Soft Fascism Florida-Style: Ron DeSantis’s War on Amendment 4

A fas­cist to the core. That’s how retired US gen­er­al Mark Mil­ley, who direct­ly served Trump as the chair of joint chiefs of staff, as described in Bob Wood­ward’s upcom­ing book. As Mil­ley put it, “He is the most dan­ger­ous per­son ever. I had sus­pi­cions when I talked to you about his men­tal decline and so forth, but now I real­ize he’s a total fas­cist. He is now the most dan­ger­ous per­son to this coun­try.” And while they may be true, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that Don­ald Trump is far from the only aspir­ing fas­cist in con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. The Sched­ule F/Project 2025 scheme orches­trat­ed by the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy is a group effort, after all. And as we’re going to see, Flori­da Gov­er­nor Ron DeSan­tis has been lay­ing the ground­work for the kind of ‘soft fas­cism’ that we should antic­i­pate a lot more of under a sec­ond Trump pres­i­den­cy. The kind of ‘soft fas­cism’ that is shaped less by Trump’s per­son­al mad­ness and more by the theo­crat­ic ambi­tions of the move­ments that have long ani­mat­ed the Repub­li­can Par­ty. Which brings us to DeSan­tis’s war on Amend­ment 4, a bal­lot ini­tia­tive that would enshrine abor­tion rights in Flori­da’s state con­sti­tu­tion up to the moment of via­bil­i­ty, com­ing months after Flori­da Repub­li­cans put in place a restric­tive new 6 week abor­tion ban. After first try­ing to get Amend­ment 4 thrown off the bal­lot, the DeSan­tis admin­is­tra­tion has pro­ceed­ed to spend tax­pay­er funds on an anti-Amend­ment 4 pub­lic mes­sag­ing cam­paign includes tv and radio ads. An unprece­dent­ed inves­ti­ga­tion into the Amend­ment 4 bal­lot sig­na­tures has also been opened, with police show­ing up at peo­ple’s homes to con­firm they signed the peti­tion. Local elec­tion super­vi­sors are also under sus­pi­cion of ver­i­fy­ing invalid sig­na­tures. And as we’re going to also see, there’s no pos­si­ble way this inves­ti­ga­tion can get the Amend­ment 4 removed from the bal­lot even if it suc­ceed­ed in reveal­ing some fraud. It’s pure intim­i­da­tion. More recent­ly, the Flori­da gov­ern­ment has threat­ened tele­vi­sion sta­tion employ­ees with crim­i­nal charges if they air a pro-Amend­ment 4 ad. Why? Because the state claims the ads — which raise ques­tions about whether or not wom­en’s health is ade­quate­ly pro­tect­ed under the new 6 week abor­tion law — pose a threat to pub­lic health because the new law in no way endan­gers women. Yes, if you run an ad sug­gest­ing the new Flori­da abor­tion law — one of the strictest in the US — could put women at risk, you could be crim­i­nal­ly charged. So if you were won­der­ing how the GOP is plan­ning on han­dling pub­lic dis­con­tent over the unpop­u­lar pol­i­cy that are about to be imposed on the pub­lic at large, look to Flori­da. Ron DeSan­tis is one of the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy’s favorite politi­cians for a rea­son.

“Some Folks Need Killing!” Mark Robinson, David Lane, and the CNP’s American Renewal Project

“Some Folks Need Killing!” So declared North Car­oli­na Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Mark Robin­son on June 30. At a church. With the full endorse­ment of the church’s pas­tor, Rev­erend Cameron McGill, who explained how Robin­son only meant the peo­ple ‘try­ing to kill us’ should be killed. Two days lat­er, Her­itage Foun­da­tion Pres­i­dent and Project 2025 leader Kevin Roberts made his now infa­mous “Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion” speech, warn­ing that the rev­o­lu­tion would remain blood­less “if the left allows it”. Days lat­er, Don­ald Trump laugh­ably dis­avowed know­ing any­thing about Project 2025. And while Robert­s’s com­ments have received ample atten­tion, Robin­son’s “Some Folks Need Killing!” com­ments have remained an under-explored top­ic. Because as we’re going to see, Mark Robin­son has become quite a celebri­ty on the far right. With one very notable fan base: The Amer­i­can Renew­al Project ded­i­cat­ed to recruit­ing con­ser­v­a­tive pas­tor to run for office and the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) fig­ures behind it. Not only is Robin­son the star of Amer­i­can Renew­al Project events, but it turns out Rev­erend McGill is a recruiter for the group too. That project, formed in 2005 by polit­i­cal activist David Lane but with roots going all the way back to the for­ma­tion of the CNP in 1981, is what we’re going to explore in this post. Because as dis­turb­ing as Robin­son’s “Some Folks Need Killings” com­ments may have been out of of con­text, they are a lot more dis­turb­ing when placed in con­text. A Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist domin­ion­ist con­text that warns of plans for a lot more than just ‘some’ killing.

