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#1200 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 7

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

(Mr. Emory gets no mon­ey from said pur­chas­es of the book.)

The pro­gram begins with review of the struc­ture of Chiang’s fas­cist infra­struc­ture, his secret police cadres in par­tic­u­lar.

Key points of analy­sis and dis­cus­sion include:

1.–Chiang trans­lat­ed his admi­ra­tion of Hitler and Mus­soli­ni into the most sin­cere form of flattery—imitation: “ . . . . Chi­ang believed that fas­cism stood on three legs—nationalism, absolute faith in the Max­i­mum Leader, and the spar­tan mil­i­ta­riza­tion of the cit­i­zens. The New Life Move­ment [the chief pro­mot­er of which was Madame Chi­ang Kai-shek] was the pop­u­lar man­i­fes­ta­tion of Chiang’s fascism—a toy for his wife and the missionaries—and it was com­ic enough not to be tak­en seri­ous­ly by for­eign­ers in gen­er­al. The mis­sion­ar­ies . . . . were now eager­ly climb­ing aboard the New Life band­wag­on. . . .”
2.–There were three over­lap­ping orga­ni­za­tion­al ele­ments to Chiang’s fas­cist cadres—the Blue Shirts, the CBIS (Cen­tral Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion and Sta­tis­tics) which was run by the Ch’en broth­ers and the MBIS (the Mil­i­tary Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion and Sta­tis­tics which was run by Tai Li. Both Ch’en broth­ers and Tai Li were Green Gang asso­ciates of Chi­ang Kai-shek: “ . . . . Chiang’s fas­ci­na­tion with Hitler result­ed in the cre­ation of a new secret soci­ety mod­eled on Hitler’s Brown Shirts and Mussolini’s Black Shirts. Chi­ang called his the Blue Shirts, though he denied their exis­tence repeat­ed­ly. They were an off­shoot of his two secret ser­vices, the par­ty gestapo under the Ch’en broth­ers, and the mil­i­tary secret police under Tai Li. . . .”
3.–The CBIS was the Kuomintang’s secret polit­i­cal police: “ . . . . Chi­ang came to depend heav­i­ly on the two nephews of his Green Gang men­tor . . . . Ch’en Ch’i‑mei. The old­er nephew, Ch’en Kuo-fu, who had orga­nized and head­ed the dri­ve that recruit­ed sev­en thou­sand Green Gang youths for the Wham­poa Mil­i­tary Acad­e­my had since then been giv­en the respon­si­bil­i­ty of set­ting up a gestapo orga­ni­za­tion with­in the KMT. As head of the KMT’s Orga­ni­za­tion Depart­ment, his job was to puri­fy the par­ty and the Nanking gov­ern­ment con­tin­u­al­ly. To guar­an­tee the loy­al­ty of each par­ty mem­ber, Ch’en Kuo-fu built a spy net­work that touched every gov­ern­ment agency. To run this new appa­ra­tus, he select­ed his younger broth­er, Ch’en Li-fu [edu­cat­ed at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pitts­burgh in the U.S.—D.E.]. Both the Ch-en broth­ers were “blood broth­ers” of Chi­ang Kai-shek, hav­ing tak­en part in a Green Gang cer­e­mo­ny after the death of their uncle. . . . Li-fu . . . . became the direc­tor of Chiang’s secret service—the Cen­tral Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion and Sta­tis­tics (CBIS), the euphemism cho­sen for the KMT’s polit­i­cal secret police. . . .”
4.–“China’s Himmler”—Tai Li—headed the MBIS: “ . . . . While the CBIS spied, con­duct­ed purges and polit­i­cal exe­cu­tions with­in the par­ty, large-scale pub­lic ter­ror­ism was the province of its mil­i­tary coun­ter­part the Mil­i­tary Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion and Sta­tis­tics (MBIS) was run by “China’s Himm­ler,” Tai Li—for twen­ty years the most dread­ed man in Chi­na. . . . Tai Li had spent his youth as a Green Gang aide to Big-eared Tu and was edu­cat­ed at Tu’s per­sona expense. In 1926, he was one of the Green Gang recruits enrolled at Wham­poa Acad­e­my. . . . All clan­des­tine oper­a­tions in Chi­na, except those con­duct­ed by the Ch’ens, were his respon­si­bil­i­ty dur­ing the 1930’s. . . .”
5.–Supplementing and over­lap­ping both CBIS and MBIS were the Blue Shirts: “ . . . . Both of these secret police orga­ni­za­tions were sup­ple­ment­ed by the Blue Shirts. Although it was a repli­ca of the Euro­pean fas­cist cults, the Blue Shirts also emu­lat­ed Japan’s dread­ed Black Drag­on Soci­ety, the most mil­i­tant secret cult of the Impe­r­i­al Army. [The orga­ni­za­tion that helped spawn Kodama Yoshio—D.E.] The Blue Shirts job was to reform Chi­na the hard way, by knock­ing heads togeth­er, car­ry­ing out polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions, liq­ui­dat­ing cor­rupt bureau­crats and “ene­mies of the state.” . . . . They were offi­cered by old Green Gang class­mates from Wham­poa. . . .”
6.–Exemplifying the homi­ci­dal bru­tal­i­ty of Chiang’s secret police cadres was the liq­ui­da­tion of six of China’s most impor­tant writ­ers: “ . . . . The extreme was soon reached with the hor­rif­ic end of six of China’s fore­most writ­ers, all fol­low­ers of the lead­ing lit­er­ary fig­ure of the [1911] rev­o­lu­tion [led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen], Lu Hsun. . . . He [Chi­ang] ordered his secret police to arrest the writ­ers. Lu Hsun elud­ed arrest but six young lead­ers of the group—including Feng Kung, China’s best-known woman writer—were tak­en into cus­tody and forced to dig a large pit. They were tied hand and foot, thrown into the pit, and buried alive. . . .”

A fun­da­men­tal dynam­ic of Chi­ang Kai-shek’s regime was his stead­fast refusal to use his mil­i­tary forces to fight the invad­ing Japan­ese. (Japan invad­ed Manchuria in 1931 and the Sino-Japan­ese War preceded—and then overlapped—World War II.)

Chi­ang and his forces fre­quent­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Japan­ese and “the Gen­er­alis­si­mo” stead­fast­ly refused to com­mit Kuom­intang armies against them, pre­fer­ring to hus­band his com­bat­ants for use against the Chi­nese Com­mu­nists. (This ide­o­log­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of Chiang’s dic­ta­tor­ship won him favor with the Axis pow­ers, as well as dom­i­nant ele­ments of the Amer­i­can pow­er elite. As will be seen in future pro­grams, Chiang’s stance led to the replace­ment of Gen­er­al Joseph Stil­well with Albert C. Wede­mey­er as chief mil­i­tary advis­er to the KMT.)

Chief among Chiang’s crit­ics was T.V. Soong, who—correctly—forecast that Chiang’s mil­i­tary pos­ture would pro­pel the Chi­nese pop­u­lace into align­ment with the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty whose fierce, suc­cess­ful mil­i­tary resis­tance to the Japan­ese was rec­og­nized as man­i­fest patri­o­tism.)

“ . . . . Shak­en by what he had observed of the Japan­ese assault, T.V. Soong began to draw some dan­ger­ous con­clu­sions. ‘If Chi­na is placed before the alter­na­tive of com­mu­nism and Japan­ese mil­i­tarism with its mil­i­tary dom­i­na­tion, then Chi­na will choose com­mu­nism.’ This rather dar­ing state­ment, giv­en dur­ing an inter­view with Karl H. von Wie­gand in March, 1932, placed T.V. in direct oppo­si­tion to Chi­ang Kai-shek. It was all the more icon­o­clas­tic for being made by a rich financier and Finance Min­is­ter. . . .”

T.V. Soong—in that same interview—noted that the West­ern pow­ers had pas­sive­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Japan­ese attacks on Manchuria and Shang­hai: “ . . . . ‘The League [of Nations—D.E.] and the big pow­ers looked on. They even per­mit­ted the Inter­na­tion­al Set­tle­ment to be used as a base of oper­a­tions. Can you be sur­prised that Chi­na would turn to Com­mu­nism or Sovi­etism, if that were to unite the coun­try, rather than sub­mit to for­eign mil­i­tary dom­i­na­tion?’ . . . .”

We con­clude with dis­cus­sion of a major event in the his­to­ry of Chi­ang Kai-shek’s con­ser­va­tion of his mil­i­tary resources to fight the Communists–what has become known as the Sian inci­dent.

 The Sian Inci­dent was very important—though lit­tle recognized—event in the his­to­ry of Chi­na: the “kid­nap­ping” of Chi­ang Kai-shek by Kuom­intang mil­i­tary offi­cers who were intent on form­ing an anti-Japan­ese coali­tion called for by Madame Sun Yat-Sen (Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s wid­ow and the for­mer Ching-ling Soong.)

This became known as the Sian inci­dent, named after the locale in which Chi­ang was tak­en into cus­tody and held.

Inspired by the suc­cess of Mao Tse-Tung’s forces in fight­ing the Japan­ese, a mass stu­dent protest move­ment pre­cip­i­tat­ed the call by Mme. Sun Yat-sen, which was put into action by “The Young Mar­shal,” Chang Hsueh-liang. He was sup­port­ed in this by the forces of Gen­er­al Yang Hu-cheng.  “ . . . . Mean­while, Mao Tse-Tung’s Com­mu­nist forces reached Yenan at the end of the Long March, and began ral­ly­ing anti-Japan­ese nation­al­ism to their side. To many stu­dents, the authen­tic hero­ism of the Red Army com­bined with this blunt stand against Tokyo was a siren call. On Decem­ber 9, 1935, ten thou­sand Peking stu­dents demon­strat­ed against Japan. The protest drew nation­wide atten­tion and Madame Sun Yat-sen emerged from seclu­sion in Shang­hai to sup­port the stu­dents by launch­ing a Nation­al Sal­va­tion League. . . .”

