FTR #1020 Baba Ramdev, Hindutva Fascism and Geopolitics

The pri­ma­ry “jump­ing off point” of this pro­gram and the foun­da­tion of the pre­vi­ous two broad­casts is the polit­i­cal and com­mer­cial career of Baba Ramdev. A major sup­port­er of Naren­dra Modi, his BJP and the Hin­dut­va fas­cist RSS, for which the BJP is a polit­i­cal front, Ramdev runs a high­ly suc­cess­ful busi­ness career cen­tered on the teach­ing of yoga and the mar­ket­ing of “ayurvedic” foods, cos­met­ics and med­i­cines. In turn, his busi­ness inter­ests are inex­tri­ca­bly linked with Modi, the BJP and the RSS.

(In FTR #‘s 795, 988 and 989, 990, 991, 992, and 1015, we detailed the Hin­dut­va fas­cism of Naren­dra Modi, his BJP Par­ty and sup­port­ive ele­ments, trac­ing the evo­lu­tion of Hin­dut­va fas­cism through the assas­si­na­tion of Mahat­ma Gand­hi to the present time.)

With Modi and the BJP run­ning India, Ramde­v’s Patan­jali food busi­ness has also dove­tailed direct­ly with Indi­a’s mil­i­tary devel­op­ment and poten­tial strate­gic inter­ests. A thought-pro­vok­ing and pos­si­bly valid com­par­i­son might be seen between Ramde­v’s oper­a­tions and the oper­a­tions of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church of Sun Myung Moon. In FTR #970, among oth­er pro­grams, we exam­ined the Moon oper­a­tion as an exten­sion around the world and down the decades of the Patri­ot­ic and Ultra­na­tion­al­ist Soci­eties of Japan. A reli­gious, com­mer­cial and fas­cist polit­i­cal enti­ty, the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church bears many strik­ing ide­o­log­i­cal and oper­a­tional sim­i­lar­i­ties to the Ramdev orga­ni­za­tion.

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. . . .”

We review of a miss­ing and very pos­si­bly impor­tant chap­ter in Ramde­v’s per­son­al his­to­ry: miss­ing years in his young adult­hood, rais­ing the ques­tion of where he was and what was he doing? We won­der, in that same con­text, who put up the ven­ture cap­i­tal to launch Ramde­v’s yoga and ayurvedic prod­ucts busi­ness­es: ” . . . . He was born to a poor farm fam­i­ly in north-cen­tral India, prob­a­bly in 1965 (he has always been vague about his age) and giv­en the name Ram Kisan Yadav. . . . As a teenag­er, he left home for a gurukul. The years that fol­lowed are curi­ous­ly blank; Ramdev has said very lit­tle about them, some­times claim­ing he doesn’t remem­ber. What is clear is that in 1995 he became a monk and assumed his cur­rent name after a rev­e­la­tion . . . .”

In addi­tion to pro­mot­ing Yoga’s well-doc­u­ment­ed fit­ness ben­e­fits, Ramdev presents Yoga as a vehi­cle for recon­nect­ing Indi­ans with their myth­ic past. In fact, the dis­ci­pline is root­ed in more recent and Euro­pean-import­ed cul­ture: “. . . . This nar­ra­tive about yoga’s ancient roots has become a sacra­ment for Hin­du nation­al­ists, and it is echoed in the West. But it is most­ly myth, an ide­al­ized ori­gin sto­ry of the kind so many would-be nation-builders, from ancient Rome to the Zion­ists, have fos­tered about them­selves. The old­est Hin­du scrip­tures con­tain almost no men­tion of phys­i­cal pos­tures. Even the Yoga Sutras, the so-called bible of yoga, include only a few short vers­es sug­gest­ing com­fort­able pos­tures for sit­ting. Many of the pos­tures prac­ticed in yoga today appear to have emerged in the 19th and ear­ly 20th cen­turies. . . .”

In fact, a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to con­tem­po­rary Yoga dis­ci­pline was made by a Dan­ish Nazi sym­pa­thiz­er named Niels Bukh. ” . . . . Dozens of mod­ern ash­tan­ga yoga pos­tures are sim­i­lar or iden­ti­cal to those found in a gym­nas­tic rou­tine intro­duced to India by the British in the first decades of the 20th cen­tu­ry and orig­i­nal­ly devel­oped by a Dan­ish fit­ness instruc­tor named Niels Bukh, who lat­er became noto­ri­ous for his pro-Nazi sym­pa­thies. . . .”

