Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
The tag 'Eastern Turkistan' is associated with 2 posts.

FTR#1206 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 13

Con­tin­u­ing our series on the regime of Chi­ang Kai-shek–all but beat­i­fied dur­ing the Cold War–we draw still more on a mag­nif­i­cent book–The Soong Dynasty by Ster­ling Sea­grave. Although sad­ly out of print, the book is still avail­able through used book ser­vices, and we emphat­i­cal­ly encour­age lis­ten­ers to take advan­tage of those and obtain it.

Sev­er­al lis­ten­ers have said that they were able to obtain the book because it is still in print! I hope so! PLEASE buy it, read it, and tell oth­ers about it, either through con­ven­tion­al means and/or through social media. (Mr. Emory gets no mon­ey from said pur­chas­es of the book.)

It is appar­ent­ly avail­able from Ama­zon on Kin­dle.

First, we high­light Fred J. Cook’s ana­lyt­i­cal account of the McCarthy peri­od, The Night­mare Decade. One of the focal points of Cook’s book is McCarthy’s theme that State Depart­ment [Com­mu­nist] treach­ery had “lost” Chi­na to Mao and his forces.

Exploit­ing the meme that “pinko” State Depart­ment offi­cials were respon­si­ble for Mao’s ascen­dance, McCarthy and his team suc­cess­ful­ly purged the State Depart­ment of offi­cials whose out­look on Chi­ang Kai-shek was real­is­tic.

The fate of John Service–described in the excerpt of The CIA as Orga­nized Crime as well as in ear­li­er pro­grams in this series, illus­trates this kind of activ­i­ty.

In FTR #s 932 and 933 (among oth­er pro­grams), we not­ed the piv­otal influ­ence of Joe McCarthy’s right-hand man Roy Cohn on the pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment of Don­ald Trump. We won­der what influ­ence Cohn and the McCarthy lega­cy may have had on Trump’s pol­i­cy toward Chi­na.

Aside from the airy pre­sump­tion that Chi­na was “ours” to “lose,” McCarthy’s the­sis ignored the effects of U.S. pol­i­cy in that coun­try before, dur­ing and after, World War II. (This trans­gres­sion is, of course, sup­ple­men­tal to Tail­gun­ner Joe’s fab­ri­ca­tion of evi­dence against those he tar­get­ed.)

In addi­tion to sup­port for Chi­ang Kai-Shek, whom Gen­er­al Joseph Stil­well com­pared to Mus­soli­ni, U.S. pol­i­cy of using scores of thou­sands of Japan­ese sol­diers as anti-Com­mu­nist com­bat­ants was loath­some to the Chi­nese pop­u­la­tion, who had felt the full mea­sure of Japan­ese atroc­i­ty dur­ing years of war­fare.

Leaf­ing through Night­mare Decade for the first time in years, we came across a pas­sage read into the record in AFA #11.

More than 16 months after V‑J Day (the offi­cial con­clu­sion of the hos­til­i­ties of World War II in Asia) the U.S. was coun­te­nanc­ing the use of 80,000 Japan­ese troops (rough­ly eight divi­sions) as anti-Com­mu­nist com­bat­ants in east­ern and north­west­ern Manchuria alone!

The tran­si­tion to the Cold War from the Sec­ond World War also saw the inci­dent that became the sig­na­ture ele­ment of the John Birch Soci­ety.

In AFA#11, we set forth the event: ” . . . . Soci­ety fig­ure­head John Birch was the intel­li­gence offi­cer for Gen­er­al Claire Chenault’s Fly­ing Tigers in World War II, sub­se­quent­ly serv­ing with the OSS Chi­na con­tin­gent. Birch was killed recruit­ing Chi­nese col­lab­o­ra­tionst troops to fight the Chi­nese com­mu­nists. (These col­lab­o­ra­tionist forces had served the Japan­ese dur­ing World War II.) Com­ing lit­tle more than a week after the end of the war in the Pacif­ic, his death was her­ald­ed by the Amer­i­can right as ‘the begin­ning of World War III.’ . . . .”

