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This broadcast was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: The title of the program comes from a Robinson Jeffers poem, reproduced at the beginning of this description. It sums up Mr. Emory’s feelings about Charlottesville and much of what has transpired since the ascension of the Trumpenkampfverbande.
With the mainstream media, the so-called “alternative media,” the so-called “progressive sector” and the GOP beating their breasts over Donald Trump’s predictably equivocal reaction to the violence in Charlottesville (Virginia), we highlight the profound complicity with all of these elements with the very white supremacist, Nazi and Neo-Confederate movements that are at the foundation of the events in question.
For the last several years, the mainstream media, the so-called “alternative media,” and the so-called “progressive sector” have manifested an almost erotic obsession with the overlapping activities of Eddie the Friendly Spook (Snowden), Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, Glenn Greenwald and Greenwald’s media financial angel Pierre Omidyar.
All of the focal points of their collective adulation are at one with the very white supremacist, Nazi and Neo-Confederate forces that coalesced on behalf of the preservation of the Confederate memorials in Charlottesville. Key points of discussion and analysis include:
- Eddie Snowden’s strong links to the Ron Paul political milieu. Snowden gave money to Paul’s campaign, whose super-PAC was capitalized largely by Peter Thiel, a key Trump supporter.
- The fact that Ron Paul has been networking with David Duke for decades. (Duke was prominent at Charlottesville.)
- The fact that Snowden’s first attorney (and the attorney for the Snowden family) was Bruce Fein, the chief legal counsel for Ron Paul’s 2012 Presidential campaign.
- Fein also networked with the German-based Schiller Institute, run by the fascist organization of Lyndon LaRouche.
- Ron Paul is very close to the Neo-Confederate movement and the heavily-overlapped Ludwig von Mises Institute.
- Ron Paul aide Walter Block, another of Paul’s supporters and a resident scholar at the Ludwig von Mises Institute is not only supportive of the neo-Confederate movement but advanced a theory of “voluntary slavery.” Voluntary slavery could be viewed as the ultimate collateralized debt obligation!
- Julian Assange is also a big Ron and Rand Paul fan. Furthermore, Assange and his fascist aide, doctrinaire Holocaust-denier Joran Jermas (aka “Israel Shamir”) are inextricably linked with a Swedish, Russian and Ukrainian fascist milieu that enfolds Carl Lundstrom, Daniel Friberg and David Duke.
- Glenn Greenwald spent years running legal interference for Nazi murderers and the “leaderless resistance” strategy Mr. Fields used to fatally-injure one of the demonstrators in Charlottesville. Greenwald worked pro-bono.
- In addition to lionizing Snowden, Assange and Greenwald–all of whom are, basically, “Alt-Right,” the mainstream media, the so-called “alternative media” and the so-called “progressive” sector have oozed all over Pierre Omidyar and his media undertakings, which have been the foundation for Snowden, Greenwald and Assange’s media presentations.
- Omidyar helped finance the coup in Ukraine, which brought OUN/B successor organizations to power and also aided in the rise of Narendra Modi in India. Modi’s BJP Party is a cat’s paw for the Hindu nationalist/fascist RSS, the organization that murdered Gandhi. Roy Prosterman, Omidyar’s primary administrator of his philanthropic undertakings, was a veteran of the Phoenix assassination program in Vietnam.
Particularly grotesque is the righteous posturing of the GOP, whose members have scrambled to go “on record” decrying racism and Nazism, intoning that such things are “un-American,” or words to that effect. In fact, the GOP is joined at the hip with the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations, formed in 1943 by Adolf Hitler as the Committee of Subjugated Nations. A consortium of Eastern and Central European fascist groups, the ABN became a major player in the GOP’s ethnic outreach organization.
The marriage of the GOP and the ABN was effected under the auspices of the Crusade for Freedom, a dual-sided covert operation with the GOP/ABN nexus at the root of a domestic political operation and the combat support afforded guerrillas from the OUN/B and other Eastern European fascist fighting by the Office of Policy Coordination (which morphed into the CIA’s Directorate of plans): “. . . . Frustration over Truman’s 1948 election victory over Dewey (which they blamed on the “Jewish vote”) impelled Dulles and his protégé Richard Nixon to work toward the realization of the fascist freedom fighter presence in the Republican Party’s ethnic outreach organization. As a young congressman, Nixon had been Allen Dulles’s confidant. . . .
. . . . Vice President Nixon’s secret political war of Nazis against Jews in American politics was never investigated at the time. The foreign language-speaking Croatians and other Fascist émigré groups had a ready-made network for contacting and mobilizing the Eastern European ethnic bloc. There is a very high correlation between CIA domestic subsidies to Fascist ‘freedom fighters’ during the 1950’s and the leadership of the Republican Party’s ethnic campaign groups. The motive for the under-the-table financing was clear: Nixon used Nazis to offset the Jewish vote for the Democrats. . . .
. . . . In 1952, Nixon had formed an Ethnic Division within the Republican National Committee. Displaced fascists, hoping to be returned to power by an Eisenhower-Nixon ‘liberation’ policy signed on with the committee. In 1953, when Republicans were in office, the immigration laws were changed to admit Nazis, even members of the SS. They flooded into the country. Nixon himself oversaw the new immigration program. [This is a Republican pro-immigration program–D.E.] . . .”
The key figures in the CFF became the cream of the Reagan administration. ” . . . . As a young movie actor in the early 1950s, Reagan was employed as the public spokesperson for an OPC front named the ‘Crusade for Freedom.’ Reagan may not have known it, but 99 percent for the Crusade’s funds came from clandestine accounts, which were then laundered through the Crusade to various organizations such as Radio Liberty, which employed Dulles’s Fascists. Bill Casey, who later became CIA director under Ronald Reagan, also worked in Germany after World War II on Dulles’ Nazi ‘freedom fighters’ program. When he returned to New York, Casey headed up another OPC front, the International Rescue Committee, which sponsored the immigration of these Fascists to the United States. Casey’s committee replaced the International Red Cross as the sponsor for Dulles’s recruits. . . .
. . . . It was [George H.W.] Bush who fulfilled Nixon’s promise to make the ‘ethnic emigres’ a permanent part of Republican politics. In 1972, Nixon’s State Department spokesman confirmed to his Australian counterpart that the ethnic groups were very useful to get out the vote in several key states. Bush’s tenure as head of the Republican National Committee exactly coincided with Laszlo Pasztor’s 1972 drive to transform the Heritage Groups Council into the party’s official ethnic arm. The groups Pasztor chose as Bush’s campaign allies were the émigré Fascists whom Dulles had brought to the United States. . . . ”
1. The program begins with the reading of a poem by Robinson Jeffers, that sums up Mr. Emory’s feelings on the events pursuant to Trump’s election, Charlottesville in particular.
“Be Angry at the Sun” by Robinson Jeffers
That public men publish falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must accept
Like the historical republics corruption and empire
Has been known for years.Be angry at the sun for setting
If these things anger you. Watch the wheel slope and turn,
They are all bound on the wheel, these people, those warriors.
