Memorial Day Broadcast: Uncle Sam and the Swastika

On Mon­day 5/28/2018 from 10 a.m. (Pacif­ic Time) until 7pm, KFJC-FM will fea­ture hours of pro­gram­ming doc­u­ment­ing the pro­found con­nec­tions of U.S. indus­try and finance to the fas­cist pow­ers of World War II. In the decades since the end of the Sec­ond World War, much has been writ­ten about the war and fas­cism, the dri­ving force behind the aggres­sion that pre­cip­i­tat­ed that con­flict. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, much of what has been said and writ­ten has failed to iden­ti­fy and ana­lyze the caus­es, nature and method­ol­o­gy of fascism—German Nation­al Social­ism or “Nazism” in par­tic­u­lar. A deep­er, more accu­rate analy­sis was pre­sent­ed in pub­lished lit­er­a­ture, par­tic­u­lar­ly vol­umes pub­lished dur­ing, or in the imme­di­ate after­math of, the Sec­ond World War. . . . Fas­cism (Nazism in par­tic­u­lar) was an out­growth of glob­al­iza­tion and the con­struc­tion of inter­na­tion­al monop­o­lies (car­tels). Key to under­stand­ing this phe­nom­e­non is analy­sis of the Webb-Pomerene act, leg­is­lat­ed near the end of the First World War. A loop­hole in the Anti-trust leg­is­la­tion of 1914, it effec­tive­ly legal­ized the for­ma­tion of cartels—international monopolies—for firms that were barred from domes­tic monop­o­lis­tic prac­tices. Decry­ing what they viewed as exces­sive and restric­tive “reg­u­la­tion” here in the Unit­ed States, U.S.-based transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions invest­ed their prof­its from the indus­tri­al boom of the 1920’s abroad, pri­mar­i­ly in Japan and Ger­many. This process might well be viewed as the real begin­ning of what is now known as “glob­al­iza­tion.” Mon­day’s pro­gram will present an overview of the rein­vest­ment of the wealth gen­er­at­ed by the Amer­i­can indus­tri­al boom of the 1920’s in Ger­man, Ital­ian and Japan­ese strate­gic heavy indus­try. It was this cap­i­tal that drove the engines of con­quest that sub­dued both Europe and Asia dur­ing the con­flict.

FTR #993 Update on Ukraine (Preparations for WWIII?)

High­light­ing recent, alarm­ing aspects of the Ukraine cri­sis, the broad­cast under­scores how past and present may sig­nal the begin­ning of World War III in a man­ner not unlike how frac­tious events in the Balka­ns trig­gered the First World War.

With Ukraine now receiv­ing U.S. arms, includ­ing mod­i­fied stinger anti-air­craft mis­siles, the Nazi “pun­ish­er” bat­tal­ions in that coun­try’s East may be in a posi­tion to trig­ger one or more provo­ca­tions that could lead to con­flict between nuclear-armed Rus­sia, NATO and the U.S.

Since the Don­bass mili­tias have no air force, the stingers would appear to be deployed in the event of a wider, Ukraine/Russia war.

Nazi ele­ments active in the Maid­an coup spawned the Azov and oth­er “pun­ish­er” units. With more infor­ma­tion sur­fac­ing that indi­cates that the Maid­an sniper shoot­ings were a provo­ca­tion-derived event, the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Svo­bo­da and Pravy Sek­tor-linked ele­ments could dri­ve devel­op­ments in the Don­bass toward World War III is one that deserves more atten­tion than it will receive.

A fright­en­ing devel­op­ment, vir­tu­al­ly unre­port­ed in the U.S., con­cerns uni­lat­er­al moves by the Poroshenko gov­ern­ment to move away from the Min­sk peace plan and to rebrand the con­flict in East­ern Ukraine as “occu­pa­tion” by an “aggres­sor” Rus­sia.

This appears to pave the way for a wider, deep­er con­flict which could, ulti­mate­ly, draw in the U.S. and NATO: ” . . . . Accord­ing to [Dmitri] Kise­ly­ov, the new law, which awaits Poroshenko’s sig­na­ture, makes prepa­ra­tions for war and includes lan­guage indi­cat­ing a bel­li­cose new approach to the con­flict. The mis­sion in Don­bass is no longer described as an ‘anti-ter­ror­ist oper­a­tion.’ Rather, the mis­sion now is to send armed forces against ‘mil­i­tary for­ma­tions of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion’ in Don­bass.

Mil­i­tary head­quar­ters are estab­lished to coor­di­nate the oper­a­tion to be waged in Don­bass. While up until now the self-declared republics of Donet­sk and Lugan­sk were con­sid­ered under the Min­sk Accords as nego­ti­at­ing par­ties, now there are only ‘occu­pa­tion admin­is­tra­tions’ of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion on these ter­ri­to­ries, with Rus­sia iden­ti­fied as an ‘aggres­sor.’ . . . .”

The dan­ger of Poroshenko seek­ing to play the “war card” to dis­tract from Urkaine’s dire eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances and his own failed gov­ern­ment are real. Con­flict with Rus­sia could also deflect from Trump’s and the GOP’s fail­ures at home: ” . . . . On the eco­nom­ic front, the Euro­pean Union has refused to extend 600 mil­lion euros of cred­it to Ukraine due to cor­rup­tion. The Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund recent­ly refused a tranche of $800 mil­lion over fail­ure to intro­duce reforms. Mean­while, in 2019 Ukraine is due to start repay­ing ear­li­er loans. This will come to $14 bil­lion a year, which amounts to half the state bud­get of Ukraine.