One of the sig­na­ture pro­pa­gan­da gam­bits in the New Cold War against Chi­na is the Uighur Geno­cide myth. A polit­i­cal fan­ta­sy, root­ed in decades of manip­u­la­tion of the Chi­nese Uighur minor­i­ty, the desta­bi­liza­tion effort in Xin­jiang province, the desta­bi­liza­tion effort derives from dynam­ics dat­ing to the Chi­nese civ­il war over­lap­ping and fol­low­ing the Sec­ond World War.

(We have cov­ered the Uighur desta­bi­liza­tion cam­paigns in numer­ous pro­grams, includ­ing [most recent­ly] FTR#’s 1143, 1144, 1145, 1178, 1179 and 1180.)

Isa Yusuf Alptekin is the patri­arch of the Uighur sep­a­ratist move­ment. He was aligned with Chi­ang Kai-shek dur­ing the Chi­nese civ­il war, espous­ing the doc­tri­naire Anti-Com­mu­nism char­ac­ter­iz­ing the Kuom­intang milieu and endear­ing Alptekin’s move­ment and suc­ces­sors to Amer­i­can and West­ern Cold War­riors.

“ . . . . The found­ing father of this sep­a­ratist move­ment was Isa Yusuf Alptekin. His son, Erkin Alptekin, found­ed the WUC and served as the organization’s inau­gur­al pres­i­dent. The senior Alptekin is referred to as “our late leader” by the WUC and cur­rent Pres­i­dent Dolkun Isa. . . . Dur­ing the Chi­nese Civ­il War that raged between the nation­al­ists and com­mu­nists from 1945 to ’49, Alptekin served under the nation­al­ist Kuom­intang (KMT) admin­is­tra­tion in Xin­jiang. Through­out this peri­od, the KMT received mas­sive mil­i­tary and eco­nom­ic back­ing from the Unit­ed States — includ­ing bil­lions of dol­lars in cash and mil­i­tary hard­ware, along with the deploy­ment of tens of thou­sands of US marines — in an effort to quash the Chi­nese rev­o­lu­tion. . . .”

As not­ed in past pro­grams, the Uighur sep­a­ratist milieu incor­po­rates Islamists allied with both Al-Qae­da and ele­ments of ISIS, as well as Pan-Turk­ists allied with the Nation­al Action (also Nation­al Move­ment) Party—a doc­tri­naire fas­cist, revan­chist body whose youth wing—the Grey Wolves—constitute the “Stay Behind” NATO cadre in Turkey.

When the fail­ures of Chiang’s regime led to scorn toward, and piv­ot­ing away from the Nation­al­ist Chi­nese cause, the amal­gam of cor­po­rate, crim­i­nal, jour­nal­is­tic and polit­i­cal inter­ests that had empow­ered the Kuom­intang coun­ter­at­tacked: “ . . . . the Chi­ang gov­ern­ment poured mil­lions of dol­lars into a coun­terof­fen­sive. Zeal­ous Amer­i­cans who joined the pro-Tai­wan cru­sade became the fund-rais­ers, the orga­niz­ers, the tele­phon­ers, the leg­men, the gofers, the pub­li­cists, the con­gress­men, the tycoons, the hosts and host­esses of the shad­owy soci­ety called ‘the Chi­na Lob­by.’ Its man­age­ment, its direc­tion, and its pri­ma­ry finances were not Amer­i­can. The Chi­na Lob­by belonged to the Soong clan and the Nation­al­ist Chi­nese gov­ern­ment. The peo­ple involved thought they were work­ing for the greater glo­ry of God, or for ‘the sur­vival of the demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem.’ They were real­ly work­ing for a Chi­nese pub­lic-rela­tions cam­paign. . . . the Kungs and Soongs remained the pri­ma­ry pipeline con­nect­ing Amer­i­can spe­cial inter­ests with Tai­wan. Ai-ling and H.H. Kung, T.V. Soong and May-ling Soong Chi­ang devot­ed con­sid­er­able ener­gies to the lob­by and some­times gath­ered for strat­e­gy ses­sions at the Kung estate in Riverdale. . . .”