Key points of analy­sis and dis­cus­sion include:

1.–The Young Marshal’s return to Chi­na after kick­ing nar­cotics admin­is­tered to him Tai-li’s secret police (this dur­ing a recu­per­a­tive sojourn in Europe): “ . . . . When the Young Mar­shal returned to Chi­na in 1934„ he was trans­formed. Gone were the nar­cotics, and in their place was a tough new nation­al­ism. He decid­ed that China’s sal­va­tion lay in per­suad­ing Chi­ang to stand firm against Tokyo. He had long talks with T.V. Soong in Shang­hai about how to engi­neer this, and T. V., who must have real­ized that a pow­er­ful mil­i­tary lever had fall­en into his hands, burned the mid­night oil with the dap­per Manchuri­an gen­er­al, explor­ing all pos­si­ble maneu­vers against Chi­ang . . . .”
2.–“ . . . . Ear­ly in 1936, the Young Mar­shal qui­et­ly instruct­ed his troops on the fron­tier to stop shoot­ing at red guer­ril­las. He had reached the con­clu­sion that most of China’s Com­mu­nists were dri­ven into the arms of the CCP by the degra­da­tion of the coun­try at the hands of Chi­ang and the for­eign pow­ers. Chi­nese, he decid­ed, should no longer fight Chi­nese while the nation was being rav­ished by for­eign invaders. . . .”
3.–The Young Mar­shal then met, and reached agree­ment with Chou En-Lai, lat­er the For­eign Min­is­ter of Chi­na under Mao Tse-tung. “ . . . . That June, he met pri­vate­ly with Chou En-Lai to see if they could put aside dif­fer­ences and devel­op a joint strat­e­gy. He came away with his con­vic­tion reaf­firmed that the answer lay in a unit­ed front He was good to his word. All mil­i­tary action halt­ed, liai­son was set up between their two head­quar­ters, and bureaus of the Nation­al Sal­va­tion League were orga­nized through­out north­west­ern Chi­na. . . . Word of this ‘treach­ery’ reached Chi­ang Kai-shek at Nanking. . . .”
4.–Chiang refused to join the nation­al­ist coali­tion: “ . . . . When the Gen­er­alis­si­mo arrived, the Young Mar­shal told Chi­ang that his anti-red cam­paign that his anti-red cam­paign should be scrapped and a unit­ed front formed with Mao Tse-Tung. The time had come for a patri­ot­ic war, not a civ­il war. Chi­ang hot­ly reject­ed the argu­ment . . . .”
Chi­ang pub­li­cized his deter­mi­na­tion to con­tin­ue with his anti-com­mu­nist anni­hi­la­tion cam­paign: “ . . . . On Decem­ber 4, 1936, the Gen­er­alis­si­mo returned to Sian to announce that he was going ahead with the anni­hi­la­tion cam­paign, to begin on Decem­ber 12. . . .”
5.–In com­bi­na­tion with Gen­er­al Yang, the Young Mar­shal decid­ed to take Chi­ang hostage and extract his con­sent to a nation­al­ist coali­tion: “ . . . . At 5:30 in the morn­ing of Decem­ber 12—the day the new anni­hi­la­tion cam­paign was to begin—Chiang Kai-shek was star­ing out the back win­dow of his bed­room at the moun­tain beyond the gar­den wall. In the dark­ness, four trucks loaded with 120 armed sol­diers rum­bled to a halt at the gates. The bat­tal­ion com­man­der in the lead truck demand­ed that the gates be opened. The sen­tries refused. The men in the trucks opened fire. . . .”
6.–Despite being tak­en cap­tive, Chi­ang refused to form a nation­al­ist coali­tion: “ . . . . At Sian, Chi­ang stub­born­ly resist­ed the Eight Demands. ‘He refused to turn our guns against the ene­my,’ the Young Mar­shal explained in a pub­lic address to a huge crowd in a Sian park on Decem­ber 16, ‘but reserved the for use against our own peo­ple.’ . . .”
7.–Eventually, Chi­ang grudg­ing­ly agreed to the coali­tion, appar­ent­ly after T.V. Soong saw to it that Chi­ang got a sig­nif­i­cant amount of mon­ey. “ . . . . The Young Mar­shal gal­lant­ly accept­ed all blame for the Sian Inci­dent, allow­ing Chi­ang to wash his hands in pub­lic and wipe them on him. (Inter­est­ing­ly he was put up at T.V. Soong’s home in Nanking.) He had done Chi­na a his­toric ser­vice by bring­ing about the long-sought unit­ed front, what­ev­er its lat­er fail­ings. . . .”
7.–Chiang’s reluc­tant agree­ment was trum­pet­ed by Hen­ry Luce: “ . . . . He put them [Chi­ang and Mme. Chi­ang] on the cov­er of Time’s first issue of 1938 as ‘Man and Wife of the Year.’ May-ling Soong Chi­ang now became an even big­ger inter­na­tion­al celebri­ty. . . .”
8.–As was his wont, Chi­ang broke his promise to the Young Mar­shal and Gen­er­al Yang. Laud­ed by Hen­ry Luce and his asso­ciates as an Exem­plary Chris­t­ian, Chi­ang promised an amnesty on Good Friday—a promise he prompt­ly broke. “ . . . . In his Good Fri­day mes­sage to Chi­na that spring of 1937, Chi­ang referred to the Sian Inci­dent and said pious­ly, ‘Remem­ber­ing that Christ enjoined us to for­give those who sin against us until sev­en­ty times sev­en and upon their repen­tance, I felt that that they should be allowed to start life anew. . . .”
9.–Similar treat­ment was afford­ed Gen­er­al Yang: “ . . . . The Young Marshal’s co-con­spir­a­tor, Gen­er­al Yang, despite the Good Fri­day amnesty, was impris­oned when he came back from Euro­pean exile and lan­guished for eleven years in one of Tai Li’s spe­cial deten­tion camps near Chungk­ing. His wife went on a hunger strike in protest and was allowed to starve her­self to death. . . .”

FTR#1199 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 6

In this pro­gram we con­tin­ue our analy­sis and his­tor­i­cal dis­cus­sion of Chi­ang Kai-shek’s nar­co-fas­cist gov­ern­ment.

Encap­su­lat­ing the nature of Chi­ang Kai-shek’s regime and the pub­lic rela­tions per­son­ae con­struct­ed for it by the Soong fam­i­ly, Ster­ling Sea­grave appro­pri­ate­ly describes it as a “Tro­jan horse.” ” . . . . . . . . The Nanking gov­ern­ment was quite sim­ply a Tro­jan horse, paint­ed in bright col­ors by the Soong clan [and Hen­ry Luce—D.E.]. In its bel­ly were hid­den the gen­er­als, secret police­men, and Green Gang who actu­al­ly wield­ed pow­er in Chi­na.  It was skill­ful­ly done, and one of T.V.’s major accom­plish­ments. Amer­i­cans, more so than oth­er West­ern­ers, were tak­en in. . . .”

Lion­ized as a suc­cess­ful tycoon and giant of inter­na­tion­al finance and com­merce, T.V. Soong (who also served as Finance Min­is­ter and oth­er cab­i­net posts for Chi­ang Kai-shek) was deeply involved with the Green Gang/Kuomintang nar­co-fas­cist oper­a­tion: “. . . . Shang­hai police reports indi­cate that in 1930, T.V. Soong per­son­al­ly arranged with Tu to deliv­er 700 cas­es of Per­sian opi­um to Shang­hai under KMT mil­i­tary pro­tec­tion to sup­ple­ment deplet­ed Chi­nese stocks. All par­ties involved in set­ting up the ship­ment and pro­tect­ing it dur­ing transit—including T.V.—received fees. . . .”

Amer­i­can pub­lish­ing giant Hen­ry Luce of Time, Inc. was the son of Amer­i­can mis­sion­ar­ies in Chi­na, where he spent much of his youth.

His posi­tion toward Chi­na might be said to embody “the Mis­sion­ary Posi­tion.”

A doc­tri­naire fas­cist him­self, he saw the busi­ness tycoon as an Amer­i­can iter­a­tion of the fas­cist strong­man, exem­pli­fied by his idol Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni.

Luce’s por­tray­al of Chi­ang Kai-shek, Mme. Chi­ang and their regime are utter­ly fan­tas­tic in nature, bear­ing no rela­tion what­so­ev­er to the real­i­ty of the Kuom­intang. Luce’s por­tray­al could be said to have set the tem­plate for cov­er­age of Chiang’s regime in the U.S.

As we con­tem­plate the cov­er­age of con­tem­po­rary Chi­na in this coun­try, it is worth recall­ing the depth of decep­tion in which our jour­nal­ists have indulged.

Key points of analy­sis and dis­cus­sion include:

1.–The influ­ence of Hen­ry Luce’s mis­sion­ary par­ent­ing in Chi­na on his per­spec­tive on Chi­ang: “ . . . . ‘The trou­ble with Har­ry,’ observed the writer Lau­ra Z. Hob­son, wife of one of his class­mates at Yale, ‘is that he’s torn between want­i­ng to be a Chi­nese mis­sion­ary like his par­ents and a Chi­nese war­lord like Chi­ang Kai-shek.’ . . . .”
2.–Luce com­pro­mised: “ . . . . he could do the next best thing—he could adopt the Soongs and make Chi­ang over into a mis­sion­ary-war­lord. . . .”
3.–“ . . . . By the spring of 1933, when T.V. was ready to vis­it Amer­i­ca, Luce was rapid­ly becom­ing the world’s most pow­er­ful pub­lish­er. With him [Luce] to take care of their pub­lic rela­tions and image build­ing in Amer­i­ca, the Soongs, Chi­angs and Kungs were in for a sen­sa­tion­al ride. . . .”
4.–For Luce, T.V. Soong’s pro­fes­sion­al busi­ness per­sona man­i­fest­ed in the same man­ner as the fas­cist strong­men he idol­ized. “. . . . The busi­ness tycoon, Luce believed, was America’s answer to the need for fas­cism. . . . He found jus­tice in the sur­vival of the fittest, and saw quite clear­ly that a soci­ety build on greed was more dynam­ic than one based on char­i­ty. . . . ‘The moral force of Fas­cism,’ Luce pro­nounced, ‘appear­ing in total­ly dif­fer­ent forms in dif­fer­ent nations, may be the inspi­ra­tion for the next gen­er­al march of mankind.’. . .”
5.–For Luce, there­fore, T.V. Soong served the same func­tion as Mus­soli­ni: “. . . . Luce char­ac­ter­ized T.V. as a car­toon super-tycoon. Luce had a soft spot for super­heroes that enabled him prac­ti­cal­ly to ven­er­ate Chi­ang Kai-shek. ‘The hero-wor­ship­per in him,’ said his biog­ra­ph­er W.A. Swan­berg, ‘respond­ed to the Fas­cist super­man who could inspire the alle­giance and coop­er­a­tion of the mass­es. . . . He point­ed to the suc­cess of Mus­soli­ni in revi­tal­iz­ing the aris­to­crat­ic prin­ci­ple in Italy, ‘a state reborn by virtue of Fas­cist sym­bols, Fas­cist rank and hence Fas­cist enter­prise.’ . . . . Luce admired strong regimes in which the ‘best peo­ple’ ruled for the good of all . . . . In Mus­soli­ni, he saw such great­ness and in Fas­cism, such dra­mat­ic polit­i­cal inno­va­tions that he could not con­tain his excite­ment. . . .’”

