FTR #1103 Fascism, 2019 World Tour, Part 13: Goose-Hopping in Hong Kong with Pepe the Frog and the Azov Battalion

We have been high­light­ing the role of Ukraine as a “piv­ot point” for the Earth Island or World Island, and the evo­lu­tion of the Inter­mar­i­um con­cept in the appli­ca­tion of fas­cist con­trol of that unfor­tu­nate coun­try. 

Stretch­ing from the Straits of Gibral­tar, all across Europe, most of the Mid­dle East, Eura­sia, Rus­sia, Chi­na and India, that stretch of land: com­pris­es most of the world’s land mass; con­tains most of the world’s pop­u­la­tion and most of the world’s nat­ur­al resources (includ­ing oil and nat­ur­al gas.) Geopoliti­cians have long seen con­trol­ling that land mass as the key to world dom­i­na­tion.

Key to ana­lyz­ing the real­iza­tion of con­trol of the Ukrain­ian “piv­ot point” is the OUN milieu and its man­i­fes­ta­tion through the bet­ter part of the last cen­tu­ry. 

On our Fas­cism: 2019 World Tour, we have cov­ered the desta­bi­liza­tion of Chi­na and Hong Kong, as well as the oper­a­tions of the Ukrain­ian Nazi Azov milieu. Now, there has been some­thing of a con­ver­gence.

Aug­ment­ing the right-wing and fas­cist pres­ence in Hong Kong are vet­er­ans of the Azov Bat­tal­ion and Pravy Sek­tor. ” . . . . The lat­est col­lec­tion of extreme-right activists to rein­force the ranks of the Hong Kong sep­a­ratists are from Ukraine. They call them­selves Gonor and have tat­toos on their upper tor­sos with unde­ni­able sym­bols of white suprema­cy and neo-Nazism. These extrem­ists pre­vi­ous­ly fought in a noto­ri­ous­ly bru­tal neo-Nazi mili­tia called the Azov Bat­tal­ion, in Ukraine’s war against pro-Russ­ian mil­i­tants. . . .”

The Gonor con­tin­gent includes a for­mer leader of Pravy Sek­tor (Right Sec­tor). ” . . . . Jour­nal­ist Mor­gan Artyukhi­na iden­ti­fied anoth­er mem­ber of the far-right Ukrain­ian con­tin­gent in Hong Kong as Ser­hii Ster­nenko. Artyukhi­na not­ed that Ster­nenko is a for­mer leader of the Ukrain­ian fas­cist group Right Sec­tor, which burned down a trade union build­ing in Odessa dur­ing the 2014 coup, killing 42 peo­ple. . . .”

Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance is the fact that the Ukrain­ian fas­cists are in Hong Kong under the aus­pices of an EU-financed NGO. ” . . . . The Free Hong Kong Cen­ter is a project of an NGO called the Lib­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic League of Ukraine. In addi­tion to build­ing links with anti-Bei­jing forces in Hong Kong, the project says its mis­sion is to ‘counter Chi­nese threats to Ukraine.’ The Lib­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic League of Ukraine is a pro-Euro­pean Union advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tion which is a mem­ber of the Euro­pean Lib­er­al Youth and the Inter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Lib­er­al Youth, both of which are fund­ed by the EU. . . .”

Key points of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis include:

1.–The Azov and Pravy Sek­tor vet­er­ans call them­selves Gonor and the NGO that facil­i­tat­ed their entry into Hong Kong white­washed the Nazi/fascist nature of the group.
2.–Members of the group sport­ed a vari­ety of Nazi and fas­cist tat­toos, includ­ing the “Vic­to­ry or Val­hal­la” slo­gan that was the title of a book by David Lane. Lane drove the get­away car for the mur­der of talk-show host Alan Berg and mint­ed the 14 Words—emblematic for the inter­na­tion­al Nazi move­ment. Svoboda’s C14 mili­tia takes its name from the 14 words.  ” . . . . Sev­er­al pho­tos show that at least two of the Ukrain­ian fas­cists in Hong Kong have tat­toos read­ing “Vic­to­ry or Val­hal­la,” the title of a com­pi­la­tion of writ­ings by the noto­ri­ous Amer­i­can white suprema­cist David Lane, whose neo-fas­cist ter­ror­ist group The Order mur­dered a lib­er­al Jew­ish radio host and planned more assas­si­na­tions of left-wing Jews. Lane, who was con­vict­ed to 190 years in a US prison for numer­ous crimes, cre­at­ed the most famous white suprema­cist slo­gan, known as the 14 Words — which inspired the name of anoth­er Ukrain­ian neo-Nazi group called C14. . . .”
3.–Gonor has embraced the slo­gan “Stand with Hong Kong.” ” . . . .  Stand With Hong Kong is also the name of a West­ern-backed orga­ni­za­tion that has been lob­by­ing the gov­ern­ments of the US, Britain, Ger­many, Cana­da, and Aus­tralia to impose sanc­tions and take puni­tive action against Chi­na. . . .”
4.–Gonor’s Telegram chan­nel has high­light­ed acts of vio­lence by the “pro-Democ­ra­cy” demon­stra­tors. ” . . . . Gonor’s Telegram chan­nel offers mem­bers a front row seat to an orgy of vio­lence. It has pub­lished dozens of videos of Hong Kong insur­gents, hero­iz­ing them for shoot­ing arrows and car­ry­ing out bru­tal attacks on state secu­ri­ty forces. . . .”
5.–The NGO—The Free Hong Kong Cen­ter (a sub­sidiary of the Lib­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic League of Ukraine) also white­washed the Nazi char­ac­ter of the Azov Bat­tal­ion.
6.–The Ukrain­ian Nazis had obtained press pass­es for their pres­ence in Hong Kong.
7.–The Ukrain­ian Nazis were emphat­ic about their pres­ence in Hong Kong being an exten­sion of the Maid­an coup.
8.–The pres­ence of the Ukrain­ian fas­cists in Hong Kong appears to be an exten­sion of Amer­i­can and EU Earth Island geo-polit­i­cal activism.
9.–Are the Azov and Pravy Sek­tor vet­er­ans in Hong Kong to pro­vide a vio­lent, mil­i­tary pres­ence as part of the Hong Kong desta­bi­liza­tion effort? Are we wit­ness­ing a “Hong Kong” Maid­an?