This republic, Europe, Asia.Observe them gesticulating,
Observe them going down. The gang serves lies, the passionate
Man plays his part; the cold passion for truth
Hunts in no pack.You are not Catullus, you know,
To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar. You are far
From Dante’s feet, but even farther from his dirty
Political hatreds.Let boys want pleasure, and men
Struggle for power, and women perhaps for fame,
And the servile to serve a Leader and the dupes to be duped.
Yours is not theirs.
2. Reviewing discussion that has dominated much of the analysis presented in For The Record during the last several years, the program reviews the profound connections between Eddie The Friendly Spook (Snowden), his profound connections to Ron Paul and the latter’s decades-long interface with David Duke (prominent in Charlottesville) and the Neo-Confederate movement. Key elements of discussion are highlighted in FTR #756:
- Ron Paul’s son Rand Paul is leading the political charge over the Snowden “disclosures” (note the quotes.) Rand Paul is lining up as a GOP Presidential hopeful for 2016, looking to capitalize on libertarian populism as a vehicle for achieving victory. Again, expect to see L’Affaire Snowden play into the Republican theme of Obama/Democrats as sponsors of “big government” etc., etc. (Both the above-mentioned Peter Thiel and Glenn Greenwald–Snowden’s leaking journalist of choice–network with the Koch brothers funded Cato Institute, an epicenter of libertarian ideology.) (See text excerpts below.) Thiel is a major backer of Donald Trump and provided most of the financing for Ron Paul’s super PAC in 2012.
- We have noted in past discussion that one of the goals of this “op” is to alienate younger, more idealistic voters from the Democratic party. That appears to be one of Rand Paul’s stratagems in his campaign bid.
- Rand Paul’s key staffer Jack Hunter is a former chairman of The League of the South, a racist neo-Confederate organization that advocates the secession of the South and has links to the milieu behind the assassination of Martin Luther King. Sarah Palin’s political milieu also has links to the League of the South.
- Jack Hunter is the former blogger for–Ron Paul, Snowden’s Nazi Presidential candidate of choice.
- Snowden’s father Lon Snowden has formed a political organization with Bruce Fein, a Ron Paul backer in 2008. (See text excerpts below.)
- Bruce Fein is also, apparently, the lawyer for Edward Snowden as well, handling legal maneuvering for Eddie the Friendly Spook while he is in Russia. (See text excerpts below.)
- Fein was a counsel for Ron Paul’s Presidential campaign in 2012.
- Fein’s association with Lon Snowden appears to have derived from the elder Snowden’s networking with Rand Paul’s organization.
- Fein also networked with the German-based Schiller Institute, run by the fascist organization of Lyndon LaRouche.
- Fein also works on behalf of Turkish interests, acting in conjunction with forces alleged by Sibel Edmonds to be involved with money laundering on behalf of interests that include Al-Qaeda. The probability is strong that Fein operates in conjunction with the Erdogan government and–possibly–Fetullah Gulen.
- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange–joined at the hip with Eddie the Friendly Spook–has endorsed both Ron and Rand Paul.
- In a post, we note that Ron Paul will be attending a fund-raiser for a fascist splinter sect of Catholicism that endorses Holocaust denial, claims the Jews are trying to exterminate Gentiles and denies that the earth revolves around the sun. Paul’s association with this group goes back to 1998.
- Another post fleshes out Ron Paul’s racist associates and views.
- Yet another entry details some of the anti-democratic views of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, as well as its profound links to the neo-Confederate movement. Eddie Snowden’s economic views derive from the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
- We note that Walter Block, another of Paul’s supporters and a resident scholar at the Ludwig von Mises Institute is not only supportive of the neo-Confederate movement but advanced a theory of “voluntary slavery.” Voluntary slavery could be viewed as the ultimate collateralized debt obligation!
- The Von Mises Institute honored Otto von Habsburg, heir to the Autro-Hungarian Empire. His son Karl heads the UNPO, which (like the League of the South) seeks the fragmentation of the United States.
- Otto von Habsburg was a fascist, part of the Freedom for Rudolf Hess Society (Hess was one of Hitler’s top aides.)
3a. Inextricably linked with “Team Snowden,” Julian Assange is also a big Ron (and Rand) Paul fan. Assange and company are also profoundly linked to the international milieu of which David Duke is a part. We have covered Assange’s fascist and right-wing underpinnings in numerous programs. Some of the basic points of analysis are presented in the “Introduction” FTR #732:
“. . . . In addition to the fact that WikiLeaks’ servers were provided by the Swedish Nazi financier Carl Lundstrom, Pirate Bay is actually incorporated as an offshore front company in the Seychelles Islands. (Pirate Bay was sold to a Swedish gaming company, but the firm went bankrupt. The sale was supposed to be financed by the sale of GGF’s stock–which rose 170% the day before the deal was announced, raising charges of insider trading.)
According to Silicon Valley sources, the Pirate Bay/WikiLeaks relationship would permit the Underground Reich to access everything being sent to WikiLeaks!
In the wake of charges being filed against Assange in Sweden, it developed that WikiLeaks in fact employed individuals connected to the Swedish Nazi/antisemitic milieu! Handling much of their business with Sweden and Russia are Joran Jermas and his son (Johannes Wahlstrom), both anti-Semitic and part and parcel to the same Nazi and fascist milieu to which Carl Lundstrom belongs. . . . ”
3b. Further solidifying the links between WikiLeaks, the Swedish fascist milieu of Carl Lundstrom and the international network of which David Duke is a part, FTR #745 highlights the role of Jermas/Shamir in effecting the links between Assange and Pirate Bay. Note again, Duke’s links to this concatenation. Assange’s eugenicist views are detailed in this program as well.
From the program’s introduction: “Featuring critical information coming to us from the Swedish magazine Expo, founded by the late Stieg Larsson, the broadcast highlights the pivotal nature of the relationship between WikiLeaks, founder Julian Assange and a Nazi/fascist/anti-Semitic network operating out of Sweden.
Far from being “just another journalist” who began moving in the WikiLeaks orbit, Joran Jermas aka “Israel Shamir” appears to have had much to do with establishing WikiLeaks in Sweden. A celebratory Holocaust denier who has stated that it is the duty of all “good Christians and Muslims to deny the Holocaust,” Jermas and his son Johannes Wahlstrom (of similar political orientation) are part and parcel to the same Nazi/fascist milieu as Carl Lundstrom, whose money is the primary financial element in Pirate Bay.
Nor is Jermas/Shamir’s relationship to Assange a casual one. On the contrary, that association stretches back for years, with Assange viewing Jermas/Shamir as “clever” and seeking to employ him under a pseudonym, indicating that Assange knew exactly what sort of creature he was dealing with and how he would be perceived.
Indications are that an individual like Jermas/Shamir would not in any way be anathema to Assange. He has, himself, given indications of a similar mentality, recently engaging in obsessive Jew-baiting of perceived critics (including in-laws of editorial personnel of the BBC and The Guardian.) . . . .”
