For several years, For The Record has presented information about efforts to break up larger countries by empowering the independence/secessionist aspirations of various regional and ethnic groups within those states. Included in this analysis are the efforts on the part of various groups to secede from, and break up, the United States of America.
The bulk of the first side of the program consists of a stunning op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journalcalling for the breakup of the United States, seen as “economically beneficial” for those participating in the process! In consideration of the above-noted drive for secession from the United States, the broadcast reiterates that a bankrupt United States could, following political catastrophe such as a terrorist attack with weapons of mass destruction, disintegrate.
Of particular significance in this context are the movements of the Lakota, the Hawaiians, the League of the South and the Alaskan Independence Party–the first two championed by the Hapsburg-led UNPO and the latter two strongly connected to neo-fascist and white supremacist parties. (Sarah Palin’s political career appears to be a front for the Alaskan Independence Party.)
Also worth noting is the fact that former Reagan administration functionary Christina Luhn is a major proponent of the dissolution of the United States. As discussed is many programs, the Reagan administration was staffed by Helene Von Damm, protege of Otto von Bolschwing, one of Hitler’s top experts on “Jewish Matters” and a postwar employee of the CIA.
After reviewing Friedrich List’s economic blueprint for German world domination (formulated in the 19th century), the program reviews the Third Reich’s goals to realize List’s design, as well as the postwar Federal Republic’s realization of those goals.
The program concludes by comparing the reality of the dawning economic landscape and the “corporacracy” set forth in the “novel” Serpent’s Walk. Mr. Emory believes that, like The Turner Diaries (also published by National Vanguard Books), the book is actually a blueprint for what is going to take place. It is a novel about a Nazi takeover of the United States in the middle of the 21st century. The book describes the Third Reich going underground, buying into the American media, and taking over the country.
Of particular significance for our purposes here is the “corporacracy” that the SS envisions will enable them to control the world (in this “novel”). It is interesting to reflect on the potential breakup of the U.S. and other nations large enough to countermand the initiatives of trans-national corporations. Such resistance might be the only potential opposition to the “corporacracy” in a world of fragmented [formerly large] nation/states.
Program Highlights Include: Review of links between Holocaust Museum shooter James Van Brunn’s links to Reagan White House official Todd Blodgett; review of National Alliance associate Bob Whitaker’s role in vetting Reagan White House appointees; review of the continuity between SS business projections for postwar Germany and the role in the Federal Republic played by SS protege Ludwig Erhard, pictured at right.
1. The bulk of the first side of the program consists of a stunning op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal calling for the breakup of the United States! There are a number of things to highlight in the article. For one thing, do not fail to note that the various secessionist movements are those that have linked to those movements championed by the UNPO including the Lakota, (whose territorial claims cover the Bakken formation, rich in petroleum strata) and the native Hawaiians. Note also that fascist-linked secessionist elements such as the neo-Confederate League of the South (whose flag is at right) and the Alaskan Independence Party, for which Sarah Palin runs interference.
Note also that the story highlights [briefly] potential breakup of China (in which both the Tibetans and the Uighurs are pushing for independence from the People’s Republic.)
Remember that classic Beatles riff of the 1960s: “You say you want a revolution?” Imagine this instead: a devolution. Picture an America that is run not, as now, by a top-heavy Washington autocracy but, in freewheeling style, by an assemblage of largely autonomous regional republics reflecting the eclectic economic and cultural character of the society.
There might be an austere Republic of New England, with a natural strength in higher education and technology; a Caribbean-flavored city-state Republic of Greater Miami, with an anchor in the Latin American economy; and maybe even a Republic of Las Vegas with unfettered license to pursue its ambitions as a global gambling, entertainment and conventioneer destination. California? America’s broke, ill-governed and way-too-big nation-like state might be saved, truly saved, not by an emergency federal bailout, but by a merciful carve-up into a trio of republics that would rely on their own ingenuity in making their connections to the wider world. And while we’re at it, let’s make this project bi-national-economic logic suggests a natural multilingual combination between Greater San Diego and Mexico’s Northern Baja, and, to the Pacific north, between Seattle and Vancouver in a megaregion already dubbed “Cascadia” by economic cartographers.
Devolved America is a vision faithful both to certain postindustrial realities as well as to the pluralistic heart of the American political tradition‑a tradition that has been betrayed by the creeping centralization of power in Washington over the decades but may yet reassert itself as an animating spirit for the future. Consider this proposition: America of the 21st century, propelled by currents of modernity that tend to favor the little over the big, may trace a long circle back to the original small-government ideas of the American experiment. The present-day American Goliath may turn out to be a freak of a waning age of politics and economics as conducted on a super-sized scale-too large to make any rational sense in an emerging age of personal empowerment that harks back to the era of the yeoman farmer of America’s early days. The society may find blessed new life, as paradoxical as this may sound, in a return to a smaller form.
This perspective may seem especially fanciful at a time when the political tides all seem to be running in the opposite direction. In the midst of economic troubles, an aggrandizing Washington is gathering even more power in its hands. The Obama Administration, while considering replacing top executives at Citigroup, is newly appointing a “compensation czar” with powers to determine the retirement packages of executives at firms accepting federal financial bailout funds. President Obama has deemed it wise for the U.S. Treasury to take a majority ownership stake in General Motors in a last-ditch effort to revive this Industrial Age brontosaurus. Even the Supreme Court is getting in on the act: A ruling this past week awarded federal judges powers to set the standards by which judges for state courts may recuse themselves from cases.
All of this adds up to a federal power grab that might make even FDR’s New Dealers blush. But that’s just the point: Not surprisingly, a lot of folks in the land of Jefferson are taking a stand against an approach that stands to make an indebted citizenry yet more dependent on an already immense federal power. The backlash, already under way, is a prime stimulus for a neo-secessionist movement, the most extreme manifestation of a broader push for some form of devolution. In April, at an anti-tax “tea party” held in Austin, Governor Rick Perry of Texas had his speech interrupted by cries of “secede.” The Governor did not sound inclined to disagree. “Texas is a unique place,” he later told reporters attending the rally. “When we came into the Union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that.”
Such sentiments resonate beyond the libertarian fringe. The Daily Kos, a liberal Web site, recently asked Perry’s fellow Texas Republicans, “Do you think Texas would be better off as an independent nation or as part of the United States of America? It was an even split: 48% for the U.S., 48% for a sovereign Texas, 4% not sure. Amongst all Texans, more than a third-35%-said an independent Texas would be better. The Texas Nationalist Movement claims that over 250,000 Texans have signed a form affirming the organization’s goal of a Texas nation.
Secessionist feelings also percolate in Alaska, where Todd Palin, husband of Governor Sarah Palin, was once a registered member of the Alaska Independence Party. But it is not as if the Right has a lock on this issue: Vermont, the seat of one of the most vibrant secessionist movements, is among the country’s most politically-liberal places. Vermonters are especially upset about imperial America’s foreign excursions in hazardous places like Iraq. The philosophical tie that binds these otherwise odd bedfellows is belief in the birthright of Americans to run their own affairs, free from centralized control. Their hallowed parchment is Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, on behalf of the original 13 British colonies, penned in 1776, 11 years before the framers of the Constitution gathered for their convention in Philadelphia. “The right of secession precedes the Constitution-the United States was born out of secession,” Daniel Miller, leader of the Texas Nationalist Movement, put it to me. Take that, King Obama.
Today’s devolutionists, of all stripes, can trace their pedigree to the “anti-federalists” who opposed the compact that came out of Philadelphia as a bad bargain that gave too much power to the center at the expense of the limbs. Some of America’s most vigorous and learned minds were in the anti-federalist camp; their ranks included Virginia’s Patrick Henry, of “give me liberty or give me death” renown. The sainted Jefferson, who was serving as a diplomat in Paris during the convention, is these days claimed by secessionists as a kindred anti-federal spirit, even if he did go on to serve two terms as president.
The anti-federalists lost their battle, but history, in certain respects, has redeemed their vision, for they anticipated how many Americans have come to feel about their nation’s seat of federal power. “This city, and the government of it, must indubitably take their tone from the character of the men, who from the nature of its situation and institution, must collect there,” the anti-federalist pamphleteer known only as the Federal Farmer wrote. “If we expect it will have any sincere attachments to simple and frugal republicanism, to that liberty and mild government, which is dear to the laborious part of a free people, we most assuredly deceive ourselves.”
In the mid-19th century, the anti-federalist impulse took a dark turn, attaching itself to the cause of the Confederacy, which was formed by the unilateral secession of 13 southern states over the bloody issue of slavery. Lincoln had no choice but to go to war to preserve the Union-and ever since, anti-federalism, in almost any guise, has had to defend itself from the charge of being anti-modern and indeed retrograde.