The domes­tic polit­i­cal result in the U.S. was summed by Ster­ling Sea­grave: “  . . . . Small won­der that a large seg­ment of the Amer­i­can pub­lic believed that Chi­ang was the essence of virtue and his cause was a joint one. Sim­i­lar amounts were spent dur­ing the Kore­an War and the peri­od­ic crises over the defense of the For­mosa Strait. Guess­es at the grand total spent by Tai­wan to stu­pe­fy Amer­i­cans ran as high as $1 bil­lion a year. . . .”

The unique nature of the man­i­fest Chi­na Lob­by was summed up: “ . . . . Mar­quis Childs wrote ‘. . . . Nation­al­ist Chi­na has used the tech­niques of direct inter­ven­tion on a scale rarely, if ever, seen.’ Part of the cam­paign was to pour gaso­line on the McCarthy witch hunts. . . .”

The com­po­nent ele­ments of the Chi­na Lob­by:

1.–“ . . . . Chiang’s gov­ern­ment used exist­ing Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tions head­ed by men who shared its view­point. . . .”
2.–“ . . . . it hired adver­tis­ing agen­cies . . . . Allied Syn­di­cates count­ed among its clients the bank of Chi­na (with H.H. Kung as direc­tor). . . . Hamil­ton Wright, worked for six years as a reg­is­tered agent for Nation­al­ist Chi­na, writ­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing sto­ries, news arti­cles, pho­tographs, and movies to cre­ate a favor­able image of Chi­ang Kai-shek and his regime. . . .”
3.–“. . . . T.V.’s wartime Uni­ver­sal Trad­ing Cor­po­ra­tion was list­ed in 1949 as a for­eign agent work­ing for the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment, with assets of near­ly $22 mil­lion. The Chi­nese News Ser­vice based in Tai­wan estab­lished branch­es in Wash­ing­ton, New York, Chica­go, and San Fran­cis­co. . . .”
4.–“ . . . . Tai­wan exer­cised a par­tic­u­lar­ly strong influ­ence on Amer­i­can news­pa­pers. . . .”
5.–“ . . . . ‘Hen­ry Luce now saw the most grandiose project of his life­time in dan­ger of ruin. Wrapped up in the ruin was not only the fate of Chi­na and of Chris­tian­i­ty and the Asian hege­mo­ny of the Unit­ed States, but also his own peace of mind and rep­u­ta­tion. Chi­ang-in-Chi­na was to have been the crown­ing of a decade and a half of plan­ning in the Chrysler build­ing and Rock­e­feller Cen­ter and of count­less thou­sands of words of Luce­press pro­pa­gan­da. The night­mare rise of Mao-in-Chi­ina brought a pow­er­ful Luce counter-strat­e­gy.’. . .”
6.–“ . . . . News­cast­er Robert S. Allen report­ed, . . . . Luce has been pro­pa­gan­diz­ing and agi­tat­ing for anoth­er two-bil­lion dol­lar U.S. hand­out for Chi­ang for a long time. . . . And in Wash­ing­ton, prac­ti­cal­ly the whole Luce bureau has been work­ing full blast as part of the Chi­ang lob­by.’. . .”
7.–“ . . . . Many of the activists in the lob­by were peo­ple whose fam­i­lies had worked in Chi­na as mis­sion­ar­ies, and now thought their her­itage was being thrown away. Among them were the direc­tors of the Amer­i­can Chi­na Pol­i­cy Asso­ci­a­tion and the Com­mit­tee to Defend Amer­i­ca by Aid­ing Anti-Com­mu­nist Chi­na . . . . .”
8.–“ . . . . These groups were peri­od­i­cal­ly sup­port­ed by cam­paigns waged on Chiang’s behalf by the exec­u­tive coun­cil of the AFL-CIO, the Amer­i­can Legion, the Amer­i­can Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil, the Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive Union, and Young Amer­i­cans for Free­dom. To many con­ser­v­a­tive orga­ni­za­tions, Tai­wan became syn­ony­mous with anti-Com­mu­nism. In the atmos­phere of the 1950s, the fear of Red Chi­na kept nor­mal­ly sen­si­ble peo­ple from won­der­ing where all the mon­ey was com­ing from. . . .”
