Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
The tag 'Koch brothers' is associated with 11 posts.

Oligarchs for Theocracy: Project Blitz, the Council for National Policy, and God’s Insurrection

“One nation under God.” It’s a famil­iar phrase for mod­ern Amer­i­cans. But how about the phrase “One nation under God, and one reli­gion under God”? That was the call recent­ly made by Michael Fly­nn. As we’re going to see, Fly­nn was­n’t just speak­ing for fel­low theocrats when he called for an end to the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state. He was voic­ing the views of some of the most pow­er­ful lob­bies oper­at­ing in DC. Groups like the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) that rep­re­sent the merg­er of cor­po­rate (Koch) and theo­crat­ic inter­ests. A net­work that for all prac­ti­cal pur­pos­es is the Repub­li­can Par­ty’s oli­garch estab­lish­ment, push­ing a theo­crat­ic agen­da with a goal of not just con­fer­ring spe­cial rights for Chris­tians but effec­tive­ly end­ing democ­ra­cy itself. Because as we’re also going to see, just as you can’t sep­a­rate the GOP estab­lish­ment from the theo­crat­ic CNP, you can’t sep­a­rate the GOP’s par­ty-wide push to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion results from the CNP either. The death of rep­re­sen­ta­tive democ­ra­cy in the US is very much a ‘God’-ordained project.


Tulsi and the Fascists

Bernie Sanders asso­ciate Tul­si Gab­bard has report­ed­ly been con­tem­plat­ing an inde­pen­dent run for Pres­i­dent. A mem­ber of the Sanders Insti­tute, she nom­i­nat­ed Boinie at the 2016 Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion and was bandied about as Sanders’ poten­tial Vice-Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date. With her pos­si­ble role as a “spoil­er” in the 2020 Pres­i­den­tial cam­paign loom­ing larg­er, Gab­bard’s ado­ra­tion by Amer­i­can fas­cists and reac­tionar­ies is some­thing to be con­sid­ered. In addi­tion to David Duke’s sup­port for her: “Stephen K. Ban­non, Pres­i­dent Trump’s for­mer chief strate­gist, is impressed with her polit­i­cal tal­ent. Richard B. Spencer, the white nation­al­ist leader, says he could vote for her. For­mer Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ron Paul prais­es her ‘lib­er­tar­i­an instincts,’ while Franklin Gra­ham, the influ­en­tial evan­ge­list, finds her ‘refresh­ing.’ . . . . And far-right con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists like Mike Cer­novich see a cer­tain MAGA sais quoi. ‘She’s got a good ener­gy, a good vibe. You feel like this is just a seri­ous per­son,’ Mr. Cer­novich said. ‘She seems very Trumpian.’ . . . . Then there is 4chan, the noto­ri­ous­ly tox­ic online mes­sage board, where some right-wing trolls and anti-Semi­tes fawn over Ms. Gab­bard, call­ing her ‘Mom­my’ and prais­ing her will­ing­ness to crit­i­cize Israel. In April, the Dai­ly Stormer, a neo-Nazi web­site, took cred­it for Ms. Gabbard’s qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the first two Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry debates. . . .” In past broad­casts, we have not­ed that Gab­bard is a mem­ber of the Hare Krish­na cult. She also sits on the advi­so­ry board of a Koch-fund­ed think tank with links to the Neo-Con­fed­er­ate move­ment. Often described as “the first Hin­du in Con­gress,” she is a vital con­tact point for Naren­dra Mod­i’s Hin­dut­va fas­cist gov­ern­ment in India.


FTR #1087 Fascism: 2019 World Tour, Part 2

After review of Carl Lund­strom’s financ­ing of the Swe­den Democ­rats, as well as his cen­tral role in financ­ing the Pirate Bay site (which host­ed Wik­iLeaks, cour­tesy of Joran Jermas/Israel Shamir), we delve into the oper­a­tions of Lund­strom’s Swe­den Demo­c­rat asso­ciates.

Uti­liz­ing the anti-immi­grant theme uti­lized with great effect by fas­cists around the world, the Swe­den Democ­rats are gain­ing ground on the Swedish polit­i­cal land­scape.

Key points of dis­cus­sion include: The Nazi ori­gins of the Swe­den Democ­rats; the Waf­fen SS back­ground of one of the par­ty’s founders; net­work­ing of the Swe­den Democ­rats with fas­cists and reac­tionar­ies in oth­er coun­tries, includ­ing the U.S., France and Ger­many; the piv­otal role of the inter­net in advanc­ing the for­tunes of the Swe­den Democ­rats.

