11. The Holo­caust Indus­try charges that the Holo­caust has become an “extor­tion racket” that has been appro­pri­ated by “an American-Jewish elite.” (Idem.) Whether or not it was inten­tion­ally designed as such, this is the sort of grad­ual reshap­ing of his­tory that Serpent’s Walk posits as being essen­tial to the Nazi takeover in the mid-21st century.

12. In a move that will greatly enhance Bertelsmann’s cap­i­tal reserves and facil­i­tate its acqui­si­tions of other com­pa­nies, Ber­tels­mann is poised to con­trol a promi­nent Euro­pean broad­caster. (“Ber­tels­mann Moves to Gain Con­trol of Broad­caster RTL” by Charles Gold­smith; Wall Street Jour­nal; 2/5/2001; p. A18.)

13. Ber­tels­mann already con­trols 37% of RTL. The pend­ing deal is described as “in line with its [Bertelsmann’s] strat­egy of con­trol­ling the busi­nesses in which it is involved.” (Idem.)

14. The Ber­tels­mann deal to gain con­trol of RTL will lead to Bertelsmann’s shares being pub­licly traded. (“Ber­tels­mann Puts its Faith in the Mar­ket” by James Hard­ing; Finan­cial Times; 2/6/2001; p. 15.) (The bulk of Bertelsmann’s stock is held by the Ber­tels­mann Foun­da­tion, which, in turn, is con­trolled by the Mohn family.)

15. In a com­plex trans­ac­tion, the con­trol of RTL was accom­plished through an “equity pur­chase.” (Idem.)

16. While greatly increas­ing Bertelsmann’s cap­i­tal­iza­tion, the deal will still leave the Ber­tels­mann Foun­da­tion and the Mohn fam­ily in con­trol of the com­pany. (Idem.)

17. One of the minor­ity cor­po­rate part­ners in the Bertelsmann/RTL deal has sig­nif­i­cant cap­i­tal par­tic­i­pa­tion in Total­Fina Elf. (“Global GBL Falls for Bertelsmann’s Charms” by Dan Bilef­sky; Finan­cial Times; 2/6/2001; p. 18.) Total­Fina Elf is, in turn, involved in the com­plex con­spir­a­to­r­ial web involved in the CDU fund­ing scandal.

18. Serpent’s Walk describes the Nazi/SS/Bormann takeover of media cor­po­ra­tions as involv­ing the process of “replac­ing exec­u­tives, push­ing some­body out here, bring­ing some­body else in there.” (Serpent’s Walk, p. 42.)

19. The Amer­i­can lead­er­ship of Terra Lycos has recently been replaced, after Lycos was acquired by Terra Net­works of Spain. (“Davis Out in Lycos Power Strug­gle” by Leslie Craw­ford and Richard Waters; Finan­cial Times; 2/2/2001; p. 16.)

20. The company’s Amer­i­can CEO was described as hav­ing “rubbed shoul­ders uncom­fort­ably with his new mas­ters and with Thomas Mid­dle­hof, the Ger­man head of Ber­tels­mann, whose com­pany had thrown its weight behind the new Terra Lycos by promis­ing it $1bn in adver­tis­ing rev­enues.” (“Span­ish Win Inter­net Bust-Up” by Richard Waters and Leslie Craw­ford; Finan­cial Times; 2/2/2001; p. 16.)

21. The sec­ond side of the broad­cast begins with an excerpt from FTR-245, detail­ing the activ­i­ties of Deutsche Telekom, a Ger­man government-controlled mobile phone com­pany. Mobile phones are seen as being cen­tral to the antic­i­pated world of the inter­net and e-commerce. As such, DT’s advance into the Amer­i­can mobile phone mar­ket fig­ures promi­nently in this series on Ger­man cor­po­rate con­trol over Amer­i­can media.

22. In order to resist leg­is­la­tion that would impede the firm’s pur­chase of Voic­eS­tream and Pow­er­tel, Deutsche Telekom has retained the pow­er­ful Wash­ing­ton law firm of Wilmer, Cut­ler & Pick­er­ing. (The Wall Street Jour­nal, 7/21/2000, p. A9.)

23. In an excerpt from FTR-139, the pro­gram high­lights the recent addi­tion of Matthias Wiss­man, the trea­surer of the CDU party in Ger­many (and a for­mer trans­port min­is­ter) to Wilmer, Cut­ler & Pick­er­ing. (Finan­cial Times, 3/2/99.)

