There is a new doc­u­men­tary com­ing out about Rea­gan and Wasser­man of MCA — This arti­cle does not cred­it the work that Dan Mold­ea did in “Dark Vic­to­ry”, but it’s good to see the main­stream press chip­ping away at Rea­gan’s facade:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2635094/EXCLUSIVE-Revealed-MAFIA-helped-Ronald-Reagan-White-House-Shocking-documentary-reveals-Mob-connections-catapulted-presidency-probe-thwarted-highest-levels.html

EXCLUSIVE: Revealed, how the MAFIA helped Ronald Rea­gan get to the White House.

Shock­ing doc­u­men­tary reveals Mob con­nec­tions that cat­a­pult­ed him to the pres­i­den­cy — and how a probe was thwart­ed at ‘the high­est lev­els’
•Pres­i­dent Rea­gan owed his act­ing and polit­i­cal career to Hol­ly­wood mogul Lew Wasser­man, chief of enter­tain­ment behe­moth MCA, who was in bed with the Mob

•An inves­ti­ga­tion into the rela­tion­ship between MCA and the Mafia was halt­ed and Fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors believe it was one of the ‘polit­i­cal favors’ that can be traced back to Rea­gan’s White House

•‘Ronald Rea­gan is a com­plete slave of MCA who would do their bid­ding on any­thing,’ one secret Jus­tice Depart­ment doc­u­ment revealed

•Accord­ing to the pro­duc­er of the doc­u­men­tary, Wages of Spin II: Bring Down The Wall, one MCA exec­u­tive had ties to Mob boss John Got­ti
•‘Rea­gan’s whole career in pol­i­tics was sub­si­dized by MCA,’ he asserts, and helped him finan­cial­ly because for a long time he was liv­ing above his means
•The Mob was prob­a­bly work­ing Nan­cy Rea­gan too, accord­ing to the pro­duc­er. ‘She was a dri­ving force behind Rea­gan’
By Jer­ry Oppen­heimer
Pub­lished: 13:22 EST, 21 May 2014

A shock­ing new doc­u­men­tary screened exclu­sive­ly by MailOn­line expos­es the chill­ing con­ncec­tions between the Mafia, one of Hol­ly­wood’s most pow­er­ful enter­tain­ment com­pa­nies and its head hon­cho Lew Wasser­man and Pres­i­dent Ronald Rea­gan and his Jus­tice Depart­ment.

From the mid-1950’s to the ear­ly 1960’s, Sun­day evenings were reserved for mil­lions of fam­i­lies to sit in front of the tube and watch the Gen­er­al Elec­tricThe­atre on CBS host­ed by genial Ronald Rea­gan, whose movie career had since dried up.

Tele­vi­sion had offered him anoth­er chance.

What view­ers did­n’t know was that Rea­gan was giv­en this new oppor­tu­ni­ty of vis­i­bil­i­ty and star­dom in a high­ly lucra­tive and rare deal. Along with a big pay­check, he was made part-own­er of the pop­u­lar pro­gram that he host­ed for eight years, mak­ing him extreme­ly wealthy.

His men­tor, close friend and the pow­er behind the deal was Lew Wasser­man, the very pri­vate head of the Music Cor­po­ra­tion of Amer­i­ca, bet­ter known as MCA, a Hol­ly­wood enter­tain­ment behe­moth.

Under Lew Wasser­man’s bril­liant and often bru­tal lead­er­ship, MCA’s huge­ly finan­cial­ly suc­cess­ful forms of mass enter­tain­ment have been pop­u­lar for gen­er­a­tions of couch pota­toes and movie-goers: from Leave It to Beaver to Mia­mi Vice on tele­vi­sion; from Amer­i­can Graf­fi­ti to Jaws on the big screen.

As a tal­ent agency in the begin­ning, its rich act­ing sta­ble had includ­ed Errol Fly­nn, Gre­ta Gar­bo, Fred Astaire, Joan Craw­ford and Hen­ry Fon­da and Bette Davis. Wasser­man had per­son­al­ly signed and rep­re­sent­ed many of them. Charl­ton Hes­ton once described Wasser­man as the ‘God­fa­ther of the film indus­try.’

Ronald Rea­gan, how­ev­er, was the bright­est star in Wasser­man’s per­son­al fir­ma­ment.

But there was a dark side to Wasser­man — and to Rea­gan — all of which is revealed in a shock­ing new doc­u­men­tary, Wages of Spin II: Bring Down The Wall, that, accord­ing to the film’s pro­duc­er and those inter­viewed, links both of them in dark­ly shad­owed ways to the Mafia, and the killing of a U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice orga­nized crime Strike Force inves­ti­ga­tion into Mob influ­ence and infil­tra­tion at the high­est lev­els of MCA.

It’s a case that one par­tic­i­pant in the film declares ‘dwarfs the Water­gate scan­dal’.

Nei­ther Rea­gan nor Wasser­man were ever pros­e­cut­ed, let alone inter­ro­gat­ed as a result of the events pre­sent­ed in the film because both were so well-insu­lat­ed.

Rea­gan died in 2004 at 93 after suf­fer­ing from Alzheimer’s for a decade, and Wasser­man died in 2002 at 89. He was said to be one of the largest con­trib­u­tors to the Ronald Rea­gan Pres­i­den­tial Library and Cen­ter for Pub­lic Affairs in Simi Val­ley, Cal­i­for­nia.

Sev­en years before Wasserman’s death, Pres­i­dent Clin­ton — who like Rea­gan got a lot of cam­paign and finan­cial sup­port from Hol­ly­wood pow­er bro­kers — pre­sent­ed Wasser­man with the nation’s high­est civil­ian hon­or in a cer­e­mo­ny at the White House, the Pres­i­den­tial Medal of Free­dom.

Wages of Spin II: Bring Down The Wall, pro­duced and direct­ed by Philadel­phia film­mak­er Shawn Swords, whose pre­vi­ous high­ly acclaimed doc­u­men­tary revealed the shady busi­ness prac­tices of pop­u­lar TV icon Dick Clark, will soon have it’s world pre­mier.

But MailOn­line has been giv­en an exclu­sive screen­ing of the com­plex film which includes can­did inter­views with, among oth­ers, two for­mer top Jus­tice Depart­ment pros­e­cu­tors and an ex-FBI agent who were spear­head­ing the ill-fat­ed top-secret probe of MCA. These men lost or left their jobs when their inves­ti­ga­tion was sud­den­ly ordered shut down at ‘the high­est lev­els in Wash­ing­ton,’ accord­ing to Swords and those he inter­viewed on cam­era over a two to three year peri­od.

Richard Stavin, a for­mer vet­er­an fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor who was assigned to the Jus­tice Depart­men­t’s Orga­nized Crime Strike Force in Los Ange­les and was an inte­gral mem­ber of the MCA-Mafia probe team, declared in the film for the first time:

‘It’s my belief that MCA and its’ involve­ment with Mafia indi­vid­u­als, Mafia-dom­i­nat­ed com­pa­nies and our inabil­i­ty to pur­sue those was not hap­pen­stance. I believe it was an orga­nized, orches­trat­ed effort on the part of cer­tain indi­vid­u­als with­in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. to keep a hands-off pol­i­cy towards MCA.

‘At the time, Ronald Rea­gan was the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States and Edwin Meese was the Attor­ney Gen­er­al of the Unit­ed States [Stavin’s ulti­mate boss]. A lit­tle known fact was MCA and Lew Wasser­man sup­port­ed Ronald Rea­gan when he want­ed to become pres­i­dent of the Screen Actors Guild, which was the launch of Mr. Rea­gan’s polit­i­cal career.

‘I would like to think that the peo­ple in the high­est lev­els of this gov­ern­ment were not pro­tec­tive of MCA...But I’m not so sure about that.’

Stavin left his Mafia crime-fight­ing career to which he was ded­i­cat­ed because, as he said on cam­era,

‘I was unable to ful­fill the duties for which I took my sworn oath.’

Anoth­er vet­er­an fed­er­al Strike Force pros­e­cu­tor involved in the probe of orga­nized crime infil­tra­tion at MCA, Mar­vin Rud­nick, known for his bull­dog tenac­i­ty, was shock­ing­ly fired by the Jus­tice Depart­ment and con­sid­ered ‘rogue’ because he want­ed to con­tin­ue to pur­sue the sus­pect­ed MCA bad guys, even if the trail led to 1600 Penn­syl­va­nia Avenue.

But the inves­ti­ga­tion was mys­te­ri­ous­ly ordered closed. He was lat­er rein­stat­ed.

‘For the Jus­tice Depart­ment to kill the case was a lit­tle extra­or­di­nary,’ Rud­nick declared on cam­era.

‘You won­der where it starts and where it ends. We did not get the inves­ti­ga­tion done because of interef­er­ence from high up.’

Spe­cial Agent Thomas G. Gates, who was head­ing up the FBI end of the inves­ti­ga­tion, declared in the film: “The pow­ers trumped what we were try­ing to to do. The play­ers with­in MCA tried to stay as low-key as they could. I don’t know how much influ­ence Wasser­man was able to put on Pres­i­dent

Rea­gan when he was in office because he [Wasser­man] was always a back­door par­tic­i­pant, but we knew who he was asso­ci­at­ing with.”

Gates stat­ed that infor­ma­tion about the probe ‘was leak­ing out that should­n’t have hap­pened’ from the Jus­tice Depart­ment in Wash­ing­ton.

The film’s direc­tor, Shawn Swords, assert­ed to MailOn­line that the Mob or MCA actu­al­ly had a mole in the Jus­tice Depart­ment. “It was some­body who was feed­ing infor­ma­tion to the Mob and MCA. The FBI knew it was one of twelve peo­ple, but they could­n’t fin­ger the guilty one.’

Along with Rud­nick­’s fir­ing, and Stavin’s quit­ing after his part of the MCA probe was shut down, all of the sealed files and wire­tap doc­u­ments were said to have mys­te­ri­ous­ly dis­ap­peared from a sup­pos­ed­ly secure fed­er­al gov­ern­ment ware­house in Mary­land.

Who was pulling the strings behind all of these ques­tion­able events, the more than two-hour doc­u­men­tary essen­tial­ly asks.

As an unnamed Hol­ly­wood source was once quot­ed in a Jus­tice Depart­ment doc­u­ment: “Ronald Rea­gan is a com­plete slave of MCA who would do their bid­ding on any­thing.’

In an exclu­sive inter­view with MailOn­line, Shawn Swords said about Rea­gan and MCA, ‘One hand washed the oth­er. That rela­tion­ship was so inces­tu­ous, and Ed Meese, who was the attor­ney gen­er­al [appoint­ed by Pres­i­dent Rea­gan] who head­ed the Jus­tice Depart­ment was real­ly good friends with the board of direc­tors at MCA.

‘Rea­gan’s whole career in pol­i­tics was sub­si­dized by them and helped him finan­cial­ly because for a long time he was liv­ing above his means. MCA backed every polit­i­cal cam­paign he ran. That’s the shock­ing his­to­ry — that MCA was preva­lent in his career and that they did so much quid pro quo for each oth­er.’

‘Ronald Rea­gan was an oppor­tunist. His whole career was guid­ed by MCA — by Wasser­man and [MCA founder] Jules Stein who bragged that Rea­gan was mal­leable, that they could do what they want­ed with him.

‘That thing about Rea­gan being tough on [orga­nized] crime — that’s a fal­la­cy.’

When Rea­gan’s movie career was fad­ing and Wasser­man had dif­fi­cul­ty get­ting him star­ring roles, a deci­sion was made that would launch his polit­i­cal career. In 1947, with the aggres­sive sup­port and back­ing of the God­fa­ther at MCA, Rea­gan was elect­ed pres­i­dent of the pow­er­ful Screen Actors Guild, known as SAG, a posi­tion in which he would serve for some sev­en terms.

SAG’s bylaws had always banned tal­ent agen­cies like MCA from pro­duc­ing any form of enter­tain­ment, such as TV pro­grams and movies. But dur­ing Rea­gan’s fifth year as the guild’s pres­i­dent a secret blan­ket waiv­er was nego­ti­at­ed with SAG, and it gave MCA and Wasser­man the plat­inum oppor­tu­ni­ty to not only mar­ket tal­ent as agents but also to move into TV and film mak­ing.

After the waiv­er was grant­ed, MCA formed MCA Tele­vi­sion Lim­it­ed that han­dled syn­di­ca­tion, and then Review Pro­duc­tions to make TV and films, and got the jump on any com­peti­ti­tion, mak­ing it a Hol­ly­wood pow­er­house.

When Rea­gan ran into finan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties it was MCA under Wasser­man that got him lucra­tive land deals that made him even wealth­i­er. The Gen­er­al Elec­tric The­ater that Rea­gan host­ed and for which he even pro­duced pro­grams was an MCA-Review prop­er­ty.

After Rea­gan was elect­ed gov­er­nor of Cal­i­for­nia in 1966, with sup­port and cam­paign financ­ing from MCA and asso­ciates, some with shady ties, MCA ben­e­fit­ed from some of his exec­u­tive deci­sions.
Fast for­ward to the mid-1980s when Rea­gan was in the Oval Office. MCA was then in nego­ti­a­tions to sell out to the giant Japan­ese com­pa­ny Mat­sushi­ta Elec­tric Indus­tri­al for bil­lions of dol­lars. From that deal Wasser­man report­ed­ly was to ben­e­fit to the tune of $500 mil­lion.

But the big dan­ger for him and his com­pa­ny, dubbed the ‘Octo­pus,’ because its ten­ta­cles were in vir­tu­al­ly all aspects of the enter­tain­ment busi­ness, was an ongo­ing U.S. Jus­tice Depart­ment probe into sus­pect­ed orga­nized crime influ­ence at MCA and in par­tic­u­lar Wasser­man’s long pur­port­ed ties to Mafia fig­ures.

If the probe became pub­lic, it would most like­ly have impact­ed Wall Street and MCA’s pub­licly held stock, and pos­si­bly dri­ven away the Japan­ese buy­ers and the lucra­tive pur­chase. Wasser­man, accord­ing to the doc­u­men­tary, was­n’t going to let that hap­pen.

The Jus­tice Depart­ment-FBI inves­ti­ga­tion into Mob ties with­in MCA start­ed by chance when orga­nized crime strike force pros­e­cu­tor Mar­vin Rud­nick came across intel­li­gence that a man by the name of Sal­va­tore Pisel­lo was in the hier­ar­chy of MCA.

A red flag instant­ly went up. How and why, Rud­nick won­dered, was a high-rank­ing sol­dier in the Gam­bi­no Mafia fam­i­ly of New York who was known to his asso­ciates as ‘Sal The Banker’, ‘Sal the Swindler,’ and ‘Big Sal,’ doing busi­nesss in MCA’s offices in Uni­ver­sal City.

Pisel­lo had just been sen­tenced to four years in prison on tax eva­sion charges, and Rud­nick at a hear­ing in U.S. Dis­trict Court in L.A. stat­ed that evi­dence had been uncov­ered link­ing him to ‘crim­i­nal activ­i­ty in the record indus­try.’

