Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
The tag 'Leon Blum' is associated with 4 posts.

More About “Coup in Dallas”: La Cagoule Connections to the JFK Assassination

In our last post, we high­light­ed “Coup in Dal­las” by the late Hank Albarel­li, Jr. This might be termed “a break­through book.” Plac­ing JFK’s assas­si­na­tion in prop­er his­tor­i­cal and polit­i­cal con­text, author Albarel­li details the pri­ma­ry role in the Dal­las coup of French fas­cist ele­ments. Those ele­ments: 1) Were from the orga­ni­za­tion La Cagoule, which attempt­ed to over­throw the French gov­ern­ment of Leon Blum in 1938. 2) Coa­lesced as impor­tant parts of the Vichy col­lab­o­ra­tionist gov­ern­ment that took pow­er fol­low­ing the Ger­man con­quest of 1940. 3) Net­worked with, and, in many cas­es, became part of, the French SS. 4) Found refuge, com­mer­cial employ­ment and renewed polit­i­cal activism in Franco’s Spain. 5) Inte­grat­ed into the post­war Nazi under­ground cen­ter­ing on Otto Sko­rzeny in Spain and around the world. 6) Worked with US intel­li­gence. 7) Were inte­grat­ed into what Dan­ish jour­nal­ist Hen­rik Kruger termed “The Inter­na­tion­al Fascista.” 8) Through some of the Skorzeny/French/US net­works, par­tic­i­pat­ed in the OAS’s secret war against French pres­i­dent Charles De Gaulle. 9) In con­junc­tion with the CIA/Skorzeny milieu, appear to have par­tic­i­pat­ed in the JFK hit. 10)Worked for cos­met­ics giant L’Oreal, which has a fascist/Nazi past. 11) Came to the atten­tion of the Jus­tice Department’s anti-Nazi Office of Spe­cial Inves­ti­ga­tions. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE. Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash dri­ve con­tain­ing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fas­cist books on easy-to-down­load PDF files.


FTR #956 The National Front and French Deep Politics, Part 1

With the French elec­tions head­ed toward a sec­ond round, there is renewed scruti­ny on the Nation­al Front and its tit­u­lar head Marine Le Pen, who fin­ished sec­ond in the race. Net­worked with var­i­ous fig­ures rang­ing from the milieu of Don­ald Trump to that of Turk­ish pres­i­dent Erdo­gan, the Nation­al Front and the Le Pens (father Jean-Marie and daugh­ter Marine) are car­ry­ing on the fas­cist tra­di­tion in France.

Key ele­ments of dis­cus­sion include:

1. The promi­nent role of Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors and French SS in the for­ma­tion of the Nation­al Front: “. . . . Ex-wartime Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors were promi­nent in the ear­ly lead­er­ship of the Nation­al Front in the 1970s–including mem­bers of the French SS and col­lab­o­ra­tionist Mil­ice, and even a lead­ing offi­cial of the French wartime anti-Jew­ish agency, a minor cog in the Holo­caust. . . .”

2. In the con­text of Le Pen’s kind words from “Team Trump,” we not­ed that, in FTR #951 Trump con­fi­dant and advi­sor Steve Ban­non has been influ­enced by Charles Mau­r­ras, part of the French fas­cist Fifth Col­umn that sub­vert­ed French resis­tance to the Third Reich’s armies.

3. Ms. Le Pen denied French com­plic­i­ty in the Vel D’Hiv roundup, direct­ed by Rene Bous­quet. ” . . . . . . . . On 2 July 1942, Bous­quet and [SS] Carl Oberg [in charge of the French Police] pre­pared the arrests known as the Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup (Rafle du Vel’ d’Hiv). Bous­quet per­son­al­ly can­celed orders pro­tect­ing some cat­e­gories of peo­ple from arrests, notably chil­dren under 18 and par­ents with chil­dren under 5. After the arrests, some bish­ops and car­di­nals protest­ed; Bous­quet threat­ened to can­cel tax priv­i­leges for Catholic schools. . . .”

4. Bous­quet was held in high regard by Hein­rich Himm­ler: ” . . . . In April 1943, Bous­quet met with Hein­rich Himm­ler. Himm­ler declared him­self ‘impressed by Bous­quet’s per­son­al­i­ty’, men­tion­ing him as a ‘pre­cious col­lab­o­ra­tor in the frame­work of police col­lab­o­ra­tion’. . . .”

