Political and social double standards – racism in the USA, Israel and (Nazi) Germany. A historical comparison.

USA-Germany-Israel: the Mental Bermuda Triangle

Three states play a special role in the imperial charade of the „West of values“: the USA, Germany and Israel. For the fiction of a West supposedly based on human rights, democracy and freedom, the triangle of these states creates special narratives of this fiction and at the same time represents the „Bermuda Triangle“ in which historical truth disappears.

These three states, which play such an important role in the West’s self-presentation, each have foundations that have as little to do with morality as a cow has to do with tightrope walking.

The USA: built on genocide. Slavery and land theft (including from Mexican territory), as well as permanent wars, are in fact an autocracy in which figures selected by the US power elite are offered to the electorate as a choice between plague and cholera. There is a close connection to Great Britain and the other Anglo-Saxon-dominated countries of Canada, Australia and New Zealand. These are also united in the closest intelligence cooperation in the world, the „Five_Eyes„, an „association for the maintenance of the rule of the white man“. It is this constellation of power that actually poses the greatest threat to humanity.

After the USA had succeeded in driving the Soviet Union almost to economic death by arms race, it initially adopted a friendly stance towards the former systemic competitor, and even signaled that it did not_want_to_expand_NATO and thus the US sphere of influence (a fact that was lied away lateron), which made German reunification possible. However, the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact was not followed by the dissolution of NATO, but by hasty attempts to plunder_Russian_resources.
NATO was expanded to an extreme extent, and finally attempts were made to seize Ukraine as well, which is why the Maidan_coup_was_staged there, fingered by Victoria Nuland. The danger was there for Russia, to have the knife at its throat by US missiles in Ukraine. Theambitions_of_the_US power elite for world domination are unbroken.

Germany was built up by the USA after the Second World War as_a_maskof Western imperialist capitalism, first via the old Federal Republic and then via the reunified Germany. Soon after the war, the FRG was once again allowed to participate in the plundering of the Global South, without direct participation through colonies or later through direct neo-colonial ties.

The FRG was actually built up quite democratically on the inside (also to keep German capital under control) and prosperity was distributed more widely than in any other Western country. This comfortable living situation first in the FRG, then in the united Germany, despite social differences, was sold as the result of the superiority of the capitalist system! The construct naturally won the hearts of those living in it.

The comprehensive criticism of its own past (as in no other Western country, and all of them had enormous colonial, murderous guilt) created a high moral reputation for Germany in the world, which could be used in many ways to make Germany appear as a kind of character witness for the West and Israel. In fact, Germany was the ideal mask for the West!

However, the unconditional loyalty to Israel’s brutal, genocidal policy towards the Palestinians is beginning to undermine its moral reputation in the world.

Israel as a Jewish state, based on Zionism, was already an idea in the 19th century that had two mothers. Firstly, Jewish fear of anti-Judaism in the West, especially in Great Britain – and also in France (of course also in Germany). Secondly, there was a desire in both countries to get rid of the unpopular Jewish population and at the same time to have a solid colonial bridgehead in the Middle East.

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This had a parallel in the US and British efforts to „dispose“ of freed slaves from Africa in Liberia and Sierra Leone respectively and to turn them into a reliable colonial bridgehead, as it were, as privileged intruders, heavily dependent on the protection of the sending country.

As in the case of Liberia and Sierra_Leone, the interests of the local people played no role whatsoever in the Zionist project; they were simply „natives without rights“, as in settler colonialism in general. The ideological underpinning of the African projects was simply the slogan „back to Africa“, in the case of Israel „home to the promised land“, Palestine, from which they had been expelled around 2000 years previously.

The monstrous German crimes involving the murder of around six million European Jews naturally gave the Israel project a special boost, allowing Israel to become the last settler colony emanating from Europe.

The relationships between the three cornerstones of this triangle are now very complex and have a variety of functions. As mentioned at the beginning, one important function is triangular trade in hypocritical narratives that are intended to conceal the USA’s continued imperial ambitions to dominate the world.

Between Germany and the USA the portrayal of the USA as a „benevolent hegemon“ plays a special role. The myth is cultivated that if you put yourself under the wing of this hegemon, you will flourish like post-war Germany. This narrative was a key bait with which the Eastern European countries released from the grip of the Soviet Union could be drawn into the US orbit of NATO and the EU after the end of the Cold War. The resulting enormous heterogeneity of the EU increasingly led to its weakening, which could only suit the US power elite, as the EU was also an economic competitor of the USA, albeit with a competing currency, the Euro.

The USA is celebrated by Germany as the main liberator from Nazi barbarism, despite its late entry into the war in 1941 following the German declaration of war on the USA.