Pisel­lo had denied any involve­ment in orga­nized crime, and declared, ‘I’ll go to prison for 20 years if any­one can prove that. I go to church every Sun­day and the only orga­ni­za­tion I ever belonged to was the Holy Name Soci­ety.’ Regard­ing his MCA con­nec­tion, he declared, ‘I’m in the record busi­ness for one year and I’m sup­posed to have destroyed the indus­try.’

But his con­nec­tions and deal­ings became the tar­get of sev­er­al fed­er­al grand jury probes. MCA denied know­ing any­thing about his alleged orga­nized crime links, and claimed to have no idea how he got in the door.

The inves­ti­ga­tion though led to oth­er crime fig­ures involved with MCA before it got shut down.
Anoth­er source inter­viewed on cam­era in the doc­u­men­tary, inves­tiga­tive reporter William K. Knoedelseder, Jr., author of Stiffed: A True Sto­ry of MCA, the Music Busi­ness and the Mafia, pub­lished in 1993, had for a dozen years been cov­er­ing orga­nized crime and oth­er cor­rup­tion in the enter­tain­ment indus­try for The Los Ange­les Times.

He began writ­ing rev­e­la­to­ry sto­ries for the paper about Rud­nick and Stavin’s inves­ti­ga­tion, and was the first to report that Pisel­lo ‘wound up in high-lev­el meet­ings with MCA offi­cers’ nego­ti­at­ing lucra­tive record deals ‘that would place him among the best-paid exec­u­tives in the indus­try.’

But like Rud­nick and Stavin, the series of sto­ries was a news­pa­per career-ender for Knoedelseder. He was ordered by edi­tors to stop writ­ing about MCA, and he quit his job, accord­ing to a 2006 book called ‘Super­mob’ that also dealt with Rea­gan, Wasser­man and the Mafia, and it not­ed that the pub­lish­er of the LA Times at the time had got­ten his job ‘thanks to Lew Wasser­man’s kind inter­ces­sion.’

Rud­nick had also been ordered to drop his end of the inves­ti­ga­tion.

‘I was told by my boss not to intro­duce evi­dence that was embar­rass­ing to MCA,’ he stat­ed in the doc­u­men­tary. ‘My office was being told by some­body high­er up to stop the inves­ti­ga­tion to show how Pisel­lo got into MCA which was the most impor­tant part of the case. MCA exec­u­tives weren’t coop­er­at­ing because some­body high up in MCA was try­ing to kill the deal.

‘For MCA to be doing busi­ness so close­ly with Pisel­lo was a pri­ma­ry exam­ple of what the Strike Force should be doing, and when the Strike Force looked the oth­er way and turned it down, then you know darn well inter­fer­ence took place. As a pros­e­cu­tor we should be inves­ti­gat­ing the peo­ple who are inter­fer­ing, not just walk­ing away from it and this is what I tried to do.’

At one point, Rud­nick real­ized he was being fol­lowed as he made his inves­tiga­tive rounds. When he told his supe­ri­ors in Wash­ing­ton, their response was, ‘We got your back.’

Accord­ing to Rud­nick, ‘MCA decid­ed to reach out and try to kill our case which they even­tu­al­ly did. MCA sent peo­ple out to fol­low me while I was dri­ving, they stopped a wire­tap that was legal. They were able to inter­fere with all kinds of offi­cial acts, but nobody at the high­est lev­els of the Jus­tice Depart­ment seemed to care or want­ed to stop it. It went all the way to the top.’

Dur­ing the course of the inves­ti­ga­tion before it was shut down by pow­ers in Wash­ing­ton the probers found anoth­er alleged Mob con­nec­tion at MCA — Eugene Giaquin­to, who was the head of MCA Home Video. Wire­taps had caught Giaquin­to talk­ing to ‘La Cosa Nos­tra peo­ple in the East,’ and the FBI agent Gates stat­ed on cam­era that ‘Wasser­man was Giaquin­to’s men­tor and pro­mot­ed in the MCA’s Home Enter­tain­ment Group which was very pow­er­ful.’

Accord­ing to Stavin, Giaquin­to, who was an exec­u­tive at MCA for some two decades, had ties to Mob boss John Got­ti, and it was learned by the inves­ti­ga­tors that when a pow­er strug­gle between two divi­sion heads at MCA had erupt­ed it was alleged­ly resolved by Got­ti, dubbed the ‘Teflon Don,’ and the ‘Dap­per Don,’ who was Boss of New York’s Gam­bi­no Fam­i­ly at the time. He died in prison in 2002.

In one bizarre spin-off to the whole com­pli­cat­ed case, Got­ti was asked to kill a planned movie in which the actor James Caan, who starred in “The God­fa­ther” report­ed­ly was to play the role of Jew­ish mob­ster Mey­er Lan­sky.

Giaquin­to, a tar­get of the MCA-Mafia probe, report­ed­ly was involved in try­ing to get the film blocked. Caan dropped the project.

In the book Super­mob, Giaquin­to was iden­ti­fied as the source who went into action to get the MCA-Mafia probe brought to an end. The author quot­ed the source as recall­ing Giaquin­to going bal­lis­tic and declar­ing, ‘I’m call­ing [Attor­ney gen­er­al Ed] Meese and get­ting this thing stopped right now.’ The book also quot­ed an attor­ney for sev­er­al MCA exec­u­tives who had been coop­er­at­ing with Strike Force pros­e­cu­tor Mar­vin Rud­nick as say­ing, ‘There was [talk] about how Ed Meese want­ed cer­tain actions tak­en because Nan­cy Rea­gan had a friend in high places in the enter­tain­ment indus­try.’

Accord­ing to Swords, ‘The Mob were prob­a­bly work­ing her, too. She was on the board of gov­er­nors for the Screen Actors Guild. She was a dri­ving force behind Rea­gan. Appar­ent­ly she was the one who was push­ing him into every­thing.’

Mrs. Rea­gan turns 93 this com­ing July 6.

While the once lib­er­al demo­c­rat Rea­gan became a pop­u­lar screen star and lat­er switched polit­i­cal alle­giance and became a con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­can polit­i­cal hero to mil­lions, Wasser­man was lit­tle known to the gen­er­al pub­lic. A tall and gaunt man of mys­tery who sport­ed over­size eye­glass­es and dressed like a mor­ti­cian — black suits, white shirts, black ties, Wasser­man made his army of under­ling agents dress sim­i­lar­ly. In the busi­ness of enter­tain­ment , they were con­sid­ered ‘the black-suit­ed Mafia.’

Wasser­man was seen as fright­en­ing­ly ruth­less with a tem­per that made pow­er­ful men cringe.
His men­tor in the begin­ing of his career was Jules Stein, an opthal­mol­o­gist from the Windy City who in the ear­ly years of the Roar­ing ’20s had found­ed the Music Cor­po­ra­tion of Amer­i­ca, which booked bands in the mid­west, and had close ties to shady fig­ures, reput­ed­ly mem­bers of the Chica­go Mob.

A poor boy from a Russ­ian immi­grant fam­i­ly, Wasser­man grew up in Cleve­land, worked as a movie house ush­er at night, and after get­ting his high school diplo­ma — he nev­er went to col­lege — joined up with what was known as the May­field Road Gang, an Ital­ian-led Mafia orga­ni­za­tion with ties to the Jew­ish mob — help­ing to run a casi­no.

Mov­ing up the career lad­der in Chica­go, Wasser­man was recruit­ed by founder Jules Stein who saw him as a bright boy with good ideas and made him an MCA tal­ent agent. Stein was well-con­nect­ed: his MCA was book­ing bands for the flashy night­clubs and crooked gam­bling hous­es run by leg­endary crime boss Al Capone. By then, Wasser­man had tak­en a wife — his attor­ney father-in-law report­ed­ly was a reput­ed Mob mouth­piece.

In the late ’30s, Stein and Wasser­man fol­lowed the adage of Horace Gree­ley and went west, set­ting up shop in the ritzy cen­ter of the enter­tain­ment indus­try — Bev­er­ly Hills, around the same time that the Chica­go Mob was putting down roots in the movie cap­i­tal.

Of all the incred­i­ble act­ing tal­ent in the MCA sta­ble of clients, the first to ever receive a $1 mil­lion movie con­tract was Ronald Rea­gan– a deal Wasser­man nego­ti­at­ed for him with Warn­er Broth­ers Stu­dios in 1941.

Wasser­man appar­ent­ly saw a future for Rea­gan far bey­ong the act­ing world. Wasser­man was just 36 when Stein anoint­ed him MCA’s pres­i­dent, the youngest to ever hold such a posi­tion of pow­er. It was in the late ’40s that Wasser­man saw MCA as a major play­er in the new tech­nol­o­gy known as tele­vi­sion.

In Hol­ly­wood, where all movies and their char­ac­ters have an arc, Wasser­man’s rise to pow­er end­ed after the Jus­tice Depat­men­t’s orga­nized Crime Strike Force inves­ti­ga­tion was killed. The sale of MCA went through to the Japan­ese for $6.5 bil­lion in 1990. Wasser­man had a role in man­age­ment for a time. But when MCA was sold again to the Sea­gram Com­pa­ny in 1995 for $5.7 bil­lion,

Wasser­man was­n’t even told. By then his pow­er was gone.

Amer­i­ca’s eter­nal faith in mod­er­ates: “Mr. Dulles believed ‘mod­er­ate’ Nazis might ‘be use­ful’ to Amer­i­ca” http://t.co/S8MZwpuDt8— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) Octo­ber 27, 2014

The dream of the uni­corn-rid­ing mod­er­ate extrem­ists is an alarm­ing­ly potent force in human affairs:

The New York Times
In Cold War, U.S. Spy Agen­cies Used 1,000 Nazis

By ERIC LICHTBLAUOCT. 26, 2014

WASHINGTON — In the decades after World War II, the C.I.A. and oth­er Unit­ed States agen­cies employed at least a thou­sand Nazis as Cold War spies and infor­mants and, as recent­ly as the 1990s, con­cealed the government’s ties to some still liv­ing in Amer­i­ca, new­ly dis­closed records and inter­views show.

At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, law enforce­ment and intel­li­gence lead­ers like J. Edgar Hoover at the F.B.I. and Allen Dulles at the C.I.A. aggres­sive­ly recruit­ed one­time Nazis of all ranks as secret, anti-Sovi­et “assets,” declas­si­fied records show. They believed the ex-Nazis’ intel­li­gence val­ue against the Rus­sians out­weighed what one offi­cial called “moral laps­es” in their ser­vice to the Third Reich.

The agency hired one for­mer SS offi­cer as a spy in the 1950s, for instance, even after con­clud­ing he was prob­a­bly guilty of “minor war crimes.”

And in 1994, a lawyer with the C.I.A. pres­sured pros­e­cu­tors to drop an inves­ti­ga­tion into an ex-spy out­side Boston impli­cat­ed in the Nazis’ mas­sacre of tens of thou­sands of Jews in Lithua­nia, accord­ing to a gov­ern­ment offi­cial.

Evi­dence of the government’s links to Nazi spies began emerg­ing pub­licly in the 1970s. But thou­sands of records from declas­si­fied files, Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act requests and oth­er sources, togeth­er with inter­views with scores of cur­rent and for­mer gov­ern­ment offi­cials, show that the government’s recruit­ment of Nazis ran far deep­er than pre­vi­ous­ly known and that offi­cials sought to con­ceal those ties for at least a half-cen­tu­ry after the war.

In 1980, F.B.I. offi­cials refused to tell even the Jus­tice Department’s own Nazi hunters what they knew about 16 sus­pect­ed Nazis liv­ing in the Unit­ed States.

The bureau balked at a request from pros­e­cu­tors for inter­nal records on the Nazi sus­pects, mem­os show, because the 16 men had all worked as F.B.I. infor­mants, pro­vid­ing leads on Com­mu­nist “sym­pa­thiz­ers.” Five of the men were still active infor­mants.

Refus­ing to turn over the records, a bureau offi­cial in a memo stressed the need for “pro­tect­ing the con­fi­den­tial­i­ty of such sources of infor­ma­tion to the fullest pos­si­ble extent.”

Some spies for the Unit­ed States had worked at the high­est lev­els for the Nazis.

One SS offi­cer, Otto von Bolschwing, was a men­tor and top aide to Adolf Eich­mann, archi­tect of the “Final Solu­tion,” and wrote pol­i­cy papers on how to ter­ror­ize Jews.

Yet after the war, the C.I.A. not only hired him as a spy in Europe, but relo­cat­ed him and his fam­i­ly to New York City in 1954, records show. The move was seen as a “a reward for his loy­al post­war ser­vice and in view of the innocu­ous­ness of his [Nazi] par­ty activ­i­ties,” the agency wrote.

His son, Gus von Bolschwing, who learned many years lat­er of his father’s ties to the Nazis, sees the rela­tion­ship between the spy agency and his father as one of mutu­al con­ve­nience forged by the Cold War.

“They used him, and he used them,” Gus von Bolschwing, now 75, said in an inter­view. “It shouldn’t have hap­pened. He nev­er should have been admit­ted to the Unit­ed States. It wasn’t con­sis­tent with our val­ues as a coun­try.”

When Israeli agents cap­tured Eich­mann in Argenti­na in 1960, Otto von Bolschwing went to the C.I.A. for help because he wor­ried they might come after him, mem­os show.

Agency offi­cials were wor­ried as well that Mr. von Bolschwing might be named as Eichmann’s “col­lab­o­ra­tor and fel­low con­spir­a­tor and that the result­ing pub­lic­i­ty may prove embar­rass­ing to the U.S.” a C.I.A. offi­cial wrote.

After two agents met with Mr. von Bolschwing in 1961, the agency assured him it would not dis­close his ties to Eich­mann, records show. He lived freely for anoth­er 20 years before pros­e­cu­tors dis­cov­ered his wartime role and pros­e­cut­ed him. He agreed to give up his cit­i­zen­ship in 1981, dying months lat­er.

In all, the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary, the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and oth­er agen­cies used at least 1,000 ex-Nazis and col­lab­o­ra­tors as spies and infor­mants after the war, accord­ing to Richard Bre­it­man, a Holo­caust schol­ar at Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty who was on a gov­ern­ment-appoint­ed team that declas­si­fied war-crime records.

The full tal­ly of Nazis-turned-spies is prob­a­bly much high­er, said Nor­man Goda, a Uni­ver­si­ty of Flori­da his­to­ri­an on the declas­si­fi­ca­tion team, but many records remain clas­si­fied even today, mak­ing a com­plete count impos­si­ble.

“U.S. agen­cies direct­ly or indi­rect­ly hired numer­ous ex-Nazi police offi­cials and East Euro­pean col­lab­o­ra­tors who were man­i­fest­ly guilty of war crimes,” he said. “Infor­ma­tion was read­i­ly avail­able that these were com­pro­mised men.”

