Listen: MP3
Side 1 Side 2 (Note that the show is misidentified as “Eddie the Friendly Spook, Part 4: Dramatis Personae, Part 4”–it is actually part five.)
Introduction: The program begins with a Bill Moyers op-ed piece, in which he correctly identifies the anti-democratic process being manifested by the GOP as secession. We we have seen, the milieux of Eddie the Friendly Spook [Snowden], Ron Paul and the Ludwig von Mises Institute are inextricably linked with the neo-Confederate movement. The latter not only justifies African-American slavery during the years prior to the end of the Civil War, but favors a “re-secession” of the Southern states.
Like Alex Karp (CEO of Palantir, the company that apparently makes the PRISM software at the center of Eddie the Friendly Spook’s “disclosures”), Hans Hermann-Hoppe was a student of Juergen Habermas, discussed in FTR #757. Like Ron Paul, Snowden’s Presidential candidate of choice and the man whose super PAC was financed primarily by chief Palantir investor Peter Thiel, Hans Hermann-Hoppe is a darling of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
The von Mises Institute also has a tangible pro-monarchist bent, with particular favor shown toward the Habsburg dynasty and its successors.
A paper which presents a “Hoppean analysis” was published through the Ludwig von Mises Institute’s website. It extols Liechtenstein as an ideal example of “libertarian” values. As we have seen in FTR #530, Liechtenstein was home to many of the Al-Taqwa related firms that were deeply involved in the funding of the 9/11 attacks. One of those fronts was the Asat Trust, which was headed up by Martin Wachter, a distant relative of the ruling family of Liechtenstein. As we saw in FTR #536, Liechtenstein is a lean, mean, money-laundering machine, with three corporate fronts for each of its 30,000 citizens.
Liechtenstein’s royal family is very close to the Habsburgs, whose UNPO inclines in the direction of the breakup of the United States. (That would, of course, be delightful to the neo-Confederates of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.)
After a review of Hitler’s speech to the Industry Club of Dusseldorf, the program highlights the profound similarity between the views of Hans Hermann-Hoppe and those expressed in Hitler’s seminal address.
Program Highlights Include: Hitler’s view that democracy automatically leads to communism; Hitler’s opinion that the politics of personality and achievement trumped a need for democracy, which he viewed as a mob-beast; Hoppe’s view of democracy as “mob rule;” Hoppe’s contempt for universal health care, something which clearly resonates with the GOP fanatics holding the U.S. government hostage.
1. The program begins with a Bill Moyers op-ed piece, in which he correctly identifies the anti-democratic process being manifested by the GOP as secession. We we have seen, the milieux of Eddie the Friendly Spook [Snowden], Ron Paul and the Ludwig von Mises Institute are inextricably linked with the neo-Confederate movement. The latter not only justifies African-American slavery during the years prior to the end of the Civil War, but favors a “re-secession” of the Southern states.
Republicans have now lost three successive elections to control the Senate, and they’ve lost the last two presidential elections. Nonetheless, they fought tooth and nail to kill President Obama’s health care initiative. They lost that fight, but with the corporate wing of Democrats, they managed to bend it toward private interests.
So, we should be clear on this: Obamacare, as it is known, is deeply flawed. Big subsidies to the health insurance industry, a bonanza for lobbyists, no public option and, as the New York Times reported this week, “Millions of Poor Are Left Uncovered by Health Law” — largely because states controlled by Republicans refused to expand Medicaid.
[...]
Despite what they say, Obamacare is only one of their targets. Before they will allow the government to reopen, they demand employers be enabled to deny birth control coverage to female employees; they demand Obama cave on the Keystone pipeline; they demand the watchdogs over corporate pollution be muzzled and the big bad regulators of Wall Street sent home. Their ransom list goes on and on. The debt ceiling is next. They would have the government default on its obligations and responsibilities.
When the president refused to buckle to this extortion, they threw their tantrum. Like the die-hards of the racist South a century and a half ago, who would destroy the union before giving up their slaves, so would these people burn down the place, sink the ship.
[...]
At least, let’s name this for what it is: sabotage of the democratic process. Secession by another means.