More about Niels Bukh: ” . . . . His sys­tem of exer­cise became high­ly pop­u­lar in Ger­many, and in 1933 Bukh pub­licly expressed his alle­giance to the Nation­al Social­ist cause and its aim of improv­ing the health of the Aryan race through gym­nas­tics. . . .”

Yoga’s pop­u­lar­i­ty in Weimar Ger­many trans­lat­ed into an affin­i­ty for the dis­ci­pline expressed by Nazi SS chief Hein­rich Himm­ler, who also saw the phys­i­cal reg­i­men as an exten­sion of the ancient “Aryan” past of India. That myth­i­cal Aryan past also became part of SS and Nazi atavis­tic occult ide­ol­o­gy. ” . . . yoga was rec­om­mend­ed to death camp guards in Nazi Ger­many. But that’s exact­ly what his­to­ri­an and yoga expert Math­ias Tietke found as he researched his new book, ‘Yoga In Nation­al Social­ism’. . . .”

More about the SS/Yoga con­nec­tion: ” . . . . It was seized on by race experts in the par­ty as being the pur­suit of ‘Ayran’ peo­ple. Jakob Wil­helm Hauer, an S.S. cap­tain and yoga expert, who influ­enced his chief Himm­ler and con­vinced him that ‘yoga can inter­nal­ly arm us and pre­pare us for the forth­com­ing bat­tles.’ . . . . Himm­ler, obsessed as he was with hocus-pocus race the­o­ries and mys­ti­cism relat­ing to his S.S. ‘super­men,’ car­ried around a Ger­man copy of the Bha­gavad Gita with him wher­ev­er he went. He regard­ed the ancient San­skrit epic as being a blue­print for cru­el­ty and ter­ror, using it, said Tietke, to ulti­mate­ly jus­ti­fy the Holo­caust. He wrote; ‘He iden­ti­fied him­self and the SS with the old Indi­an Ksha­triya caste and its pub­li­cized atti­tude of unscrupu­lous killing for one’s ‘high­er pur­pose.’ . . . . ”

This dove­tails with the SS mythology/ideology, which saw the SS as the embod­i­ment and ful­fill­ment of the “Aryan” race.

Next, we review of the sweet­heart land deals giv­en to the Morit­o­mo Gakuen school in Japan by the Abe gov­ern­ment and com­par­isons between that arrange­ment and the bar­gain-base­ment land pur­chas­es afford­ed the Ramdev oper­a­tion by the Modi gov­ern­ment.

We then “dol­ly out,” so to speak, and begin to exam­ine the Modi/RSS/Ramdev axis in a broad­er polit­i­cal and geopo­lit­i­cal con­text.

We review the strong links between “Team Trump” and the Modi/BJP/RSS axis. There are also strong links between Tul­si Gab­bard, the left-cov­er Hin­dut­va fas­cist who nom­i­nat­ed Bernie Sanders for Pres­i­dent in 2016 and The Modi/BJP/RSS axis., as well as con­nec­tions between “Team Trump” and Gab­bard.

We also review Pierre Omid­yar’s sig­nif­i­cant role in both India and Ukraine:

Omid­yar’s work in both Ukraine and India–operating as an appar­ent asset of U.S. intel­li­gence and (per­haps) the Under­ground Reich–are best viewed in the con­text of the Earth Island and a flank­ing maneu­ver on Rus­sia and Chi­na.

Stretch­ing from the Straits of Gibral­tar, all across Europe, most of the Mid­dle East, Eura­sia, Rus­sia, Chi­na and India, that stretch of land: com­pris­es most of the world’s land mass; con­tains most of the world’s pop­u­la­tion and most of the world’s nat­ur­al resources (includ­ing oil and nat­ur­al gas.) Geopoliti­cians have long seen con­trol­ling that land mass as the key to world dom­i­na­tion.