What is swallowed up in the mental Bermuda Triangle is the fact that it was important parts of the US power elite that made the Nazis‘ seizure_of_power possible, and that the Nazis‘ blitzkrieg, which was so successful at the beginning, was made possible by intensive economic_cooperation. Even during large parts of the war, goods essential to the war were traded covertly. The aim was not to lead the Nazis to world domination, but for the USA, through Germany, to „relegate“ its imperial rival Great Britain to the sidelines and bomb the Soviet Union into misery, which cost the Soviet Union around 27 million deaths. It should also be mentioned here that there were military plans in the USA at the end of the 1920s and beginning of the 1930s for a war between the USA and Great Britain („War_Plan_Red“) as part of various war plans (United_States_color-coded_war_plans).

The collapse of Nazi barbarism was due more to the bloodshed of the Red Army than to the USA, which only really struck once the aforementioned war aims had been achieved. The civilian population was targeted even more than industry, as the USA hoped to soon be able to fall back on Germany in the further fight against the Soviet Union.

In any case, Germany is probably the most compliant vassal of the USA, lending a helping hand in most of the wars it wages to expand its global dominance. Germany’s foreign policy sovereignty is severely restricted and important US bases are located on German soil, including Ramstein_Air_Base, the headquarters of the US armed forces in Europe and the largest military base outside the USA.

In Germany’s political and media public, the USA is celebrated more than ever as the guarantor of Germany’s and Europe’s freedom and security and of the much-cited „free Western world“, regardless of the wars and destruction it causes in the world. Yet the US’s work of destruction around Europe is one of the most important causes of flight and migration flows, alongside the general plundering of the global South. There was only a partial uprising of German politics during the Iraq war in 2003 (together with France), when even government politicians took part in demonstrations against the Iraq war under the banner „no blood for oil“. However, Germany served as a hub for the US operations. The rebelliousness soon disappeared again. In the Ukraine_conflict, which was puposefully_brought_about by the USA, German politicians also showed enormous compliance, apart from the Chancellor’s refusal to supply the Taurus cruise missile. German political „super-vassals“ are already coming down hard on him for this.

Between Israel and Germany, of course, the criminal Nazi regime played a key role, as it greatly promoted the founding of the state of Israel, which was initially more of a British-French project. However, the Soviet Union also initially had illusions about some socialist elements in Zionism (e.g. the kibbutz system) and supported the emerging Israel. The Israeli government declared itself the heir to the six million European Jews murdered by Germany in the Holocaust and demanded unrestricted support for its colonial project. The old Federal Republic, and later the whole of Germany, lived comfortably with the situation of making the Palestinians pay the main price for their own historical crimes.

A mental self-deception in Germany consists in believing that unrestricted support for the Israeli colonial and racist occupation regime would mitigate German historical guilt, when in fact it is the case that even more guilt is heaped on top of historical guilt! One can speak of a moral indulgence mentality.

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In the West today, all criticism of Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians is often branded as „anti-Semitism“. The term ‚anti-Semitism‘ is highly misleading, because the majority of the Semites are – the Arabs! The term originated in German-speaking countries as a synonym for anti-Judaism. It arose essentially from bourgeois competitive thinking against well-educated Jewish circles. It served to endow the European Jews with a special alleged foreignness by accessing their ancient origins. At the time the word was coined, the Jews were practically the only Semites (however mixed with Europeans) to be found in Europe.

The relationship between the USA and Israel is particularly multi-layered and complex and has also changed considerably over the decades. Both states are based on settler colonialism and serious crimes against the original inhabitants of the territories. The US power elite as „WASP“, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, was originally strongly anti-Jewish (e.g. Henry Ford’s anti-Jewish inflammatory_writings as quite representative to a certain extent). It should also not be forgotten that the racist policies of the USA with its racial legislation were a terrible_model for the Nazis‘ Nuremberg Race Laws.

The Nazis‘ increasing ideology of exclusion and extermination was of little importance to US policy for a long time, even during the Second World War. It was only with the increasing number of casualties of US soldiers in the Second World War that the racist crimes of the Nazis took on a certain role in the legitimization of US military involvement.

This meant that racism in the western world could no longer be ignored as an issue. And it was an important aspect of the anti-colonial struggle. And the Nazi war of extermination in the East was also based on racism. It had cost 27 million lives. Belgian_Colonialism in the Congo alone cost eight to ten million lives, and lateron Congo´s independence_was_destroyed. In addition, many, many millions died throughout the global South as a result of Western colonialism. Morally, the West was left naked.

The narrative of the uniqueness of the Holocaust came in handy. In order not to be misunderstood, the industrial character of the Nazi mass murders certainly has its uniqueness, but not in terms of the number of deaths and the immeasurable suffering. Subliminally, a completely different kind of uniqueness may play a role in the Western consciousness: in the Holocaust, what could only be done to black, brown and yellow people was done to „whites“! Well, and the Slavic dead were quickly added to the rest of the „Untermenschen“. Even before the end of the Second World War (UK: „Operation_Unthinkable„) and shortly after its end, nuclear mass destruction fantasies flourished against them in the UK and the USA (USA: „Plan_Totality„).

