WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE.

Mr. Emory’s entire life’s work is avail­able on a 64GB flash dri­ve, avail­able for a con­tri­bu­tion of $65.00 or more (to KFJC). (This is a new feature–the old, 32GB flash­drive will not hold the new mate­r­i­al. Click Here to obtain Dav­e’s 46+ years’ work, com­plete through fall/early win­ter of 2026.)

NB: The Flash Dri­ve is now being updat­ed month­ly!

“Polit­i­cal language…is designed to make lies sound truth­ful and mur­der respectable, and to give an appear­ance of solid­i­ty to pure wind.”

Mr. Emory has launched a new Patre­on site. Vis­it at: Patreon.com/DaveEmory

Folar­in Balo­quin Red Card Foul
Pho­to Cred­it: Moon of Alaba­ma blog

COMMENT: On Sun­day, June 28, it was Dave’s plea­sure to wel­come back the bril­liant Hal Sander­son, who detailed a very time­ly pre­sen­ta­tion about fas­cism and the insti­tu­tion­al­ized cor­rup­tion behind FIFA and the World Cup.

Coa­lesc­ing around French World War I vet­er­an Jules Rimet, the World Cup and Fifa gained momen­tum dur­ing the rise of fas­cism and the dic­ta­tors who drove World War II.

Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni was among the first to rec­og­nize the polit­i­cal util­i­ty of con­trol­ling sport, and deemed foot­ball (what Amer­i­cans call soc­cer) to be an excel­lent vehi­cle for doing just that. Even­tu­al­ly, he told the Ital­ian nation­al team at the World Cup “Win or die.”

Ini­tial­ly a crit­ic of fas­cism, Rimet even­tu­al­ly coop­er­at­ed with the Vichy fas­cist col­lab­o­ra­tionist gov­ern­ment of France and was chum­my with Hitler’s cho­sen head of Ger­man foot­ball, whose fam­i­ly had been involved with Nazi slave labor.

Like so many Nazis and Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors, he con­tin­ued on post­war as the head of Ger­man foot­ball.

The World Cup and FIFA con­tin­ue as a hub of cor­rup­tion and fas­cism.

Key Top­ics of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: The pos­si­bil­i­ty that the head of Nazi foot­ball may have poi­soned his Jew­ish wife, there­by remov­ing a large obsta­cle to his rise in the Third Reich hier­ar­chy; The forced for­fei­ture of Rus­sia for refus­ing to play in the nation­al sports sta­di­um that had been used by the CIA-installed Pinochet gov­ern­ment as a prison, tor­ture cham­ber and place of exe­cu­tion; The curi­ous behav­ior of FIFA toward the fas­cist jun­ta in Argenti­na, FIFA’s dou­ble stan­dard when they would not oblige Swe­den to for­feit for refus­ing to play Rus­sia; The strange dis­ap­pear­ance of the orig­i­nal Rimet/World Cup and the sus­pi­cious deaths of the play­ers in its dis­ap­pear­ance; The numer­ous orga­nized crime and fas­cist-con­nect­ed indi­vid­u­als in the cast of char­ac­ters sur­round­ing the trophy’s dis­ap­pear­ance; The tes­ti­mo­ny by the crim­i­nal­ly-involved gold deal­er involved with this syn­di­cate that he did not melt the tro­phy down and that it was sold to an unnamed wealthy Ital­ian; The death by hang­ing (!) of Pick­les, the dog who dis­cov­ered the Rimet tro­phy when it first went miss­ing; The numer­ous fas­cist and fas­cist-con­nect­ed coun­tries that have won the World Cup; The web of cor­rup­tion lead­ing to the award­ing of the World Cup to host coun­tries; Sig­nif­i­cant areas of over­lap between the Piz­za Con­nec­tion case (part of the Iran-Con­tra scan­dal) and FIFA/World Cup; The con­stel­la­tion of fas­cists and crim­i­nal ele­ments sur­round­ing the ISL and its involve­ment with FIFA; The involve­ment with the FIFA milieu of Dentsu, strong­ly con­nect­ed to the Japan­ese post-World War II fas­cist under­ground; The pro­found areas of over­lap between the Inter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee and ISL; The involve­ment of the FIFA/ISL milieu with the Dassler fam­i­ly busi­ness­es, descend­ed from the Third Reich; The involve­ment of Juan Anto­nio Sama­rach, Sr. with the ISL milieu and his pre­vi­ous role as Fran­cis­co Franco’s Min­is­ter of Sport; FIFA chief Sepp Blatter’s shady deal­ings and insti­tu­tion­al links to the Dassler milieu.