None of the spies are known to be alive today.

The wide use of Nazi spies grew out of a Cold War men­tal­i­ty shared by two titans of intel­li­gence in the 1950s: Mr. Hoover, the long­time F.B.I. direc­tor, and Mr. Dulles, the C.I.A. direc­tor.

Mr. Dulles believed “mod­er­ate” Nazis might “be use­ful” to Amer­i­ca, records show. Mr. Hoover, for his part, per­son­al­ly approved some ex-Nazis as infor­mants and dis­missed accu­sa­tions of their wartime atroc­i­ties as Sovi­et pro­pa­gan­da.

In 1968, Mr. Hoover autho­rized the F.B.I. to wire­tap a left-wing jour­nal­ist who wrote crit­i­cal sto­ries about Nazis in Amer­i­ca, inter­nal records show. Mr. Hoover declared the jour­nal­ist, Charles Allen, a poten­tial threat to nation­al secu­ri­ty.

John Fox, the bureau’s chief his­to­ri­an, said: “In hind­sight, it is clear that Hoover, and by exten­sion the F.B.I., was short­sight­ed in dis­miss­ing evi­dence of ties between recent Ger­man and East Euro­pean immi­grants and Nazi war crimes. It should be remem­bered, though, that this was at the peak of Cold War ten­sions.”

The C.I.A. declined to com­ment for this arti­cle.

The Nazi spies per­formed a range of tasks for Amer­i­can agen­cies in the 1950s and 1960s, from the haz­ardous to the triv­ial, the doc­u­ments show.

In Mary­land, Army offi­cials trained sev­er­al Nazi offi­cers in para­mil­i­tary war­fare for a pos­si­ble inva­sion of Rus­sia. In Con­necti­cut, the C.I.A. used an ex-Nazi guard to study Sovi­et-bloc postage stamps for hid­den mean­ings.

In Vir­ginia, a top advis­er to Hitler gave clas­si­fied brief­in­gs on Sovi­et affairs. And in Ger­many, SS offi­cers infil­trat­ed Russ­ian-con­trolled zones, lay­ing sur­veil­lance cables and mon­i­tor­ing trains.

But many Nazi spies proved inept or worse, declas­si­fied secu­ri­ty reviews show. Some were deemed habit­u­al liars, con­fi­dence men or embez­zlers, and a few even turned out to be Sovi­et dou­ble agents, the records show.

Mr. Bre­it­man said the moral­i­ty of recruit­ing ex-Nazis was rarely con­sid­ered. “This all stemmed from a kind of pan­ic, a fear that the Com­mu­nists were ter­ri­bly pow­er­ful and we had so few assets,” he said.

...

It’s look­ing like move­ment con­ser­v­a­tives is expe­ri­enc­ing a peri­od of self dis­cov­ery. Uh oh:

TPM Cafe
Why Con­ser­v­a­tives Sud­den­ly Care About Rightwing Mail-Order Scams
By Aman­da Mar­cotte
Pub­lished Feb­ru­ary 18, 2015, 11:56 AM EST

Any­one who fol­lows the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment care­ful­ly could tell you that it’s about 25 per­cent pol­i­tics and 75 per­cent mail-order scam. For more than half a cen­tu­ry now, char­la­tans pass­ing them­selves off as con­ser­v­a­tive lead­ers have exploit­ed ordi­nary con­ser­v­a­tives’ anx­i­ety about a chang­ing Amer­i­ca to col­lect address­es and now email lists in order to sell snake oil and raise funds that fol­low­ers believe are going to polit­i­cal caus­es but fre­quent­ly just line the pock­ets of the con artists. The con­ser­v­a­tive ten­den­cy to con their own peo­ple occa­sion­al­ly piques the inter­est of the lib­er­al media. Media Mat­ters, for instance, has run expos­es on how con­ser­v­a­tive lumi­nar­ies like Mike Huck­abee and Scott Brown sold their mail­ing lists to con artists ped­dling fake “cures” for Alzheimer’s and can­cer. Rachel Mad­dow has been report­ing for years on how Newt Gin­grich scams mon­ey off his fol­low­ers through direct mail offers of “awards” and by try­ing to rope them into fraud­u­lent invest­ments.

But, until recent­ly, even the more rep­utable con­ser­v­a­tive out­lets have remained mum about their fel­lows’ habit of bilk­ing their fol­low­ers. Fox News even keeps bring­ing one of the worst offend­ers, Mike Huck­abee, on air over and over, mak­ing it all the eas­i­er for him to earn the trust of view­ers and then to sell them out to snake-oil sales­men.

But there are signs that some of the most rigid­ly con­ser­v­a­tive rightwing writ­ers out there are get­ting sick of it and are ready to speak out. On Tues­day, Jon­ah Gold­berg of the Nation­al Review high­light­ed a report from John Hawkins of Right Wing News that exposed how many of the Tea Par­ty-style PACs are basi­cal­ly tak­ing mon­ey gullible donors think is going to elect con­ser­v­a­tive politi­cians and using it for basi­cal­ly any­thing but that. Ten of the 17 PACs exam­ined by Hawkins took in more than $50 mil­lion and only spent about $3.6 mil­lion of it on cam­paigns. Sarah­PAC, run by Sarah Palin, was a typ­i­cal offend­er, spend­ing only $205,000 of their $3 mil­lion, or about 7 per­cent of the funds.

“I doubt the aver­age donor was under the impres­sion that only a nick­el out of every dol­lar he or she gave went to get­ting tea-par­ty-friend­ly can­di­dates elect­ed,” Gold­berg writes angri­ly.

Why is there this sud­den inter­est on the right in shin­ing a light on the way that con­ser­v­a­tive lead­ers see their fol­low­ers less as fel­low trav­el­ers and more as marks? Part of it is like­ly due to a major exposé of the same problem—scam PACs—run by Politi­co last month. “Since the tea par­ty burst onto the polit­i­cal land­scape in 2009, the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment has been plagued by an explo­sion of PACs that crit­ics say exist most­ly to pad the pock­ets of the con­sul­tants who run them,” Vogel wrote. That means, as Hawkins not­ed in his cov­er­age, that mon­ey that might oth­er­wise help sway elec­tions is instead just spin­ning down the drain.

But don’t start wor­ry­ing that con­ser­v­a­tive lead­er­ship is grow­ing a con­science about steal­ing Grandma’s Social Secu­ri­ty check. Erick Erick­son was quot­ed in the Politi­co sto­ry as say­ing that “[t]hese groups have the pulse of the crowd, and they rec­og­nize that they can make a prof­it off the angst of the con­ser­v­a­tive base vot­ers who are look­ing for out­siders.” But Erick­son him­self is one of those peo­ple who prof­its off scams run, to use his own words, “by con men liv­ing well off oth­er people’s mon­ey.” As Media Mat­ters detailed last month, Erick­son sells his email list to not just the scam PACs that Erick­son crit­i­cizes, but to even sketch­i­er char­la­tans. Erickson’s email list has host­ed pitch­es that claim to have a “secret can­cer cure,” that they need to stock­pile food to avoid being thrown in “FEMA camps,” and try­ing to sell “a real and unusu­al retire­ment option that no bank will tell you about” with the alarmist claim that the gov­ern­ment is shut­ting down ATMs.

...

The prob­lem is only going to become more vis­i­ble in the next year or so, as Repub­li­cans gear up for anoth­er pri­ma­ry sea­son. In 2012, some Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates such as Her­man Cain and Newt Gin­grich ran cam­paigns that seemed to be less about actu­al­ly try­ing to win the White House and more about get­ting more email sub­scribers to hit with the fake can­cer cures and fraud­u­lent invest­ment schemes. Already Mike Huck­abee and Ben Car­son have been mak­ing noise about run­ning for pres­i­dent in 2016, which is just more the same: A feint whose real pur­pose is get­ting the email address­es of peo­ple gullible enough to think that Mike Huck­abee is a legit­i­mate can­di­date so that you can sell them sur­vival­ist gear and inef­fec­tive erec­tile dys­func­tion pills.

It’s tempt­ing to write off this prob­lem, say­ing it’s hard to care if a bunch rightwingers are stu­pid enough to let Mike Huck­abee con them out of their mon­ey. But just because the marks are often less than sym­pa­thet­ic doesn’t mean that con­ning them is any less deplorable. Hope­ful­ly, this will­ing­ness to talk about shady PACs sug­gests that con­ser­v­a­tive pun­dits will grow bold­er about tack­ling the wider prob­lem of flim­flam in the ranks. The only way this prob­lem is going to get bet­ter is if con­ser­v­a­tives them­selves start speak­ing out about it.

“Hope­ful­ly, this will­ing­ness to talk about shady PACs sug­gests that con­ser­v­a­tive pun­dits will grow bold­er about tack­ling the wider prob­lem of flim­flam in the ranks. The only way this prob­lem is going to get bet­ter is if con­ser­v­a­tives them­selves start speak­ing out about it.” Yep, and it’s not just rab­ble’s mon­ey that’s being har­vest­ed by The Long Con. For the activist rab­ble, it’s also har­vest­ing their hopes and dreams:

Politi­co
Tea Par­ty News Net­work staffers resign
By HADAS GOLD |
2/19/15 4:48 PM EST

Staffers of the Tea Par­ty News Net­work resigned on Thurs­day after a Dai­ly Beast report showed how the three-year-old con­ser­v­a­tive news site fell into post­ing click bait smut, like videos of fights and burn­ing cars.

“Unfor­tu­nate­ly the ‘coali­tion’ of com­pa­nies and groups you col­lec­tive­ly run has not been oper­at­ing with the hon­or that peo­ple should be able to expect,” TeaParty.net chief strate­gist Dustin Stock­ton, oper­a­tions man­ag­er Kris Hall, TPNN Social Media Direc­tor Jen­nifer Burke, TPNN con­trib­u­tor and TPNN social media spe­cial­ist Matthew Burke and TPNN con­trib­u­tor Greg Camp­bell wrote in a let­ter to own­ers Todd Cefarat­ti and Kellen Gui­da, and post­ed by Wash­ing­ton Free Beacon’s CJ Cia­ramel­la.

“TheTeaParty.net Face­book page was built using non-prof­it dol­lars and resources and yet the hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars a month being gen­er­at­ed from traf­fic deriv­ing from the non-prof­it Face­book page are being fun­neled to a for prof­it com­pa­ny with no trans­paren­cy. Even if you could find a way to make that legal, it’s immoral and uneth­i­cal,” the let­ter con­tin­ues. “We rep­re­sent our­selves as ‘The Tea Par­ty’ on Face­book and take no action to hold our­selves to the high­er stan­dards of that des­ig­na­tion. Posts by fights.buzz and viral.buzz have become increas­ing­ly vile and unac­cept­able. The Tea Par­ty is not TMZ and TPNN is not World­Star.”

...

Accord­ing to the Dai­ly Beast, Cefaratti’s non-prof­it TeaParty.net which is con­nect­ed to TPNN took in close to $6 mil­lion in dona­tions in this last elec­tion cycle.

“You reg­u­lar­ly show con­tempt for the peo­ple who make all your finan­cial suc­cess pos­si­ble. The staff who work around the clock t pro­duce time­ly and break­ing con­tent is reg­u­lar­ly remind­ed that ‘writ­ers are cheap,’” the staffers wrote in the let­ter. “The audi­ence is regard­ed as unso­phis­ti­cat­ed sim­ple­tons. The activism that built all the infra­struc­ture is con­sid­ered a ‘pain in the ass’ not as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to save the coun­try. As a group we can no longer tol­er­ate being asso­ci­at­ed with these despi­ca­ble prac­tices. Effec­tive imme­di­ate­ly we resign from all posi­tions with Glen­Gary and Stop This Insan­i­ty. Pleas update all web­sites to reflect our depar­ture.”

“You reg­u­lar­ly show con­tempt for the peo­ple who make all your finan­cial suc­cess pos­si­ble. The staff who work around the clock t pro­duce time­ly and break­ing con­tent is reg­u­lar­ly remind­ed that ‘writ­ers are cheap,’...The audi­ence is regard­ed as unso­phis­ti­cat­ed sim­ple­tons.” The sit­u­a­tion is def­i­nite­ly look­ing dicey.

Part of what makes the cri­sis of con­fi­dence in The Long Con is that fact that the GOP does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly need its small donor mon­ey. The bil­lion­aires can han­dle that part just fine. But they still need the rab­ble to vote for The Long Con, and all those small dona­tions are undoubt­ed­ly part of the psy­cho­log­i­cal bond that keeps the activist base active and vot­ing.

At the same time, in a strange way the scam­my nature of these net­works real­ly does helps get GOP elect­ed. Why? Because the extreme ease with which you can appar­ent­ly prof­it from scam­ming the right-wing rab­ble guar­an­tees a steady stream of new con artists into the move­ment. So there’s also going to new grifters to replace the old ones once they get out­ted as a scam or grow stale. After all, one of the key sources of GOP suc­cess is a hyper-active base and the Grifter Cir­cus makes its mon­ey by ril­ing up the base into hyper-activ­i­ty. So even though the mon­ey may not be spent on out­reach, the fact that these groups are pro­duc­ing con­tent that moti­vates peo­ple to donate is indeed a sign that they are suc­ceed­ing in that key area of freak­ing out the base and keep­ing them engaged and ready for more grift­ing. That’s how the GOP gets out the vote and cre­ates and army of activists...but that only works if scam­my nature of it all isn’t rubbed so deeply in the faces of the rab­ble that they sour on the whole expe­ri­ence.

One or two grifters get­ting out­ed every now and then is sus­tain­able. But if it becomes known that pret­ty much the entire right-wing polit­i­cal infra­struc­ture is either a bil­lion­aire front group or small-time scam out­fit, all the mon­ey in the world isn’t going to help the oli­garchs on elec­tion day. Demor­al­ized rab­ble don’t vote.

And oth­er than the scams and oli­garch agen­das, what’s the Amer­i­can right-wing fight­ing for these days that could keep the rab­ble in the fold? Oh yeah. Moral val­ues.

Relat­ed to this is that pub­lic opin­ion is being pushed in a more racist direc­tion that sub­stan­tial­ly can lead to civic ten­sion result­ing in race war such as a ver­sion of what hap­pened in Bal­ti­more. The recent ille­gal pur­chase of a gun and relat­ed death caused by an ille­gal alien will be used to sup­port can­di­dates such as Bob Whitak­er.

The ille­gal alien mur­der of a young woman in San Fran­cis­co is the 1988 “Willie Hor­ton” politi­ciza­tion of a sen­sa­tion­al crime all over again. Parolees like Willie Hor­ton do some­times kill again. That’s an accept­able risk we are will­ing to take. The alter­na­tive is to grant no parole to any vio­lent offend­er and to keep 5 mil­lion Amer­i­cans, instead of 2.3 mil­lion, in prison indef­i­nite­ly.