In FTR #1089, we not­ed the pres­ence of Pepe the Frog as an icon­ic pres­ence in the Hong Kong tur­moil. 

Steve Bannon–one of the lumi­nar­ies of the “Alt-Right,” and a for­mer key Trump aide is cen­tral­ly involved in the anti-Chi­na effort. This sug­gests that the pres­ence of Pepe the Frog’s image in Hong Kong might have some­thing to do with the “Alt-Right” after all.

As dis­cussed in–among oth­er programs–FTR #‘s 946 and 1077, Ban­non was at the epi­cen­ter of the Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca cyber-psy-op dur­ing the 2016 elec­tion. One of the prin­ci­pal oper­a­tors of Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca was Christo­pher Wylie. 

We won­der if the tech­niques used by Ban­non, Wylie, Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca, SCL et al might have been used in Hong Kong? The the lais­sez-faire econ­o­my of Hong Kong has seen a 300 per­cent increase in rents while income has stag­nat­ed, thus impov­er­ish­ing 20% of Hong Kong’s pop­u­la­tion. Many young peo­ple in Hong Kong might well be vul­ner­a­ble to the type of social media psy-op that Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca spe­cial­ized in.

Was such a tech­nique employed to help gen­er­ate the unrest in Hong Kong?

In our next pro­gram, we will review the rebirth of Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca, with a Hong Kong-based financier and busi­ness part­ner of Erik Prince (of Black­wa­ter fame and the broth­er of Trump Sec­re­tary of Edu­ca­tion Bet­sy DeVos) on the board of direc­tors.

Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca is rebrand­ing under a new com­pa­ny, Emer­da­ta. Intrigu­ing­ly, Cam­bridge Analytica’s trans­for­ma­tion into Emer­da­ta is note­wor­thy because  the fir­m’s direc­tors include John­son Ko Chun Shun, a Hong Kong financier and busi­ness part­ner of Erik Prince: ” . . . . But the company’s announce­ment left sev­er­al ques­tions unan­swered, includ­ing who would retain the company’s intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty — the so-called psy­cho­graph­ic vot­er pro­files built in part with data from Face­book — and whether Cam­bridge Analytica’s data-min­ing busi­ness would return under new aus­pices. . . . In recent months, exec­u­tives at Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca and SCL Group, along with the Mer­cer fam­i­ly, have moved to cre­at­ed a new firm, Emer­da­ta, based in Britain, accord­ing to British records. The new company’s direc­tors include John­son Ko Chun Shun, a Hong Kong financier and busi­ness part­ner of Erik Prince. . . . An exec­u­tive and a part own­er of SCL Group, Nigel Oakes, has pub­licly described Emer­da­ta as a way of rolling up the two com­pa­nies under one new ban­ner. . . . ”

The pro­gram con­cludes with dis­cus­sion of Wik­iLeaks’ links to Chi­nese and Tibetan dis­si­dent activists and spec­u­la­tion about the CIA’s Edward Snow­den’s activ­i­ties in Hong Kong–the first stop on his inter­na­tion­al odyssey. In Hong Kong, he net­worked with Wik­iLeaks, who then facil­i­tat­ed his decamp­ment to Moscow. That trip was the open­ing gam­bit in the New Cold War.

In our next pro­gram, we will fur­ther dis­cuss Chi­na’s role as an inter­na­tion­al leader in Green tech­nol­o­gy and the impli­ca­tions of this for the Lithi­um Coup in Bolivia.

Tulsi and the Fascists

Bernie Sanders asso­ciate Tul­si Gab­bard has report­ed­ly been con­tem­plat­ing an inde­pen­dent run for Pres­i­dent. A mem­ber of the Sanders Insti­tute, she nom­i­nat­ed Boinie at the 2016 Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion and was bandied about as Sanders’ poten­tial Vice-Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date. With her pos­si­ble role as a “spoil­er” in the 2020 Pres­i­den­tial cam­paign loom­ing larg­er, Gab­bard’s ado­ra­tion by Amer­i­can fas­cists and reac­tionar­ies is some­thing to be con­sid­ered. In addi­tion to David Duke’s sup­port for her: “Stephen K. Ban­non, Pres­i­dent Trump’s for­mer chief strate­gist, is impressed with her polit­i­cal tal­ent. Richard B. Spencer, the white nation­al­ist leader, says he could vote for her. For­mer Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ron Paul prais­es her ‘lib­er­tar­i­an instincts,’ while Franklin Gra­ham, the influ­en­tial evan­ge­list, finds her ‘refresh­ing.’ . . . . And far-right con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists like Mike Cer­novich see a cer­tain MAGA sais quoi. ‘She’s got a good ener­gy, a good vibe. You feel like this is just a seri­ous per­son,’ Mr. Cer­novich said. ‘She seems very Trumpian.’ . . . . Then there is 4chan, the noto­ri­ous­ly tox­ic online mes­sage board, where some right-wing trolls and anti-Semi­tes fawn over Ms. Gab­bard, call­ing her ‘Mom­my’ and prais­ing her will­ing­ness to crit­i­cize Israel. In April, the Dai­ly Stormer, a neo-Nazi web­site, took cred­it for Ms. Gabbard’s qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the first two Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry debates. . . .” In past broad­casts, we have not­ed that Gab­bard is a mem­ber of the Hare Krish­na cult. She also sits on the advi­so­ry board of a Koch-fund­ed think tank with links to the Neo-Con­fed­er­ate move­ment. Often described as “the first Hin­du in Con­gress,” she is a vital con­tact point for Naren­dra Mod­i’s Hin­dut­va fas­cist gov­ern­ment in India.

FTR #1092 The Destabilization of China, Part 3

We begin with review of an arti­cle that was promi­nent­ly fea­tured in our last pro­gram.

