For The Record #1016 Miscellaneous Articles And Updates

As indi­cat­ed in the title, this show updates some paths of inquiry and intro­duces oth­ers.

Dis­cus­sion begins with the ori­gins of the Aus­tri­an Free­dom Par­ty (FPO). The par­ty has its gen­e­sis with post World War II Third Reich vet­er­ans. Its first head was SS Gen­er­al Anton Reinthaller: ” . . . .  an hon­orary Brigade­führer (Major Gen­er­al) in the SS.[1] Hav­ing ini­tial­ly joined the SS in Decem­ber 1938 (with the mem­ber­ship num­ber 292,775)[2] he achieved his high­est rank on 30 Jan­u­ary 1941. . . . 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.] . . . .”

Fur­ther analy­sis of the devel­op­ment of the FPO, notes that the par­ty was found­ed by Third Reich vet­er­ans and Reinthaller’s suc­ces­sor was also an SS offi­cer. ” . . . . The par­ty was found­ed by the orig­i­nal Nazis in the 1950s and led by Nazis until the 1980s. . . . 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. . . .”

Against the back­ground of the gen­e­sis of the FPO, we note that a for­mer speech writer for Jurg Haider is now the inte­ri­or min­is­ter of Aus­tria.

The FPO’s Her­bert Kickl is described as the “mas­ter­mind” behind the elec­toral suc­cess­es of the FPÖ that allowed it to enter into a coali­tion gov­ern­ment.

In March, a police unit head­ed by a Free­dom Par­ty mem­ber raid­ed the homes of four staffers and an office of the BVT (Bun­de­samt für Ver­fas­sungss­chutz und Ter­ror­is­mus Bekämp­fung, i.e., Fed­er­al Bureau for the Pro­tec­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion and for Coun­tert­er­ror­ism). The BVT is the bureau that deals with right-wing extrem­ism.

The head of the BVT was fired sev­er­al days after the raids. He had been the object of a vir­u­lent cam­paign by a web­site Unzensuriert.at which is known as “the Aus­tri­an Bre­it­bart”. The for­mer edi­tor in chief of unzensuriert.at is now Kickl’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor.

As the arti­cle points out, hav­ing the far right in charge of Austria’s and Italy’s domes­tic intel­li­gence agen­cies doesn’t just put the anti-extrem­ist oper­a­tions of Aus­tria and Italy at risk. Because of data-shar­ing agree­ments across Europe, they’re also learn­ing what oth­er intel­li­gence agen­cies of oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries (such as Ger­many) decid­ed to share with Aus­tria and Italy.

Key points of this sto­ry include:

1.–” . . . . In Italy, far-right politi­cian Mat­teo Salvi­ni now serves as head of Italy’s inte­ri­or min­istry, which han­dles inter­nal secu­ri­ty and ter­ror­ism. . . . ”
2.–” . . . . In Aus­tria, 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. . . .”
3.–” . . . . 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.’ . . . .”
4.–[German politi­cian Andrej] Hunko tells The Dai­ly Beast he is specif­i­cal­ly con­cerned that Kickl and his peo­ple would be able to acquire intel­li­gence about left­ist activists who oppose right-wing extrem­ism: ‘It is unthink­able what would hap­pen if secret infor­ma­tion about anti-fas­cist activ­i­ties falls into the hands of the extreme right via Austria’s con­ser­v­a­tive-far right gov­ern­ment.’ . . .”

Jar­rod Ramos, the alleged shoot­er at the Mary­land news­pa­per The Cap­i­tal Gazette was influ­enced by a theo­crat­ic neo-Con­fed­er­ate ide­ol­o­gy espoused by League of the South.

Specif­i­cal­ly, Ramos is a believ­er in the world­view expressed by League of the South lead­ers Mike Per­out­ka and Michael Hill, for whom a Bib­li­cal fun­da­men­tal­ist inter­pre­ta­tion of the Bible is the only REAL law and indi­vid­u­als are empow­ered enforce their inter­pre­ta­tion of Bib­li­cal law on their own.

Hill has also called for the for­ma­tion of death squads to tar­get jour­nal­ists, elect­ed offi­cials, and oth­er mem­bers of “the elite”. Hill has called for young men of “Chris­ten­dom” to become “cit­i­zen-sol­diers” to destroy the “gal­lop­ing tyran­ny” of our time.

” . . . . The League is a theo­crat­ic, seces­sion­ist orga­ni­za­tion whose leader, Michael Hill, had called for the for­ma­tion of death squads tar­get­ing jour­nal­ists, elect­ed offi­cials and oth­er mem­bers of ‘the elite.’ In his essay ‘A Bazooka in Every Pot,’ Hill described such an assas­si­na­tion cam­paign as part of ‘fourth-gen­er­a­tion war­fare,’ a style of decen­tral­ized con­flict that blurs the lines between war and pol­i­tics, com­bat­ants and civil­ians. . . . .”

Mike Per­out­ka was one of the only politi­cians Ramos tweet­ed about (he was sup­port­ive of Per­out­ka). The oth­er politi­cian was Don­ald Trump.

The author notes a pos­si­ble pair of events that may have cat­alyzed the shoot­ing: Three days before the shoot­ing, Pres­i­dent Trump once again demo­nized mem­ber of the media as “ene­mies of the peo­ple,” at a big out­door ral­ly in Cal­i­for­nia. The next day, Mike Per­out­ka lost his 2018 re-elec­tion bid in the Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry.

As Ramos’s social media posts reveal, anoth­er influ­ence on Ramos is the “Berserk” bloody ani­me movie. He made numer­ous ref­er­ences to Berserk in his posts, includ­ing the last tweet made min­utes before the shoot­ing. He even described him­self as play­ing a role in the world of “Berserk”, a world that includes vig­i­lante “hands of God”.

In FTR #756, we not­ed the strong over­lap­ping con­nec­tions between Edward Snow­den, Julian Assange, Ron Paul and the League of the South.

Ramos appears to have man­i­fest­ed the “lone wolf/leaderless resis­tance” strat­e­gy. ” . . . . ‘Ramos came to see him­self as some kind of vig­i­lante for right­eous­ness, cast­ing him­self for exam­ple as a ‘cru­sad­er’ . . . . Polit­i­cal Research Asso­ciates ana­lyst Fred­er­ick Clark­son told Salon. This vision was ‘not unlike the mil­i­taris­tic, mil­len­ni­al vision of Michael Hill,’ he con­tin­ued. . . .”

In FTR #888, we not­ed that Glenn Green­wald ran legal inter­fer­ence for the lead­er­less resis­tance strat­e­gy, free­ing up the likes of Michael Hill from civ­il lia­bil­i­ty for their advo­ca­cy of may­hem. Green­wald is, in effect, an acces­so­ry to the blood­shed alleged­ly real­ized by Ramos and oth­ers like him.

Next, we turn to the sub­ject of Hin­dut­va fas­cism. (For more about this sub­ject, see, among oth­er pro­grams, FTR #‘s 988 and 989, 990, 991, 992, and 1015.

In FTR #1015, we high­light­ed the “cow vig­i­lantes” in India–Hindutva fas­cist gangs per­pe­trat­ing vio­lence on Mus­lims and low­er-caste Hin­dus. What­sApp is fuel­ing the vio­lence.

The may­or of Jaipur, Ashok Laho­ty, shared the rumor about beef being served at the hotel on a BJP What­sApp group.

It appears that the BJP is behind much of the rumor cam­paigns as part of its Hin­du nation­al­ist agen­da. ” . . . . Indi­an Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi has large­ly remained silent about the prob­lem, and ana­lysts say there’s a rea­son for that: Much of the fake news now spread­ing like wild­fire has been pro­mot­ed, if not cre­at­ed, by some of Modi’s most fer­vent sup­port­ers. . . .”

Modi has a well orches­trat­ed machine for dis­sem­i­nat­ing BJP’s fake news: ” . . . . In her book, ‘I am a Troll: Inside the Secret World of the BJP’s Dig­i­tal Army,’ jour­nal­ist Swati Chaturve­di explains how the par­ty orches­trates online cam­paigns to intim­i­date per­ceived gov­ern­ment crit­ics through a net­work of trolls on Twit­ter and Face­book. And she cites mul­ti­ple peo­ple who worked inside the BJP’s social media machine to make her case. . . . Chaturvedi’s find­ings were backed by anoth­er for­mer BJP cyber-vol­un­teer, Sad­havi Khosla, who left the par­ty in 2015 because of the con­stant bar­rage of misog­y­ny, Islam­o­pho­bia, and hatred she was asked to dis­sem­i­nate online. And Prodyut Bora, one of the mas­ter­minds of the BJP’s ear­ly tech­nol­o­gy and social media strat­e­gy, recent­ly offered a sim­i­lar out­look. He described his cre­ation as ‘Frankenstein’s mon­ster,’ and said that it had mor­phed from its orig­i­nal aim of bet­ter con­nect­ing with the party’s sup­port­ers. ‘I mean, occa­sion­al­ly, it’s just painful to watch what they have done with it,’ he told Huff­Post India last month. . . .”

