FTR #948 Walkin’ the Snake with Breitbart: The Gathering Sturm

The title of the pro­gram refers to the Nazi tract Ser­pen­t’s Walk. The back cov­er of that book sums up the essence of the tome: ” . . . 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.’ . . .”

The “opin­ion-form­ing media” in 2017 has crys­tal­lized into a fright­en­ing­ly dom­i­nant enti­ty, the Bre­it­bart­ian engine of Steven Ban­non, Robert Mer­cer, Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca and the lat­ter’s par­ent com­pa­ny SCL. An arti­cle from The Guardian sets forth this ter­ri­fy­ing devel­op­ment. (Note that, due to the lim­i­ta­tions of time, we were not able to read the entire sto­ry. The arti­cle will be the cen­ter­piece of a fol­low-up pro­gram.)

Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca and its par­ent com­pa­ny SCL, spe­cial­ize in using AI and Big Data psy­cho­me­t­ric analy­sis on hun­dreds of mil­lions of Amer­i­cans in order to mod­el indi­vid­ual behav­ior. SCL devel­ops strate­gies to use that infor­ma­tion, and manip­u­late search engine results to change pub­lic opin­ion (the Trump cam­paign was appar­ent­ly very big into AI and Big Data dur­ing the cam­paign).

Indi­vid­ual social media users receive mes­sages craft­ed to influ­ence them, gen­er­at­ed by the Nazi AI at the core of this media engine, using Big Data to tar­get the indi­vid­ual user!

As the arti­cle notes, not only are Cam­bridge Analytica/SCL are using their pro­pa­gan­da tech­niques to shape US pub­lic opin­ion in a fas­cist direc­tion, but they are achiev­ing this by uti­liz­ing their pro­pa­gan­da machine to char­ac­ter­ize all news out­lets to the left of Bri­et­bart as “fake news” that can’t be trust­ed.

In short, the secre­tive far-right bil­lion­aire (Robert Mer­cer), joined at the hip with Steve Ban­non, is run­ning mul­ti­ple firms spe­cial­iz­ing in mass psy­cho­me­t­ric pro­fil­ing based on data col­lect­ed from Face­book and oth­er social media. Mercer/Bannon/Cambridge Analytica/SCL are using Naz­i­fied AI and Big Data to devel­op mass pro­pa­gan­da cam­paigns to turn the pub­lic against every­thing that isn’t Bri­et­bart­ian by con­vinc­ing the pub­lic that all non-Bri­et­bart­ian media out­lets are con­spir­ing to lie to the pub­lic.

This is the ulti­mate Ser­pen­t’s Walk scenario–a Nazi Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence draw­ing on Big Data gleaned from the world’s inter­net and social media oper­a­tions to shape pub­lic opin­ion, tar­get indi­vid­ual users, shape search engine results and even feed­back to Trump while he is giv­ing press con­fer­ences!

We begin the pro­gram with a “sign of the times.” Some­thing of a barom­e­ter for the present polit­i­cal cli­mate is New York Times colum­nist Paul Krug­man’s recog­ni­tion that: “Are you angry about the white nation­al­ist takeover of the U.S. gov­ern­ment? . . . Does any­one doubt it? And giv­en this real­i­ty, it’s com­plete­ly rea­son­able to wor­ry that Amer­i­ca will go the route of oth­er nations like Hun­gary, which remain democ­ra­cies on paper but have become author­i­tar­i­an states in prac­tice. . . .”

After dis­cussing Bre­it­bart alum­nus Sebas­t­ian Gorka’s role as the point man for the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s counter-jihadist strat­e­gy, the pro­gram fur­ther devel­ops his roots in Hun­gar­i­an fas­cism, past and present. ” . . . . But an inves­ti­ga­tion by the For­ward into Gorka’s activ­i­ties from 2002 to 2007, while he was active in Hun­gar­i­an pol­i­tics and jour­nal­ism, found that he had close ties then to Hun­gar­i­an far-right cir­cles, and has in the past cho­sen to work with open­ly racist and anti-Semit­ic groups and pub­lic fig­ures. Gorka’s involve­ment with the far right includes co-found­ing a polit­i­cal par­ty with for­mer promi­nent mem­bers of Job­bik, a polit­i­cal par­ty with a well-known his­to­ry of anti-Semi­tism; repeat­ed­ly pub­lish­ing arti­cles in a news­pa­per known for its anti-Semit­ic and racist con­tent; and attend­ing events with some of Hungary’s most noto­ri­ous extreme-right fig­ures. . . . In the Unit­ed States, Gor­ka, who was appoint­ed deputy assis­tant to the pres­i­dent on Jan­u­ary 20, is known as a tele­vi­sion com­men­ta­tor, a pro­fes­sor and an “alt-right” writer who describes him­self as a coun­tert­er­ror­ism expert. A close asso­ciate of Stephen Ban­non, Trump’s chief strate­gist, Gor­ka is now part of Bannon’s key in-house White House think tank, the Strate­gic Ini­tia­tives Group. The new­ly formed group con­sists of fig­ures close to Trump and is seen by some as a rival to the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil in for­mu­lat­ing poli­cies for the pres­i­dent.”

Turn­ing to the well-pub­li­cized issue of what is por­trayed as “anti-ille­gal” immi­grant pol­i­cy, we note DHS Sec­re­tary John Kel­ly’s recruit­ment of local law enforce­ment offi­cers as fed­er­al immi­gra­tion enforcers, a sig­nif­i­cant step from a stand­point of the con­sti­tu­tion.