Heads We Win, Tails You Lose Your Retirement: Private Equity, Pension Funds, and the CRE Double Down

There’s blood in the water. With region­al banks poten­tial­ly look­ing at years of trou­ble ahead and inter­est rates well above the his­toric lows, dis­tress is per­me­at­ing the US com­mer­cial real estate (CRE) mar­kets. That’s been the CRE news, with the pri­vate equi­ty now pal­pa­bly excit­ed about all the dis­tressed real estate that’s bound to come on the mar­ket. A sup­ply and demand dis­lo­ca­tion that can turn blood in water into a gold laced sil­ver lin­ing for the enti­ties with cash on the side­lines. As we’ve seen, being the ‘cash on the side­lines’ oppor­tunis­ti­cal­ly wait­ing for things to fall apart or blow is a big part of the ‘Heads we win, tails you lose’ pri­vate equi­ty busi­ness mod­el. A busi­ness mod­el also root­ed in the fact that the fund man­agers charge high fees whether they’re invest­ments pan out or not. So we should­n’t be sur­prised to learn that one of the big invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties pri­vate equi­ty has been steer­ing bil­lions of dol­lars of pub­lic pen­sion mon­ey into in recent years is...*drumroll*...commercial real estate! With plans on shov­el­ing bil­lions more into the sec­tor going for­ward. JP Mor­gan is now pre­dict­ing these pen­sion funds are going to cre­ate a ‘floor’ in the CRE mar­kets. Yes, pri­vate equi­ty-led pen­sion funds are going to save the CRE mar­ket from com­plete col­lapse. At least that’s the plan. A plan that’s going to pay its pri­vate equi­ty man­agers hand­some­ly no mat­ter how it pans out. It’s all part of how Amer­i­can’s grow­ing retire­ment cri­sis is trans­lat­ing into pri­vate equi­ty’s grow­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty. The kind of cri­sis-dri­ven oppor­tu­ni­ty that pays hand­some­ly whether the under­ly­ing cri­sis grows or not.

The (Schedule F) Purge: Trump’s Big Revenge Plan, Brought to You By the Council for National Policy

It’s not a secret plot to purge the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment of its career staffers and replace them with par­ti­san hacks. It was a secret when then-Pres­i­dent Trump set the plot in motion 13 days before the 2020 elec­tion with an exec­u­tive order. The “Sched­ule F” exec­u­tive order plot — cen­tered around a bureau­crat­ic loop­hole dis­cov­ered in Jan­u­ary of 2019 by an obscure Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial — opened the flood­gates. And while the mass fir­ings nev­er actu­al­ly took place in the final months of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, those flood­gates remain open along with the plot. That’s the explo­sive rev­e­la­tion described in a pair of arti­cles put out by Axios back in July: The Sched­ule F plot con­tin­ues. The Trump admin­is­tra­tion isn’t wast­ing any time next time. A mass purge of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment will be one of the first moves of a sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion. And now that Don­ald Trump has thrown his hat in the ring one more time the prospect of see­ing this plot put into effect is very real. But as we’re going to see, that ongo­ing plot is real whether or not Trump gets the nom­i­na­tion and ‘wins’ the race. Because the ongo­ing Sched­ule F effort isn’t just a MAGA-land plot. The pow­er­ful Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) is deeply invest­ed in it, with the CNP’s Con­ser­v­a­tive Pol­i­cy Insti­tute (CPI) play­ing a lead­ing and grow­ing role. Sched­ule F is the plan. Or at least the start of the plan. As we’re also going to see, there’s a larg­er plot being devel­oped for what to do after the Sched­ule F purge and all the obsta­cles are out of the way. A larg­er plot for that appears to be inspired by none oth­er than Cur­tis “Men­cius Mold­bug” Yarvin, whose ideas for a post-demo­c­ra­t­ic Amer­i­ca are only grow­ing in elite con­ser­v­a­tive cir­cles. That’s the plot we’re going to be cov­er­ing in this post. The plans for Sched­ule F and beyond. Plans and tens of mil­lions of dol­lars and army of CNP-activists work­ing to make them a real­i­ty.