9.–“ . . . . As prin­ci­pal direc­tor of the Bank of China’s New York City branch, H.H. [Kung] was dri­ven to Wall Street two or three days a week . . . . Colum­nist Drew Pear­son, one of the few jour­nal­ists who main­tained an inter­est in the Soongs after they went into exile, called the Bank of Chi­na the “nerve cen­ter of the Chi­na Lob­by . . . .”
10.–“ . . . . ‘Dr. Kung’s knowl­edge of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics is almost as astute as his knowl­edge of Chi­nese finance, and well before he entered the Tru­man cab­i­net, Kung picked Louis John­son as his per­son­al attor­ney. It may or may not be sig­nif­i­cant that, lat­er, when John­son became Sec­re­tary of Defense, he was one of the staunchest advo­cates of Amer­i­can sup­port for For­mosa. . . .”
11.–“ . . . . [From a Drew Pear­son column—D.E.] A move by a Chi­ang broth­er-in-law. . . . to cor­ner the soy­bean mar­ket at the expense of the Amer­i­can pub­lic . . . The broth­er-in-law is T.L. Soong, broth­er of For­eign Min­is­ter T.V. Soong, who for­mer­ly han­dled much of the three and a half bil­lion dol­lars worth of sup­plies which the Unit­ed States sent to Chi­na dur­ing the War. The soy­bean pool net­ted a prof­it of $30,000,000 and shot up the cost to the Amer­i­can con­sumer $1 as bushel [much more mon­ey in 1950 than now—D.E.] One of the strange things about the soy­bean manip­u­la­tion was that its oper­a­tors knew exact­ly the right time to buy up the world’s soy­bean supply—a few weeks before the com­mu­nists invad­ed Korea. . . .”
12.–“ . . . . Louis Kung [son of Ai-ling and H.H. who had become a Dal­las oil man—D.E.] had become one of the busiest mem­bers of the clan. Dur­ing Richard Nixon’s 1950 sen­a­to­r­i­al cam­paign, Dad­dy Kung dis­patched Younger Son to Los Ange­les to give the sen­a­tor dona­tions and encour­age­ment. . . . Louis took an active role in the Soong-Kung petro­le­um hold­ings, with oil prop­er­ties across Texas, Okla­homa, and Louisiana. At the (Nation­al­ist) Chi­nese embassy in Wash­ing­ton in 1956, Louis orga­nized the Cheyenne Oil Com­pa­ny. . . . If one of Louis’s wells (leased for exam­ple, to John Daly, then vice-pres­i­dent for news of the (ABC Net­work), did poor­ly, Louis guar­an­teed that Daly would have his invest­ment back; if the well turned out to be a suc­cess, then the prof­its were divid­ed with Daly. . . .”


Is the Economic Meltdown as Good as Gold? Maybe for the Far Right Powers that Be

Now that West­’s regime change cam­paign against Chi­na is now play­ing out in the mid­dle of a glob­al COVID-19 pan­dem­ic that threat­ens to stran­gle vir­tu­al­ly all major economies at the same time far right gov­ern­ments are in pow­er across the globe, per­haps it’s time to ask an unset­tling ques­tion: Is col­laps­ing the glob­al econ­o­my and bank­rupt­ing major world pow­ers for the pur­pose of push­ing the world to the gold stan­dard on the agen­da on top of col­laps­ing Chi­na? That’s what we’re going to explore in this post. It’s a high­ly spec­u­la­tive and we bet­ter hope it’s very wrong. But if it’s cor­rect you bet­ter hope you have to gold. And guns. And what­ev­er else is required to sur­vive a social col­lapse because social col­lapse is what the far right has been hop­ing to see for decades and with far right gov­ern­ments in con­trol around the globe in the mid­dle of a glob­al pan­dem­ic that is stran­gling the every econ­o­my we are now clos­er than ever to ‘achiev­ing’ that night­mar­ish far right dream.