In this arti­cle we note: the involve­ment of the NED with the lead­ing indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions involved with the tur­moil in Hong Kong; the net­work­ing between oth­er U.S. “soft-pow­er” intel­li­gence fronts with the Hong Kong activists; the net­work­ing between top Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials and the Hong Kong activists; the use of anti-Chi­nese slurs dat­ing to the fight­ing between Japan and Chi­na pri­or to, and dur­ing, World War II; U.S. “Alt-right” involve­ment with the Hong Kong unrest; the meet­ing of a U.S. diplo­mat with Hong Kong activists; the use of what–if it were used by peo­ple act­ing in the U.S.–rioting and ter­ror­ism by the crowds in Hong Kong; the vio­lence used in Hong Kong includes throw­ing gaso­line bombs at the police, set­ting fire to sub­way sta­tions, attack­ing passers-by and assault­ing counter-pro­test­ers.

Under­ly­ing the tur­moil in Hong Kong, the pro­gram sets forth the con­flict between the finan­cial­ized, lais­sez-faire econ­o­my of Hong Kong with the “state cap­i­tal­ist” sys­tem of Chi­na.

The for­mer has led to an rent increase of rough­ly 300% over the last ten years, while wages stag­nat­ed. This has made Hong Kong the most expen­sive city in the world and led to a pover­ty rate of 20% of the island’s rough­ly 7 mil­lion cit­i­zens.

For all of its short­com­ings, the “state cap­i­tal­ist” sys­tem of Chi­na has led to a decrease in the pover­ty rate from 88% in 1981 to 0.7% in 2015. (The fig­ure comes from the World Bank, hard­ly a bas­tion of inter­na­tion­al Com­mu­nist ide­ol­o­gy.)

In that same con­text, the per­cent­age of Chi­nese in the mid­dle class has gone from 4% in 2002 to 31% today. (Again, the fig­ures come from the World Bank, as well as the IMF and that well-known bas­tion of Marx­ist ide­ol­o­gy and promulgation–the CIA’s analy­sis divi­sion.)

The eco­nom­ic plight of many in Hong Kong–the young in particular–has made them easy tar­gets for regime-change tac­tics.

Of para­mount sig­nif­i­cance in under­stand­ing the unrest in Hong Kong is the island’s role as an epi­cen­ter of eco­nom­ic crime. The extra­di­tion law which was the ini­tial focus of the unrest would have enabled the extra­di­tion of male­fac­tors for eco­nom­ic crim­i­nal activ­i­ty. For that rea­son, it was vig­or­ous­ly opposed by the Hong Kong busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and its U.S. allies.

FTR #1091 The Destabilization of China, Part 2

The pro­gram begins with an excerpt of AFA #37 (from the fall of 1992), deal­ing with the desta­bi­liza­tion of the U.S.S.R. Rely­ing on arti­cles from Covert Action Infor­ma­tion Bul­letin #35, by Doug Hen­wood and Sean Ger­vasi, the pro­gram reviews both NSC 68 and what Ger­vasi terms “the full court press” strat­e­gy that was its ulti­mate ful­fill­ment.

Using polit­i­cal action focused on pro­mot­ing frac­tious nation­al­ism among tar­get­ed eth­nic­i­ties with­in the tar­get­ed nation and eco­nom­ic and diplo­mat­ic pres­sure to weak­en that coun­try, the strat­e­gy worked very well with the Sovi­et Union.

It is Mr. Emory’s con­sid­ered opin­ion that the same strat­e­gy is being applied to Chi­na. Whether that strat­e­gy will be suc­cess­ful remains to be seen.

Next, we note the role of the Nation­al Endow­ment for Democ­ra­cy (an exam­ple of Orwellian Newspeak if ever there was one) in con­tin­u­ing our exam­i­na­tion of the tur­moil in Hong Kong. NED was deeply involved in the desta­bi­liza­tion of the U.S.S.R. We exam­ined NED’s role in pro­ject­ing Nazi and fas­cist ele­ments back into Lithua­nia in AFA #37, as well as FTR #858.

In this arti­cle we note: the involve­ment of the NED with the lead­ing indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions involved with the tur­moil in Hong Kong; the net­work­ing between oth­er U.S. “soft-pow­er” intel­li­gence fronts with the Hong Kong activists; U.S. “Alt-right” involve­ment with the Hong Kong unrest; the meet­ing of a U.S. diplo­mat with Hong Kong activists; the net­work­ing between top Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials and the Hong Kong activists; the use of anti-Chi­nese slurs dat­ing to the fight­ing between Japan and Chi­na pri­or to, and dur­ing, World War II; the use of what–if it were used by peo­ple act­ing in the U.S.–rioting and ter­ror­ism by the crowds in Hong Kong; the vio­lence used in Hong Kong includes throw­ing gaso­line bombs at the police, set­ting fire to sub­way sta­tions, attack­ing passers-by and assault­ing counter-pro­test­ers.

FTR #1090 Fascism: 2019 World Tour, Part 5 (Destabilizing China)

We begin with brief review of the Falun Gong cult and its con­nec­tions. Part of a con­stel­la­tion of orga­ni­za­tions and indi­vid­u­als work­ing with for­mer Trump chief of staff Steve Ban­non to neu­tral­ize Chi­na, Falun Gong has gar­nered the sup­port of CIA deriv­a­tive Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors in the effort.

The Falun Gong teach­es that: post menopausal women can regain men­stru­a­tion, con­sid­ered manda­to­ry for spir­i­tu­al evo­lu­tion; gays are demo­nized; mixed race peo­ple are demo­nized; cult mem­bers are dis­cour­aged from seek­ing mod­ern med­ical treat­ment; space aliens are inhab­it­ing human bod­ies and are respon­si­ble for mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy such as air­planes and com­put­ers; tiny beings are said to be invad­ing human bod­ies and caus­ing “bad kar­ma;” mas­ter Li Hongzhi knows the secrets of the uni­verse; mas­ter Li Hongzhi can lev­i­tate and walk through walls; mas­ter Li Hongzhi can install a phys­i­cal “Falun”–swastika–in the abdomen of fol­low­ers which revolves in var­i­ous direc­tions; Falun Gong teach­ing demo­nizes fem­i­nists and pop­u­lar music; there will be a “Judge­ment Day” on which com­mu­nists and oth­ers deemed unwor­thy by mas­ter Li Hongzhi will be neu­tral­ized.