Me Ne Frego

In an ear­li­er post, we not­ed that Mela­nia Trump’s jacket–adorned with the state­ment “I Real­ly Don’t Care, Do U” res­onates with a key fas­cist mot­to. The phrase “Me Ne Frego” was put for­ward by Mus­soli­ni him­self. (“Il Duce” detailed his state­ment in his “The Doc­trine of Fas­cism) as a defin­i­tive state­ment of the exis­ten­tial eth­ic of the fas­cist stormtroop­er. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE.

FTR #1161 Bio-Psy-Op Apocalypse Now, Part 21: What the Hell Does Dave Emory Mean by Bio-Psy-Op Apocalypse?

Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of ris­ing dis­trust of Chi­na, the pro­gram notes the role in that ris­ing dis­trust of the coro­n­avirus. First detect­ed in Chi­na, the avail­able evi­dence chron­i­cled in numer­ous pro­grams points to the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic as a bio­log­i­cal war­fare false flag oper­a­tion and provocation–part of the Full Court Press against Chi­na. 

The bulk of the pro­gram con­sists of Mr. Emory read­ing arti­cles from The New York Times pub­lished over the course of the lock­down in the U.S. High­light­ing the stress expe­ri­enced by var­i­ous pop­u­la­tion groups and the behav­ioral and phys­i­o­log­i­cal symp­toms stem­ming from that stress, the articles–covering a peri­od from the spring through fall of 2020–document the man­i­fes­ta­tions of the “bio-psy-op apoc­a­lypse.”

The arti­cles chron­i­cle: Stress on mar­i­tal rela­tion­ships; duress on sex­u­al behav­ior, with New York and Los Ange­les (among oth­er cities) advis­ing peo­ple to mas­tur­bate, rather than engage in sex­u­al encoun­ters with oth­ers; psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­lo­ca­tion of chil­dren, who can’t play with oth­ers; psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­lo­ca­tion of ath­let­ic youths, who can’t com­pete in sports; work­ers who can’t inter­act at the office with their peers; stress on friend­ships; peo­ple los­ing their hair in clumps, because of stress; peo­ple grind­ing their teeth and crack­ing them; the effect of peo­ple wear­ing masks and lim­it­ing the abil­i­ty of oth­ers to respond to facial stimuli–an innate and impor­tant ele­ment of human psy­cho-social behav­ior; cities expe­ri­enc­ing soar­ing mur­der rates because of stress; the effect of lock­downs on street demon­stra­tions pur­suant to the deaths of George Floyd and Bre­an­na Tay­lor; ris­ing rates of domes­tic vio­lence; ris­ing con­sump­tion of alco­hol; ris­ing inci­dence of peo­ple feel­ing sui­ci­dal; ris­ing drug abuse; peo­ple fore­go­ing wear­ing masks and prac­tic­ing social dis­tanc­ing because of what psy­chol­o­gists call “Covid Fatigue;” peo­ple flock­ing to con­trar­i­ans oppos­ing var­i­ous pub­lic safe­ty mea­sures; peo­ple express­ing sup­port for polit­i­cal lead­ers because of feel­ings of inse­cu­ri­ty. 

Mr. Emory also opines that the pan­dem­ic may well have inter­dict­ed the pro­ject­ed “Blue Wave,” because peo­ple who might oth­er­wise have endorsed a more altru­is­tic polit­i­cal agen­da instead were feel­ing fright­ened and–as a result–more needy and self­ish.

Although Belarus­sians had put up with Alexan­der Lukashenko pri­or to the coro­n­avirus: “Trapped inside their coun­try by the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, many Belaru­sians began to chafe at the inhu­man­i­ty in Mr. Lukashenko’s rule and lan­guage that had once been easy to ignore. . . .” 

We con­clude with a look at the past, which may reflect on the future.

An aca­d­e­m­ic paper pro­duced by a Fed­er­al Reserve econ­o­mist posits the socio-polit­i­cal effects of the 1918 flu pan­dem­ic as a fac­tor con­tribut­ing to the rise of Nazism in Ger­many.