Next, we exam­ine the rise of Jair Bol­sonaro’s fas­cist gov­ern­ment.

Again, in recent pro­grams, we have exam­ined the pro­found role of online tech­nol­o­gy. in the pro­mo­tion of fas­cism, as well as over­lap­ping areas of intel­li­gence activ­i­ty. In that con­text, it is vital to remem­ber that the Inter­net was devel­oped as a weapon, with the focus of the tech­nol­o­gy being coun­terin­sur­gency.

In Brazil, the rise of Jair Bol­sonaro’s fas­cist gov­ern­ment received deci­sive momen­tum from YouTube, which is trans­form­ing the polit­i­cal land­scape in Brazil, as it is in this coun­try.

” . . . .In col­or­ful, far-right rants, Mr. Moura accused fem­i­nists, teach­ers and main­stream politi­cians of wag­ing vast con­spir­a­cies. Mr. Dominguez was hooked.

As his time on the site grew, YouTube rec­om­mend­ed videos from oth­er far-right fig­ures. One was a law­mak­er named Jair Bol­sonaro, then a mar­gin­al fig­ure in nation­al pol­i­tics — but a star in YouTube’s far-right com­mu­ni­ty in Brazil, where the plat­form has become more wide­ly watched than all but one TV chan­nel. Last year, he became Pres­i­dent Bol­sonaro.

‘YouTube became the social media plat­form of the Brazil­ian right,’ said Mr. Dominguez, now a lanky 17-year-old who says he, too, plans to seek polit­i­cal office. . . .”

Two excerpts from the sto­ry below encap­su­late and epit­o­mize the grow­ing, suc­cess­ful man­i­fes­ta­tion of inter­net fas­cism: “An Ecosys­tem of Hate” and the “Dic­ta­tor­ship of the ‘Like’ ”

“. . . . An Ecosys­tem of Hate

. . . . As the far right rose, many of its lead­ing voic­es had learned to weaponize the con­spir­a­cy videos, offer­ing their vast audi­ences a tar­get: peo­ple to blame. Even­tu­al­ly, the YouTube con­spir­acists turned their spot­light on Deb­o­ra Diniz, a women’s rights activist whose abor­tion advo­ca­cy had long made her a tar­get of the far right.

Bernar­do Küster, a YouTube star whose home­made rants had won him 750,000 sub­scribers and an endorse­ment from Mr. Bol­sonaro, accused her of involve­ment in the sup­posed Zika plots.

As far-right and con­spir­a­cy chan­nels began cit­ing one anoth­er, YouTube’s rec­om­men­da­tion sys­tem learned to string their videos togeth­er.

How­ev­er implau­si­ble any indi­vid­ual rumor might be on its own, joined togeth­er, they cre­at­ed the impres­sion that dozens of dis­parate sources were reveal­ing the same ter­ri­fy­ing truth.

‘It feels like the con­nec­tion is made by the view­er, but the con­nec­tion is made by the sys­tem,’ Ms. Diniz said.

Threats of rape and tor­ture filled Ms. Diniz’s phone and email. Some cit­ed her dai­ly rou­tines. Many echoed claims from Mr. Küster’s videos, she said.

Mr. Küster glee­ful­ly men­tioned, though nev­er explic­it­ly endorsed, the threats. That kept him just with­in YouTube’s rules.

When the uni­ver­si­ty where Ms. Diniz taught received a warn­ing that a gun­man would shoot her and her stu­dents, and the police said they could no longer guar­an­tee her safe­ty, she left Brazil. . . .

. . . . ‘The Dic­ta­tor­ship of the Like’

Ground zero for pol­i­tics by YouTube may be the São Paulo head­quar­ters of Movi­men­to Brasil Livre, which formed to agi­tate for the 2016 impeach­ment of the left-wing Pres­i­dent Dil­ma Rouss­eff. Its mem­bers trend young, mid­dle-class, right-wing and extreme­ly online.

Renan San­tos, the group’s nation­al coor­di­na­tor, ges­tured to a door marked ‘the YouTube Divi­sion’ and said, ‘This is the heart of things.’

Inside, eight young men poked at edit­ing soft­ware. One was styl­iz­ing an image of Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni for a video argu­ing that fas­cism had been wrong­ly blamed on the right.

. . . . The group’s co-founder, a man-bunned for­mer rock gui­tarist name Pedro D’Eyrot, said ‘we have some­thing here that we call the dic­ta­tor­ship of the like.’