But nearly a century and a half has passed since Johnny Rebel whooped for the last time. Slavery is dead, and so too is the large-scale industrial economy that the Yankees embraced as their path to victory over the South and to global prosperity. The model lasted a long time, to be sure, surviving all the way through the New Deal and the first several decades of the post-World War II era, coming a cropper at the tail end of the 1960s, just as the economist John Kenneth Galbraith was holding out “The New Industrial State,” the master-planned economy, as a seemingly permanent condition of modern life.
Not quite. In a globalized economy transformed by technological innovations hatched by happily-unguided entrepreneurs, history seems to be driving one nail after another into the coffin of the big, which is why the Obama planners and their ilk, even if they now ride high, may be doomed to fail. No one anymore expects the best ideas to come from the biggest actors in the economy, so should anyone expect the best thinking to be done by the whales of the political world?
A notable prophet for a coming age of smallness was the diplomat and historian George Kennan, a steward of the American Century with an uncanny ability to see past the seemingly-frozen geopolitical arrangements of the day. Kennan always believed that Soviet power would “run its course,” as he predicted back in 1951, just as the Cold War was getting under way, and again shortly after the Soviet Union collapsed, he suggested that a similar fate might await the United States. America has become a “monster country,” afflicted by a swollen bureaucracy and “the hubris of inordinate size,” he wrote in his 1993 book, “Around the Cragged Hill: A Personal and Political Philosophy.” Things might work better, he suggested, if the nation was “decentralized into something like a dozen constituent republics, absorbing not only the powers of the existing states but a considerable part of those of the present federal establishment.”
Kennan’s genius was to foresee that matters might take on an organic, a bottom-up, life of their own, especially in a society as dynamic and as creative as America. His spirit, the spirit of an anti-federalist modernist, can be glimpsed in an intriguing “mega-region” initiative encompassing greater San Diego County, next-door Imperial County and, to the immediate south of the U.S. border, Northern Baja, Mexico. Elected officials representing all three participating areas recently unveiled “Cali Baja, a Bi-National Mega-Region,” as the “international marketing brand” for the project.
The idea is to create a global economic powerhouse by combining San Diego’s proven abilities in scientific research and development with Imperial County’s abundance of inexpensive land and availability of water rights and Northern Baja’s manufacturing base, low labor costs and ability to supply the San Diego area with electricity during peak-use terms. Bilingualism, too, is a key-with the aim for all children on both sides of the border to be fluent in both English and Spanish. The project director is Christina Luhn, a Kansas native, historian and former staffer on the National Security Council in Ronald Reagan’s White House in the mid-1980s. Contemporary America as a unit of governance may be too big, even the perpetually-troubled state of California may be too big, she told me, by way of saying that the political and economic future may belong to the megaregions of the planet. Her conviction is that large systems tend not to endure-“they break apart, there’s chaos, and at some point, new things form,” she said.
The notion that small is better and even inevitable no doubt has some flavor of romance-even amounting to a kind of modern secular faith, girded by a raft of multi-disciplinary literature that may or may not be relevant. Luhn takes her philosophical cue not only from Kennan but also from the science writer and physicist M. Mitchell Waldrop, author of “Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos.”
American secessionist groups today range from small startups with a few laptop computers to organized movements with meetings of delegates from several states.
The Middlebury Institute, a group that studies and supports the general cause of separatism and secessionism in the U.S., has held three Secession Congresses since its founding in 2004.
At the most recent gathering, held in New Hampshire last November, one discussion focused on creating a new federation potentially to be called “Novacadia,” consisting of present-day New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia. An article highlighted on the group’s Web site describes Denmark as a role-model for the potential country. In the months following the convention, the idea “did not actually evolve into very much,” says Kirkpatrick Sale, the institute’s director.
Below the Mason-Dixon Line, groups like the League of the South and Southern National Congress hold meetings of delegates. They discuss secession as a way of accomplishing goals like protecting the right to bear arms and tighter immigration policies. The Texas Nationalist Movement claims that over 250,000 Texans have signed a form affirming the organization’s goal of a Texas nation.
A religious group, Christian Exodus, formed in 2003 with the purpose of transforming what is today South Carolina into a sovereign, Christian-run state. According to a statement on its Web site, the group still supports the idea, but has learned that “the chains of our slavery and dependence on Godless government have more of a hold on us than can be broken by simply moving to another state.”
On the West Coast, elected officials representing greater San Diego County, Imperial County and Northern Baja, Mexico, have proposed creating a “mega-region” of the three areas called “Cali Baja, a Bi-National Mega-Region.”
Hawaii is home to numerous groups that work toward the goal of sovereignty, including Nation of Hawaii. The group argues that native Hawaiians were colonized and forced into statehood against their will and without fair process, and therefore have the right to decide how to govern themselves today. In Alaska, the Alaska Independence Party advocates for the state’s independence.
There is also a Web site for a group called North Star Republic, with a mission to establish a socialist republic in what today is Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.
A group of American Indians led by activist Russell Means is working to establish the Republic of Lakotah, which would cover parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming and Nebraska. In 2007, the Republic presented the U.S. State Department with a notice of withdrawal.
Even for the hard-edged secessionist crowd, with their rapt attentiveness to America’s roots, popular texts in the future-trend genre mingle in their minds with the yellowed scrolls of the anti-federalists. “The cornerstone of my thought,” Daniel Miller of the Texas Nationalist Movement told me, is John Naisbitt’s 1995 best seller, “Global Paradox,” which celebrates the entrepreneurial ethos in positing that “the bigger the world economy, the more powerful its smallest players.”
More convincingly, the proposition that small trumps big is passing tests in real-life political and economic laboratories. For example, the U.S. ranked eighth in a survey of global innovation leadership released in March by the Boston Consulting Group and the National Association of Manufacturers-with the top rankings dominated by small countries led by the city-state republic of Singapore. The Thunderbird School of Global Management, based in Arizona, has called Singapore “the most future-oriented country in the world.” Historians can point to the spectacularly inventive city-states of Renaissance Italy as an example of the small truly making the beautiful.
How, though, to get from big to small? Secessionists like Texas’ Miller pledge a commitment to peaceful methods. History suggests skepticism on this score: Even the American republic was born in a violent revolution. These days, the Russian professor Igor Panarin, a former KGB analyst, has snagged publicity with his dystopian prediction of civil strife in a dismembered America whose jagged parts fall prey to foreign powers including Canada, Mexico and, in the case of Alaska, Russia, naturally.
Still, the precedent for any breakup of today’s America is not necessarily the one set by the musket-bearing colonists’ demanded departure from the British crown in the late 18th century or by the crisis-ridden dissolution of the U.S.S.R. at the end of the 20th century. Every empire, every too-big thing, fragments or shrinks according to its own unique character and to the age of history to which it belongs.
The most hopeful prospect for the USA, should the decentralization impulse prove irresistible, is for Americans to draw on their natural inventiveness and democratic tradition by patenting a formula for getting the job done in a gradual and cooperative way. In so doing, geopolitical history, and perhaps even a path for others, might be made, for the problem of bigness vexes political leviathans everywhere. In India, with its 1.2 billion people, there is an active discussion of whether things might work better if the nation-state was chopped up into 10 or so large city-states with broad writs of autonomy from New Delhi. Devolution may likewise be the future for the European continent-think Catalonia-and for the British Isles. Scotland, a leading source of Enlightenment ideas for America’s founding fathers, now has its own flourishing independence movement. Even China, held together by an aging autocracy, may not be able to resist the drift towards the smaller.
So why not America as the global leader of a devolution? America’s return to its origins-to its type-could turn out to be an act of creative political destruction, with “we the people” the better for it.
“Divided We Stand” by Paul Starobin; The Wall Street Journal; 6/13/2009.
2. Cited as a positive influence in his advocacy of a “smaller” United States, George Kennan was in fact an an antediluvian reactionary.
“. . . A Washington Post obituary provided an insight into the mind of one of the foremost figures of post-World War II U.S. foreign policy and his antipathy for the modern world. ‘Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas reported in their book The Wise Men that he suggested in an unpublished work that women, blacks and immigrants be disenfranchised. He deplored the automobile, computers, commercialism, environmental degradation and other manifestations of modern life.’ . . .”
Afghanistan’s Untold Story by Paul Fitzgerald and Liz Gould; Copyright 2009 by Paul Fitzgerald and Liz Gould; City Lights Books (SC); ISBN 13: 978–0‑87286–494‑8; p. 270.