Next, we exam­ine the sor­did, Machi­avel­lian, klep­to­crat­ic nature of the Soong fam­i­ly.

Key points of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis include:

1.–H.Kung (Chiang’s Finance Min­is­ter at the time and the broth­er-in-law of T.V. Soong) and his finan­cial coup‑d’etat, real­iz­ing a takeover of much of China’s finan­cial infra­struc­ture and the banks com­pris­ing it. He did so in col­lab­o­ra­tion with T.V. Soong, his wife (the for­mer Ai-ling Soong) and Green Gang king­pin Tu Yueh-sheng.
2.–The bank­ing coup was rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the dizzy­ing cor­rup­tion with which the Chiang/Tu/Soong axis dom­i­nat­ed the Chi­nese econ­o­my: “ . . . . The Bank of China’s new board [of direc­tors] was elect­ed on March 30. Among the new direc­tors were T.V. Soong, [his broth­er] T.L. Soong, and Big Eared Tu [Yueh-sheng]. When the Bank of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions held its first meet­ing after the coup, T.L. Soong was on its board. Both T.V. and T. L. acquired seats on the board of the Cen­tral Bank. The Bank coup of March [1935] was fol­lowed by the method­i­cal sub­ver­sion of three oth­er impor­tant Shang­hai com­mer­cial banks that June. . . . All three banks were placed under the super­vi­sion of H.H. Kung’s Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ Bank, on the board of which sat T.L. Soong, T.A. Soong, and T.V. Soong. Big-eared Tu became the new chair­man of the board of the Com­mer­cial Bank. . . . The list went on and on, as bank after bank, then com­pa­ny after com­pa­ny, came under con­trol of the clan. . . .”
3.–In addi­tion to T.V. Soong’s younger broth­ers T.L. and T.A., the Green Gang hier­ar­chy com­prised anoth­er, vital com­po­nent of the Kuom­intang eco­nom­ic axis: “ . . . . L. was also the head of the Wham­poo Con­ser­van­cy Board with juris­dic­tion over Shang­hai har­bor, which was dom­i­nat­ed by the Green Gang. Every­thing that hap­pened on the water­front was the busi­ness of Big-eared Tu’s man Ku Tsu-chuan. . . . Although it was not wide­ly known, and cer­tain­ly not talked about, this water­front gang­ster was the old­er broth­er of one of Gen­er­alis­si­mo Chi­ang Kai-shek’s senior mil­i­tary officers—General Ku Chu‑t’ung, who even­tu­al­ly rose to be chief of the gen­er­al staff and, because of the New Fourth Army Inci­dent, one of the most hat­ed men in Chi­na. (We will say more about this top­ic lat­er. It was high­light­ed in FTR#1142.) . . . .”

Hav­ing been born in 1949, I grew up with World War II as a crit­i­cal ele­ment of my polit­i­cal, civic and cog­ni­tive upbring­ing. I vivid­ly remem­ber watch­ing the doc­u­men­tary “Vic­to­ry at Sea” on tele­vi­sion as a child. As I have grown old­er, more knowl­edge­able and wis­er, learn­ing the truth about World War II has been very sad and painful.

In FTR #1095, we not­ed the his­tor­i­cal back­ground to the ongo­ing con­flict with China–the bru­tal Japan­ese onslaught and the col­lab­o­ra­tion of Chi­ang Kai-shek’s Kuom­intang nar­co-dic­ta­tor­ship with Japan’s attack and occu­pa­tion.

As a boy, I was awed and moved by the hero­ism of Amer­i­can and Allied ser­vice per­son­nel who braved the dan­gers of fly­ing over the Hump to bring U.S. sup­plies to Chi­ang Kai-shek’s forces. Although offi­cial­ly allied with the U.S., Chi­ang Kai-shek’s forces were actu­al­ly work­ing “both sides of the street.”

We have encoun­tered noth­ing more grotesque­ly trag­ic and dis­il­lu­sion­ing than the aware­ness that Amer­i­can mil­i­tary sup­plies flown over the Hump and/or sent along the Bur­ma Road found their way into the hands of the Japan­ese, cour­tesy of KMT gen­er­al Ku Chu-tung and his orga­nized crime broth­er.

Col­lab­o­rat­ing with Kodama Yoshio, the Japan­ese crime boss and Admi­ral of the Impe­r­i­al Japan­ese Navy, the broth­ers swapped U.S. lend lease sup­plies for drugs.

In the pas­sage below, it is impor­tant to note the role of the Black Drag­on Soci­ety in the ascent of Kodama Yoshio. Black Drag­on, along with Black Ocean, are key Japan­ese ultra-nation­al­ist soci­eties and the appar­ent fore­run­ners of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church and, pos­si­bly the over­lap­ping Shin­cheon­ji cult.

Kodama played a key role in the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, as dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 291  and 970.

. . . . He [Kodama] was sprung from jail by [Gen­er­al] Doi­hara in April 1937, on the con­di­tion that he devot­ed his vio­lent ener­gies to loot­ing Chi­na’s under­world. This epiphany, the trans­for­ma­tion of Kodama from thug to super-patri­ot, was sug­gest­ed by Black Drag­on’s Toya­ma [Mit­su­ru], whose own stature as a patri­ot was affirmed in 1924 when he was a guest at Emper­or Hiro­hi­to’s wed­ding. . . .

. . . . All pro­ceeds were divert­ed from Chi­nese rack­e­teers to Gold­en Lily, minus a han­dling charge for Kodama him­self. Ulti­mate­ly, Kodama was respon­si­ble to Prince Chichibu, and to the throne.

Princes were not equipped to deal with gang­sters. Kodama saved them from soil­ing their hands. He con­vert­ed nar­cotics into bul­lion by the sim­ple method of trad­ing hero­in to gang­sters for gold ingots. How bro­kers got the ingots was not his con­cern. He closed a deal with water­front boss Ku Tsu-chuan to swap hero­in for gold through­out the Yangtze Val­ley. Thanks to Ku’s broth­er, KMT senior gen­er­al Ku Chu-tung, Japan also gained access to U.S. Lend-Lease sup­plies reach­ing west­ern Chi­na by way of the Bur­ma road, or on air­craft fly­ing over the Hump from India. Once in ware­hous­es in Kun­ming or Chungk­ing, the Lend-Lease was re-sold to the Japan­ese Army, with Kodama as pur­chas­ing agent. . . .

T.L. Soong—T.V.’s younger broth­er: “ . . . . who had been in charge of Lend Lease dur­ing World II, and whose Amer­i­can roots were in New York City, became some­thing of an enig­ma. Sources in Wash­ing­ton said T.L. worked as a secret con­sul­tant to the Trea­sury Depart­ment in the 1950’s, engaged in what they would not say. Trea­sury claims it has no record of a T.L. Soong what­ev­er. . . .”

Next, we high­light the cen­tral role of Ger­man gen­er­al Hans Von Seeckt in Chi­ang Kai-shek’s mil­i­tary cam­paign against the Chi­nese Com­mu­nists.

Key points of analy­sis and dis­cus­sion include:

1.–“ . . . . The mil­i­tary cam­paign . . . . was engi­neered for Chi­ang Kai-shek by one of the best-known strate­gists of Nazi Germany—General Hans von Seeckt. When Hitler came to pow­er in 1933, Chi­ang asked for mil­i­tary help. Hitler sent von Seeckt and Lieu­tenant Gen­er­al Georg Wet­zell. The Generalissimo’s deter­mi­na­tion to fight Com­mu­nists, rather than Japan­ese, was to Hitler’s lik­ing. . . .”
2.–Unsurprisingly, the von Seeckt-engi­neered cam­paign was a slaugh­ter: “ . . . . [not­ed jour­nal­ist] Edgar Snow said the Com­mu­nists suf­fered 60,000 casu­al­ties, and that in all a mil­lion peo­ple were killed or starved to death. Of that mil­lion dead, there­fore, at least 940,000 were not ‘Com­mu­nist ban­dits.’ . . . .”

Chi­ang Kai-shek’s regime net­worked exten­sive­ly with the fas­cist dic­ta­tor­ships of Europe. Com­mer­cial net­work­ing between Hitler, Mus­soli­ni and Chi­ang involved Kuom­intang Finance Min­is­ter H.H. Kung and his wife, the for­mer Ai-ling Soong.