In any case, anti-Judaism was now declared the archaetype of racism as „anti-Semitism“. The memorial of uniqueness could now cover up large parts of Western crimes! This is also an important part of the function of the mental Bermuda Triangle, in which historical truth disappears.

In fact, for a long time the USA was not an unconditional supporter of Israeli policy, as allies in the Arab world were important and useful to them, with Saudi Arabia playing a particularly important role (oil for dollars). This is why, in the midst of the Cold War, the USA, together with the Soviet Union, stopped the invasion_of_Egypt by Great Britain, France and Israel in 1956.

Let us now look at the situation today: Israel’s openly racist practice of genocide is slowly becoming a burden for the West, especially the USA, vis-à-vis the world. The US government is increasingly urging moderation. However, one close ally of the USA, although extremely dependent on it financially, doesn’t give a damn about even the fierce frowning of US power: Israel! Despite all the geostrategic advantages that the USA may derive from this close relationship, it often seems puzzling why the superpower allows itself to be so much put through its nose by this small country.

The explanation for this is simpler than you might think. There are „dirty secrets“, as there are two_prominent_events in recent US history: the assassination of Kennedy and Nine Eleven!

Both events allow only one reasonable conclusion for those who look closely at the details: both were acts of important parts of the US power elite! It was an „inside job“ in each case, however much this view may be defamed by the mainstream media as „conspiracy beliefs“. These are the two most important dirty secrets of the US power elite. But who has one of the most effective secret services in the world? Israel! The Israeli power elite has all the important details about these two events „on the screen“! This offers tremendous blackmail potential, at least for all issues concerning the Middle East. This blackmailing power is unquestionably being exploited without restraint. There might be more dark_secrets which are on the screen of Israels intelligence apparatus.

An important addition is also necessary: For the USA and the West as a whole, Israel played an important role in supporting not only fascist regimes in Latin America (in which, incidentally, heavily burdened Nazis had found refuge), but also in relation to the apartheid regime in South Africa at the time. No country in the Western alliance supported South Africa’s fascist and racist regime as openly as Israel. The cooperation extended to_the_nuclear_field. Israel has played a role in South Africa’s nuclear armament. South Africa’s nuclear weapons were immediately abolished after the ANC came to power (nuclear weapons in the hands of an African government, a „no go“ for the West). Mention must also be made of the proximity between the former far-right Bolsonaro government in Brazil and Israel. Bolsonaro’s sons even appeared in T-shirts with_the_logos of the IDF and MOSSAD!

Outlook: the USA, Germany and Israel are, as I said, engaging in a triangular trade in hypocritical narratives in order to present themselves to their own population and the rest of the West as guarantors of human rights, freedom and civilization. Historical truth disappears or is disposed of in the Bermuda Triangle they have created. Fortunately, the rest of the world is less and less ready to accept this. The deeds of these three countries and their allies are increasingly open_to_the_eyes of the rest of the world.

Germany is in some ways the weakest link, insofar as its participation in the atrocities is leading the country itself further and further_into_crisis and makes many people in Germany feel that their comfort zone is gone. The country´s policy (bought, blackmailed and threatened) is turning ever more clearly and obviously against the legitimate interests interests of its own population (as well as against the legitimate interests of others). It is to be hoped that the growing discontent does not lead to dull right-wing nationalism, but that social and peace-political lines and structures of orientation force politicians to change course.

The political struggle for peace and social justice is made more difficult by the fact that the US power elite in particular have given humanism an autoimmune disease, so to speak, through their covert machinations, as they have also been practised since the „COINTELPRO“ program. The individual, very important humanist concerns have been isolated from each other and set against each other.

The analytical efforts for clarity are attacked and defamed with two terms of power: „conspiracy belief“ and „Whataboutism„. The latter is intended to prevent the prehistory of conflicts such as the Ukraine war and their classification, as this would reveal the guilt of the West. Logic is suspended. Desperate actions of the resistance in Palestine are isolated from decades of oppression and the systematic prevention of the two-state solution.

Large sections of German politics play a particularly perfidious role in this dangerous fake narrative: Contrary to all the facts, especially with regard to the comparison of the military-spendings between the USA-NATO and Russia, it is repeatedly claimed that if Ukraine were to lose the war, Russia would soon attack other European countries. This fear scenario has nothing whatsoever to do with reality, because Russia has enough to do to fend off the NATO threat in Ukraine. However, this nonsense is intended to keep the population in the EU ready, to keep burning more and more of the economy for the geopolitical ambitions of the USA.