3c. When, during the 2016 campaign, WikiLeaks emerged as the full-blown, unofficial “cyber-dirty-tricks” element of the Trump campaign, (networking with long-time GOP dirty tricks specialist Roger Stone), Assange, once again, attacked his critics as “Jews.” We discussed this in FTR #917.
From that program’s introduction: “In FTR #‘s 724, 725, 732, 745 and 755, we have detailed the fascist and far right-wing ideology, associations and politics of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.
Lionized by the so-called progressive sector, as well as mainstream media sources like The New York Times and Der Spiegel, Assange’s true colors and fascist politics and associations have emerged on a larger stage.
As the Trump campaign evolves, a major alliance between “The Donald’s” Trumpenkampfverbande and the Assange organization has developed. Obviously serving as a dirty-tricks cadre for the GOP, Assange is working hard to destroy Hillary Clinton with leaked documents intended to torpedo her campaign.
Assange–not even an American citizen–is manifesting what we termed “technocratic fascism,” arrogating to himself the right to determine the results of the American Presidential election. Quoting from a seminal article by David Golumbia: ” . . . Hackers (“civic,” “ethical,” “white” and “black” hat alike), hacktivists, WikiLeaks fans [and Julian Assange et al–D. E.], Anonymous “members,” even Edward Snowden himself walk hand-in-hand with Facebook and Google in telling us that coders don’t just have good things to contribute to the political world, but that the political world is theirs to do with what they want, and the rest of us should stay out of it: the political world is broken, they appear to think (rightly, at least in part), and the solution to that, they think (wrongly, at least for the most part), is for programmers to take political matters into their own hands. . . .”
Beginning with analysis of the alleged Russian authorship of the hack of the Democratic National Committee on the eve of the Democratic Convention in July, we highlight disturbing indications that the hack is actually a false flag operation, setting the stage for some very dangerous developments.
In that context, we recall that one of the terms we have applied to Edward Snowden is “The Obverse Oswald.” We strongly suspect that Snowden, in Russia and working for a computer firm, may have had something to do with this.
The (frankly lame) framing of Russia for the DNC hack reminds us of the process of “painting Oswald Red.” We have covered this in numerous broadcasts, including The Guns of November, Part 1, AFA #15 and FTR #‘s 777 and 876. (An excellent book on the JFK assassination that presents an excellent breakdown of “the painting of Oswald Red” is JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters.)
Much of the broadcast highlights WikiLeaks’ efforts on behalf of the Trump campaign, detailing aspects of Assange’s presentation of Hillary Clinton’s e‑mails.
We note the powerful resonance between Assange’s presentations and elements of major right-wing attacks on Clinton.
Assange/WikiLeaks’ points of attack on Hillary Clinton:
- Focus on the Clinton Foundation, synchronizing with Koch brothers’ protege Peter Schweizer’s book Clinton Cash.
- Imply that Clinton murdered a DNC volunteer named Seth Rich. Trump dirty tricks specialist Roger Stone is writing a book blaming the Clintons for murdering JFK, Jr.–Hillary the murderer!
- Obliquely endorse Donald Trump.
- Disclose the Social Security and credit card numbers of Democratic Party contributors, opening them up to retribution. Stone threatened to disclose the hotel room numbers of anti-Trump GOP delegates, implying that they could be subject to violence. The WikiLeaks Clinton e‑mail dump: ” . . . . The emails include unencrypted, plain-text listings of donor emails addresses, home addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers, passport numbers, and credit card information. WikiLeaks proudly announced the data dump in a single tweet. . . .” Might this have had something to do with the murder of Seth Rich?
- Are apparently being conducted in concert with Roger Stone, with whom Assange is apparently in contact!
Further developing the right-wing, fascist and anti-Semitic aspects of Assange/WikiLeaks, we note that Assange responded to critics of his efforts against Clinton and on behalf of Trump/Stone with an anti-Semitic tweet.
Among Assange’s champions are the fascist National front in France and the U.K. Independence Party, which may well have set the stage for the fragmentation of Great Britain with the Brexit campaign.
It would come as a distasteful surprise to the Bernie Sanders crowd, to whom Assange has catered, to learn that Assange is a champion of free-market economics, synthesizing the Chicago and Austrian schools of economics.
Much of the latter part of the broadcast reviews information about Assange, Snowden and Citizen Greenwald’s right-wing and fascist manifestations.
Program Highlights Include:
- Comparison of the racist rhetoric of Snowden and Assange Presidential candidate of choice Ron Paul with that of Donald Trump.
- Citizen Greenwald’s anti-immigrant rhetoric.
- Review of the back-cover promotion of Serpent’s Walk in the context of the Trump campaign.
- A bullet-point analysis that connects many of the dots in this concatenation.
4. Like Snowden, Assange and WikiLeaks, Glenn Greenwald would be cast as “Alt-Right” if his true actions and inclinations were honestly evaluated and presented. Before turning to journalism, Greenwald was a lawyer who ran pro-bono legal interference for Nazi murderers.
5a. In addition to lionizing Snowden, Assange and Greenwald–all of whom are, basically, “Alt-Right,” the mainstream media, the so-called “alternative media” and the so-called “progressive” sector have oozed all over Pierre Omidyar and his media undertakings, which have been the foundation for Snowden, Greenwald and Assange’s media presentations.
Omidyar helped finance the coup in Ukraine, which brought OUN/B successor organizations to power and also aided in the rise of Narendra Modi in India. Modi’s BJP Party is a cat’s paw for the Hindu nationalist/fascist RSS, the organization that murdered Gandhi.
5b. Recent news has offered up a grimly instructive juxtaposition. As Glenn Greenwald and his associates in the Snowden “op” continue to bask in the glow of professional awards granted them, Dylann Roof has put into action the type of behavior advocated by Greenwald’s legal clients.
A big supporter of George W. Bush in the early part of the last decade, Greenwald became an attorney for, and a fellow-traveler of, some of the most murderous Nazis in the country.)
Exemplifying Greenwald is his association with Ron Paul (Snowden’s Presidential candidate of choice) and neo-Confederate apologists.
“Baltimore & The Walking Dead” by Mark Ames; Pando Daily; 5/1/2015.
. . . . So when Rand Paul went on Laura Ingraham’s radio program to blame Baltimore on black culture and values and “lack of fathers,” the libertarian whom Time called “the most interesting man in politics” was merely rehashing 25-year-old mainstream Republicrat bigotries, the very same bigoted, wrong assumptions that led to all the disastrous policies we’re now paying for today.
Which brings me to the Libertarians of 1992.
After Ferguson exploded last year, Libertarians positioned themselves as the only political force that had no blood on their hands, the only political force that was “principled” enough throughout the past few decades to offer the right analyses — and the right solutions — to the problems faced by people now rising up in Baltimore.
In 1992, the most famous libertarian of all, Ron Paul, was still between Congressional stints when [the riots in] Los Angeles erupted, but he did run a profitable libertarian newsletter, “The Ron Paul Political Report,” to keep his ideas alive. Shortly after the LA riots, Ron Paul put out a “Special Issue on Racial Terrorism”offering his libertarian analysis of what he termed black “terrorism”:
“The criminals who terrorize our cities—in riots and on every non-riot day—are not exclusively young black males, but they largely are. As children, they are trained to hate whites, to believe that white oppression is responsible for all black ills, to ‘fight the power,’ to steal and loot as much money from the white enemy as possible.