Key points of analy­sis and dis­cus­sion include: 

1.–” . . . . The Kungs then sailed to Europe and the most impor­tant part of their trip, the boom­ing Ger­man arms indus­try. H.H. arranged to pur­chase $25 mil­lion U.S. in weapons from Ger­many. Then, since fas­cism was fash­ion­able, and his broth­er-in-law [Chi­ang Kai-shek] was one of its lead­ing expo­nents, H. H. decid­ed to vis­it Mus­soli­ni . . .”
2.–The Kungs’ mis­sion to Italy was suc­cess­ful: “ . . . . When H.H. arrived, he cut a deal where­by the $2 mil­lion U.S. bal­ance of Box­er [Rebel­lion] indem­ni­ties still owed to Italy would be used to buy Fiat war planes. Mus­soli­ni left it to his hand­some, swarthy son-in-law, count Ciano, his Min­is­ter to Chi­na, to arrange the details. Ital­ian assis­tance to the infant Chi­nese air force was expand­ed to include a school to train pilots at Loyang and a Fiat air­craft assem­bly plant in Nan­chang. . . .”
3.–Chiang’s tac­tic of using his mil­i­tary to fight the Chi­nese Com­mu­nists instead of the Japan­ese was viewed favor­ably by the Axis—Nazi Ger­many, Fas­cist Italy and Impe­r­i­al Japan. Not even T.V. Soong could influ­ence Chi­ang to change strat­e­gy, one which Soong felt—correctly–would dri­ve the Chi­nese peo­ple into the arms of the Com­mu­nists. (Chiang’s anti-Com­mu­nism was a major sell­ing point used to cul­ti­vate sup­port in the U.S.: “ . . . . While T.V. Soong was try­ing to per­suade Chi­ang to for­get the Chi­nese Com­mu­nists and defend Chi­na against Japan­ese aggres­sion, the Japan­ese, Ger­mans, and Ital­ians were all encour­ag­ing Chi­ang to love Japan and kill reds. . . .”
4.–Chiang’s fas­cist infat­u­a­tion with Hitler’s Ger­many influ­enced his dis­patch­ing of his son to join the Wehrma­cht: “ . . . . The Gen­er­alis­si­mo dai­ly became more enam­ored of the Nazi mil­i­tary and police state. Even­tu­al­ly, he sent his younger son, Wei-kuo, to be schooled by the Nazis. . . . (Wei-kuo became a sec­ond lieu­tenant in the 98th Jaeger Reg­i­ment and before return­ing to Chi­na took part in the inva­sion of Aus­tria in 1938. . . .)

The pro­gram con­cludes by set­ting forth the struc­ture of Chiang’s fas­cist infra­struc­ture, his secret police cadres in par­tic­u­lar.

Key points of analy­sis and dis­cus­sion include:

1.–Chiang trans­lat­ed his admi­ra­tion of Hitler and Mus­soli­ni into the most sin­cere form of flattery—imitation: “ . . . . Chi­ang believed that fas­cism stood on three legs—nationalism, absolute faith in the Max­i­mum Leader, and the spar­tan mil­i­ta­riza­tion of the cit­i­zens. The New Life Move­ment [the chief pro­mot­er of which was Madame Chi­ang Kai-shek] was the pop­u­lar man­i­fes­ta­tion of Chiang’s fascism—a toy for his wife and the missionaries—and it was com­ic enough not to be tak­en seri­ous­ly by for­eign­ers in gen­er­al. The mis­sion­ar­ies . . . . were now eager­ly climb­ing aboard the New Life band­wag­on. . . .”
2.–There were three over­lap­ping orga­ni­za­tion­al ele­ments to Chiang’s fas­cist cadres—the Blue Shirts, the CBIS (Cen­tral Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion and Sta­tis­tics) which was run by the Ch’en broth­ers and the MBIS (the Mil­i­tary Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion and Sta­tis­tics which was run by Tai Li. Both Ch’en broth­ers and Tai Li were Green Gang asso­ciates of Chi­ang Kai-shek: “ . . . . Chiang’s fas­ci­na­tion with Hitler result­ed in the cre­ation of a new secret soci­ety mod­eled on Hitler’s Brown Shirts and Mussolini’s Black Shirts. Chi­ang called his the Blue Shirts, though he denied their exis­tence repeat­ed­ly. They were an off­shoot of his two secret ser­vices, the par­ty gestapo under the Ch’en broth­ers, and the mil­i­tary secret police under Tai Li. . . .”
3.–The CBIS was the Kuomintang’s secret polit­i­cal police: “ . . . . Chi­ang came to depend heav­i­ly on the two nephews of his Green Gang men­tor . . . . Ch’en Ch’i‑mei. The old­er nephew, Ch’en Kuo-fu, who had orga­nized and head­ed the dri­ve that recruit­ed sev­en thou­sand Green Gang youths for the Wham­poa Mil­i­tary Acad­e­my had since then been giv­en the respon­si­bil­i­ty of set­ting up a gestapo orga­ni­za­tion with­in the KMT. As head of the KMT’s Orga­ni­za­tion Depart­ment, his job was to puri­fy the par­ty and the Nanking gov­ern­ment con­tin­u­al­ly. To guar­an­tee the loy­al­ty of each par­ty mem­ber, Ch’en Kuo-fu built a spy net­work that touched every gov­ern­ment agency. To run this new appa­ra­tus, he select­ed his younger broth­er, Ch’en Li-fu [edu­cat­ed at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pitts­burgh in the U.S.—D.E.]. Both the Ch-en broth­ers were “blood broth­ers” of Chi­ang Kai-shek, hav­ing tak­en part in a Green Gang cer­e­mo­ny after the death of their uncle. . . . Li-fu . . . . became the direc­tor of Chiang’s secret service—the Cen­tral Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion and Sta­tis­tics (CBIS), the euphemism cho­sen for the KMT’s polit­i­cal secret police. . . .”
4.–“China’s Himmler”—Tai Li—headed the MBIS: “ . . . . While the CBIS spied, con­duct­ed purges and polit­i­cal exe­cu­tions with­in the par­ty, large-scale pub­lic ter­ror­ism was the province of its mil­i­tary coun­ter­part the Mil­i­tary Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion and Sta­tis­tics (MBIS) was run by “China’s Himm­ler,” Tai Li—for twen­ty years the most dread­ed man in Chi­na. . . . Tai Li had spent his youth as a Green Gang aide to Big-eared Tu and was edu­cat­ed at Tu’s per­sona expense. In 1926, he was one of the Green Gang recruits enrolled at Wham­poa Acad­e­my. . . . All clan­des­tine oper­a­tions in Chi­na, except those con­duct­ed by the Ch’ens, were his respon­si­bil­i­ty dur­ing the 1930’s. . . .”
5.–Supplementing and over­lap­ping both CBIS and MBIS were the Blue Shirts: “ . . . . Both of these secret police orga­ni­za­tions were sup­ple­ment­ed by the Blue Shirts. Although it was a repli­ca of the Euro­pean fas­cist cults, the Blue Shirts also emu­lat­ed Japan’s dread­ed Black Drag­on Soci­ety, the most mil­i­tant secret cult of the Impe­r­i­al Army. [The orga­ni­za­tion that helped spawn Kodama Yoshio—D.E.] The Blue Shirts job was to reform Chi­na the hard way, by knock­ing heads togeth­er, car­ry­ing out polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions, liq­ui­dat­ing cor­rupt bureau­crats and ‘ene­mies of the state.’ . . . . They were offi­cered by old Green Gang class­mates from Wham­poa. . . .”
6.–Exemplifying the homi­ci­dal bru­tal­i­ty of Chiang’s secret police cadres was the liq­ui­da­tion of six of China’s most impor­tant writ­ers: “ . . . . The extreme was soon reached with the hor­rif­ic end of six of China’s fore­most writ­ers, all fol­low­ers of the lead­ing lit­er­ary fig­ure of the [1911] rev­o­lu­tion [led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen], Lu Hsun. . . . He [Chi­ang] ordered his secret police to arrest the writ­ers. Lu Hsun elud­ed arrest but six young lead­ers of the group—including Feng Kung, China’s best-known woman writer—were tak­en into cus­tody and forced to dig a large pit. They were tied hand and foot, thrown into the pit, and buried alive. . . .”

The Corporatist Virus

The Covid-19 pan­dem­ic is dri­ving what might be termed a right-wing ide­o­log­i­cal wet dream in a num­ber of dif­fer­ent respects. In this post, we note that the dam­age done by the virus is seen as fur­ther­ing a cor­po­ratist agen­da, mas­querad­ing under the com­mon rhetor­i­cal cam­ou­flage of “lib­er­tar­i­an” phi­los­o­phy. An impor­tant piece in “The Guardian” details how plu­to­crats terming them­selves “anar­cho-cap­i­tal­ists” see the pan­dem­ic as forc­ing regions–from nations to municipalities–to con­form to the demands of dom­i­nant, mobile blocks of cap­i­tal by elim­i­nat­ing the essen­tials of the pro­gres­sive social agen­da. ” . . . .Their analy­sis divid­ed the US map into ‘lag­gard anti-growth’ states and ‘momen­tum pro-growth’ states. The for­mer have min­i­mum wages, pro-union laws and state income tax; the lat­ter are free of such reg­u­la­tions. In the estab­lished mode of dis­as­ter cap­i­tal­ism, Laf­fer and Moore’s analy­sis appears to see the pan­dem­ic as a way to com­pel ‘anti-growth’ states to adopt ever low­er tax rates in order to attract mobile cap­i­tal and labour. It sug­gests those who resist will not be bailed out by redis­tri­b­u­tion from the cen­tral gov­ern­ment, but left to lan­guish in a deserved eco­nom­ic depres­sion. The effect is rem­i­nis­cent of social Dar­win­ism, applied as a phi­los­o­phy of gov­ern­ment. . . .”

Walkin’ the Cobra in India: Hindutva Fascism’s Triumphal Revisionism

In FTR #’s 988 and 989, we set forth the assas­si­na­tion of Mahat­ma Gand­hi by an elab­o­rate, well-doc­u­ment­ed plot by the Hin­dut­va fas­cist RSS and the asso­ci­at­ed Hin­du Mahasab­ha:The RSS was mod­eled after Euro­pean fas­cist move­ments and the Hin­du Mahasab­ha open­ly emu­lat­ed the Ger­man Nazi Par­ty under Hitler, see­ing the Fuhrer’s treat­ment of the Jews as an oper­a­tional par­a­digm for their pro­posed han­dling of Indi­a’s Mus­lims.The RSS came to pow­er with the elec­tion of Naren­dra Modi, whose regime has under­tak­en a pro­gram of active per­se­cu­tion of Mus­lims and mur­der of crit­i­cal jour­nal­ists and polit­i­cal oppo­nents. Now, the Hin­du Mahasab­ha is lead­ing a pro­gram to cel­e­brate Nathu­ram Godse, the RSS assas­sin who killed Gand­hi.Yogi Adityanath, appoint­ed by Modi to lead Uttar Pradesh, has pro­posed renam­ing the city of Meerut after Godse.