With the OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tion fas­cists in pow­er via the Maid­an coup and a par­lia­men­tary coali­tion gov­ern­ment with Petro Poroshenko, pres­sure is being put direct­ly on Rus­si­a’s flank. With the Hin­dut­va fas­cists of Naren­dra Modi/BJP/RSS in pow­er in India, pres­sure is being put on Chi­na’s flank: “U.S. Sec­re­tary of Defense James Mat­tis announced a momen­tous shift in Amer­i­can glob­al strate­gic pol­i­cy in a lit­tle noticed state­ment on May 30. From now on, he decreed, the U.S. Pacif­ic Com­mand (PACOM), which over­sees all U.S. mil­i­tary forces in Asia, will be called the Indo-Pacif­ic Com­mand (INDOPACOM). The name change, Mat­tis explained, reflects “the increas­ing con­nec­tiv­i­ty between the Indi­an and Pacif­ic Oceans,” as well as Washington’s deter­mi­na­tion to remain the dom­i­nant pow­er in both. Such a name change may not sound like much, but some­day you may look back and real­ize that it couldn’t have been more con­se­quen­tial or omi­nous. Think of it as a sig­nal that the U.S. mil­i­tary is already set­ting the stage for even­tu­al con­fronta­tion with Chi­na. . . .On June 8th, for exam­ple, the DoD launched Mal­abar 2018, a joint Pacif­ic Ocean naval exer­cise involv­ing forces from India, Japan, and the Unit­ed States. Incor­po­rat­ing once neu­tral India into America’s anti-Chi­nese “Pacif­ic” alliance sys­tem in this and oth­er ways has, in fact, become a major twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry goal of the Pen­ta­gon, pos­ing a sig­nif­i­cant new threat to Chi­na. . . .”

Of sig­nif­i­cance for us in the con­text of anti-Chi­na/Earth Island geopo­lit­i­cals are the anti-com­mu­nist util­i­ty of the BJP/RSS/Ramdev nexus and the dove­tail­ing of a Ramdev/Patanjali instal­la­tion in Assam with the needs of the Indi­an Air Force for a base in that area:

1.–Ramdev and the B.J.P. appear to have util­i­ty as vehi­cles to erad­i­cate Com­mu­nist influ­ence in parts of India: ” . . . . The RSS has become more vis­i­ble since Modi’s 2014 vic­to­ry. The group and its affil­i­ates have built hun­dreds of schools and job-train­ing cen­ters in Assam and oth­er north­east­ern states in recent years. I vis­it­ed sev­er­al and saw unmis­tak­able signs of the RSS ide­o­log­i­cal pro­gram. . . . All this hard indoc­tri­na­tion work has paid off. In 2016, the B.J.P. won con­trol of Assam’s state gov­ern­ment in leg­isla­tive elec­tions. And in March of this year, the par­ty won stun­ning elec­toral upsets in two adja­cent north­east­ern states, where left­ist par­ties had dom­i­nat­ed for decades. There was talk of a ‘saf­fron wave’ that might spread to the south Indi­an regions, includ­ing Com­mu­nist-dom­i­nat­ed Ker­ala, that have long resist­ed the advance of Hin­du nation­al­ism. Many Indi­an polit­i­cal ana­lysts said the RSS’s grass-roots work was essen­tial to the recent elec­toral vic­to­ries. But one RSS vol­un­teer in Assam, a con­struc­tion con­trac­tor, told me Ramdev’s pres­ence and his yoga pro­mo­tion had been very influ­en­tial, too. . . .”
2.–Also of sig­nif­i­cance is the dove­tail­ing of Modi/B.J.P. assist­ed Patan­jali oper­a­tions with the Indi­an military–specifically, the Indi­an Air Force: “. . . . After admir­ing the cook­ie plant and its 300-foot oven, we drove across a deli­cious­ly smooth, medi­an-free stretch of pave­ment that resem­bled a run­way. In fact, it is a run­way, built in con­sul­ta­tion with the Indi­an Air Force so that jet fight­ers can take off and land on it, Singh told me. ‘We will ded­i­cate this to the nation in case there is need for an extra airstrip,’ he said, and then added with a know­ing look, ‘We are near Chi­na.’ Patan­jali seems almost to view itself as an exten­sion of the state — or rather, an illus­tra­tion of what has become a ‘state-tem­ple-cor­po­rate com­plex,’ in the apt phrase of the Indi­an author Meera Nan­da. . . .”

We con­clude the pro­gram with review of a Hin­dut­va chant used by Baba Ramdev and Naren­dra Modi.