Turn­ing from the sub­ject of fake news in India to fake news in the U.S., we con­clude with a look at what “deep fake” video tech­nol­o­gy may har­bin­ger.

When the ‘deep­fake’ video tech­nol­o­gy devel­ops to the point of being indis­tin­guish­able from real videos, the far right is going to go into over­drive cre­at­ing videos pur­port­ing to prove vir­tu­al­ly every far right fan­ta­sy you can imag­ine. Among the memes that might be rein­forced by such tech­nol­o­gy is the ‘Piz­za­Gate’ con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry pushed by the right wing in the final weeks of the 2016 alleg­ing that Hillary Clin­ton and num­ber of oth­er promi­nent Democ­rats are part of a Satanist child abuse ring.

Right wing polemi­cist Liz Crokin is repeat­ing her asser­tions that video of Hillary Clin­ton – specif­i­cal­ly, Hillary sex­u­al­ly abus­ing and then eat­ing the face of a child is float­ing around on the Dark Web is def­i­nite­ly real. Crokin is now warn­ing that reports about ‘deep­fake’ tech­nol­o­gy are dis­in­for­ma­tion sto­ries being pre­emp­tive­ly put out by the Deep State to make the pub­lic skep­ti­cal when the videos of Hillary cut­ting the face off of a child come to light.

FTR #1011 Miscellaneous Articles and Updates

This broad­cast updates and high­lights pre­vi­ous top­ics of dis­cus­sion, focus­ing large­ly on online/Alt-Right/­Nazi fas­cism and some of the malev­o­lent com­mu­ni­ties that coa­lesce around var­i­ous ide­o­log­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tions of that phe­nom­e­non.

There has been lit­tle pub­lic recog­ni­tion that many of the mass shoot­ers whose activ­i­ties have dom­i­nat­ed much of the news cycle in recent years,have been immersed in one form or extrem­ist far right ide­ol­o­gy or anoth­er.

The release of ~1,200 pages of doc­u­ments relat­ed to the Las Vegas shoot­ing reveals that Stephen Pad­dock appears to have been “a sov­er­eign cit­i­zen.” . . . . In the doc­u­ments, those who encoun­tered gun­man Stephen Pad­dock say he expressed con­spir­a­to­r­i­al, anti-gov­ern­ment beliefs char­ac­ter­is­tic of the far right . . . . But tan­ta­liz­ing­ly, peo­ple who encoun­tered Pad­dock before his shoot­ing say that he expressed con­spir­a­to­r­i­al, anti-gov­ern­ment beliefs, which are char­ac­ter­is­tic of the far right. . . .”

Pad­dock­’s actions are not unex­pect­ed for some­one with his ide­o­log­i­cal mind­set: ” . . . . In sur­veys con­duct­ed in 2014 and 2015, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of US law-enforce­ment ranked the risk of ter­ror­ism from the sov­er­eign-cit­i­zen move­ment high­er than the risk from Islam­ic extrem­ism.”

Naz­i/alt-right cul­ture was a pri­ma­ry influ­ence on accused San­ta Fe (Texas) gun­man Dim­itrios Pagourtzis. ” . . . . Dim­itrios Pagourtzis, the sus­pect­ed gun­man who opened fire at a Texas high school on Fri­day morn­ing, appar­ent­ly post­ed pho­tos of neo-Nazi iconog­ra­phy online, accord­ing to social media accounts flagged by class­mates and reviewed by The Dai­ly Beast. . . . Oth­er images on Pagourtzis’ now-delet­ed Face­book page sug­gest a pos­si­ble inter­est in white suprema­cist groups. Pagourtzis uploaded a num­ber of T‑shirts that fea­ture Vapor­wave-style designs. Vapor­wave, a music and design move­ment, has spawned a relat­ed move­ment called Fash­wave, which bor­rows the same aes­thet­ic but applies them to neo-Nazi sub­jects. Pagourtzis’ Face­book head­er image was the cov­er of an album by musi­cian Per­tur­ba­tor. Perturbator’s music has been co-opt­ed by mem­bers of the Fash­wave move­ment, Buz­zFeed pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed. Neo-Nazi web­site The Dai­ly Stormer fre­quent­ly includes Perturbator’s music in “Fash­wave Fri­days” posts. . . . .”

Ini­tial press reports about the San­ta Fe shoot­ing dis­cuss pos­si­ble accom­plices of Pagourtzis. Was he part of a group of some kind? “. . . . On Fri­day, author­i­ties intend­ed to ques­tion two oth­er peo­ple: One was at the scene and had “sus­pi­cious reac­tions,” accord­ing to the gov­er­nor, and anoth­er had drawn the scruti­ny of inves­ti­ga­tors. . . .”

Pagourtzis, as we saw above, had tak­en to wear­ing a trench coat, even in 90 degree weath­er. Press reports have described him as a “copy-cat” killer, hav­ing imi­tat­ed Dylan Kle­bold and Eric Har­ris of Columbine shoot­ing fame. (Pagourtzis was too young to have mem­o­ries of the inci­dent, though he may well have absorbed infor­ma­tion about the Columbine per­pe­tra­tors.)

The media have, for the most part, not men­tioned that Har­ris and Kle­bold were heav­i­ly influ­enced by Nazi cul­ture. “. . . . Nine­teen days before they were to grad­u­ate, Har­ris and Kle­bold seemed insep­a­ra­ble and trou­ble­some. In Columbine’s hall­ways, they spoke bro­ken Ger­man and referred often to ‘4–20,’ Hitler’s birth­day and the day they chose for their assault. . . . Some Columbine stu­dents said the vio­lent side of Har­ris and Kle­bold became more obvi­ous in recent months. They became obses­sive­ly inter­est­ed in World War II, Nazi imagery, Adolf Hitler. John House, 17, a Columbine senior, told reporters that when he went bowl­ing with Kle­bold, ‘when he would do some­thing good, he would shout ‘Heil Hitler’ and throw up his hand. It just made every­one mad.’ . . . .”

In FTR #995, we exam­ined the Atom­waf­fen Neo-Nazi group. Atom­waf­fen mem­ber Andrew Oneschuk was about to join Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion. ” . . . . . . . Andrew, who was one-eighth Ukrain­ian, took to the cause, chat­ting with fight­ers and their allies. He began for­mu­lat­ing a plan to join the Azov Bat­tal­ion, a noto­ri­ous­ly bru­tal band of inter­na­tion­al fight­ers help­ing in the resis­tance against the Rus­sians. . . . Andrew took it fur­ther, even­tu­al­ly adopt­ing the online han­dle “Borovikov,” after a famous Russ­ian neo-Nazi gang leader. That spring, he hung an SS flag in his bed­room as well as a giant swasti­ka. . . .”

Online net­work­ing between resent­ful, sex-deprived men who call them­selves “incels” (a con­trac­tion of  “invol­un­tary celi­bates”) over­lap Naz­i/Alt-Right ele­ments. The ide­o­log­i­cal col­li­sion of the online “incels” and the #MeToo move­ment may well gen­er­ate some tru­ly patho­log­i­cal vio­lence. “. . . . The alt-right, right-wing pop­ulism, men’s rights groups and a renewed white suprema­cist move­ment have cap­i­tal­ized on many white men’s feel­ing of loss in recent years. The groups vary in how they diag­nose society’s ills and whom they blame, but they pro­vide a sense of mean­ing and place for their fol­low­ers. And as dif­fer­ent extrem­ist groups con­nect online, they draw on one another’s mem­ber­ship bases, tac­tics and world­views, allow­ing mem­ber­ship in one group to become a gate­way to oth­er extrem­ist ide­olo­gies as well. Today, for exam­ple, posts on Incel.me, an incel forum, debate join­ing forces with the alt-right and argue that Jews are to blame for incels’ oppres­sion. On one thread, users fan­ta­sized that if they were dic­ta­tors, they would not only cre­ate harems and enslave women, but also ‘gas the Jews.’ . . . . By divid­ing the world into us-ver­sus-them and describ­ing vast injus­tice at the hands of the sup­pos­ed­ly pow­er­ful, these groups, experts say, can prime adher­ents for vio­lence. . . .”

Incel cul­ture is metas­ta­siz­ing into “lone-wolf”/leaderless resis­tance ter­ror­ism. ” . . . . In 2014, a gam­ing award cer­e­mo­ny set to hon­or the fem­i­nist crit­ic Ani­ta Sar­keesian received a bomb threat; an anony­mous harass­er threat­ened to det­o­nate a device unless her award was rescind­ed. Before Milo Yiannopou­los was a well-known alt-right fig­ure, fem­i­nists knew him as one of the pri­ma­ry archi­tects of Gamer­gate, a move­ment of young men who harassed and threat­ened women in the videogam­ing indus­try. Two fans of Mr. Yiannopou­los were charged with shoot­ing a pro­test­er out­side of one of his speech­es. . . .”

