Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained HERE. The new dri­ve is a 32-giga­byte dri­ve that is cur­rent as of the pro­grams and arti­cles post­ed by the fall of 2017. The new dri­ve (avail­able for a tax-deductible con­tri­bu­tion of $65.00 or more.)

WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE.

You can sub­scribe to e‑mail alerts from Spitfirelist.com HERE.

You can sub­scribe to RSS feed from Spitfirelist.com HERE.

You can sub­scribe to the com­ments made on pro­grams and posts–an excel­lent source of infor­ma­tion in, and of, itself HERE.

This broad­cast was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Intro­duc­tion: Pub­lic schools and pub­lic edu­ca­tion are, and for many years have been, the focal point of right-wing activ­i­ty. From dis­sat­is­fac­tion over man­dat­ed school deseg­re­ga­tion to oppo­si­tion to the judi­cial ban on prayer in pub­lic schools to the present-day dra­con­ian slash­ing of pub­lic edu­ca­tion budges, the right has attacked the pub­lic edu­ca­tion. At the same time, the right has pro­mot­ed the use of pub­lic funds for parochial schools and home school­ing as alter­na­tives to pub­lic edu­ca­tion.

The for­ma­tive expe­ri­ence of pub­lic school atten­dance might well be viewed as fun­da­men­tal to young peo­ples’ social­iza­tion process–learning to share, acquir­ing tol­er­ance for those of dif­fer­ent back­grounds and learn­ing the basics of civic life  in Amer­i­ca.

Pub­lic schools have also come under attack–quite literally–from armed fas­cists.

The first of a two-part series, this pro­gram con­sists almost entire­ly of a recap of mate­r­i­al from Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M55: Pur­dy’s Last Stand: The Stock­ton (CA) School­yard Mas­sacre of 1989.

Although Mr. Emory would have engaged in a more nuanced dis­cus­sion of school shoot­ings and their polit­i­cal and psy­cho-social impli­ca­tions had the pro­gram been record­ed today, there are some essen­tial ele­ments to be con­sid­ered in con­nec­tion with the event.

The syn­op­tic writ­ten descrip­tion for the pro­gram reads as fol­lows:

“Advances the work­ing hypoth­e­sis that the Stock­ton school­yard mas­sacre of Jan­u­ary 1989 may have been delib­er­ate­ly pre­cip­i­tat­ed by ele­ments of the U.S. nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment act­ing in com­bi­na­tion with ele­ments of the ultra-right. Patrick Edward Pur­dy mur­dered five Asian-Amer­i­can school­child­ren and then com­mit­ted sui­cide, spurring leg­is­la­tion for gun con­trol and cre­at­ing pub­lic fear and sen­ti­ment for police state tac­tics. Pur­dy had asso­ci­a­tions with Aryan Nations and the Moon orga­ni­za­tion, and may have been a covert intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty pat­sy and vic­tim of mind con­trol. The broad­cast ana­lyzes a pos­si­ble intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty con­nec­tion to the gun con­trol move­ment with­in the larg­er back­ground of the mar­tial law con­tin­gency plans devel­oped by the Rea­gan and Bush admin­is­tra­tions.”

Again, Mr. Emory would have pre­sent­ed a more nuanced analy­sis of this event had it occurred today–almost 30 years later–critical ele­ments of the dis­sec­tion of Pur­dy’s last stand bear repeat­ing and more intense scruti­ny:

1. Pur­dy’s xeno­pho­bic view of Asian-Amer­i­cans  and “immigrants”–a point of view that is held by a large por­tion of the Trump con­stituen­cy, the so-called “Alt-Right” in this coun­try and abroad, as well. Exac­er­bat­ed great­ly by eco­nom­ic depri­va­tion stem­ming from glob­al­iza­tion and the finan­cial col­lapse of 2008 and aus­ter­i­ty eco­nom­ics insti­tut­ed in the EU at the insti­ga­tion of Ger­many and the U.S. by the obstruc­tion­ist GOP Con­gres­sion­al  major­i­ty that took pow­er after the 2010 mid-term elec­tions, the fear of immi­grants is a major aspect of fas­cist ide­ol­o­gy.
2. The gal­va­niz­ing effect on both par­ents and their chil­dren of the school shoot­ings is vital to con­sid­er. Ter­ror­ized by these events, a pop­u­lace is far more will­ing to  accept police-state tactics–creeping mar­tial law, if you will.
3. The mar­tial law con­tin­gency plans for­mal­ized by Oliv­er North and com­pa­ny and out­ed dur­ing the Iran-Con­tra scan­dal involved the fed­er­al dep­u­ti­za­tion of para­mil­i­tary right-wing groups such as the Oath Keep­ers and Nazi and fas­cist ele­ments. Iron­i­cal­ly, much of the so-called “Alt-Right” now incor­po­rate anti-gun con­trol ide­ol­o­gy and mar­tial law plans into their world view. In Lec­ture M3, we high­light­ed how ele­ments of what are now called “Alt-Right” are play­ing into the var­i­ous sce­nar­ios they inveigh against.
4. It is iron­ic that much of the so-called “Alt-Right” cite gun con­trol as a step toward mar­tial law. Although they are cor­rect, up to a point, they fail to real­ize that they, them­selves, will be both insti­ga­tors of, and in some cas­es, the enforcers for, that very same mar­tial law!
5. Again, we note that pub­lic edu­ca­tion has long been a tar­get of the far-right, which attacked school inte­gra­tion in the 1950’s, 60’s and ’70s, the ban­ning of prayer in pub­lic schools and, in lat­er years attempts at intro­duc­ing pro­grams like sex edu­ca­tion and pro­grams pro­mot­ing a more tol­er­ant atti­tude toward oth­ers. In cal­en­dar year 2018, we should note that pub­lic schools are under attack from the far right, and not just in the per­son of school shoot­ers. Bet­sy De Vos, Trump’s Sec­re­tary of Edu­ca­tion, is push­ing for fed­er­al fund­ing of parochial schools, enabling of for-prof­it col­leges. The GOP and far right are push­ing home school­ing as an alter­na­tive to pub­lic edu­ca­tion and the fur­ther slash­ing of fed­er­al and state bud­gets, which inevitably harms pub­lic edu­ca­tion. We note that pub­lic schools are a major font of social aware­ness. Students–ideally–encounter and devel­op a greater under­stand­ing and tol­er­ance for oth­ers in pub­lic schools. Pub­lic edu­ca­tion is a major fea­ture of social cohe­sion, and its dis­so­lu­tion a major step toward the imple­men­ta­tion of fas­cism.