In our pre­vi­ous pro­grams, we have spo­ken of Ramde­v’s use of a Modi/BJP/RSS invo­ca­tion, high­light­ing Ramde­v’s work­ing of the “fascis”–the “bun­dle” of accolytes–in Fuhrer/­Duce-like fash­ion: ” . . . . Ramdev took the micro­phone and intro­duced the pha­lanx of sev­er­al hun­dred Hin­du reli­gious stu­dents, known as brah­macharis, sit­ting in neat rows on the field. Every­one repeat after me: ‘Bharat mata ki jai!’ he shout­ed. The crowd raised their arms and pumped their fists as they chant­ed the words — ‘India my moth­er­land is great’ — that have become a defin­ing slo­gan of the Hin­du nation­al­ist move­ment. . . .”

Naren­dra Modi echoed this in his Sep­tem­ber 2015 speech at the SAP Cen­ter in San Jose. (As men­tioned above, Tul­si Gab­bard helped arrange Mod­i’s tour.) An audio excerpt con­cludes this pro­gram. For con­ve­nience, we have includ­ed a por­tion of text from Mod­i’s speech.

“Com­plete Text and Video of Naren­dra Modi’s Speech at SAP Cen­ter: Watch;” India West Online; 9/29/2015.

. . . . Please repeat after me “Bharat Mata Ki Jai.” Say it loud­ly; I want the voice to boom all the way to India, Bharat Mata Ki Jai, (audi­ence repeats), Bharat Mata Ki Jai, (audi­ence repeats) . . . .

Update on “Partying Like It’s 1932” (FTR #‘s 969 & 970)

In FTR #‘s 969 and 970, we exam­ined the resur­gence of fas­cism in Japan. A cen­tral ele­ment in that analy­sis is the role of schools used by the patri­ot­ic and ultra­na­tion­al­ist soci­eties as bases for polit­i­cal sub­ver­sion and ultra nation­al­ism: “. . . . In 1939, his [Kos­aburo Tachibana’s] admir­ers enabled him to estab­lish a school. He called it the Native-Land-Lov­ing School (Aiky­o­juku). Every­body in Japan with a mes­sage to deliv­er or an axe to grind opens a school. . . . Those schools in the hands of the patri­ot­ic soci­eties are at once a method of train­ing young men for strong-arm work and a plau­si­ble excuse for extort­ing con­tri­bu­tions from the rich and timid. . . .“The Native-Land-Lov­ing School is sim­i­lar to the Morit­o­mo Gakuen, that was assist­ed by Akie Abe, the wife of the ultra­na­tion­al­ist Japan­ese Prime Min­is­ter: ” . . . . But last month, the Finance Min­istry said an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion found that bureau­crats had tam­pered with offi­cial doc­u­ments relat­ed to the sale of pub­lic land to an ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive edu­ca­tion group, known as Morit­o­mo Gakuen, at a steeply dis­count­ed price. Mr. Abe’s wife, Akie, served as a one­time hon­orary prin­ci­pal of a planned ele­men­tary prin­ci­pal of a planned ele­men­tary school that Morit­o­mo want­ed to build on the dis­put­ed land. In one of the most dam­ag­ing find­ings, the min­istry said that offi­cials had scrubbed Mrs. Abe’s name and alleged remarks encour­ag­ing the deal from the doc­u­ments when they were first sub­mit­ted to Par­lia­ment, known in Japan as the Diet. Then this month, the Finance Min­istry told Par­lia­ment that a bureau­crat had urged a lawyer for Morit­o­mo to lie about how much it would cost to remove garbage from the pub­lic land in order to jus­ti­fy the sale at a dis­count­ed price. . . .”

FTR #970 Partying Like It’s 1932, Part 2: The Japanese Deep State

Reca­pit­u­lat­ing key the­mat­ic ele­ments of the pre­vi­ous program–an omi­nous res­o­nance between Japan­ese revi­sion­ist schools Tsukamo­to, Morit­o­mo Gakuen and the Native-Land-Lov­ing School, some of whose alum­ni assas­si­nat­ed Japan­ese prime min­is­ter Inukai on May 15, 1932. The “May 15th Inci­dent,” as it is known, was a key ele­ment in the rise of fas­cism in Japan.