3. Noting that secession advocate Christina Luhn was a veteran of the Reagan administration, we review some of the Nazi character of that administration. Accused Holocaust Museum killer James Van Brunn was linked to former Reagan White House aide Todd Blodgett. In this context, it is important to recall that the Reagan administration personnel were selected by Otto von Bolschwing protege Helene Von Damm.
“. . . Todd Blodgett, a former White House aide to President Ronald Reagan who later became affiliated with extremist groups, said he spent a lot of time with Von Brunn in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Von Brunn is obsessed with Jewish people, Blodgett told the Post. He had equal contempt for both Jews and blacks, but if he had to pick one group to wipe out, he’d always say it would be Jews.
Von Brunn went so far as to say he fought on the wrong side of World War II, according to Blodgett.
You’d get the impression that he was intelligent and a bit off, said Blodgett, who worked as a paid FBI informant on white supremacist groups. . . .”
4. Again noting the legacy of the Helene Von Damm/Otto von Bolschwing axis within the GOP and the Reagan administrations, the program highlights the fact that American neo-Nazi Bob Whitaker held a sensitive position within the Reagan White House. Again, available evidence suggests very strongly that Von Damm served as a functionary of the Underground Reich. Notice the position of National Alliance associate Bob Whitaker within the Reagan administration: ” . . . Special Assistant to the Director of the Office of Personnel Management, in charge of security clearances, staffing, and that sort of thing. . . .”
It will be interesting to see if people infiltrated into government by the likes of Whitaker and Von Damm play a role in the breakup of the United States.
” . . . KAS: When we introduced you for the first time to our readers in National Vanguard, we gave a capsule biography of you as follows:
‘Mr. Whitaker was born and raised in South Carolina, and attended the University of South Carolina and the University of Virginia Graduate School. He has been a college professor, an international aviation negotiator, a Capitol Hill senior staffer, a Reagan Administration appointee, and a writer for the Voice of America.”
So you’re a Reagan administration appointee — what’s the story behind that?
BW: I was Special Assistant to the Director of the Office of Personnel Management, in charge of security clearances, staffing, and that sort of thing.
KAS: Why is someone with such excellent establishment credentials defending the White race, as you do in your work, without apology or regret? Isn’t that something that simply ‘isn’t done’ these days by anyone who wants to retain his position in private or public life?
BW: Well, I did it. And they cleared me at the highest possible levels, so if you do it right, you can do it. And I’m good at it. . . .”
5. Next, the program reviews the Nazi plans for Europe after their victory. Writing in 1943, author Paul Winkler foresaw that the Prusso-Teutonics would realize their goals through the creation of a German-dominated central European economic union (bearing a striking resemblance to today’s European Monetary Union.) One of the principal influences on List’s thinking was the “continental” concept of Napoleon, who attempted to economically unite Europe under French influence.
The Listian formula for German world dominance should be viewed against the background of the materials set forth below concerning the successful realization of continuity from the Third Reich to the “new” Federal Republic of Germany.
How will this central European economic union interact with a dismembered United States?
“Charles Andler, a French author, summed up certain ideas of List in his work, The Origins of Pan-Germanism, (published in 1915.) ‘It is necessary to organize continental Europe against England. Napoleon I, a great strategist, also knew the methods of economic hegemony. His continental system, which met with opposition even from countries which might have profited from such an arrangement should be revived, but, this time, not as an instrument of Napoleonic domination. The idea of united Europe in a closed trade bloc is no longer shocking if Germany assumes domination over such a bloc—and not France. [Emphasis added.] Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, willingly or by force, will enter this ‘Customs Federation.’ Austria is assumed to be won over at the outset. Even France, if she gets rid of her notions of military conquest, will not be excluded. The first steps the Confederation would take to assure unity of thought and action would be to establish a joint representative body, as well as to organize a common fleet. But of course, both the headquarters of the Federation and its parliamentary seat would be in Germany. [Emphasis added.]”
(The Thousand-Year Conspiracy; by Paul Winkler; Charles Scribner’s Sons [HC]; 1943; pp. 15–16.)
6. A stunning measure of the success of the Underground Reich and German Ostpolitik can be obtained by reading Dorothy Thompson’s analysis of the Third Reich’s plans for world dominance by a centralized European economic union. (In this, we can again see the plans of pan-German theoretician Friedrich List, as realized by the European Monetary Union.) Ms. Thompson was writing in The New York Herald Tribune on May 31, 1940! Her comments are reproduced by Tetens on page 92.
“The Germans have a clear plan of what they intend to do in case of victory. I believe that I know the essential details of that plan. I have heard it from a sufficient number of important Germans to credit its authenticity . . . Germany’s plan is to make a customs union of Europe, with complete financial and economic control centered in Berlin. This will create at once the largest free trade area and the largest planned economy in the world. In Western Europe alone . . . there will be an economic unity of 400 million persons . . . To these will be added the resources of the British, French, Dutch and Belgian empires. These will be pooled in the name of Europa Germanica . . .”
“The Germans count upon political power following economic power, and not vice versa. Territorial changes do not concern them, because there will be no ‘France’ or ‘England,’ except as language groups. Little immediate concern is felt regarding political organizations . . . . No nation will have the control of its own financial or economic system or of its customs. The Nazification of all countries will be accomplished by economic pressure. In all countries, contacts have been established long ago with sympathetic businessmen and industrialists . . . . As far as the United States is concerned, the planners of the World Germanica laugh off the idea of any armed invasion. They say that it will be completely unnecessary to take military action against the United States to force it to play ball with this system. . . . Here, as in every other country, they have established relations with numerous industries and commercial organizations, to whom they will offer advantages in co-operation with Germany. . . .”
Germany Plots with the Kremlin by T. H. Tetens; Henry Schuman [HC]; p. 92.
7. Illustrating the realization of continuity between the Third Reich and the new German economic empire realized through the EU and the European Monetary Union, the show features a recent Daily Mail article that bears out much of the line of argument presented in For The Record.
Of particular significance for our purposes here is Joseph Goebbels prediction that ” . . . ‘In 50 years’ time nobody will think of nation states.’” Reflect on Goebbels’ statement against the background of a dismembered United States.
“The paper is aged and fragile, the typewritten letters slowly fading. But US Military Intelligence report EW-Pa 128 is as chilling now as the day it was written in November 1944.
The document, also known as the Red House Report, is a detailed account of a secret meeting at the Maison Rouge Hotel in Strasbourg on August 10, 1944. There, Nazi officials ordered an elite group of German industrialists to plan for Germany’s post-war recovery, prepare for the Nazis’ return to power and work for a ’strong German empire’. In other words: the Fourth Reich.
The three-page, closely typed report, marked ‘Secret’, copied to British officials and sent by air pouch to Cordell Hull, the US Secretary of State, detailed how the industrialists were to work with the Nazi Party to rebuild Germany’s economy by sending money through Switzerland.
They would set up a network of secret front companies abroad. They would wait until conditions were right. And then they would take over Germany again.
The industrialists included representatives of Volkswagen, Krupp and Messerschmitt. Officials from the Navy and Ministry of Armaments were also at the meeting and, with incredible foresight, they decided together that the Fourth German Reich, unlike its predecessor, would be an economic rather than a military empire — but not just German.
The Red House Report, which was unearthed from US intelligence files, was the inspiration for my thriller The Budapest Protocol.
The book opens in 1944 as the Red Army advances on the besieged city, then jumps to the present day, during the election campaign for the first president of Europe. The European Union superstate is revealed as a front for a sinister conspiracy, one rooted in the last days of the Second World War.
But as I researched and wrote the novel, I realised that some of the Red House Report had become fact.
Nazi Germany did export massive amounts of capital through neutral countries. German businesses did set up a network of front companies abroad. The German economy did soon recover after 1945.
The Third Reich was defeated militarily, but powerful Nazi-era bankers, industrialists and civil servants, reborn as democrats, soon prospered in the new West Germany. There they worked for a new cause: European economic and political integration.
Is it possible that the Fourth Reich those Nazi industrialists foresaw has, in some part at least, come to pass?
The Red House Report was written by a French spy who was at the meeting in Strasbourg in 1944 — and it paints an extraordinary picture.
The industrialists gathered at the Maison Rouge Hotel waited expectantly as SS Obergruppenfuhrer Dr Scheid began the meeting. Scheid held one of the highest ranks in the SS, equivalent to Lieutenant General. He cut an imposing figure in his tailored grey-green uniform and high, peaked cap with silver braiding. Guards were posted outside and the room had been searched for microphones.
There was a sharp intake of breath as he began to speak. German industry must realise that the war cannot be won, he declared. ‘It must take steps in preparation for a post-war commercial campaign.’ Such defeatist talk was treasonous — enough to earn a visit to the Gestapo’s cellars, followed by a one-way trip to a concentration camp.