24. The pro­gram also notes that Wilmer, Cut­ler & Pick­er­ing had rep­re­sented Swiss banks in a law­suit filed by Holo­caust vic­tims against Swiss banks, as well as act­ing as coun­sel for Ger­man cor­po­ra­tions being sued over their use of slave labor in World War II. (Idem.) This con­nec­tion also sug­gests the pres­ence of the Bor­mann group in the back­ground of the law­suits, as well as in the DT machi­na­tions. It should be noted that, as trea­surer of the CDU, Wiss­man must have had first hand knowl­edge of the CDU fund­ing scan­dal. (This scan­dal, as well, almost cer­tainly involves the Bor­mann organization.)

25. Updat­ing the dis­cus­sion from FTR-245, the pro­gram high­lights the lat­est devel­op­ments in the DT/VoiceStream/Powertel nego­ti­a­tions. The FBI has filed a peti­tion ask­ing the FCC to hold off rul­ing on whether the deal is in the pub­lic inter­est. (“U.S. Works Out Secu­rity Issues with Voic­eS­tream & DT” by Jeremy Pelof­sky; [Reuters]; 12/20/2000.) It will be inter­est­ing to see whether the FCC (under the direc­tion of Michael Pow­ell, Colin Powell’s son) will approve the deal.

26. Not­ing, in turn, the involve­ment of CDU trea­surer Wiss­man with Wilmer, Cut­ler & Pick­er­ing, that firm’s involve­ment with Holocaust-related law­suits, the firm’s lob­by­ing on behalf of DT and the Bor­mann organization’s con­trol over cor­po­rate Ger­many, the coin­ci­dence of a recent law­suit and the release of a Ber­tels­mann title assumes added sig­nif­i­cance. A suit was filed against IBM, and timed to coin­cide with the release of a book that doc­u­ments IBM’s involve­ment with the Third Reich and main­tains that the firm was involved with the Holo­caust. (“Law­suit Says IBM Helped Nazis” by Barn­aby J. Felder [New York Times]; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 2/11/2001; p. A9.)

27. The coun­sel for the plain­tiffs noted that “pub­lic rela­tions strate­gies have been as impor­tant as legal argu­ments in their Holo­caust suits.” (Idem.)

28. IBM’s involve­ment with the Third Reich is described as con­tin­u­ing vir­tu­ally through the end of World War II. “Even as late as 1945, [Edwin] Black says, IBM execs in the US were in con­stant touch with their Nazi part­ners, smooth­ing over the odds and ends of a busi­ness alliance which had by that time been ille­gal for years.” (“IBM Impli­cated in Nazi Exter­mi­na­tion of Jews” by Thomas C. Greene; The Reg­is­ter; 11/02/2001.)

29. Inter­est­ingly (and per­haps sig­nif­i­cantly) the Edwin Black book is being pub­lished by Crown books, a Ber­tels­mann sub­sidiary. (“Book Links IBM to Hitler” by Paul D. Col­ford; New York Daily News; 2/10/2001.)

30. One won­ders whether there is, indeed, a Holo­caust “extor­tion racket” (as charged in The Holo­caust Indus­try) and whether the racket is being run by those who oper­ated the gas cham­bers. This com­plex and hypo­thet­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tion will be explored in greater depth in FTR-278.

31. Next, the pro­gram sets forth efforts by Gruner & Jahr (Bertelsmann’s mag­a­zine sub­sidiary) to expand its oper­a­tions in the U.S. (For more on the planned Amer­i­can expan­sion of Gruner & Jahr, see also: FTR-238.) In par­tic­u­lar, Gruner & Jahr is expand­ing its pur­chase of busi­ness mag­a­zines. Fast Com­pany is the lat­est Ber­tels­mann acqui­si­tion in this area. (“Ger­man Firm to Buy Fast Com­pany Mag­a­zine” by Julia Werdi­ger [Bloomberg News]; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 12/19/2000; p. C7.)

32. The pub­lisher of The New Yorker (David Carey) is set to become the pres­i­dent and chief exec­u­tive of Gruner & Jahr’s newly formed busi­ness mag­a­zine group. (“Pub­lisher Set to Step Down at New Yorker” by Alex Kuczyn­ski; New York Times; 1/17/2001; pp. C1-C6.)

33. Barnesandnoble.com (half-owned by Ber­tels­mann) is forg­ing ahead in the area of the pub­li­ca­tion of dig­i­tal books. (“Dig­i­tal Book Turf Bat­tle Esca­lates Over Roy­al­ties” by David D. Kirk­patrick; New York Times; 1/4/2001; p. C1.)