“The cause of the riots is plain: barbarism. If the barbarians cannot loot sufficiently through legal channels (i.e., the riots being the welfare-state minus the middle-man), they resort to illegal ones, to terrorism. Trouble is, few seem willing to stop them. The cops have been handcuffed. . . .
. . . .“We are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, but it is hardly irrational. Black men commit murders, rapes, robberies, muggings, and burglaries all out of proportion to their numbers.”
“I think we can safely assume that 95% of the black males in [major U.S. cities] are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.”A few months later, in October 1992, Dr. Paul explained how he taught his own family—presumably including his favorite son, Rand Paul—how to defend themselves and even murder what Dr. Paul called “hip-hop” carjackers, “the urban youth who play unsuspecting whites like pianos”:
“What can you do? More and more Americans are carrying a gun in the car. An ex-cop I know advises that if you have to use a gun on a youth, you should leave the scene immediately, disposing of the wiped off gun as soon as possible. Such a gun cannot, of course, be registered to you, but one bought privately (through the classifieds, for example.).
Beyond that, the Libertarian Party’s political solution to African-American poverty and injustice was to abolish all welfare programs, public schools, and anti-discrimination laws like the Civil Rights Act. This was the solution promoted by an up-and-coming libertarian, Jacob Hornberger—who this week co-hosted an event with RON PAUL and GLENN GREENWALD. Hornberger believes that 19th century antebellum slave-era America was “the freest society in history”. . .
6a.We review analysis of the Crusade For Freedom–the covert operation that brought Third Reich alumni into the country and also supported their guerilla warfare in Eastern Europe, conducted up until the early 1950’s. Conceived by Allen Dulles, overseen by Richard Nixon, publicly represented by Ronald Reagan and realized in considerable measure by William Casey, the CFF ultimately evolved into a Nazi wing of the GOP.
. . . . Frustration over Truman’s 1948 election victory over Dewey (which they blamed on the “Jewish vote”) impelled Dulles and his protégé Richard Nixon to work toward the realization of the fascist freedom fighter presence in the Republican Party’s ethnic outreach organization. As a young congressman, Nixon had been Allen Dulles’s confidant. They both blamed Governor Dewey’s razor-thin loss to Truman in the 1948 presidential election on the Jewish vote. When he became Eisenhower’s vice president in 1952, Nixon was determined to build his own ethnic base. . . .
. . . . Vice President Nixon’s secret political war of Nazis against Jews in American politics was never investigated at the time. The foreign language-speaking Croatians and other Fascist émigré groups had a ready-made network for contacting and mobilizing the Eastern European ethnic bloc. There is a very high correlation between CIA domestic subsidies to Fascist ‘freedom fighters’ during the 1950’s and the leadership of the Republican Party’s ethnic campaign groups. The motive for the under-the-table financing was clear: Nixon used Nazis to offset the Jewish vote for the Democrats. . . .
. . . . In 1952, Nixon had formed an Ethnic Division within the Republican National Committee. Displaced fascists, hoping to be returned to power by an Eisenhower-Nixon ‘liberation’ policy signed on with the committee. In 1953, when Republicans were in office, the immigration laws were changed to admit Nazis, even members of the SS. They flooded into the country. Nixon himself oversaw the new immigration program. As Vice President, he even received Eastern European Fascists in the White House. . .
6b. More about the composition of the cast of the CFF: Note that the ascension of the Reagan administration was essentially the ascension of the Nazified GOP, embodied in the CFF milieu. Reagan (spokesman for CFF) was President; George H.W. Bush (for whom CIA headquarters is named) was the Vice President; William Casey (who handled the State Department machinations to bring these people into the United States) was Reagan’s campaign manager and later his CIA director.
. . . . As a young movie actor in the early 1950s, Reagan was employed as the public spokesperson for an OPC front named the ‘Crusade for Freedom.’ Reagan may not have known it, but 99 percent for the Crusade’s funds came from clandestine accounts, which were then laundered through the Crusade to various organizations such as Radio Liberty, which employed Dulles’s Fascists. Bill Casey, who later became CIA director under Ronald Reagan, also worked in Germany after World War II on Dulles’ Nazi ‘freedom fighters’ program. When he returned to New York, Casey headed up another OPC front, the International Rescue Committee, which sponsored the immigration of these Fascists to the United States. Casey’s committee replaced the International Red Cross as the sponsor for Dulles’s recruits. Confidential interviews, former members, OPC; former members, British foreign and Commonwealth Office. . . .
. . . . . It was Bush who fulfilled Nixon’s promise to make the ‘ethnic emigres’ a permanent part of Republican politics. In 1972, Nixon’s State Department spokesman confirmed to his Australian counterpart that the ethnic groups were very useful to get out the vote in several key states. Bush’s tenure as head of the Republican National Committee exactly coincided with Laszlo Pasztor’s 1972 drive to transform the Heritage Groups Council into the party’s official ethnic arm. The groups Pasztor chose as Bush’s campaign allies were the émigré Fascists whom Dulles had brought to the United States. . . .
The Political Implications of the UFO Phenomenon and the "ET" Myth
Oh look at that: It turns out Christopher Cantwell, one of the more prominent and outspoken Nazis at the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” march, who sells t‑shirts on his website with the words “Radical Agenda” on the front and a picture of someone being thrown out of a helicopter on the back (presumably a reference the Pinochet government’s murder of leftists), has had articled published by the far-right Libertarian Instituto Mises Brasil think tank funded by Koch Brothers:
“News that Mises Institute, founded in 2007 and part of the Libertarian Atlas Network, has published material by Augusto Pinochet fanboy Cantwell shouldn’t actually be that surprising. In 1927, Mises himself argued that Fascism had saved European Civilisation, and “The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history”. Meanwhile, Atlas, which has been built over decades to distort Latin American politics, is funded by the Koch Brothers (a family with their own distinguished Nazi history).”
Yep, the Koch network has been quietly financing and promoting fascism and Libertarian in Brazil for years. And it’s not just through the Instituto Mises Brasil think tank. The proto-fascist Movimento Brasil Livre is also part of the network, along with Students for Liberty:
Students for It’s also worthing recall that Edward Snowden spoke at a Students for Liberty conference in 2015.
And in case in wasn’t obvious that these “pro-Freedom” groups are only interesting in freedom for fascists and oligarchs, note the talk of a “Ukrainian scenario” in Brazil if Dilma Rousseff didn’t leave office:
And, of course, during the drive to push Rousseff out of office it was MBL that was getting more media attention in the international press than almost anyone else:
So will Cantwell get to write moor columns for Koch network now that he’s facing prison time? We’ll see, but if not, there’s still plenty more like-minded people ready and willing to spread the gospel of Koch-style freedom.