Nazi killer Anders Breivik embod­ied the over­lap between Alt-Right white suprema­cy and insti­tu­tion­al­ized misog­y­ny: ” . . . . On July 22, Breivik slaugh­tered 77 of his coun­try­men, most of them teenagers, in Oslo and at a sum­mer camp on the island of Utøya, because he thought they or their par­ents were the kinds of ‘polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect’ lib­er­als who were enabling Mus­lim immi­gra­tion. But Breivik was almost as vol­u­ble on the sub­jects of fem­i­nism, the fam­i­ly, and fathers’ rights as he was on Islam. ‘The most direct threat to the fam­i­ly is ‘divorce on demand,’ ’ he wrote in the man­i­festo he post­ed just before he began his dead­ly spree. ‘The sys­tem must be reformed so that the father will be award­ed cus­tody rights by default.’ The manos­phere lit up. Said one approv­ing poster at The Spear­head, an online men’s rights mag­a­zine for the ‘defense of our­selves, our fam­i­lies and our fel­low men’: ‘What could be more ‘an eye for an eye’ than to kill the chil­dren of those who were so will­ing to destroy men’s fam­i­lies and destroy the home­land of men?’ . . . .”

The “psy­cho-polit­i­cal” polar­iza­tion of the #MeToo move­ment and the “incels” misog­y­nist com­mu­ni­ty holds dev­as­tat­ing poten­tial.

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1.–Journalist Ronan Far­row’s author­ship of the New York­er arti­cle that took down Har­vey Wein­stein. (For more dis­cus­sion of the #MeToo Move­ment and weaponized fem­i­nism, see FTR #‘s 998, 999, 1000, 1001.)
2.–Farrow’s State Depart­ment work sug­ges­tive of involve­ment with the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty.  “. . . .  Post-law school: Lands a job at the State Depart­ment, as a spe­cial advi­sor focus­ing on con­flict in Afghanistan and Pak­istan. . . .”
3.–Farrow’s co-author­ship of the New York­er arti­cle that took down for­mer New York Attor­ney Gen­er­al Eric Schnei­der­man, a major Trump neme­sis, who was also crit­i­ciz­ing and inves­ti­gat­ing oth­er indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions asso­ci­at­ed with the Trump/GOP pow­er elite.  “. . . . Schnei­der­man had already been declared ‘the man the banks fear most’ by the lib­er­al mag­a­zine ‘The Amer­i­can Prospect.’ . . . . In the days since Novem­ber 9, Schnei­der­man fired off a let­ter warn­ing Trump not to drop White House sup­port of Obama’s Clean Pow­er Plan, intro­duced a bill in the state Leg­is­la­ture to give New York­ers cost-free con­tra­cep­tion if the Afford­able Care Act is dis­man­tled, threat­ened to sue after Trump froze EPA fund­ing of clean air and water pro­grams, and joined a law­suit that argues that Trump’s exec­u­tive order on immi­gra­tion is not just uncon­sti­tu­tion­al and un-Amer­i­can, but it brings pro­found harm to the res­i­dents of New York State. . . . He’s on the oppo­site side of the Clean Pow­er Plan fight from Okla­homa Attor­ney Gen­er­al Scott Pruitt, since named head of the EPA, and who Schnei­der­man labeled a ‘dan­ger­ous and unqual­i­fied choice.’ . . . ”
4.–Schneiderman was also inves­ti­gat­ing the pow­er­ful, well-con­nect­ed NXIVM cult, one of whose asso­ciates was Roger Stone, the long-time Trump/GOP dirty trick­ster who sig­naled the #MeToo take­down of Sen­a­tor Al Franken.

FTR #1003 School Shootings and Fascist Groups, Part 2

Pub­lic schools and pub­lic edu­ca­tion are, and for many years have been, the focal point of right-wing activ­i­ty. From dis­sat­is­fac­tion over man­dat­ed school deseg­re­ga­tion to oppo­si­tion to the judi­cial ban on prayer in pub­lic schools to the present-day dra­con­ian slash­ing of pub­lic edu­ca­tion budges, the right has attacked pub­lic edu­ca­tion. At the same time, the right has pro­mot­ed the use of pub­lic funds for parochial schools and home school­ing as alter­na­tives to pub­lic edu­ca­tion.

The for­ma­tive expe­ri­ence of pub­lic school atten­dance might well be viewed as fun­da­men­tal to young peo­ples’ social­iza­tion process–learning to share, acquir­ing tol­er­ance for those of dif­fer­ent back­grounds and learn­ing the basics of civic life  in Amer­i­ca.

Pub­lic schools have also come under attack–quite literally–from armed fas­cists.

This is the sec­ond pro­gram deal­ing with school shoot­ings and the role fas­cist groups play in the devel­op­ment of such inci­dents. The broad­cast begins with a brief sum­ma­ry and recap of key points of dis­cus­sion from FTR #1002. They include:

1.-Patrick Pur­dy’s appar­ent links to Aryan Nations.
2.-Purdy’s anti-Asian xeno­pho­bia, deem­ing that Amer­i­cans were being edged out in their own home­land.
3.-The Order’s attempts at devel­op­ing mind con­trol tech­niques.
4.-Purdy’s involve­ment with the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church.
5.-The pro­found effect of school shoot­ings on both par­ents and stu­dents of affect­ed insti­tu­tions. School shoot­ings fun­da­men­tal­ly under­mine peo­ples’ sense of com­fort and cre­ate an anx­i­ety con­ducive to the imple­men­ta­tion of total­i­tar­i­an­ism.
6.-The pro­vi­sion of Oliv­er North’s mar­tial law con­tin­gency plans to use para­mil­i­tary right-wingers as fed­er­al deputies.

Dis­cus­sion pro­ceeds to the Flori­da high school shoot­ing. Mort Sahl’s obser­va­tion decades ago that “A lib­er­al’s idea of courage is eat­ing at a restau­rant that has­n’t been reviewed yet” is exem­pli­fied by jour­nal­ists’ retrac­tion of the sto­ry of Park­land, Flori­da shoot­er Niko­las Cruz being affil­i­at­ed with the ROF because of what might be termed “reverse trolling.” A post on a chat group about the Cruz/ROF link was deemed to be false. Jor­dan Jereb told jour­nal­ists that Cruz was a mem­ber of his group, but that he had­n’t seen him in a long time. He has been said to be “walk­ing that back.” Just HOW does one “walk that back?” ” . . . . The ADL said ROF leader Jor­dan Jereb told them Cruz was asso­ci­at­ed with his group. Jereb, who is based in Tal­la­has­see, said Cruz was brought into the group by anoth­er mem­ber and had par­tic­i­pat­ed in one or more ROF train­ing exer­cis­es in the Tal­la­has­see area, the ADL said. . . . Jereb told the ADL that ROF had not ordered Cruz to take any such action. He told ABC News he has not spo­ken to Cruz in ‘some time’ but said ‘he knew he would get­ting this call.’ . . . .” Jereb told the ADL that ROF had not ordered Cruz to take any such action. He told ABC News he has not spo­ken to Cruz in “some time” but said “he knew he would get­ting this call.”

Whether or not Niko­las Cruz was for­mal­ly net­work­ing with the Repub­lic of Flori­da or oth­er neo-Nazi groups, he was indeed a neo-Nazi in spir­it: It turns out that Cruz had swastikas etched onto his ammu­ni­tion mag­a­zines used dur­ing the attack. This reminds us of the jot­tings Patrick Edward Pur­dy had on his weapons and cloth­ing.

Cruz didn’t just sud­den­ly adopt a neo-Nazi world­view. He’s been stew­ing in these juices for years, and clear­ly had addi­tion­al men­tal health issues.

Sev­er­al fac­tors great­ly exac­er­bate the school shoot­ing phe­nom­e­non.

The Steam gam­ing app, a major dis­trib­u­tor for very pop­u­lar video games, has a neo-Nazi problem–neo-Nazis are using its chat room and voice-over-IP options to pro­mote their ide­ol­o­gy. Both the Dai­ly Stormer and Andrew Auern­heimer have Steam chat rooms, as does Atom­Waf­fen.

On these forums, there are 173 dif­fer­ent groups cham­pi­oning school shoot­ers, laud­ing them as heroes and set­ting the stage for future inci­dents. ” . . . . A lead­ing gam­ing app that is pop­u­lar with adher­ents of the neo-Nazi wing of the alt-right move­ment has at least 173 groups ded­i­cat­ed to the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of school shoot­ings, accord­ing to a report pub­lished last week by Reveal News. . . .”

In addi­tion, Nazi groups are active­ly recruit­ing depressed peo­ple! ” . . . . For years, mem­bers of the alt-right have tak­en advan­tage of the internet’s most vul­ner­a­ble, turn­ing their fear and self-loathing into vit­ri­olic extrem­ism, and thanks to the movement’s recent gal­va­niza­tion, they’re only grow­ing stronger. . . . Accord­ing to Chris­t­ian Pic­ci­oli­ni, a for­mer neo-nazi who co-found­ed the peace advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tion, Life After Hate, these sort of recruit­ing tac­tics aren’t just com­mon, but sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly enforced. ‘[The recruiters] are active­ly look­ing for these kind of bro­ken indi­vid­u­als who they can promise accep­tance, who they can promise iden­ti­ty to,’ Pic­ci­oli­ni said in an inter­view with Sam Seder. . . .”