5. Aides of Ms. Le Pen man­i­fest affin­i­ty for the Third Reich. “. . . . ‘They [Le Pen aides Fred­er­ic Chatil­lon, and Axel Lous­tau] have remained Nation­al Social­ist,’ said Aymer­ic Chauprade, once Ms. Le Pen’s prin­ci­pal advis­er on for­eign affairs. . . . ‘The only debat­able point, in the use of the term ‘neo-Nazi,’ is the wrong­ful qual­i­fi­er ‘neo,’ the affi­davit states. . . . . . . . French tele­vi­sion recent­ly broad­cast video from the 1990s of Mr. Lous­tau vis­it­ing an aging promi­nent for­mer SS mem­ber, Léon Degrelle, a dec­o­rat­ed war­rior for Hitler and the founder of the Bel­gian Rex par­ty, a pre­war fas­cist move­ment. Oth­er video showed Mr. Chatil­lon speak­ing warm­ly of his own vis­it with Mr. Degrelle, who was a patron saint of Europe’s far-right youths until his death in 1994. . . .”

6. Of con­sid­er­able impor­tance in the con­text of the cov­er­age of the Nazi influ­ences of the Nation­al Front is the fact that the post-war per­pet­u­a­tion of French fas­cism extends far beyond the Le Pen milieu. Main­stream, even “social­ist” French politi­cians such as Fran­cois Mit­terand are bound­ed by defin­i­tive links with fig­ures from the Vichy col­lab­o­ra­tionist gov­ern­ment. “. . . . An exam­ple is his mem­ber­ship of the Volon­taires Nationaux (Nation­al Vol­un­teers), an orga­ni­za­tion relat­ed to François de la Roc­que’s far-right league, the Croix de Feu, for one to three years, depend­ing on the source.[2] On 1 Feb­ru­ary 1935, Mit­ter­rand joined the Action française march, more com­mon­ly known as ‘l’in­va­sion métèque’, to demon­strate against for­eign doc­tors set­ting up in France with cries of ‘La France aux Français’. [This is sim­i­lar to the theme of the Nation­al Front!–D.E.] There are two pho­tos that show Mit­ter­rand fac­ing a police line,[3] pub­lished in Les Camelots du Roi by Mau­rice Pujo.[4] . . . .”

7. Mit­terand’s fas­cist activ­i­ties extend­ed to oppo­si­tion to sup­port­ers of Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, who resist­ed Mus­solin­i’s takeover of his coun­try: ” . . . . Dur­ing the win­ter of 1936, François Mit­ter­rand took part in action against Gas­ton Jèze. Between Jan­u­ary and March 1936, the nation­al­ist right and the Action française, cam­paigned for Jèze’s resignation.because he act­ed as a coun­sel­lor for Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia, after he was dri­ven from Addis Aba­ba by Mus­solin­i’s troops dur­ing the Sec­ond Ita­lo-Abyssin­ian War. . . .”

8. Per­haps most impor­tant for our pur­pos­es con­cerns Mit­terand’s post­war rela­tion­ship with Bous­quet, who financed Mit­terand’s polit­i­cal career and did so for oth­er left-wing French politi­cians. “. . . The most damming of all charges against Mit­ter­rand and his right wing con­nec­tions is prob­a­bly his long last­ing friend­ship with René Bous­quet, ex secré­taire général of the Vichy police. Charles de Gaulle said of Mit­ter­rand and Bous­quet ‘they are ghosts who come from the deep­est depths of the collaboration.’[24] . . . . In 1974, René Bous­quet gave finan­cial help to François Mit­ter­rand for his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign against Valéry Gis­card d’Es­taing. In an inter­view with Pierre Favier et Michel Mar­tin-Roland Mit­ter­rand claimed that he was not the only left wing politi­cian to ben­e­fit from Bous­quet’s mon­ey, as René Bous­quet helped finance all the prin­ci­pal left wing politi­cians from the 1950s to the begin­ning of the 1970s, includ­ing Pierre Mendès France. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of the French fas­cist Fifth Col­umn that sub­vert­ed the French mil­i­tary resis­tance to Hitler; dis­cus­sion of the Cagoulard plot to over­throw the social front of Leon Blum; not­ing the con­cen­tra­tion of eco­nom­ic own­er­ship in pre­war France and how that gen­er­at­ed sup­port for the Social Front of Leon Blum.