My adventure being slandered in USA Today thanks to the Underground Reich backed German Marshall Fund and It’s Alliance for Securing Democracy. Spitfire List was also featured on their Hamilton 68 Project. Also The Nazi groups that made up Charlottesville are discussed.
http://anti-imperialist‑u.blogspot.com/2017/09/exposing-underground-reich-part‑3.html
A great interview with Stephen Singular on the Order the Murder of Alan Berg, Trump and Charlottesville.
https://porkinspolicyreview.com/2017/09/20/porkins-policy-radio-episode-109-stephen-singular-talked-to-death-the-murder-of-alan-berg/
Oh what a surprise: It turns out Roy Moore — the far-right theocratic former Alabama Supreme Court Justice who was removed from the state Supreme Court twice (in 2003 for refusing to remove a Ten Commandments statue he placed in the court house and again in 2016 for continuing to enforce a state ban on same-sex marriage) and who just won the GOP primary in the race to fill Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s old seat — hosted a pro-Confederacy ‘Secession Day’ event at his foundation. For two years in a row:
“The events, held at the Foundation for Moral Law’s building in 2009 and 2010, promoted a history of the Civil War sympathetic to the Confederate cause, in which the conflict is presented as one fought over the federal government violating the South’s sovereignty as opposed to one fought chiefly over the preservation of slavery.”
Surprise.
And of course, this “Secession Day” event didn’t just include far right figures like Chuck Baldwin (who railed against ‘Zionist control of America’ in 2015), but also a board member of the League of the South:
The South was right and Confederate leaders weren’t racist. That’s Chuck Baldwin, a pre-‘Alt-Right’ master far-right troll.
And note how these events first came to light when Moore was running for Governor. He apparently thought this was good politics at the time. And the guy who was head of Moore’s foundation that owned the building that hosted the event is now Moore’s campaign manager:
It makes you wonder what kind of extremist events Moore’s is going to be hosting this time around. He’s not going to be lacking options.
With Tropical Storm Nate threatening to become Hurricane Nate and careening towards the coast of Alabama, the obvious question to ask at this point is whether or not God is angry at Alabama for some reason? It’s an obvious question not because it’s a reasonable question. No, it’s an obvious question because the new GOP Senate nominee, Roy Moore, is the same guy who said 9/11 may have been diving punishment upon America for allowing homosexuality and abortion. So now that Alabama might be facing a hurricane, we’re forced to ask, did Alabama do something to upset God?
Well, remember those reports about Alabama GOP Senate nominee Roy Moore’s foundation hosting “Secession Day” events back in 2009 and 2010? Talking Points Memo has a long new piece on Moore’s ties to the secessionist/neo-Confederate movement and it turns out his ties to the movement are a lot deeper than just hosting those two events. How deep? So deep that Moore’s top financial supporter over the course of his political, who has donated more than $600k to Moore’s races, is Michael Peroutka of the League of the South, a group dedicated to secession and creating a theocratic white supremacist Confederacy 2.0.
So is nominating someone like that as a majority party Senate nominee enough to prompt a divinely nasty storm? It’s the kind of question we shouldn’t actually have to ask, but now that Moore is the nominee and might actually become a US senator we kind of have to ask it:
“The sum total of Peroutka’s donations to Moore, his causes and campaigns: at least $622,000 since 2004.”
$622,000 since 2004. And yet when confronted about Peroutka’s views and big donations Moore claimed to know nothing about who Peroutka was or what he believes:
Taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from secessionists and then laughably lying about. This is the guy who just won the GOP Senate nomination by acting like he was the ‘anti-Establishment’ candidate.
And Moore isn’t the only one to publicly disavow Peroutka and the League of the South’s views. Peroutka himself tried the same old song and dance during his *successful* run for a county commission seat in Anne Arundel County, Maryland as a Republican. All of a sudden:
““It’s pretty transparent bullshit that he couldn’t see racism in the League of the South until he ran for office,” said Miranda Blue, who has long tracked Peroutka and the League for Right Wing Watch and the liberal group People for the American Way.”
Yep, that’s a pretty transparent giant pile bullshit Michael Peroutka is hiding behind. A pile stacked on top of the transparent pile Roy Moore is using for cover to hide the fact that he wants to use religion to break up the US and create a brutal white nationalist theocracy.
That sure sounds like a reason for Alabama fear some divinely directed high winds. At least, it’s a reason according to Roy Moore’s logic.
@Pterrafractyl–
The thing that continues to stick in my craw about all of this is the fact that Snowden/Assange/Greenwald et al are inextricably linked to these same forces.
They are, of course, “shocked, shocked” at the recent events at Charlottesville.
Progressive physicians, heal thyselves.
Best,
Dave
Here’s another fun chapter from Roy Moore’s political history: That time he led the charge against removing language about “separate schools for white and colored children” and allowing poll taxes from the Alabama constitution. And won. In 2004. It’s not exactly ancient history.
But Moore and his defenders want you to know that he didn’t oppose removing the language for racist reasons. No, Moore opposed removing the language from Alabama’s constitution because that would have also involved removing language saying no Alabaman has a constitution “right to education or training at public expense.” Moore asserted that stripping this language out was a going to lead to tax increases. Yes, concerns that kids would possibly gain a right to a public education was the nice explanation for why Moore and his allies fought against removing the segregationist language from Alabama’s constitution:
“The most prominent politician besides Moore battling the amendment was his protege and former staffer, Tom Parker, who was running for the Alabama Supreme Court at the time. During that campaign, Parker spoke at an event celebrating Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan leader, hosted by opponents of the civil rights movement, and handed out Confederate battle flags at the funeral of a woman believed to have been the last living widow of a Confederate soldier.”
Yep, the most prominent politicians other than Moore battling the amendment, Tom Parker, was Moore’s protege and former staffer. Parker was running for a seat on the Alabama Supreme Court at the time and won. And he’s still around, announcing his intentions to run for Chief Justice of Alabama Supreme Court in April of this year.
But note how even the two former staffers of GOP governor Bob Riley want to assure us that Moore isn’t really a racist. He’s just more than happy to court the backing of the racists. No, Moore is just an anti-tax ideologue who hates taxes so much he had to defend segregationist language to do it. And that gives us a hint at the defence Moore is going to use when all these things from his past are brought up on the campaign trail: He’s not a racist...he just hates taxes so much that is might sometimes come across as racism:
“I’m not a racist! I just hate that Big Government!”
That’s going to be the GOP’s cover-story for Moore. The same old cover-story the GOP has been whistling for decades...
just watched Citizen 4. Eddy is such a nice boy, like a puppy!
@Ken Lee–
Puppies, however, don’t say things like this: The elderly “wouldn’t be fucking helpless if you weren’t sending them fucking checks to sit on their ass and lay in hospitals all day.” (https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-831-the-elderly-wouldnt-be-fucking-help%C2%ADless-if-you-werent-send%C2%ADing-them-fucking-checks-to-sit-on-their-ass-and-lay-in-hos%C2%ADpi%C2%ADtals-all-day-the-gops-as/)
Bad Dog!