A pas­sage from Hugh Byas’s 1942 text encom­pass­es the dynam­ic:

“. . . . In 1939, his [Kos­aburo Tachibana’s] admir­ers enabled him to estab­lish a school. He called it the Native-Land-Lov­ing School (Aiky­o­juku). Every­body in Japan with a mes­sage to deliv­er or an axe to grind opens a school. . . . Those schools in the hands of the patri­ot­ic soci­eties are at once a method of train­ing young men for strong-arm work and a plau­si­ble excuse for extort­ing con­tri­bu­tions from the rich and timid. . . .”

Pro­gress­ing down­ward from the upper tiers of the polit­i­cal struc­ture, Japan­ese fas­cism stems from the Nip­pon Kagai (“Japan Con­fer­ence”), whose mem­bers exert pro­found influ­ence in the admin­is­tra­tion of Shin­zo Abe, as well as the Japan­ese par­lia­ment.

Fun­da­men­tal to an under­stand­ing of the dynam­ics under­ly­ing the Japan­ese deep state is aware­ness of the rela­tion­ship between the pow­er­ful Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions, the zaibat­su, U.S.-based transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions and the inter­na­tion­al car­tel sys­tem. FTR #905 exam­ines this rela­tion­ship at con­sid­er­able length.

Anoth­er impor­tant ele­ment in this dynam­ic is Gold­en Lily–the sys­tem­at­ic loot­ing of Asia by Japan in World War II and the use of the bil­lions in recov­ered gold to fund the re-insti­tu­tion of fas­cist infra­struc­ture in Japan, U.S. covert oper­a­tions and the clan­des­tine but­tress­ing of finan­cial and gov­ern­men­tal insti­tu­tions around the world. (FTR #‘s 427, 428, 446, 451, 501, 509, 688, 689 deal with the sub­ject of the Gold­en Lily pro­gram.)

With much of the world’s atten­tion focused on the blus­ter­ing between Kim Jong-Un and Kim Jong-Trump, the fact that Japan has had a clan­des­tine nuclear weapons pro­gram since the 1960s has gone unre­port­ed:

” . . . . The Unit­ed States delib­er­ate­ly allowed Japan access to the Unit­ed States’ most secret nuclear weapons facil­i­ties while it trans­ferred tens of bil­lions of dol­lars worth of Amer­i­can tax paid research that has allowed Japan to amass 70 tons of weapons grade plu­to­ni­um since the 1980s, a Nation­al Secu­ri­ty News Ser­vice inves­ti­ga­tion reveals. . . . The NSNS inves­ti­ga­tion found that the Unit­ed States has known about a secret nuclear weapons pro­gram in Japan since the 1960s, accord­ing to CIA reports.

. . . . The Rea­gan and George H.W. Bush admin­is­tra­tions per­mit­ted sen­si­tive tech­nol­o­gy and nuclear mate­ri­als to be trans­ferred to Japan despite laws and treaties pre­vent­ing such trans­fers. High­ly sen­si­tive tech­nol­o­gy on plu­to­ni­um sep­a­ra­tion from the U.S. Depart­ment of Energy’s Savan­nah Riv­er Site and Han­ford nuclear weapons com­plex, as well as tens of bil­lions of dol­lars worth of breed­er reac­tor research was turned over to Japan with almost no safe­guards against pro­lif­er­a­tion. Japan­ese sci­en­tist and tech­ni­cians were giv­en access to both Han­ford and Savan­nah Riv­er as part of the trans­fer process.

While Japan has refrained from deploy­ing nuclear weapons and remains under an umbrel­la of U.S. nuclear pro­tec­tion, NSNS has learned that the coun­try has used its elec­tri­cal util­i­ty com­pa­nies as a cov­er to allow the coun­try to amass enough nuclear weapons mate­ri­als to build a nuclear arse­nal larg­er than Chi­na, India and Pak­istan com­bined. . . .

. . . . That secret effort was hid­den in a nuclear pow­er pro­gram that by March 11, 2011– the day the earth­quake and tsuna­mi over­whelmed the Fukushi­ma Dai­ichi Nuclear Plant – had amassed 70 met­ric tons of plu­to­ni­um. Like its use of civil­ian nuclear pow­er to hide a secret bomb pro­gram, Japan used peace­ful space explo­ration as a cov­er for devel­op­ing sophis­ti­cat­ed nuclear weapons deliv­ery sys­tems. . . .”