Although not includ­ed in the audio por­tion of the pro­gram due to the lim­i­ta­tions of time, we note that, in our opin­ion, the pres­ence of lethal, mil­i­tary-style firearms are not, by them­selves, the pri­ma­ry fac­tor in the epi­dem­ic of school shoot­ings and oth­er mass casu­al­ty firearms attacks. A would-be school shoot­er can always pur­chase a pump-action, 12-gauge shot­gun, saw it off and pre­cip­i­tate con­sid­er­able may­hem.

Many of the school shoot­ings have been per­formed by fas­cists of one stripe or anoth­er, man­i­fest­ing the type of actions advo­cat­ed by the likes of Michael Moy­ni­a­han, James Mason and their fel­low trav­el­ers. Mason and his role mod­el Charles Man­son are now viewed favor­ably by a seg­ment of the Nazi move­ment. The role of nihilist/fascist ide­ol­o­gy in moti­vat­ing some of the school shoot­ers should be fac­tored into the dis­cus­sion.

The role of the media in con­di­tion­ing young peo­ple to kill is a major focal point of the book On Killing by Lieu­tenant Colonel Dave Gross­man, who taught psy­chol­o­gy at West Point. From Ama­zon’s pro­mo­tion­al text for Gross­man­’s book: “The good news is that most sol­diers are loath to kill. But armies have devel­oped sophis­ti­cat­ed ways of over­com­ing this instinc­tive aver­sion. And con­tem­po­rary civil­ian soci­ety, par­tic­u­lar­ly the media, repli­cates the army’s con­di­tion­ing tech­niques, and, accord­ing to Lt. Col. Dave Gross­man­’s the­sis, is respon­si­ble for our ris­ing rate of mur­der among the young. Upon its ini­tial pub­li­ca­tion, ON KILLING was hailed as a land­mark study of the tech­niques the mil­i­tary uses to over­come the pow­er­ful reluc­tance to kill, of how killing affects sol­diers, and of the soci­etal impli­ca­tions of esca­lat­ing vio­lence. Now, Gross­man has updat­ed this clas­sic work to include infor­ma­tion on 21st-cen­tu­ry mil­i­tary con­flicts, recent trends in crime, sui­cide bomb­ings, school shoot­ings, and more. The result is a work cer­tain to be rel­e­vant and impor­tant for decades to come.”

Our high body-count movies and TV pro­grams, as well as point-and-shoot video games, accord­ing to Gross­man, repli­cate to a con­sid­er­able degree the audio-visu­al desen­si­ti­za­tion tech­niques used by con­tem­po­rary armies to help recruits over­came their inhi­bi­tions about killing. We sug­gest Gross­man­’s the­sis as a fac­tor in the school mas­sacres.

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1.-The para­mil­i­tary right-wing Oath Keep­ers deploy­ment of heav­i­ly armed cadre out­side of schools.
2.-Discussion of how the likes of Stew­art Rhodes and his Oath Keep­ers are the type of para­mil­i­tary right-wingers who would be dep­u­tized in the event of an acti­va­tion of mar­tial law con­tin­gency plans.
3.-The online dis­par­age­ment of Park­land high school stu­dents by the “Alt-Right.”
4.-The use of the C14 mili­tias in Ukraine to enforce pub­lic order in Kiev (the cap­i­tal) and 21 oth­er cities. The orga­ni­za­tion takes its name from the 14 words of David Lane, a mem­ber of the Order. One of that group’s founders was high­light­ed at the begin­ning of FTR #1002, not­ing his quest to obtain sophis­ti­cat­ed weapon­ry and to devel­op mind-con­trol tech­niques.

FTR #1002 School Shootings and Fascist Groups, Part 1: Purdy’s Last Stand Redux

Pub­lic schools and pub­lic edu­ca­tion are, and for many years have been, the focal point of right-wing activ­i­ty. From dis­sat­is­fac­tion over man­dat­ed school deseg­re­ga­tion to oppo­si­tion to the judi­cial ban on prayer in pub­lic schools to the present-day dra­con­ian slash­ing of pub­lic edu­ca­tion budges, the right has attacked pub­lic edu­ca­tion. At the same time, the right has pro­mot­ed the use of pub­lic funds for parochial schools and home school­ing as alter­na­tives to pub­lic edu­ca­tion.

The for­ma­tive expe­ri­ence of pub­lic school atten­dance might well be viewed as fun­da­men­tal to young peo­ples’ social­iza­tion process–learning to share, acquir­ing tol­er­ance for those of dif­fer­ent back­grounds and learn­ing the basics of civic life  in Amer­i­ca.

Pub­lic schools have also come under attack–quite literally–from armed fas­cists.

The first of a two-part series, this pro­gram con­sists almost entire­ly of a recap of mate­r­i­al from Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M55: Pur­dy’s Last Stand: The Stock­ton (CA) School­yard Mas­sacre of 1989.

Although Mr. Emory would have engaged in a more nuanced dis­cus­sion of school shoot­ings and their polit­i­cal and psy­cho-social impli­ca­tions had the pro­gram been record­ed today, there are some essen­tial ele­ments to be con­sid­ered in con­nec­tion with the event.

The syn­op­tic writ­ten descrip­tion for the pro­gram reads as fol­lows:

“Advances the work­ing hypoth­e­sis that the Stock­ton school­yard mas­sacre of Jan­u­ary 1989 may have been delib­er­ate­ly pre­cip­i­tat­ed by ele­ments of the U.S. nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment act­ing in com­bi­na­tion with ele­ments of the ultra-right. Patrick Edward Pur­dy mur­dered five Asian-Amer­i­can school­child­ren and then com­mit­ted sui­cide, spurring leg­is­la­tion for gun con­trol and cre­at­ing pub­lic fear and sen­ti­ment for police state tac­tics. Pur­dy had asso­ci­a­tions with Aryan Nations and the Moon orga­ni­za­tion, and may have been a covert intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty pat­sy and vic­tim of mind con­trol. The broad­cast ana­lyzes a pos­si­ble intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty con­nec­tion to the gun con­trol move­ment with­in the larg­er back­ground of the mar­tial law con­tin­gency plans devel­oped by the Rea­gan and Bush admin­is­tra­tions.”

Again, Mr. Emory would have pre­sent­ed a more nuanced analy­sis of this event had it occurred today–almost 30 years later–critical ele­ments of the dis­sec­tion of Pur­dy’s last stand bear repeat­ing and more intense scruti­ny:

1.-Purdy’s xeno­pho­bic view of Asian-Amer­i­cans  and “immigrants”–a point of view that is held by a large por­tion of the Trump con­stituen­cy, the so-called “Alt-Right” in this coun­try and abroad, as well. Exac­er­bat­ed great­ly by eco­nom­ic depri­va­tion stem­ming from glob­al­iza­tion and the finan­cial col­lapse of 2008 and aus­ter­i­ty eco­nom­ics insti­tut­ed in the EU at the insti­ga­tion of Ger­many and the U.S. by the obstruc­tion­ist GOP Con­gres­sion­al  major­i­ty that took pow­er after the 2010 mid-term elec­tions, the fear of immi­grants is a major aspect of fas­cist ide­ol­o­gy.
2.-The gal­va­niz­ing effect on both par­ents and their chil­dren of the school shoot­ings is vital to con­sid­er. Ter­ror­ized by these events, a pop­u­lace is far more will­ing to  accept police-state tactics–creeping mar­tial law, if you will.
3.-The mar­tial law con­tin­gency plans for­mal­ized by Oliv­er North and com­pa­ny and out­ed dur­ing the Iran-Con­tra scan­dal involved the fed­er­al dep­u­ti­za­tion of para­mil­i­tary right-wing groups such as the Oath Keep­ers and Nazi and fas­cist ele­ments. Iron­i­cal­ly, much of the so-called “Alt-Right” now incor­po­rate anti-gun con­trol ide­ol­o­gy and mar­tial law plans into their world view. In Lec­ture M3, we high­light­ed how ele­ments of what are now called “Alt-Right” are play­ing into the var­i­ous sce­nar­ios they inveigh against.
4.-It is iron­ic that much of the so-called “Alt-Right” cite gun con­trol as a step toward mar­tial law. Although they are cor­rect, up to a point, they fail to real­ize that they, them­selves, will be both insti­ga­tors of, and in some cas­es, the enforcers for, that very same mar­tial law!
5.-Public edu­ca­tion has long been a tar­get of the far-right, which attacked school inte­gra­tion in the 1950’s, 60’s and ’70s, the ban­ning of prayer in pub­lic schools and, in lat­er years attempts at intro­duc­ing pro­grams like sex edu­ca­tion and pro­grams pro­mot­ing a more tol­er­ant atti­tude toward oth­ers. In cal­en­dar year 2018, we should note that pub­lic schools are under attack from the far right, and not just in the per­son of school shoot­ers. Bet­sy De Vos, Trump’s Sec­re­tary of Edu­ca­tion, is push­ing for fed­er­al fund­ing of parochial schools, enabling of for-prof­it col­leges. The GOP and far right are push­ing home school­ing as an alter­na­tive to pub­lic edu­ca­tion and the fur­ther slash­ing of fed­er­al and state bud­gets, which inevitably harms pub­lic edu­ca­tion. We note that pub­lic schools are a major font of social aware­ness. Students–ideally–encounter and devel­op a greater under­stand­ing and tol­er­ance for oth­ers in pub­lic schools. Pub­lic edu­ca­tion is a major fea­ture of social cohe­sion, and its dis­so­lu­tion a major step toward the imple­men­ta­tion of fas­cism.

