Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
The tag 'Henrik Kruger' is associated with 12 posts.

FTR #992 Hindutva Fascism, Part 5: Political and Historical Context (Connecting the Dots)

This pro­gram con­cludes our FTR series on Hin­dut­va fas­cism (Hin­du nation­al­ist fas­cism). In pre­vi­ous pro­grams, we high­light­ed key fea­tures of the gov­er­nance of Indi­an Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi, whose BJP is a polit­i­cal front for the RSS. Formed along the lines of Mus­solin­i’s Black­shirts in 1925, the RSS was the orga­ni­za­tion that assas­si­nat­ed Mahat­ma Gand­hi. (We have dis­cussed Modi, the RSS and the BJP in numer­ous broad­casts, includ­ing FTR #‘s 795, 889, 441, 442, 445, 988 and 989, 990, 991.)

In past dis­cus­sions of the RSS and BJP, we have not­ed the fol­low­ing:

1.–Modi’s polit­i­cal for­tunes were boost­ed with sup­port and appar­ent financ­ing from Pierre Omid­yar, who also helped finance the rise of the OUN/B fas­cist suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tios in Ukraine.
2.–Modi and his BJP are viewed with great favor by Bre­it­bart king­pin, for­mer Trump cam­paign man­ag­er and advis­er Steve Ban­non. A num­ber of Trump’s busi­ness asso­ciates in India are asso­ci­at­ed with the BJP.
3.–Bernie Sanders’ prospec­tive Vice-Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Tul­si Gab­bard helped arrange the details for Mod­i’s Amer­i­can vis­it and is net­worked with the RSS.
4.–The above-men­tioned Tul­si Gab­bard is a mem­ber of the Hare Krish­na cult, as is her hus­band, her in-laws, her par­ents and her Con­gres­sion­al staff.
5.–Gabbard is high­ly regard­ed by Modi admir­er Steve Ban­non as well.
6.–Gabbard was seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered for a cab­i­net posi­tion by Team Trump.
7.–Under Modi, anti-Mus­lim vio­lence has dra­mat­i­cal­ly accel­er­at­ed, jour­nal­is­tic and civ­il free speech has been atten­u­at­ed, oppo­nents of the gov­ern­ment have faced var­i­ous forms of retal­i­a­tion and oppres­sion, jour­nal­ists and activists crit­i­cal of Modi/BJP/RSS have been mur­dered, a vir­u­lent­ly anti-Mus­lim cler­ic has been appoint­ed head of Uttar Pradesh (Indi­a’s largest province), vot­ing machines have appar­ent­ly been tam­pered with, and Indi­ans have expressed pos­i­tive feel­ings about mar­tial law. BJP mem­bers have cel­e­brat­ed Gand­hi’s mur­der.

In this pro­gram, we posi­tion the ideological/political tile of Hin­dut­va fas­cism in the mosa­ic of what free­lance Dan­ish jour­nal­ist Hen­rik Kruger (author of The Great Hero­in Coup: Drugs, Intel­li­gence and Inter­na­tion­al Fas­cism) and Kevin Coogan (author of Dream­er of the Day: Fran­cis Park­er Yock­ey and the Post­war Fas­cist Inter­na­tion­al) call “The Fas­cist Inter­na­tion­al.”

Begin­ning with review of ide­o­log­i­cal and oper­a­tional links between RSS Hin­dut­va fas­cists and the fol­low­ers of Hitler and Mus­soli­ni, we high­light key fea­tures of what may seem to many to be a clas­sic case of polit­i­cal “strange bed­fel­lows.” Key con­sid­er­a­tions in the Hitler/Mussolini/Hindutva fas­cist affin­i­ty include:

1.–Opposition to the British Empire (as con­sti­tut­ed), admi­ra­tion for the domes­tic agen­das of the Fuehrer and Il Duce, as well as the mil­i­tary prowess shown by the Euro­pean Axis nations: “. . . . In the decades pri­or to that momen­tous event, senior RSS mem­bers had direct links to both Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni in Italy and Adolf Hitler in Ger­many. Part of the RSS’ fas­ci­na­tion with these total­i­tar­i­an regimes was their shared oppo­si­tion to the British Empire — how­ev­er, it went far beyond that. The RSS (as well as mul­ti­tudes of oth­er Hin­du nation­al­ists) admired the way Mus­soli­ni and Hitler reor­ga­nized their respec­tive nations so quick­ly from the wreck­age of war to build a pow­er­ful econ­o­my and mil­i­tary under the ban­ner of patri­o­tism and nation­al­ism. . . .”
2.–The stud­ied nature of the Hindutva/Hitler/Mussolini affin­i­ty: ” . . . . Marzia Caso­lari, an Ital­ian schol­ar who stud­ied Indi­an pol­i­tics, once wrote of RSS’ con­nec­tions with Euro­pean fas­cism: The exis­tence of direct con­tacts between the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the [Ital­ian] Fas­cist regime, includ­ing Mus­soli­ni, and Hin­du nation­al­ists demon­strates that Hin­du nation­al­ism had much more than an abstract inter­est in the ide­ol­o­gy and prac­tice of fas­cism. The inter­est of Indi­an Hin­du nation­al­ists in fas­cism and Mus­soli­ni must not be con­sid­ered as dic­tat­ed by an occa­sion­al curios­i­ty, con­fined to a few indi­vid­u­als; rather, it should be con­sid­ered as the cul­mi­nat­ing result of the atten­tion that Hin­du nation­al­ists… focused on Ital­ian dic­ta­tor­ship and its leader. To them, fas­cism appeared to be an exam­ple of con­ser­v­a­tive rev­o­lu­tion. . . .”
3.–Belief in the com­mon, mytho­log­i­cal “Aryan” ori­gins of India and Ger­many: ” . . . . Much of Nazi ide­ol­o­gy and imagery came from the sym­bols and his­to­ry of ancient India – indeed, the infa­mous Nazi swasti­ka was based on a Hin­du sym­bol of strength and good for­tune. More­over, the leg­endary his­to­ry (some would say, myth) of the inva­sion of pre­his­toric India by the mys­te­ri­ous ‘Aryan’ tribes would (cen­turies lat­er) pro­vide Hitler with his notion of a ‘super mas­ter race’ that was des­tined to dom­i­nate the world. . . .”
4.–The enthu­si­as­tic embrace of Hitler and Mus­soli­ni by V.D. Savarkar, the ide­o­log­i­cal founder of Hin­dut­va fas­cism and the pri­ma­ry archi­tect of Gand­hi’s assas­si­na­tion: ” . . . . Per­haps there was no greater admir­er of Hitler and Mus­soli­ni in India than Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, anoth­er lead­ing mem­ber of RSS.In a speech deliv­ered in 1940 (after the Sec­ond World War had com­menced), Savarkar said: There is no rea­son to sup­pose that Hitler must be a human mon­ster because he pass­es off as a Nazi or Churchill is a demigod because he calls him­self a Demo­c­rat. Nazism proved unde­ni­ably the sav­ior of Ger­many under the set of cir­cum­stances Ger­many was placed in. . . .”