Best,
Dave
Here’s an interesting analysis of the available evidence of the influences and possible motive behind the recent shooting if the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland. The shooting was carried about by Jarrod Romas, a man with a long history of grievances with the newspaper going back to the paper’s reporting of a legal case against Ramos. Surprise! It looks like Ramos was influenced by the theocratic neo-Confederate ideology espoused by League of the South.
Ramos also previously interacted with the author of the following piece, Jonathan Hutson. Hutson, a former investigative journalist, had a story written about him in 2015 in the Capital Gazette about how Hutson had observed threats made on Twitter about by a white supremacist in Montana against the communications director for the Brady Campaign and Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The threats escalating to threatening to shoot up a school and kill Jewish leaders. Hutson compiled the threats and informed the FBI. Ramos began harassing Hutson in response to that story. Hutson had also been researching and writing about the League of the South.
Hutson has continued to examine Ramos’s social media feeds and made a number of observations that would appear to give insights into what drove Ramos to do the shootings. First, it appears that Ramos is a believer in the kind of worldview expressed by League of the South leaders Mike Peroutka and Michael Hill, where a Biblical fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible is the only REAL law and individuals have a right to righteously enforce their interpretation of Biblical law on their own.
Hill has also called for the formation of death squads to target journalists, elected officials, and other members of “the elite”. Hill has also called for young men of “Christendom” to become “citizen-soldiers” to destroy the “galloping tyranny” of our time.
Mike Peroutka was, until recently, a locally elected official on the Anne Arundel County Council, and one of the only politicians Ramos tweeted about (he was supportive of Peroutka). The other politician was Donald Trump (who Ramos was also supportive of).
Intriguingly, the author notes a possible pair of events that may have catalyzed the shooting: Three days before the shooting, President Trump once again demonized member of the media as “enemies of the people,” at a big outdoor rally in California. The next day, Mike Peroutka lost his 2018 re-election bid in the Republican primary. So while we don’t know if these events helped catalyzed Ramos, as Hutson makes clear, Ramos’s years of tweets and comments make it clear that Ramos was an ideological fellow travelor of Peroutka and believes that “elites” like journalists deserved to be killed according to a ‘higher law’.
Hutson also one one additional key influence Ramos’s social media posts reveal: the “Berserk” bloody anime movie. He made numerous references to Berserk in his posts, including the last tweet made minutes before the shooting. He even described himself as playing a role in the world of “Berserk”, a world that includes vigilante “hands of God”.
So while Ramos was obviously an unhinged individual, the nature of his extremism wasn’t immediately clear. But when you take a closer look at the guy, all the evidence indicates he was inspired by ideologies that exalt the idea of righteous lone wolf vigilantes killing those who violate God’s law, which just happens to be the ideology of the League of the South:
“What I learned about Ramos, as I followed his Twitter trail, reveals as strange a worldview as one could imagine informing a mass-murder scenario. There are at least two main influences evident in Ramos’ tweets. One is a worldview taken from the theocratic wing of the alt-right, and the other comes from a violent anime subculture centered around a popular manga, anime and film series titled “Berserk.” Taken together, they provide a Rosetta Stone that allows us to translate the significance of two religious visions, in relation to each other, as they existed in Ramos’ mind.”
Neo-Confederate theocratic lone wolf vigilantism of the League of the South and a passion for bloody anime involving vigilantes dealing righteous justice from the hand of God. It’s quite a combination of major worldview influences. But that’s what one finds when you examine Ramos’s social media content. He was sharing this with the world, even if he wasn’t explicit about it:
As Hutson points out, the killing of journalists is something League of the South leader Michael Hill has openly called for as part of his call for the formation of death squads to kill journalists, elected officials, and “the elite”:
Over a seven year period of tweets, Ramos only references two politicians: Mike Peroutka and Donald Trump:
And while Ramos doesn’t appear to be affiliated with any political party, that shouldn’t be too surprising when we learn that he was immersed in ideologies that promotes lone wolf violence. He probably wasn’t going to be very interested in party politics:
Ramos’s tweet in reference to a 16th century church court case, Mitford v. Shaw, that found defamation a violation of God’s law, was particularly telling about what motivated the attack on the Capital Gazette given that Ramos’s primary complaint was that they defamed his character:
And that desire to see ecclesiastical courts replace the American judicial system just happens to be part of Peroutka’s and Hill’s worldview. They believe church courts are the only valid court (as long as they enforce their particular interpretation of Biblical law):
And other than his tweets defending Peroutka, the only other politician Ramos tweeted about, and defended, was President Trump:
And as Hutson observes, three days before the attack on the Cpatial Gazette, President Trump once again called the media the “enemy of the people” and the next day Mike Peroutka lost his primary bid:
So that all is probably the best explanation we’re going to get for understanding what drove the guy to attack a newspaper. It certainly explains the motivation.
Then there’s there other influence that clearly shaped Ramos: “Berserk”, a bloody anime show and movie series that features “hand of God” vigilante assassins. Three minutes before the attack, he tweeted out a reference to Berserk:
So, thanks to Hutson’s research in Ramos, we have a much better idea of what motivated this attack. It appears to have been driven by a toxic mix of personal grievance and religous zeal. A religious zeal shared and promoted by figures like Hill who has called for death squads to murder journalists they disagree with.
This is highly disturbing, especially in the context of the recent FBI report on Stephen Paddock that completely downplayed his far right Sovereign Citizen views: Following a series of stabbings of counter-protestors that took place during a neo-Nazi rally in Sacramento in 2016, the FBI opened up a domestic terror investigation...against the counter-protestors. Specifically, the anti-fascist group By Any Means Necessary (Bamn) was subsequently survielled as part of this domestic terror investigation. The neo-Nazi Traditionalist Worker party (TWP) and the Golden State Skinheads faced no investigation.
This is revealed in a records request by the government transparency non-profit Property of the People. None of the neo-Nazis involved with the stabbings have been charged. Given what appears to be some sort of favoritism towards the neo-Nazis, perhaps the most disturbing aspect of it all was how the internal report characterized the groups behind the rally: “In 2016, law enforcement learned that the Ku Klux Klan would be holding a rally at the State Capitol Building … The KKK consisted of members that some perceived to be supportive of a white supremacist agenda.” Yep, according to the FBI’s internal report on the domestic terror investigation into the anti-fascist stabbing victims, the KKK is merely perceived by some to have a white supremacist agenda:
“The FBI launched its terrorism investigation and surveillance of Bamn after white supremacists armed with knives faced off with hundreds of counter-protesters, including Bamn activists, at a June 2016 neo-Nazi rally in Sacramento. Although numerous neo-Nazis were suspected of stabbing at least seven anti-fascists in the melee, leaving some with life-threatening injuries, the FBI chose to launch a inquiry into the activities of the leftwing protesters.”