FTR #998 “In Politics, Nothing Happens by Accident”: Weaponized Feminism and the #MeToo Movement

“A lib­er­al’s idea of courage is eat­ing at a restau­rant that has­n’t been reviewed yet.”–Mort Sahl.

We begin our dis­cus­sion of weaponized fem­i­nism with its ulti­mate manifestation–a joint call by NATO Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Jens Stoltenberg and Har­vey Wein­stein accuser Angeli­na Jolie for NATO to com­mit its resources to defend­ing wom­en’s rights.

Note that they cite Koso­vo as a salient exam­ple of their fem­i­nist “call to arms.” As dis­cussed in FTR #161 , among oth­er pro­grams, fight­ers in the Koso­vo Lib­er­a­tion Army were large­ly descen­dants of World War II fas­cist fight­ing for­ma­tions, includ­ing the 21st Waf­fen SS Division–the Skan­der­beg Divi­sion.

The irony in Stoltenberg and Jolie’s call for NATO to enforce wom­en’s rights in Koso­vo, among oth­er places could not be more pro­found: ” . . . . Kosovo’s Prime Min­is­ter Hashim Thaci is fac­ing a wide range of crim­i­nal alle­ga­tions, includ­ing own­ing a harem with 52 female sex slaves . . . . Accord­ing to the news agency, a Ukrain­ian woman escaped from Thaci’s harem and revealed damn­ing infor­ma­tion about sex slav­ery in Koso­vo. The woman claims 52 female sex slaves are forced to work night and day to ser­vice the Prime Min­is­ter and his rich friends in busi­ness and gov­ern­ment. . . .”

Next, we turn to what may well be anoth­er exam­ple of NATO weaponized fem­i­nism. Among the vic­tims of the #MeToo move­ment was Rep. John Cony­ers (D‑MI), a promi­nent con­gres­sion­al crit­ic of the Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion, receiv­ing arms and train­ing from the U.S.

In 2018, NATO forces are sched­uled to engage in maneu­vers in Ukraine.

It is not sur­pris­ing that Kristofer Har­ri­son (the author of an apolo­gia for the Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion in Ukraine) is a for­mer Defense Depart­ment and State Depart­ment advi­sor to George W. Bush (and from the same polit­i­cal milieu of Kurt Volk­er, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s CIA-trained rep­re­sen­ta­tive to Ukraine.) Note­wor­thy in his pro­pa­gan­da piece dis­miss­ing Rep­re­sen­ta­tive John Cony­ers (D‑MI) as “the Krem­lin’s Man in Con­gress” and dis­count­ing any­one else dis­cussing the ascen­sion of the OUN/B fas­cists in Ukraine in a sim­i­lar vein, is the iden­ti­ty of his source for assur­ances that Azov is not a Nazi unit.

With Al Franken’s depar­ture from the Senate–an event that fig­ures to make the Democ­rats’ chances of regain­ing con­trol of the cham­ber more precarious–we reflect on aspects of Franken’s depar­ture, includ­ing the right-wing affil­i­a­tions of Leann Twee­den, the appar­ent fore­knowl­edge of the event by long-time GOP dirty trick­ster Roger Stone, the extreme dif­fi­cul­ty of a pub­lic fig­ure suc­cess­ful­ly suing for defama­tion under Amer­i­can civ­il law, the util­i­ty of “sex­pi­onage” from the stand­point of intel­li­gence and coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence and the pro­cliv­i­ty of the so-called “pro­gres­sive sec­tor” for one-dimen­sion­al iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics.

We note that the now-famous pho­to­graph of Franken “grop­ing” Leann Twee­den’s breasts was obvi­ous­ly a staged event, not to be tak­en seri­ous­ly. (The taste here is ques­tion­able, although as can be seen from two oth­er pho­tos of the same USO tour, the dom­i­nant aes­thet­ic of this tour was bawdy, tongue-in-cheek. Note the pho­tos of Twee­den goos­ing a male C &W per­former and Franken and Twee­den mug­ging over a skimpy under­gar­ment. It is clear that nei­ther is to be tak­en seri­ous­ly.)

We con­clude the pro­gram with exam­i­na­tion of tech­no­crat­ic fas­cism in action–the Twit­ter bot role in the take­down of Franken.

On Novem­ber 15th, a Japan­ese devel­op­er named Atsu­fu­mi Otsu­ka reg­is­ter­ing a web domain in Japan called RealUSA.site, on the same day Roger Stone announced over Twit­ter that it’s Franken’s “time in the barrel”–one day before the sto­ry broke.

Then, on Novem­ber 20th, Alt-Right provo­ca­teur Charles John­son tweet­ed, “Think­ing of offer­ing mon­ey to peo­ple who go on tv and say Al Frank is a preda­tor.” That same day, Otsu­ka reg­is­tered a sec­ond domain in Japan for anoth­er fake-news site, VotyUS.me.

The two fake news sites were final­ly put to use on Decem­ber 7, short­ly before Democ­rats start­ed call­ing for Franken to step down. The sites re-pub­lished an arti­cle by Ijeo­ma Oluo, a lib­er­al writer, urg­ing women and activists to stop sup­port­ing Franken. Oluo’s piece, titled “Dear Al Franken, I’ll Miss You but You Can’t Mat­ter Any­more,” was post­ed on rel­a­tive­ly obscure web­site that only had a reach of of 10,000 fol­low­ers. But once the arti­cle got repost­ed to those two fake news sites the twit­ter bot net­work­ing sud­den­ly sprang into action, with thou­sands of fake Twit­ter accounts tweet­ing the title of the article—but link­ing back to repost of the arti­cle on the fake news sites, RealUSA.site or VotyUS.me.

Although it’s not clear who paid for the Twit­ter-bot activ­i­ty, it’s hard to ignore the coin­ci­den­tal tim­ing. Researchers have con­clud­ed that it wasn’t cheap. They esti­mate that it required dozens of hours of ini­tial devel­op­ment time and at least one per­son work­ing full time to pro­duce and dis­trib­ute con­tent. The whole task of set­ting up this Japan­ese Twit­ter bot army to ampli­fy the calls for Sen­a­tor Franken to step down was deemed by who­ev­er paid for it to be worth the time and mon­ey.

“ . . . . A pair of Japan-based web­sites, cre­at­ed the day before Twee­den came for­ward, and a swarm of relat­ed Twit­ter bots made the Twee­den sto­ry go viral and then weaponized a lib­er­al writer’s crit­i­cism of Franken. The bot army—in tan­dem with promi­nent real, live mem­bers of the far right who have Twit­ter fol­low­ers in the mil­lions, such as Mike Cernovich—spewed thou­sands of posts, help­ing the #Franken­Fon­dles hash­tag and the “Franken is a grop­er” meme effec­tive­ly silence the tes­ti­monies of eight for­mer female staffers who defend­ed the Min­neso­ta Demo­c­rat before he resigned last year. . . .

. . . . One ques­tion remains: Who is pay­ing for this oper­a­tion? The researchers believe that the oper­a­tion was expen­sive. ‘We esti­mate dozens of hours of ini­tial devel­op­ment time and at least one per­son work­ing full time to pro­duce and dis­trib­ute con­tent,’ one of the researchers told Newsweek. ‘Addi­tion­al­ly, it’s like­ly that an exist­ing bot farm of com­pro­mised com­put­ers is basi­cal­ly being rent­ed as a dis­trib­uted host for these accounts.’ . . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1. Dis­cus­sion of Gand­hi’s belief that one should not mix sex and pol­i­tics.
2. Dis­cus­sion of the amoral aspect of gen­der or sex­u­al pref­er­ence typ­ing of indi­vid­u­als.
3. Franken’s sec­ond accuser, Lind­say Menz, is a Trump backer who sup­pos­ed­ly was groped by Franken sev­en years before, in the pres­ence of her father and fel­low Trump backer/husband Jere­my Menz. ” . . . . the inci­dent took place at the 2010 Min­neso­ta State Fair. . . . Menz said she was at the fair with her father . . . . As they pre­pared for the pho­tos, Franken ‘pulled (her) in real­ly close, like awk­ward close’ as her hus­band was tak­ing the pic­ture. . . . Menz said that her and [hus­band] Jere­my vot­ed for Don­ald Trump dur­ing the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion . . . .”

GOP Immigration Policy: ” . . . The Immigration Laws Were Changed to Admit . . . Members of the SS . . . . Nixon Himself Oversaw the . . . Program. . . .”