5.–The Hin­du Mahasab­ha’s sup­port for a Hitler/RSS con­junc­tion: ” . . . . Indeed, many Hin­du nation­al­ists also derid­ed Gand­hi for oppos­ing Nazism and fas­cism. In 1939, a spokesman for the Hin­du Mahasab­ha (Hin­du Par­ty) inti­mate­ly con­nect­ed Ger­many with Indi­an cul­ture and peo­ple. ‘Germany’s solemn idea of the revival of the Aryan cul­ture, the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of the Swasti­ka, her patron­age of Vedic learn­ing and the ardent cham­pi­onship of the tra­di­tion of Indo-Ger­man­ic civ­i­liza­tion are wel­comed by the reli­gious and sen­si­ble Hin­dus of India with a jubi­lant hope,’ the spokesman blus­tered. ‘Only a few Social­ists head­ed by… Nehru have cre­at­ed a bub­ble of resent­ment against the present gov­ern­ment of Ger­many, but their activ­i­ties are far from hav­ing any sig­nif­i­cance in India.’ He added: ‘Germany’s cru­sade against the ene­mies of Aryan cul­ture will bring all the Aryan nations of the world to their sens­es and awak­en the Indi­an Hin­dus for the restora­tion of their lost glo­ry. . . .’ ”
6.–Other RSS lead­ers saw use­ful sim­i­lar­i­ties in the eth­nic chau­vin­ist phi­los­o­phy of both Hitler and Hin­dut­va fas­cism. ” . . . . Anoth­er senior RSS mem­ber, Mad­hav Sadashiv Gol­walkar, also praised Nazism and believed the ide­ol­o­gy should be applied to India. ‘Ger­man race pride has now become the top­ic of the day,’ he wrote. ‘To keep up the puri­ty of the race and its cul­ture, Ger­many shocked the world by her purg­ing the coun­try of the Semit­ic Races — the Jews. Race pride at its high­est has been man­i­fest­ed here. Ger­many has also shown how well-nigh impos­si­ble it is for races and cul­tures, hav­ing dif­fer­ences going to the root, to be assim­i­lat­ed into one unit­ed whole, a good les­son for us in Hin­dus­tan [India] to learn and prof­it by.’ Gol­walkar enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly advo­cat­ed for an India dom­i­nat­ed by Hin­dus. ‘There are only two cours­es open to the for­eign ele­ments, either to merge them­selves in the nation­al race and adopt its cul­ture, or to live at its mer­cy so long as the nation­al race may allow them to do so and to quit the coun­try at the sweet will of the nation­al race,’ he wrote. . . . ”
7.–The eth­nic ide­o­log­i­cal par­a­digm of Hin­dut­va fas­cism and Nazism meld well: ” . . . . If one were to replace ‘Hin­du’ with ‘Ger­man,’ Golwalkar’s words would match Hitler’s rhetoric almost exact­ly. . . .”
8.–Savarkar also saw Nazi and RSS eth­nic the­o­ry and pol­i­cy as con­verg­ing:  ” . . . . Savarkar also spelled out why Hin­dus should rule India and oth­ers should either be expelled or merged into the Hin­du major­i­ty. ‘The Aryans who set­tled in India at the dawn of his­to­ry already formed a nation, now embod­ied in the Hin­dus,’ he wrote. ‘Hin­dus are bound togeth­er not only by the love they bear to a com­mon father­land and by the com­mon blood that cours­es through their veins and keeps our hearts throb­bing and our affec­tion warm but also by the of the com­mon homage we pay to our great civ­i­liza­tion, our Hin­du cul­ture. . . .”