FTR #1072 Doin’ Wind Sprints with the Snake in Ukraine

We pro­ceed from our pre­vi­ous pro­gram with con­tin­ued read­ing of an arti­cle about the rise of fas­cism in Ukraine that details the numer­ous, mul­ti-faceted exam­ples of the cap­ture of Ukrain­ian soci­ety and gov­ern­ment by the OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions ele­vat­ed to pow­er through the Maid­an coup. Yet, as the arti­cle notes at the end, its many exam­ples were just a small sam­pling of what has tran­spired in Ukraine since 2014.

We have spo­ken repeat­ed­ly about the Nazi tract Ser­pen­t’s Walk, in which the Third Reich goes under­ground, buys into the opin­ion-form­ing media and, even­tu­al­ly, takes over.

Hitler, the Third Reich and their actions are glo­ri­fied and memo­ri­al­ized. The essence of the book is syn­op­sized on the back cov­er:

“It assumes that Hitler’s war­rior elite — the SS — did­n’t give up their strug­gle for a White world when they lost the Sec­ond World War. Instead their sur­vivors went under­ground and adopt­ed some of their tac­tics of their ene­mies: they began build­ing their eco­nom­ic mus­cle and buy­ing into the opin­ion-form­ing media. A cen­tu­ry after the war they are ready to chal­lenge the democ­rats and Jews for the hearts and minds of White Amer­i­cans, who have begun to have their fill of gov­ern­ment-enforced mul­ti-cul­tur­al­ism and ‘equal­i­ty.’ ”

Some­thing anal­o­gous is hap­pen­ing in Ukraine and India.

In Ukraine, fas­cism in being remade as a hero­ic bul­wark against com­mu­nism and Rus­sia. In India, it is being remade as a lib­er­at­ing anti-colo­nial, anti-impe­r­i­al force.

In FTR #889, we not­ed that Pierre Omid­yar, a dar­ling of the so-called “pro­gres­sive” sec­tor for his found­ing of The Inter­cept, was deeply involved with the financ­ing of the ascent of both Naren­dra Mod­i’s Hin­dut­va fas­cist BJP and the OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions in Ukraine.

Omid­yar’s anoint­ment as an icon of inves­tiga­tive report­ing could not be more iron­ic, in that jour­nal­ists and crit­ics of his fas­cist allies in Ukraine and India are being repressed and mur­dered, there­by fur­ther­ing the sup­pres­sion of truth in those soci­eties. This sup­pres­sion of truth feeds in to the Ser­pen­t’s Walk sce­nario.

The Snake is doing wind sprints in the  U.S. as well.

We have not­ed the pho­to of Bara­boo, Wis­con­sin high school stu­dents giv­ing the Nazi salute at their junior prom.

Now, Bara­boo Ukrain­ian-Amer­i­can youth have erect­ed stat­ues of Ukrain­ian pogromist Simonon Petlu­ra (translit­er­at­ed spellings vary), along with Ukrain­ian Nazi lead­ers Roman Shukhevych and Stephan Ban­dera.

This is to be seen against the back­ground of the re-insti­tu­tion of OUN/B fas­cists in Ukraine.

To pro­vide his­tor­i­cal and polit­i­cal con­text to the dis­cus­sion, we con­clude the broad­cast with infor­ma­tion sup­ple­ment­ing pre­vi­ous analy­sis of the devel­op­ment of “The Chris­t­ian West.” It is with­in the cre­ation of The Chris­t­ian West that the foun­da­tion of the present, unfor­tu­nate devel­op­ments is to be found.In FTR #‘s 1058, 1059, 1060, we revis­it­ed the con­cept of “The Chris­t­ian West”: ” . . . . When it became clear that the armies of the Third Reich were going to be defeat­ed, it opened secret nego­ti­a­tions with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the West­ern Allies. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on both sides belonged to the transat­lantic finan­cial and indus­tri­al fra­ter­ni­ty that had active­ly sup­port­ed fas­cism. The thrust of these nego­ti­a­tions was the estab­lish­ment of The Chris­t­ian West. Viewed by the Nazis as a vehi­cle for sur­viv­ing mil­i­tary defeat, ‘The Chris­t­ian West’ involved a Hitler-less Reich join­ing with the U.S., Britain, France and oth­er Euro­pean nations in a transat­lantic, pan-Euro­pean anti-Sovi­et alliance. In fact, The Chris­t­ian West became a real­i­ty only after the ces­sa­tion of hos­til­i­ties. The de-Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of Ger­many was abort­ed. Although a few of the more obvi­ous and obnox­ious ele­ments of Nazism were removed, Nazis were returned to pow­er at vir­tu­al­ly every lev­el and in almost every capac­i­ty in the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many. . . .”

In FTR #1009, we detailed “Chris­t­ian West” nego­ti­a­tions to have a Hitler-less Third Reich join with the West­ern Allies, under­tak­en by OSS rep­re­sen­ta­tives Allen Dulles and William Dono­van, net­work­ing with Prince Max Egon von Hohen­lo­he, a proxy for SD offi­cer Wal­ter Schel­len­berg.

In in his 1985 vol­ume Amer­i­can Swasti­ka, the late author Charles High­am pro­vides us with insight into the Chris­t­ian West con­cept, reveal­ing the extent to which these SS/OSS nego­ti­a­tions set the tem­plate for the post-World War II world, as well as the degree of res­o­nance that key Amer­i­cans, such as Allen Dulles, had with Nazi ide­ol­o­gy, anti-Semi­tism in par­tic­u­lar.

The post­war polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic real­i­ties of the Dulles, Hohen­lo­he, Schel­len­berg meet­ings were fur­ther solid­i­fied when William (Wild Bill) Dono­van entered into his “M” Project.

Impor­tant to note in this con­text, is the dom­i­nant role in world affairs played by car­tels, the fun­da­men­tal ele­ment in the indus­tri­al and finan­cial axis that was essen­tial to the cre­ation and per­pet­u­a­tion of fas­cism. Much of the Third Reich’s mil­i­tary indus­tri­al com­plex, the pri­ma­cy of Ger­many in the post­war EU, as well as the cor­re­la­tion between post­war Europe as con­struct­ed in the Chris­t­ian West nego­ti­a­tions and long-stand­ing Ger­man plans for Euro­pean dom­i­na­tion are deriv­a­tive of the pow­er of car­tels.

The Chris­t­ian West and “M” Projects:

1.–Revealed that Allen Dulles’ views res­onat­ed with Third Reich anti-Semi­tism, and that his opin­ions were shared by oth­er, like-mind­ed Amer­i­can pow­er bro­kers: ” . . . . He said that it would be unbear­able for any decent Euro­pean to think that the Jews might return some­day, and that there must be no tol­er­a­tion of a return of the Jew­ish pow­er posi­tions. . . . He made the curi­ous asser­tion that the Amer­i­cans were only con­tin­u­ing the war to get rid of the Jews and that there were peo­ple in Amer­i­ca who were intend­ing to send the Jews to Africa. . . .”
2.–Set the tem­plate for the post­war Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many and the EU: ” . . . . He [Dulles] reit­er­at­ed his desire for a greater Euro­pean polit­i­cal federation–and fore­saw the fed­er­al Ger­many that in fact took place. . . . Ger­many would be set up as the dom­i­nat­ing force in indus­try and agri­cul­ture in con­ti­nen­tal Europe, at the heart of a con­ti­nen­tal state run by Ger­many, the U.S.A., and Great Britain as a focus of trade. . . .”
3.–Were the vehi­cle for Allen Dulles to betray much of the Allied mil­i­tary plans for South­ern Europe to the Third Reich: “. . . . Dulles now pro­ceed­ed to sup­ply Hohen­lo­he with dol­lops of secret intel­li­gence, announc­ing that the U.S. Army would not land in Spain but, after con­quer­ing Tunisia, would advance from Africa toward the Ploesti oil fields to cut off the Ger­man oil sup­plies. He said it was like­ly the Allies would land in Sici­ly to cut off Rom­mel and con­trol Italy from there, and thus secure the advance in the Balka­ns. Hav­ing giv­en vir­tu­al­ly the entire bat­tle plan for Europe, top secret at the time, to one of Ger­many’s agents, Allen Dulles pro­ceed­ed to the almost unnec­es­sary rid­er that he had very good rela­tions with the Vat­i­can. . . .”
4.–Directly fore­shad­owed the con­fronta­tion between the U.S. and the Sovi­et Union which became the Cold War.  “. . . . In oth­er meet­ings, Dulles . . . . pre­dict­ed that ‘the next world war would be between the U.S.A. and the Sovi­et Union.’ . . . .”
5.–Were the occa­sion for Dulles to laud the “genius” of Nazi pro­pa­gan­da min­is­ter Joseph Goebbels: “He . . . . described a recent speech by Dr. Goebbels as ‘a work of genius; I have rarely read a speech with such ratio­nal plea­sure.’ . . . .”

Memorial Day Weekend Broadcast: Sunday, May 26th and Monday, May 27th

On Sun­day 5/26/2019 from 11 a.m. (Pacif­ic Time) until 7pm, and on Mon­day, 5/27/2019 from 10am 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.” This rein­vest­ment of the prof­its of the Amer­i­can indus­tri­al boom of the 1920’s in Japan­ese and Ger­man strate­gic heavy indus­try was the cap­i­tal that drove the engines of con­quest that sub­dued both Europe and Asia dur­ing World War II. On Sun­day, we will high­light the Amer­i­can-Ger­man indus­tri­al axis and its var­i­ous man­i­fes­ta­tions. On Mon­day, we will explore the Amer­i­can-Japan­ese indus­tri­al axis.