Due to dire eco­nom­ic con­di­tions, Poroshenko and oth­er gov­ern­ment offi­cials in Kiev have become deeply unpop­u­lar, and with dimin­ished chances for elec­toral suc­cess may see war as polit­i­cal­ly advan­ta­geous. . . .”

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion just approved the sale of sniper rifles and, more sig­nif­i­cant­ly, anti-tank Javelin mis­siles to Ukraine. This should be eval­u­at­ed against the back­ground of the recent moves by Kiev (increas­ing the dan­ger for an esca­lat­ed con­flict) as well as  the activ­i­ties of Kurt Volk­er, the “ex”-CIA offi­cer, NATO func­tionary, George W. Bush State Depart­ment offi­cial and Atlantic Coun­ci­cl Senior advi­sor serv­ing as the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s point-man in Ukraine.

Might anti-air­craft mis­siles be next? As the arti­cle below notes, the Don­bass sep­a­ratists don’t actu­al­ly have an air force, so it would be a curi­ous deci­sion to start send­ing them anti-air­craft weapons. ” . . . . The pro­posed trans­fer — which also would include anti­air­craft arms that would be defined as defen­sive weapon­ry — comes as fight­ing between Ukrain­ian troops and Russ­ian-backed sep­a­ratists. . . . The util­i­ty of anti­air­craft weapon­ry, for exam­ple, is unclear, as the Russ­ian-backed rebel army has no air force. The war is fought along a line of trench­es that has not moved much since Feb­ru­ary 2015. . . .”

Accord­ing to a report back in June, the Pen­ta­gon recent­ly mod­i­fied shoul­der-fired stinger mis­siles to shoot small down drones that are dif­fi­cult for reg­u­lar Stinger mis­siles to hit. It’s not at all incon­ceiv­able that the anti-air­craft weapons the Pen­ta­gon and State Depart­ment have in mind are those Stinger mis­siles, mod­i­fied for the pur­pose of shoot­ing down sep­a­ratist drones.

Also keep in mind that the shoul­der-launched stringer mis­siles are among the weapons that ter­ror­ists would love to obtain and the Ukrain­ian troops get­ting trained on these sys­tems may include the neo-Nazis fight­ing in Ukraine’s army get­ting trained by US mil­i­tary advi­sors like the Azov batal­lion. ” . . . . The Amer­i­can train­ing at the Yavoriv base in west­ern Ukraine is focused on forg­ing a dis­ci­plined, pro­fes­sion­al mil­i­tary from the mix of vol­un­teer groups that first fought the Russ­ian incur­sion, rather than plac­ing bets on any high-tech weapons sys­tems. . . .”

When you read that, remem­ber that the “mix of vol­un­teers groups” includes neo-Nazis, includ­ing the Azov Bat­tal­ion.

In oth­er words, if Stinger mis­siles real­ly are part of the mil­i­tary pack­age, and just not yet announced, those lit­tle night­mares could eas­i­ly end up in neo-Nazi hands and the US mil­i­tary could even be the ones train­ing them on how to use them. We’ll see if that’s how it plays out, but we can’t rule it out.

The arms sales described above are being real­ized under the super­vi­sion of Trump’s new point man for Ukraine, “ex”-CIA, State Depart­ment and NATO func­tionary Kurt Volk­er. From Volk­er’s Wikipedia entry: ” . . . . Volk­er began his career in for­eign affairs as an ana­lyst at the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency in 1986. . . . In July 2005, Volk­er became the Deputy Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of State for Euro­pean and Eurasian Affairs, serv­ing in that posi­tion until he was appoint­ed Unit­ed States Per­ma­nent Rep­re­sen­ta­tive to NATO in July 2008 by Pres­i­dent George W. Bush. . . . and a Senior Advi­sor at the Atlantic Coun­cil since Octo­ber 2009. . . . .”

We note that the arms sales to Ukraine effect­ed on Volk­er’s watch come after the removal of John Cony­ers (D‑MI), one of the most vocif­er­ous Con­gres­sion­al oppo­nents of arm­ing and train­ing the Azov Bat­tal­ion and sim­i­lar Nazi units.

Next, we take stock of how Cony­ers, “The Krem­lin’s Man in Con­gress,” was removed fol­low­ing a gam­bit by “Alt-Right” blog­ger, Trump ally and misog­y­nist Mike Cer­novich to finance the solic­i­ta­tion of pro­fes­sion­al­ly dam­ag­ing infor­ma­tion about polit­i­cal oppo­nents. “. . . . In Novem­ber, the Trump-back­ing social media agi­ta­tor Mike Cer­novich offered to pay $10,000.00 for details of any con­gres­sion­al sex­u­al harass­ment set­tle­ments, and said on Twit­ter that he would cov­er the expens­es of ‘any VICTIM of a Con­gress­man who wants to come for­ward to tell her sto­ry.’ Short­ly before post­ing that offer, a source pro­vid­ed Mr. Cer­novich with a copy of a sex­u­al harass­ment set­tle­ment that led in Decem­ber to the res­ig­na­tion of Rep­re­sen­ta­tive John Cony­ers Jr., Demo­c­rat of Michi­gan, until then the longest-serv­ing mem­ber of the House. . . .”