The late Sav­it­ri Devi was an embod­i­ment of the Hindu/Nazi/Aryan ide­o­log­i­cal con­ver­gence. Devi has been among the ele­ments syn­the­siz­ing Hin­dut­va fas­cism with the con­tem­po­rary “Alt-Right.” Devi has been the focal point of renewed inter­est:

1.–” . . . . I filed her as a curios­i­ty at the back of my mind, until the ris­ing tide of extreme-right pol­i­tics in Europe and Amer­i­ca threw up the name ‘Sav­it­ri Devi’ once again. It isn’t hard these days to find dis­cus­sions of Sav­it­ri Devi’s books on neo-Nazi web forums, espe­cial­ly The Light­ning and the Sun, which expounds the the­o­ry that Hitler was an avatar — an incar­na­tion — of the Hin­du god Vish­nu, and Gold in the Fur­nace, which urges true believ­ers to trust that Nation­al Social­ism will rise again. The Amer­i­can extreme-right web­site Counter-Cur­rents hosts an exten­sive online archive of her life and work. . . .”
2.–More about the resus­ci­ta­tion of Devi: ” . . . . Her views are reach­ing a wider pub­lic, too, thanks to Amer­i­can alt-right lead­ers such as Richard Spencer and Steve Ban­non, for­mer Trump chief strate­gist and chair of Bre­it­bart News, who have tak­en up the account of his­to­ry as a cycli­cal bat­tle between good and evil — a the­o­ry she shared with oth­er 20th Cen­tu­ry mys­ti­cal fas­cists. Dark met­al bands and Amer­i­can right-wing radio sta­tions also roar about the Kali Yuga, the Dark Age of Hin­du mythol­o­gy, which Sav­it­ri Devi believed that Hitler was once des­tined to bring to an end. . . . ”
3.–The psy­cho­log­i­cal and polit­i­cal foun­da­tion of the Aryan/Hindutva con­ver­gence is neat­ly summed up in the BBC Mag­a­zine arti­cle we excerpt: ” . . . . Sav­it­ri Devi her­self is almost for­got­ten in India now, but the Hin­du nation­al­ism she espoused and helped to pro­mote is in the ascen­dant, much to the con­cern of her nephew, the vet­er­an left-wing jour­nal­ist Suman­ta Baner­jee.  ‘In her book A Warn­ing to the Hin­dus, which came out in 1939, she advised the Hin­dus to cul­ti­vate a ‘spir­it of organ­ised resis­tance through­out Hin­du­dom,’ he says. ‘The tar­gets of this resis­tance were the Mus­lims, who were a threat, accord­ing to her, to the Hin­dus. And this is the same fear that is being echoed today.’ . . .” 
4.–More about the dynam­ics behind the “Alt-Right”/Hindutva con­ver­gence: ” . . . . Hin­dut­va is the offi­cial ide­ol­o­gy of Prime Min­ster Naren­dra Mod­i’s rul­ing Bharatiya Jana­ta Par­ty, which claims that Mus­lims and sec­u­lar­ists have under­mined the strength of the Hin­du nation. Though the par­ty’s offi­cial spokes­men con­demn vio­lence, the riots that led to the tear­ing down of the Babri Mosque at Ayo­d­hya in 1992 and the cur­rent waves of attacks — some­times fatal — by vig­i­lante groups on Mus­lims and dis­senters tell a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. . . . ”
5.–Highlighting the nature of the ide­o­log­i­cal sim­i­lar­i­ty between Nazi eth­nic pol­i­cy and Hin­dut­va fas­cist ide­ol­o­gy: “In the US, racism, anti-com­mu­nism and Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ist notions about the impend­ing apoc­a­lypse have togeth­er pre­pared the ground for the far right’s flir­ta­tion with occult Nazism and Hin­du prophe­cies. And as in India, the tra­di­tion­al rul­ing major­i­ty’s fear of los­ing pow­er has been an effec­tive recruit­ing tool. . . .”

In addi­tion to the posi­tion of Hin­dut­va fas­cism in the Fas­cist Inter­na­tion­al , we exam­ine Pierre Omid­yar, his espousal of neolib­er­al eco­nom­ic doc­trine, his sup­port for Mod­i’s Hin­dut­va fas­cists and his sup­port (along with U.S. intel­li­gence cut-outs like the Nation­al Endow­ment for Democ­ra­cy and the Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment) for the Ukrain­ian OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions like Pravy Sek­tor, Svo­bo­da and the Azov Bat­tal­ion.

In FTR #889, among oth­er pro­grams, we high­light­ed Omi­da­yar’s devo­tion to the Aus­tri­an school of eco­nom­ic the­o­ry.