Real­i­ty, he said, is shaped by what­ev­er mes­sage goes most viral. Even as he spoke, a two-hour YouTube video was cap­ti­vat­ing the nation. Titled ‘1964’ for the year of Brazil’s mil­i­tary coup, it argued that the takeover had been nec­es­sary to save Brazil from com­mu­nism.

Mr. Dominguez, the teenag­er learn­ing to play gui­tar, said the video per­suad­ed him that his teach­ers had fab­ri­cat­ed the hor­rors of mil­i­tary rule.

Ms. Borges, the his­to­ry teacher vil­i­fied on YouTube, said it brought back mem­o­ries of mil­i­tary cur­fews, dis­ap­peared activists and police beat­ings. ‘I don’t think I’ve had my last beat­ing,’ she said. . . .”


John Roberts Gives Bad Faith Blessing to Hyper-Partisan Gerrymandering, Paving Way for the Kochstitution.

There was an omi­nous warn­ing about the direc­tion Amer­i­can Democ­ra­cy was head­ing When David Frum warned, “If con­ser­v­a­tives become con­vinced that they can­not win demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly, they will not aban­don con­ser­vatism. They will reject democ­ra­cy.” It was a warn­ing about what might hap­pen, but as we’re going to see, the corporate/billionaire wing com­po­nent of the Repub­li­can par­ty has already con­clud­ed that it can’t get the pub­lic behind its agen­da and has already turned against democ­ra­cy. And John Roberts just hand­ed this bil­lion­aire fac­tion a mas­sive legal vic­to­ry in Rucho vs Com­mon Cause: fed­er­al courts can’t rule on whether or not dis­trict lines are drawn in an over­ly-par­ti­san man­ner. It’s up to each state on its own. And as we’re going to see, Repub­li­cans already dom­i­nate the con­trol of state gov­ern­ments and now state leg­is­la­tures can ger­ry­man­der their own dis­tricts with­out fear of fed­er­al med­dling. Beyond that, the Kochs and ALEC are work­ing on remov­ing state courts from over­see­ing redis­trict­ing maps too. And to top it off, the Kochs are aggres­sive­ly push­ing for a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion that could eas­i­ly turn into a ‘run­away’ con­ven­tion. And if there’s a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion, whichev­er par­ty con­trols the most states is going to con­trol the out­come of the con­ven­tion. So the Supreme Court just tur­bocharged the Kochs’ cap­ture of state assem­blies, the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, and even­tu­al­ly the Con­sti­tu­tion.


How the Murder of Mollie Tibbetts Shined a Light On the GOP’s Dark Money Propaganda Machine

What does the mur­der of Mol­lie Tib­betts have in com­mon with down­fall of Amer­i­ca? If you had asked Fox News or Pres­i­dent Trump in the days fol­low­ing the rev­e­la­tion that Mol­lie’s mur­der­er was ‘an ille­gal’, they would have told you ille­gal immi­gra­tion is what the mur­der and Amer­i­ca’s down­fall have in com­mon. But as we’re going to see, the real com­mon link between Mol­lie’s mur­der and the down­fall of Amer­i­ca was dis­cov­ered and the right-wing noise sud­den­ly stopped talk­ing about Mol­lie’s mur­der almost entire­ly. Because that com­mon link turned out to be Nicole Schlinger, an influ­en­tial GOP fundrais­er and an impor­tant fig­ure in one of the most impor­tant GOP 501(c)(4) (‘social wel­far’) polit­i­cal super­PACs: Amer­i­can Future Fund (AFF). And as we’re going to see, the sto­ry of AFF is the sto­ry of how the explo­sion of dark mon­ey in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics was exe­cut­ed. And as sto­ry of how it was pri­ma­ry right-wing mega-donors behind this explo­sion. It’s a sto­ry illus­tra­tive of how the kinds of pro­pa­gan­da net­works that would exploit the mur­der of an Iowan col­lege stu­dent for polit­i­cal gain oper­ate and the dom­i­nance of these net­works in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, so it real­ly is a sto­ry about the down­fall of Amer­i­ca.