Falun Gong–largely through its Epoch Times newspaper–has estab­lished a major social media pres­ence and is a key ally of Pres­i­dent Trump’s re-elec­tion effort: “. . . . In April, at the height of its ad spend­ing, videos from the Epoch Media Group, which includes The Epoch Times and dig­i­tal video out­let New Tang Dynasty, or NTD, com­bined for around 3 bil­lion views on Face­book, YouTube and Twit­ter, rank­ing 11th among all video cre­ators across plat­forms and out­rank­ing every oth­er tra­di­tion­al news pub­lish­er, accord­ing to data from the social media ana­lyt­ics com­pa­ny Tubular.That engage­ment has made The Epoch Times a favorite of the Trump fam­i­ly and a key com­po­nent of the president’s re-elec­tion cam­paign.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The enor­mous amount of mon­ey under con­trol of Falun Gong; sim­i­lar­i­ties to the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church; the anti-com­mu­nist dog­ma of the cult (again, not unlike the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church); the role of the inter­net and social media–Facebook, in particular–in the growth of Falun Gong’s oper­a­tions; the spin put by NBC on Falun Gong’s beliefs.

FTR #1089 Fascism: 2019 World Tour, Part 4 (Goose Hopping in Hong Kong with Pepe the Frog)

Con­tin­u­ing our look at glob­al fas­cism, we vis­it Hong Kong and (by exten­sion) Chi­na, where an intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty desta­bi­liza­tion effort is under­way. That effort is uti­liz­ing Islam­ic fas­cists in the Uighur com­mu­ni­ty in Xin­jiang Province and the Falun Gong, a fas­cist mind con­trol cult that has devel­oped close oper­a­tional links with the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, Steve Ban­non and the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors (a CIA “deriv­a­tive.”)

Begin­ning our sojourn in Hong Kong, we review the preva­lence of the Pepe the Frog icon in the Hong Kong protests. “The New York Times’ ” dis­claimer that the pro­test­ers are not “alt-right” should be seen in per­spec­tive.

With Steve Ban­non at the epi­cen­ter of the anti-Chi­na move­ment, Pepe’s pres­ence in Hong Kong is not sur­pris­ing.

Note Ban­non and com­pa­ny’s net­work­ing with the Falun Gong cult.

In our long series pred­i­cat­ed on Yasha Levine’s “Sur­veil­lance Val­ley,” we not­ed the Inter­net Free­dom move­ment and its fun­da­men­tal posi­tion as part of the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty’s “soft pow­er” pro­pa­gan­da and regime change arse­nal.

Yasha Levine sums up the fun­da­men­tal con­tra­dic­tions inher­ent  in this dynam­ic: ” . . . . If you stepped back to sur­vey the scene, the entire land­scape of this new Inter­net Free­dom pri­va­cy move­ment looked absurd. Cold War-era orga­ni­za­tions spun off from the CIA now fund­ing the glob­al move­ment against gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance? Google and Face­book, com­pa­nies that ran pri­vate sur­veil­lance net­works and worked hand in hand with the NSA, deploy­ing gov­ern­ment-fund­ed pri­va­cy tech to pro­tect their users from gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance? Pri­va­cy activists work­ing with Sil­i­con Val­ley and the US gov­ern­ment to fight gov­ern­ment surveillance—and with the sup­port of Edward Snow­den him­self? . . . .”

In Chi­na, Falun Gong is among the recip­i­ents of Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors mon­ey. Recall that the BBG is a CIA “deriv­a­tive.”: ” . . . .It also fund­ed sev­er­al small out­fits run by prac­ti­tion­ers of Falun gong, a con­tro­ver­sial Chi­nese anti­com­mu­nist cult banned in Chi­na whose leader believes that humans are being cor­rupt­ed by aliens from oth­er dimen­sions and that peo­ple of mixed blood are sub­hu­mans and unfit for sal­va­tion. . . . ”

After excerpt­ing a puff piece that lion­izes Falun Gong in their strug­gles with the Chi­nese, we high­light the beliefs of the orga­ni­za­tion.

The Falun Gong teach­es that: post menopausal women can regain men­stru­a­tion, con­sid­ered manda­to­ry for spir­i­tu­al evo­lu­tion; gays are demo­nized; mixed race peo­ple are demo­nized; cult mem­bers are dis­cour­aged from seek­ing mod­ern med­ical treat­ment; space aliens are inhab­it­ing human bod­ies and are respon­si­ble for mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy such as air­planes and com­put­ers; tiny beings are said to be invad­ing human bod­ies and caus­ing “bad kar­ma;” mas­ter Li Hongzhi knows the secrets of the uni­verse; mas­ter Li Hongzhi can lev­i­tate and walk through walls; mas­ter Li Hongzhi can install a phys­i­cal “Falun”–swastika–in the abdomen of fol­low­ers which revolves in var­i­ous direc­tions; Falun Gong teach­ing demo­nizes fem­i­nists and pop­u­lar music; there will be a “Judge­ment Day” on which com­mu­nists and oth­ers deemed unwor­thy by mas­ter Li Hongzhi will be neu­tral­ized.

We con­clude with part of an arti­cle which will be pre­sent­ed and ana­lyzed at greater length in our next pro­gram.