The political/economic con­text of Omid­yar’s efforts can be seen as a “neo-lib­er­al” flank­ing maneu­ver: putting “free-mar­ket” forces in pow­er and the West­ern and South­east­ern flanks of Rus­sia and Chi­na. Those two nations con­sti­tute much of what geo-politi­cians call “The Earth Island” or “World Island.”

Omid­yar’s neo-lib­er­al, Aus­tri­an eco­nom­ic school can be seen in Mod­i’s enthu­si­as­tic recep­tion by Sil­i­con Val­ley movers and shak­ers, at the same time that the Indi­an leader is mov­ing  to weak­en his coun­try’s child  labor laws.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: 

1.–The Omid­yar-owned Hon­ololu Civ­il Beat­’s curi­ous cov­er-up of Tul­si Gab­bard’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Hin­dut­va fas­cist Hare Krish­na cult.
2.–The par­tic­i­pa­tion of Indi­an sol­diers in the Wehrma­cht and Waf­fen SS dur­ing World War II.
3.–Tulsi Gab­bard’s co-spon­sor­ship of a bill that would label oppo­nents of Ukraine’s entrance into the EU as “ter­ror­ists.”
4.–Omidyar jour­nal­is­tic pro­tege Glenn Green­wald had Andrew “Weev” Aueren­heimer at his par­ty cel­e­brat­ing Green­wald and Lau­ra Poitras’s receipt of the pres­ti­gious Polk Award. Wee­v’s name has been bandied about in con­nec­tion with the [alleged] hack­ing of DNC e‑mails. We note that Weev is appar­ent­ly res­i­dent in Ukraine. ” . . . . [GOP oper­a­tive Peter] Smith also reached out to “Guc­cifer 2.0”—an alias the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty has linked to Russ­ian state hackers—and was advised to seek the help of a white nation­al­ist hack­er who lives in Ukraine. . . . [Alt-Right media fig­ure Charles] John­son said he also sug­gest­ed that Smith get in touch with Andrew Aueren­heimer, a hack­er who goes by the alias ‘Weev’ and has col­lab­o­rat­ed with John­son in the past. . . .”


RIP, Jerry Meldon

Researcher, author and Tufts Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Jer­ry Mel­don has drowned in a North Car­oli­na lake at the age of 69. The trans­la­tor for Hen­rik Kruger’s land­mark text The Great Hero­in Coup: Drugs Intel­li­gence and Inter­na­tion­al Fas­cism, Mel­don has authored impor­tant arti­cles cov­er­ing much of the same mate­r­i­al we have pre­sent­ed over the decades. (The Kruger text has been a main­stay of these pro­grams and posts since its pub­li­ca­tion in 1980.) Some of the arti­cles he penned for Con­sor­tium News include: sto­ries about the CIA-drug con­nec­tions; the Iran-Con­tra scan­dal; the Gold­en Lily oper­a­tion and its sig­nif­i­cance for con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­ca and Japan; the Dulles/Nazi/CIA rela­tion­ship; the ongo­ing influ­ence of Nazis in post-war Ger­many.


FTR #869 The Assassination of Olof Palme, Part 2

Con­tin­u­ing dis­cus­sion and analy­sis from FTR #868, this pro­gram under­scores the pos­si­ble role of Swedish and Scan­di­na­vian fas­cists over­lap­ping both WACL and Sapo, the Swedish intel­li­gence ser­vice. Involved with escape net­works forged to aid the inter­na­tion­al flight from jus­tice of fas­cists and Nazis, the prin­ci­pals in these net­works exhib­it­ed behav­ior around the time of the Palme killing that is sug­ges­tive. Worth not­ing in this regard is the late Stieg Larsson’s inves­ti­ga­tion of the Palme killing, which point­ed in the direc­tion of some of the same fig­ures exam­ined in the Kruger essay. The pro­gram con­cludes with an exam­i­na­tion of the Bofors muni­tions firm and its cor­po­rate links to Third Reich indus­try and the post­war Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work, with which it may well be affil­i­at­ed.