With Trump hav­ing re-focused atten­tion on GOP immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy with his recent com­ments about Haiti and Nor­way, we review the Cru­sade For Free­dom, an ille­gal domes­tic and for­eign covert oper­a­tion exe­cut­ed by the elite of the post-World War II Repub­li­can Par­ty: Allen Dulles, Richard Nixon, Ronald Rea­gan, William Casey and George H.W. Bush. The pro­gram pro­vid­ed for the legal entry of Nazi SS into the coun­try. ” . . . . There is a very high cor­re­la­tion between CIA domes­tic sub­si­dies to Fas­cist ‘free­dom fight­ers’ dur­ing the 1950’s and the lead­er­ship of the Repub­li­can Party’s eth­nic cam­paign groups. The motive for the under-the-table financ­ing was clear: Nixon used Nazis to off­set the Jew­ish vote for the Democ­rats. . . . In 1952, Nixon had formed an Eth­nic Divi­sion with­in the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee. Dis­placed fas­cists, hop­ing to be returned to pow­er by an Eisen­how­er-Nixon ‘lib­er­a­tion’ pol­i­cy signed on with the com­mit­tee. In 1953, when Repub­li­cans were in office, the immi­gra­tion laws were changed to admit Nazis, even mem­bers of the SS. They flood­ed into the coun­try. Nixon him­self over­saw the new immi­gra­tion pro­gram. . . .” All of the con­tents of this web­site as of 12/19/2014–Dave Emory’s 37+ years of research and broadcasting–as well as hours of video­taped lec­tures are avail­able on a 32GB flash dri­ve. Dave offers his pro­grams and arti­cles for free–your sup­port is very much appre­ci­at­ed. All of the con­tents of this web­site as of 12/19/2014–Dave Emory’s 37+ years of research and broadcasting–as well as hours of video­taped lec­tures are avail­able on a 32GB flash dri­ve. Dave offers his pro­grams and arti­cles for free–your sup­port is very much appre­ci­at­ed.

FTR #986 Walkin’ the Snake with Breitbart, Part 3

This pro­gram details the process of main­stream­ing “Alt Right” neo-Nazis. As has been dis­cussed before, this has been under­way at Bre­it­bart for some time. This analy­sis is pre­sent­ed against the back­ground of our decades-long dis­cus­sion of the Nazi tract Ser­pen­t’s Walk. The back cov­er of that book sums up the essence of the tome: ” . . . It assumes that Hitler’s war­rior elite — the SS — did­n’t give up their strug­gle for a White world when they lost the Sec­ond World War. Instead their sur­vivors went under­ground and adopt­ed some of their tac­tics of their ene­mies: they began build­ing their eco­nom­ic mus­cle and buy­ing into the opin­ion-form­ing media. A cen­tu­ry after the war they are ready to chal­lenge the democ­rats and Jews for the hearts and minds of White Amer­i­cans, who have begun to have their fill of gov­ern­ment-enforced mul­ti-cul­tur­al­ism and ‘equal­i­ty.’ . . .”

Buz­zFeed has a long piece based on a cache of leaked emails that describe behind-the-scenes efforts at Bre­it­bart to main­stream the “Alt Right” neo-Nazis. This sto­ry firms up analy­sis of Bre­it­bart as a white nation­al­ist pub­li­ca­tion run by neo-Nazis for the pur­pose of main­stream­ing neo-Nazi ideals.

Those efforts pri­mar­i­ly revolved around Milo Yiannopou­los, who is:

1.-Tasked with reach­ing out to “Alt Right” fig­ures.
2.-Getting com­ments from them about what the “Alt Right” was all about.
3.-Then, lat­er get­ting feed­back from them about the planned arti­cles before they were pub­lished.

It was clear­ly a group effort. Those efforts includ­ed Andrew ‘the weev’ Auern­heimer, Cur­tis Yarvin (the founder of the “Dark Enlight­en­ment” move­ment), and Devin Sauci­er, a neo-Nazi Yiannopou­los describes as his best friend.

Of pri­ma­ry inter­est here is the cun­ning exer­cised by Yiannopou­los, Ban­non et al in pars­ing just what they can get away with doing and what they must avoid. ” . . . . By Yiannopoulos’s own admis­sion, main­tain­ing a suf­fi­cient­ly believ­able dis­tance from overt racists and white nation­al­ists was cru­cial to the machine he had helped Ban­non build. . . .‘Thanks re 1488,’ Yiannopou­los respond­ed. . . .‘I have been strug­gling with this. I need to stay, if not clean, then clean enough.’ ”

The emails includ­ed back and forths between Yiannopou­los and Bre­it­bart edi­tors about whether or not the pub­li­ca­tion was get­ting too open­ly friend­ly with the Nazis, with Yiannopou­los being told at one point that it was fine to use a “shekels” joke but “you can’t even flirt with OKing gas cham­ber tweets.”

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1.-Curtis Yarv­in’s  state­ment that he was “coach­ing” Peter Thiel on pol­i­tics.
2.-How the two Yiannopou­los pass­words found in the emails were “a pass­word that began with the word Kristall”, and “LongKnives1290”.
3.-How the for­mi­da­ble eco­nom­ic pow­er of the Mer­cer fam­i­ly serves as a legal intim­i­da­tion fac­tor for any­one label­ing Yiannopou­los as a racist or Nazi.

FTR #952 Be Afraid, Be VERY Afraid: Update on Technocratic Fascism

One of the illu­sions har­bored by many–in par­tic­u­lar, young peo­ple who have grown up with the inter­net, social net­works and mobile technology–sees dig­i­tal activ­i­ty as pri­vate. Noth­ing could be fur­ther from the truth. Even before the cyber-lib­er­tar­i­an poli­cies advo­cat­ed by indi­vid­u­als like John Per­ry Bar­low, Eddie Snow­den, Julian Assange and oth­ers became man­i­fest in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s were imple­ment­ed by the Trump admin­is­tra­tion and the GOP-con­trolled con­gress, dig­i­tal affairs were sub­ject to an extra­or­di­nary degree of manip­u­la­tion by a mul­ti­tude of inter­ests.

We begin our exam­i­na­tion of tech­no­crat­ic fas­cism with a look at the cor­po­rate foun­da­tion of Poke­mon Go. Infor­ma­tion about the back­ground of Poke­mon Go’s devel­op­er (Niantic) and the devel­op­ment of the firm is detailed in an arti­cle from Net­work World. In addi­tion to the for­mi­da­ble nature of the intel­li­gence agen­cies involved with gen­er­at­ing the cor­po­rate foun­da­tion of Poke­mon Go (Key­hole, Inc.; Niantic), note the unnerv­ing nature of the infor­ma­tion that can be gleaned from the Android phone of any­one who down­loads the “app.”

Poke­mon Go was seen as enhanc­ing the “Cool Japan Strat­e­gy” of Prime Min­is­ter Shin­zo Abe. The “Cool Japan Pro­mo­tion Fund” was imple­ment­ed by Abe (the grand­son of Nobo­suke Kishi, a Japan­ese war crim­i­nal who signed Japan’s dec­la­ra­tion of war against the U.S. and became the coun­try’s first post­war Prime Min­is­ter) to “raise the inter­na­tion­al pro­file of the country’s mass cul­ture.”

The Finance Min­is­ter of Japan is Taro Aso, one of the enthu­si­asts of Nazi polit­i­cal strat­e­gy high­light­ed below. The “Cool Japan pro­mo­tion Fund” would have been under his admin­is­tra­tion, with Tomo­mi Ina­da func­tion­ing as his admin­is­tra­tor for the pro­gram. Now serv­ing as Japan’s Defense Min­is­ter, Ina­da is anoth­er advo­cate of Nazi polit­i­cal strat­e­gy.

Next, we turn to anoth­er man­i­fes­ta­tion of Poke­mon Go. The “Alt-Right” (read “Nazi”) move­ment is using Poke­mon Go to recruit kids to the Nazi cause. Con­sid­er this against the back­ground of Niantic, the Cool Japan strat­e­gy and the pro-Nazi fig­ures involved with it. Con­sid­er this also, in con­junc­tion with the Naz­i­fied AI devel­oped and deployed by Robert and Rebekah Mer­cer, Steve Ban­non, Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca and the “Alt-Right” milieu with which they asso­ciate.

A recent “New York­er” arti­cle by Jane May­er con­cern­ing Robert Mer­cer keys some inter­est­ing thoughts about Mer­cer, Ban­non, the Alt-Right Wik­iLeaks and the Naz­i­fied AI we spoke of in FTR #‘s 948 and 949. In FTR #946, we not­ed this con­cate­na­tion’s cen­tral place in the Face­book con­stel­la­tion, a posi­tion that has posi­tioned them to act deci­sive­ly on the polit­i­cal land­scape.