Falun Gong–largely through its Epoch Times newspaper–has estab­lished a major social media pres­ence and is a key ally of Pres­i­dent Trump’s re-elec­tion effort: “. . . . In April, at the height of its ad spend­ing, videos from the Epoch Media Group, which includes The Epoch Times and dig­i­tal video out­let New Tang Dynasty, or NTD, com­bined for around 3 bil­lion views on Face­book, YouTube and Twit­ter, rank­ing 11th among all video cre­ators across plat­forms and out­rank­ing every oth­er tra­di­tion­al news pub­lish­er, accord­ing to data from the social media ana­lyt­ics com­pa­ny Tubu­lar. That engage­ment has made The Epoch Times a favorite of the Trump fam­i­ly and a key com­po­nent of the president’s re-elec­tion cam­paign

FTR #1086 Fascism: 2019 World Tour, Part 1

Begin­ning an overview of bur­geon­ing fas­cism around the world, this pro­gram com­mences with fur­ther doc­u­men­ta­tion of the oper­a­tion and her­itage of fas­cism in Ukraine.

We begin with dis­cus­sion of a Kyiv legal deci­sion main­tain­ing that the C14 mili­tia of the Svo­bo­da orga­ni­za­tion is not a neo-Nazi orga­ni­za­tion.

A lawyer for C14 asserts that the group, while nation­al­ist, is not neo-Nazi in nature and label­ing it a neo-Nazi group hurt its “busi­ness rep­u­ta­tion”.

The Kyiv City Com­mer­cial Court agreed, rul­ing that Hro­madske TV couldn’t estab­lish that C14 – a group named after David Lane’s “14 words” white suprema­cist slo­gan – was actu­al­ly a neo-Nazi group. As a result, Hro­madske TV has to retract its tweet and pay 3,500 hryvnyas ($136) in court fees for C14.

This despite the fact not­ed in the arti­cle below that: ” . . . . [C14’s] own mem­bers have admit­ted to join­ing it because of its neo-Nazi ide­ol­o­gy . . . .”

It’s a sign of how far along the main­stream­ing of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi groups is in Ukraine: If you call the open neo-Nazis “neo-Nazis”, they can sue you and win.

As the arti­cle also notes, C14’s youth cadre is fund­ed by the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment: “ . . . . Nev­er­the­less, C14 has received state fund­ing for two years run­ning from the Min­istry of Youth and Sport to con­duct “nation­al-patri­ot­ic edu­ca­tion” cours­es at sum­mer camps for the country’s youth. . . . .”

In FTR #907,we not­ed the pro­found pres­ence of the Ukrain­ian fas­cists in the Unit­ed States, as well as their oper­a­tional con­nec­tions to the Third Reich. In FTR #1072, we not­ed the Ukrain­ian youth cadre in the U.S., and its affil­i­a­tion with the OUN/B milieu in Ukraine.

Our next sto­ry flesh­es out these con­nec­tions, not­ing:

1. The CYM orga­ni­za­tion and its pres­ence in the U.S.
2. The deci­sive involve­ment of post-World War II emi­gres in the growth of that move­ment.
3. CYM’s close affil­i­a­tion with the OUN/B.
4. CYM’s uni­formed, mil­i­tary ori­en­ta­tion: ” . . . . Among the most pop­u­lar activ­i­ties are mil­i­tary-style games where campers are divid­ed into two teams that have to dodge or cap­ture their oppo­nents by mov­ing stealth­ily and orga­niz­ing ambush­es. . . . .”

Next, we high­light the fas­cist ascent in the Baltic states.

In Esto­nia, the EKRE par­ty is imple­ment­ing a fas­cist agen­da, cap­i­tal­iz­ing on an anti-immi­grant theme, in a coun­try that has had lit­tle immi­gra­tion.

In addi­tion, the par­ty has tar­get­ed the LGBT milieu and “glob­al­iza­tion,” as well as resus­ci­tat­ing Nazi eco­nom­ic the­o­ry and prac­tice.

After review of Carl Lund­strom’s financ­ing of the Swe­den Democ­rats, as well as Lund­strom’s cen­tral role in financ­ing the Pirate Bay site (which host­ed Wik­iLeaks, cour­tesy of Julian Assange’s fas­cist asso­ciate Joran Jermas/Israel Shamir), we delve into the oper­a­tions of Lund­strom’s asso­ciates.

Uti­liz­ing the anti-immi­grant theme uti­lized with great effect by fas­cists around the world, the Swe­den Democ­rats are gain­ing ground on the Swedish polit­i­cal land­scape.

Key points of dis­cus­sion include: The Nazi ori­gins of the Swe­den Democ­rats; the Waf­fen SS back­ground of one of the par­ty’s founders; net­work­ing of the Swe­den Democ­rats with fas­cists and reac­tionar­ies in oth­er coun­tries, includ­ing the U.S., France and Ger­many.

The CIA and Fox News Background of Trump’s New Minister of Truth

The State Depart­men­t’s “Min­istry of Truth” is going to be head­ed by a Fox News and CIA vet­er­an, Lea Gabrielle. Designed to neu­tral­ize what the Pow­ers That Be deem to be for­eign pro­pa­gan­da, the bland­ly-named Glob­al Engage­ment Cen­ter has been exem­pli­fied by its attempts to por­tray as “Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion” the ver­i­fi­ably Nazi char­ac­ter and polit­i­cal her­itage of the OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions wield­ing the police, edu­ca­tion­al and nation­al secu­ri­ty reins in Ukraine. ” . . . . Gabrielle, who begins her job on Feb. 11, was described to reporters by deputy spokesman Robert Pal­ladi­no on Thurs­day as ‘a for­mer CIA-trained human intel­li­gence oper­a­tions offi­cer, defense for­eign liai­son offi­cer, Unit­ed States Navy pro­gram direc­tor, Navy F/A‑18C fight­er pilot, and nation­al tele­vi­sion news cor­re­spon­dent and anchor at two dif­fer­ent net­works. . . .” Cur­rent Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo was for­mer­ly head of the CIA.

FTR #1021 FascisBook: (In Your Facebook, Part 3–A Virtual Panopticon, Part 3)

This pro­gram fol­lows up FTR #‘s 718 and 946, we exam­ined Face­book, not­ing how it’s cute, warm, friend­ly pub­lic facade obscured a cyn­i­cal, reac­tionary, exploita­tive and, ulti­mate­ly “cor­po­ratist” eth­ic and oper­a­tion.

