Lis­ten: Side 1 | Side 2

Dur­ing the Viet­nam War, Amer­i­can pol­i­cy was offi­cial­ly aimed at win­ning the “hearts and minds” of the Viet­namese peo­ple. This broad­cast high­lights Nazi and fas­cist attempts at uti­liz­ing var­i­ous cul­tur­al and intel­lec­tu­al milieus to win hearts and minds to their cause. Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of the Nazi tract Ser­pen­t’s Walk, Mr. Emory reviews the sce­nario out­lined in that book. (Osten­si­bly a nov­el, this book appears to be a blue­print for what Nazi ele­ments are actu­al­ly doing.)

In this book, the SS go under­ground, build a cap­i­tal orga­ni­za­tion and buy into the Amer­i­can opin­ion form­ing media. Ulti­mate­ly, this leads to a Nazi takeover. The activ­i­ties and orga­ni­za­tion described in the “nov­el” are a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of what Mr. Emory believes that the remark­able and dead­ly Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion is actu­al­ly doing. (The eco­nom­ic com­po­nent of a Third Reich gone under­ground, the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion has been described as “the most impor­tant con­cen­tra­tion of mon­ey pow­er under a sin­gle con­trol in his­to­ry”.)

As the cen­tu­ry draws to a close, his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism on the sub­ject of the Third Reich is mak­ing front-page news, as Pat Buchanan trum­pets his view that the Unit­ed States faced no immi­nent threat from Hitler. In late Sep­tem­ber of 1999, that view was echoed by a syn­di­cat­ed Wash­ing­ton Post colum­nist. The pro­gram sets forth dis­cus­sion of a new Ger­man film about Joseph Men­gele, the infa­mous SS doc­tor of Auschwitz. This film white­wash­es Men­gele’s activ­i­ties and, in so doing, jus­ti­fies them.

Mr. Emory has dis­cussed the Ber­tels­mann firm and the Ger­man cor­po­rate con­trol of Amer­i­can pub­lish­ing. Found­ed by Hein­rich Mohn, a mem­ber of the SS, Ber­tels­mann is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion. In addi­tion to its lit­er­ary endeav­ors, Ber­tels­mann is one of the largest music dis­trib­u­tors in the Unit­ed States, own­ing both RCA Records and Arista. Rock music is one of the avenues that Nazi ele­ments have been using to win young peo­ple over to their cause. The pro­gram under­scores the man­ner in which musi­cal gen­res such as “black met­al” over­lap the cul­ture of fas­cism, accli­mat­ing young peo­ple to a poten­tial fas­cist ori­en­ta­tion. (Mr. Emory stress­es that this cul­ture is nei­ther fas­cist nor Nazi. Most of its adher­ents are opposed to fas­cism. The cul­tur­al over­lap with Nazi cul­ture makes them sus­cep­ti­ble to seduc­tion to the Nazi cause.)

After review­ing ele­ments of over­lap between New Age cul­ture and fas­cism, the broad­cast under­scores how neo-Nazi ele­ments have blend­ed fac­tu­al infor­ma­tion about Nazi devel­op­ment of fly­ing saucers with mythol­o­gy and occultism.

The pro­gram con­cludes with a look at the man­ner in which “con­spir­a­cy research” can also be used to seduce some­one to a fas­cist point of view. When a per­son becomes aware of the fact that Lee Har­vey Oswald did not kill Pres­i­dent Kennedy and real­izes the truth con­cern­ing oth­er offi­cial lies, it can leave that per­son in an intel­lec­tu­al­ly rel­a­tivis­tic state. They are then poten­tial­ly open to reori­en­ta­tion. “Per­haps the holo­caust real­ly didn ‘at hap­pen?!” The author of Cross­fire (about the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion) and advis­er to Oliv­er Stone on the movie JFK, Jim Marrs has writ­ten a book called Alien Agen­da, which endors­es the unten­able view that space aliens made con­tact with the Third Reich and gave them their tech­nol­o­gy. In addi­tion to this high­ly sus­pect behav­ior, Marrs has also flirt­ed with holo­caust denial, claim­ing that only “thou­sands” died. Seri­ous researchers should view Marrs with a jaun­diced eye. (Record­ed on 10/3/99.)