In political media discussions, the only argument is how best to harm Russia and China. However, absurdities are also being systematically smuggled into the alternative media. Support for US imperialism and the Zionist occupation policy is masked in pseudo-left garb, such as the „AntiFa“ in Germany, which is more fa than anti.

A particularly repugnant example is the fight against the peace efforts of the „Jewish_voice_for_a_just_peace in the Middle East“. This Jewish organization is absurdly defamed as „anti-Semitic“ and accounts are blocked. There is hardly an absurdity left that the authorities would not resort to.

And you would hardly believe it, olive green war rhetoric is being sold as „feminist foreign policy“. Even moderate admonitions such as those of SPD politician Mützenich are met with a shitstorm (as is Scholz’s refusal to deliver Taurus). We in the West are living in a new age of inquisition, which was created in this triangle. Incidentally, it was the Inquisition in Spain that accompanied Spain’s decline against the rising British Empire with bans on thought and exclusion. Even today, these are signs of the helplessness of Western power. And the world is seeing this decline ever more clearly!

Anyway, this triangle will not last forever! Perhaps the Bermuda Triangle they have created will one day swallow up its creators.

Andreas Schlüter

Faktencheck: Das Referendum #OXI oder #NAI. Wahlauswertung durch ein CIA Unternehmen!

Aktualisierung 05.07.2015

http://www.ariva.de/forum/Der-USA-Baeren-Thread-28334320.

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http://www.ariva.de/forum/Der-USA-Baeren-Thread-283343

20.02.2007 – 26 Beiträge – ‎10 Autoren

The plans, which call for a “haircut” of at least 30 per cent on deposits … Eine dringende Empfehlung: Legt Griechenland mal ad acta und beschäftigt … 714) der 30 % Haircut („Bail-in“) auf Spareinlagen oberhalb von 8000 Euro. ….. Hinzu kommt, dass der IWF-Bericht den Schluss erlaubt, dass auch die …

Das Spiel mit der Angst der griechischen Sparer wird gerade eingeläutet.

Natürlich ist es für jeden Griechen damit nicht leichter geworden, sich für ein #OXI zu entscheiden, wenn er gleichzeitig glaubt, 2/3 seiner Ersparnisse zu verlieren. Darin liegt der eigentliche Sinn und Zweck dieser Mitteilung, die, man ahnt es, von der Fincial Times verbreitet wurde.

Warum ein solches Szenario niemals eintreten wird?

Dafür gibt es zwei ganz simple Gründe.

Erstens würde die EZB dann gegen vertragliche Pflichten verstoßen, denn zuständig für jedes nationale EU-Bankensystem ist die EZB und müsste genau so einen Fall verhindern! Wir alle können uns noch an die hektischen Aktionen zur Rettung von Zypern, Spanien, Irland, Portugal, etc. erinnern, damals begann das Geld deutscher Steuerzahler in Richtung der Banken zu fließen.
Zweitens wäre der von Draghi aufgebaute Schutzwall, “Wir werden den EURO mit allen, mit allen verfügbaren Mitteln schützen…” dahin. Das Ende des Schutzwalls, wäre der Startschuss für die Spekulanten, die schon nach den Finanzkrisen, in den Ländern Zypern, Spanien, Portugal, Irland etc. eine Bankenkrise nach der anderen auslösten, das wäre das Aus für den EURO. Damit würde das Zitat der Bundeskanzlerin, Angela Merkel: “Stirbt der EURO stirbt Europa.” zu einer zwangsläufigen Folge werden. Dann Prost Mahlzeit, damit hätte dann Deutschland, vor allem Angela Merkel, den unrühmlichen Titel der Totengräberin Europas sicher.
Wer will an dieses Szenario ernsthaft glauben?
Wer kann sich dann als Gewinner fühlen?
Deshalb kann sich jeder griechische Wähler getrost sicher sein, denn diesen Titel wird sich niemand in Europa ans Revers heften wollen! Diese Analyse bezieht sich auf einen möglichen Zusammenhang, der zum pro- #OXI Wahlausgang hergeleitet werden könnte! Ein Haircut ist, wenn er denn doch erfolgt, dann aber nicht als Folge des Wahlausgangs zu sehen! Das wollte ich damit sagen! Die sonstigen Zwänge kann ich nicht einschätzen! Die Haircut-Pläne des IWF betreffen uns in Deutschland genauso, wie jedes andere Land in dieser Welt und sind seit längerem bekannt!