FTR #1071 75th Anniversaries: Walkin’ the Snake on the Earth Island with Pierre Omidyar

We have spo­ken repeat­ed­ly about the Nazi tract “Ser­pen­t’s Walk,” in which the Third Reich goes under­ground, buys into the opin­ion-form­ing media and, even­tu­al­ly, takes over.

Hitler, the Third Reich and their actions are glo­ri­fied and memo­ri­al­ized. The essence of the book is syn­op­sized on the back cov­er:

“It assumes that Hitler’s war­rior elite — the SS — did­n’t give up their strug­gle for a White world when they lost the Sec­ond World War. Instead their sur­vivors went under­ground and adopt­ed some of their tac­tics of their ene­mies: they began build­ing their eco­nom­ic mus­cle and buy­ing into the opin­ion-form­ing media. A cen­tu­ry after the war they are ready to chal­lenge the democ­rats and Jews for the hearts and minds of White Amer­i­cans, who have begun to have their fill of gov­ern­ment-enforced mul­ti-cul­tur­al­ism and ‘equal­i­ty.’ ”

Some­thing anal­o­gous is hap­pen­ing in Ukraine and India.

In Ukraine, fas­cism in being remade as a hero­ic bul­wark against com­mu­nism and Rus­sia. In India, it is being remade as a lib­er­at­ing anti-colo­nial, anti-impe­r­i­al force.

In FTR #889, we not­ed that Pierre Omid­yar, a dar­ling of the so-called “pro­gres­sive” sec­tor for his found­ing of The Inter­cept, was deeply involved with the financ­ing of the ascent of both Naren­dra Mod­i’s Hin­dut­va fas­cist BJP and the OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions in Ukraine.

Omid­yar’s anoint­ment as an icon of inves­tiga­tive report­ing could not be more iron­ic, in that jour­nal­ists and crit­ics of his fas­cist allies in Ukraine and India are being repressed and mur­dered, there­by fur­ther­ing the sup­pres­sion of truth in those soci­eties. This sup­pres­sion of truth feeds in to the “Ser­pen­t’s Walk” sce­nario.

In a long series deal­ing large­ly with appar­ent fas­cist ele­ments and spooks grouped around the “social­ists” on the left-wing of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, as well as a sup­ple­men­tal Food For Thought post, we hypoth­e­sized about, among oth­er things, a mar­riage between the Hin­dut­va fas­cism of Naren­dra Modi, his BJP and the RSS (the orga­ni­za­tion that mur­dered Mahat­ma Gand­hi and which was mod­eled after Mus­solin­i’s black­shirts) and the “Boseian” fas­cism of Sub­has Chan­dra Bose.

Not­ing that Hitler was viewed favor­ably by many Indi­ans, busi­ness stu­dents in par­tic­u­lar, and that Mein Kampf was a best-sell­er in India, we have dis­cussed Mod­i’s intro­duc­tion of a school text­book when he gov­erned Gujarat that glo­ri­fied Hitler.

It appears that the mar­riage between Mod­i’s Hin­dut­va fas­cism and “Boseian” fas­cism has been effect­ed, with Modi renam­ing three Islands as a trib­ute to Bose and glo­ri­fy­ing Bose and his Axis fight­ing forces in a dis­gust­ing com­mem­o­ra­tive cer­e­mo­ny.

Key ele­ments of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis include:

1.–“Prime min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi on Sun­day announced the renam­ing of three islands of Andaman and Nico­bar arch­i­pel­ago as a trib­ute to Neta­ji Sub­has Chan­dra Bose. . . .The Ross Island was renamed as Neta­ji Sub­has Chan­dra Bose Dweep, the Neil Island as Sha­heed Dweep and the Have­lock Island as Swaraj Dweep. . . . “ ‘When it comes to heroes of the free­dom strug­gle, we take the name of Neta­ji Sub­has Chan­dra Bose with pride. The first prime min­is­ter of the Azad Hind gov­ern­ment Sub­hash Babu had made Indi­a’s inde­pen­dence res­o­lu­tion on the soil of Andaman,’ he said.”
2.–Modi began his speech by ask­ing the peo­ple in the ground to switch on the flash­lights of their mobile phones to hon­our Bose.
3.–Thousands of mobile flash­lights were then switched on pro­vid­ing a visu­al delight.
Don­ning the Azad Hind Fauj (Indi­an Nation­al Army) cap, he addressed a pub­lic meet­ing at Neta­ji Sta­di­um on the occa­sion of the 75th anniver­sary of the hoist­ing of the Tri­colour by Bose.
4.–At the sta­di­um, the PM also released a com­mem­o­ra­tive stamp, its first-day cov­er and a Rs 75 coin.He also announced set­ting up of a deemed uni­ver­si­ty named after Bose.
5.–The Andaman and Nico­bar islands are not just a sym­bol of Indi­a’s nat­ur­al beau­ty, but are also like a place of pil­grim­age for Indi­ans, said Modi.Modi also vis­it­ed the Mari­na Park and hoist­ed a nation­al flag on a 150-feet high mast, besides pay­ing flo­ral trib­ute at Neta­ji’s stat­ue.
6.–On Decem­ber 30, 1943, Bose had sug­gest­ed that Andaman and Nico­bar Islands be renamed as Shahid and Swaraj Dweep respec­tive­ly.
7.–During World War II, the Japan­ese had cap­tured the Andaman and Nico­bar Islands, and Neta­ji came here as the Azad Hind Fauz led by him was an ally of the Japan­ese force.
8.–“ ‘The his­tor­i­cal event of 30th Decem­ber 1943 has been com­plet­ed today after 75 years,’ Modi said. . . .”

The 1943 renam­ing of the Andaman Islands was done dur­ing the bru­tal Japan­ese occu­pa­tion of that ter­ri­to­ry:

” . . . . [KR] Ganesh [the MP from the Andaman and Nico­bar Islands] Ganesh point­ed out to the House that the local peo­ple of the Andamans were impris­oned and tor­tured by the Japan­ese in the same Cel­lu­lar Jail in Port Blair where Neta­ji Bose raised the flag of a free India for the first time in Decem­ber 1943. [MP] Samar Guha was unaware of this, as were most oth­er mem­bers of Par­lia­ment. He want­ed to know if the atroc­i­ties by the Japan­ese occu­pa­tion forces on the local peo­ple had tak­en place before or after Bose’s vis­it. Ganesh’s reply was, “Before, dur­ing and after.” . . . .  ‘Japan­ese troops act­ed harsh­ly against local pop­u­la­tions. The Japan­ese mil­i­tary police were espe­cial­ly feared. Food and vital neces­si­ties were con­fis­cat­ed by the occu­piers caus­ing wide­spread mis­ery and star­va­tion by the end of the war.’ The sit­u­a­tion was the same in Port Blair and sur­round­ing vil­lages and near­by islands such as Neil Island and Have­lock Island. I have come across many sto­ries of the fear of the Kem­peitai, the Japan­ese mil­i­tary police – of the arrests, the beat­ings, the hunger, the fear and anx­i­ety that had gripped the peo­ple with hun­dreds in jail for sus­pi­cion of spy­ing for the British. . . .”

We have repeat­ed­ly made the point that the dimen­sions of offi­cial lying in the West were of tru­ly Orwellian proportions–documented World War II his­to­ry was being dis­missed as “Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da” or “Krem­lin pro­pa­gan­da.” The snake is doing wind sprints in Ukraine.

Next, we begin read­ing and analy­sis of an arti­cle about the rise of fas­cism in Ukraine that details the numer­ous, mul­ti-faceted exam­ples of the cap­ture of Ukrain­ian soci­ety and gov­ern­ment by the OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions ele­vat­ed to pow­er through the Maid­an coup. (This will be con­tin­ued in our next pro­gram.)

Points of analy­sis and dis­cus­sion include:

* The ele­va­tion of the neo-Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion that was for­mal­ly incor­po­rat­ed into Ukraine’s armed forces yet remains a neo-Nazi bat­tal­ion.
* Azov is now engaged in polic­ing with its Nation­al Druzhi­na street patrol units that have engaged in anti-Roma pogroms
* Azov’s cam­paign to turn Ukraine into an inter­na­tion­al hub of white suprema­cy
* Andriy Parubiy’s role in cre­at­ing Ukraine’s Nazi Par­ty that he con­tin­ues to embrace and that’s rou­tine­ly ignored as he has become the par­lia­ment speak­er
* The deputy min­is­ter of the Interior—which con­trols the Nation­al Police—is a vet­er­an of Azov, Vadim Troy­an
* Gov­ern­ment spon­sor­ship of his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism and holo­caust denial though agen­cies like Ukrain­ian Insti­tute of Nation­al Mem­o­ry
* Torch­light parades are now nor­mal
* With­in sev­er­al years, an entire gen­er­a­tion will be indoc­tri­nat­ed to wor­ship Holo­caust per­pe­tra­tors as nation­al heroes
* Books that crit­i­cize the now-glo­ri­fied WWII Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors like Stepan Ban­dera are get­ting banned
* Pub­lic offi­cials make threats against Ukraine’s Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty with no reper­cus­sions
* The neo-Nazi C14’s street patrol gangs are both respon­si­ble for anti-Roma pogroms and also the recip­i­ent of gov­ern­ment funds to run a children’s edu­ca­tion­al camp. Last Octo­ber, C14 leader Ser­hiy Bon­dar was wel­comed at Amer­i­ca House Kyiv, a cen­ter run by the US gov­ern­ment
* It’s open sea­son on the LGBT com­mu­ni­ty and far right groups rou­tine­ly attack LGBT gath­er­ings
* Ukraine is extreme­ly dan­ger­ous for jour­nal­ists and the gov­ern­ment has sup­port­ed the doxxing and intim­i­da­tion of jour­nal­ist by the far right like Myrovorets group
* The gov­ern­ment is try­ing to repeal laws pro­tect­ing the many minor­i­ty lan­guages used in Ukraine

FTR #1069 Socialists for Trump and Hitler, (The “Assistance”), Part 9: Walkin’ the Snake in India

In the con­clu­sion to FTR #1068, we rumi­nat­ed about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a post-World War II “Boseian” or “Boseist” under­ground in India. We also spec­u­lat­ed about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a Ser­pen­t’s Walk sce­nario, in which revi­sion­ist his­tor­i­cal claims about Sub­has Chan­dra Bose being the real lib­er­a­tor of India–not Mahat­ma Gand­hi, would be a point of entry for the re-brand­ing of fas­cism as “anti-impe­ri­al­ist” or “anti-colo­nial­ist.” (An arti­cle in the peri­od­i­cal of the Lib­er­ty Lob­by’s Holo­caust revi­sion­ist Insti­tute of His­tor­i­cal Review makes that claim.)