2. Like Alex Karp (CEO of Palantir, the company that makes the PRISM software at the center of Eddie the Friendly Spook’s “disclosures”, their disclaimers to the contrary notwithstanding), Hans Hermann-Hoppe was a student of Juergen Habermas, discussed in FTR #757. Like Ron Paul, Snowden’s Presidential candidate of choice and the man whose super PAC was financed primarily by chief Palantir investor Peter Thiel, Hans Hermann-Hoppe is a darling of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
Explicitly opposed to democracy, explicitly in favor of the Confederacy, inextricably linked to the pro-secessionist neo-Confederate movement and favorably disposed toward slavery itself, the von Mises Institute is the source for the economic ideology of Ron Paul, his son Senator Rand Paul and Eddie the Friendly Spook.
The von Mises Institute also has a tangible pro-monarchist bent, with particular favor shown toward the Habsburg dynasty and its successors.
A paper which presents a “Hoppean analysis” was published through the Ludwig von Mises Institute’s website. It extols Liechtenstein as an ideal example of “libertarian” values. As we have seen in FTR #530, Liechtenstein was home to many of the Al-Taqwa related firms that were deeply involved in the funding of the 9/11 attacks. One of those fronts was the Asat Trust, which was headed up by Martin Wachter, a distant relative of the ruling family of Liechtenstein. As we saw in FTR #536, Liechtenstein is a lean, mean, money-laundering machine, with three corporate fronts for each of its 30,000 citizens.
Liechtenstein’s royal family is very close to the Habsburgs, whose UNPO inclines in the direction of the breakup of the United States. (That would, of course, be delightful to the neo-Confederates of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.)
. . . . The work of economist and political philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe, specifically his seminal book Democracy—The God That Failed: The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy, and Natural Order gives us a framework for analyzing Liechtenstein’s development. In his
. . . .. . . . Liechtenstein’s freedom and prosperity also gives libertarians an idea of what may be the most tolerable form of state in existence today. This study suggests that, if there must be a state in its modern, democratic form—a return to the old regime, in which the state is the monarch’s property, seems impossible—then the most tolerable form is a constitutional monarchy, with the monarch retaining extensive powers to discourage demagoguery. The state should also be restricted to a small area (in both population and territory), giving politicians little incentive to expand the state. Under such a situation, as Liechtenstein shows us, monarchy is, in the words of Charles Maurras, “the least evil and the possibility of something good.” . . . .
3. The program features an excerpt from Miscellaneous Archive Show M11, Side 3. Highlighting Hitler’s Speech before the Industry Club of Dusseldorf in 1932, the broadcast underscores Hitler’s point that democracy was counter-evolutionary and led to communism. The essence of Hitler’s argument was that people of wealth and means were clearly superior–hence their elevated economic status.
If “inferior” people were allowed to run the political process, they would produce a degeneration of society, by structuring things after their own fashion.
4. Compare what Hitler said in his Industry Club of Dusseldorf speech with the doctrine espoused by Hans Herman-Hoppe. In addition to his overt contempt for democracy, Hoppe favors a quasi-eugenics viewpoint eerily reminiscent of the Nazi eugenicists and their intellectual and political backers in the Western elites.
Note, also, Hoppe’s fierce opposition to universal health care. It is no mystery that Hoppe’s views would resonate among the “Paulistinians.”
In addition, Hoppe favors small, idiosyncratic states, not unlike the landscape favored by Peter Thiel and other seasteaders, as discussed in FTR #744.
“Anarcho-Fascism: the Libertarian Endgame” by “DowneastDem”; Daily Kos; 6/15/2010.
. . . .But most of Professor Hoppe’s ideas on the evils of democracy can be found in his book Democracy: The God that Failed, large chunks of which can be accessed via Google Books. Democracy: the God that Failed starts out with a revisionist analysis of World War I. If only, Hoppe writes, the United States had not entered the war the European monarchies would have been preserved. As mentioned earlier, Hoppe is an anarcho-fascist where the ideal system would be a confederation of small privately-owned units controlled by “natural elites” — i.e. Herrenmenschen. But until anarchy is possible, a monarchy is far superior to a democracy:
Democracy, Professor Hoppe tells his readers (and presumably his students at UNLV) is nothing more than mob-rule, and has resulted in a serious decline in civilization:
The mass of people, as La Boetie and Mises recognised, always and everywhere consists of “brutes”, “dullards”, and “fools”, easily deluded and sunk into habitual submission. Thus today, inundated from early childhood with government propaganda in public schools and educational institutions by legions of publicly certified intellectuals, most people mindlessly accept and repeat nonsense such as that democracy is self-rule and government is of, by, and for the people. (Democracy: The God that Failed)
Even worse than the statist capitalism of the United States is European social democracy and its myriad social programs. Universal health care, for example, is especially evil according to Professor Hoppe:
As a result of subsidizing the malingerers, the neurotics, the careless, the alcoholics, the drug addicts, the Aids-infected, and the physically and mentally challenged through insurance regulation and compulsory health insurance, there will be more illness, malingering, neuroticism, carelessness, alcoholism, drug addiction, Aids infection, and physical and mental retardation. (Democracy: The God that Failed)
Democrats, in this radical libertarian philosophy, are no better than communists, since democrats rely on statist solutions that are antithetical to the “natural order” and the cult of private property. So Professor Hoppe has the following words of advice for the “natural elites”, the Herrenmenschen, who would build his anarcho-fascist utopia: . . .