In FTR #981, we exam­ined the Ukrain­ian fas­cist foun­da­tion of much of the “Rus­sia-Gate” psy-op,” fol­low­ing that with detailed exam­i­na­tion of the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Paul Man­afort may have actu­al­ly been work­ing as a U.S./Western intel­li­gence asset or agent, delib­er­ate­ly pre­cip­i­tat­ing the Maid­an sniper fire that sound­ed the death knell for the Yanukovich regime.

This pro­gram updates the boil­ing sew­er that is Ukraine, uti­liz­ing infor­ma­tion from Ger­man For­eign Pol­i­cy (which feeds along the low­er right-hand page of this web­site.) We take note of sev­er­al key points:

1.–Corruption in Ukraine remains ram­pant and “rule by oli­garch” con­tin­ues unabat­ed under Poroshenko, an oli­garch him­self and the for­mer finance min­is­ter for Yanukovich.
2.–Supporters of Maid­an have been high­ly crit­i­cal of the con­tin­u­a­tion of this grotesque sta­tus quo.
3.–Among the per­pe­tra­tors of ongo­ing, insti­tu­tion­al­ized cor­rup­tion in Ukraine has been the son of Arsen Avakov, the inte­ri­or min­is­ter and a patron of the Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion. ” . . . . Cor­rup­tion con­tin­ues at high lev­els. For exam­ple, the case of Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Arsen Avakov’s son, who sold back­packs to the army at six times their nor­mal price, alleged­ly caus­ing dam­age in the six-dig­it euros. . . .”
4.–Investigation of Avakov, jr’s activ­i­ties has been [pre­dictably] inter­dict­ed. ” . . . .When the Nation­al Anti-Cor­rup­tion Bureau searched the man’s house, the Nation­al Guard, under the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the inte­ri­or min­is­ter inter­vened and halt­ed the search — under the pre­text of hav­ing to vacate the build­ing because of a bomb threat. . . .”
5.–The two arti­cle series sets forth greater detail on the sniper shoot­ings at the Maid­an, which look more and more to be a provo­ca­tion. ” . . . . In Feb­ru­ary 2016, Maid­an activist Ivan Bubenchik con­fessed that in the course of the mas­sacre, he had shot Ukrain­ian police offi­cers. Bubenchik con­firmed this in a film that had attract­ed inter­na­tion­al attention.[10] . . . .”
6.–An Ital­ian TV doc­u­men­tary alleges that eth­nic Geor­gian snipers were involved in the Maid­an shoot­ings, fur­ther indi­cat­ing that the Maid­an sniper shoot­ings were a pos­si­ble provo­ca­tion. (The doc­u­men­tary does come from a Berlus­coni-con­trolled out­let, how­ev­er it dove­tails cred­i­bly with oth­er avail­able infor­ma­tion. UNA-UNSO, the lat­est iter­a­tion of the UPA was very active in the cau­ca­sus and Chechens have been work­ing with Pravy Sek­tor and ele­ments asso­ci­at­ed with the Azov Bat­tal­ion. As dis­cussed in FTR #850, for­mer Geor­gian pres­i­dent Mikhail Saakashvili became the gov­er­nor of Odessa province and is very close to Ihor Kolo­moisky, anoth­er patron of the Azov Bat­tal­ion.) “In an Ital­ian TV doc­u­men­tary on the Feb­ru­ary 20, 2014 Maid­an mas­sacre, seri­ous accu­sa­tions were made against sev­er­al politi­cians in Ukraine. . . .  In the doc­u­men­tary, three Geor­gians, incrim­i­nat­ing them­selves for their own par­tic­i­pa­tion, report that some of the lead­ers of the protests, who are today mem­bers of Kiev’s par­lia­ment, had sup­plied weapons to the snipers, who, at the time, indis­crim­i­nate­ly killed police­men and demon­stra­tors. Offi­cial­ly, this mas­sacre is still being attrib­uted to Ukrain­ian repres­sive organs or to unspec­i­fied Rus­sians. The Geor­gians also report that the cur­rent speak­er of the par­lia­ment, Andriy Paru­biy, was often seen in the hotel, from where the snipers were fir­ing that day. As ‘Maid­an Commander,‘Parubiy had been in charge of con­trol­ling armed gangs on that square. The man, whose real role at the time remains unclear, was a guest at a con­fer­ence held by the Kon­rad Ade­nauer Foun­da­tion and a speak­er at NATO events. . . .”
7.–Parubiy was one of the main orga­niz­ers of the Orange Rev­o­lu­tion, which brought Vik­tor Yuschenko to pow­er and installed OUN/B deriv­a­tive orga­ni­za­tions in pow­er in Ukraine, sort of a “pre-Maid­an” Maid­an.” . . . .  Fol­low­ing his retire­ment from the par­ty, this expe­ri­enced protest activist became one of the main orga­niz­ers of the 2004 ‘Orange Rev­o­lu­tion.’  . . .”
8.–Andriy Paru­biy was the first defense min­is­ter of the Ukraine inter­im gov­ern­ment and a mem­ber of the OUN/B‑redux Svo­bo­da Par­ty. His role in the events dove­tails with the pos­si­ble par­tic­i­pa­tion of fas­cist and Nazi snipers who were to par­tic­i­pate in the Azov Bat­tal­ion. “. . . . The Geor­gians’ accu­sa­tions also impli­cate, at least indi­rect­ly, the ‘Com­man­der of the Maid­an,’ Andriy Paru­biy. Paru­biy comes from the Ukrain­ian fas­cist scene. In the ear­ly 1990s he was one of the founders of the extreme right-wing Social Nation­al Par­ty of Ukraine. Since 1996, he was the leader of its mil­i­tarist street fight­ing sub­sidiary ‘Patri­ot of Ukraine.’ Fol­low­ing his retire­ment from the par­ty, this expe­ri­enced protest activist became one of the main orga­niz­ers of the 2004 ‘Orange Rev­o­lu­tion.’ In 2013, he assumed the same func­tion at the Maid­an, where he was respon­si­ble for none oth­er than secu­ri­ty and the ‘self-defense units,’ which were often made up of heav­i­ly armed thugs. In the Ital­ian TV doc­u­men­tary, it was report­ed that Paru­biy was going in and out of Hotel Ukraina, from where numer­ous dead­ly shots were being fired. Paru­biy, claims that the hotel from which these shots were being fired — which was firm­ly under the Maid­an demon­stra­tors’ con­trol — had been tak­en over ‘by snipers who arrived from Rus­sia and who were con­trolled by Rus­sia.’ . . .”