But Scheid had been given special licence to speak the truth — the future of the Reich was at stake. He ordered the industrialists to ‘make contacts and alliances with foreign firms, but this must be done individually and without attracting any suspicion’.
The industrialists were to borrow substantial sums from foreign countries after the war.
They were especially to exploit the finances of those German firms that had already been used as fronts for economic penetration abroad, said Scheid, citing the American partners of the steel giant Krupp as well as Zeiss, Leica and the Hamburg-America Line shipping company.
But as most of the industrialists left the meeting, a handful were beckoned into another smaller gathering, presided over by Dr Bosse of the Armaments Ministry. There were secrets to be shared with the elite of the elite.
Bosse explained how, even though the Nazi Party had informed the industrialists that the war was lost, resistance against the Allies would continue until a guarantee of German unity could be obtained. He then laid out the secret three-stage strategy for the Fourth Reich.
In stage one, the industrialists were to ‘prepare themselves to finance the Nazi Party, which would be forced to go underground as a Maquis’, using the term for the French resistance.
Stage two would see the government allocating large sums to German industrialists to establish a ’secure post-war foundation in foreign countries’, while ‘existing financial reserves must be placed at the disposal of the party so that a strong German empire can be created after the defeat’.
In stage three, German businesses would set up a ’sleeper’ network of agents abroad through front companies, which were to be covers for military research and intelligence, until the Nazis returned to power.
‘The existence of these is to be known only by very few people in each industry and by chiefs of the Nazi Party,’ Bosse announced.
‘Each office will have a liaison agent with the party. As soon as the party becomes strong enough to re-establish its control over Germany, the industrialists will be paid for their effort and co-operation by concessions and orders.’
The exported funds were to be channelled through two banks in Zurich, or via agencies in Switzerland which bought property in Switzerland for German concerns, for a five per cent commission.
The Nazis had been covertly sending funds through neutral countries for years.
Swiss banks, in particular the Swiss National Bank, accepted gold looted from the treasuries of Nazi-occupied countries. They accepted assets and property titles taken from Jewish businessmen in Germany and occupied countries, and supplied the foreign currency that the Nazis needed to buy vital war materials.
Swiss economic collaboration with the Nazis had been closely monitored by Allied intelligence.
The Red House Report’s author notes: ‘Previously, exports of capital by German industrialists to neutral countries had to be accomplished rather surreptitiously and by means of special influence.
‘Now the Nazi Party stands behind the industrialists and urges them to save themselves by getting funds outside Germany and at the same time advance the party’s plans for its post-war operations.’
The order to export foreign capital was technically illegal in Nazi Germany, but by the summer of 1944 the law did not matter.
More than two months after D‑Day, the Nazis were being squeezed by the Allies from the west and the Soviets from the east. Hitler had been badly wounded in an assassination attempt. The Nazi leadership was nervous, fractious and quarrelling.
During the war years the SS had built up a gigantic economic empire, based on plunder and murder, and they planned to keep it.
A meeting such as that at the Maison Rouge would need the protection of the SS, according to Dr Adam Tooze of Cambridge University, author of Wages of Destruction: The Making And Breaking Of The Nazi Economy.
He says: ‘By 1944 any discussion of post-war planning was banned. It was extremely dangerous to do that in public. But the SS was thinking in the long-term. If you are trying to establish a workable coalition after the war, the only safe place to do it is under the auspices of the apparatus of terror.’
Shrewd SS leaders such as Otto Ohlendorf were already thinking ahead.
As commander of Einsatzgruppe D, which operated on the Eastern Front between 1941 and 1942, Ohlendorf was responsible for the murder of 90,000 men, women and children.
A highly educated, intelligent lawyer and economist, Ohlendorf showed great concern for the psychological welfare of his extermination squad’s gunmen: he ordered that several of them should fire simultaneously at their victims, so as to avoid any feelings of personal responsibility.
By the winter of 1943 he was transferred to the Ministry of Economics. Ohlendorf’s ostensible job was focusing on export trade, but his real priority was preserving the SS’s massive pan-European economic empire after Germany’s defeat.
Ohlendorf, who was later hanged at Nuremberg, took particular interest in the work of a German economist called Ludwig Erhard. Erhard had written a lengthy manuscript on the transition to a post-war economy after Germany’s defeat. This was dangerous, especially as his name had been mentioned in connection with resistance groups.
But Ohlendorf, who was also chief of the SD, the Nazi domestic security service, protected Erhard as he agreed with his views on stabilising the post-war German economy. Ohlendorf himself was protected by Heinrich Himmler, the chief of the SS.
Ohlendorf and Erhard feared a bout of hyper-inflation, such as the one that had destroyed the German economy in the Twenties. Such a catastrophe would render the SS’s economic empire almost worthless.
The two men agreed that the post-war priority was rapid monetary stabilisation through a stable currency unit, but they realised this would have to be enforced by a friendly occupying power, as no post-war German state would have enough legitimacy to introduce a currency that would have any value.
That unit would become the Deutschmark, which was introduced in 1948. It was an astonishing success and it kick-started the German economy. With a stable currency, Germany was once again an attractive trading partner.
The German industrial conglomerates could rapidly rebuild their economic empires across Europe.
War had been extraordinarily profitable for the German economy. By 1948 — despite six years of conflict, Allied bombing and post-war reparations payments — the capital stock of assets such as equipment and buildings was larger than in 1936, thanks mainly to the armaments boom.
Erhard pondered how German industry could expand its reach across the shattered European continent. The answer was through supranationalism — the voluntary surrender of national sovereignty to an international body.
Germany and France were the drivers behind the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the precursor to the European Union. The ECSC was the first supranational organisation, established in April 1951 by six European states. It created a common market for coal and steel which it regulated. This set a vital precedent for the steady erosion of national sovereignty, a process that continues today.
But before the common market could be set up, the Nazi industrialists had to be pardoned, and Nazi bankers and officials reintegrated. In 1957, John J. McCloy, the American High Commissioner for Germany, issued an amnesty for industrialists convicted of war crimes.
The two most powerful Nazi industrialists, Alfried Krupp of Krupp Industries and Friedrich Flick, whose Flick Group eventually owned a 40 per cent stake in Daimler-Benz, were released from prison after serving barely three years.
Krupp and Flick had been central figures in the Nazi economy. Their companies used slave labourers like cattle, to be worked to death.
The Krupp company soon became one of Europe’s leading industrial combines.
The Flick Group also quickly built up a new pan-European business empire. Friedrich Flick remained unrepentant about his wartime record and refused to pay a single Deutschmark in compensation until his death in July 1972 at the age of 90, when he left a fortune of more than $1billion, the equivalent of £400million at the time.
‘For many leading industrial figures close to the Nazi regime, Europe became a cover for pursuing German national interests after the defeat of Hitler,’ says historian Dr Michael Pinto-Duschinsky, an adviser to Jewish former slave labourers.
‘The continuity of the economy of Germany and the economies of post-war Europe is striking. Some of the leading figures in the Nazi economy became leading builders of the European Union.’
Numerous household names had exploited slave and forced labourers including BMW, Siemens and Volkswagen, which produced munitions and the V1 rocket.
Slave labour was an integral part of the Nazi war machine. Many concentration camps were attached to dedicated factories where company officials worked hand-in-hand with the SS officers overseeing the camps.
Like Krupp and Flick, Hermann Abs, post-war Germany’s most powerful banker, had prospered in the Third Reich. Dapper, elegant and diplomatic, Abs joined the board of Deutsche Bank, Germany’s biggest bank, in 1937. As the Nazi empire expanded, Deutsche Bank enthusiastically ‘Aryanised’ Austrian and Czechoslovak banks that were owned by Jews.
By 1942, Abs held 40 directorships, a quarter of which were in countries occupied by the Nazis. Many of these Aryanised companies used slave labour and by 1943 Deutsche Bank’s wealth had quadrupled.
Abs also sat on the supervisory board of I.G. Farben, as Deutsche Bank’s representative. I.G. Farben was one of Nazi Germany’s most powerful companies, formed out of a union of BASF, Bayer, Hoechst and subsidiaries in the Twenties.
It was so deeply entwined with the SS and the Nazis that it ran its own slave labour camp at Auschwitz, known as Auschwitz III, where tens of thousands of Jews and other prisoners died producing artificial rubber.
When they could work no longer, or were verbraucht (used up) in the Nazis’ chilling term, they were moved to Birkenau. There they were gassed using Zyklon B, the patent for which was owned by I.G. Farben.
But like all good businessmen, I.G. Farben’s bosses hedged their bets.
