by John Roy Carlson
1943, E. P. Dutton, 544 pages
Download Pt. 1 | Download Pt. 2
In Under Cover—My Four Years in the Nazi Underworld in America, John Roy Carlson penned the account of his successful infiltration of the vigorous Nazi Fifth Column that existed in the United States before and during World War II. Posing as a sympathizer and activist on behalf of the Nazi cause, Carlson gained access to the inner sanctum of the traitors—great and small—who sought to replace the Stars and Stripes with the Swastika. In Under Cover, the author chronicles the operations and ideological tenets of a large (and frequently overlapping) group of organizations that operated on behalf of the Third Reich (and also Imperial Japan). As Carlson illustrates in the book, the “small fry” domestic fascists are often cats’ paws for larger, more prominent political and economic figures. Many of the organizations were actually directed and financed by the Deutsches Ausland Institut—the foreign section of the Nazi party of Germany.
Among the most virulent of the above-ground Fifth Column groups was the German-American Bund, composed largely of U.S. citizens of Germanic extraction. On pages 110 and 111, Carlson highlights a Bund meeting at which those in attendance viewed newsreel footage of Nazi conquests. This is followed by a brief history and operational overview of the organization:
“ . . . When the blistering campaign in Poland was shown on the screen and a bomb heaved from an airplane laid waste an area teeming with life, the audience went into hysterics. When a German submarine was shown torpedoing a helpless Allied ship and the ship turned turtle, sinking stern first, the sea dotted with human beings crawling like beetles, the audience roared lustily! ‘Wonderful!’ Wunderbar!”
Author Carlson sets forth the Bund’s early history. Note that founder Fritz Gissibl was an associate of Hitler, dating his connection to the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch in Munich. Like many domestic fascists, Gissibl’s Bund ally Heinz Spanknoebel was an employee of Henry Ford, one of Hitler’s earliest financial backers. Ford supported many domestic fascists and their movements, as well as backing Hitler. (Carlson details Ford’s association with White Russian exiles in the publishing of the anti-Semitic tract The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as well as the financing of Hitler. For more about this subject, see—among other programs—FTR#511.) “The foundations of the Bund were laid in 1924. It originated with the Chicago unit of the Teutonia Club when that club raised a platoon of storm troopers modeled directly on Hitler’s Brownshirts, and adopted the swastika. The Teutonia Clubs were originally founded in Detroit by Fritz Gissibl, a German alien who was with Hitler in the Munich beer hall Putsch. Eight years later, under Heinz Spanknoebel, a former worker for Henry Ford, the Friends of the Hitler Movement was founded in Detroit and in other cities.”
Also on page 111, the author highlights the “Americanization” of the bund—its transformation into a “patriotic” American organization in order to make it more marketable. Like many domestic fascist movements the Bund represented itself as “patriotic.” As Dr. Johnson noted centuries ago—“patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Note that Bund leader Fritz Kuhn was also a Ford employee.
“When Hitler became Chancellor on January 30, 1933, Spanknoebel was called to Germany. On his return to America, the Friends of the Hitler Movement changed its name to Friends of the New Germany—(Freunde des Neuen Deutschlands) and continued to function under that name. In the meanwhile, Fritz Kuhn, also working as a chemist in Henry Ford’s plant, became the fuehrer of the Detroit regional group. In December, 1935, a merger of all the scattered ‘Friends’ was effected and Kuhn was appointed supreme Bundesfuehrer. In June, 1936, the ‘Friends’ were Americanized to the German-American Bund (Amerkadeutscher Volksbund) and launched on a national campaign of treason under the guise of star-spangled ‘patriotism.’”
Dismissed by some as unimportant, the Bund and other, similar organizations were anything but trivial. On page 112, author Carlson notes the importance of the Bund, as well as the networking that domestic fascist groups did with important personages, including members of Congress.
“ . . . The influence wielded by the Bund in our political dissensions must not be underestimated. The Bund was the spearhead of the anti-Democratic crusade and set the pattern for the Christian Front and the Silver Shirts and countless others like them. Viewed over the years, the swastika-heiling period was a temporary expediency staged to arrest public opinion and enthrall the admiration of frustrated and simple-minded Americans in the lower classes of our society.”