The Trumpenkampfver­bande is mov­ing to pub­li­cize crimes actu­al­ly, or alleged­ly, com­mit­ted by ille­gal immi­grants, a tac­tic that was used by Hitler to max­i­mize anti-Semi­tism in Ger­many. When the Ger­man pop­u­lace proved insuf­fi­cient­ly respon­sive to Nazi anti-Semit­ic pol­i­cy, crimes com­mit­ted by Jews became a high-pro­file pro­pa­gan­da fea­ture of the Reich. “ . . . . In The Nazi Con­science, Duke his­to­ri­an Clau­dia Koonz notes that the Nazi news­pa­per Der Sturmer ran a fea­ture called ‘Let­ter Box,’ which pub­lished read­ers’ accounts of Jew­ish crimes. When the Nazis took pow­er, the Ger­man state began doing some­thing sim­i­lar. Frus­trat­ed by the fail­ure of most Ger­mans to par­tic­i­pate in a boy­cott of Jew­ish busi­ness­es in April 1933, Adolf Hitler’s gov­ern­ment began pub­li­ciz­ing Jew­ish crime sta­tis­tics as a way of stok­ing anti-Semi­tism. In Nazi Ger­many and the Jews: The Years of Per­se­cu­tion, the his­to­ri­an Saul Fried­lan­der notes that, until 1938, Hitler’s Min­istry of Jus­tice ordered pros­e­cu­tors to for­ward every crim­i­nal indict­ment against a Jew so the ministry’s press office could pub­li­cize it. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include:The Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s appar­ent intent to stop mon­i­tor­ing the activ­i­ties of domes­tic fas­cist and white suprema­cist hate groups; The League of the South’s for­ma­tion of a para­mil­i­tary cadre, designed with an eye to being dep­u­tized as enforcers by fed­er­al, state or local gov­ern­ments; The Lithuan­ian cel­e­bra­tion of Third Reich col­lab­o­ra­tor Kazys Skir­pa, who was por­trayed as Pepe the Frog, an Amer­i­can “Alt-Right” meme; The appoint­ment of Chrys­tia Free­land as Cana­di­an For­eign Minister–her grand­fa­ther was a major Ukrain­ian fas­cist and Nazi collaborator–this appears to have mint­ed her anti-Russ­ian dog­ma.

FTR #676 Sedition! (Part 2): Target, America!

Wall Street Jour­nal fea­tur­ing advo­ca­cy for the dis­so­lu­tion of the US; Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion vet­er­ans push­ing this view­point; Will a Nazi “cor­po­racra­cy” dom­i­nate the “left­overs”?

FTR #668 Sedition!

Repub­li­cans, Fox News lin­ing up with white suprema­cists to pro­mote seces­sion­ist views; 9/11 ” truthers” line up with them; Pitts­burgh cop killer influ­enced by Nazis.

FTR #652 Palin by Comparison

Sarah Pal­in’s polit­i­cal resume and her­itage is gen­uine­ly fright­en­ing: Alaskan seces­sion­ist par­ty, mili­tias and Iran­ian mul­lahs.

Meet Sarah Palin’s radical right-wing pals

Extrem­ists Mark Chryson and Steve Stoll helped launch Pal­in’s polit­i­cal career in Alas­ka, and in return had influ­ence over pol­i­cy. “Her door was open,” says Chryson — and still is. by Max Blu­men­thal and David Nei­w­ertSalon.com On the after­noon of Sept. 24 in down­town Palmer, Alas­ka, as the sun began to sink behind the snow­capped […]

The Palins’ un-American activities

Imag­ine if the Oba­mas had hooked up with a vio­lent­ly anti-Amer­i­­can group in league with the gov­ern­ment of Iran. By David Tal­botSalon.com “My gov­ern­ment is my worst ene­my. I’m going to fight them with any means at hand.” This was for­mer rev­o­lu­tion­ary ter­ror­ist Bill Ayers back in his old Weath­er Under­ground days, right? Imag­ine what […]

Palin’s Source

by Ben SmithPolitico.comThomas Frank noticed in the Jour­nal today that Sarah Palin used an odd source for a quote in her announce­ment speech attrib­uted only to a “writer.” “We grow good peo­ple in our small towns, with hon­esty and sin­cer­i­ty and dig­ni­ty,” she said, draw­ing from a once-pow­er­­ful, now for­got­ten mid-cen­­tu­ry con­ser­v­a­tive colum­nist named West­brook […]

FTR #643 Miscellaneous Articles and Updates

Long-stand­ing effort by neo-fas­cists to acquire “spe­cial­ized knowl­edge and abil­i­ties,” mil­i­tary, law-enforce­ment and espi­onage pro­fi­cien­cy; UFO devices devel­oped by humans, not space aliens.

FTR #635 and #636 Going Native, Parts V and VI

Third Reich polit­i­cal strat­e­gy per­pet­u­at­ed by Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many, “volks­grup­pen­rechte” (the rights of native peo­ples) aids revan­chist nation­al agen­da.

North Meets South: Vermont Secessionists Meet with Racist League of the South

by Hei­di BeirichSouth­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­terJune 2008 From 1777 until 1791, Ver­mont was an inde­pen­dent state com­plete with all the trap­pings — a con­sti­tu­tion, a flag, even a mint to pump out its own mon­ey, the Ver­mont cop­per. But in 1791, Ver­mon­ters hap­pi­ly joined the new Unit­ed States. Now, some of the locals want out. […]