 

Was deutsche Medien verschweigen: Die CIA und der Countdown in Athen

Udo Ulfkotte

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Ein mit der CIA verwobenes Unternehmen kann theoretisch ganz nach Belieben den Ausgang der Abstimmung in Griechenland beeinflussen. Denn an diesem Sonntag stellt in Athen die IT-Technik für die Abstimmung …? Raten Sie mal …

Wenn an diesem Sonntag in Athen die Griechen im Mutterland der Demokratie mit »Ja« oder »Nein« stimmen werden, dann übernimmt die Auszählung, die Prognosen und die Bereitstellung des offiziellen Endergebnisses der IT-Dienstleister Singular Logic mit Sitz in Athen und Thessaloniki. Die Firma stellt die Software, die Hardware und auch die Human Ressorces – also die Menschen – für alles, was in Griechenland mit offiziellen Wahlen zu tun hat.

Und das schon seit Jahren. Und zwar offiziell im Auftrag der griechischen Regierung – finanziert von der Europäischen Union, abgestimmt mit den USA. Besser gesagt: mit Mitarbeitern aus dem Umfeld der US-Geheimdienste.

Singular Logic gehörte zur Marfin Investment Group. Als im Dezember 2014 klar wurde, dass Syriza künftig Griechenland regieren würde, da verkaufte Marfin Investment Singular Logic an das US-Investmentunternehmen KKR. Im Management von KKR sitzt der frühere CIA-Chef David Petraeus.

Er ist heute auch Chairman des KKR Global Institute. David Petraeus gilt als ein Bindeglied zwischen Goldman Sachs und KKR. Goldman Sachs und KKR treten immer dann zusammen auf, wenn es darum geht, gemeinsam Kasse zu machen.

Wenn KKR sich also unlängst jenen IT-Dienstleister gekauft hat, der in Griechenland komplett ALLE Soft- und Hardwarekomponenten für Wahlen unterhält, wartet und betreibt, dann macht das – vorsichtig gesagt ‒ stutzig. Singular Logic wird am Sonntagabend um 21 Uhr das Ergebnis der Umfrage bekanntgeben.

Singular Logic, aus dem Hintergrund in den USA gesteuert vom ehemaligen CIA-Chef David Petraeus, führt die Umfrage durch und teilt uns auch das Endergebnis mit. Hätten Sie‘s gewusst? Warum aber verschweigen unsere Medien das?

Zusammengefasst: Der für die Wahlen, Abstimmungen und Umfragen in Griechenland bei der Regierung zuständige private IT-Dienstleister wurde just zu jenem Zeitpunkt von einem CIA-nahen US-Unternehmen aufgekauft, als die unbequeme Syriza die letzte Wahl in Athen gewann.

Und jetzt führt dieses im Hintergrund von Ex-CIA-Mitarbeitern gelenkte Unternehmen die wichtigste Abstimmung in der jüngeren griechischen Geschichte durch und hat ganz allein alle Datensätze für das Abstimmungsergebnis. Werden wir also Zeuge einer großen Wahlfälschung im Mutterland der Demokratie?

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CIA Power to establish democracy!

This article first appeared in 1997 in The Rothbard-Rockwell Report.

Not long after the Central Intelligence Agency was founded in 1947, the American public and the world were subjected to an unprecedented level of propaganda in the service of US foreign policy objectives in the Cold War. The propaganda offensive of the government centered around its obsession with securing the emerging US-dominated world order in the wake of the Second World War. It was a time when Europe lay in ruins and when subservience to US planners, in government and business, was the order of the day.

Although it is now widely conceded that there was never any serious threat of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, let alone of the United States, the menace of the Soviet Union was the pretext underlying discussion of foreign policy. To pay for the Cold War, Harry Truman set out, as Arthur Vandenberg advised, to „Scare the Hell out of the American people.“ A daunting task, considering the years of pro-Soviet accolades that had been previously flowing from the executive branch.

Nonetheless, the Soviet threat served as a useful chimera to keep the masses in line. What were the targets singled out for demonization in the Cold War propaganda campaign? One of the chief aims of the government was to discredit dangerously parochial attitudes about the desirability of peace. It was also thought necessary to inoculate the public, particularly in Europe, against the virus of „neutralism.“

Further, since the American government had successfully entrenched the military industrial complex as a permanent feature of American life, US planners were eager to discredit the idea of „disarmament,“ which meant not only a rejection of the techniques of mass murder developed and perfected by the Allied powers in the Second World War, but also a return to the pre-war days when the union of government and business was more tenuous, government-connected profits were fleeting, and market discipline provided a check on consolidation.

The degree to which the press participated as a partner in the rhetoric of the Cold War was no accident. Media penetration was a major facet of CIA activities in both the foreign and domestic context. At its peak, the CIA allocated 29 percent of its budget to „media and propaganda.“ The extent of its efforts are difficult to measure, but some information has slipped through the shroud of secrecy.