Those who would blame all 11,300,000 undoc­u­ment­ed aliens for the actions of one ille­gal alien, would do well to recall the noto­ri­ous anti-Semit­ic Drey­fus case in 1880s France.

Kristall­nacht (Nov. 9, 1938) was jus­ti­fied by the Nazis because a sin­gle Jew­ish “ter­ror­ist” had assas­si­nat­ed the Ger­man ambas­sador in Paris the day before.

See the arti­cle “Obser­va­tion San Fran­cis­co shoot­ing: a game-chang­er for immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy?”

http://m.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2015/0710/San-Francisco-shooting-a-game-changer-for-immigration-policy?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Weekend_Best_of_Web&utm_campaign=20150711_Newsletter%3AWeekend%20%28UMP%29&cmpid=ema%3Anws%3AWeekly%2520Newsletter%2520%2807–11-2015%29

Kevin Williamson, the right-wing colum­nist know for such clas­sics as call­ing for the exe­cu­tion of both the doc­tors that per­form abor­tions and the women that get them and has hailed the con­tem­po­rary GOP as today’s true cham­pi­on of civ­il rights in Amer­i­ca, had a thought brand new thought of sim­i­lar cal­iber that he decid­ed to share with the world in his Nation­al Review col­umn recent­ly: Bernie Sanders is a Nazi. Now you know:

TPM Livewire
Nation­al Review’s 4 Zani­est Claims For Why Bernie Sanders Is Like A Nazi

By Caitlin Mac­Neal
Pub­lished July 21, 2015, 11:52 AM EDT

In a Nation­al Review Online piece pub­lished on Mon­day, con­ser­v­a­tive writer Kevin D. Williamson tried to make the point that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I‑VT), who is cur­rent­ly run­ning to be the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee, is actu­al­ly a nation­al social­ist.

Through­out the piece, Williamson sug­gests that Sanders’ ide­olo­gies are sim­i­lar to those of the Nazis and that the sen­a­tor holds racist and xeno­pho­bic beliefs. He also claims that Sanders is a ruth­less politi­cian hell-bent on destroy­ing his com­pe­ti­tion and Amer­i­cans’ free­doms.

The piece is rem­i­nis­cent of the Nation­al Review senior edi­tor Jon­ah Gold­berg’s book “Lib­er­al Fas­cism,” which Gold­berg described as a piece “about how con­tem­po­rary pro­gres­sivism is a polit­i­cal reli­gion with its roots in Ger­man state the­o­ry, shar­ing a close fam­i­ly resem­blance to fas­cism.”

Here are some of the low­lights from Williamson’s piece titled “Bernie’s Strange Brew of Nation­al­ism and Social­ism”:

Bernie is a nation­al social­ist, like the Nazis

At the start of his piece, Williams ref­er­ences the Nazi par­ty while intro­duc­ing his the­sis that Sanders is a nation­al social­ist:

In the Berniev­erse, there’s a whole lot of nation­al­ism mixed up in the social­ism. He is, in fact, lead­ing a nation­al-social­ist move­ment, which is a queasy and uncom­fort­able thing to write about a man who is the son of Jew­ish immi­grants from Poland and whose fam­i­ly was mur­dered in the Holo­caust. But there is no oth­er way to char­ac­ter­ize his views and his pol­i­tics.

Sanders is sim­i­lar to Hugo Chavez

Fur­ther along in the piece, Williamson com­pares Sanders to deceased Venezue­lan pres­i­dent Hugo Chávez:

There are many kinds of Us-and-Them pol­i­tics, and Bernie Sanders, to be sure, is not a nation­al social­ist in the mode of Alfred Rosen­berg or Julius Stre­ich­er. He is a nation­al social­ist in the mode of Hugo Chávez. He isn’t dri­ven by racial hatred; he’s dri­ven by polit­i­cal hatred. And that’s bad enough.

Sanders is a xeno­phobe and a racist

Williamson paints Sanders as xeno­pho­bic based on the sen­a­tor’s views on trade pol­i­cy and Chi­na:

The inces­sant reliance on xeno­pho­bic (and large­ly untrue) tropes hold­ing that the cur­rent eco­nom­ic woes of the Unit­ed States are the result of schem­ing for­eign­ers, espe­cial­ly the wicked Chi­nese, “steal­ing our jobs” and vic­tim­iz­ing his class allies is noth­ing more than an updat­ed ver­sion of Kaiser Wil­helm II’s “yel­low per­il” rhetoric, and though the kaiser had a more poet­i­cal imag­i­na­tion — he said he had a vision of the Bud­dha rid­ing a drag­on across Europe, lay­ing waste to all — Bernie’s take is sub­stan­tial­ly sim­i­lar. He describes the nor­mal­iza­tion of trade rela­tions with Chi­na as “cat­a­stroph­ic” — Sanders and Jesse Helms both vot­ed against the Clin­ton-backed Chi­na-trade leg­is­la­tion — and heaps scorn on every oth­er trade-lib­er­al­iza­tion pact. That eco­nom­ic inter­ac­tions with for­eign­ers are inher­ent­ly hurt­ful and exploita­tive is cen­tral to his view of how the world works.

The con­ser­v­a­tive writer con­tin­ued to rail against Sanders’ views on trade, accus­ing the pres­i­den­tial can­di­date of being racist:

Like most of these advo­cates of “eco­nom­ic patri­o­tism” (Barack Obama’s once-favored phrase) Bernie wor­ries a great deal about trade with brown peo­ple — Asians, Latin Amer­i­cans — but has nev­er, so far as pub­lic records show, made so much as a peep about our very large trade deficit with Swe­den, which as a share of bilat­er­al trade vol­ume is not much dif­fer­ent from our trade deficit with Chi­na, or about the size of our trade deficit with Cana­da, our largest trad­ing part­ner. Sanders doesn’t rail about the Cana­di­ans and Ger­mans steal­ing our jobs — his ire is reserved almost exclu­sive­ly for the Chi­nese and the Latin Amer­i­cans ...

Bernie wants to crim­i­nal­ize polit­i­cal dis­sent

After estab­lish­ing that Sanders har­bors racist beliefs, Williamson moved on to paint the sen­a­tor as a ruth­less leader ready to “sti­fle his ene­mies’ abil­i­ty to par­tic­i­pate in the polit­i­cal process”:

And crim­i­nal­iz­ing things is very much on Bernie’s agen­da, begin­ning with the crim­i­nal­iza­tion of polit­i­cal dis­sent. At every event he swears to intro­duce a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment revers­ing Supreme Court deci­sions that affirmed the free-speech pro­tec­tions of peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions film­ing doc­u­men­taries, orga­niz­ing Web cam­paigns, and air­ing tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials in the hopes of influ­enc­ing elec­tions or pub­lic atti­tudes toward pub­lic issues. That this would amount to a repeal of the First Amend­ment does not trou­ble Bernie at all. If the First Amend­ment enables Them, then the First Amend­ment has got to go.

Fol­low­ing crit­i­cism that Williamson com­pared Sanders to Nazis in his Mon­day piece, the Nation­al Review writer defend­ed the arti­cle and claimed that he did not inten­tion­al­ly paint Sanders as a Nazi.

...

Well, this would be a clear case of God­win’s Law if Williamson did­n’t pro­ceed to deny what he just did.

No, some­thing else just hap­pened: God­win’s Allu­sion Elu­sion strikes again.

With near­ly two-thirds of like­ly GOP vot­ers respond­ing pos­i­tive­ly to Don­ald Trump’s pro­posed ban on all Mus­lims enter­ing the US, it’s prob­a­bly not too soon to engage in the fol­low­ing analy­sis

Talk­ing Points Memo
Edi­tor’s Blog
Know Your Fas­cist Dic­ta­tors

By Josh Mar­shall
Pub­lished Decem­ber 9, 2015, 9:45 AM EST

As long as we’re on to the sub­ject of fas­cist dic­ta­tors and Don­ald Trump is now being being com­pared to Adolf Hitler in major urban news­pa­pers, I thought I should speak up on behalf of fas­cist dic­ta­tor Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni as the true pro­to-Trump.

Mus­soli­ni was­n’t just a fas­cist dic­ta­tor. He was the fas­cist dic­ta­tor. Indeed, he’s the only fas­cist dic­ta­tor. As I not­ed a few days ago, “fas­cism” — for main­ly decent rea­sons — became a catch-all phrase used to refer to var­i­ous right­ist author­i­tar­i­an move­ments and regimes, in some cas­es explic­it­ly draw­ing inspi­ra­tion from each oth­er, of the first half of the 20th cen­tu­ry. Lat­er the term evolved into an ever vaguer phrase which high­ly agi­tat­ed peo­ple on the far left and far right used to yell at peo­ple about. But fas­cism was a specif­i­cal­ly Ital­ian polit­i­cal move­ment. And Mus­soli­ni was its cre­ator and leader.

Mus­soli­ni nev­er real­ly held a can­dle to Adolf Hitler in terms of bar­bar­i­ty and killing. Indeed, after con­sol­i­dat­ing pow­er through a mix of con­sti­tu­tion­al revi­sions, extra-legal vio­lence and secret police, Mus­soli­ni made some effort to rebrand him­self as a respectable world states­man in the late 20s and ear­ly 30s, going in for suits rather than para­mil­i­tary uni­forms. (Lat­er, for a mix of rea­sons includ­ing the eco­nom­ic chal­lenges of the Great Depres­sion and the rise of Adolf Hitler he swerved back in the oth­er direc­tion.) But what real­ly makes the Trump com­par­i­son in my mind is the mix of per­son­al man­ner, cyn­i­cism and nar­cis­sism.

We’ve all seen the videos of Adolf Hitler’s speech­es. To many Ger­mans at the time, his speech­es were sim­ply spell­bind­ing and irre­sistible. Eighty years lat­er, liv­ing in a dif­fer­ent era and with full knowl­edge of what was to come, they seem a mix of chill­ing, bizarre or demon­ic. But they are unde­ni­ably intense, phys­i­cal and dri­ven by some chill­ing but pow­er­ful and rav­en­ous inter­nal ener­gy. While Mus­soli­ni pro­vid­ed many of the mod­els for Nazi regime (col­or-shirt­ed para­mil­i­taries, var­i­ous trap­pings of pow­er and even the title of ‘leader’) he was an alto­geth­er dif­fer­ent char­ac­ter.

Mus­solin­i’s speech­es have a mix of melo­dra­mat­ic chest-puff­ing, hands at the waist swag­ger, hints of humor, hands to the crowd to calm them­selves no mat­ter how excit­ed they are. Frankly, they’re almost oper­at­ic in nature. The mix of vio­lent rhetoric with folksy hypo­thet­i­cals and humor­ous jabs unites the two men quite nice­ly.

The prob­lem of course is that Trump has trend­ed in an increas­ing­ly racist and xeno­pho­bic direc­tion as his cam­paign has gone on. But that was nev­er real­ly Mus­solin­i’s thing. The Nazi fetishiza­tion of race was basi­cal­ly for­eign to fas­cist ide­ol­o­gy. And Ital­ian fas­cism was not at all anti-Semit­ic ... except after 1938. That’s when Mus­soli­ni moved into full alliance with Nazi Ger­many, a move­ment he had once seen as a pro­tege and then a rival, and remade much of his move­ment (which had by then been in pow­er for fif­teen years) on the Nazi mod­el, import­ing its own ver­sion of Nazi anti-Semit­ic laws and var­i­ous new racial­ist poli­cies. Mus­solin­i’s regime was explic­it­ly anti-Semit­ic from 1938 to its fall in 1943, though there’s a fair of amount of his­tor­i­cal debate about how active­ly it pur­sued those poli­cies. When he nom­i­nal­ly ruled a Nazi pup­pet state in North­ern Italy after the col­lapse of the fas­cist regime, the Final Solu­tion was giv­en full rein.

In oth­er words, Mus­solin­i’s embrace of racism and anti-Semi­tism appears to have been cyn­i­cal and oppor­tunis­tic. But this works as an ana­log to Trump since I con­tin­ue to believe that Trump’s embrace of racism, anti-Mex­i­can immi­grant big­otry and Islam­o­pho­bia is large­ly oppor­tunis­tic. My only hes­i­ta­tion in call­ing it cyn­i­cal is that I think Trump may be the type who once he finds some­thing con­ve­nient to say, he then starts to believe it. Once Trump says some­thing it car­ries the Trump brand. And to Trump every­thing with the Trump brand is right and amaz­ing. So pos­si­bly his mix of arro­gance and nar­cis­sism, by an alchem­i­cal process, make it gen­uine rather than cyn­i­cal. I’m out of my depth in ana­lyz­ing that par­tic­u­lar ques­tion. But how­ev­er that may be, let’s look to Mus­soli­ni as our Trump prog­en­i­tor of choice.

“In oth­er words, Mus­solin­i’s embrace of racism and anti-Semi­tism appears to have been cyn­i­cal and oppor­tunis­tic. But this works as an ana­log to Trump since I con­tin­ue to believe that Trump’s embrace of racism, anti-Mex­i­can immi­grant big­otry and Islam­o­pho­bia is large­ly oppor­tunis­tic. My only hes­i­ta­tion in call­ing it cyn­i­cal is that I think Trump may be the type who once he finds some­thing con­ve­nient to say, he then starts to believe it. Once Trump says some­thing it car­ries the Trump brand. And to Trump every­thing with the Trump brand is right and amaz­ing. So pos­si­bly his mix of arro­gance and nar­cis­sism, by an alchem­i­cal process, make it gen­uine rather than cyn­i­cal. I’m out of my depth in ana­lyz­ing that par­tic­u­lar ques­tion. But how­ev­er that may be, let’s look to Mus­soli­ni as our Trump prog­en­i­tor of choice.”

Did Don­ald Trump start out an oppor­tunist who, due to some sort of nar­cis­sis­tic per­son­al­i­ty defect, came to actu­al­ly believ­ing his own oppor­tunis­ti­cal­ly cho­sen rhetoric? Seems pos­si­ble.

Then again, if we lis­ten to Jeb Bush, Trump’s entire can­di­da­cy is in real­i­ty a pro-Hillary Clin­ton giant psy­op, and while that seems high­ly unlike­ly all things con­sid­ered, you got­ta dream.

@Pterrafractyl–

Note­wor­thy in this con­text is the fact that the Mus­lim Brotherhood–parent of al-Qae­da, Hamas, Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic Jihad, and ISIS enjoy the favor they enjoy in the transna­tion­al cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty because of their “cor­po­ratist” eco­nom­ics.

This was pre­cise­ly the foun­da­tion of their ado­ra­tion of, and sup­port for, Mus­soli­ni.

The util­i­ty of Islamists as proxy war­riors against Rus­sia and Chi­na is obvi­ous­ly impor­tant and of imme­di­ate rel­e­vance.