Fred Koch, the John Birch Society and the JFK Assassination

Jane May­er’s Dark Mon­ey has received con­sid­er­able dis­cus­sion and media play over the last cou­ple of years. In past dis­cus­sion of the Koch fam­i­ly, we not­ed that patri­arch Fred Koch worked with Hitler build­ing one of Nazi Ger­many’s most impor­tant refineries–one capa­ble of refin­ing the high-octane fuel need­ed by fight­er planes. In addi­tion, we not­ed that Fred Koch was one of the first mem­bers of the John Birch Soci­ety and remained an impor­tant mem­ber of the group after that. May­er notes that Fred Koch helped finance ads in the wake of the JFK assas­si­na­tion that pinned respon­si­bil­i­ty for the crime on the Sovi­et Union–one of the pri­ma­ry lev­els of dis­in­for­ma­tion. We have cov­ered the “paint­ing of Oswald Red” in numer­ous pro­grams, includ­ing FTR #‘s 925 and 926. 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.


Enema Action: The Koch Family’s Nazi Nanny

Jane May­er’s Dark Mon­ey has received con­sid­er­able dis­cus­sion and media play over the last cou­ple of years. What has been over­looked is a detail about the upbring­ing of the young Koch boys. Afi­ciona­dos of psy­cho-his­to­ry will find the Ger­man Nazi nan­ny hired by Fred Koch to mind and raise his young sons sub­stan­ti­tive, as well as inter­est­ing. 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 #983 Fascism, 2017 World Tour, Part 2

As the title indi­cates, this pro­gram exam­ines man­i­fes­ta­tions of fas­cism around the world.

In Europe, we ana­lyze:

1.-The reca­pit­u­la­tion of Nazi and fas­cist ele­ments in the cur­rent Bul­gar­i­an coali­tion gov­ern­ment of Boyko Borisov. (Bul­gar­ia was a Nazi ally in World War II.)
2.-The vital­i­ty of “regionalism”–a political/economic doc­trine that advo­cates the seces­sion of key pros­per­ous regions from nation states.
3.-Analysis of region­al­ism as an appli­ca­tion of glob­al­ist eco­nom­ic the­o­ry to Euorope.
4.-The his­to­ry of regionalism’s advoa­cy by Third Reich vet­er­an the­o­reti­cians.
5.-Edward Snow­den and Julian Assange’s sup­port for Cata­lan seces­sion from Spain.
6.-The suc­cess of the AfD in Ger­man elec­tions.
7.-AfD politi­cian Alexan­der Gauland’s state­ment that Ger­mans should be proud of what that country’s sol­diers accom­plished in World War II.
8.-The Aus­tri­an Free­dom Party’s pro­ject­ed suc­cess in upcom­ing elec­tions. The par­ty was formed in 1956 by Third Reich vet­er­ans as a vehi­cle for re-intro­duc­ing Aus­tri­an Nazis into the country’s polit­i­cal life.

In Latin Amer­i­ca, we exam­ine:

1.-The ver­dict that Argen­tine AMIA bomb­ing inves­ti­ga­tor Alber­to Nisman’s death was a mur­der, not a sui­cide.
2.-Review of the AMIA bomb­ing inves­ti­ga­tion.
3.-The dis­cov­ery of a cache of Nazi arti­facts, includ­ing devices used for deter­min­ing racial puri­ty. Hitler appar­ent­ly posed with some of the arti­fi­cats.
4.-The role of Nisman’s wid­ow as the judge inves­ti­gat­ing the Nazi arti­fact case.
5.-Operational links between Amer­i­can Nazi Christo­pher Cantwell and the Koch Broth­ers-fund­ed Lud­wig Von Mis­es Insti­tute in Brazil.

In the Unit­ed States, we detail:

1.-How Bre­it­bart active­ly pro­mot­ed Neo-Nazism, while down­play­ing what it was actu­al­ly doing.
2.-How white suprema­cist and Nazi ele­ments are suc­cess­ful­ly using YouTube to main­stream fas­cist and racist views.

In the Mid­dle East, we high­light:

1.-Benjamin Netanyahu’s polit­i­cal con­nec­tions with the Thyssen/Krupp firm, one of the lynch­pins of the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work.
2.-Yair Netanyahu’s attri­bu­tion of his father’s polit­i­cal dif­fi­cul­ties to sab­o­tage by an inter­na­tion­al Jew­ish con­spir­a­cy.
3.-Ronald Regan’s 1981 cita­tion of Ibn Khal­dun as a key advo­cate for sup­ply-side eco­nom­ics.
4.-Review of the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s embrace of the views of Ibn Khal­dun.