Still more about the Bund, this also on page 112:
“The Deutsches Ausland Institut launched a two-pronged pincer attack on our Democracy. Leadership on the first ‘Fifth Column’ was entrusted to German-Americans, while the second was entrusted to carefully selected candidates of non-German ‘one hundred per cent American’ ancestry—the Edmondsons and Pelleys—whose job it was literally to translate Nazi propaganda into English terms and serve it as ‘patriotism’ to those who would swallow it as such. The American wing of the Nazi psychological Fifth Column penetrated Park Avenue society, or business and industrial circles and eventually projected itself deep into the halls of Congress. . . .”
One can not stress too heavily that these subversives and traitors represented themselves as “patriots.” On page 113, Carlson notes the “patriotic” makeover that the Bund underwent. Note that much Third Reich propaganda and many spies came to the U.S. on the Hamburg-Amerika Line, one of the companies that featured the Bush family in partnership with the Third Reich. (For more about the Hamburg-Amerika Line and the Bush/Nazi connection, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 273, 361, 475.)
“ . . . It was the boom period for espionage in which the boats of the Hamburg-Amerika Line played a prominent role. Dr. Colin Ross, a Nazi of Scot ancestry, toured America photographing our industries, harbors, power plants and rallying Hitlerites in our key cities. ‘Germans in America, too, have experienced their Versailles,’ he wrote. ‘A man will arise and rally them, a German Thomas Paine.’”
More about the Bund and its “American makeover,” this from pages 113 and 114:
“In the meanwhile, the Bund had so antagonized most Americans by its swastika-heiling phase that orders came from Berlin to cut out public singing of the Horst Wessel Lied, shelve the Sam Browne belts and marching boots and ‘go American.’ The party line changed, as a bucket of red-white-and-blue paint was applied to make overnight ‘patriots’ of the Nazis. The Deutscher Weckruf became The Free American. And no longer professing to convert the United States to National-Socialism, the Bund became nationalist and isolationist, showed great concern for the welfare of the Republic and adopted the slogan: America First.”
“America First” became the title of an organization devoted to keeping the U.S. out of World War II. Although some of its members were sincerely opposed to war, the majority were of fascist persuasion, many of them German spies. “America First” echoed the sloganeering of fascist movements in other countries, including the Croix de Feu in France and the Falange in Spain—both covered at length in the Cot’s Triumph of Treason and Chase’s Falange. On pages 498 and 499, Carlson relates:
“ . . . Mussolini’s fascist system was first described as ‘nationalist.’ The French fascist organization Croix de Feu, which developed into a Vichy instrument was called ‘nationalist.’ The Nazi party is the National-Socialist Party. The Japanese War Party is a ‘nationalist’ party. All these countries had their ‘Germany First,’ ‘France First’ and ‘Spain First’ parties. Recall that the motto of Sir Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts was ‘Britain First’ and Stahrenberg’s slogan of the American National-Socialist Party was ‘America First, Last and Always.’ ‘America First’ can be no different in its connotation and ultimate outcome despite the sincere intents of some of those who mouth it. ‘America First’ is a cry unwittingly used by Liberty’s hangmen.”
If patriotism is—as Dr. Johnson observed—“the last refuge of a scoundrel,” then religion is usually the first. A staggering number of the fascist Fifth Column organizations in the U.S. professed to be “Christian.” Most prominent among the fascists marching behind the façade of Christianity was the infamous Father Coughlin — the driving force behind the Christian Front. Railing against President Roosevelt, Jews and anything that stood in the way of the Third Reich’s path of conquest, Couglin used Social Justice as his primary bully pulpit. After the war, it emerged that he was actually in the pay of Third Reich intelligence. Invoking the name of Jesus to support everything Christ condemned, fascists and fascist institutions masquerading as Christians abounded within the Fifth Column—the Reverend Gerald Winrod, the Christian Mobilizers, The Cross and the Flag, ad infinitum. Indeed, author Carlson was able to infiltrate the Fifth Column by posing as a fascist pamphleteer, publishing The Christian Defender. This ingratiated him to the traitors.