The UK’s Chan­nel 4 sent an inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist under­cov­er to work for one of the third-par­ty com­pa­nies Face­book pays to mod­er­ate con­tent. This inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist was trained to take a hands-off approach to far right vio­lent con­tent and fake news because that kind of con­tent engages users for longer and increas­es ad rev­enues. ” . . . . An inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist who went under­cov­er as a Face­book mod­er­a­tor in Ire­land says the com­pa­ny lets pages from far-right fringe groups ‘exceed dele­tion thresh­old,’ and that those pages are ‘sub­ject to dif­fer­ent treat­ment in the same cat­e­go­ry as pages belong­ing to gov­ern­ments and news orga­ni­za­tions.’ The accu­sa­tion is a damn­ing one, under­min­ing Facebook’s claims that it is active­ly try­ing to cut down on fake news, pro­pa­gan­da, hate speech, and oth­er harm­ful con­tent that may have sig­nif­i­cant real-world impact.The under­cov­er jour­nal­ist detailed his find­ings in a new doc­u­men­tary titled Inside Face­book: Secrets of the Social Net­work, that just aired on the UK’s Chan­nel 4. . . . .”

Next, we present a fright­en­ing sto­ry about Aggre­gateIQ (AIQ), the Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca off­shoot to which Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca out­sourced the devel­op­ment of its “Ripon” psy­cho­log­i­cal pro­file soft­ware devel­op­ment, and which lat­er played a key role in the pro-Brex­it cam­paign. The arti­cle also notes that, despite Facebook’s pledge to kick Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca off of its plat­form, secu­ri­ty researchers just found 13 apps avail­able for Face­book that appear to be devel­oped by AIQ. If Face­book real­ly was try­ing to kick Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca off of its plat­form, it’s not try­ing very hard. One app is even named “AIQ John­ny Scraper” and it’s reg­is­tered to AIQ.

The arti­cle is also a reminder that you don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly need to down­load a Cam­bridge Analytica/AIQ app for them to be track­ing your infor­ma­tion and reselling it to clients. Secu­ri­ty researcher stum­bled upon a new repos­i­to­ry of curat­ed Face­book data AIQ was cre­at­ing for a client and it’s entire­ly pos­si­ble a lot of the data was scraped from pub­lic Face­book posts.

” . . . . Aggre­gateIQ, a Cana­di­an con­sul­tan­cy alleged to have links to Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca, col­lect­ed and stored the data of hun­dreds of thou­sands of Face­book users, accord­ing to redact­ed com­put­er files seen by the Finan­cial Times.The social net­work banned Aggre­gateIQ, a data com­pa­ny, from its plat­form as part of a clean-up oper­a­tion fol­low­ing the Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca scan­dal, on sus­pi­cion that the com­pa­ny could have been improp­er­ly access­ing user infor­ma­tion. How­ev­er, Chris Vick­ery, a secu­ri­ty researcher, this week found an app on the plat­form called ‘AIQ John­ny Scraper’ reg­is­tered to the com­pa­ny, rais­ing fresh ques­tions about the effec­tive­ness of Facebook’s polic­ing efforts. . . .”

In addi­tion, the sto­ry high­lights a forms of micro-tar­get­ing com­pa­nies like AIQ make avail­able that’s fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent from the algo­rith­mic micro-tar­get­ing asso­ci­at­ed with social media abus­es: micro-tar­get­ing by a human who wants to specif­i­cal­ly look and see what you per­son­al­ly have said about var­i­ous top­ics on social media. This is a ser­vice where some­one can type you into a search engine and AIQ’s prod­uct will serve up a list of all the var­i­ous polit­i­cal posts you’ve made or the polit­i­cal­ly-rel­e­vant “Likes” you’ve made.

Next, we note that Face­book is get­ting sued by an app devel­op­er for act­ing like the mafia and turn­ing access to all that user data as the key enforce­ment tool:

“Mark Zucker­berg faces alle­ga­tions that he devel­oped a ‘mali­cious and fraud­u­lent scheme’ to exploit vast amounts of pri­vate data to earn Face­book bil­lions and force rivals out of busi­ness. A com­pa­ny suing Face­book in a Cal­i­for­nia court claims the social network’s chief exec­u­tive ‘weaponised’ the abil­i­ty to access data from any user’s net­work of friends – the fea­ture at the heart of the Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca scan­dal.  . . . . ‘The evi­dence uncov­ered by plain­tiff demon­strates that the Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca scan­dal was not the result of mere neg­li­gence on Facebook’s part but was rather the direct con­se­quence of the mali­cious and fraud­u­lent scheme Zucker­berg designed in 2012 to cov­er up his fail­ure to antic­i­pate the world’s tran­si­tion to smart­phones,’ legal doc­u­ments said. . . . . Six4Three alleges up to 40,000 com­pa­nies were effec­tive­ly defraud­ed in this way by Face­book. It also alleges that senior exec­u­tives includ­ing Zucker­berg per­son­al­ly devised and man­aged the scheme, indi­vid­u­al­ly decid­ing which com­pa­nies would be cut off from data or allowed pref­er­en­tial access. . . . ‘They felt that it was bet­ter not to know. I found that utter­ly hor­ri­fy­ing,’ he [for­mer Face­book exec­u­tive Sandy Parak­i­las] said. ‘If true, these alle­ga­tions show a huge betray­al of users, part­ners and reg­u­la­tors. They would also show Face­book using its monop­oly pow­er to kill com­pe­ti­tion and putting prof­its over pro­tect­ing its users.’ . . . .”

The above-men­tioned Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca is offi­cial­ly going bank­rupt, along with the elec­tions divi­sion of its par­ent com­pa­ny, SCL Group. Appar­ent­ly their bad press has dri­ven away clients.

Is this tru­ly the end of Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca?

No.

