COMMENT: As this soci­ety impacts upon the con­tra­dic­tions stem­ming from a care­ful­ly man­i­cured and dis­tort­ed his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive, it is inter­est­ing to reflect on the research pre­sent­ed on this web­site.

The true nature of fas­cism (or “the cor­po­rate state” as termed by Mus­soli­ni) has been sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly eclipsed by aca­d­e­m­ic illu­sions, direct­ed at mis­lead­ing the unin­formed.

No pro­gram address­es these illu­sions and fore­casts the dark, dark future that awaits all of us bet­ter than Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M11–“Uncle Sam and the Swasti­ka: U.S. Indus­tri­al Sup­port for Nazi Ger­many.” This link also per­mits lis­ten­ers to hear pro­grams record­ed and re-broad­cast in sub­se­quent years.)

The orig­i­nal broad­cast was recy­cled as a For The Record broad­cast–FTR#511–a few years ago. It is rec­om­mend­ed that new­er lis­ten­ers use this show to absorb the mate­r­i­al.

Record­ed live on Fri­day, 5/23/1980 on KPFA (Paci­fi­ca’s Berke­ley sta­tion), this pro­gram sets forth the nature of fas­cism and the true real­i­ties under­ly­ing the Sec­ond World War. (That day was the Fri­day of Memo­r­i­al Day week­end, on which Amer­i­cans pause to remem­ber this coun­try’s fight­ing men and women fall­en in for­eign wars.)

This broad­cast was the first of the Archive Shows and deter­mined the tem­plate for what was to fol­low. Record­ed off of FM radio/cassette recorders, the sound qual­i­ty was rel­a­tive­ly poor to begin with and has been “duped off” onto oth­er cas­settes since, fur­ther dimin­ish­ing the audio qual­i­ty.

In addi­tion, my own skills as a broad­cast­er were ele­men­tal at that point in time. My then co-host Mark Ortiz had more radio expe­ri­ence, some­thing that was deeply grat­i­fy­ing to me.

Hav­ing done all of the aca­d­e­m­ic research and orga­ni­za­tion for the pro­gram, I think it res­onates even more strong­ly at this point in time than it did then.

Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance is the con­clu­sion of the broad­cast, in which Mark and I recapped James Stew­art Mar­t­in’s reflec­tions on the dan­gers of eco­nom­ic con­cen­tra­tion and the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the Ger­man tragedy of the 1930’s might some­day be replayed in the Unit­ed States.

Pub­lished in 1950, Mar­t­in’s All Hon­or­able Men bore an eerie, prophet­ic qual­i­ty at the dis­tance of 30 years.

Now, at the dis­tance of just over 30 years from the orig­i­nal pro­gram, Martin’s–and, by exten­sion, my own and Mark Ortiz’s–thoughts about eco­nom­ic con­cen­tra­tion, the nature of government/corporate rela­tion­ship and the dan­gers of fas­cism were nev­er more rel­e­vant than in this age of “Too Big to Fail.”