Key play­ers on the Japan­ese land­scape, such as Yoshio Kodama and Ryoichi Sasakawa (the self-pro­claimed “world’s rich­est fas­cist”) embody the Japan­ese deep state, oper­at­ing from the 1930’s onward in con­junc­tion with the Japan­ese patri­ot­ic and ultra-nation­al­ist soci­eties, the zaibat­su, Gold­en Lily and the clan­des­tine fas­cist polit­i­cal infra­struc­ture that is increas­ing­ly vis­i­ble.

Sasasakawa launched and fund­ed Sasasakawa Peace Foun­da­tion USA, which might be viewed in the same light as “The Adolf Hitler Foun­da­tion for the Study of Peace and Social Jus­tice.” One of its schol­ars (now with the RAND Cor­po­ra­tion) is Jef­frey Hor­nung, a fre­quent “go-to guy” for the media.

After review­ing Sasakawa and Kodama, espe­cial­ly their links to the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, the pro­gram notes that Abe’s grand­fa­ther, Nobo­suke Kishi was Kodama’s cell­mate in Sug­amo prison. Kishi also signed Japan’s dec­la­ra­tion of war against the U.S. ” . . . . Dur­ing World War II, he was vice min­is­ter of muni­tions and min­is­ter of com­merce and indus­try, active­ly involved in slave labor. Along the way, he made a per­son­al for­tune in side-deals with the zaibat­su. . . .In 1948, when his release from prison was pur­chased by Kodama, Kishi began orga­niz­ing the finan­cial base of the LDP, using Kodama’s black gold and injec­tions of M‑Fund cash. . . .”

The pro­gram con­cludes with review of the pro­found con­nec­tions of the Japan­ese zaibat­su, the deep state asso­ci­at­ed with that, and Amer­i­can diplo­mats who rebuffed a suit by Allied POW’s to get com­pen­sa­tion for hav­ing been used as Japan­ese slaves.

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1.-Japanese Air Force chief-of-staff Toshio Tam­agami’s view that Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt bears respon­si­bil­i­ty for World War II.
2.-Tamagami’s view that Japan should acquire nuclear weapons.
3.-Tamagami’s assess­ment that Japan­ese aggres­sion in World War II ben­e­fit­ed the occu­pied coun­tries.
4.-Tamagami’s sup­port from many promi­nent Japan­ese politi­cians and mil­i­tary fig­ures.
5.-Japanese Finance Min­is­ter, Deputy Prime Min­is­ter and for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Taro Aso’s admis­sion that his fam­i­ly’s coal min­ing com­pa­ny used slave labor.
6.-Discussion of the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the Aso Coal Min­ing com­pa­ny may have been involved in stor­ing some of the Gold­en Lily booty.
7.-Discussion of the fact that Aso, as Finance Min­is­ter, would have been involved with the M‑Fund and its financ­ing of Japan­ese pol­i­tics.

FTR #969 Partying Like It’s 1932: Update on the Re-Emergence of Japanese Fascism

In the sum­mer of 2017, jour­nal­is­tic focus in Asia has been on Korea and its nuclear capa­bil­i­ty. The growth of Japan­ese fas­cism, in con­trast, has large­ly passed beneath the intel­lec­tu­al radar. Fur­ther devel­op­ing cov­er­age in pre­vi­ous broad­casts, this pro­gram updates the re-emer­gence of the polit­i­cal forces that drove the con­quests of Impe­r­i­al Japan, as well as attempts to insti­tute an Orwellian re-write of the past.

Key the­mat­ic ele­ments of the broad­cast include an omi­nous res­o­nance between Japan­ese revi­sion­ist schools Tsukamo­to, Morit­o­mo Gakuen and the Native-Land-Lov­ing School, some of whose alum­ni assas­si­nat­ed Japan­ese prime min­is­ter Inukai on May 15, 1932. The “May 15th Inci­dent,” as it is known, was a key ele­ment in the rise of fas­cism in Japan.

“. . . . In 1939, his [Kos­aburo Tachibana’s] admir­ers enabled him to estab­lish a school. He called it the Native-Land-Lov­ing School (Aiky­o­juku). Every­body in Japan with a mes­sage to deliv­er or an axe to grind opens a school. . . . Those schools in the hands of the patri­ot­ic soci­eties are at once a method of train­ing young men for strong-arm work and a plau­si­ble excuse for extort­ing con­tri­bu­tions from the rich and timid. . . .”