During the war the company had financed Ludwig Erhard’s research. After the war, 24 I.G. Farben executives were indicted for war crimes over Auschwitz III — but only twelve of the 24 were found guilty and sentenced to prison terms ranging from one-and-a-half to eight years. I.G. Farben got away with mass murder.
Abs was one of the most important figures in Germany’s post-war reconstruction. It was largely thanks to him that, just as the Red House Report exhorted, a ’strong German empire’ was indeed rebuilt, one which formed the basis of today’s European Union.
Abs was put in charge of allocating Marshall Aid — reconstruction funds — to German industry. By 1948 he was effectively managing Germany’s economic recovery.
Crucially, Abs was also a member of the European League for Economic Co-operation, an elite intellectual pressure group set up in 1946. The league was dedicated to the establishment of a common market, the precursor of the European Union.
Its members included industrialists and financiers and it developed policies that are strikingly familiar today — on monetary integration and common transport, energy and welfare systems.
When Konrad Adenauer, the first Chancellor of West Germany, took power in 1949, Abs was his most important financial adviser.
Behind the scenes Abs was working hard for Deutsche Bank to be allowed to reconstitute itself after decentralisation. In 1957 he succeeded and he returned to his former employer.
That same year the six members of the ECSC signed the Treaty of Rome, which set up the European Economic Community. The treaty further liberalised trade and established increasingly powerful supranational institutions including the European Parliament and European Commission.
Like Abs, Ludwig Erhard flourished in post-war Germany. Adenauer made Erhard Germany’s first post-war economics minister. In 1963 Erhard succeeded Adenauer as Chancellor for three years.
But the German economic miracle — so vital to the idea of a new Europe — was built on mass murder. The number of slave and forced labourers who died while employed by German companies in the Nazi era was 2,700,000.
Some sporadic compensation payments were made but German industry agreed a conclusive, global settlement only in 2000, with a £3billion compensation fund. There was no admission of legal liability and the individual compensation was paltry.
A slave labourer would receive 15,000 Deutschmarks (about £5,000), a forced labourer 5,000 (about £1,600). Any claimant accepting the deal had to undertake not to launch any further legal action.
To put this sum of money into perspective, in 2001 Volkswagen alone made profits of £1.8billion.
Next month, 27 European Union member states vote in the biggest transnational election in history. Europe now enjoys peace and stability. Germany is a democracy, once again home to a substantial Jewish community. The Holocaust is seared into national memory.
But the Red House Report is a bridge from a sunny present to a dark past. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda chief, once said: ‘In 50 years’ time nobody will think of nation states.’
For now, the nation state endures. But these three typewritten pages are a reminder that today’s drive towards a European federal state is inexorably tangled up with the plans of the SS and German industrialists for a Fourth Reich — an economic rather than military imperium.”
8. The program compares the reality of the dawning economic landscape and the “corporacracy” set forth in the “novel” Serpent’s Walk. Mr. Emory believes that, like The Turner Diaries (also published by National Vanguard Books), the book is actually a blueprint for what is going to take place. It is a novel about a Nazi takeover of the United States in the middle of the 21st century. The book describes the Third Reich going underground, buying into the American media, and taking over the country.
Of particular significance for our purposes here is the “corporacracy” that the SS envisions will enable them to control the world (in this “novel”). It is interesting to reflect on the potential breakup of the U.S. and other nations large enough to countermand the initiatives of trans-national corporations. Such resistance might be the only potential opposition to the “corporacracy” in a world of fragmented [formerly large] nation/states.
As noted by Joseph Goebbels more than 50 years ago [and quoted in the Daily Mail article above], no one will be talking about nation states a half century after the Third Reich.
“It assumes that Hitler’s warrior elite—the SS—didn’t give up their struggle for a White world when they lost the Second World War. Instead their survivors went underground and adopted some of their tactics of their enemies: they began building their economic muscle and buying into the opinion-forming media. A century after the war they are ready to challenge the democrats and Jews for the hearts and minds of White Americans, who have begun to have their fill of government-enforced multi-culturalism and ‘equality.’”
(From the back cover of Serpent’s Walk by “Randolph D. Calverhall;” Copyright 1991 [SC]; National Vanguard Books; 0–937944-05‑X.)
Awww...Wyoming won’t get an aircraft carrier after all:
etc., etc., ...
US should return stolen land to Indian tribes, says United Nations
UN’s correspondent on indigenous peoples urges government to act to combat ‘racial discrimination’ felt by Native Americans
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A United Nations investigator probing discrimination against Native Americans has called on the US government to return some of the land stolen from Indian tribes as a step toward combatting continuing and systemic racial discrimination.
James Anaya, the UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, said no member of the US Congress would meet him as he investigated the part played by the government in the considerable difficulties faced by Indian tribes.
Anaya said that in nearly two weeks of visiting Indian reservations, indigenous communities in Alaska and Hawaii, and Native Americans now living in cities, he encountered people who suffered a history of dispossession of their lands and resources, the breakdown of their societies and “numerous instances of outright brutality, all grounded on racial discrimination”.
“It’s a racial discrimination that they feel is both systemic and also specific instances of ongoing discrimination that is felt at the individual level,” he said.
Anaya said racism extended from the broad relationship between federal or state governments and tribes down to local issues such as education.
“For example, with the treatment of children in schools both by their peers and by teachers as well as the educational system itself; the way native Americans and indigenous peoples are reflected in the school curriculum and teaching,” he said.
“And discrimination in the sense of the invisibility of Native Americans in the country overall that often is reflected in the popular media. The idea that is often projected through the mainstream media and among public figures that indigenous peoples are either gone or as a group are insignificant or that they’re out to get benefits in terms of handouts, or their communities and cultures are reduced to casinos, which are just flatly wrong.”
Close to a million people live on the US’s 310 Native American reservations. Some tribes have done well from a boom in casinos on reservations but most have not.
Anaya visited an Oglala Sioux reservation where the per capita income is around $7,000 a year, less than one-sixth of the national average, and life expectancy is about 50 years.
The two Sioux reservations in South Dakota – Rosebud and Pine Ridge – have some of the country’s poorest living conditions, including mass unemployment and the highest suicide rate in the western hemisphere with an epidemic of teenagers killing themselves.
“You can see they’re in a somewhat precarious situation in terms of their basic existence and the stability of their communities given that precarious land tenure situation. It’s not like they have large fisheries as a resource base to sustain them. In basic economic terms it’s a very difficult situation. You have upwards of 70% unemployment on the reservation and all kinds of social ills accompanying that. Very tough conditions,” he said.
Anaya said Rosebud is an example where returning land taken by the US government could improve a tribe’s fortunes as well as contribute to a “process of reconciliation”.
“At Rosebud, that’s a situation where indigenous people have seen over time encroachment on to their land and they’ve lost vast territories and there have been clear instances of broken treaty promises. It’s undisputed that the Black Hills was guaranteed them by treaty and that treaty was just outright violated by the United States in the 1900s. That has been recognised by the United States supreme court,” he said.
Anaya said he would reserve detailed recommendations on a plan for land restoration until he presents his final report to the UN human rights council in September.
“I’m talking about restoring to indigenous peoples what obviously they’re entitled to and they have a legitimate claim to in a way that is not devisive but restorative. That’s the idea behind reconciliation,” he said.
But any such proposal is likely to meet stiff resistance in Congress similar to that which has previously greeted calls for the US government to pay reparations for slavery to African-American communities.
Anaya said he had received “exemplary cooperation” from the Obama administration but he declined to speculate on why no members of Congress would meet him.
“I typically meet with members of the national legislature on my country visits and I don’t know the reason,” he said.
Last month, the US justice and interior departments announced a $1 billion settlement over nearly 56 million acres of Indian land held in trust by Washington but exploited by commercial interests for timber, farming, mining and other uses with little benefit to the tribes.
The attorney general, Eric Holder, said the settlement “fairly and honourably resolves historical grievances over the accounting and management of tribal trust funds, trust lands and other non-monetary trust resources that, for far too long, have been a source of conflict between Indian tribes and the United States.”
But Anaya said that was only a step in the right direction.
“These are important steps but we’re talking about mismanagement by the government of assets that were left to indigenous peoples,” he said. “This money for the insults on top of the injury. It’s not money for the initial problem itself, which is the taking of vast territories. This is very important and I think the administration should be commended for moving forward to settle these claims but there are these deeper issues that need to be addressed.”