How­ev­er, going for­ward, for all the rhetoric about ISIS, ban­ning Mus­lims from the U.S., nuk­ing Islamists to see if sand glows (Ted Cruz’s lat­est), the transna­tion­als and their asso­ci­at­ed polit­i­cal lumi­nar­ies and elites want to see the Arab and Mus­lim world (upwards of a bil­lion peo­ple) man­i­fest­ing eco­nom­ic gov­er­nance that cor­re­sponds to the doc­trines of M’u Sah-lini and his Cor­po­rate State.

Best,

Dave

@Dave: Along those line, it’s going to be inter­est­ing to see what Don­ald Trump has to say to reporters should they start bring­ing up his exten­sive invest­ments in the Mid­dle East and all the praise he’s has for slave-wage par­adis­es like Dubai:

Vice
I Con­front­ed Don­ald Trump in Dubai

June 2, 2014

By Mol­ly Crabap­ple

Don­ald Trump’s hair should not be.

It sits on his head like a souf­flé, both airy and sol­id, as improb­a­ble as any build­ing to which he’s giv­en his name. In Dubai, I get to inspect Trump from all angles. His hair is oth­er­world­ly, but his face is more eas­i­ly dis­sect­ed. It’s tan­ger­ine, save two pale cir­cles around his eyes.

Ivan­ka looks per­fect, how­ev­er. Even when her mouth is a moue of hate.

I am sit­ting two scant yards from Trump père et fille at a media brief­ing for the Trump Inter­na­tion­al Golf Course, which is being built by the Emi­rati firm DAMAC Prop­er­ties in con­junc­tion with Don­ald Trump Town­hous­es and Vil­las. Trump has promised it will be the great­est golf course in the world.

Ivan­ka is angry because I asked a real ques­tion. In Dubai, this can land you in jail.

***

This May, I researched labor issues in the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates. I inter­viewed con­struc­tion work­ers build­ing muse­ums on Abu Dhabi’s Saadiy­at Island. In the rich­est city in the world, the work­ers we spoke to were lit­tle more than inden­tured ser­vants. For between $150 and $300 a month, they worked 13 hours a day, six days a week. Their boss­es kept their pass­ports. They land­ed in the UAE owing more than a year’s salary to recruiters back home. They could be deport­ed for strik­ing.

In Pak­istan, Bangladesh, India, and Nepal, they had fam­i­lies depen­dent on their wages. How­ev­er bru­tal it was, the Gulf dream was their one shot out of pover­ty. They could not fu ck this up.

The UAE is not unique­ly guilty. Migrants through­out the world, in the US as well as the UAE, do the worst work and suf­fer the worst state vio­lence. While my research focused on Abu Dhabi, poor con­di­tions are typ­i­cal through­out the Gulf. Thou­sands of work­ers could die build­ing the World Cup sta­dia in Qatar. Fig­u­ra­tive blood stains the gleam­ing steel of Earth­’s tallest build­ing, Dubai’s Burj Khal­i­fa.

The day before Trump’s press con­fer­ence, A source inter­viewed work­ers build­ing the lux­u­ry vil­las bear­ing Trump’s name. They told him they made less than $200 a month.

***

These work­ers would nev­er bask in the air con­di­tion­ing with me in the AKOYA by DAMAC Sales Cen­ter. Like so many of Dubai’s inte­ri­ors, the sales cen­ter is as cold and shin­ing as top-shelf gin. TVs play ads for Trump’s vil­las. On screen, white women plunge into swim­ming pools. Their hair bil­lows in vast bed­rooms. These vil­las are dreams for the world’s win­ners. Like the con­struc­tion work­ers who built them, they are place­less. They could be any­where. Cap­i­tal is con­text free.

“Who are you here for?” one of the pub­li­cists asks me.

“VICE.”

The pub­li­cist asks how I know about the event. I say I heard about it from a friend.

“Behave your­self,” he smiles. “Don’t embar­rass them.”

...

At this type of par­ty, I always tell myself I won’t eat the food. Jour­nal­ists are either shills or sit­u­a­tion­al sociopaths. When you cov­er the pow­er­ful, they serve great canapés. The pow­er­ful can seem so nice. Your lizard brain tells you to be nice back. But to be nice is to sell out those work­ers sweat­ing it out for $200 a month.

I swipe a flute of orange juice.

Trump enters with Ivan­ka and DAMAC CEO Hus­sain Sajwani. Cam­era­men bash into one anoth­er to film them. Trump is lit­tle more than a mov­ing stat­ue to be sucked into their devices. He gives a prac­ticed thumbs up.

On stage, Trump prais­es his Dubai. He is effusive—and sin­cere. Trump is one sort of West­ern­er who loves the UAE. They find here a throw­back to colo­nial­is­m’s hey­day. No mat­ter how much you’ve shat the bed at home, here your white­ness will get you a job, mon­ey, ser­vants from the Glob­al South. Help is so afford­able when migrant work­ers make $200 a month. In police states, there is lit­tle crime.

“The world has so many prob­lems and so many fail­ures, and you come here and it’s so beau­ti­ful,” Trump says. “Why can’t we have that in New York?”

Trump does not men­tion that, like Dubai, New York is mor­ph­ing into the no-place of mul­ti-nation­al cap­i­tal­ism. He does not men­tion that this is par­tial­ly his fault.

The floor opens to ques­tions.

I stand up.

“Mr. Trump,” I ask, “the work­ers who build your vil­las make less than $200 a month. Are you sat­is­fied?”

The room gasps, then goes silent. The secu­ri­ty tens­es towards me. In two hours I am sched­uled to inter­view Ahmed Man­soor, who spent eight months in jail for sign­ing a pro-democ­ra­cy peti­tion. I think about Nick McGee­han, a researcher from Human Rights Watch who was deport­ed a few months ago for inves­ti­gat­ing the same migrant issues I am.

I think about the web of pro­fes­sion­al coer­cion that keeps jour­nal­ists in the US from ask­ing real ques­tions at press con­fer­ences. I won­der if the rules in Dubai are the same.

Trump says noth­ing.

“That’s not an appro­pri­ate ques­tion,” the pub­li­cist barks.

When the next jour­nal­ist says, “Dubai is syn­ony­mous with the big, bold, and beau­ti­ful,” the room un-tens­es. “Is that where your affin­i­ty comes from?” the jour­nal­ist asks.

“I think Dubai has a tremen­dous future,” Trump replies.

***

The secu­ri­ty guards are still star­ing a hole into me when we file out. “Nice ques­tion,” says one reporter from a local news­pa­per.

“Why did­n’t you ask him some­thing like that?” I ask.

“It’s just not done here. You don’t do it because you know you won’t get an answer.”

Implied: I live here. I might suf­fer con­se­quences. You’re leav­ing in a few days. It thrills the soul to con­front pow­er­ful bas­tards, but does that alone change any­thing? The whole Gulf is built on exploita­tion. Local jour­nal­ists must be can­ny and patient, applaud­ing small improve­ments as they come.

...

“The world has so many prob­lems and so many fail­ures, and you come here and it’s so beautiful...Why can’t we have that in New York?”
And that was in ref­er­ence to Dubai, where Sharia law is the law.

So now we get to see how soon Trump makes any more trips back to Dubai or any of the oth­er many Mus­lim coun­tries that he’s invest­ed in. The new Trump Inter­na­tion­al Golf Club in Dubai sched­uled to be fin­ished next year and pre­sum­ably there’s going to be some sort grand open­ing cel­e­bra­tion. His busi­ness part­ners there sure seem to be tak­ing this lat­est Trumptro­ver­sy in stride.

It looks like Don­ald Trump’s busi­ness part­ners in Dubai who were ini­tial­ly stand­ing by him fol­low­ing out­rage across the Mid­dle East over Trump’s “ban all Mus­lims from enter­ing the US” pro­pos­al have decid­ed that their own busi­ness self-inter­erests trump pleas­ing Trump:

Reuters
Trump’s Dubai real estate part­ner strips his image, name from lux­u­ry golf project site

Thu Dec 10, 2015 12:04pm EST

DUBAI

A Dubai real estate firm build­ing a $6 bil­lion golf com­plex with Don­ald Trump on Thurs­day stripped the prop­er­ty of his name and image amid a back­lash over the U.S. pres­i­den­tial can­di­date’s pro­pos­al to ban all Mus­lims from enter­ing the Unit­ed States.

...

DAMAC Prop­er­ties had ini­tial­ly said it would stand by Trump, even as anoth­er of the bil­lion­aire’ s Mid­dle East part­ners, the Lifestyle chain of depart­ment stores, halt­ed sales of his “Trump Home” line on Wednes­day in protest at his com­ments.

A spokesman for DAMAC Prop­er­ties, Niall McLough­lin, declined to com­ment on why Trump’s image had been removed from a bill­board out­side the project con­struc­tion site, along with that of his daugh­ter, Ivan­ka Trump.

The AKOYA by DAMAC project will include a Trump-brand­ed golf course, gat­ed island com­mu­ni­ty and spa. Trump is also build­ing a sec­ond golf course, the Tiger Woods-designed Trump World Golf Club, at anoth­er DAMAC prop­er­ty in Dubai, AKOYA Oxy­gen.

An adver­tis­ing bill­board out­side the AKOYA by DAMAC devel­op­ment had shown Trump in a red hat swing­ing a golf club against a back­drop of a lush green golf course.

By Thurs­day, the image had gone, a Reuters pho­tog­ra­ph­er said.

An adja­cent pho­to of Trump’s daugh­ter Ivan­ka, an exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent for his Trump Orga­ni­za­tion firm, was also removed from the bill­board.

Gold let­ters spelling out “Trump Inter­na­tion­al Gold Club,” affixed to a land­scaped stone wall at the entrance to the project site, were also removed lat­er in the day, accord­ing to the Reuters pho­tog­ra­ph­er.

Trump on Thurs­day post­poned a planned trip to Israel amid the glob­al back­lash over his pro­pos­al. Israeli politi­cians and more than 370,000 Britons urged their gov­ern­ments on Wednes­day to bar Don­ald Trump from their coun­tries.

“A spokesman for DAMAC Prop­er­ties, Niall McLough­lin, declined to com­ment on why Trump’s image had been removed from a bill­board out­side the project con­struc­tion site, along with that of his daugh­ter, Ivan­ka Trump.”
Who knows why they did what they did? What a mys­tery.

But DAMAC Prop­er­ties was­n’t the only enti­ty to sud­den­ly decide to dis­as­so­ci­ate them­selves with The Don­ald in recent days, although unlike DAMAC Prop­er­ties, who is pre­sum­ably a some­what inno­cent bystander in all this (if you ignore its abu­sive labor poli­cies), this oth­er enti­ty was­n’t a vic­tim of guilt by asso­ci­a­tion but rather guilt by alarm­ing resem­b­lence:

Vox
Don­ald Trump has gone too far for French far-right leader Marine Le Pen

Updat­ed by Matthew Ygle­sias on Decem­ber 11, 2015, 10:40 a.m. ET

Don­ald Trump has been fre­quent­ly com­pared (includ­ing by me) to “far-right” pop­ulist move­ments in Europe. Indeed, schol­ar­ly experts on fas­cism say that this — rather than fas­cism — is the cor­rect com­par­i­son to make about Trump.

But as David Kirk­patrick writes in the New York Times, Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s very suc­cess­ful pop­ulist right par­ty Front Nation­al, actu­al­ly thinks Trump has gone too far:

Mr. Trump on Mon­day evoked com­par­isons to Ms. Le Pen and her Euro­pean coun­ter­parts with his call to close Amer­i­can bor­ders to all Mus­lims “until our country’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives can fig­ure out what the hell is going on.”

Ms. Le Pen said that was too much for her, per­haps in part because she feared jeop­ar­diz­ing the progress she had made in shed­ding her party’s pre­vi­ous image as racist and anti-Semit­ic.

“Seri­ous­ly, have you ever heard me say some­thing like that?” she asked on Thurs­day when ques­tioned about Mr. Trump’s com­ments dur­ing a tele­vi­sion inter­view. “I defend all the French peo­ple in France, regard­less of their ori­gin, regard­less of their reli­gion.”

You are see­ing here the basic dif­fer­ence between a legit­i­mate pro­fes­sion­al politi­cian who hap­pens to run an anti-immi­grant, anti-Mus­lim par­ty, and a real­i­ty tele­vi­sion star. Propos­ing for­mal dis­crim­i­na­tion on reli­gious grounds just does­n’t fly under the French con­sti­tu­tion any more than it does under the Amer­i­can Con­sti­tu­tion. The way you’re sup­posed to play the game is with for­mal­ly neu­tral pol­i­cy ini­tia­tives — some­thing like a ban on Syr­i­an refugees or on wear­ing reli­gious attire in school — that hap­pen to tar­get Mus­lim pop­u­la­tions. Trump’s more straight­for­ward bom­bast is get­ting him head­lines, but it’s mak­ing trou­ble for fun­da­men­tal­ly like-mind­ed peo­ple else­where.

“You are see­ing here the basic dif­fer­ence between a legit­i­mate pro­fes­sion­al politi­cian who hap­pens to run an anti-immi­grant, anti-Mus­lim par­ty, and a real­i­ty tele­vi­sion star.”
It must be hard being a pro­fes­sion­al far-right politi­cians who has spent years try­ing to white­wash away decades of xeno­pho­bia into a mere dog whis­tles only to see some rab­ble rous­ing real­i­ty TV star grab glob­al head­lines and then pro­ceed to drop not only his mask but the masks of pro­fes­sion far-right politi­cians every­where. Poor Marine. But at least she’s not alone. Plen­ty of oth­ers no doubt feel her pain.

The Wash­ing­ton Post had a recent piece on the fran­tic search among evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers to find an alter­na­tive to Don­ald Trump who, in a recent Quin­nip­i­ac poll, was tied with Ted Cruz, at 24 per­cent, among white evan­gel­i­cal reg­is­tered Repub­li­cans (Ben Car­son got 19 per­cent). And just who are these lead­ers start­ing to coa­lesce behind in an attempt to pre­vent Trump’s tox­i­c­i­ty from poi­son­ing the GOP’s brand more than it already is? They’re get­ting behind the one can­di­date that’s basi­cal­ly as tox­ic as Trump on all pol­i­cy posi­tion and pos­si­bly even more tox­ic:

The Wash­ing­ton Post
Evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers are fran­ti­cal­ly look­ing for ways to defeat Don­ald Trump

By Sarah Pul­liam Bai­ley
Decem­ber 10

Evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers are sig­nal­ing an urgency to find some­one oth­er than busi­ness­man Don­ald Trump to win the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion, releas­ing endorse­ments and talk­ing behind closed doors.

Evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers, who are an impor­tant vot­ing bloc for the Repub­li­can Par­ty and are not eas­i­ly led by their lead­ers, are all over the map in polls lead­ing up to the pri­maries in key states. And many evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers are strug­gling to coa­lesce around one can­di­date who they believe could beat Trump.