Pro­gress­ing down­ward from the upper tiers of the polit­i­cal struc­ture, Japan­ese fas­cism stems from the Nip­pon Kai­gi (“Japan Con­fer­ence”), whose mem­bers exert pro­found influ­ence in the admin­is­tra­tion of Shin­zo Abe, as well as the Japan­ese par­lia­ment.

In addi­tion to open­ly sanc­tion­ing anti-Kore­an racism and net­work­ing with orga­ni­za­tions that pro­mote that doc­trine, sev­er­al mem­bers of Abe’s gov­ern­ment net­work with Japan­ese neo-Nazis. Some of those Nazi acolytes advo­cate using the Nazi method for seiz­ing pow­er in Japan. Is Abe’s gov­ern­ment doing just that?

In addi­tion to finance min­is­ter (and deputy prime-min­is­ter) Taro Aso, for­mer defense min­is­ter Tomi Ina­da and inte­ri­or min­is­ter Sanae Takaichi are appar­ent expo­nents of Nazi polit­i­cal method­ol­o­gy. ” . . . . Ina­da made news ear­lier this month after pho­tos cir­cu­lated of her and anoth­er female in the new cab­i­net pos­ing with a neo-Nazi par­ty leader. Both denied know­ing the neo-Nazi well but lat­er were revealed to have con­tributed blurbs for an adver­tise­ment prais­ing the out-of-print book Hitler’s Elec­tion Strat­e­gy. Coin­ci­den­tally, Vice-Prime Min­is­ter [and Finance Minister–D.E.],Taro Aso, is also a long-time admir­er of Nazi polit­i­cal strat­egy, and has sug­gested Japan fol­low the Nazi Par­ty tem­plate to sneak con­sti­tu­tional change past the pub­lic. . . . it is a lit­tle wor­ri­some that [Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter] Sanae Takaichi . . . is the oth­er female min­is­ter who was pho­tographed with a neo-Nazi leader and is a fan of Hitler. . .”

Abe appears to be using a super­fi­cial pseu­do-fem­i­nism to “sneak con­sti­tu­tion­al change past the pub­lic.” All five of his female cab­i­net appointees are mem­bers of Nip­pon Kai­gi (two resigned short­ly after being appoint­ed.) The actu­al views of these women toward wom­en’s rights belie their fem­i­nist cre­den­tials. ” . . . . The new­ly appoint­ed Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter, Sanae Takaichi, while serv­ing on the LDP’s Pol­i­cy Research coun­cil, sug­gest­ed that the Japan­ese gov­ern­ment rescind the Kono State­ment in 2015, on Japan’s 70th anniver­sary of its sur­ren­der from World War II. [11] The Kono State­ment was a land­mark 1993 apol­o­gy issued by the for­mer Chief Cab­i­net Sec­re­tary that apol­o­gized for the ‘com­fort women:’ 200,000 pri­mar­i­ly Kore­an women forced into sex­u­al slav­ery by the Japan­ese mil­i­tary. Anoth­er min­is­ter, Eriko Yaman­tani, has pre­vi­ous­ly made com­ments that denied the exis­tence of ‘com­fort women.’ . . . .”

Much of the pro­gram focus­es on Shin­zo (and wife Akie) Abe’s sup­port for the Morit­o­mo Gakuen.

1.-Akie Abe was the hon­orary prin­ci­pal of the Morit­o­mo Gakuen (still being con­struct­ed) and con­tributed a mil­lion yen toward its con­struc­tion.
2.-Abe him­self appar­ent­ly donat­ed mon­ey to the con­struc­tion of Morit­o­mo Gakuen.
3.-Tomomi Ina­da sup­port­ed Morit­o­mo Gakuen, hav­ing rep­re­sent­ed the school as a lawyer. She lat­er claimed she could not remem­ber hav­ing done so.
4.-Moritomo Gakuen chief Yasunori Kagoike is a mem­ber of Nip­pon Kai­gi.
5.-Moritomo Gakuen appar­ent­ly ben­e­fit­ed from favors from Taro Aso’s finance min­istry.

High­light­ing the his­tor­i­cal res­o­nance between Tsukamoro and Morit­o­mo Gakuen and the Native Land-Lov­ing School, the pro­gram recounts the May 15th Inci­dent.