Guardian UK
Sean Hannity thinks secession sounds reasonable because of
plans to buld a Death Startax and spending radicalism from the Obama Administration.Rick Perry is about to teach Texas a valuable lesson in money-management: maintaining your state’s billion dollar gold hoard ain’t free:
Lone Star Secessionist-lit: Romance novels for those that just can’t stop pining for a civil war:
Oh look, Rick Joyner — a leader in the Dominionist/“Latter Rain” movement and ‘historian’ of the David Barton-variety — just called for a US military coup:
Note that, while it’s probably the case that Joyner was calling for a coup by the US army, he may have been referring to a different army. Don’t forget that Rick Joyner is also apparently an member of the Knights of Malta and was apparently a spiritual catalyst for fellow Knight Kurt Waldheim...it turns out being a Catholic isn’t a requirement for joining the order. So maybe Joyner’s coup call also included an unspoken reference to a different kind of military force?
And then there’s his friends in Joel’s Army. Rick hangs out with a lot of scary folks spouting scary stuff so who knows what this was all about.
In other news...
It worth noting that de facto secession might look a lot like sedition:
Well, the GOP maybe have devolved into a state of childlike terror over the prospect of a government program possibly working, but at least they’re still winners.
@Pterrafractyl and Atlanta Bill–
What we are looking at–under all the flowery ideologized rhetoric–is fascism and a fundamental rejection of not only democratic process, but of American nationhood itself.
Obamacare was a bill that was passed by both houses of congress, signed by the President and upheld by the Supreme Court.
The GOP is rejecting legislative democracy.
The Ludwig von Mises Institute and “Paulistinian Libertarian Organization” rejct America, endorse the Confederacy, seek to have the South “re-cedede,” and favor SLAVERY.
What I have been warning of for decades is now taking place before our eyes.
Best,
Dave
@Dave: With the GOP now offering a six-week rise in the debt ceiling (and a six-week extension of the government shutdown), in exchange for the promise that the Democrats will sit down and negotiate a long-term entitlement “Grand Bargain”, the question gets raised of just what kind of pressure Wall Street is going to be applying to the different sides if the six-week deal is accepted. It’s widely assumed that Wall Street must be getting worried about damage the GOP is doing to the economy and the banksters are going to quietly urge the GOP to back away from their demands. And who knows, maybe there was some Wall Street involvement in this recent debt ceiling retreat. But if there’s one thing that could tempt Wall Street into courting an economic catastrophe it’s the possibility that the catastrophe will result in Wall Street getting their hands on all that social security money.
Just imagine how much money will be made if one of the GOP’s long-standing entitlement privatization schemes are put into place.
So the question of what type of pressure Wall Street is going to apply to the GOP going forward is partially a question of whether or not entitlement privatization is more, or less, likely when the government’s finances are seen as unstable. Sure, a damaged economy might make the populace a lot less inclined to throw their future financial safety-net into the giant stock market money-pit. But at the same time, part of the argument we hear in favor of privatizing social security is that there’s just no way the government will be able to afford to pay out entitlements decades from now so the youth should take private accounts to protect against that future government fiscal uncertainty. So is Wall Street likely to be all that concerned about the GOP terrorizing the markets and convincing the public that the government is on a doomed path of unavoidable insolvency? There’s a pretty massive payout for all those financial giants if the GOP succeeds and they’ve been pining for such a gift for quite some time.
The next few weeks should teach us quite a bit about how interested the big banks and plutocrats are in just dropping the mask and aggressively subverting democracy. Fascist dystopias don’t build themselves, I suppose, so they have to make a move at some point. Now sure feels like one of those points.
@Dave: With another round of bizarre “negotiating” ending in failure and the dwindling prospects of the US business community reigning in the Tea Party kamikazi squads, it’s worth asking whether or not creating a hopeless situation that ends in mass disaster for the economy and the GOP is a perfectly acceptable and desirable result for the far-right oligarchs. As Krugman points out, while the GOP has long been a disaster for the broader US business community, the GOP’s policies have still been great for those at the very top. So while the business community’s proles might be freaking out about the economic damage, it’s possible the oligarchs really would love to see the kind of permanent damage done to the US economy that a default could bring about. Especially if the damage is permanent, at least for a few decades. Because few things could fuel the decades-long far-right drive to undo the New Deal and eliminate the notion of a public safety-net better than dethroning of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency and sending the US economy into a deep, extended depression. So there’s obviously going to some serious eurozone-crisis envy at work in the minds of the US’s elite.
But here’s the best part, from an oligarch perspective: The political repurcussions may not really matter. Sure, it’s entirely possible that the GOP could simply out-message the Democrats so maybe they’re still betting that Obama will get more of the blame in the event of a default. But there’s another possibility that involves winning by losing. The more damage the GOP does to itself, the better this could end up being for far-right movements that truly want to want to destabilize the US. Why? Because what could be more useful to the far-right than convincing one of the most heavily-armed and radicalized segments of the populace to potentially just give up on the democratic process. And what could convince that segment of the populace to give up on democracy better than an utter economic disaster that the rest of the country blames on the GOP? In other words, if the GOP screws up so badly that they do permanent damage to the economy and GOP itself, we’re going to be left with a deeply depressed economy and an utterly hopeless and dejected far-right community that sees no salvation in electoral politics. That’s the perfect scenario for secessionist movements and worse.
And, of course, if Obama caves to their demands they can claim ultimate victory and rinse and repeat.
So it’s potentially a “Heads I win, Tails You lose, unless I lose, in which case I lead an insurrectionist movement fueled by blind rage that destroys the country and Your children’s future and therefore I still win”-situation.
@Dave: Speaking of secession and sedition, check out today’s event at the WWII memorial. It’s apparently going to be a “game-changer”, according to the House GOPers, because of all the enthusiasm being whipped up to oppose the tyranny of closing war memorials during government shutdowns:
The prominent placement of the Oath Keepers flag at Sunday’s “Million Vet March” at the WWII Memorial in DC might seem like potentially disturbing news when Larry Klayman is also speaking there. But keep in mind that this could be an exercise by the Oath Keepers’ “Civilization Preservation” units. Maybe they thought the war memorials needed preserving. And why not? Learning about the history of warfare — all the sacrifice and horrors involved and why we absolutely have to avoid warfare in the future if we’re to truly preserve civilization — is a pretty important component of “Civilization Preservation” so it’s hard to argue with organizations focused trying to preserve war memorials. Especially if the organization is also offering FEMA-like services in the event of disasters. That sounds quite helpful, actually. That may or may not be what the Oath Keepers have in mind for the future but it would be nice if it was.
It looks like we have a winner!
The GOP’s civil war between the overtly crazy Tea Party wing and the not quite as overtly crazy establishment wing can manifest in all sorts of different ways. Sometimes, this conflict can take on historical resonance with the US civil war itself. For instance, in Mississippi, the GOP’s civil war is about whether or not the party should be seeking out the support of secessionist and segregationists. It’s a reminder that history can come alive in contemporary conflicts. Especially when you’re trying to repeat:
Back in February, the news about Mississippi’s Senate primary was looking like this:
Being down by 20 back point against the six term incumbent Senators isn’t an easy position for anyone, even if you’re the neo-Confederate candidate of choice. But times change:
Yes, times changed. Specifically, the race was almost tied going into yesterday’s primary, and was after an independent blogger and Chris McDaniel supporter, Clayton Kelly, decided to break into Thad Cochran’s home to videotape his bedridden wife suffering dementia. Why? In order to somehow suggest that Cochran has some sort of unseemly relationship with his campaign manager since he’s never seen on the campaign trail with his bedridden wife suffering dementia. And, unfortunately for McDaniel, he can’t easily distance himself from this scandal because one of the people that appears to have been pushing Kelly to do this was Mark Mayfield, then the head of the Mississippi Tea Party, and the Tea Party is the primary movement backing McDaniel. Uh oh. Fortunately for McDaniel, GOP primary voters don’t really seem to care:
McDaniel was able to overcome a 20 point deficit AND a bizarre video-taping break in scandal and is now poised for a primary run off against a six-term incumbent senator. “That Mr. McDaniel was still able run so strong in the face of such a story illustrated the intensity of his support and the favorable environment in which he was running.” Yep!
Ummmmm...there’s going to be an investigation, right?
Ok, no investigation. So who knows what was going on, but it’s worth pointing out that Hinds County didn’t exactly have an easy time voting back in 2011 either when the county’s voting machines encountered a number of “technical glitches”:
100% unverifiable touch-screen voting machines. Uh oh. But don’t worry. While Hinds county was the only county in the state using its particular brand of voting machine the county upgraded its machines last year to ES&S optical scanner voting machines last year. So if there was any meddling with the machines, the problem would be ES&S machines and at least there should be a paper trail. Which again raises the question: WTF was going on in that courthouse last night?