We con­clude with anoth­er exam­ple of just what the con­tem­po­rary Ukrain­ian polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment is man­i­fest­ing. Ukraine’s offi­cial under­stand­ing of its own WWII his­to­ry and the Holo­caust had anoth­er man­i­fes­ta­tion of Orwellian his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism. This time it was by Poroshenko rein­forc­ing the Orwellian revi­sion. ” . . . . As we report­ed back in Octo­ber, Ukrain­ian media out­let Radio Svo­bo­da — the Ukrain­ian arm of the US Gov­ern­ment-fund­ed arm of RFERL — post­ed a pic­ture from the US Holo­caust Muse­um. It is an image of Pol­ish Jews being deport­ed to a death camp. There was just one prob­lem. Radio Svo­bo­da claimed the pic­ture was from 1949 of Ukraini­ans being deport­ed to Siberia. In fact, so effec­tive was Radio Svoboda’s forgery that Pres­i­dent Poroshenko him­self tweet­ed it claim­ing it showed Ukraini­ans being deport­ed. . . . Today it emerged that a major Ukrain­ian media out­let has struck again. In a Decem­ber 20th arti­cle about the hor­rors of the NKVD (Sovi­et fore­run­ner of the KGB), media out­let “Ukrin­form” also bor­rowed a pic­ture from the US Holo­caust Muse­um, this time of Ukrain­ian Aux­il­iary Police­men shoot­ing a Jew­ish child and moth­er — and fraud­u­lent­ly claimed it was actu­al­ly of the NKVD shoot­ing peo­ple. The cap­tion reads in trans­la­tion: ‘Atroc­i­ties of the Chekhists: the exe­cu­tion of a moth­er and child by the NKVD’. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1.–Review of the pos­si­ble role of Nazi hack­er, Glenn Green­wald asso­ciate and Ukraine res­i­dent Andrew “Weev” Aueren­heimer in the high-pro­file hacks: ” . . . . [Peter W.] Smith also reached out to ‘Guc­cifer 2.0’—an alias the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty has linked to Russ­ian state hackers—and was advised to seek the help of a white nation­al­ist hack­er who lives in Ukraine. . . . [Pax] John­son said he also sug­gest­ed that Smith get in touch with Andrew Auern­heimer, a hack­er who goes by the alias “Weev” and has col­lab­o­rat­ed with John­son in the past. . . .” We note that Charles C. John­son, an asso­ciate of Mike Cer­novich, was involved with this maneu­ver.
2.–Review of Atlantic Coun­cil fel­low Dmitri Alper­ovitch (co-founder and chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer of Crowd­strike, the cyber-secu­ri­ty firm that led the charge to attribute the high-pro­file hacks to Rus­sia. Kurt Volk­er is also close­ly affil­i­at­ed with the Atlantic Coun­cil. ” . . . . Dmitri Alper­ovitch is also a senior fel­low at the Atlantic Coun­cil. . . . The con­nec­tion between [Crowd­strike co-founder and chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer Dmitri] Alper­ovitch and the Atlantic Coun­cil has gone large­ly unre­marked upon, but it is rel­e­vant giv­en that the Atlantic Council—which is is fund­ed in part by the US State Depart­ment, NATO, the gov­ern­ments of Latvia and Lithua­nia, the Ukrain­ian World Con­gress, and the Ukrain­ian oli­garch Vic­tor Pinchuk—has been among the loud­est voic­es call­ing for a new Cold War with Rus­sia. As I point­ed out in the pages of The Nation in Novem­ber, the Atlantic Coun­cil has spent the past sev­er­al years pro­duc­ing some of the most vir­u­lent spec­i­mens of the new Cold War pro­pa­gan­da. . . . ”

Guess What? Grandma is Moving In. She’s Got Medical Bills. Maybe to Share. It’s Medicaid Brought to You by Kochcare.