FTR #951 Fascism: 2017 World Tour

The events over­tak­ing the Unit­ed States are echoes of events occur­ring world­wide. This “2017 World Tour” exam­ines aspects of ascen­dant glob­al fas­cism, includ­ing his­tor­i­cal and ide­o­log­i­cal trends stretch­ing back to the World War II peri­od.

Yet anoth­er of the fascist/Nazi/racist influ­ences on Steve Ban­non is French writer Charles Mau­r­ras. A doc­tri­naire anti-Semi­te, he was sen­tenced to life impris­on­ment for col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Third Reich.

Set­ting Mau­r­ras’s activ­i­ties in an his­tor­i­cal con­text, we recap an excerpt from FTR #372 (August of 2002) detail­ing the French Fifth Col­umn that sub­vert­ed the French mil­i­tary resis­tance to the armies of the Third Reich. Mau­r­ras’s L’Ac­tion Fran­caise was among the jour­nals influ­enc­ing French fas­cists, who saw the Ger­man inva­sion as a vehi­cle for elim­i­nat­ing democ­ra­cy and, at the same time, blam­ing the defeat on gov­ern­ment of Leon Blum, whose mur­der was advo­cat­ed by Mau­r­ras.

In Italy, Bepe Gril­lo’s Five Star Move­ment is lead­ing in the polls, and may come out ahead in the 2018 elec­tions. Observers have seen the par­ty as an heir to Mus­solin­i’s black­shirts. We note, in pass­ing, that the pop­ulist ide­al­ism offi­cial­ly endorsed by Five Star is sim­i­lar to aspects of many left-pop­ulist agen­das, while incor­po­rat­ing fea­tures of con­tem­po­rary fas­cist pol­i­tics.

Trav­el­ing north­ward, we observe the resus­ci­ta­tion of Slo­va­kian fas­cism and the cel­e­bra­tion of Nazi quis­ling Josef Tiso’s World War II col­lab­o­ra­tionist gov­ern­ment. Social media/Facebook are a key ele­ment of the suc­cess of the “neo-Tiso’s.”

An American/Swedish axis, of sorts, man­i­fests as a col­lab­o­ra­tive effort between Trumpenkampfver­bande sup­port­er Richard B. Spencer and Daniel Friberg, a key fig­ure in the Swedish fas­cist milieu of Carl Lund­strom.

Trav­el­ing to Asia, we note the re-emer­gence of Japan­ese fas­cism, insti­tut­ed in the Abe gov­ern­ment by orga­ni­za­tions like Nip­pon Kai­gi. In addi­tion to insti­tut­ing revi­sion­ist teach­ing in the Japan­ese edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem, the Abe gov­ern­ment is cur­tail­ing that coun­try’s free press.

Sev­er­al of Abe’s cab­i­net min­is­ters are sup­port­ive of Hitler’s elec­toral strat­e­gy, see­ing it as a blue­print for the imple­men­ta­tion of Japan­ese reaction–among them Tomo­mi Ina­da, the new defense min­is­ter.

The pro­gram con­cludes with a look at Naren­dra Mod­i’s Hin­du nationalist/fascist gov­ern­ment and it selec­tion of a hard-line anti-Mus­lim big­ot to gov­ern the state of Uttar Pradesh.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: review of Mod­i’s BJP as a cat’s paw for the Hin­du nationalist/fascist RSS; dis­cus­sion of the eco­nom­ic links between Ger­man and French indus­tri­al­ists that under­lay the devel­op­ment of the French Fifth Col­umn inspired, in part, by Charles Mau­r­ras; review of the links between Carl Lund­strom, Wik­iLeaks and Assange aide Joran Jer­mas, a doc­tri­naire Holo­caust denier; review of the “Naz­i­fied AI” at the heart of Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca’s data manip­u­la­tion engine.


FTR #412 The Engineer Intends To Wreck The Train

” . . . the Bush administration’s rever­sal of Clin­ton poli­cies that would have increased eco­nom­ic trans­paren­cy and reduced the use of off­shore finan­cial safe­havens. . . .”