One report notes that the media organizations funded by the CIA in Europe included: the West German News agency DENA (later the DPA), the writers association PEN in Paris, a number of French newspapers, the International Forum of Journalists, and Forum World Features. The London-based Forum World Features provided stories to „140 newspapers around the world, including about 30 in the United States, amongst which were the Washington Post and four other major dailies.“

The US Senate’s Church committee reported that the Post was aware that the service was „CIA-controlled.“ German media tycoon Axel Springer had received the then-substantial sum of more than $7 million from the Agency to build his press empire. His relationship with the CIA was reported to have extended through the 1970s. The New York Times reported that the CIA owned or subsidized more than 50 newspapers, news services, radio stations, and periodicals. The paper reported that at least another dozen were infiltrated by the CIA; more than 1,000 books either written directly or subsidized by the Agency were published during this period.

The penetration of CIA propaganda into the American press was far more extensive than an occasional distorted report from Europe. By the early 70s, it had been revealed that the head of the Hearst bureau in London was a CIA agent. Some suspicion was aroused among those editors not on the Company payroll, and inquiring minds among them wanted to know if CIA men were currently in their employ. Soon thereafter the Washington Star-News published a report claiming that some three-dozen journalists were on the payroll of the Agency. One agent was identified in the story as a member of the Star-News’ own staff. When the paper went belly up in 1981, the „journalist“ in question went directly to work for the Reagan administration. Later, he joined the staff of the Washington Times.

Though pressured, the CIA refused for some time to release information on its tentacles in the „free press.“ There’s little wonder why. When George Bush assumed the role of CIA director, he agreed to a single paragraph summary of each of its journalists for the Church committee. When it submitted the last of its data, the CIA had provided information on more than 400 journalists. The final Church report was a disappointment, having been audited by the CIA. A subsequent House investigation was suppressed, though a leak it was published in the Village Voice. The House report indicated that Reuters news service was frequently used for CIA disinformation, and that media manipulation may have been the „largest single category of covert action projects taken by the CIA.“ According to the watchdog group Public Information Resource, propaganda expenses in the 70s may have exceeded $285 million a year. This was more than „the combined budgets of Reuters, United Press International, and the Associated Press.“

By the late seventies, reports emerged that the publishing house Copley Press had for three decades served as a CIA front. Its subsidiary, Copley News Service, provided the CIA a mouthpiece in Latin America. Propaganda in Latin America was more or less constant, as the CIA influenced elections, organized the torture and murder of dissidents, including priests, and backed brutal, but pro-American patsies throughout the region.

The efforts in manipulation of opinion in Latin America were reflected in similar campaigns at home. For instance: pro-contra public relations specialist Edgar Chamorro served as a conduit of disinformation from 1982 to 1984, manipulating journalists and Congressmen at the behest of the CIA. Though domestic propaganda is a violation of the law, it was a standard Agency tactic.

The Carter administration, in an effort to soften public interest in the CIA’s involvement with the press, issued an executive order touted in the media as a ban on the manipulation of the American media. Belatedly, as another PIR report notes, the Society of Professional Journalists had this to say—“An executive order during the Carter administration was thought to have banned the practice [of recruitment of journalists by the CIA]. After a Council on Foreign Relations task force recommended that the ban be reconsidered, it was revealed that a ‘loophole’ existed allowing the CIA director or his deputy to grant a waiver.“ As a follow-up, the Reagan administration signed a law banning media disclosure of covert operations as a felony.

If reporters were often led to compromise their integrity at the behest of the warfare state, it was an example set at the highest levels of power in the American media. Press ownership, already concentrated to a ludicrous degree, shared a cozy relationship with the CIA from its start. Those chummy with the Company included Time-Life magnate Henry Luce, former Post owner Philip Graham and assorted New York Times owners in the Sulzberger family. Top editors of the Post and Newsweek have also served as agents, while the Post’s intelligence reporter was on the take from the CIA in the 60s. Katherine Graham, for decades owner of the Washington Post, had this to say to top CIA officials as the Berlin Wall was starting to crack. „There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn’t. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows.“

The conservative movement that culminated in the elevation of Ronald Reagan to the presidency was a product of those turbulent Cold War years, and perhaps more so a product of domestic intervention by the security state than many of its participants would care to admit. The armchair warriors in the neoconservative camp and the inveterate interventionists at National Review can both trace their roots straight back to the propaganda efforts of the CIA.