Among the Christian prelates operating on behalf of the Nazi cause was the Reverend Norman Vincent Peale. Best known as the exponent of “the power of positive thinking,” Peale long graced the pages of publications like Reader’s Digest and his name became synonymous with wholesome, mainstream Americana in the postwar years. Prior to and during the war, however, Peale fronted for Edward A. Rumely, a spy and agitator for Germany during both World Wars. Like so many others, Rumely, too, benefited from his association with Hitler benefactor Henry Ford. Note that another of Rumely’s fellow travelers in the Fifth Column movement was Frank Gannett, founder of the newspaper chain that bears his name. On pages 474 and 475, Carlson writes:
“Rumely is boss of the Committee for Constitutional Government and second in command to Frank E. Gannett, publisher of a string of newspapers and founder of the committee in 1937. As soon as the Senatorial investigation was over, Rumely literally went underground and erased his name from the Committee stationery. But he continued to run it by appointing a docile Protestant clergyman as ‘acting chairman and secretary’ who visited the office only occasionally. He was the Reverend Norman Vincent Peale, once a joint speaker with [American fascist] Mrs. Elizabeth Dilling and the Reverend Edward Lodge Curran [key aide to Father Coughlin] at a ‘pro-American mass meeting sponsored by more than 50 patriotic organizations’ at the Hotel Commodore in New York. . . . Rumely’s friendship with Henry Ford dated prior to the summer of 1918 when Ford rushed to Washington in an unsuccessful attempt to save Rumely from being indicted. . . .”
When evaluating the significance of the Fifth Column for contemporary Americans, it is important to remember that there was no de-Nazification process for the United States after the war. The Nazi conspirators in this country not only went untouched, many of them became prominent, or continued in positions of prominence. In addition, some of the most heinous Third Reich alumni were imported into this country under the auspices of the Gehlen spy organization, Project Paperclip and the Crusade For Freedom, where they joined their domestic American partners in corrupting postwar American politics. Noting the rise of the reactionary Christian forces in this country, one must wonder if they are heirs to Father Coughlin and his ilk.
In FTR#476, we viewed the politics of Joseph Schmitz, former Inspector General of the Pentagon and now head of the parent company of the Blackwater security firm. Son of domestic fascist John G. Schmitz, Joseph was described after his resignation in disgrace from the Pentagon as “obsessed with Von Steuben and all things German”—a reference to Schmitz’s profound affinity for General Von Steuben and his descendants. The elder Von Steuben fought on the American side in the Revolutionary War and is thought to have been the first Inspector General of the U.S. military. Joseph Schmitz even changed the seal of the Inspector General to the coat of arms of the Von Steuben family. Is it possible that he was an admirer of the Steuben Society, a branch of the Third Reich Fifth Column in the United States? On pages 118 and 119, Carlson describes the Steuben Society:
“ . . . Aristocrat in its class, the Steuben Society hated the Bund because of its difference in tactics, shunned wild Nazi talk and avoided in recent years the public heiling of Hitler, while the Bund continued as before. . . . It goes back to his [Steuben Society President Theodore H. Hoffman] trip to Germany and his reception by Hitler. Hoffman told the story in a by-lined article in the December 20, 1934 issue of the Deutscher Beobachter published in New York: ‘Whoever thinks that National-Socialism rules by oppression, is mistaken. . . . My personal impressions of Hitler were that he is an idealist, an unusual organizer and a man of tremendous energy. It is my conviction that he is honest and sincere in his endeavors not only to unite the German people, but also in his determination to break the chains of slavery. . . . He is the one man who filled the life of the German nation. . . . with new hope of the future. . . .’”
Is this what Joseph E. Schmitz thinks today?
I am amazed — having just watched the events at the Lincoln Memorial on 8/28 — that this scenario is replaying in America, that toxic (but heady!) combination of fervent patriotism and religion. I predict that Glenn Beck will more and more portray himself as a revivalist religious leader, making more and more references to “God” (while his audiences are blissfully unaware that the Mormon god is not the Christian one), and aggrandizing power for himself and the politicians he supports.