Yep, a bunch of neo-Nazis stab at least seven anti-fascist counter-protestors and the FBI chose to investigate the anti-fascists. Specifically, the FBI characterized its investigation as a domestic terror anarchist extremism case. The KKK, on the other hand, was characterized in the report as a group that “some perceived to be supportive of a white supremacist agenda”. And that’s what makes this case so disturbing: the anti-fascists got investigated as domestic terrorist at the same time the KKK, a group with an extensive record of real domestic terrorism, wasn’t also investigated and was characterized as merely being a group that ‘some people’ perceive to be supportive of white supremacy. And the report doesn’t even specify that it was the anti-fascists who were stabbed by the neo-Nazis. It reads like a KKK member wrote the report:
Adding criminal insult to actual injury, one of the women stabbed is now facing state charges of assault and rioting:
The specific reasons for the investigation appeared to be “potential violations of federal law”, including “conspiracy against rights” and “riots”, citing the BAMN website that used slogans like “SMASH FASCISM!” and “NO ‘FREE SPEECH’ FOR FASCISTS!” So it appears that the common anti-fascist rhetoric of “shutting down” neo-Nazi rallies with counter-protests is now being used as a legal pretext for opening investigations into these groups:
And while the FBI’s investigation didn’t end up finding any criminal activity by BAMN, it’s notable that the FBI report mentioned the possibility that these legal counter-protests could invite a violence or be used a means of targeting law enforcement, which is pretty twisted in the context of not investigating the neo-Nazis who did the actual stabbings, especially given the extensive history of the far right attacks on law enforcement:
And it wasn’t that long ago that the justice department criticized the FBI for using non-violent civil disobedience and speculation of future crimes to justify terrorism investigations against domestic advocacy groups. That was just in 2010:
Another thing to keep in mind with this story is the recent report on the DHS policy analyst, Ian M. Smith, being a closet white supremacist and secretly hanging out with TWP members. Is it possible this story of the FBI’s shockingly light treatment of stabbing neo-Nazis reflects another instance of white supremacists infiltrating federal agencies? Let’s hope not, but considering the characterization of the KKK in that FBI report it’s hard to rule out the possibility. Although given the FBI’s long history of cracking down on civil rights movements it’s not like we need secret neo-Nazi infiltrators as a plausible explanation.
So the KKK and TWP hold a neo-Nazi rally. Anti-fascist counter-protestors show up. The FBI and local law enforcement decide to charge the counter-protestors. The FBI opens a domestic terror investigation into them. And the FBI report downplays both the white supremacist nature of these groups, their history as real domestic terror outfits, and the fact it was neo-Nazis who did the stabbings. It would all be astonishing if there wasn’t so much historic precedent. So it’s really just depressing.
Here’s the latest iteration of a story that we’ve seen a disturbing number of times before: It appears that the US Department of Homeland Security quietly disbanded the group of intelligence analysts at the Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) who were dedicated to the threat of domestic white supremacist terrorism.
Recall that it was the Office of Intelligence and Analysis that put out a report in 2009 warning that a new black president would inflame white supremacist groups. The report was leaked to the press and created a massive right-wing backlash in Congress resulting in DHS rescinding the report and dissolving that team. It’s unclear if that team was subsequently reformed and now redissolved or if this is a new unit that was dissolved.
Also recall how, in February of 2017, less than two weeks after taking office, the Trump administration announced that it was changing the DHS’s “Countering Violent Extremism” program to focus it exclusively on Islamic terrorism and no longer cover white supremacists. They even changed the name of the program to the “Countering Islamic Extremism” program. So are just some of the examples of the US government intentionally removing focus from white supremacist domestic terror in recent years.
And how we have this new example. So what is the justification for disbanding the Office of Intelligence and Analysis’s white supremacist group? Well, based on the vague statements from DHS officials, they assure us that there hasn’t actually been any reduction in focus on white supremacists. Instead, they got rid of this unit because they wanted to reduce redundancy with the FBI and they argue that the FBI should be the ones handling this. The official response appears to be that this unit was redundant so therefore there hasn’t actually been a reduction in focus on white supremacists because the FBI is doing it anyway. So DHS basically declared that there should only be one government agency that watching out for white supremacy terrorism and it shouldn’t be DHS:
“The group in question was a branch of analysts in DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A). They focused on the threat from homegrown violent extremists and domestic terrorists. The analysts there shared information with state and local law enforcement to help them protect their communities from these threats. ”
Yep, so long to the DHS unit dedicated to sharing information about domestic terror threats with state and local law enforcement. The Trump administration apparently took the opportunity to disband the unit during a reorganization of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis least year:
But DHS assures us that this is no concern. They were merely reducing overlap with the FBI. So it was actually just about bureaucratic efficiency! It’s the kind of spin far right groups, themselves generally connoisseurs of mass deception, doubt appreciate:
Not surprisingly, that explanation doesn’t appear to be accepted by the actual law enforcement officials who have noticed a stark drop off in the intelligence reports from this office in recent months:
Don’t forget that the local law enforcement officials are the ones who are going to have to actually respond to future domestic terror acts, like the four officers shot when responding to the massacre at the Pittsburgh synagogue. So when the federal government decides to stop this kind of analysis and the sharing of this intelligence with local law enforcement and make it harder for authorities to stop an attack before it happens they really are increasing the chances those same local authorities are going to be facing a these extremists when responding to a terrorist act.
So the Trump administration’s DHS appears to have decided that having both DHS and the FBI focused on domestic white supremacist terror was redundant and needed to be cut back. It raises the obvious question about the kinds of focus the FBI has on white supremacist terror. And as the following article unsurprisingly reveals, the FBI considers the threat of white supremacist groups to be, in the words of one retired agent, “the lowest priority”:
“Five veterans of the Department of Homeland Security told The Daily Beast that DHS, created in the wake of al Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks, has long considered far-right radicalism to be the FBI’s purview. But the FBI has competing priorities. Four bureau veterans interviewed by The Daily Beast gave a range of responses, spanning from either considering it important but less so than fighting jihadist terror to, in the words of one retiree, “the lowest priority.” (The FBI, for its part, insisted to The Daily Beast that its “top priority remains protecting the United States from terrorist attacks, both international and domestic.”)”
The FBI, now effectively the sole federal agency tasked with tracking white supremacist threats, just isn’t that concerned about white supremacists. That was the assessment of four FBI veterans:
And according to former DHS officials, it was the right-wing uproar over the DHS’s 2009 report on far right domestic extremism that appears to have taught DHS the lesson that even talking about right-wing violence is a political risk. You have to wonder to what extent the FBI’s lack of concern about white supremacists as also adopted by seeing that political backlash vs being a reflection of long-standing biases at the bureau. Presumably both are contributing factors:
But it’s hard to ignore that while this has long been an issue for both the FBI and DHS, it’s gotten worse under Trump. Much worse. Thanks, in part, to decisions like dissolving the DHS focused on white supremacy. But it’s worth noting a column written in August of 2017 by Daryl Johnson, the former head of the I&A unit that put out the 2009 DHS report that triggered the initial dissolution of this unit, on the nature of one of the growing dangers of white supremacist domestic terror during the Trump administration. Johnson makes a key observation about one of other ways the Trump administration is fueling white supremacist violence: Trump’s frequent campaign-style rallies appear to be literally unifying the American far right, with groups that in the past would squabble with each other finding unity around their love of Trump:
“Neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members, militia extremists, and other radical right-wing zealots march side-by-side at pro-Trump rallies across the country. Trump’s endorsement of the border wall, the travel ban, mass deportations of illegal immigrants — these ideas were touted on white supremacist message boards merely 10 years ago. Now they’re being put forth as official U.S. policy. Such controversial plans have placated white supremacists and anti-government extremists and will draw still more sympathetic individuals toward these extremist causes along with the sort of violent acts that too often follow, like Charlottesville.”
Neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members, militia extremists, and other right-wing zealots marching side-by-side at Trump rallies is doing something the far right has been trying to do for decades. And they aren’t just uniting. They’re also infiltrating the government:
And this was the warning from the guy who wrote the 2009 DHS report that created such a fierce right-wing backlash that his group was dissolved.
So, to summarize, the officials at DHS appear to have determined that it would be redundant for DHS to continue the work of watching out for white supremacist domestic terrorists because that’s the FBI’s job and the FBI has determined that it’s the lowest priority. And the “Unite the Right” rally of Charlottesville was also redundant because Trump rallies are effective operating as presidential “Unite the Right” rallies all over the country. So the Trump administration has indeed achieved a new level of government efficiency but it’s unfortunately an efficiency at promoting white supremacist domestic terror.
President Trump once against threatened to declare antifa a domestic terrorist organization on Saturday. Over Twitter, of course. This was apparently in response to a recent push in Senate by Republican Senators Ted Cruz and Bill Cassidy to do just that.
It’s a particularly ominous threat heading into the 2020 election cycle given the incredible opportunities the anonymous structure of antifa poses for far right provocateurs to infiltrate the group and commit violence. At this point it’s clear that Trump’s 2020 election chances hinge on successfully executing a full-spectrum dirty tricks campaign, much like 2016. So when Trump signals that he’s considering declaring Antifa a domestic terror organization it’s a threat that should be taken seriously. It’s just too big of an opportunity for him to pass up, especially because the anonymous nature of antifa would give the government an excuse to accuse a much broader swathe of the left as being antifa members.
The tweet didn’t get much attention in the US. Trump’s racist attack on Baltimore that same day grabbed all attention.
Interestingly, as the following article notes, Trump’s threat prompted big backlash in Germany, where the #IchbinAntifa (“I am Antifa”) hashtag began trending on Twitter on Sunday. A number of left-wing politicians joined in on the Twitter rebukes. As we should expect, Germany’s far right celebrated Trump’s proposal and called for Germany to declare antifa a domestic terror group too. AfD parliamentarian Jürgen Braun called for investigations of those using the #IchbinAntifa hashtag, writing on Twitter, “if Antifa is finally classified as a terrorist organization in this country as well, then the currently popular hashtag ‘I am Antifa’ offers up a very rich pool of investigative leads in the fight against terrorism.”
So if we see some sort of antifa violence erupt in the US between now and the November 2020 elections, it’s going to be important to demand evidence that the person committing that violence isn’t actually a far right troll infiltrator because at this point the far right, led by Trump, is strongly signaling that making anti-fascism a form of domestic terrorism is the next phase of their power grab:
““If Antifa is finally classified as a terrorist organization in this country as well, then the currently popular hashtag ‘I am Antifa’ offers up a very rich pool of investigative leads in the fight against terrorism,” AfD parliamentarian Jürgen Braun wrote on Twitter.”
That’s how the neo-Nazi AfD predictably responded to German left-wing politicians pointing out the necessity of embracing anti-fascism. Portray people who express an opposition to fascism as domestic terrorists who should be investigated. And as the following article notes, one of the biggest consequences of declaring antifa a domestic terrorist group is that it would vastly expand the investigative powers that can be used against anyone affiliated with the group. So a single antifa infiltrator (or genuine useful idiot) could lead to the investigation of a huge number of people on the political left. The article also notes the absurd legal reasoning that has prevented all sorts of far right groups from being labeled domestic terrorist organizations despite the fact that there isn’t a single person who has been killed by an antifa member and yet far right zealots are committing a mass shootings on a regular basis: in order for someone to be declared a terrorist under US law, they need to be part of a group. So if a neo-Nazi can carry out a domestic terror attack (that was heavily inspired by the broader far right) but make it look like a “lone wolf” attack, that isn’t considered terrorism and the groups associated with those neo-Nazi attackers get to avoid the “domestic terror” designation:
“Importantly, declaring a suspect a domestic terrorist isn’t just a rhetorical gambit: A formal classification of “domestic terrorist” bestows a new class of investigatory powers on the Department of Justice (DOJ). As NPR explained in the aftermath of the Charlottesville incident, “domestic terrrorism” isn’t a criminal act itself but a categorization that, under federal law, defines “acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law” that appears “intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population.” In the eyes of the United States government, terrorism is necessarily an organizational crime rather than a “lone wolf” one, and requires a more aggressive investigatory response. While federal law does indeed specify a number of specific terrorism-related crimes, it’s this separate designation that allows the government “to investigate not only an individual suspect, but also any group the suspect may be affiliated with.””
Yep, as long as neo-Nazis don’t declare, “I commit this mass murder in the name of [insert neo-Nazi group here]!” they end up being labeled “lone wolves” who just somehow independently got radicalized and decided to commit these acts on their own, the neo-Nazi groups that drove them to these acts get to avoid the domestic terror designation and those organizations get to avoid getting investigated. And this loophole isn’t available to antifa because they don’t pretend to be a bunch of lone wolves like the neo-Nazis do:
In light of this loophole, it’s worth recalling the antics by the attribution of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting by the neo-Nazi former student Nikolas Cruz. Initially, we had a local neo-Nazi group, the Republic of Florida (ROF), claiming Cruz was affiliated with them. In the weeks before the shooting, the leader of ROF, Jordan Jereb, was posting on the ‘Alt Right’ social media site about a strategy for using the ROF militia to create “lone wolf activists”. But after that initial admission, Jereb insisted that he hadn’t spoken to Cruz in “some time” and emphasized to the press that his group was not a terrorist organization. That’s the game the neo-Nazis are playing with wild success.
So given that the far right is successfully exploiting a legal ‘lone wolf’ loophole to carryout one mass murder rampage after another while avoiding domestic terror group designations at the same to the far right President is considering declaring antifa a domestic terror group as part of a larger crackdown on the Left, it’s worth noting another story that came out of Germany on Saturday: Newly uncovered evidence makes it even clearer that Reichstag fire was as Nazi provocation:
“In his testimony, the former paramilitary Hans-Martin Lennings, who died in 1962, said he took Van der Lubbe from an infirmary to the Reichstag where they noticed a strange burning smell on arrival.”
That was the testimony from 1955 that somehow got lost for the last 64 years. And Hans-Martin Lennings wasn’t the only person who realized that Van der Lubbe arrived after the fire started. There was a group:
So a whole group of people knew the official story about the cause of the Reichstag fire was false, but they were forced to stay silent. Then we have this 1955 testimony, after the Nazis lost, that also just somehow got lost for decades. It’s a powerful lesson from history about the ability of corrupt governments to stage provocations to declare their opposition illegal and cover it up for decades. A history lesson made all the more powerful at this moment by being tragically topical too.