After the Hitler-Stalin pact, the neoconservatives moved from cafeteria Trotskyites to apologists for the US warfare state without missing a beat, as Justin Raimondo shows in his 1993 Reclaiming the American Right. The CIA’s role in establishing the influence of the neocons came out in the late 60s, though the revelations were obscured by the primary actors’ denials of knowledge of the covert funding. The premiere organization of the anti-Stalinist left, the Congress for Cultural Freedom, provided a base of operations to launch a left-intellectual crusade against the Soviet Union. The revelation that the Congress was a CIA front destroyed the organization’s credibility, and it went belly up despite the best efforts of the Ford Foundation to keep it afloat. The Congress disappeared, but as Raimondo notes, „the core group later came to be known as the neoconservatives.“

The Congress for Cultural Freedom was perhaps the Agency’s most ambitious attempt at control and influence of intellectual life throughout Europe and the world. Affiliates were established in America, Europe, Australia, Japan, Latin America, India, and Africa, although its appeal was limited in the Third World for obvious reasons. It combined concerts, conferences, and publishing efforts, promoting the State Department line on the Cold War. Magazines affiliated with the Congress included, among others, the China Quarterly, the New Leader and, of course, Encounter.

The funding of the Congress and similar fronts was organized through dozens of charitable trusts and nonprofit foundations, some of which were invented by the CIA. The money was made available through seemingly legitimate means to the Congress, as well as to political parties (including the German Social Democrats), unions and labor organizations, journalists’ unions, student groups, and any number of other organizations that could be counted on to support US hegemony in Europe and the world.

The most complete story of the CIA and the Congress for Cultural Freedom is found in Peter Coleman’s apologetic book, The Liberal Conspiracy. Coleman, a former Australian barrister and editor of the Congress magazine, the Quadrant, lets slip quite a bit of revelatory information in his analysis of the Congress’s activities and its relationship to the CIA. The common targets of Congress literature, as Coleman notes, are familiar: the literature was anti-Communist, social democratic, and anti-neutralist. Other aims promoted by the Congress were cataloged by William Blum: „a strong, well-armed, and united Western Europe, allied to the United States….support for the Common Market and NATO and…skepticism of disarmament [and] pacifism. Criticism of US foreign policy took place within the framework of cold war assumptions; for example that a particular American intervention was not the most effective way of combating communism, not that there was anything wrong with intervention per se….“ F.A. Hayek commented that the Congress’ strategic agenda was „not to plan the future of freedom, but to write its obituary.“

Among those involved with the Congress were James Burnham, Irving Kristol, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Daniel Bell, Arthur Schlesinger, Lionel Trilling, and the self-described „life-long Menshevik“ Sidney Hook. After World War Two, Kristol worked as the editor for the American Jewish Committee’s Commentary magazine, then served as editor of Encounter from 1953 to 1958.

The Congress was organized by Kristol’s boss and CIA man Michael Josselson, who maintained a tight grip on the activities of the Congress as well as the content of its publications. According to Coleman, Josselson’s criteria for his editors was simple: they had to be reliable on the State Department line. Later, Kristol was to deny he knew the organization was a front. This seems unlikely for several reasons. For one, Sidney Hook stated that „like almost everyone else,“ he had heard that „the CIA was making some contribution to the financing of the Congress.“ More to the point, as Tom Braden, then head of the CIA’s International Organizations division, wrote in a Saturday Evening Post article, a CIA agent always served as editor of Encounter. Today, Kristol is a kind of svengali in the modern conservative world.

Neoconservative prominence and influence owes quite a bit to the covert activities of this government, something they forget only rarely, as with the case of neocon Richard Perle who was caught funneling information to one of our „reliable allies“ while in the Reagan administration.

While waging the CIA’s battle, the neocons were not yet billing themselves as conservatives. But the National Review was another matter, a journal aimed specifically at the American right wing. The official line holds that National Review was founded in an intellectual vacuum, and, for all intents and purposes, created conservatism in America. But events, as are most often the case, were not that simple. The idea for National Review originated with Willi Schlamm, a hard-line interventionist and feature editor with the Old Right Freeman. At odds with the isolationism of the right, Schlamm was well-known for his belligerence, having demanded that the United States go to war over Formosa.

One person in a position to know more details about the founding of NR was the late classicist and right-winger Revilo Oliver. Although late in life Oliver was associated most closely with extremist racialism, in the 50s, he was an influential member of the Buckley inner circle, a regular contributor to National Review and a member of Bill Buckley’s wedding party. Later, he went on to serve as a founding board member of the John Birch Society, until his break with the Society’s founder Robert Welch.

In his autobiography, Oliver explains that the National Review was conceived as a way to put the isolationist Freeman out of business. A surreptitious deal was cut with one of the Freeman editors (presumably Schlamm) to turn the magazine over to Buckley; a last-ditch effort saved the magazine, and control was assumed by Leonard E. Read, president of the Foundation for Economic Education. Unfortunately, Read balked at „politics,“ i.e., analyzing and criticizing government actions, and the magazine quickly slipped into irrelevance.