Is kick­ing senior cit­i­zens out of nurs­ing homes good pol­i­tics? That’s a ques­tion GOP ask­ing itself these days. One of many ques­tions relat­ed to the pol­i­tics of health care. Although not many are ask­ing it since the pub­lic large­ly has no idea the ques­tion is being asked at all as recent polls show. With the Sen­ate’s ver­sion of ‘Trump­care’ final­ly released to the pub­lic, we’re now learn­ing that, yes, the GOP appears to think kick­ing seniors out their nurs­ing homes is good pol­i­tics. Because trans­fer­ring Med­ic­aid costs to states and indi­vid­u­als has been a key GOP goal of Trump­care’s con­gres­sion­al authors the entire time and nurs­ing homes are paid for by Med­ic­aid for the vast major­i­ty of peo­ple. So in addi­tion to the many pro­found moral ques­tions raised by the GOP’s health care ‘reform’ plans, a grow­ing num­ber of pro­found polit­i­cal ques­tions are being raised the more we learn about Trump­care as it takes form. Includ­ing whether or not putting nurs­ing home cov­er­age on a fis­cal death spi­ral makes for good pol­i­tics. Granny would prob­a­bly say ‘no’, but she’s got com­pe­ti­tion.

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 #950 Shock to the System: Further Reflections on the Breitbart Axis

This broad­cast updates cov­er­age of key aspects of the Nazi/fascist, oops, we mean “alt-right,” milieu that moved into gov­ern­ment cour­tesy of the Trumpenkampfver­bande and Bre­it­bart.

Fur­ther devel­op­ing the ter­ri­fy­ing real­i­ty of what Arti­fi­cial Intel­l­li­gence (AI) can accom­plish for the ded­i­cat­ed fas­cist, oops, we mean “alt-right” adher­ent, we note an impor­tant address giv­en at SXSW. Microsoft researcher Kate Craw­ford gave a speech 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.’ . . . .”

Turn­ing next to the polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy of Steve Ban­non and the sem­i­nal influ­ences on its devel­op­ment, we refresh our acquain­tance with Cur­tis Yarvin, aka “Men­cius Mold­bug,” a her­ald of the Dark Enlight­ment.

Cur­tis Yarvin has actu­al­ly opened a backchan­nel advi­so­ry con­nec­tion to the White House.

Note that the Ban­non influ­ences all seem to agree that what is need­ed is “a shock to the sys­tem.” We may very well expe­ri­ence just that. ” . . . . . . . . Bannon’s read­ings tend to have one thing in com­mon: the view that tech­nocrats have put West­ern civ­i­liza­tion on a down­ward tra­jec­to­ry and that only a shock to the sys­tem can reverse its decline. . . . ”

Fas­cist philoso­pher Julius Evola is anoth­er of the key influ­ences 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.

He is anoth­er advo­cate of the “shock to the system”/“blow it up” approach to the sta­tus quo. ” . . . Chang­ing the sys­tem, Evola argued, was ‘not a ques­tion of con­test­ing and polemi­ciz­ing, but of blow­ing every­thing up.’ . . . .”

A reveal­ing influ­ence on Ban­non is a French nov­el The Camp of the Saints by Jean Ras­pail. “. . . . The Camp of the Saints — which draws its title from Rev­e­la­tion 20:9 — is noth­ing less than a call to arms for the white Chris­t­ian West, to revive the spir­it of the Cru­sades and steel itself for bloody con­flict against the poor black and brown world with­out and the trai­tors with­in. The novel’s last line links past humil­i­a­tions tight­ly to its own grim para­ble about mod­ern migra­tion. ‘The Fall of Con­stan­tino­ple,’ Raspail’s unnamed nar­ra­tor says, ‘is a per­son­al mis­for­tune that hap­pened to all of us only last week.’ . . . . ”

In FTR #947, we high­light­ed Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka, a Bre­it­bart alum­nus and Hun­gar­i­an fas­cist. Gor­ka is now the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s point man work­ing against Islam­ic ter­ror­ism. His view (and Ban­non’s) that we are engaged in an his­toric clash of civ­i­liza­tions. That is pre­cise­ly the point of view expressed by ISIS (and The Camp of the Saints) and will play into their hands.

That, in turn, will help pro­pel the U.S. into more end­less wars on the periph­ery of our empire, ulti­mate­ly sap­ping the nation’s vital­i­ty and lead­ing to the fall of the U.S. in a man­ner delin­eat­ed in FTR #944.

After review­ing Gorka’s anti-Semi­tism, his pro­found con­nec­tions to three gen­er­a­tions of Hun­gar­i­an fas­cism dat­ing to the pre-World War II peri­od and con­fir­ma­tion of his alle­giance to the Order of Vitezi Rend, we high­light the fact that Gor­ka is part of the Strate­gic Ini­tia­tives Group, some­thing of a par­al­lel NSC formed by Steve Ban­non. It reminds us of Hitler’s cre­ation of a par­al­lel gen­er­al staff, born of a mis­trust of his own senior offi­cers and a desire to have a trust­ed cadre to obey his orders.

” . . . . In the Unit­ed States, Gor­ka, who was appoint­ed deputy assis­tant to the pres­i­dent on Jan­u­ary 20, is known as a tele­vi­sion com­men­ta­tor, a pro­fes­sor and an “alt-right” writer who describes him­self as a coun­tert­er­ror­ism expert. A close asso­ciate of Stephen Ban­non, Trump’s chief strate­gist, Gor­ka is now part of Bannon’s key in-house White House think tank, the Strate­gic Ini­tia­tives Group. The new­ly formed group con­sists of fig­ures close to Trump and is seen by some as a rival to the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil in for­mu­lat­ing poli­cies for the pres­i­dent. . . .”