Greenwald is heading up a new media venture funded by Ebay CEO Pierre Omidyar. I posted a link to a story about this on another one of Dave’s posts (to be honest I forgot which one. It’s “Hades” being old). Anyway, here an interesting item in a story from the Atlantic Wire:
Until reports named Omidyar as Greenwald’s backer, speculation on possible investors included Facebook supporter Peter Thiel and the $40 million funding round Vox Media just amassed for no particular reason.
Here is the link to the Atlantic story:
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2013/10/glenn-greenwald-leave-guardian-new-media-outlet/70575/
Hmmmm. Is it possible things are NOT as they present themselves? Hmmmm.....
@Kathleen–
Your speculation about Thiel isn’t far off.
Omidyar isn’t the CEO of Ebay, he’s the founder. Ebay bought PayPal about 10 years ago, which places him in the same milieu as Peter Thiel.
Thiel is the “capo” of the “PayPal Mafia” as they are known. Thiel was one of the founders of Paypal.
A recent CEO of Ebay is Meg Whitman, now CEO of Hewlett-Packard.
Same string, different yo yo.
Best,
Dave
With a growing chunk of the GOP field now advocating for repeal of the 14th amendment in order to constitutionally allow the deportation of children born in the US to undocumented immigrants, here’s an example of the kind of “solutions” we should expect to follow:
“We would take a lesson from Sheriff [Joe] Arpaio down in Arizona. Put up a tent village, we feed and water these new assets, we give them minimal shelter, minimal nutrition, and offer them the opportunity to work for the benefit of the taxpayers of the state of Iowa. All they have to do to avoid servitude is to leave.”
It sounds like we might have to ditch more than just the 14th amendment if Iowa’s “kingmaker” sees his vision come to fruition. So long, 8th Amendment! We hardly knew ye.
It’s worth noting that pro-Monarchist/pro-slavery anarcho-capitalist Hans Hermann Hoppe characterized Murray Rothbard, the godfather of anarcho-capitalist libertarianism, as his ideological mentor and close friend. It’s something especially worth noting this election season since Murry Rothbard is sort of an ideological godfather of Donald Trump’s “Alt Right” superfans too:
“Expanding on themes raised two years earlier by his longtime partner and friend Llewellyn “Lew” Rockwell, an editor and fundraiser for libertarian causes, Rothbard argued that Duke’s candidacy was vitally important because it made clear that the “old America” had been overthrown by “an updated, twentieth-century coalition of Throne and Altar” and its “State Church” of government officials, journalists and social scientists.”
That’s right, the ideological godfather of the “Alt Right” movement that’s bringing neo-Nazi memes into the mainstream, Murray Rothbard, was a co-founder of the Cato Institute, the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and a big fan of David Duke’s political runs in 1990–91. What a shocker. And one of the reasons he was so fond of Duke’s campaign was the number of similarities it had to Ron Paul’s 1988 Libertarian bid:
So David Duke’s prior electoral bids were basically a rehash of Ron Paul’s bid a few years earlier. And here were are, decades later, talking about how that very movement has overtaken the GOP. Again, what a shocker.
It’s all the kind of topical history that raises a number of disturbing questions. So many disturbing questions that hard to know where to start. So why not start with questions about how best to set up flourishing free markets for selling children:
So if it ever feels like the US in the process of selling out the future, keep in mind that one of the philosophical guiding lights for the contemporary far-right is a guy who thought a free market in children is required for a truly free society. You can see why Hoppe and the Alt-Right love him so much.
And now you know: The core inspirations of the “Alt-Right” Trumpian superfans isn’t limited to Hitler. It also includes a guy who advocated for a flourishing free market in selling children.
@Pterrafractyl–
Never lose sight of the fact that Paul, Sr. is Eddie the Friendly Spook’s and Julian Assange’s Presidential candidate of choice.
Alt.right, FACE!
Best,
Dave