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1.-The vir­u­lent, pro-fas­cist revi­sion­ism of bil­lion­aire Japan­ese hote­lier Toshio Motoya, whose writ­ings por­tray Japan as a hero­ic lib­er­a­tor in World War II and deny the Rape of Nanking.
2.-Motoya’s affil­i­a­tion with Nip­pon Kai­gi.
3.-Motoya’s spon­sor­ship of Toshio Tam­aga­mi, the for­mer head of the Japan­ese Air Self Defense Force, who has blamed World War II on Franklin D. Roo­sevelt and “com­mu­nists” in his admin­is­tra­tion.
4.-Taro Aso’s view that elder­ly Japan­ese should “hur­ry up and die.”
5.-A curi­ous mass mur­der of elder­ly, dis­abled Japan­ese that sug­gests the killer may have enjoyed pro­tec­tion or spon­sor­ship.

FTR #793 Miscellaneous Articles and Updates

Updat­ing and intro­duc­ing a num­ber of sto­ries, this pro­gram notes the death of Nazi art deal­er Cor­nelius Gurlitt, high­light­ed in FTR #791. After detail­ing the back­ground and polit­i­cal con­nec­tions of Fra­zier Glenn Miller, accused of killing three peo­ple at a Jew­ish Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­ter in Kansas, the pro­gram high­lights the grow­ing con­trol of Amer­i­can media out­lets by doc­tri­naire fas­cist orga­ni­za­tions with a her­itage evolv­ing from World War II. In addi­tion to the spec­tac­u­lar growth of pub­lish­ing giant Ber­tels­mann, with a Nazi and SS her­itage, the broad­cast under­scores the con­trol of the Al-Jazeera net­work by the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. The curi­ous adver­tis­ing behav­ior of BMW, con­trolled by the heirs of Joseph Goebbels is set forth, as well.

Newsweek Publisher Has Unification Church Background

In FTR #291, we exam­ined the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church as an exten­sion of the Japan­ese Patri­ot­ic Soci­eties, that brought fas­cism to Japan through a pro­gram of polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tion and pro­pa­gan­da. David Jang, whose busi­ness enter­pris­es con­trol both Newsweek and The Inter­na­tion­al Busi­ness Times, has a back­ground in the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, for­mer­ly head­ed by the Rev­erend Sun Myung Moon.

RFK Jr: JFK Assassination Was a Conspiracy

We’ve pro­duced much pro­gram­ming and post­ing over the years on the assas­si­na­tions of JFK, RFK and Mar­tin Luther King. All of these killings are con­nect­ed and, togeth­er, com­prise the sys­tem­at­ic elim­i­na­tion of viable pro­gres­sive lead­er­ship in this coun­try. Stat­ing the obvi­ous, Robert F. Kennedy’s kids RFK jr. and Rory have stat­ed that Pres­i­dent Kennedy was not assas­si­nat­ed by a lone nut. We’ve not seen any state­ments by Kennedy fam­i­ly mem­bers about the assas­si­na­tion of Robert Kennedy. That case is head­ing back into court. The inves­ti­ga­tion of Robert Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion yields evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries lead­ing in the direc­tion of his broth­er’s killing, Dr. King’s assas­si­na­tion and the shoot­ing of George Wal­lace.

Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish: Sun Myung Moon Exits Stage Far Right

A self-pro­claimed mes­si­ah who viewed the polit­i­cal sub­ju­ga­tion of the Unit­ed States as essen­tial, Sun Myung Moon head­ed the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church. With strong con­nec­tions to the Bush fam­i­ly and ele­ments of the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency, the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church appears to be an exten­sion of the Japan­ese patri­ot­ic and ultra­na­tion­al­ist soci­eties that brought fas­cism to Japan. The group’s pri­ma­ry fund­ing may well come from Japan­ese heavy indus­try, the Mit­subishi Cor­po­ra­tion, in par­tic­u­lar. Moon has final­ly passed away at age 92.

FTR #666 Badjacketing Obama, Part 4

Hav­ing left office with­out inves­ti­ga­tion of GOP/Muslim Brotherhood/al Qae­da polit­i­cal nexus, Bush/Cheney leave Oba­ma to deal with those very forces.

FTR #633 Miscellaneous Articles and Updates

Mus­lim Broth­er­hood-Al-Taqwa link to Berlus­coni; Eliot Spitzer scan­dal viewed in com­par­i­son to Pal­frey mur­der case; pan-Turk­ist move­ment link to shoot­ing of the pope.