The con­clu­sion of the pro­gram fore­shad­ows dis­cus­sion in our next broad­cast, which will crit­i­cal­ly exam­ine Bernie Sanders cam­paign and dis­turb­ing indi­ca­tions that his can­di­da­cy may have been gen­er­at­ed by the Under­ground Reich as a vehi­cle for infil­trat­ing and desta­bi­liz­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty.

In FTR #941, we high­light­ed the push by Bernie Sanders and his promi­nent backer Tul­si Gab­bard to have Kei­th Elli­son, an African-Amer­i­can Mus­lim to be head of the DNC. He was not elect­ed head of the DNC, but is now deputy chair of the DNC, the posi­tion for­mer­ly held by Gab­bard.

Elli­son is net­worked with the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, and the Nation of Islam as well. ” . . . . Indeed, the June 21, 1998 arti­cle states that at that time – that is, three years after Farrakhan’s march – Elli­son was a mem­ber of the Nation of Islam: ‘Elli­son has been active in the com­mu­ni­ty, but not with­in the estab­lished DFL par­ty [the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty in Min­neso­ta]. A mem­ber of the Nation of Islam, Elli­son was the coor­di­na­tor of the Min­neso­ta par­tic­i­pants in the Mil­lion Man March and the sub­se­quent com­mu­ni­ty group that formed.’ . . . .”

In a point of dis­cus­sion that will be con­duct­ed at greater length in our next pro­gram, we con­clude by not­ing that anoth­er of Kei­th Ellison’s sup­port­ers to head the DNC was Faisal Gill, a Grover Norquist pro­tege whom we cov­ered in FTR #467.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: review of Gorka’s for­ma­tion of a fas­cist par­ty in Hun­gary in the last decade; review of Gorka’s doc­tri­naire anti-Semi­tism; review of Gorka’s net­work­ing with mem­bers of the Job­bik Par­ty in Hun­gary; review of Gorka’s sup­port­ive atti­tude toward the Arrow Cross Par­ty, which allied with Hitler; review of Job­bik’s affin­i­ty with Julius Evola; review of Karl Rove’s and Grover Norquist’s sem­i­nal sup­port for the cre­ation of a Mus­lim Broth­er­hood branch of the GOP.

Trumplandian Feudalism: Employ the Unemployed While Still Starving Them

Did Trump sud­den­ly drop his oft-repeat­ed crit­i­cism of tra­di­tion unem­ploy­ment report­ing and asser­tions that in real­i­ty its 42 per­cent and 94 mil­lion Amer­i­can adults are out of work? Well, as we’re going to see, prob­a­bly not because his admin­is­tra­tion is still plan­ning on redefin­ing the “offi­cial” unem­ploy­ment rate to be much “loos­er” and his claims that 42 per­cent if Amer­i­can adults are out of work are nec­es­sary to achieve a long-held GOP goal cham­pi­oned by House Speak­er Paul Ryan: con­vert­ing the US safe­ty-net — includ­ing Medicare, Med­ic­aid, and Social Secu­ri­ty — into a “work for a pit­tance to get a pit­tance of gov­ern­ment support”-net that traps the poor in sys­tem where if you have to find full time work to get any help at all. Maybe even for the elder­ly. And the help you get in return for that work-require­ment will keep shrink­ing year after year. It’s a plan that can’t hap­pen unless almost all non-work­ing adults are defined as “unem­ployed”. So, no, Trump did­n’t change his mind. He just still thinks we’re all stu­pid (maybe).

“The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism” by David Golumbia

In pre­vi­ous pro­grams, we have high­light­ed tech­no­crat­ic fas­cism, embod­ied in a text excerpt­ed from an excel­lent arti­cle by David Golum­bia. In oth­er pro­grams, we have detailed the anarcho/fascist pol­i­tics under­ly­ing Bit­coin. Now, Mr. Golum­bia has pub­lished a book about Bit­coin, as excel­lent as it is short (77 pages of text.) It should be not­ed that the apoc­a­lyp­tic, dystopi­an view of our civ­i­liza­tion epit­o­mized by the Bit­coin crowd is embraced by Steve Ban­non and the philo­soph­i­cal influ­ences on him.

FTR #921 The Trumpenkampfverbande, Part 4: Trump on the Stump (The Underground Reich Emerges Into Plain View, Part 2)