They’re rebrand­ing under a new com­pa­ny, Emer­da­ta. Intrigu­ing­ly, Cam­bridge Analytica’s trans­for­ma­tion into Emer­da­ta is note­wor­thy because  the fir­m’s direc­tors include John­son Ko Chun Shun, a Hong Kong financier and busi­ness part­ner of Erik Prince: ” . . . . But the company’s announce­ment left sev­er­al ques­tions unan­swered, includ­ing who would retain the company’s intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty — the so-called psy­cho­graph­ic vot­er pro­files built in part with data from Face­book — and whether Cam­bridge Analytica’s data-min­ing busi­ness would return under new aus­pices. . . . In recent months, exec­u­tives at Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca and SCL Group, along with the Mer­cer fam­i­ly, have moved to cre­at­ed a new firm, Emer­da­ta, based in Britain, accord­ing to British records. The new company’s direc­tors include John­son Ko Chun Shun, a Hong Kong financier and busi­ness part­ner of Erik Prince. . . . An exec­u­tive and a part own­er of SCL Group, Nigel Oakes, has pub­licly described Emer­da­ta as a way of rolling up the two com­pa­nies under one new ban­ner. . . . ”

In the Big Data inter­net age, there’s one area of per­son­al infor­ma­tion that has yet to be incor­po­rat­ed into the pro­files on everyone–personal bank­ing infor­ma­tion.  ” . . . . If tech com­pa­nies are in con­trol of pay­ment sys­tems, they’ll know “every sin­gle thing you do,” Kapi­to said. It’s a dif­fer­ent busi­ness mod­el from tra­di­tion­al bank­ing: Data is more valu­able for tech firms that sell a range of dif­fer­ent prod­ucts than it is for banks that only sell finan­cial ser­vices, he said. . . .”

Face­book is approach­ing a num­ber of big banks – JP Mor­gan, Wells Far­go, Cit­i­group, and US Ban­corp – request­ing finan­cial data includ­ing card trans­ac­tions and check­ing-account bal­ances. Face­book is joined byIn this by Google and Ama­zon who are also try­ing to get this kind of data.

Face­book assures us that this infor­ma­tion, which will be opt-in, is to be sole­ly for offer­ing new ser­vices on Face­book mes­sen­ger. Face­book also assures us that this infor­ma­tion, which would obvi­ous­ly be invalu­able for deliv­er­ing ads, won’t be used for ads at all. It will ONLY be used for Facebook’s Mes­sen­ger ser­vice.  This is a dubi­ous assur­ance, in light of Face­book’s past behav­ior.

” . . . . Face­book increas­ing­ly wants to be a plat­form where peo­ple buy and sell goods and ser­vices, besides con­nect­ing with friends. The com­pa­ny over the past year asked JPMor­gan Chase & Co., Wells Far­go & Co., Cit­i­group Inc. and U.S. Ban­corp to dis­cuss poten­tial offer­ings it could host for bank cus­tomers on Face­book Mes­sen­ger, said peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter. Face­book has talked about a fea­ture that would show its users their check­ing-account bal­ances, the peo­ple said. It has also pitched fraud alerts, some of the peo­ple said. . . .”