I have a hard cover 1943 original copy of Under Cover for sale. 544 pages. Pulp paper, some edge burning otherwise in great shape
Extremely entertaining book that drew considerable legal attention in its time. Email for a coloured photo.
price$100.00
Non negotionable.
Mr. Beynon–
Good to see that you’re following this website and familiar with the landmark work of John Roy Carlson.
Don’t know that $100.00 is something the listeners would want to pay.
It’s available for download for free here!
Best,
Dave
Anybody ever read “Behind the Egyptian Sphinx”? Congress held hearings on this book in 1963 — escapted nazis running around Egypt, Syria, and Iraq- posing as Islamists — organizing terror groups — I found a copy in an archive — made a copy for myself before they burn it
Henry Ford’s fingerprints are everywhere.
I read that Heinz Spanknoebel was “called to Germany” in 1933; I also read he was deported in 1933.
So was Spanky called, deported or both?
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/135982/english-nazi-club-revealed?print=1
Secrets of English World War II Upper-Class Nazi Club Revealed by a Venetian Dandy
A new film about England’s avowed anti-Semites stirs a champion of European tolerance, liberalism, and civilization
By Vladislav Davidzon|June 26, 2013 12:00 AM
Venice, with its grandiloquent manner and grandiose style, has for almost half a millennium provided refuge to a certain kind of English dreamer who would not countenance the drab and gray shores of England. The list of illustrious and dissolute English expatriates, honing their art in this most gloriously decaying of cities, stretches from luminaries like Byron, Ruskin, Housman, and Browning to minor eccentrics such as the Alpinist and literary gadfly Horatio Brown [1], or the novelist, madman, and mystic Frederick Rolfe [2], aka “Baron Corvo,” who went completely native and became a gondolier. I went there to visit the latest exemplar in this oddball tradition of exiles, the British travel writer and historian Robin Saikia—author of The Red Book: The Membership List of The Right Club–1939, which provides [3] startling and unsettling insight into upper-class English anti-Semitism during Hitler’s rise to power.
The Red Book is a primary source for this year’s documentary release Churchill and the Fascist Plot (now available in some regions for viewing online [4]), by Peter Nicholson, one of England’s best-known documentary filmmakers. A charming made-for-TV thriller, its nostalgic confection of newsreels of marching armies, jagged shots of men in trench coats passing folders in dark alleys, and women whispering malignant secrets over cups of tea in south Kensington is interspersed with interviews of the three or four historians who have done the most to bring the story to light. Though its primary focus is the espionage caper and the colorful back story of the intrigues, its far more disquieting revelation is that the isolationist tendency and inclination toward appeasement was more deeply rooted in the middle and upper strata of British society than our a posteriori victorious and self-congratulatory selves might like to admit. My visit to the dandy Saikia in Venice revealed a dark world of reactionary intrigue, along with its inverse potential of a capacity for redemption through humane reflection.
***
Arriving at a discreet minor palazzo on a small canal behind Campo Santa Margherita, the historical nucleus of Venice’s bohemian life for the last century, I found Saikia in his idyllic garden, smoking and sipping champagne in the twilight, surrounded by a cluster of white Siamese cats. Half Indian and half English, the tweedy Saikia has an imposing patrician nose that peeks out from below his expansive Caesar dome of a forehead, and his jet-black shoulder-length hair belies the fact that he has just turned 50. His upper-crust English-weirdo résumé of eccentric affectations is unimpeachable. During his post-colonial childhood in Zambia, his mother kept a pet lion named Alexander that slept in his bed. He has flown around the world teaching “Received Pronunciation” to professional elites in the Arab world, the post-Soviet sphere, and Far East Asia. He admits that he has had the opportunity to “polish the pronunciation of the occasional Russian oligarch” with his patented method of teaching English elocution, and that he holds the distinction of being the only British writer to receive royalties from the sale of a cocktail he invented: the “Death in Venice” (strawberry aquavit, Ciroc vodka, vermouth), which is served at Winston Churchill’s favorite watering hole, the bar of the Excelsior on the Venice Lido.