The Repub­li­can field is full of can­di­dates who could appeal to evan­gel­i­cals because of their social con­ser­v­a­tive posi­tions, includ­ing Ben Car­son, for­mer Arkansas gov­er­nor Mike Huck­abee or for­mer Penn­syl­va­nia sen­a­tor Rick San­to­rum. But inter­views with sev­er­al evan­gel­i­cal insid­ers this week sug­gest that lead­ers are debat­ing whether to sup­port Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) or Sen. Mar­co Rubio (Fla.).

The lat­est nation­al poll by Quin­nip­i­ac Uni­ver­si­ty had Trump tied with Cruz for first, at 24 per­cent, among white evan­gel­i­cal reg­is­tered Repub­li­can vot­ers. The poll, done Nov. 23–30, has Car­son at 19 per­cent and every­one else with 4 per­cent or less.

How­ev­er in Iowa, where evan­gel­i­cals can have the biggest ear­ly impact, evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers are mov­ing behind Cruz. Accord­ing to a Mon­mouth Uni­ver­si­ty sur­vey released Mon­day, Cruz has 30 per­cent sup­port from Iowa evan­gel­i­cals, fol­lowed by Trump (18 per­cent), Rubio (16 per­cent) and Car­son (15 per­cent).

There are no rep­re­sen­ta­tive sur­veys of all evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers, but infor­mal indi­ca­tors sug­gest lit­tle sup­port for Trump among elites. Rubio led an Octo­ber sur­vey of board mem­bers of the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Evan­gel­i­cals ask­ing which can­di­date they sup­port — includ­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates. Rubio also led an infor­mal sur­vey of 103 evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers and “insid­ers” by WORLD mag­a­zine, with Cruz and Car­ly Fio­r­i­na also receiv­ing sup­port. Only 1 per­cent picked Trump.

Cruz has also seen a hand­ful of high-pro­file endorse­ments and is expect­ed to win among evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers in Iowa. James Dob­son, founder of Focus on the Fam­i­ly and an influ­en­tial leader among some evan­gel­i­cals, told The Wash­ing­ton Post that he is endors­ing Cruz.

“It does appear that evan­gel­i­cal [vot­ers] are coa­lesc­ing around Sen­a­tor Cruz, along with sev­er­al oth­er coali­tions with­in the Repub­li­can field,” Dob­son said in an email. “While things can change over time, right now Sen­a­tor Cruz’s strong record on reli­gious lib­er­ty, life and mar­riage seems to be steadi­ly attract­ing evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers — a trend I don’t see end­ing any time soon.”

Dob­son said that although he is friends with can­di­dates such as Huck­abee, he believes Cruz is the right choice because he is “bril­liant, artic­u­late, and well estab­lished in his moral and spir­i­tu­al con­vic­tions.”

“I am very wary of Don­ald Trump,” Dob­son said in his email, cit­ing Trump’s busi­ness in gam­bling. “I would nev­er vote for a king pin with­in that enter­prise. Trump’s ten­den­cy to shoot from the hip and attack those with whom he dis­agrees would be an embar­rass­ment to the nation if he should become our Chief Exec­u­tive. I don’t real­ly believe Trump is a con­ser­v­a­tive. Final­ly, I would nev­er under any cir­cum­stance vote for Hillary Clin­ton.”

Dobson’s posi­tion char­ac­ter­izes the point of view of many evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers who are seek­ing ways to defeat Trump. Many dis­like his involve­ment in gam­bling and are uncom­fort­able with his state­ments. For instance, some lead­ers cit­ed his report­ed com­ments about his daughter’s fig­ure, includ­ing: “I’ve said if Ivan­ka weren’t my daugh­ter, per­haps I’d be dat­ing her.”

The sense of urgency among many evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers to defeat Trump became clear this week after he pro­posed that Mus­lims be tem­porar­i­ly halt­ed from immi­grat­ing to the Unit­ed States.

Rus­sell Moore, pres­i­dent of the South­ern Bap­tist Ethics and Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Com­mis­sion, said Trump’s com­ments this week “pro­vid­ed a sense of clar­i­ty” and sparked a back­lash among evan­gel­i­cals.

“Any­one who is famil­iar with the First Amend­ment and basic rights of due process in this coun­try would revolt at the idea of what Trump was propos­ing,” Moore said.

Moore, who said he will not endorse a can­di­date, believes that evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers and vot­ers are keep­ing an open mind but that many assumed that Trump would be out of the race by now.

“It’s sud­den­ly becom­ing seri­ous for a lot of peo­ple,” Moore said. “I know evan­gel­i­cals and oth­ers who laughed along the Trump clown­ish­ness in the sum­mer and into the fall who are now tak­ing this seri­ous­ly because they can’t believe this is hap­pen­ing in our coun­try.”

Not all evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers were opposed to Trump’s remarks. Famed evan­ge­list Bil­ly Graham’s son Franklin Gra­ham has been urg­ing a halt on Mus­lim immi­gra­tion since this sum­mer and reit­er­at­ed his sup­port for the idea in a Face­book post on Wednes­day. “Politi­cians in Wash­ing­ton seem to be total­ly dis­con­nect­ed with real­i­ty,” he said after House Speak­er Paul Ryan crit­i­cized Trump.

Tony Perkins, pres­i­dent of the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil, has yet to endorse a can­di­date. He declined to speak about a group of con­ser­v­a­tives he has con­vened behind closed doors and said he is still weigh­ing the pres­i­den­tial field. But he said Trump has tapped into the fear that peo­ple have over secu­ri­ty.

“I give Don­ald Trump a lot more cred­it than some do. I don’t think he mis­s­peaks as much as peo­ple think,” Perkins said. “I think in this age of polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness, in which peo­ple refuse to speak with clar­i­ty, he is seen as very attrac­tive. I think it’s a mis­take to write off Don­ald Trump. He has tapped some­thing that’s very real across the spec­trum, includ­ing [among] evan­gel­i­cals.”

Perkins said a con­gres­sion­al mea­sure that would lim­it Syr­i­an refugees is “a rea­son­able approach,” but he added that “I would not talk about it in a way that we should pro­hib­it peo­ple of any par­tic­u­lar reli­gion.” He said Trump’s com­ments about Mus­lims were too broad.

“There are many peo­ple in parts of the world who are born into Mus­lim fam­i­lies, but they don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly hold to the faith. It’s not a reli­gious test. It’s an ide­o­log­i­cal test,” Perkins said. “I would avoid mak­ing sweep­ing state­ments about what our pol­i­cy should be for a par­tic­u­lar class or set of peo­ple.”

Evan­gel­i­cals make up the largest reli­gious group in the coun­try, and they heav­i­ly lean Repub­li­can. Near­ly 70 per­cent of white evan­gel­i­cals either iden­ti­fy as Repub­li­cans or lean Repub­li­can, while 22 per­cent affil­i­ate with the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty or lean Demo­c­ra­t­ic, accord­ing to the Pew Research Cen­ter.

San­to­rum and Huck­abee have drawn sup­port from social con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cals in the past, but this time around, evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers have been espe­cial­ly divid­ed over which can­di­date to sup­port.

“The key is, will evan­gel­i­cals find a can­di­date that most of them can agree on?” said John Green, a polit­i­cal sci­en­tist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Akron. “If they all unit­ed behind a par­tic­u­lar can­di­date, it would make it dif­fi­cult for Trump to win.”

Ohio con­ser­v­a­tive leader Phil Bur­ress said lead­ers in his coali­tion are still decid­ing whom they will endorse, but he believes there’s a 95 per­cent chance that they will go with Cruz.

“We’re scared to death right now. This admin­is­tra­tion is let­ting these rad­i­cal Mus­lims into the coun­try,” Bur­ress said. “This isn’t a war on ter­ror­ism. This is a war against rad­i­cal Islam. We need some­one to speak plain­ly and clear­ly, and the pres­i­dent refus­es to do that. Ted Cruz will call it what it is.”

But Bur­ress also sup­ports Rubio and would back him if he became a front-run­ner. Some believe Rubio could pull ahead if oth­er lead­ers drop out of the race, but tea par­ty-lean­ing evan­gel­i­cals are ner­vous about his past work on immi­gra­tion reform.

Many lead­ers believe Cruz has a chance to beat Trump, since he has raised the most mon­ey after for­mer Flori­da gov­er­nor Jeb Bush. Bur­ress said lead­ers are espe­cial­ly eager to find a way to defeat Trump.

“He is scary. He’ll lead us into World War III in a heart­beat,” Bur­ress said. “He thinks he’s such a great nego­tia­tor, but he’s a bul­ly.”

John Stem­berg­er, pres­i­dent of Flori­da Fam­i­ly Action, has yet to back a can­di­date and said Cruz has the advan­tage of receiv­ing sup­port from influ­en­tial lead­ers in Texas.

“Cruz is fear­less. He is undaunt­ed by con­fronta­tion. He is will­ing to take very unpop­u­lar posi­tions and stand alone if nec­es­sary,” Stem­berg­er said. “Rubio has an almost iden­ti­cal vot­ing record. He’s extreme­ly win­some, the finest com­mu­ni­ca­tor in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics today.”

The Nation­al Orga­ni­za­tion for Mar­riage, a group that believes mar­riage should be between a man and a woman, announced its sup­port for Cruz on Wednes­day. “Unless con­ser­v­a­tives come togeth­er behind a full-spec­trum can­di­date — pro-mar­riage, pro-life, strong nation­al defense, etc. — there is a real risk that some­one like Don­ald Trump could win the nom­i­na­tion, which would be dis­as­trous,” the group said in a state­ment.

Richard Viguerie, chair­man of Con­ser­v­a­tive Head­quar­ters and a pio­neer in polit­i­cal direct mail, which has been effec­tive with evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers in the past, urged vot­ers to sup­port Cruz, ask­ing on Wednes­day:: “What are we con­ser­v­a­tives wait­ing for?”

“Along with Ted Cruz’s tal­ent and zest for polit­i­cal com­bat, and con­sis­tent record of sup­port­ing con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­cy solu­tions, goes a method­i­cal self-dis­ci­pline and self-con­trol that dis­tin­guish him from the long­time front run­ner who has been the oth­er mes­sage-car­ri­er for the con­ser­v­a­tive grass­roots and their demand for change in Wash­ing­ton — Don­ald Trump,” Viguerie wrote.

...

“Along with Ted Cruz’s tal­ent and zest for polit­i­cal com­bat, and con­sis­tent record of sup­port­ing con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­cy solu­tions, goes a method­i­cal self-dis­ci­pline and self-con­trol that dis­tin­guish him from the long­time front run­ner who has been the oth­er mes­sage-car­ri­er for the con­ser­v­a­tive grass­roots and their demand for change in Wash­ing­ton — Don­ald Trump.”
Those are the words of Richard Viguerie, one of the most influ­en­tial con­ser­v­a­tive strate­gists for the past half a cen­tu­ry and a key fig­ure in the rise of the New Right. And as we just saw, his pro-Cruz sen­ti­ments appear to be shared by a grow­ing num­ber of con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers. It all rais­es the obvi­ous ques­tion of why a Ted Cruz nom­i­na­tion isn’t also going to be a night­mare for the GOP:

The Hill
Night­mare sce­nario for estab­lish­ment: Trump or Cruz

By Niall Stan­age — 12/10/15 06:05 AM EST

Three can­di­dates for the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion have bro­ken away from the rest of the pack, and two of them — busi­ness­man Don­ald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz — give the GOP estab­lish­ment night­mares.

That leaves the third mem­ber of the trio, Flori­da Sen. Mar­co Rubio, poten­tial­ly well placed to pick up the sup­port of cen­ter-right Repub­li­can vot­ers who are look­ing for some­one to stop Trump and Cruz at almost any cost.

But Rubio is behind both of his top-tier rivals in nation­al polling aver­ages and is even fur­ther back in Iowa, home to the first-in-the-nation cau­cus­es, where he holds fourth place, albeit behind the fast-fad­ing Ben Car­son.

An even deep­er prob­lem for the Flori­da sen­a­tor is that oth­er can­di­dates who are com­pet­ing for the same vot­ers are unlike­ly to drop out before the New Hamp­shire pri­ma­ry. That means votes that might oth­er­wise go to Rubio could instead be won by con­tenders such as for­mer Flori­da Gov. Jeb Bush, New Jer­sey Gov. Chris Christie and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

Add all these fac­tors togeth­er and it becomes clear why estab­lish­ment Repub­li­cans are so con­cerned, espe­cial­ly in the wake of Trump’s inflam­ma­to­ry call to ban Mus­lims from enter­ing the Unit­ed States. Cruz, mean­while, has been enjoy­ing a rapid rise in the polls.

“Lis­ten, I think both Cruz and Trump would have a sim­i­lar impact on the par­ty, nei­ther of which would be very good. I am actu­al­ly more con­cerned about Cruz than I am about Trump,” said GOP strate­gist John Fee­hery, a for­mer senior lead­er­ship aide who is a colum­nist for The Hill.

Fee­hery added, “I think Cruz has made a rep­u­ta­tion of relent­less men­dac­i­ty ... I think he’s a dem­a­gogue and I think he’ll destroy the par­ty. I think Trump is much more of a blowhard. But there’s not real­ly a dime’s worth of dif­fer­ence between Trump and Cruz.”

As of Wednes­day after­noon, Trump sat atop the Real­Clear­Pol­i­tics nation­al polling aver­age, with the back­ing of 29.3 per­cent of GOP vot­ers, with Cruz in sec­ond, at 15.5 per­cent. Rubio was just behind, with 14.8 per­cent. In Iowa, where the first cau­cus­es will be held on Feb. 1, Cruz runs much clos­er, with 22.3 per­cent aver­age sup­port to Trump’s 25.7 per­cent. Rubio is far­ther behind in the Hawk­eye State than nation­al­ly, draw­ing 13.7 per­cent back­ing.

Trump’s com­ments call­ing for a “shut­down” of Mus­lims enter­ing the U.S. have been con­demned by many Repub­li­cans, as well as Democ­rats and unaligned observers. Includ­ed among his crit­ics are Speak­er Paul Ryan (R‑Wis.) and Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Mitch McConnell (R‑Ky.), who both lam­bast­ed him on Tues­day. The con­dem­na­tion of a party’s pres­i­den­tial front-run­ner by that same party’s most senior mem­bers of Con­gress is with­out prece­dent, at least in mod­ern times.

The oppro­bri­um from on high will not nec­es­sar­i­ly doom Trump. A Bloomberg Pol­i­tics poll released Wednes­day indi­cat­ed that 64 per­cent of like­ly Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry vot­ers sup­port­ed the idea of tem­porar­i­ly ban­ning Mus­lims from com­ing to Amer­i­ca.

But Wash­ing­ton Repub­li­cans shake their heads at the dam­age they believe the real estate tycoon is inflict­ing on the party’s image. They are also enraged about his sug­ges­tion that he could mount a third-par­ty run if he is not treat­ed in a way that he deems fair dur­ing the GOP pri­ma­ry process.