We note sev­er­al things about the May­er piece:

She writes of Mer­cer’s sup­port for the Alt-Right–Mercer helps fund Ban­non’s Bre­it­bart: “. . . . In Feb­ru­ary, David Mager­man, a senior employ­ee at Renais­sance, spoke out about what he regards as Mercer’s wor­ri­some influ­ence. Mager­man, a Demo­c­rat who is a strong sup­port­er of Jew­ish caus­es, took par­tic­u­lar issue with Mercer’s empow­er­ment of the alt-right, which has includ­ed anti-Semit­ic and white-suprema­cist voic­es. . . .”

Mer­cer is racist, feel­ing that racism only exists in con­tem­po­rary black cul­ture: “. . . . Mer­cer, for his part, has argued that the Civ­il Rights Act, in 1964, was a major mis­take. Accord­ing to the one­time Renais­sance employ­ee, Mer­cer has assert­ed repeat­ed­ly that African-Amer­i­cans were bet­ter off eco­nom­i­cal­ly before the civ­il-rights move­ment. (Few schol­ars agree.) He has also said that the prob­lem of racism in Amer­i­ca is exag­ger­at­ed. The source said that, not long ago, he heard Mer­cer pro­claim that there are no white racists in Amer­i­ca today, only black racists. . . .”

His work at IBM was fund­ed in part by DARPA, strong­ly imply­ing that the DOD has applied some of the Mer­cer tech­nol­o­gy: “. . . . Yet, when I.B.M. failed to offer ade­quate sup­port for Mer­cer and Brown’s trans­la­tion project, they secured addi­tion­al fund­ing from DARPA, the secre­tive Pen­ta­gon pro­gram. Despite Mercer’s dis­dain for ‘big gov­ern­ment,’ this fund­ing was essen­tial to his ear­ly suc­cess. . . .”

In a 2012 anti-Oba­ma pro­pa­gan­da film fund­ed by Cit­i­zens Unit­ed, Steve Ban­non bor­rowed from “The Tri­umph of the Will: “. . . . Many of these [dis­il­lu­sioned Oba­ma] vot­ers became the cen­tral fig­ures of ‘The Hope & the Change,’ an anti-Oba­ma film that Ban­non and Cit­i­zens Unit­ed released dur­ing the 2012 Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion. After Cad­dell saw the film, he point­ed out to Ban­non that its open­ing imi­tat­ed that of ‘Tri­umph of the Will,’ the 1935 ode to Hitler, made by the Nazi film­mak­er Leni Riefen­stahl. Ban­non laughed and said, ‘You’re the only one that caught it!’ In both films, a plane flies over a blight­ed land, as omi­nous music swells; then clouds in the sky part, augur­ing a new era. . . .”

Next, we return to the sub­ject of Bit­coin and cyber-lib­er­tar­i­an pol­i­cy. We have explored Bit­coin in a num­ber of programs–FTR #‘s 760, 764, 770 and 785.

An impor­tant new book by David Golum­bia sets forth the tech­no­crat­ic fas­cist pol­i­tics under­ly­ing Bit­coin. Known to vet­er­an listeners/readers as the author of an oft-quot­ed arti­cle deal­ing with tech­no­crat­ic fas­cism, Golum­bia has pub­lished a short, impor­tant book about the right-wing extrem­ism under­ly­ing Bit­coin. (Pro­grams on tech­no­crat­ic fas­cism include: FTR #‘s 851, 859, 866, 867.)

In an excerpt from the book, we see dis­turb­ing ele­ments of res­o­nance with the views of Stephen Ban­non and some of the philo­soph­i­cal influ­ences on him. Julius Evola, “Men­cius Mold­bug” and Ban­non him­self see our civ­i­liza­tion as in decline, at a crit­i­cal “turn­ing point,” and in need of being “blown up” (as Evola put it) or need­ing a “shock to the sys­tem.”

Note that the Cypher­punk’s Man­i­festo (pub­lished by the Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion) and the 1996 “Dec­la­ra­tion of the Inde­pen­dence of Cyber­space” writ­ten by the lib­er­tar­i­an activist, Grate­ful Dead lyri­cist, Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion founder John Per­ry Bar­low decry gov­ern­men­tal reg­u­la­tion of the dig­i­tal sys­tem. (EFF is a lead­ing “dig­i­tal rights” and tech­nol­o­gy indus­try advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tion.)

The libertarian/fascist eth­ic of the dig­i­tal world was artic­u­lat­ed by Bar­low.

Note how the “free­dom” advo­cat­ed by Bar­low et al has played out: the Trump admin­is­tra­tion (imple­ment­ing the desires of cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca) has “dereg­u­lat­ed” the inter­net. All this in the name of “free­dom.”

In FTR #854, we not­ed the curi­ous pro­fes­sion­al resume of Bar­low, con­tain­ing such dis­parate ele­ments as–lyricist for the Grate­ful Dead (“Far Out!”); Dick Cheney’s cam­paign man­ag­er (not so “Far Out!”); a vot­er for white supremacist/segregationist George Wal­lace in the 1968 Pres­i­den­tial cam­paign (very “Un-Far Out!”).

For our pur­pos­es, his most note­wor­thy pro­fes­sion­al under­tak­ing is his found­ing of the EFF–The Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion. A lead­ing osten­si­ble advo­cate for inter­net free­dom, the EFF has endorsed tech­nol­o­gy and embraced per­son­nel inex­tri­ca­bly linked with a CIA-derived milieu embod­ied in Radio Free Asi­a’s Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund. (For those who are, under­stand­ably, sur­prised and/or skep­ti­cal, we dis­cussed this at length and in detail in FTR #‘s 891 and 895.)

Next, we present an arti­cle that brings to the fore some inter­est­ing ques­tions about Bar­low, the CIA and the very gen­e­sis of social media.

We offer Ms. Sun­der­son­’s obser­va­tions, stress­ing that Bar­low’s fore­shad­ow­ing of the com­mu­ni­ca­tion func­tions inher­ent in social media and his pres­ence at CIA head­quar­ters (by invi­ta­tion!) sug­gest that Bar­low not only has strong ties to CIA but may have been involved in the con­cep­tu­al gen­e­sis that spawned CIA-con­nect­ed enti­ties such as Face­book.

In FTR #951, we observed that Richard B. Spencer, one of Trump’s Nazi back­ers, has begun a web­site with Swedish Alt-Righter Daniel Friberg, part of the Swedish fas­cist milieu to which Carl Lund­strom belongs. In FTR #732 (among oth­er pro­grams), we not­ed that it was Lund­strom who financed the Pirate Bay web­site, on which Wik­iLeaks held forth for quite some time. In FTR #745, we doc­u­ment­ed that top Assange aide and Holo­caust-denier Joran Jer­mas (aka “Israel Shamir”) arranged the Lundstrom/WikiLeaks liai­son. (Jer­mas han­dles Wik­iLeaks Russ­ian oper­a­tions, a point of inter­est in the wake of the 2016 cam­paign.)

It is a good bet that Lundstrom/Pirate Bay/WikiLeaks et al were data min­ing the many peo­ple who vis­it­ed the Wik­iLeaks site.

Might Lundstrom/Jermas/Assange et al have shared the volu­mi­nous data they may well have mined with Mercer/Cambridge Analytica/Bannon’s Naz­i­fied AI?

We con­clude with recap of Microsoft researcher Kate Craw­ford’s obser­va­tions at the SXSW event. Craw­ford gave a speech about her work titled “Dark Days: AI and the Rise of Fas­cism,” the pre­sen­ta­tion high­light­ed the social impact of machine learn­ing and large-scale data sys­tems. The take home mes­sage? By del­e­gat­ing pow­ers to Bid Data-dri­ven AIs, those AIs could become fascist’s dream: Incred­i­ble pow­er over the lives of oth­ers with min­i­mal account­abil­i­ty: ” . . . .‘This is a fascist’s dream,’ she said. ‘Pow­er with­out account­abil­i­ty.’ . . . .”

We reit­er­ate, in clos­ing, that ” . . . . Palan­tir is build­ing an intel­li­gence sys­tem to assist Don­ald Trump in deport­ing immi­grants. . . .”

In FTR #757 we not­ed that Palan­tir is a firm dom­i­nat­ed by Peter Thiel, a main backer of Don­ald Trump.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Wik­iLeaks’ con­tin­ued prop­a­ga­tion of Alt-Right style Anti-Semit­ic pro­pa­gan­da: ” . . . . Now it is the dar­ling of the alt-right, reveal­ing hacked emails seem­ing­ly to influ­ence a pres­i­den­tial con­test, claim­ing the US elec­tion is ‘rigged.’ and descend­ing into con­spir­a­cy. Just this week on Twit­ter, it described the deaths by nat­ur­al caus­es of two of its sup­port­ers as a ‘bloody year for Wik­iLeaks.’ and warned of media out­lets ‘con­trolled by’ mem­bers of the Roth­schild fam­i­ly – a com­mon anti-Semit­ic trope. . . .”; assess­ing all of the data-min­ing poten­tial (cer­tain­ty) of Wik­iLeaks, Poke­mon Go and the (per­haps) Bar­low-inspired Social Media world against the back­ground of the Mercer/Bannon/Cambridge ana­lyt­i­ca Naz­i­fied AI.