Cit­ed by numer­ous pub­li­ca­tions, includ­ing The New York Times, Bloomberg News and Politi­co, the study under­scores some of our asser­tions con­cern­ing the fas­cist and extreme right-wing ram­i­fi­ca­tions of the pan­dem­ic. 

This time­ly and very impor­tant study will be ref­er­enced in future dis­cus­sion of the psy­cho­log­i­cal, soci­o­log­i­cal and socio-eco­nom­ic aspects of the Covid-19 out­break.

Kris­t­ian Blick­le’s analy­sis under­scores points we have made about the demo­graph­ic, eco­nom­ic and psy­cho­log­i­cal dev­as­ta­tion the pan­dem­ic is hav­ing on the body politic.

“A new aca­d­e­m­ic paper pro­duced by the Fed­er­al Reserve Bank of New York con­cludes that deaths caused by the 1918 influen­za pan­dem­ic “pro­found­ly shaped Ger­man soci­ety” in sub­se­quent years and con­tributed to the strength­en­ing of the Nazi Par­ty.

“The paper, pub­lished this month and authored by New York Fed econ­o­mist Kris­t­ian Blick­le, exam­ined munic­i­pal spend­ing lev­els and vot­er extrem­ism in Ger­many from the time of the ini­tial influen­za out­break until 1933, and shows that ‘areas which expe­ri­enced a greater rel­a­tive pop­u­la­tion decline’ due to the pan­dem­ic spent ‘less, per capi­ta, on their inhab­i­tants in the fol­low­ing decade.’ . . .

“. . . . The paper’s find­ings are like­ly due to ‘changes in soci­etal pref­er­ences’ fol­low­ing the 1918 out­break, Blick­le argues — sug­gest­ing the influen­za pandemic’s dis­pro­por­tion­ate toll on young peo­ple may have ‘spurred resent­ment of for­eign­ers among the sur­vivors’ and dri­ven vot­ers to par­ties ‘whose plat­form matched such sen­ti­ments.’ The con­clu­sions come amid fears that the cur­rent coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic will shake up inter­na­tion­al pol­i­tics and spur extrem­ism around the world, as offi­cials and pub­lic health experts look to pre­vi­ous out­breaks for guid­ance on how to nav­i­gate the months and years to come. . . .”

“These Are Dictator Moves”: Is Trump Going Coup Coup?

Even rel­a­tive­ly staid polit­i­cal and nation­al secu­ri­ty insid­ers, as well as media out­lets are open­ly express­ing fear after a series of post-elec­tion shuf­fling by Trump at the Pen­ta­gon. ” . . . . The flur­ry of depar­tures appar­ent­ly sent shock­waves through the Depart­ment of Defense. A defense offi­cial told CNN that the sit­u­a­tion was ‘unset­tling,’ adding that ‘these are dic­ta­tor moves.’ The Asso­ci­at­ed Press wrote that ‘unease was pal­pa­ble inside’ the Pen­ta­gon Tues­day. . . .”

Heads We Win, Tails You Lose: The Fascist Philosophy Behind Private Equity’s Leveraged Buyout of Everything

It’s been the same head­line for months now:
* April of 2020: Amer­i­can bil­lion­aires have got­ten $280 bil­lion rich­er since the start of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic
* May of 2020: Amer­i­can bil­lion­aires got $434 rich­er dur­ing the pan­dem­ic
* August of 2020: Amer­i­can bil­lion­aires got $637 rich­er dur­ing the pan­dem­ic
* Sep­tem­ber of 2020: U.S. bil­lion­aires got $845 bil­lion rich­er since the start of the pan­dem­ic/Wealth of US bil­lion­aires ris­es by near­ly a third dur­ing pan­dem­ic
* Octo­ber of 2020: US bil­lion­aires saw their net worth rise by almost $1 tril­lion between March and Octo­ber — Jeff Bezos remains the rich­est, a study says.

From near­ly the start of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic it’s been clear that the pub­lic health dis­as­ter was­n’t a dis­as­ter for every­one, with the wealth­i­est indi­vid­u­als being not only large­ly insu­lat­ed from the eco­nom­ic lock­down but in many cas­es well posi­tioned to prof­it from it. The pan­dem­ic was turn­ing into a giant upward trans­fer of wealth. And as we’re going to see, giant upward trans­fers of wealth are essen­tial­ly what the pri­vate equi­ty indus­try is all about. The rise of ‘sup­ply-side’ eco­nom­ics in the 1980s coin­cid­ed with the rise of pri­vate equi­ty and that’s no coin­ci­dence. The phi­los­o­phy behind the pri­vate equi­ty move­ment is the phi­los­o­phy of sup­ply-side eco­nom­ics. An anti-New Deal phi­los­o­phy, where ruth­less­ness is a virtue, that fueled a 40 year giant fas­cist lever­aged buy­out of soci­ety.