Indeed, the balmy and pleasure-seeking Lido is his spiritual home, and Saikia is the author of its sole English-language literary history, The Venice Lido. The book [5] includes a perceptive chapter on the history of the Jews in Venice, to me the first clue in his identification with the tribe, and a vivid description of what might be Europe’s most remarkable Jewish cemetery. There is also an amusing anecdote about the Jewish pastry chef who successfully sabotaged a ceremonial lunch given by Mussolini for Hitler on the lido by spiking the coffee with salt. John Julius Norwich, the English-speaking world’s premier historian of Venice, is an avowed fan of the book, and when pressed Saikia admitted to me that on occasion he and Lord Norwich “drink bubbly and discuss matters Venetian.”
Still, the carefully cultivated appearance of the frivolous run-of-the-mill English dilettante-dandy is misleading. Saikia is as (mysteriously) proud as any Englishman to have graduated from the oldest and most academically rigorous English schools, including Winchester College, followed by Oxford. And yet despite his provenance, he is manifestly ill at ease with the establishment he was born into and considers himself an outsider. The product of an interracial marriage, Saikia vividly recalls the social opprobrium his parents encountered from many quarters of British and Indian society when they married in the late 1950s. His father, the scion of a very grand Assamese tea-planting dynasty, escaped India’s repressive social proscriptions to make his way, only to run up against England’s own special brand of prejudice. The family soon decamped again for newly independent Zambia, and Saikia led a peripatetic childhood bouncing between his English prep school, the African bush, and the Indian plantation, which made him, in his own words, “an honorary Jew.” In all three places he encountered and observed at first hand what he terms the “the corrupting and degrading consequences of racial prejudice and political corruption,” which in turn became the source of his interest in debunking racist and anti-Semitic secret societies in England.
The Right Club was one such secret society, part of a constellation of reactionary right-wing social clubs that existed in England prior to the beginning of World War II. A “patriotic society” whose upper- and middle-class members would gather for dinners and rousing discussions of the “Jewish problem,” it was founded by a well-connected Scottish aristocrat and parliamentary nonentity named Capt. Archibald Henry Maule Ramsay, who served as conservative MP for Peebles and South Midlothian. Scandalized by the anticlericism of the Republican and Anarchist Left, he began making radical speeches during the Spanish Civil War calling for the formation of a united Christian front. He proceeded to gather around himself a pestilent group of reactionaries, many of them luminaries of British anti-Semitic thought like the Irish-American William Joyce (later known as Lord Haw-Haw [6]), Anthony Ludovici, A.K. Chesterson (who was no less opinionated and no less anti-Semitic than his famous writer cousin, G.K. Chesterton, but lacking genius and wit), and Arnold Spencer Leese, a veterinarian who combined his fascist politicking with a fanatical opposition to kosher meat slaughtering and titled his autobiography [7] Out of Step: Events in the Two Lives of an Anti-Jewish Camel Doctor. Ludovici was a former assistant to Rodin, a specialist on Nietzsche, and an ideological eugenicist with links to the rural British right wing who wrote chilling volumes such as Jews, and the Jews in England; The Quest of Human Quality: How To Rear Leaders; and In Defense of Aristocracy: A Text Book for Tories.
Though the club officially disbanded with the onset of the war, and the members at the highest level of British society melted away, a dedicated nucleus of activist members soon began to hold secret meetings with powerful (and now infamous) pro-Nazi figures in Britain—including Adm. Barry Domville and British fascist leader Oswald Mosley—with the express objective of achieving a negotiated peace with Nazi Germany. Ramsey inscribed the names of each new club member in a thick and totemic leather-bound ledger, the eponymous Red Book.