FTR #951 Fascism: 2017 World Tour

The events over­tak­ing the Unit­ed States are echoes of events occur­ring world­wide. This “2017 World Tour” exam­ines aspects of ascen­dant glob­al fas­cism, includ­ing his­tor­i­cal and ide­o­log­i­cal trends stretch­ing back to the World War II peri­od.

Yet anoth­er of the fascist/Nazi/racist influ­ences on Steve Ban­non is French writer Charles Mau­r­ras. A doc­tri­naire anti-Semi­te, he was sen­tenced to life impris­on­ment for col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Third Reich.

Set­ting Mau­r­ras’s activ­i­ties in an his­tor­i­cal con­text, we recap an excerpt from FTR #372 (August of 2002) detail­ing the French Fifth Col­umn that sub­vert­ed the French mil­i­tary resis­tance to the armies of the Third Reich. Mau­r­ras’s L’Ac­tion Fran­caise was among the jour­nals influ­enc­ing French fas­cists, who saw the Ger­man inva­sion as a vehi­cle for elim­i­nat­ing democ­ra­cy and, at the same time, blam­ing the defeat on gov­ern­ment of Leon Blum, whose mur­der was advo­cat­ed by Mau­r­ras.

In Italy, Bepe Gril­lo’s Five Star Move­ment is lead­ing in the polls, and may come out ahead in the 2018 elec­tions. Observers have seen the par­ty as an heir to Mus­solin­i’s black­shirts. We note, in pass­ing, that the pop­ulist ide­al­ism offi­cial­ly endorsed by Five Star is sim­i­lar to aspects of many left-pop­ulist agen­das, while incor­po­rat­ing fea­tures of con­tem­po­rary fas­cist pol­i­tics.

Trav­el­ing north­ward, we observe the resus­ci­ta­tion of Slo­va­kian fas­cism and the cel­e­bra­tion of Nazi quis­ling Josef Tiso’s World War II col­lab­o­ra­tionist gov­ern­ment. Social media/Facebook are a key ele­ment of the suc­cess of the “neo-Tiso’s.”

An American/Swedish axis, of sorts, man­i­fests as a col­lab­o­ra­tive effort between Trumpenkampfver­bande sup­port­er Richard B. Spencer and Daniel Friberg, a key fig­ure in the Swedish fas­cist milieu of Carl Lund­strom.

Trav­el­ing to Asia, we note the re-emer­gence of Japan­ese fas­cism, insti­tut­ed in the Abe gov­ern­ment by orga­ni­za­tions like Nip­pon Kai­gi. In addi­tion to insti­tut­ing revi­sion­ist teach­ing in the Japan­ese edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem, the Abe gov­ern­ment is cur­tail­ing that coun­try’s free press.

Sev­er­al of Abe’s cab­i­net min­is­ters are sup­port­ive of Hitler’s elec­toral strat­e­gy, see­ing it as a blue­print for the imple­men­ta­tion of Japan­ese reaction–among them Tomo­mi Ina­da, the new defense min­is­ter.

The pro­gram con­cludes with a look at Naren­dra Mod­i’s Hin­du nationalist/fascist gov­ern­ment and it selec­tion of a hard-line anti-Mus­lim big­ot to gov­ern the state of Uttar Pradesh.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: review of Mod­i’s BJP as a cat’s paw for the Hin­du nationalist/fascist RSS; dis­cus­sion of the eco­nom­ic links between Ger­man and French indus­tri­al­ists that under­lay the devel­op­ment of the French Fifth Col­umn inspired, in part, by Charles Mau­r­ras; review of the links between Carl Lund­strom, Wik­iLeaks and Assange aide Joran Jer­mas, a doc­tri­naire Holo­caust denier; review of the “Naz­i­fied AI” at the heart of Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca’s data manip­u­la­tion engine.

FTR #947 Evola on Our Minds

The entry point to our explo­ration of Julius Evola is top Trump advis­er and first tier NSC mem­ber Steve Ban­non. Evola is a key influ­ence on Ban­non. Evola was an ear­ly occult fas­cist, with strong con­nec­tions with Mus­solin­i’s Italy. Even­tu­al­ly Evola estab­lished strong, last­ing con­nec­tions with the Nazi SS, both oper­a­tional­ly and ide­o­log­i­cal­ly.

Evola has also influ­enced Alexan­der Dug­in, a promi­nent Russ­ian ide­o­logue and politi­cian.

The broad­cast recaps FTR #233, which details Evola’s work for the SS and Kevin Coogan’s the­o­ry that Evola was involved with an SS occult net­work incor­po­rat­ing impor­tant peo­ple and insti­tu­tions in both the West and behind the so-called “Iron Cur­tain.” Lat­er in the pro­gram, we fur­ther devel­op the sto­ry of Alexan­der Dug­in, a Russ­ian “Alt-right” thinker and politi­cian promi­nent in the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment. As men­tioned above, Dug­in, like Ban­non, has been influ­enced by Evola.

We won­der if, in the per­sons of Ban­non and Dug­in, we are see­ing “West­ern” and “East­ern” man­i­fes­ta­tions of what Kevin con­cep­tu­al­izes as “The Order.”

Draw­ing on mate­r­i­al from Kev­in’s sem­i­nal work Dream­er of the Day: Fran­cis Park­er Yock­ey and The Post­war Fas­cist Inter­na­tion­al (soft cov­er, Autono­me­dia, copy­right 1999, ISBN I‑57027–039‑2), the pro­gram sets forth a hypo­thet­i­cal con­struct advanced in the book. Hypoth­e­siz­ing an inter­na­tion­al fas­cist milieu orig­i­nat­ing from (though not coter­mi­nous with) the ide­o­log­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion of the Waf­fen SS, Kevin terms this milieu “The Order.” (This enti­ty is not to be con­fused with the 1980’s Amer­i­can Nazi orga­ni­za­tion of the same name.)

Begin­ning with analy­sis of Kev­in’s dis­cus­sion of the work of fas­cist occultist Julius Evola in Vien­na dur­ing the con­clu­sion of World War II, the pro­gram doc­u­ments Evola’s oper­a­tions on behalf of the SD (the SS intel­li­gence ser­vice.)

Like SS chief Himm­ler, Evola saw the SS as the suc­ces­sors to the Ksha­triya class (the Hin­du war­rior caste.) See­ing Ger­many and Europe as suc­cumb­ing to “bar­bar­ian inva­sion,” Evola saw a pagan, anti-Chris­t­ian mys­ti­cism as nec­es­sar­i­ly anti­thet­i­cal to the Judeo-Chris­t­ian cul­ture which, he felt, had led the West to decline before the “Bol­she­vik hordes” of the Sovi­et Union and the “chew­ing gum impe­ri­al­ism” of the Unit­ed States.

Kevin felt that this orga­ni­za­tion (reflect­ing the ide­o­log­i­cal stance of an ele­ment of the Waf­fen SS) would be pan-Euro­pean in scope and ori­en­ta­tion, and not nec­es­sar­i­ly entire­ly chau­vin­is­tic from a Nordic or Ger­man­ic racial and nation­al stand­point. Nour­ished by bank accounts secret­ed abroad, this hypo­thet­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion func­tions in an under­ground fash­ion. (The funds that nour­ished this insti­tu­tion would nec­es­sar­i­ly have derived from the Bor­mann Orga­ni­za­tion.) The Order appears to have estab­lished osten­si­bly friend­ly rela­tions with the West.

This orga­ni­za­tion may very well have begun work­ing with the U.S. intel­li­gence appa­rat after the war, as evi­denced by, among oth­er things, the col­lab­o­ra­tion between post-war SS ele­ments and the CIA. Coogan hypoth­e­sizes that CIA direc­tor Allen Dulles may have played a pri­ma­ry role in such an accord.

Anoth­er influ­ence on a Dulles/Order col­lab­o­ra­tive rela­tion­ship may have been psy­chol­o­gist Carl Jung, who was con­nect­ed to Dulles and to the Third Reich.

Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, the Order appears to have over­lapped, and also worked with, ele­ments of the East Bloc, includ­ing for­mer Sovi­et and East Ger­man nation­al secu­ri­ty offi­cials. The orga­ni­za­tion also main­tained con­tacts with “anti-impe­ri­al­ist,” Third World lib­er­a­tion move­ments.

Steve Ban­non’s dis­cus­sion of Alexan­der Dug­in gains sig­nif­i­cance in this con­text.

The Order appears to have exploit­ed its con­tacts with­in both East and West blocs to fur­ther its own fascis­tic and elit­ist agen­da, play­ing both sides against the mid­dle dur­ing the Cold War.

The Dugin/Evola affil­i­a­tion and the Bannon/Evola affil­i­a­tion may be sig­nif­i­cant in that con­text.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Sebas­t­ian Gorka’s man­i­fes­ta­tion of the her­aldry of the order of Vitezi Rend, close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Nazi Ger­many’s Hun­gar­i­an allies;
Adbusters mag­a­zine’s pub­li­ciz­ing of Alexan­der Dugin–we review the fact that Adbusters appears to have played a key role in jump­start­ing the “Occu­py” move­ment.