“Don­ald Trump says he might make a third-par­ty run if he is mis­treat­ed by the par­ty, but Don­ald Trump has severe­ly mis­treat­ed the Repub­li­can Par­ty with his out­landish and over-the-top state­ments against His­pan­ics, women and now against reli­gion in terms of Mus­lims,” said Ron Bon­jean, a GOP con­sul­tant and for­mer aide to House and Sen­ate Repub­li­can lead­ers.

Bon­jean expressed less out­rage about Cruz per­son­al­ly, but just as much skep­ti­cism about his chances of pre­vail­ing in a gen­er­al elec­tion.

Allud­ing to reports that Cruz and his advis­ers believe he can win the White House by boost­ing enthu­si­asm and turnout sole­ly among the con­ser­v­a­tive base, Bon­jean said, “If Cruz would fol­low through on his promise not to court the mid­dle, we would lose the gen­er­al elec­tion.”

The Cruz camp has also made the case it can win over “Rea­gan Democ­rats” in the gen­er­al elec­tion, though some Repub­li­cans are skep­ti­cal.

All of the GOP estab­lish­ment angst could be good news for Rubio. The fact that he has now achieved a degree of sep­a­ra­tion from oth­er estab­lish­ment-friend­ly choic­es such as Bush, Kasich and Christie could cre­ate a snow­ball effect where more vot­ers are drawn to his ban­ner.

...

Cen­trist Repub­li­cans believe the par­ty needs to act soon in order to defeat Trump and Cruz.

“There needs to be a con­sol­i­da­tion of can­di­dates that attract white-col­lar and estab­lish­ment vot­ers, and that will com­pete for the nom­i­na­tion,” said Bon­jean. “At this point, you are see­ing some move­ment in the estab­lish­ment toward Rubio — a lit­tle bit. It feels like a plate-shift­ing is hap­pen­ing.”

“If Cruz would fol­low through on his promise not to court the mid­dle, we would lose the gen­er­al elec­tion.”
Yep, Ted Cruz’s promise to his sup­port­ers is that he his attempt to appeal the broad­er Amer­i­can elec­torate is basi­cal­ly to be Ted Cruz and assume that the nation will be super inspired by that. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, some GOP ana­lysts that aren’t part and par­cel of the evan­gel­i­cal right aren’t so sure about that:

...
“Lis­ten, I think both Cruz and Trump would have a sim­i­lar impact on the par­ty, nei­ther of which would be very good. I am actu­al­ly more con­cerned about Cruz than I am about Trump,” said GOP strate­gist John Fee­hery, a for­mer senior lead­er­ship aide who is a colum­nist for The Hill.

Fee­hery added, “I think Cruz has made a rep­u­ta­tion of relent­less men­dac­i­ty ... I think he’s a dem­a­gogue and I think he’ll destroy the par­ty. I think Trump is much more of a blowhard. But there’s not real­ly a dime’s worth of dif­fer­ence between Trump and Cruz.”
...

So not only is the GOP “estab­lish­ment” appar­ent­ly freak­ing out about the prospect of a Trump nom­i­na­tion, but the evan­gel­i­cal “estab­lish­ment” is too and yet the evan­gel­i­cal’s Trump-ter­na­tive of choice is the guy that freaks out “estab­lish­ment” ana­lysts like John Fee­hery even more than Trump.

Giv­en all that, it’s going to be very inter­est­ing to see if the GOP “estab­lish­ment” adopts an “any­one but Trump or Cruz” atti­tude in com­ing months and what impact that’s going to have on the prospect of Trump actu­al­ly fol­low­ing through on his threat to wage a third par­ty bid. And why might an anti-Cruz cam­paign by the “estab­lish­ment” impact the like­li­hood of a Trump third par­ty bid? Well, keep in mind that the above piece was about con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers and also keep in mind what we saw above: the evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers love both Trump and Cruz more than any­one else:

...
The lat­est nation­al poll by Quin­nip­i­ac Uni­ver­si­ty had Trump tied with Cruz for first, at 24 per­cent, among white evan­gel­i­cal reg­is­tered Repub­li­can vot­ers. The poll, done Nov. 23–30, has Car­son at 19 per­cent and every­one else with 4 per­cent or less.
...

So what’s going to hap­pen if the “estab­lish­ment” wages an open cam­paign against not just the cur­rent GOP front run­ner but also the guy surg­ing into sec­ond place nation­al and who just took a sig­nif­i­cant lead over Trump in the most recent­ly Iowa poll? Isn’t that exact­ly the kind of behav­ior by the “estab­lish­ment” that makes “anti-estab­lish­ment” behav­ior like vot­ing third-par­ty far more like­ly? Trump will sure­ly be be well aware of the grow­ing antipa­thy towards the “estab­lish­ment”, so won’t an anti-Trump/Cruz cam­paign make a third par­ty Trump bid sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly?

And if he does make that third par­ty bid fol­low­ing a joint “any­one but Trump or Cruz” cam­paign by the estab­lish­ment, you have to won­der who he’ll try to enlist as his run­ning mate.

French far-right leader Le Pen calls on Euro­peans to ‘wake up’
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-farright-lepen-idUSKBN1550DD

KOBLENZ, Ger­many French far-right leader Marine Le Pen urged Euro­pean vot­ers to fol­low the exam­ple of Amer­i­cans and the British and “wake up” in 2017, at a meet­ing of right-wing lead­ers aim­ing to oust estab­lished par­ties in elec­tions this year.

Le Pen told sev­er­al hun­dred sup­port­ers in the Ger­man city of Koblenz that Britons’ vote last year to leave the Euro­pean Union would set in train a “domi­no effect”.

A day after U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump took office, Le Pen said his inau­gu­ra­tion speech includ­ed “accents in com­mon” with the mes­sage on reclaim­ing nation­al sov­er­eign­ty pro­claimed by the far-right lead­ers meet­ing in Koblenz.

“2016 was the year the Anglo-Sax­on world woke up. I am sure 2017 will be the year the peo­ple of con­ti­nen­tal Europe wake up,” she said to loud applause on Sat­ur­day.

Pop­ulist par­ties are on the rise across Europe. Unem­ploy­ment and aus­ter­i­ty, the arrival of record num­bers of refugees and mil­i­tant attacks in France, Bel­gium and Ger­many have left vot­ers dis­il­lu­sioned with con­ven­tion­al par­ties.

Le Pen, head of the anti-Euro­pean Union, anti-immi­grant Nation­al Front (FN) and seen by poll­sters as high­ly like­ly to make a two-per­son runoff vote for the French pres­i­den­cy in May, has marked out Europe as a major plank in her pro­gramme.

“The key fac­tor that is going to set in course all the domi­nos of Europe is Brex­it,” Le Pen said. “A sov­er­eign peo­ple chose ... to decide its des­tiny itself.”

Of Trump, she added: “His posi­tion on Europe is clear: he does not sup­port a sys­tem of oppres­sion of peo­ples.”

In a joint inter­view with the Times of Lon­don and the Ger­man news­pa­per Bild pub­lished on Mon­day, Trump said the EU had become “a vehi­cle for Ger­many” and pre­dict­ed that more EU mem­ber states would vote to leave the bloc, as Britain did last June.

Le Pen said if elect­ed she would ask the EU to return sov­er­eign pow­ers to France and hold a ref­er­en­dum on the out­come of nego­ti­a­tions she expect­ed to fol­low. If the EU reject­ed her demands, she said: “I will sug­gest to the French peo­ple: exit!”

“FREE FATHERLANDS”

The far-right lead­ers met under the slo­gan “Free­dom for Europe” with the aim of strength­en­ing ties between their par­ties, whose nation­al­ist ten­den­cies have ham­pered close col­lab­o­ra­tion in the past.

“Togeth­er with the par­ties rep­re­sent­ed here, we want a sub­sidiary Europe of free Father­lands,” said Frauke Petry, leader of Ger­many’s anti-immi­gra­tion Alter­na­tive for Ger­many (AfD).

Sev­er­al lead­ing Ger­man media were barred from the Koblenz meet­ing, which was organ­ised by the Europe of Nations and Free­dom (ENF), the small­est group in the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment.

Also at the meet­ing were Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch far-right Free­dom Par­ty (PVV), who was last month con­vict­ed of dis­crim­i­na­tion against Moroc­cans, and Mat­teo Salvi­ni of the North­ern League, who wants to take Italy out of the euro.

In the Nether­lands, Wilders is lead­ing in all major polls before nation­al par­lia­men­tary elec­tions on March 15. Hail­ing Trump’s elec­tion, Wilders told the meet­ing: “Yes­ter­day, a free Amer­i­ca, today Koblenz, and tomor­row a new Europe.”

“The genie will not go back into the bot­tle,” he added.

Sig­mar Gabriel, the leader of Ger­many’s Social Democ­rats, junior part­ner in Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel’s rul­ing coali­tion, joined a protest out­side the venue. Police said the demon­stra­tion was peace­ful and about 5,000 peo­ple took part.

The ques­tions about the depth of Pres­i­dent Trump’s racism is one of the sad­der fea­tures of the Trump era of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, large­ly because Trump keeps say­ing and doing racist things and palling around with racists which keeps rais­ing the ques­tion of whether or not he’s even more racist than peo­ple real­ized. And then there’s the fact that vir­tu­al­ly none of Trump’s racist antics turn off his vot­er base which prompts the larg­er sad ques­tion of just how racist is the Repub­li­can elec­torate in gen­er­al.

Giv­en that sad back­drop of Trump’s open near-dai­ly racist-inspire out­burst and tweets, it’s worth not­ing that the Nixon Pres­i­den­tial Library just released a record­ed phone call between Nixon and Ronald Rea­gan from 1971 where Rea­gan goes on a racist tirade. It’s the kind of tirade that more or less makes it impos­si­ble to deny one is a racist. In 1971, the UN vot­ed to seat Bei­jing instead of Tai­wan. Fol­low­ing the vote, mem­bers of the Tan­zan­ian del­e­ga­tion, which was­n’t wear­ing shoes, start­ed danc­ing in the Gen­er­al Assem­bly. This shoe­less cel­e­bra­tion, which was tele­vised, appar­ent­ly deeply enraged Rea­gan. After the vote, Rea­gan called up Nixon to express his out­rage, say­ing, “Last night, I tell you, to watch that thing on tele­vi­sion as I did,”. “Yeah,” Nixon respond­ed. Then Rea­gan decried, “To see those, those mon­keys from those African countries—damn them, they’re still uncom­fort­able wear­ing shoes!” It was an even more overt­ly racist state­ment about African coun­tries than Trump’s now-infa­mous ‘shit­hole’ com­ment about African coun­tries.

It turns out the tape of this con­ver­sa­tion was released in 2000, but the racist parts were edit­ed out, osten­si­bly to pro­tect Rea­gan’s pri­va­cy. Rea­gan’s death in 2004 end­ed those pri­va­cy con­cerns. The tape is only now being released unedit­ed.

So Rea­gan made an unam­bigu­ous racist tirade on those tapes. As the fol­low­ing arti­cle notes, Rea­gan’s racist sen­ti­ments was made abun­dant­ly clear lat­er that decade with his pas­sion­ate defens­es of the apartheid states of Rhode­sia and South Africa (not to men­tion his friend­li­ness with ex-Nazis when he was in office). But it’s Nixon’s response to Rea­gan’s tirade that high­light­ed his own racist sen­ti­ments.

Nixon had already been angered at the African lead­ers over that UN vote when Rea­gan called. Despite being informed that British and French behind the scene maneu­ver­ing was respon­si­ble for the vote, Nixon con­tin­ued to blame the Africans.

After Rea­gan’s call, Nixon called Sec­re­tary of State William Rogers and told him about Rea­gan’s anger over the vote. Nixon told Rogers, “As you can imag­ine, there’s strong feel­ing that we just shouldn’t, as [Rea­gan] said, he saw these, as he said, he saw these ...these, uh, these can­ni­bals on tele­vi­sion last night, and he says, ‘Christ, they weren’t even wear­ing shoes, and here the Unit­ed States is going to sub­mit its fate to that,’ and so forth and so on.” Nixon appar­ent­ly felt that Rea­gan’s anger at the Africans was sym­bol­ic of the anger a much larg­er swathe of racist white vot­ers would feel about the vote and that those sen­ti­ments need­ed to be tak­en into account. Nixon called Rogers two hours lat­er and told the exact same sto­ry about Rea­gan’s phone call to make the same point about the need for the Sec­re­tary of State to keep the anger of the racist vot­ing block in mind regard­ing the response to the UN vote.

The arti­cle goes on to describe how Nixon appeared to gen­uine­ly feel that blacks are sim­ply infe­ri­or. Nixon was appar­ent­ly a fan of the ‘race sci­ence’ work of Arthur Jensen and Richard Her­rn­stein. Recall that Her­rn­stein co-authored The Bell Curve with Charles Mur­ray in 1994 and Arthur Jensen is well known as a pro­mot­er of racist pseu­do­science fund­ed by orga­ni­za­tions like the Pio­neer Fund. Nixon once told Daniel Patrick Moyni­han, who worked as a Nixon advis­er, “I have reluc­tant­ly con­clud­ed, based at least on the evi­dence present­ly before me … that what Her­rn­stein says, and what was said ear­li­er by Jensen, is prob­a­bly … very close to the truth.” So Nixon, in his own words, was a believ­er that blacks are infe­ri­or as a race.

So thanks to Nixon’s deci­sion to record every­thing for pos­ter­i­ty, we can unam­bigu­ous­ly con­clude that both Nixon and Rea­gan had deeply held anti-Black sen­ti­ments. Of course, the actions of both pres­i­dents also made this abun­dant­ly clear if we look at their actu­al poli­cies and the polit­i­cal bat­tles they fought. The ‘South­ern Strat­e­gy’ of appeal­ing to white racists was crit­i­cal to the elec­toral suc­cess­es of both Nixon and Rea­gan, after all.

And as the arti­cle also notes, while both Rea­gan and Nixon may have held these racist sen­ti­ments, they still weren’t near­ly as open about it as Trump is today:

The Atlantic

Ronald Reagan’s Long-Hid­den Racist Con­ver­sa­tion With Richard Nixon

In new­ly unearthed audio, the then–California gov­er­nor dis­par­aged African del­e­gates to the Unit­ed Nations.

Tim Naf­tali
Clin­i­cal asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of his­to­ry at NYU
Jul 30, 2019

The day after the Unit­ed Nations vot­ed to rec­og­nize the People’s Repub­lic of Chi­na, then–California Gov­er­nor Ronald Rea­gan phoned Pres­i­dent Richard Nixon at the White House and vent­ed his frus­tra­tion at the del­e­gates who had sided against the Unit­ed States. “Last night, I tell you, to watch that thing on tele­vi­sion as I did,” Rea­gan said. “Yeah,” Nixon inter­ject­ed. Rea­gan forged ahead with his com­plaint: “To see those, those mon­keys from those African countries—damn them, they’re still uncom­fort­able wear­ing shoes!” Nixon gave a huge laugh.