Con­tin­u­ing analy­sis of Don­ald Trump’s can­di­da­cy, this pro­gram high­lights Trump’s suc­cess­ful use of Hitler’s rhetor­i­cal style and prin­ci­ples. Blog­ger Josh Mar­shall not­ed: ” . . . This was as wild and as unbri­dled a speech as I’ve seen from Trump. Even if you couldn’t under­stand Eng­lish, it would be stun­ning to watch the slash­ing hand ges­tures, the red face, the yelling. . . . Watch­ing this speech, com­pared to the press con­fer­ence today in Mex­i­co City, what kept com­ing to my mind was the con­trast between Hitler’s uni­formed ral­ly speech­es from the hus­tings and the suit­ed, states­man Hitler we see in the old news reels in Munich and at oth­er icon­ic moments in the late 1930s. . . . the dem­a­gog­ic style, the fren­zied invo­ca­tion of famil­ial blood sac­ri­ficed to bar­bar­ic out­siders – these are not unique to him [Hitler]. When we see this lurid, stab-in-the-back incite­ment, the wild hyper­bole, the febrile rail­ing against out­siders who will make us no longer a coun­try – the sim­i­lar­i­ties are real. More than any­thing, per­haps the most chill­ing part of this day is the con­trast between the two men – a mea­sured, calm states­man fig­ure we saw this after­noon and this rail­ing, angry dem­a­gogue fig­ure who cap­tured the emo­tion­al tenor of a Klan ral­ly. . . .” The sim­i­lar­i­ty does not appear to be coin­ci­den­tal: “. . . . Don­ald Trump appears to take aspects of his Ger­man back­ground seri­ous­ly. John Wal­ter works for the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion, and when he vis­its Don­ald in his office, Ivana told a friend, he clicks his heels and says, ‘Heil Hitler,’ pos­si­bly as a fam­i­ly joke. . . . Ivana Trump told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that from time to time her hus­band reads a book of Hitler’s col­lect­ed speech­es, ‘My New Order,’ which he keeps in a cab­i­net by his bed. . . .” The prin­ci­ples of the book have been put into action: “. . . . But it appears that one way or anoth­er, much of the con­tent in ‘My New Order’ about how Hitler says pro­pa­gan­da works, and how he struc­tures his speak­ing style, and how Hitler tar­gets the low­est-com­mon denom­i­na­tor as his intend­ed audi­ence, has seeped into Trump: the way he speaks, argues, rages and responds in pub­lic. . . .” Trump’s rhetor­i­cal rein­car­na­tion of Hitler cor­re­sponds to polit­i­cal sup­port from a bevy of fas­cists and white suprema­cists, old and new, as dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 882 and 920. Fur­ther­more, the financ­ing for his com­plex, mys­te­ri­ous­ly opaque real estate oper­a­tions comes from insti­tu­tions and indi­vid­u­als linked to the remark­able and dead­ly Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work, as high­light­ed in FTR #920. Con­tin­u­ing to man­i­fest “dog whis­tles” direct­ed at the Nazi faith­ful, Trump’s cam­paign pre­sent­ed the unlike­ly num­ber of 88 high-rank­ing mil­i­tary offi­cers who sup­port his can­di­da­cy, chan­nel­ing the “88” device used by post­war Nazis to code “Heil Hitler.” (“H” is the 8th let­ter of the alpha­bet.) One of the few observers to cor­rect­ly ana­lyze the scan­dalous role of the media in their cov­er­age of Trump’s cam­paign is for­mer CNN host Soledad O’Brien: ” . . . ‘If you look at Hillary Clinton’s speech where she basi­cal­ly point­ed out that what Don­ald Trump has done — actu­al­ly quite well — has nor­mal­ized white suprema­cy,’ O’Brien explained to CNN host Bri­an Stel­ter on Sun­day. ‘I think she made a very good argu­ment, almost like a lawyer. . . . The for­mer CNN host argued that the ques­tion that jour­nal­ists should be ask­ing is if Trump is ‘soft­en­ing the ground for peo­ple — who are white suprema­cists, who are white nation­al­ists, who would self-iden­ti­fy that way — to feel com­fort­able with their views being brought into the nation­al dis­course to the point where they can do a five minute inter­view hap­pi­ly on nation­al tele­vi­sion? And the answer is yes, clear­ly,’ she said. ‘And there is lots of evi­dence of that.’ . . .” The pro­gram con­cludes with a read­ing from “They Thought They Were Free: The Ger­mans 1933–1945”–listeners should com­pare their sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ence of the present with that of a pro­fes­sor who lived through Hitler’s ascen­sion. Pro­gram High­lights Include: review of Deutsche Bank’s pri­ma­ry role in back­ing Trump’s busi­ness oper­a­tions; review of George Soros’ back­ing of Trump’s busi­ness deal­ings; review of Soros’s role in “Aryaniz­ing” Jew­ish prop­er­ty dur­ing the Holo­caust; review of the links of the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work’s piv­otal role in Deutsche Bank and the Union Bank of Switzer­land, anoth­er financier of Trump prop­er­ties; an ear­ly man­i­fes­ta­tion of Ger­man “Ost­poli­tik,” in which the SS intel­li­gence ser­vice float­ed the idea to Allen Dulles that Ger­many would ally with Rus­sia.

FTR #917 WikiFascism, Part #4: Weighing In for the Trumpenkampfverbande (Technocratic Fascism in Action)

