Lis­ten:
MP3 One Seg­ment

1. This broad­cast exam­ines Ger­man cor­po­rate influ­ence in tele­vi­sion and mag­a­zines, and his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism and edi­to­r­i­al reac­tion, appar­ent­ly result­ing from that con­trol.

2. The pro­gram begins with a thought-pro­vok­ing arti­cle about “Frog­man,” the tele­vi­sion pilot star­ring O.J. Simp­son. Pro­duced by a Ger­man com­pa­ny before the killing of Ron and Nicole, the pilot con­tains a num­ber of scenes that became sig­nif­i­cant when the killings occurred. (Los Ange­les Times, 5/8/2000.)

3. One scene has O.J. hold­ing a knife to a wom­an’s throat. A video­tape of the pilot was appar­ent­ly viewed by L.A. police, although Judge Lance Ito (mar­ried to Mark Fuhrman’s for­mer watch com­man­der) would not allow the video to be intro­duced as evi­dence for the defense. Mr. Emory dis­cuss­es the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the pilot may have been part of the Nazi “psy-op” that he the­o­rized about in ear­li­er pro­grams about the O.J. case.

4. The line of inquiry that led to the series on Ger­man cor­po­rate con­trol over the Amer­i­can media had its gen­e­sis with the O.J. inves­ti­ga­tion, dur­ing which Mr. Emory read the book Ser­pen­t’s Walk. Mr. Emory won­ders if the pilot (like the movie The Patri­ot) might be a man­i­fes­ta­tion of the sup­pos­ed­ly fic­tion­al plan for Nazi-SS con­trol of the Unit­ed States that is described in the Nazi tract Ser­pen­t’s Walk (Nation­al Van­guard Books, soft cov­er, copy­right 1991, ISBN # 0–937944-05‑X.) Mr. Emory believes that the book, sup­pos­ed­ly a nov­el, is a blue­print for the strate­gic pol­i­cy Nazi ele­ments are cur­rent­ly pur­su­ing. In this regard, it would resem­ble The Turn­er Diaries, also pub­lished by Nation­al Vanguard—the pub­lish­ing arm of the Nation­al Alliance. This book was the role mod­el for Tim­o­thy McVeigh & Co. in the Okla­homa City Bomb­ing, as well as the Nazi group The Order.

5. The book Blood Oath: The Con­spir­a­cy to Mur­der Nicole Brown Simp­son (soft­cov­er edi­tion, Rain­bow Books, copy­right 1996) links the Okla­homa City bomb­ing, the O.J. case and the mur­der of talk-show host Alan Berg by The Order.

6. The broad­cast high­lights sev­er­al key pas­sages of Ser­pen­t’s Walk, under­scor­ing the SS post­war cap­i­tal orga­ni­za­tion’s grad­ual assim­i­la­tion of the Amer­i­can opin­ion-form­ing media. (Ser­pen­t’s Walk, pp. 44–45.)

7. After that assim­i­la­tion, they use the result­ing con­trol to indoc­tri­nate the pub­lic with a revi­sion­ist view of the Third Reich. (The sup­pos­ed­ly fic­tion­al SS cap­i­tal orga­ni­za­tion described in the book is rec­og­niz­able to vet­er­an lis­ten­ers as the dead­ly Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion.)

8. Next the broad­cast sets forth the Ber­tels­mann fir­m’s increase in sales dur­ing the last fis­cal year. (Wall Street Jour­nal, 6/26/2000, p. A21.)

9. The dis­cus­sion also high­lights the res­ig­na­tion of Mark Woess­ner, the CEO of Ber­tels­mann. (Wall Street Jour­nal, 5/22/2000, p. A32.)

10. Pre­vi­ous pro­grams in this series present cir­cum­stan­tial infor­ma­tion sug­gest­ing that the Ber­tels­mann firm is a crit­i­cal part of the Bor­mann group, as well as of the plan for media con­trol described in Ser­pen­t’s Walk. Run dur­ing the World War II peri­od by “pas­sive” SS man Hein­rich Mohn, Ber­tels­mann was the lead­ing pub­lish­er of books for the Wehrma­cht and the SS. Ber­tels­mann hired Dirk Baven­damm as its house his­to­ri­an. As described in FTR #238 (among oth­er pro­grams), Baven­damm’s take on his­to­ry is fun­da­men­tal­ly revi­sion­ist. Baven­damm was involved in approv­ing Stern mag­a­zine’s pub­li­ca­tion of draw­ings (alleged­ly by Hitler, but in fact forg­eries.) (Stern is a Ber­tels­mann pub­li­ca­tion.) The draw­ings present a “kinder, gen­tler” pic­ture of Hitler. (The Nation, 11/08/1999.)

11. The pro­gram then high­lights the episode of the reac­tionary his­to­ry of Ber­tels­man­n’s pub­li­ca­tions, and Rein­hard Mohn’s right-wing edi­to­r­i­al pol­i­cy. (Glob­al Dreams, Richard Bar­net & Richard Cavanaugh, Simon & Schus­ter, copy­right 1994, ISBN# 068–4800276, p. 77.)

12. Hav­ing sti­fled pub­li­ca­tion of Rolf Hoc­chuth’s The Deputy (accu­rate­ly depict­ing Pope Pius XII’s sup­port for Hitler), Mohn also dis­missed Ber­tels­mann exec­u­tives for a vari­ety of trans­gres­sions, includ­ing oppo­si­tion to reuni­fi­ca­tion. (Idem.)

13. Mohn approved pub­li­ca­tion of the Hitler diaries, forg­eries that pre­sent­ed a rel­a­tive­ly benign pic­ture of Hitler. (Ibid, p. 75.)

14. Obtained by a “secret Hitler freak,” the diaries’ pub­li­ca­tion led to a fur­ther right-wing slant­i­ng of the pre­vi­ous­ly lib­er­al, muck-rak­ing Stern. (Ibid., pp. 75–77.)

15. The reac­tionary edi­to­r­i­al pol­i­cy of Ber­tels­mann-owned peri­od­i­cals should be reflect­ed on, against the fir­m’s incip­i­ent push into Amer­i­can peri­od­i­cals. Its Gruner & Jahr sub­sidiary has hired Time Inc.‘s Daniel B. Brew­ster, as part of an attempt by Ber­tels­mann to dom­i­nate the Amer­i­can mag­a­zine mar­ket. (Wall Street Jour­nal, 5/22/2000, p. B1.) One of Brew­ster’s first acqui­si­tions was the mag­a­zine Inc. (a small busi­ness mag­a­zine.) (Los Ange­les Times, 6/21/2000.)