The past month has brought pres­i­den­tial racism back into the head­lines. This Octo­ber 1971 exchange between cur­rent and future pres­i­dents is a reminder that oth­er pres­i­dents have sub­scribed to the racist belief that Africans or African Amer­i­cans are some­how infe­ri­or. The most nov­el aspect of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s racist gibes isn’t that he said them, but that he said them in pub­lic.

The exchange was taped by Nixon, and then lat­er became the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the Nixon Pres­i­den­tial Library, which I direct­ed from 2007 to 2011. When the Nation­al Archives orig­i­nal­ly released the tape of this con­ver­sa­tion, in 2000, the racist por­tion was appar­ent­ly with­held to pro­tect Reagan’s pri­va­cy. A court order stip­u­lat­ed that the tapes be reviewed chrono­log­i­cal­ly; the chrono­log­i­cal review was com­plet­ed in 2013. Not until 2017 or 2018 did the Nation­al Archives begin a gen­er­al rere­view of the ear­li­est Nixon tapes. Reagan’s death, in 2004, elim­i­nat­ed the pri­va­cy con­cerns. Last year, as a researcher, I request­ed that the con­ver­sa­tions involv­ing Ronald Rea­gan be rere­viewed, and two weeks ago, the Nation­al Archives released com­plete ver­sions of the Octo­ber 1971 con­ver­sa­tions involv­ing Rea­gan online.

When the UN took its vote to seat a del­e­ga­tion from Bei­jing instead of from Tai­wan in 1971, mem­bers of the Tan­zan­ian del­e­ga­tion start­ed danc­ing in the Gen­er­al Assem­bly. Rea­gan, a devot­ed defend­er of Tai­wan, was incensed, and tried to reach Nixon the night of the vote. Rea­gan despised the Unit­ed Nations, which he described as a “kan­ga­roo court” filled with “bums,” and he want­ed the U.S. to with­draw from full par­tic­i­pa­tion imme­di­ate­ly. Nixon was asleep when Rea­gan called, so they spoke the next morn­ing.

Reagan’s slur touched an already raw nerve. Ear­li­er that day, Nixon had called his deputy nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er, Al Haig, to can­cel any future meet­ings with any African leader who had not vot­ed with the Unit­ed States on Tai­wan, even if they had already been sched­uled. “Don’t even sub­mit to me the prob­lem that it’s dif­fi­cult to turn it off since we have already accept­ed it,” Nixon exclaimed. “Just turn it off, on the ground that I will be out of town.”

Nixon’s anger at the UN del­e­ga­tions from African nations for the loss was mis­placed. His own State Depart­ment blamed fac­tors oth­er than African vot­ing, includ­ing maneu­ver­ing by the British and French behind the scenes, for the loss. But Nixon would have none of it. The Africans were to blame.

Had the sto­ry stopped there, it would have been bad enough. Racist vent­ing is still racist. But what hap­pened next showed the dynam­ic pow­er of racism when it finds enablers. Nixon used Reagan’s call as an excuse to adapt his lan­guage to make the same point to oth­ers. Right after hang­ing up with Rea­gan, Nixon sought out Sec­re­tary of State William Rogers.

Even though Rea­gan had called Nixon to press him to with­draw from the Unit­ed Nations, in Nixon’s telling, Reagan’s com­plaints about Africans became the pri­ma­ry pur­pose of the call.

“As you can imag­ine,” Nixon con­fid­ed in Rogers, “there’s strong feel­ing that we just shouldn’t, as [Rea­gan] said, he saw these, as he said, he saw these—” Nixon stam­mered, choos­ing his words carefully—“these, uh, these can­ni­bals on tele­vi­sion last night, and he says, ‘Christ, they weren’t even wear­ing shoes, and here the Unit­ed States is going to sub­mit its fate to that,’ and so forth and so on.”

The pres­i­dent want­ed his patri­cian sec­re­tary of state to under­stand that Rea­gan spoke for racist Amer­i­cans, and they need­ed to be lis­tened to. “You know, but that’s typ­i­cal of a reac­tion, which is probably”—“That’s right,” Rogers interjected—“quite strong.”

Nixon couldn’t stop retelling his ver­sion of what Rea­gan had said. Odd­ly unfo­cused, he spoke with Rogers again two hours lat­er and repeat­ed the sto­ry as if it would be new to the sec­re­tary.

“Rea­gan called me last night,” Nixon said, “and I didn’t talk to him until this morn­ing, but he is, of course, out­raged. And I found out what out­raged him, and I find this is typ­i­cal of a lot of peo­ple: They saw it on tele­vi­sion and, he said, ‘These can­ni­bals jump­ing up and down and all that.’ And appar­ent­ly it was a pret­ty grotesque pic­ture.” Like Nixon, Rogers had not seen the tele­vised images. But Rogers agreed: “Appar­ent­ly, it was a ter­ri­ble scene.” Nixon added, “And they cheered.”

Then Nixon said, “He prac­ti­cal­ly got sick at his stom­ach, and that’s why he called. And he said, ‘It was a ter­ri­ble scene.’ And that sort of thing will have an emo­tion­al effect on peo­ple … as [Rea­gan] said, ‘This bunch of peo­ple who don’t even wear shoes yet, to be kick­ing the Unit­ed States in the teeth’ … It was a ter­ri­ble thing, they thought.”

Nixon didn’t think of him­self as a racist; per­haps that’s why it was so impor­tant to him to keep quot­ing Reagan’s racism, rather than own the sen­ti­ment him­self. But Reagan’s com­ment about African lead­ers res­onat­ed with Nixon, because it reflect­ed his warped think­ing about African Amer­i­cans.

In the fall of 1971, the Nixon admin­is­tra­tion was engaged in a mas­sive wel­fare-reform effort, and was also fac­ing school bus­ing. These two issues appar­ent­ly inspired Nixon to exam­ine more deeply his own think­ing on whether African Amer­i­cans could make it in Amer­i­can soci­ety. Only three weeks before the call with Rea­gan, Nixon had revealed his opin­ions on Africans and African Amer­i­cans in a con­ver­sa­tion with the Har­vard pro­fes­sor Daniel Patrick Moyni­han, who had briefly served in the Nixon admin­is­tra­tion. Nixon was attract­ed to the the­o­ries of Richard Her­rn­stein and Arthur Jensen, which linked IQ to race, and won­dered what Moyni­han thought.

“I have reluc­tant­ly con­clud­ed, based at least on the evi­dence present­ly before me … that what Her­rn­stein says, and what was said ear­li­er by Jensen, is prob­a­bly … very close to the truth,” Nixon explained to a qui­et Moyni­han. Nixon believed in a hier­ar­chy of races, with whites and Asians much high­er up than peo­ple of African descent and Lati­nos. And he had con­vinced him­self that it wasn’t racist to think black peo­ple, as a group, were infe­ri­or to whites, so long as he held them in pater­nal­is­tic regard. “With­in groups, there are genius­es,” Nixon said. “There are genius­es with­in black groups. There are more with­in Asian groups … This is knowl­edge that is bet­ter not to know.”

Nixon’s analy­sis of African lead­er­ship reflect­ed his prej­u­dice toward America’s black cit­i­zens. This is, at least, what he told Moyni­han. “Have in mind one fact: Did you real­ize there is not, of the 40 or 45—you’re at the Unit­ed Nations—black coun­tries that are rep­re­sent­ed there, not one has a pres­i­dent or a prime min­is­ter who is there as a result of a con­test­ed elec­tion such as we were insist­ing upon in Viet­nam?” And, he con­tin­ued, a lit­tle lat­er in the con­ver­sa­tion: “I’m not say­ing that blacks can­not gov­ern; I am say­ing they have a hell of a time. Now, that must demon­strate some­thing.”

Fifty years lat­er, the one fact that we should have in mind is that our nation’s chief exec­u­tive assumed that the non­white cit­i­zens of the Unit­ed States were some­how infe­ri­or. Nixon con­fid­ed in Moyni­han, who had been one of his house intel­lec­tu­als, about the nature of his inter­est in research on African Amer­i­can intel­li­gence: “The rea­son I have to know it is that as I go for pro­grams, I must know that they have basic weak­ness­es.”

As these and oth­er tapes make clear, the 37th pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States was a racist: He believed in treat­ing peo­ple accord­ing to their race, and that race implied fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ences in indi­vid­ual human beings. Nixon’s racism mat­ters to us because he allowed his views on race to shape U.S. policies—both for­eign and domes­tic. His poli­cies need to be viewed through that lens.

The 40th pres­i­dent has not left as dra­mat­ic a record of his pri­vate thoughts. Reagan’s racism appears to be doc­u­ment­ed only once on the Nixon tapes, and nev­er in his own diaries. His com­ment on African lead­ers, how­ev­er, sheds new light on what lay behind the governor’s pas­sion­ate defense of the apartheid states of Rhode­sia and South Africa lat­er in the 1970s. Dur­ing his 1976 pri­ma­ry-chal­lenge run against Ger­ald Ford, Rea­gan pub­licly opposed the Ford administration’s rejec­tion of white-minor­i­ty rule in Rhode­sia. “We seem to be embark­ing on a pol­i­cy of dic­tat­ing to the peo­ple of south­ern Africa and run­ning the risk of increased vio­lence and blood­shed,” Rea­gan said at a ral­ly in Texas.

...

Nixon nev­er changed his mind about the sup­posed inher­ent infe­ri­or­i­ty of Africans. At the end of Octo­ber 1971, he dis­cussed the UN vote with his best friend, Bebe Rebo­zo. Bebe delight­ed Nixon by echo­ing Rea­gan: “That reac­tion on tele­vi­sion was, it proves how they ought to be still hang­ing from the trees by their tails.” Nixon laughed.

These days, though Trump’s imagery is less zoo­log­i­cal, it is pret­ty much the same in spir­it. And this pres­i­dent, unlike Nixon, doesn’t believe he needs to hide behind any­one else’s racism.

———

“Ronald Reagan’s Long-Hid­den Racist Con­ver­sa­tion With Richard Nixon” by Tim Naf­tali; The Atlantic; 07/30/2019

“The past month has brought pres­i­den­tial racism back into the head­lines. This Octo­ber 1971 exchange between cur­rent and future pres­i­dents is a reminder that oth­er pres­i­dents have sub­scribed to the racist belief that Africans or African Amer­i­cans are some­how infe­ri­or. The most nov­el aspect of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s racist gibes isn’t that he said them, but that he said them in pub­lic.”

That’s per­haps the sad­dest les­son in all of this: the cur­rent pres­i­dent is far more open­ly racist than either Nixon or Reagan...and Nixon and Rea­gan were clear­ly huge racists.

At the same time, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that Nixon appar­ent­ly did­n’t think of him­self as a racist at the same he admit­ted to sub­scrib­ing to the racial­ist pseu­do­sci­en­tif­ic the­o­ries of Richard Her­rn­stein and Arthur Jensen:

...
Nixon didn’t think of him­self as a racist; per­haps that’s why it was so impor­tant to him to keep quot­ing Reagan’s racism, rather than own the sen­ti­ment him­self. But Reagan’s com­ment about African lead­ers res­onat­ed with Nixon, because it reflect­ed his warped think­ing about African Amer­i­cans.

In the fall of 1971, the Nixon admin­is­tra­tion was engaged in a mas­sive wel­fare-reform effort, and was also fac­ing school bus­ing. These two issues appar­ent­ly inspired Nixon to exam­ine more deeply his own think­ing on whether African Amer­i­cans could make it in Amer­i­can soci­ety. Only three weeks before the call with Rea­gan, Nixon had revealed his opin­ions on Africans and African Amer­i­cans in a con­ver­sa­tion with the Har­vard pro­fes­sor Daniel Patrick Moyni­han, who had briefly served in the Nixon admin­is­tra­tion. Nixon was attract­ed to the the­o­ries of Richard Her­rn­stein and Arthur Jensen, which linked IQ to race, and won­dered what Moyni­han thought.

“I have reluc­tant­ly con­clud­ed, based at least on the evi­dence present­ly before me … that what Her­rn­stein says, and what was said ear­li­er by Jensen, is prob­a­bly … very close to the truth,” Nixon explained to a qui­et Moyni­han. Nixon believed in a hier­ar­chy of races, with whites and Asians much high­er up than peo­ple of African descent and Lati­nos. And he had con­vinced him­self that it wasn’t racist to think black peo­ple, as a group, were infe­ri­or to whites, so long as he held them in pater­nal­is­tic regard. “With­in groups, there are genius­es,” Nixon said. “There are genius­es with­in black groups. There are more with­in Asian groups … This is knowl­edge that is bet­ter not to know.”

...

Nixon nev­er changed his mind about the sup­posed inher­ent infe­ri­or­i­ty of Africans. At the end of Octo­ber 1971, he dis­cussed the UN vote with his best friend, Bebe Rebo­zo. Bebe delight­ed Nixon by echo­ing Rea­gan: “That reac­tion on tele­vi­sion was, it proves how they ought to be still hang­ing from the trees by their tails.” Nixon laughed.
...

And note how Nixon took the obser­va­tion that the lead­ers of African coun­tries weren’t demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed at the time as some sort of exam­ple of how black nations can’t gov­ern­ment them­selves, com­plete­ly ignor­ing the lega­cy of colo­nial­ism and the impact that had on African soci­eties and gov­ern­ing struc­tures at that point. It seemed to be a gen­uine­ly clue­less racism:

...
Nixon’s analy­sis of African lead­er­ship reflect­ed his prej­u­dice toward America’s black cit­i­zens. This is, at least, what he told Moyni­han. “Have in mind one fact: Did you real­ize there is not, of the 40 or 45—you’re at the Unit­ed Nations—black coun­tries that are rep­re­sent­ed there, not one has a pres­i­dent or a prime min­is­ter who is there as a result of a con­test­ed elec­tion such as we were insist­ing upon in Viet­nam?” And, he con­tin­ued, a lit­tle lat­er in the con­ver­sa­tion: “I’m not say­ing that blacks can­not gov­ern; I am say­ing they have a hell of a time. Now, that must demon­strate some­thing.

Fifty years lat­er, the one fact that we should have in mind is that our nation’s chief exec­u­tive assumed that the non­white cit­i­zens of the Unit­ed States were some­how infe­ri­or. Nixon con­fid­ed in Moyni­han, who had been one of his house intel­lec­tu­als, about the nature of his inter­est in research on African Amer­i­can intel­li­gence: “The rea­son I have to know it is that as I go for pro­grams, I must know that they have basic weak­ness­es.”

...

These days, though Trump’s imagery is less zoo­log­i­cal, it is pret­ty much the same in spir­it. And this pres­i­dent, unlike Nixon, doesn’t believe he needs to hide behind any­one else’s racism.
...

So who knows, maybe Trump seri­ous­ly does­n’t think he’s a racist. Like Nixon.

In relat­ed news, Trump’s sup­port­ers at his recent ral­ly in Cincin­nati made it clear to reporters that they are sick and tired of being called racist.