One of the last members to join the Right Club was an American named Tyler Kent. A 29-year-old cipher clerk at the American Embassy in London, Kent was introduced to Ramsay and the club by Anna Wolkoff, a staunchly anti-Semitic White Russian and the daughter of an Imperial Russian navy admiral who had been reduced to running a genteel establishment in South Kensington, the “Russian Tea Rooms.” The Wolkoffs, according to Saikia, “had fallen on hard times and were an embittered pair”: Their tea rooms soon became a gathering place for “disaffected émigrés like themselves and the exiled Russian Prince Yuri Galizine, along with pro-Nazi Britains” who shared their fanatical hatred for Jews and Bolsheviks. Wolkoff led the aristocratic women in the group in nightly outings plastering anti-Semitic posters on back-alley walls in London.
After the outbreak of war Ramsay gave Kent the Red Book for safe-keeping, thinking that his flat would be the best hiding place for this radioactively compromising document, since Kent held diplomatic immunity as a member of the American legation. Kent, meanwhile, was pilfering copies of top-secret private telegrams between Churchill and Roosevelt, which were being passed by way of embassy back channels. These telegrams, emblematic tokens of the “special relationship,” contained Churchill’s open, frank, and urgent beseeching of Roosevelt for American assistance in the war. As the correspondence was being conducted extra-constitutionally in both the United States and in Britain, they constituted political dynamite on both sides of the Atlantic.
Ramsay’s involvement with Kent was a concern of paramount importance to British security authorities since Ramsay, as a member of Parliament, enjoyed parliamentary privilege: If Kent handed over his stolen documents to Ramsay, it would have been impossible to prevent their publication, which may very well have sabotaged Britain’s war initiative and set in motion the complete takeover of Europe by the Third Reich.
Sir Maxwell Knight, the head of MI5 and an eccentric and a remarkable character [9] in his own right—he went on to become a naturalist with 34 books to his name, as well as serving as the model for Agent M in the James Bond novels—had built his career infiltrating the fetid underground of Britain’s myriad right-wing circles. Knight had been keeping Kent and the other Right Wing Club members under surveillance for some time. As their plans crossed the Rubicon from noxious stupidity into the realm of existential threat to the British empire, he masterminded a sting operation in which Kent and his accomplice Wolkoff were duped into accepting—and agreeing to pass along—a letter to Berlin supporting the propaganda efforts of the traitorous broadcaster William Joyce.
On May 20, 1940, Kent’s flat was raided and he was arrested; the Red Book’s fastening was forced open. U.S. Ambassador Joseph Kennedy, himself a Nazi sympathizer in the 1930s, was brought to the apartment to observe British Intelligence break open the book’s lock and catalog its contents and personally waived Kent’s right to diplomatic immunity. Kent and Wolkoff were imprisoned for seven and 10 years respectively. The British Cabinet decided to extend the invocation of “Defense Regulation 18B,” the anti-terrorism laws of their day, and the precursor of our own, which enabled Churchill to imprison or intern anyone suspected of Nazi sympathies for the duration of the war.
Capt. Ramsay was also interned for several years, until September 1944 when, in a “breathtaking act of chutzpah” (Saikia’s words yet again), the first thing he did upon his release—the war was not yet over—was to resume his seat in Parliament. He then called for a motion to reinstate the 1275 Statute of Jewry, a pernicious piece of medieval anti-Semitic legislation first introduced during the reign of Edward I that, among other things, required Jews to wear a yellow badge and that also outlawed usury. Ramsay died an unapologetic fascist.
For several years the actual Red Book has resided in the Wiener Library [10] for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide in London. The first time its totemic contents are to be made public, readers will discover that the new edition includes Ramsey’s list of Right Club members published in facsimile, with notes on every peer, diplomat, member of the armed forces, and parliamentarian who joined the club. I inquired of Saikia his view of the fraught issue of posthumously dishonoring the descendants of the Right Club members, some of whom are from families still prominent at the highest levels of British society. He replied, with a wry smile, that “if they have nothing with which to reproach themselves, then I am sure they would take the book in good part.”