In FTR #‘s 724, 725, 732, 745 and 755, we have detailed the fas­cist and far right-wing ide­ol­o­gy, asso­ci­a­tions and pol­i­tics of Julian Assange and Wik­iLeaks. Lion­ized by the so-called pro­gres­sive sec­tor, as well as main­stream media sources like “The New York Times” and “Der Spiegel,” Assange’s true col­ors and fas­cist pol­i­tics and asso­ci­a­tions have emerged on a larg­er stage. As the Trump cam­paign evolves, a major alliance between Trump and the Assange orga­ni­za­tion has devel­oped. Obvi­ous­ly serv­ing as a dirty-tricks cadre for the GOP, Assange is work­ing hard to destroy Hillary Clin­ton with leaked doc­u­ments intend­ed to tor­pe­do her cam­paign. Assange–not even an Amer­i­can citizen–is man­i­fest­ing what we termed “tech­no­crat­ic fas­cism,” arro­gat­ing to him­self the right to deter­mine the results of the Amer­i­can Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Quot­ing from a sem­i­nal arti­cle by David Golum­bia: ” . . . Hack­ers (“civic,” “eth­i­cal,” “white” and “black” hat alike), hack­tivists, Wik­iLeaks fans [and Julian Assange et al–D. E.], Anony­mous “mem­bers,” even Edward Snow­den him­self walk hand-in-hand with Face­book and Google in telling us that coders don’t just have good things to con­tribute to the polit­i­cal world, but that the polit­i­cal world is theirs to do with what they want, and the rest of us should stay out of it: the polit­i­cal world is bro­ken, they appear to think (right­ly, at least in part), and the solu­tion to that, they think (wrong­ly, at least for the most part), is for pro­gram­mers to take polit­i­cal mat­ters into their own hands. . . .” Assange is net­work­ing with Trump’s dirty tricks oper­a­tor Roger Stone and res­onat­ing with the right-wing GOP/Trump play­book in his activ­i­ties against Clin­ton. A major por­tion of the pro­gram high­lights the sub­stan­tive evi­dence that the DNC hack was NOT done by Rus­sia, but by some­one try­ing to make it look like Rus­sia did it. Assange is now strong­ly hint­ing that the source was Seth Rich, a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee vol­un­teer who was mur­dered. Assange is oblique­ly sug­gest­ing that Clin­ton was behind the mur­der. (Rich’s fam­i­ly dis­putes this canard and is urg­ing the pub­lic to dis­re­gard Assange’s claims.) The Wik­iLeaks Clin­ton e‑mail dump: ” . . . . The emails include unen­crypt­ed, plain-text list­ings of donor emails address­es, home address­es, phone num­bers, social secu­ri­ty num­bers, pass­port num­bers, and cred­it card infor­ma­tion. . . .” Might this have had some­thing to do with the mur­der of Seth Rich? Pro­gram High­lights Include: Wik­iLeaks’ dis­clo­sure of the Social Secu­ri­ty and cred­it card num­ber of Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­trib­u­tors; Wik­iLeaks anti-Semit­ic tweet, label­ing its crit­ics as Jews; Assange’s oblique endorse­ment of Trump; Assange’s embrace of a syn­the­sis of Chica­go school and Aus­tri­an school neo-lib­er­al eco­nom­ic the­o­ry; Assange’s oper­a­tional res­o­nance with Koch broth­ers asso­ciate Peter Schweitzer; review of Assange’s piv­otal asso­ci­a­tions with fas­cists and anti-Semi­tes like Carl Lund­strom and Joran Jer­mas (aka “Israel Shamir”); review of David Duke’s links to the Wik­iLeaks milieu and to Ron Paul (Snow­den and Assange’s Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date of choice); David Duke’s sup­port of Trump; ide­o­log­i­cal and rhetor­i­cal res­o­nance between Ron Paul, Glenn Green­wald and Don­ald Trump; a bul­let-point analy­sis that con­nects the dots between ele­ments of this com­plex analy­sis.

FTR #851 Technocratic Fascism and Post-Reaganoid Political Dementia: Update on the Adventures of Eddie the Friendly Spook

Updat­ing “L’Af­faire Snow­den,” this pro­gram ana­lyzes the fun­da­men­tal political/ideological prin­ci­ples that unite Eddie the Friend­ly Spook (Snow­den) with the cor­po­rate enti­ties com­pris­ing “Big Tech.” Tak­ing advan­tage of the notion that “gov­ern­ment is bad, but cor­po­ra­tions are good” (“post-Reaganoid polit­i­cal demen­tia”), many of the indi­vid­u­als and com­pa­nies in the tech world are pur­su­ing and achiev­ing goals that are fun­da­men­tal­ly anti­thet­i­cal to demo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples. Fun­da­men­tal to the dis­cus­sion is a bril­liant analy­sis by David Golum­bia in “Uncomputing.org” that dis­tills the essence of “tech­no­crat­ic fascism”–the polit­i­cal and social phi­los­o­phy that unites “coders”–Snowden, Assange and hack­ers of all stripes–with the cor­po­rate giants of Big Tech. Build­ing on a view­point sim­i­lar to that expressed in “The Decline of the West,” by Oswald Spen­gler (a text fun­da­men­tal to much of 20th cen­tu­ry fas­cism), they con­tend that soci­ety is bro­ken, the polit­i­cal process is bro­ken, and there­fore they have the right–expressed as “nat­ur­al law”–to do what­ev­er they think is best. Demo­c­ra­t­ic poli­ties are to have no say in their actions, regard­less of the poten­tial con­se­quences for the mem­bers of those poli­ties. They do not feel that they need “the con­sent of the gov­erned.” Pro­gram high­lights include: the pres­ence at the exclu­sive elite gath­er­ing of the Bilder­berg­ers of key Sil­i­con Val­ley techies includ­ing Peter Thiel and Alex Karp of Palan­thir; review of the rela­tion­ship between Ron Paul–Snowden’s polit­i­cal idol–and Thiel; the pres­ence of Third Reich alum­ni in the Bilder­berg­er gath­er­ings; the anti-labor prac­tices of Big Tech; the role of Big Tech in financ­ing extreme right can­di­dates like Ted Cruz; the dri­ve by the Indi­an gov­ern­ment of Naren­dra Modi (whose elec­tion was aid­ed by EBay’s Pierre Omid­yar) to under­mine Indi­a’s laws against child labor, a syn­op­tic overview of the key ele­ments of our analy­sis of The Adven­tures of Eddie the Friend­ly Spook.