FTR #906 The Destabilization of Hillary Clinton

Ana­lyz­ing the medi­a’s psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare against Hillary Clin­ton, we note how much of the “neg­a­tive narrative”–including asser­tions par­rot­ed by Bernie Sanders and his associates–about her comes from the right-wing media attack machine. How many peo­ple note, for exam­ple, that the Inspec­tor Gen­er­al’s refer­ral to the Jus­tice Depart­ment was not crim­i­nal? We note that George H.W. Bush–the man for whom CIA head­quar­ters was named–was defeat­ed for re-elec­tion by Bill Clin­ton. Fox News is head­ed by Roger Ailes, who was George H.W. Bush’s cam­paign direc­tor.

Much of the media/internet cov­er­age of Hillary comes from Fox, echoed duti­ful­ly by oth­er, so-called “respon­si­ble” media out­lets. It should be not­ed that both “The New York Times” and “The Wash­ing­ton Post” have long­stand­ing ties to the CIA. Both papers have contracted–along with Fox News–for excerpts from a book titled “Clin­ton Cash,” authored by Peter Schweiz­er, a Koch broth­ers polit­i­cal spear car­ri­er and for­mer advis­er to Sarah Palin. We note that the Cit­i­zens Unit­ed deci­sion had as its cen­ter­piece an anti-Hillary movie called Hillary Clin­ton: The Movie. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the New York Times has fea­tured slant­ed cov­er­age of the Clin­ton e‑mail non-scan­dal.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of FBI direc­tor James Comey’s work as a Mitt Rom­ney sup­port­er in 2012; Hillary Clin­ton’s vot­ing record as the 11th most lib­er­al Sen­a­tor; CNBC’s “Morn­ing Joe” pro­gram’s delib­er­ate dis­tor­tion of Wash­ing­ton Post colum­nist David Ignatius’s state­ments on the Hillary Clin­ton e‑mail non-scan­dal; Joe “Morn­ing Joe” Scar­bor­ough’s role as a GOP mem­ber of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives; CNBC own­er Chris Burke’s major con­tri­bu­tions to George W. Bush’s cam­paigns.


FTR #887 Miscellaneous Articles and Updates

The ongo­ing occu­pa­tion of an Ore­gon wildlife pre­serve in Ore­gon by para­mil­i­tary forces led by Ammon Bundy (son of Cliv­en Bundy) may seem far removed from the gild­ed realms in which the Koch Broth­ers move. They may also appear to be of an entire­ly dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal stripe from the likes of Edward Snow­den and Julian Assange. That is not the case. In fact, the “Bundy­ists” are real­iz­ing the agen­da of the Wise Use move­ment and the Koch broth­ers, both advo­cates of ced­ing con­trol of fed­er­al lands to local con­trol, in order that cor­po­rate inter­ests such as tim­ber, min­ing and cat­tle ranch­ing can use the ter­ri­to­ry for their own use and prof­it. By the same token, the likes of Edward Snow­den and Julian Assange have arro­gat­ed to them­selves the use, con­trol and dis­sem­i­na­tion of sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion that was not theirs to own or dis­trib­ute. David Golum­bia not­ed the atti­tude of “coders” such as Snow­den, Assange and “hack­tivists ” . . . the polit­i­cal world is theirs to do with what they want, and the rest of us should stay out of it . . . mem­bers of demo­c­ra­tic poli­ties have no choice but to accept them hav­ing that role.” Turn­ing to tur­moil in Europe, the recent assaults on women by Mid­dle East­ern immi­grants in Ger­man, Finnish and oth­er cities on the con­ti­nent have fueled the rise of fas­cist groups, mint­ing valu­able polit­i­cal coinage from the assaults. Some observers com­pared a recent ram­page in Leipzig with the 1938 Kristall­nacht pogrom. The broad­cast con­cludes with an overview of P‑2 Lodge grand­mas­ter Licio Gel­li, the recent­ly deceased fas­cist who pro­found­ly influ­enced events on three con­ti­nents. Pro­gram High­lights Include: Fred C. Koch’s con­struc­tion of an oil refin­ery for Hitler; Ex-CIA offi­cer and author Robert Baer’s belief that Hitler escaped Ger­many at the end of the war; review of the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Fox News host Andrew Napoli­tano and Snow­den Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date of choice Ron Paul at a lib­er­tar­i­an stu­dents con­fer­ence; review of the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Edward Snow­den at that same con­fer­ence; review of Carl Lund­strom’s financ­ing of the anti-immi­grant Swe­den Demo­c­rat fas­cist par­ty and his fund­ing of the Pirate Bay web­site that host­ed Wik­iLeaks.