In Ser­pen­t’s Walk, the Nazi SS go under­ground, buy into the opin­ion-form­ing media and, after a series of ter­ror­ist inci­dents involv­ing WMD’s dev­as­tate the U.S., mar­tial law is declared and the SS descen­dants take over. The Third Reich and the Axis go down in his­to­ry as the “good guys.”

In this pro­gram, we high­light the ongo­ing, oper­a­tional lega­cy of Sub­has Chan­dra Bose, its links to con­tem­po­rary India and Ger­many, its pres­ence in the Ger­man com­mer­cial land­scape dom­i­nat­ed by the remark­able and dead­ly Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work, and the net­work­ing between this Boseian under­ground and Japan­ese ele­ments.

Key aspects of this milieu include:

1.–Narendra Mod­i’s net­work­ing with Surya Kumar Bose, Sub­has Chan­dra Bose’s grand­nephew, promis­ing to declas­si­fy files on Bose.
2.–Surya Bose’s pres­i­den­cy of the Indo-Ger­man asso­ci­a­tion. ” . . . . Surya, who has a soft­ware con­sul­tan­cy busi­ness in Ham­burg and is pres­i­dent of the Indo-Ger­man Asso­ci­a­tion . . . .”
3.–The gen­e­sis of the Indo-Ger­man asso­ci­a­tion in Ger­many dur­ing World War II: ” . . . . ‘The DIG was set up on Sep­tem­ber 11, 1942, by Sub­hash Chan­dra Bose at Hotel Atlanta in Ham­burg.’ . . . . Bose recounts, adding that the DIG today is the largest bilat­er­al organ­i­sa­tion in Ger­many, with 27 branch­es. As a con­sul­tant he often guides Ger­mans keen on work­ing in the boom­ing Indi­an IT sec­tor. He is also a founder-mem­ber of the Ger­man-Indi­an Round Table, an infor­mal gath­er­ing that seeks to fur­ther mutu­al busi­ness inter­ests. . . .”
4.–Surya Kuma Bose’s net­work­ing with Alexan­der Werth, the Ger­man trans­la­tor for Sub­has Chan­dra Bose’s Ger­man forces, which were fold­ed into the Waf­fen SS at the end of World War II. ” . . . . Back in the day, Netaji’s stay in Ger­many had proved instru­men­tal in shap­ing his strug­gle. Decades lat­er, that lega­cy would play a piv­otal role in shap­ing his grandnephew’s career. Bose came to Ger­many on the advice of Alexan­der Werth, Netaji’s Ger­man inter­preter in the Indi­an Legion. . . .”
5.–The col­lab­o­ra­tion of Surya Kumar Bose, Alexan­der Werth and World War II asso­ciates of Sub­has Chan­dra Bose in both Ger­many and Japan in the com­pi­la­tion of a biog­ra­phy that fun­da­men­tal­ly revis­es the his­to­ry of “the Neta­ji.” ” . . . . Its six parts deal with his expe­ri­ences in India, Ger­many and Japan and have been co-authored by peo­ple who either worked with, or were close asso­ciates of, his dur­ing his stay in their respec­tive coun­tries. The aim of the biog­ra­phy is to place Sub­has Chan­dra Bose in a cor­rect his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive with regard to his much pub­li­cized rev­o­lu­tion­ary activ­i­ties, and to pro­vide an under­stand­ing of an extreme­ly com­plex man, much maligned by Britain and great­ly mis­un­der­stood by her allies. . . .”
6.–The Nehru gov­ern­men­t’s sur­veil­lance of Aniya Nath Bose–very close to Sub­has Chan­dra Bose–while Aniya was in Japan, an epi­cen­ter of the Sub­has Chan­dra’s World War II oper­a­tions. ” . . . . Doc­u­ments accessed by author Anuj Dhar for his book ‘India’s Biggest Cov­er-up’ show that Nehru, in a let­ter dat­ed Novem­ber 26, 1957 to the then for­eign sec­re­tary Subi­mal Dutt sought to know what Bose’s nephew Amiya Nath Bose was doing in Tokyo. . . . Amiya Bose, son of Subhas’s broth­er Sarat Chan­dra Bose, was known to be close to Neta­ji. . . .”
7.–An arti­cle in the Holo­caust revi­sion­ist peri­od­i­cal of the Insti­tute for His­tor­i­cal review that attrib­ut­es the lib­er­a­tion of India to–you guessed it–Subhas Chan­dra Bose, not Gand­hi: ” . . . . When the new ver­sion of the his­to­ry of the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry India, and espe­cial­ly the episode of the coun­try’s unique strug­gle for inde­pen­dence comes to be writ­ten, it will no doubt sin­gle out but one per­son who made the most sig­nif­i­cant and out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion among all his com­pa­tri­ots toward the eman­ci­pa­tion of his moth­er­land from the shack­les of an alien bondage. Dur­ing World War II this man strode across two con­ti­nents like a colos­sus, and the foot­steps of his army of lib­er­a­tion rever­ber­at­ed through the forests and plains of Europe and the jun­gles and moun­tains of Asia. His armed assaults shook the very foun­da­tions of the British Empire. His name was Sub­has Chan­dra Bose. . . .”

As dis­cussed in the first eight pro­grams of this series, Saikat Chakrabar­ti is the pow­er behind throne, so to speak, for AOC. Both of the polit­i­cal action com­mit­tees he found­ed are fun­da­men­tal to the polit­i­cal ascent of AOC. Those PAC’s–Justice Democ­rats and Brand New Congress–contributed $900,000.00 on AOC’s behalf to a polit­i­cal con­sult­ing firm also head­ed by Chakrabar­ti. Chakrabar­ti is AOC’s chief of staff and was her cam­paign man­ag­er. Saikat Chakrabar­ti idol­izes Sub­has Chan­dra Bose!

Fun­da­men­tal to an under­stand­ing of the crit­i­cism Mr. Emory has expressed of the Bernie Sanders and AOC phe­nom­e­na is the strate­gic use of anti-Com­mu­nism by the Under­ground Reich and relat­ed ele­ments.

In the ear­ly 1960’s, there was a plot afoot on the part of Nazi ele­ments to use anti-Com­mu­nism to enslave Amer­i­ca. Might some of the ele­ments we have seen in this series have coa­lesced in such a con­text? One can­not use anti-Com­mu­nism to enslave Amer­i­ca with­out Com­mu­nists. Is this why we see far-right and explic­it­ly fas­cist ele­ments grouped around Bernie Sanders and AOC?

Gen­er­al Walk­er and the Mur­der of Pres­i­dent Kennedy by Jef­frey H. Cau­field, M.D.; More­land Press [HC]; Copy­right 2015 Jef­frey H. Cau­field; ISBN-13: 978–0‑9915637–0‑8; pp. 86–87.

. . . . Gar­ri­son did not pro­vide an expla­na­tion for all of the [David Fer­rie] note’s sub­ject mat­ter. How­ev­er, he did know the mean­ing of “fly­ing Barag­o­na in the Beech.” “Beech” refers to the mod­el of Fer­rie’s air­plane, a Beechcraft. Barag­o­na was a Nazi from Fort Sill. . . .

. . . . Gar­ri­son also obtained a tran­script of a let­ter writ­ten by Fer­rie to Barag­o­na. Next to Barag­o­na’s name, Gar­ri­son wrote: “Note Barag­o­na is impor­tant.” The let­ter had been sent to Gar­ri­son by Glenn Pinch­back, and a car­bon copy was sent to Mendel Rivers, a con­gress­man from Geor­gia. (Pinch­back worked in the Oper­a­tions Com­mand at Fort Sill, where he inter­cept­ed mail.) In the let­ter, Fer­rie shared his dream of the re-uni­fi­ca­tion of Ger­many and liv­ing in a world where all the cur­ren­cy was in Deutschmarks. Pinch­back­’s sum­ma­tion of the let­ter described a “Neo-Nazi plot to enslave Amer­i­ca in the name of anti-Com­mu­nism,” and “a neo-Nazi plot gar­gan­tu­an in scope.” The Fer­rie let­ter spoke of the need to kill all the Kennedys and Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. . . . Pinch­back also report­ed­ly obtained a let­ter from David Fer­rie to Barag­o­na con­fess­ing his role in the assas­si­na­tion of Robert Gehrig, who was a Nazi and Fort Sill sol­dier. . . .”

The true char­ac­ter of Saikat Chakrabar­ti’s appar­ent idol Sub­has Chan­dra Bose’s pol­i­tics is to be found in his 1935 net­work­ing with Mus­soli­ni: “. . . . Neta­ji Bose, by his own admis­sion in his book, ‘Indi­an Strug­gle’ (pub­lished in 1935 in Lon­don), believed India need­ed a polit­i­cal sys­tem that was a mix of fas­cism and com­mu­nism — some­thing that he called samyavad. Neta­ji made a spe­cial trip to Rome in 1935 to present a copy of his book to Ital­ian dic­ta­tor Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni, whom he great­ly admired and whose ideals he would fol­low for the rest of his life. . . .”