“This isn’t just a musty corner of English history,” Saikia elaborated. “And in a way, the Wolkoff-Kent spy story is a secondary issue. What is of great importance is that the principal demons of the Right Club—Arnold Leese, A.K. Chesterson, and Anthony Ludovici for example—are the ideological forefathers of today’s far right in Britain. Leese and Chestertson were in different ways founding fathers of the National Front and the BNP [British National Party]. The racial ‘solutions’ proposed by Ludovici and the idea that English blood should not be contaminated by foreign immigrants still have currency today. There is a message here, I think, for all extremists whether they be Christian, Muslim, or Jewish, for whichever people of whichever book.”
The one redemptive story unearthed by Saikia is to be found in the postwar evolution of the only Right Club member to have reneged on his racist past. “For me, the story of Prince Yuri Galizine, the White Russian nobleman, is one of the most moving and inspiring stories I have come across when researching this book,” Saikia said. “Galizine began by joining the Right Club shortly before the Second World War, and as a result of his considerable linguistic skills he was recruited into Allied intelligence and ended the war investigating the Nazi crimes in multiple concentration camps, including Natzweiler-Rudhof. He began the war with a closed mind and ended it with a deeply stricken conscience. He wrote an impassioned paper for Allied intelligence proposing methods by which propaganda could be turned to good effect in the cause of peace and tolerance, which fell on deaf ears,” Saikia added. “Ironically he forged a highly successful career as a PR tycoon in the ’50s and ’60s. He had the courage to change his mind. The rest of these men never changed their mind.”
The great insight that Saikia has drawn from his research is that the intellectual frameworks of exclusion and hatred developed by nativists in reaction to successive waves of Jewish immigrants in the early 20th century are now being applied to the Romanian construction worker and the Polish nanny. “While it is true,” he told me, “that there are new ‘enemies’—in England it’s the Muslims, Afro-Caribbeans, Eastern Europeans—anti-Semitism remains deeply ingrained at all levels of British society. Though British Jews are for the most part successful (though not always rich) and hard working, and at the top levels, prominent and influential in current affairs, they are still discussed behind closed doors as being parasitical usurpers of the national heritage. No amount of legislation can remove such deeply ingrained prejudices, which is why avowedly xenophobic organizations such as the NBP get such dangerously high levels of votes.”
“There is hope however”—he finished with a flourish. “The voice of the extremist is always the loudest; we moderates and liberals need to turn up the volume.” Thus, having made a compelling and stirring argument for the virtues of tolerance, liberalism, and civilization, he proceeded to open another bottle of champagne.
...‘pro-American mass meeting sponsored by more than 50 patriotic organizations’ at the Hotel Commodore in New York. . . .
I found a couple of references to this event on the internet–it is from an agenda of the gathering held at the Commodore Hotel on April 30, 1938. Norman Vincent Peale offered the invocation. I find it interesting that the Commodore Hotel was bought by Donald Trump in 1980, and renovated and renamed the Grand Hyatt New York. This is probably nothing more than a coincidence–but still, an interesting confluence of several personalities with fascist or at least, right wing connections.
@Michael Hacker–
Good show. It may, indeed, be just coincidence, but there may be more to it than that.
Trump’s father was wealthy and of mixed German and Swedish heritage.
I’ve seen it alleged that there were connections of the family to early supporters of Hitler, however that may have been an attempt at disseminating disinformation.
I couldn’t find anything on the web about what was alleged.
Still, one wonders if Daddy Trump was hooked up with the Bund or the Steuben Society?
Norman Vincent Peale–the Trump family’s pastor–fronted for Axis spies.
All in all, we are looking at some highly unsavory possibilities in the immediate future, if, indeed the Trumpenkampfverbande wins the White House.
“The Donald” will get to determine who controls the Supreme Court and the rest of the Federal Judiciary.
Once seated, Federal judges are almost impossible to impeach.
It remains to be seen if Hillary gets knocked out by the e‑mail imbroglio.
Note that, at the outset, this was NOT a criminal investigation of Hillary.
Several things to ponder: Immediately after the 2012 Presidential election, Petraeus was blown out of the water, and replaced (temporarily) by Michael Morell, who gave Dubya his intelligence briefings and was at his side when the 9/11 attacks took place. https://spitfirelist.com/news/reflections-on-the-petraeus-affair/
Morell does not appear to have been an objective observer, shall we say: https://spitfirelist.com/news/benghazi-david-petraeus-michael-j-morell-and-the-destabilization-of-the-obama-administration/
One of the things in play with regard to the e‑mail imbroglio concerns re-classified communications.