FTR #868: The Assassination of Olof Palme, Part 1

The first of two pro­grams high­light­ing the unsolved 1986 assas­si­na­tion of Swedish Prime Min­is­ter Olof Palme, the broad­cast fea­tures a 1988 arti­cle by the bril­liant free­lance Dan­ish jour­nal­ist Hen­rik Kruger, author of “The Great Hero­in Coup: Drugs, Intel­li­gence and Inter­na­tion­al Fas­cism.” Through this exam­i­na­tion of the inter­sect­ed net­works that Kruger has termed (in “The Great Hero­in Coup”) “The Inter­na­tion­al Fascista,” we are able to observe the ele­ments of Oper­a­tion Con­dor, key indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions com­pris­ing the for­mer World Anti-Com­mu­nist League, indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions under­ly­ing “the Strat­e­gy of Ten­sion” in Italy, as well as the cast of char­ac­ters that man­aged the Iran-Con­tra machi­na­tions. Long the focal point of death threats and assas­si­na­tion attempts, Palme had earned the lethal ire of fas­cists in North and South Amer­i­ca, as well as Europe. The fail­ure to solve the killing, despite the pas­sage of almost 30 years and some very strong evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries, under­scores the grav­i­tas of the forces that destroyed Palme. Kruger’s arti­cle also serves as some­thing of an “in vit­ro” win­dow into many of the polit­i­cal net­works we have exam­ined over the years.


The Assassination of Olof Palme

In our ongo­ing series of inter­views with Peter Lev­en­da, the author of “The Hitler Lega­cy,” we have high­light­ed points of dis­cus­sion relat­ing to WACL, Oper­a­tion Con­dor, the Iran/Contra scan­dal and oth­er ele­ments that might not be famil­iar to recent/younger read­ers and lis­ten­ers. Peter detailed his hair-rais­ing vis­it to Colo­nia Dig­nidad in FTR #839. While going through some box­es in stor­age, we came across an old essay by the bril­liant Dan­ish jour­nal­ist Hen­rik Kruger, author of “The Great Hero­in Coup,” ana­lyz­ing the unsolved 1986 assas­si­na­tion of Swedish prime min­is­ter Olof Palme. We present that arti­cle here, in order to famil­iar­ize younger read­ers and lis­ten­ers with indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions we haven’t cov­ered in decades. All of the con­tents of this web­site as of 12/19/2014–Dave Emory’s 35+ years of research and broadcasting–as well as hours of video­taped lec­tures are avail­able on a 32GB flash dri­ve. Dave offers his pro­grams and arti­cles for free–your sup­port is very much appre­ci­at­ed.


AFA 3: Reinhard Gehlen & His Organization

Hitler’s top spy­mas­ter, Gen­er­al Rein­hard Gehlen and his orga­ni­za­tion played a major role in post-World War II his­to­ry.


AFA 4: Terpil, Wilson & Company

“Ex” CIA agents Frank Ter­pil and Edwin Wil­son trained and equipped noto­ri­ous “left-wing” ter­ror­ists.


AFA 15: The World Anti-Communist League, Pt. 2

Despite rel­a­tive obscu­ri­ty, the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League played a sig­nif­i­cant role in the pol­i­tics of the sec­ond half of the 20th cen­tu­ry.


AFA 17–21: Who Shot the Pope?

A major intel­li­gence-relat­ed con­tro­ver­sy of the late Cold War, the shoot­ing of Pope John Paul II in 1981 was wide­ly and mis­tak­en­ly blamed on the Sovi­et Union.


AFA 22: The Terror Connection, Pt.1

Hitler’s com­man­do, for­mer SS offi­cer Otto Sko­rzeny was a promi­nent fig­ure in the devel­op­ment of the method­ol­o­gy and orga­ni­za­tion­al onto­ge­n­e­sis of ter­ror­ism.