Sub­has Chan­dra Bose’s pol­i­tics were the antithe­sis of what we would expect from the AOC camp: “. . . . In a speech the same year in Sin­ga­pore, Bose spoke about India need­ing a ruth­less dic­ta­tor for 20 years after lib­er­a­tion. Then Sin­ga­pore dai­ly, Sun­day Express (now defunct), print­ed his speech where he said, ‘So long as there is a third par­ty, ie the British, these dis­sen­sions will not end. These will go on grow­ing. They will dis­ap­pear only when an iron dic­ta­tor rules over India for 20 years. For a few years at least, after the end of British rule in India, there must be a dictatorship…No oth­er con­sti­tu­tion can flour­ish in this coun­try and it is so to India’s good that she shall be ruled by a dic­ta­tor, to begin with . . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church as an exten­sion of the Japan­ese Patri­ot­ic and Ultra­na­tion­al­ist Soci­eties, with which Sub­has Chan­dra Bose net­worked; dis­cus­sion of the con­trast between Gand­hi’s asceti­cism and Bose’s per­son­al extrav­a­gance and self-glo­ri­fi­ca­tion; sum­ma­ry review of the fas­cist antecedents of the Hin­dut­va fas­cism of Naren­dra Modi, the RSS and the BJP.

FTR #1013 Fascism and the Politics of Immigration

In The Hitler Lega­cy, Peter Lev­en­da not­ed anti-immi­grant sen­ti­ment and xeno­pho­bia as part of “The Hitler Lega­cy.”

“. . . Xeno­pho­bia is at an all-time high in Europe and increas­ing­ly in Amer­i­ca. The Inter­net has pro­vid­ed new and improved means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. As the polit­i­cal life of every coun­try becomes more and more polar­ized between “right” and “left,” the men of ODESSA can only laugh at our dis­com­fort. . . .”

Fear of “the oth­er” has been a sta­ple of fas­cist thought and is dom­i­nat­ing much of the polit­i­cal dis­course on both sides of the Atlantic.

In FTR #838, Lev­en­da dis­coursed on how immi­gra­tion from Europe, both Catholic  and Jew­ish,  meld­ed with oth­er events in the post-World War I peri­od to mobi­lize fas­cist sen­ti­ment and activism.

React­ing to the advent of the Sovi­et Union, abortive Marx­ist rev­o­lu­tions in Ger­many and else­where in Europe, large scale immi­gra­tion of Catholics from Ire­land and Italy and Jews from East­ern Europe, pow­er­ful ele­ments of the U.S. pow­er elite embraced fas­cism and eugen­ics ide­ol­o­gy.

With the onset of the Great Depres­sion, the poten­tial threat of Com­mu­nism was mag­ni­fied in the eyes of many pow­er­ful Amer­i­can indus­tri­al­ists, financiers and cor­po­rate lawyers. Ger­many’s suc­cess in putting down the Marx­ist rev­o­lu­tions with­in its own bor­ders, as well as the busi­ness rela­tion­ships between cor­po­rate Ger­many and its car­tel part­ners in the U.S. busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty inclined many influ­en­tial Amer­i­can reac­tionar­ies to sup­port fas­cism.

By the same token, these same ele­ments came to despise Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt and his “Jew Deal,” as it was called by his ene­mies. Amer­i­can Jews were seen as hir­ing Jew­ish immi­grants and thus deny­ing “real Amer­i­cans” jobs and eco­nom­ic well-being.

Attack­ing Roo­sevelt as a Jew and a Com­mu­nist, Amer­i­can fas­cists embraced a cog­ni­tive and rhetor­i­cal posi­tion not unlike the view of Barack Oba­ma as a “Kenyan Mus­lim,” and, con­se­quent­ly, a “trai­tor.”

Some key points in Peter’s analy­sis are explored a sec­tion of the book titled the “Ori­gins of 21st Cen­tu­ry Con­flict.” High­lights of this part of the pro­gram include:

1.–Analyzing the abortive social­ist rev­o­lu­tions that took place in Ger­many at the end of the First World War, Peter notes the role of the Freiko­rps and relat­ed insti­tu­tions in sup­press­ing those revolts. In par­tic­u­lar, a num­ber of over­lap­ping Pan-Ger­man occult orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing the Thule Gesellschaft, con­tributed to the sub­stance of Ger­man reac­tion in the post-World War I peri­od.
2.–In the Unit­ed States, the Bol­she­vik Rev­o­lu­tion pro­duced a spate of anti-Com­mu­nist orga­ni­za­tions that saw Marx­is­m’s advo­ca­cy of a work­ers’ rev­o­lu­tion as a fun­da­men­tal threat to the exist­ing order.
3.–Marx’s Jew­ish background–in tan­dem with large Jew­ish emi­gra­tion from East­ern Europe–fed a doc­tri­naire anti-Semi­tism which fused with anti-Com­mu­nism to become a key ele­ment of fas­cist ide­ol­o­gy in the U.S. and the rest of the world.
4.–The pro­gram set forth how Bol­she­vism, immi­gra­tion and anti-Semi­tism fused to become a the­o­ry of “glob­al con­spir­a­cy.”
5.–We high­light the role in the for­ma­tion of this ide­ol­o­gy of Dar­win’s the­o­ries and eugen­ics, both in the U.S. and in Ger­many. (In par­tic­u­lar, we dis­cuss the impact of Irish and Ital­ian Catholic immi­gra­tion as well as Jew­ish immi­gra­tion on the con­scious­ness of ele­ments of the Amer­i­can pow­er elite.) We also detail how Nation­al Social­ists came to view their role in shap­ing the evo­lu­tion of homo sapi­ens.
6.–The Depres­sion and FDR’s New Deal and their effects on many of those same ele­ments of the Pow­er Elite.
7.–Hate-mongering that labeled FDR as a “Jew” and a “Communist”–similar to anti-Oba­ma rhetoric por­tray­ing him as a Mus­lim and a trai­tor.
8.–Atavism–the long­ing for a “sim­pler time” and its man­i­fes­ta­tions both in the 1930’s and present­ly.

In FTR #864, record­ed in Sep­tem­ber of 2015, Peter updat­ed the con­text of our dis­cus­sion from March of that year in the con­text of Don­ald Trump’s lead in the GOP pri­ma­ry strug­gle and the reac­tion sweep­ing Europe.

Immi­gra­tion dom­i­nat­ed the news that fall and has con­tin­ued to do so. The flood of refugees from the wars in the Mid­dle East threat­ened to over­whelm Euro­pean infra­struc­ture and the phe­nom­e­non dom­i­nat­ed the polit­i­cal debate in the GOP pri­ma­ry elec­tion cam­paign. Don­ald Trump cap­i­tal­ized on anti-immi­grant xeno­pho­bia dur­ing the pri­ma­ry and then the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign.

Of course, he con­tin­ues to do so today.

In The Hitler Lega­cy, Peter not­ed anti-immi­grant sen­ti­ment and xeno­pho­bia as part of “The Hitler Lega­cy.”

Fear of “the oth­er” has been a sta­ple of fas­cist thought and has dom­i­nat­ed much of the polit­i­cal dis­course on both sides of the Atlantic.

Next, we turn to a more recent devel­op­ment.

Mela­nia Trump gar­nered con­sid­er­able media atten­tion when she vis­it­ed a deten­tion cen­ter for immi­grants, includ­ing chil­dren, wear­ing a jack­et that said “I Real­ly Don’t Care. Do U?”

Taste­less on its sur­face, the state­ment assumes added sig­nif­i­cance when we fac­tor in the fact that  “I don’t care” (“Me Ne Frego” in Ital­ian) was an impor­tant fas­cist slo­gan.

Fur­ther­more, the Zara com­pa­ny that made Mela­ni­a’s jack­et has a his­to­ry of mar­ket­ing gar­ments with fascist/racist over­tones. It mar­ket­ed a shirt that mim­ic­ked a con­cen­tra­tion camp inmate’s garb and a swasti­ka-enlaid hand­bag. It also mar­ket­ed a Pepe The Frog skirt.

Recent com­ments by Trump dis­parag­ing Haiti as a “shit­hole” coun­try and pin­ing for immi­gra­tion from Nor­way instead war­rant a fresh look at the Cru­sade For Free­dom.

Dur­ing Trump’s brief tenure as Pres­i­dent, the media have con­sis­tent­ly lament­ed his actions as idio­syn­crasies. Trump’s poli­cies are not his alone, but fol­low in a lin­ear path, along which the GOP has trav­eled for decades.

In this post, we review the Cru­sade For Freedom–the covert oper­a­tion that brought Third Reich alum­ni into the coun­try and also sup­port­ed their guer­ril­la war­fare in East­ern Europe, con­duct­ed up until the ear­ly 1950’s. Con­ceived by Allen Dulles, over­seen by Richard Nixon, pub­licly rep­re­sent­ed by Ronald Rea­gan and real­ized in con­sid­er­able mea­sure by William Casey, the CFF ulti­mate­ly evolved into a Nazi wing of the GOP.

“. . . . Vice Pres­i­dent Nixon’s secret polit­i­cal war of Nazis against Jews in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics was nev­er inves­ti­gat­ed at the time. The for­eign lan­guage-speak­ing Croa­t­ians and oth­er Fas­cist émi­gré groups had a ready-made net­work for con­tact­ing and mobi­liz­ing the East­ern Euro­pean eth­nic bloc. There is a very high cor­re­la­tion between CIA domes­tic sub­si­dies to Fas­cist ‘free­dom fight­ers’ dur­ing the 1950’s and the lead­er­ship of the Repub­li­can Party’s eth­nic cam­paign groups. The motive for the under-the-table financ­ing was clear: Nixon used Nazis to off­set the Jew­ish vote for the Democ­rats. . . .

. . . . In 1952, Nixon had formed an Eth­nic Divi­sion with­in the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee. Dis­placed fas­cists, hop­ing to be returned to pow­er by an Eisen­how­er-Nixon ‘lib­er­a­tion’ pol­i­cy signed on with the com­mit­tee. In 1953, when Repub­li­cans were in office, the immi­gra­tion laws were changed to admit Nazis, even mem­bers of the SS. They flood­ed into the coun­try. Nixon him­self over­saw the new immi­gra­tion pro­gram. . . .”