New Book on Manson Killings and the Intelligence Community (UPDATED on 7/23/’19)

In FTR #809, we high­light­ed evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries run­ning between the assas­si­na­tions of both Kennedy broth­ers and the Man­son crimes, the assas­si­na­tion of Robert F. Kennedy, in par­tic­u­lar. The Reeve Whit­son con­nec­tion may have some con­nec­tion to the infor­ma­tion dis­cussed in that pro­gram. A new book about the Man­son Fam­i­ly and their killings high­lights the prob­a­bil­i­ty that ele­ments of the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty may have had involve­ment with the group and its devel­op­ment. One of the most strik­ing of the appar­ent intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty con­nec­tions to the Man­son inves­ti­ga­tion is the afore­men­tioned Reeve Whit­son. Reeve Whit­son: 1.–Was alleged by Iran­ian immi­grant Shahrokh Hata­mi to have phoned him with knowl­edge of the killings of Sharon Tate, et al, before the crime was report­ed by the news media and before law enforce­ment even arrived at the crime scene!; 2.–Was alleged by the LAPD’s top inves­ti­ga­tor and Sharon Tate’s father (a Colonel in Army intel­li­gence) to have been deeply involved with the Man­son inves­ti­ga­tion; 3.–Was alleged by attor­ney Neil Cum­mings to have main­tained some kind of sur­veil­lance on the Cielo Dri­ve home, as part of some sort of work he was doing for the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty; 4.–Was con­firmed as an offi­cer of the CIA by his own ex-wife; 5.–Was known to have felt that he was–in the end–betrayed by the fac­tion of the CIA for which he worked; 6.–Was asso­ci­at­ed, through his intel­li­gence work with Otto Sko­rzeny and his wife Ilse; 7.–Was the spe­cial advis­er to the chair­man of the board of the Thyssen firm, also as part of his intel­li­gence work; 8.–Was appar­ent­ly a close asso­ciate of retired Gen­er­al Cur­tis LeMay, George Wal­lace’s Vice-Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date in 1968; 9.–Was asso­ci­at­ed with LeMay when the lat­ter became vice-pres­i­dent of a mis­sile parts man­u­fac­tur­er, which was head­ed by Mihai Patrichi. Patrichi was a for­mer Roman­ian army gen­er­al and a mem­ber of the Roman­ian Iron Guard, part of the Gehlen “Org” and the GOP.

The Crusade For Freedom and the Assassination of President Kennedy

We have spo­ken for years about The Cru­sade For Free­dom, a covert oper­a­tion with both for­eign and domes­tic venues. Abroad, the CFF was a vehi­cle for financ­ing the use of East­ern Euro­pean Third Reich alum­ni as “fas­cist free­dom fight­ers” in para­mil­i­tary oper­a­tions in the Sovi­et Union and East­ern Europe. Domes­ti­cal­ly, the CFF spawned a Nazi branch of the Repub­li­can Par­ty, with roots in the Third Reich and the Rein­hard Gehlen spy orga­ni­za­tion. Many of CFF’s mem­bers fig­ure in the milieu of the JFK assas­si­na­tion:
” . . . . Mem­bers of the Texas Cru­sade for Free­dom would become a who’s who of Tex­ans con­nect­ed to the events sur­round­ing the assas­si­na­tion of John F. Kennedy. In addi­tion to Neil Mal­lon, mem­bers includ­ed [Paul] Raig­orod­sky, Lewis W. Mac­Naughton, Everette De Goly­er, and Dal­las may­or Ear­le Cabell, broth­er of Charles Cabell, who was Allen Dulles’s deputy CIA direc­tor [fired by JFK for his con­duct in the Bay of Pigs oper­a­tion along with Dulles him­self]. Anoth­er mem­ber was D. Harold Byrd, who owned the build­ing in down­town Dal­las that would become known as the Texas School Book Depos­i­to­ry. Anoth­er mem­ber was E.M. “Ted” Dealey, pub­lish­er of “The Dal­las Morn­ing News,” who was a harsh crit­ic of Kennedy. . . .”