What role might Morell have played in this?
I also note that James Comey, head of the FBI, was a Mitt Romney backer in 2012!
According to media accounts, Obama appointed him in order to find someone palatable to both right and left.
As a Dubya cabinet official, he came down on the side of “pro-privacy” while Ashcroft was incapacitated.
The GOP was apparently OK with Comey, who was the former general counsel for a hedge fund that capitalized Palantir, that–their disclaimers to the contrary notwithstanding–makes the Prism software at the core of the Snowden “disclosures.”
The chief stockholder in Palantir is Trump delegate Peter Thiel, who capitalized Snowden Presidential selection Ron Paul’s super-PAC. Paul and Romney are close. https://spitfirelist.com/news/nazi-linked-pied-piper-ron-paul-all-roads-lead-to-romney/
Much of the apparent anxiety on the part of Hillary about the e‑mail server was expressed in 2010, AFTER the WikiLeaks affair broke, with liberal hacking/accessing of classified State Department memos.
What role might that have played in Hillary’s defensive reaction?
Note, also, that–at the time that WikiLeaks was holding forth on the Pirate Bay server in Sweden (bankrolled by Swedish fascist Carl Lundstrom), Karl Rove was serving as a key adviser to the Swedish prime minister. https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-733-wikileaks-soup-the-roveing-reporter-a-night-in-tunisia/
The WikiLeaks and Snowden affairs are inextricably linked, and are part of what I called “The Conga-Line Ops.”
Note, also, that the so-called Arab Spring, which keyed the Syrian and Libyan bloodbaths, which figure prominently in the e‑mail imbroglio.
The Arab Spring began with an uprising in Tunisia, which some called “The WikiLeaks Coup.”
Taken together, I don’t think it is too much of a reach to see these developments as conspiratorially linked.
Personally, I’m scared as hell.
At least there is a savior on the horizon: Saint Bernard (Sanders)–joke!
Best,
Dave
“America First” in the inaugural speech:
“From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first, America first. Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs will be made to benefit American workers and American families. We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our product, stealing our companies and destroying our jobs.”
CNBC’s headline underscores this theme:
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/20/transcript-of-president-trumps-inauguration-speech.html
Comes across as code to these ears. These folks that Carlson chronicled have the reigns and it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
I just stumbled on the Carlson book recently while searching Spitfire List for dirt on Norman Vincent Peale because my elderly mother is prone to be taken in by mail scams and she sent me a health booklet published by “Guide Posts”, connected with Peale and Gannett Publishing. In the back of my mind was a dark place associated with Peale, but I’d never run across the Carlson book on Spitfire List. I’m reading it now. The Spitfire List archive is such a wealth of anti-fascist information! It would make Mae Brussell proud. Thanks, Dave.
Peter Nicholson’s “Churchill and the Fascist Plot” (mentioned by VANFIELD above) is available for viewing on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qjyiy471crw
@Atlanta Bill–
Thanks for the kind words.
Peale was Trump’s pastor, having married Trump and his first wife Ivana.
This is discussed in FTR #920
https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-920-the-trumpenkampfverbande-part-3-the-underground-reich-emerges-into-plain-view/
Best,
Dave
At the very end of chapter III in Carlson’s book, he quotes one of the German-American Bundists:
“Our idea is to sell nationalism [alias fascism] to the people first. It’s easier that way. Once we sell it to the mob, then the big boys will swing around.” (the bracketed words are Carlson’s)
Never let it be said that all fascists are dumb. It was American fascists displeased with the result of World War II, after all, who tried to make us believe it was COMMUNISTS who always “took the obvious and reversed it”. In this case, the fascist who made the remark knows full well what anyone with the slightest common sense who pauses to think about it should know: that the super-rich are few in number and have to fund a phony mass movement of their own to protect their interests when the vast majority are turning against them (which in a nutshell is what fascism is anyway).