Too bad they didn’t know someone with experience breaking into and out of buildings. Oh well:
Conflicting stories? Yeah, that might be a red flag. And then there’s the fact that the McDaniel campaign is acknowledging that the three were sent there on the campaign’s behalf:
Keep in mind that the phone call was at 2 am and the last election officials had left at 11:30 PM.
Well that settles that, in a most unsettling manner:
Note that one of the three, Scott Brewster, tweeted at 11:16PM that he was “Going to come down to Hinds county”, so based on this timeline, the three look over two and a half hours to meet up and enter the courthouse. Perhaps they entered earlier?
Continuing...
Here’s a new fun twist in the ongoing speculation about the nature of the GOP’s new plan to defeat Obama with frivolous lawsuits over ‘executive overreach’: When GOP representative Bob Goodlatte was asked if the lawsuit would just be a waste of time because it would get dragged out past the end of Obama’s term, Goodlatte replied that the legal process could be sped up and should only take a few months. So once John Boehner finally figures out what the lawsuit will be all about, it should just be a few months before freedom is free again and power has been rebalanced:
Part of what makes the language being used by the GOP so interesting is that it’s highly reminiscent of the strategy put forth by GOP dirty trickster Floyd Brown in 2010. According to Brown — who brought us the infamous Willie Horton ad and Citizens United — the growing impeachment talk of 2010 was perfectly legitimate even though there were no actually grounds for doing so being discussed (beyond the Birther stuff) because, “Our Founding Fathers fully intended to allow for the removal of the president for actions which include: gross incompetence, negligence and distasteful behavior...For those who mistakenly hold the illusion that impeaching Barack Hussein Obama would be a simple matter of ‘playing politics,’ the founders fully intended that the impeachment of a sitting president be a political act.”
And when you listen to John Boehner, the closest thing to a rational that he gives is that “The Constitution makes it clear that a president’s job is to faithfully execute the laws. In my view, the president has not faithfully executed the laws,” and also that Obama has asserted “king-like authority.” Now, Boehner’s clearly trying to make this more of a ‘constitution crises’ stunt than Brown was advocating back in 2010 by talking about executive overreach and “faithfully executing” laws, but he’s still only barely trying to make that case. It’s half-assed even by the GOP’s standards. So is Boehner really even trying to come across as serious or is this intended to seem like trolling? Don’t forget that trolling the president (and the country, really) is pretty much the GOP’s primary campaign tactic these days. That’s the ‘red meat’ the base craves: trolling the president as an expression of some sort of political primal scream. Irrational movements require primal screams for maintaining moral so irrational primal screams via trolling does make sense in a twisted way. Could that be what Boehner has in mind? Rallying the GOP going into the elections with one more primal scream as a moral booster? It might be needed right about now.
Uh oh. It’s looking the GOP is having difficulties just saying no to its most treasured vice:
Ideally, society could create an Ayahuasca-like exemption for the GOP: Since the party’s religion mandates the imbibing of ‘impeachment’, the party will be allowed to use its drug of choice for religious ceremonies for the true believers. But that would only work if their religious ceremonies weren’t going to heavily impact the rest of society. If only that was an option...
Oh geeze: First, we have Alex Jones and far right immigration activist William Gheen are claiming that Obama is giving Obamaphones to all the central american child refugees in order to lure them hear to create a child army. That’s not good. And congressman Louie Gohmert is claiming that the children aren’t really facing threats of violence and abuse back home and are just lying in order to get into the country (Obamaphones are extremely tempting after all). So that’s a rather chilling portrayal of the child refugee crisis at on the Texas border.
Even more alarming is the suggestion by Michelle Bachmann that Obama is planning using these kids for medical experimentation.
Connecting all these dots, we can only come to one conclusion: Obama is creating a private army of cybernetically enhanced super soldiers! Super soldiers capable of traveling vast distances at incredible speeds while still recieving a clear phone signal.
A far right fantasy you say? Well, many would have said the idea of the GOP suing Obama in an election year over executive orders when he’s issued the fewest in over a century was a complete fantasy when Michelle Bachmann was floating the idea back in January, but they aren’t saying that any more:
So are we going to see another far right dream come true now that the GOP has exposed the secret cyborg child army plans? Maybe, but if not, there are plenty of other far right dreams.
Someone might need to check in on the University of Texas researchers that are working on an Ebola vaccine to make sure that nothing has escaped the lab. There’s a nasty fever sweeping Texas and it looks incredibly painful:
Wait, so Congress is to “withhold Supreme Court jurisdiction in cases involving abortion, religious freedom and the Bill of Rights”?! OK, someone get the patient in a bathtub and grab the ice.
Reason # whatever for why we can’t have nice things:
Given the inevitable growth in foreign financing of US elections now that we’re living in the Citizens United/McCutcheon era of unlimited secret political spending, you have to wonder how much analogous far right international financing is taking place in the US at this point since there’s really no reason to believe that the kind of foreign financing of far right agendas described below is limited to France:
Police in Ferguson threatened a group of Oath Keepers with arrest on Saturday after “more than five, less than 500” volunteers showed up to protect local businesses with armed street patrols and and riflemen on rooftops:
“I don’t want any racists in my group...I don’t want any people who want to visit violence on any group. I only want professionals with real credentials that can be verified and have experience in dealing with violence.” LOL. Well, at least if any racists do get kicked out of the militia patrols they probably won’t have to go far to find a new home.
So, in the last year or so alone, we’ve found the Oath Keepers at the WWII Memorial with Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin, and Larry “put the Koran down, get of your knees and come out with your hands up!” Klayman. And then there was all their fun and games at the Bundy Ranch. And don’t forget the fun and games at the US-Mexican border. And now they’ve brought that same Oath Keeper flair to Ferguson.
So what’s next for the Oath Keeper’s brand of reactionary “Fight the Power (of specifically the federal government, unless it involves the military)!” vigilante activism? That next step is very unclear largely because that next step is likely to be as reactionary as the all previous steps. That said, the final destination of the Oath Keepers and their fellow Koch-fueled travelers shouldn’t really be in doubt.
It looks like Daniel Miller and his Texas Nationalist Movement, which was one of the secessionist movements featured in that 2009 WSJ piece on the break up of the US, continue to refuse to secede from their vision of the Lone Star state going solo
So we’ll see how many signature the Texas Nationalist Movement actually gets, but if they do reach their 75,000 goal it wouldn’t be all that shocking given that ~25% of Americans seem to be interested in secession in general. Fortunately it sounds like this particular secessionist group is dedicated to non-violent means, so if they don’t end up modifying the Texas GOP plank we presumably won’t have to worry about the Texas Nationalist Insurgency. Although it’s worth pointing out that the propensity for non-violence is probably going to be heavily dependent on whether or not enough Texas Nationalist Movement are perceiving that the US has adopted a ‘Gestapo Government’, because as one member put it back in 2013, “We’re liable to fight the Alamo all over again...We’re not interested in legislation; we’re interested in bullets, body-bags and bayonets. If the ‘Gestapo Government’ starts trying to take away our guns, we’re going to have another revolution.”:
“The likely scenario is that Obama’s government will collapse sometime in 2013 or 2014...Then people will look to who’s best equipped to take over.”
In other news...
The Texas Nationalist Movement’s quest to get its pro-secession initiative on the GOP 2016 primary ballots in March got a big boost on Friday when the ballot initiative, pushed by Texas GOP executive committee member Tanya Robertson, passed the Texas GOP’s Resolutions Committee:
Wow, so the Texas GOP’s executive committee’s 12-person resolution committe approved taking the pro-secession measure to the 60-member assembly vote (not 40, that’s an error) which takes place today. And based on an informal poll by the Chronicle of 40 of those 60 members, 13 responded and support is split:
And note that the executive committee member that put forth this measure, Tanya Robertson, represents areas like Galveston. That’s also one of the areas once represented by Ron Paul, who asserted that “we should be like 1900” when there was no FEMA (a statement he made hours before hurricane Irene made landfall on the East Coast). Aside from the fact that federal disaster assistance was commonplace before the creation of FEMA, also note that Texas receives more federal disaster aid than any other state. It’s a reflection of the mentality at work in the Texas GOP’s leadership these days (although given polls that show 53 percent of Tea Party members nationality would support secession, it’s not a mentality limited to the leadership).
So did the secession measure pass the 60-member vote and make it onto the GOP’s primary ballot in March? No, it didn’t pass, although we can’t actually be sure it wouldn’t have passed if left up to a recorded vote since they used a voice vote instead:
Oh well, better luck next time! And hopefully they’ll actually record the votes next time so we get to know just how many Texas GOP executive committee members want to start dismantling the US. It would be interesting to hear an audio recording of the voice vote too. It would also interesting to hear what Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who is now in second place nationally in the GOP presidential primary, thinks about such a proposal. Probably scary and disturbing too, but also interesting.
