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.

So You’ve Got a Hate Cult Problem: Living With the Kingston Klan and its ‘Alt-Right’ Cousins

Now that the neo-Nazi car attack on a group of anti-racist pro­tes­tors in Char­lottesville, Vir­ginia, has once again remind­ed Amer­i­ca that hate groups rep­re­sent a and sig­nif­i­cant threat to the coun­try (and world, if you look around), it’s worth keep­ing in mind that these groups are in many ways cults rein­forced by far-right media ecosys­tems that have been steadi­ly rad­i­cal­iz­ing Amer­i­cans as Amer­i­can con­ser­vatism has veered fur­ther and fur­ther to the right. A media ecosys­tem that includes Steve Ban­non’s Bre­it­bart along with sites like Dai­ly Stormer and InfoWars and tells its audi­ence that a cabal that includes every­one from lib­er­als to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood are all work­ing togeth­er to under­mine white Chris­tians and The West in gen­er­al. It’s the kind of hate land­scape that might make a vio­lent lunatic run over a bunch of anti-neo-Nazi pro­tes­tors. But this is where we are and now a sig­nif­i­cant con­tem­po­rary chal­lenge for Amer­i­can is fig­ur­ing out how to get fel­low Amer­i­cans trapped in such hate cults to rec­og­nize they got sucked into some­thing awful and need to leave it and join Team Nice. Sure, that might be fruit­less in many cas­es, but it’s still impor­tant to try. And nice. And as we’re going to see as we look at a recent report from the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter on the Kingston clan, a ~6,000 mem­ber strong polyg­a­mous inces­tu­ous super-racist apoc­a­lyp­tic cult that runs its own busi­ness empire, it’s pret­ty clear that fig­ur­ing out how to encour­age hate cult mem­bers to join their fel­low humans and just mel­low out is a chal­lenge we can’t ignore. Because they might be apoc­a­lyp­tic death cults plan­ning on win­ning a race war and becom­ing div­ing kings. With their own high-end firearms man­u­fac­tur­er. Hate cult recov­ery ser­vices are some­thing soci­ety is going to have to get real­ly good at if its going to sur­vive so we should prob­a­bly work on that.