Peter Thiel’s sur­veil­lance firm Palan­tir was appar­ent­ly deeply involved with Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca’s gam­ing of per­son­al data har­vest­ed from Face­book in order to engi­neer an elec­toral vic­to­ry for Trump. Thiel was an ear­ly investor in Face­book, at one point was its largest share­hold­er and is still one of its largest share­hold­ers. ” . . . . It was a Palan­tir employ­ee in Lon­don, work­ing close­ly with the data sci­en­tists build­ing Cambridge’s psy­cho­log­i­cal pro­fil­ing tech­nol­o­gy, who sug­gest­ed the sci­en­tists cre­ate their own app — a mobile-phone-based per­son­al­i­ty quiz — to gain access to Face­book users’ friend net­works, accord­ing to doc­u­ments obtained by The New York Times. The rev­e­la­tions pulled Palan­tir — co-found­ed by the wealthy lib­er­tar­i­an Peter Thiel — into the furor sur­round­ing Cam­bridge, which improp­er­ly obtained Face­book data to build ana­lyt­i­cal tools it deployed on behalf of Don­ald J. Trump and oth­er Repub­li­can can­di­dates in 2016. Mr. Thiel, a sup­port­er of Pres­i­dent Trump, serves on the board at Face­book. ‘There were senior Palan­tir employ­ees that were also work­ing on the Face­book data,’ said Christo­pher Wylie, a data expert and Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca co-founder, in tes­ti­mo­ny before British law­mak­ers on Tues­day. . . . The con­nec­tions between Palan­tir and Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca were thrust into the spot­light by Mr. Wylie’s tes­ti­mo­ny on Tues­day. Both com­pa­nies are linked to tech-dri­ven bil­lion­aires who backed Mr. Trump’s cam­paign: Cam­bridge is chiefly owned by Robert Mer­cer, the com­put­er sci­en­tist and hedge fund mag­nate, while Palan­tir was co-found­ed in 2003 by Mr. Thiel, who was an ini­tial investor in Face­book. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1.–Facebook’s project to incor­po­rate brain-to-com­put­er inter­face into its oper­at­ing sys­tem: ” . . . Face­book wants to build its own “brain-to-com­put­er inter­face” that would allow us to send thoughts straight to a com­put­er. ‘What if you could type direct­ly from your brain?’ Regi­na Dugan, the head of the company’s secre­tive hard­ware R&D divi­sion, Build­ing 8, asked from the stage. Dugan then pro­ceed­ed to show a video demo of a woman typ­ing eight words per minute direct­ly from the stage. In a few years, she said, the team hopes to demon­strate a real-time silent speech sys­tem capa­ble of deliv­er­ing a hun­dred words per minute. ‘That’s five times faster than you can type on your smart­phone, and it’s straight from your brain,’ she said. ‘Your brain activ­i­ty con­tains more infor­ma­tion than what a word sounds like and how it’s spelled; it also con­tains seman­tic infor­ma­tion of what those words mean.’ . . .”
2.–” . . . . Brain-com­put­er inter­faces are noth­ing new. DARPA, which Dugan used to head, has invest­ed heav­i­ly in brain-com­put­er inter­face tech­nolo­gies to do things like cure men­tal ill­ness and restore mem­o­ries to sol­diers injured in war. But what Face­book is propos­ing is per­haps more radical—a world in which social media doesn’t require pick­ing up a phone or tap­ping a wrist watch in order to com­mu­ni­cate with your friends; a world where we’re con­nect­ed all the time by thought alone. . . .”
3.–” . . . . Facebook’s Build­ing 8 is mod­eled after DARPA and its projects tend to be equal­ly ambi­tious. . . .”
4.–” . . . . But what Face­book is propos­ing is per­haps more radical—a world in which social media doesn’t require pick­ing up a phone or tap­ping a wrist watch in order to com­mu­ni­cate with your friends; a world where we’re con­nect­ed all the time by thought alone. . . .”
5.–” . . . . Face­book hopes to use opti­cal neur­al imag­ing tech­nol­o­gy to scan the brain 100 times per sec­ond to detect thoughts and turn them into text. Mean­while, it’s work­ing on ‘skin-hear­ing’ that could trans­late sounds into hap­tic feed­back that peo­ple can learn to under­stand like braille. . . .”
6.–” . . . . Wor­ry­ing­ly, Dugan even­tu­al­ly appeared frus­trat­ed in response to my inquiries about how her team thinks about safe­ty pre­cau­tions for brain inter­faces, say­ing, ‘The flip side of the ques­tion that you’re ask­ing is ‘why invent it at all?’ and I just believe that the opti­mistic per­spec­tive is that on bal­ance, tech­no­log­i­cal advances have real­ly meant good things for the world if they’re han­dled respon­si­bly.’ . . . .”
7.–Some telling obser­va­tions by Nigel Oakes, the founder of Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca par­ent firm SCL: ” . . . . . . . . The pan­el has pub­lished audio records in which an exec­u­tive tied to Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca dis­cuss­es how the Trump cam­paign used tech­niques used by the Nazis to tar­get vot­ers. . . .”
8.–Further expo­si­tion of Oakes’ state­ment: ” . . . . Adolf Hitler ‘didn’t have a prob­lem with the Jews at all, but peo­ple didn’t like the Jews,’ he told the aca­d­e­m­ic, Emma L. Bri­ant, a senior lec­tur­er in jour­nal­ism at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Essex. He went on to say that Don­ald J. Trump had done the same thing by tap­ping into griev­ances toward immi­grants and Mus­lims. . . . ‘What hap­pened with Trump, you can for­get all the micro­tar­get­ing and micro­da­ta and what­ev­er, and come back to some very, very sim­ple things,’ he told Dr. Bri­ant. ‘Trump had the balls, and I mean, real­ly the balls, to say what peo­ple want­ed to hear.’ . . .”
9.–Observations about the pos­si­bil­i­ties of Face­book’s goal of hav­ing AI gov­ern­ing the edi­to­r­i­al func­tions of its con­tent: As not­ed in a Pop­u­lar Mechan­ics arti­cle: ” . . . When the next pow­er­ful AI comes along, it will see its first look at the world by look­ing at our faces. And if we stare it in the eyes and shout ‘we’re AWFUL lol,’ the lol might be the one part it doesn’t under­stand. . . .”
10.–Microsoft’s Tay Chat­bot offers a glimpse into this future: As one Twit­ter user not­ed, employ­ing sar­casm: “Tay went from ‘humans are super cool’ to full nazi in <24 hrs and I’m not at all con­cerned about the future of AI.”

Austrian Nazi Coalition Government Raids Office, Officials of Agency Charged with Countering Right-Wing Extremism

In FTR #1016, we high­light­ed a sto­ry about the Aus­tri­an Free­dom Par­ty (FPO), formed by Third Reich vet­er­ans in 1956. It is now a coali­tion part­ner in the gov­ern­ment of that unfor­tu­nate coun­try. The first head of the par­ty was SS Gen­er­al Anton Reinthaller (pic­tured at right): ” . . . . Reinthaller was brought before the Aus­tri­an Peo­ple’s Court and accused of ‘high trea­son against the Aus­tri­an peo­ple’, with the three [defen­dants] labelled as being those most respon­si­ble for the Anschluss [Nazi Ger­many’s annex­ing of Austria–D.E.] . . . .” ” . . . . Reinthaller died in 1958 and was suc­ceed­ed as Free­dom Par­ty leader by Friedrich Peter, anoth­er for­mer Nazi Par­ty mem­ber and an offi­cer in the SS. Peter ran the par­ty for­mal­ly until 1978 and then played an infor­mal role well into the 1980s. . . .” “ . . . . Since Decem­ber, the FPÖ’s Her­bert Kickl has been Austria’s inte­ri­or min­is­ter. . . . .The for­mer pres­i­dent of the Vien­nese Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, Ariel Muz­i­cant, said in 2009 that Kickl’s texts remind­ed him of Joseph Goebbels. . . . The spe­cif­ic inci­dent that has crys­tal­lized wider con­cerns in the world of espi­onage and coun­teres­pi­onage as well as coun­tert­er­ror was a series of raids ordered by the far-right inte­ri­or min­is­ter ear­li­er this year on the offices of the pro­fes­sion­al domes­tic intel­li­gence chief, whose orga­ni­za­tion had in the past con­duct­ed and coor­di­nat­ed with Ger­many its sur­veil­lance of right-wing extrem­ists. . . .Peter Gridling, known as the stub­born but polit­i­cal­ly col­or­less head of the BVT for the last 10 years, was fired sev­er­al days after the raids. He had been the object of a vir­u­lent cam­paign by the web­site unzensuriert.at (known as ‘the Aus­tri­an Bre­it­bart’). The for­mer edi­tor in chief of unzensuriert.at is now Kickl’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor. . . . as one long-time secu­ri­ty advis­er to sev­er­al French pres­i­dents told The Dai­ly Beast, ‘The Aus­tri­an oper­a­tion against the intel­li­gence ser­vice by the min­istry of inte­ri­or had an impact on every oth­er intel­li­gence ser­vice in the West.’ . . . ”