The Texas Nationalist Movement, the ‘usual suspect’ in calling for for Texas to secede, is getting quite a bit of help from the ‘usual suspect’ for dysfunctional politics in general, the GOP. So everything is as it should be, at least in the sense that things aren’t as they should be but the groups we should expect to be making things not as they should be are doing what they should be doing to fulfill their role as the groups that do that which shouldn’t be done. In other words, it’s just a normal year for the Texas GOP in that things are all f*#@ed up, although this year it might be a little more normal than normal:
“Supporters of and independent Texas allege overreach, corruption and excessive spending by the federal government, and argue that Texas is large and prosperous enough to get by on its own.”
This might be a good time to remind the secessionists that Texas is actually a net recipient of federal dollars. If it’s not a good time for that reminder, just wait. It’ll get better.
When Donald Trump was asked back in June whether or not he thought Texas might attempt to secede from the United States, Trump had a typically Trumpian (i.e. disturbing and ominous) response: “Texas will never do that because Texas loves me...Texas would never do that if I’m president.” And it’s probably true that if Trump became president the Texas secessionist movement would probably put itself on hold until the next Democratic president (this is assuming there’s a next President following the Trump Presidency)
But how about if Hillary Clinton wins? Well, with the Trump campaign appearing to be planning on a ‘Plan B’ strategy of making preparations to win the 2016 race by first losing and the vote and then challenging the validity of entire electoral system, as the article below sadly reminds us it’s worth keeping in mind that one of the other ‘Plan Bs’ out there for the Trump campaign involves running for President of a different nation: The United States of Trump. Sure, that nation doesn’t exist, but that doesn’t mean Trump can’t start recruiting now. Who knows which states might be interested:
“Fortunately for Unionists, a clear majority of 59 percent of Texans said they’d rather stick with the Stars and Stripes, while just 26 percent said they wouldn’t. But that number dropped when the pollsters followed up by asking whether voters would support secession if Clinton won the election. Forty percent said they would, including 61 percent of Trump supporters. (While PPP is run by Democrats, it has a solid grade in FiveThirtyEight’s pollster accuracy ratings.)”
Ok, so if Donald Trump loses and then declares the entire US government rigged and the election was illegitimate, the winner is illegitimate, there’s a constitutional crisis and the need for widespread civil disobedience because the government is no longer the government, (in other words, what Roger Stone is threatening to do if Trump loses), what’s that going to do to all the secession movements? Won’t they kick into overdrive?
And if Trump just straight up called for states to rebel and declare him the president (which is not too far removed from the kinds of scenarios the Trump campaign is flirting with), would Texas attempt to be the first member of the United States of Trump? It’s kind of funny to imagine Texas secessionist getting behind a New York billionaire, but with 60 percent of Texas’s Trump supporters apparently open to secession if Hillary wins and Trump already solidifying his status as the voice of the far-right, it’s hard to entirely rule the possibility out. Trump really could end up being the Texas secessionists’ best shot of winning the public support they need if his cult of personality lingers on after the election and maintains its status as a cesspool of all things far-right. Plus, being the first state in the USofT(rump) would presumably have its advantages. The new capital would basically have to be in Texas. And there would probably be a really, really, big tower/palace built there. That could be kind of neat. The shade should be nice.
So that’s one more Trumpian disaster scenario to watch out for. It’s not a new disaster scenario since the Texas GOP has been flirting with this idea for a long time but with Trump in the mix it’s hard to say it isn’t now a more likely scenario. It’s a reminder that the slew of Trumpian disaster scenarios facing the nation are basically the same GOP disaster scenarios that have been looming over the nation for years. It’s just that now all those GOP disaster scenarios have an avatar. A big orange avatar of GOP disaster scenarios who won the GOP’s nomination for president. He’s an usually metaphorical avatar. And a highly topical avatar too, which is one reason why we shouldn’t be shocked if the next phase of the Texas secession movement end up with a Trumpian twist.
It’s that time again. Time for the Texas GOP’s extremism to make national news. It’s the kind of the story that pops up with such frequency that it’s almost not even news. And yet, while the Texas GOP may be as unhinged as ever, there’s no denying that the rest of the GOP has gotten even crazier in recent years. That’s the context that makes news of the Texas GOP’s enduring insanity actual news. While stories of the Texas GOP’s extremism were more of a local anomaly in decades past, today it’s a harbinger of what we should expect from the GOP nationally. In other words, we may be hearing the same old calls for secession for the Texas GOP, but those calls are happening in contemporary context of 2022. The contemporary context of an openly insurrectionist Republican Party. That’s what makes this story a harbinger:
“Several far-right platform planks were part of the the existing 2020 platform, including calls for the repeal of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, for stripping the state legislature’s power to regulate the “wearing of arms,” and for ending birthright citizenship. As in 2020, the 2022 platform states that “Texas retains the right to secede from the United States.” And it asserts, again, that “We oppose all efforts to validate transgender identity.””
As in 2020, the Texas GOP has a platform asserting its right to secede. Keep in mind that Donald Trump was president in 2020, so the Texas GOP wasn’t just reactionarily responding to a Democrat in the White House. And as the following article notes, the platform doesn’t just include a recognition (which legal experts dispute) that Texas retains a right to secede. The platform actually calls for secession to be put on the ballot as a general reference in the 2023 state general elections:
“On Texas seceding from the U.S.: “We urge the Texas Legislature to pass bill in its next session requiring a referendum in the 2023 general election for the people of Texas to determine whether or not the State of Texas should reassert its status as an independent nation.””
Are we going to see open secession votes next year? That’s apparently the plan. Does secession have shot of winning? Well, that presumably depends in part on whether or not the GOP wins back control of the House as is widely expected in the 2022 mid-terms. With the GOP back in control of at least one chamber of congress it’s easy to imagine the secession calls rapidly dissipating. But what if the GOP’s gross extremism manages to turn off enough voters for the Democrats to retain control of Congress? How tempting might secession be for the Texas electorate at that point?
And as the following article from 2016 reminds us, there’s no reason to assume the people who vote for secession necessarily want to actually secede. They might instead be convinced that the threat of secession is their best political move for getting their way. At least that was the ‘wisdom’ conveyed the reporter of the following piece who was covering the narrow defeat of a similar secession resolution by Texas’s GOP that year. The idea was that threatening secession is the best way to get Washington DC to take the state’s concerns seriously. Might we see secession get adopted as a popular new form of right-wing trolling?
Also note how the 2016 defeated resolution included a call for a statewide referendum to vote on secession. So the resolution that was narrowly defeated in 2016 just passed.
And there’s another interesting observation tucked away in this report that could have a fascinating impact on how the dynamics of secession politics plays out in the current environment with a far right Supreme Court majority locked in place for decades to come: the pro-secession crowd kept bringing up its opposition to abortion and trans-rights. So with Roe v Wade poised to be overturned and anti-trans movements now dominating the GOP, what will the pro-secession groups latch onto as the new need for secession? We’ll presumably find out during the planned 2023 secession referendum:
“But that didn’t prepare me for the full-throated, red-faced vitriol at last night’s debate over secession at the Texas GOP Convention. During an hour-long fight in the middle of the Friday platform vote, secession advocates tried to force back into the platform language that party leaders had dropped the previous night. “The federal government has impaired our right of local self-government,” the proposal claimed, setting up the potential for a statewide vote so that Texas could reassert its right to return to its original status as an independent nation.”
The Texas GOP almost voted in 2016 to set up a state-wide referendum in 2017 to vote on secession. Almost, but it was narrowly defeated. But it wasn’t defeated this year, so it sounds like a 2023 secession vote is quite possibly going to happen. What kinds of arguments should we expect from the pro-secession crowd? In 2016, it abortion and trans rights that appeared to be key animating factors. With Roe slated to be overturned any day now, that’s going to take at least some of the steam from such appeals. Will anti-trans ferocity be enough to motivate Texans to secede?
Also keep in mind that, should the GOP nominee in 2024 again lose and claim the election was stolen, the number of GOP-dominated states that start seriously looking at secession is going to explode. Especially if that 2024 nominee is Donald Trump. Which raises another question facing any secession moves, by Texas or any other states in the near future: So are they going to just appoint Donald Trump as the leader of the newly created nation or will there be elections first? What if two separate states secede at the same time into two separate new nations. Can Trump be the leader of both of those nations simultaneously? Will one get Don Jr as like a stand in instead? We’ll see in 2023. Or maybe 2024. Or 2025. If trends continue it’s really just a matter of time.