It’s hard to blame the editors of the Freeman for failing to see Buckley’s treachery coming. As late as 1954, Buckley was denouncing the US military as incompatible with a free society. Soldiers emerging from the armed forces, Buckley argued, were brainwashed with militaristic platitudes. In his essay, Buckley proposed a debriefing regime for all military men „solely based on the great libertarian documents of our civilization“ and study of the lives of the world’s „great individualists.“ But, as they say, the times, they were a changin’.

Buckley’s decision to launch the National Review was a watershed event on the right by any measure. As Buckley’s admiring social-democratic biographer John Judis notes, „Except for Chodorov, who was a Buckley family friend, none of the right-wing isolationists were included on National Review’s masthead. While this point of view had been welcome in the Freeman, it would not be welcome, even as a dissenting view, in National Review.“

As Judis notes, Schlamm, who envisioned himself as the guiding light behind NR, was not even a conservative. He „had more in common with Dwight MacDonald or Daniel Bell than with Robert McCormick; Buckley was turning his back on much of the isolationist…Old Right that had applauded his earlier books and that his father had been politically close to.“

Buckley, by 1955, had already been in deep cover for the CIA. While there is some confusion as to the actual duration of Buckley’s service as an agent, Judis notes that he served under E. Howard Hunt of Watergate fame in Mexico City in 1951. Buckley was directed to the CIA by Yale Professor Wilmoore Kendall, who passed Buckley along to James Burnham, then a consultant to the Office Of Policy Coordination, the CIA’s covert-action wing.

Buckley apparently had a knack for spying: before his stint with the Agency, he had served as an on-campus informant for the FBI, feeding God only knows what to Hoover’s political police. In any case, it is known that Buckley continued to participate at least indirectly in CIA covert activities through the 60s.

The founding circle of National Review was composed largely of former agents or men otherwise in the pay of the CIA, including Buckley, Kendall, and Burnham. Wall Street lawyer William Casey, rooted in OSS activities and later to be named director of the CIA, drew up the legal documents for the new magazine. (He also helped transfer Human Events from isolationist to interventionist hands.)

NR required nearly half a million to get off the ground; the only substantial contribution known was from Will Buckley, Senior: $100,000. It’s long been rumored that CIA black funds were used to start the magazine, but no hard evidence exists to establish it. It may also be relevant that the National Review was organized as a nonprofit venture, as covert funding was typically channeled through foundations.

By the 70s, it was known that Buckley had been an agent. More imaginative right-wingers accused Buckley of complicity in everything from the assassination of JFK to the Watergate break-in, undoubtedly owing to his relationship with the mysterious Hunt.

But sober minds also believed that something was suspicious about the National Review. In a syndicated column, Gary Wills wondered, „Was National Review, with four ex-agents of the CIA on its staff, a CIA operation? If so, the CIA was stingy, and I doubt it – but even some on the editorial board raised the question. And the magazine supported Buckley’s old CIA boss, Howard Hunt, and publicized a fund drive for him.“ In reply, Buckley denounced Wills for being a classicist. But others close to the founding circle of National Review nurtured similar suspicions. Libertarian „fusionist“ Frank Meyer, for example, confided privately that he believed that the National Review was a CIA front.

If it was, then it was the federal government that finally broke the back of the populist and isolationist right, the mass-based movement with its roots in the America First anti-war movement. What FDR tried and failed to do when he sought to shut down the Chicago Tribune, when his attorney general held mass sedition trials of his critics on the right, and when he orchestrated one of the worst smear campaigns in US history against his conservative opponents, the CIA accomplished. That in itself ought to lead conservatives to oppose the existence of executive agencies engaged in covert operations.

Today, the war-mongering right is self-sustaining. Money flows like milk and honey to neoconservative activists from the major conservative foundations. Irving’s son Bill Kristol has his sugar daddy in the form of media tycoon and alien Rupert Murdoch. National Review is boring, but in no danger of going under financially.

But the cozy relationship with the federal government is the same. Neocons Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan now insist on massive extensions of the warfare state. The Weekly Standard demands a ground war to topple the head of a foreign government unfriendly to Israel, while denouncing right-wing isolationism, libertarianism, and Murray Rothbard.

This time, the right-wing War Hawks face a potentially insurmountable challenge. The pro-war propaganda directed at the domestic population is failing badly. It is ineffective for two principle reasons: mounting intellectual opposition to the warfare state and the return of grassroots isolationism. Both trends have come to the fore. And not only with the collapse of communism. Widespread public disillusionment exists over the Gulf War of 1991. Sold to the public as a high-tech „virtual“ war, the consequences have been harder to hide than the execution of the attack. With over a million Iraqis dead, Hussein still in power, US soldiers apparently poisoned by their own government and a not so far-fetched feeling that the public was duped into supporting an unjust slaughter, people are starting to regard the Gulf War as an outrage. And they are right.

At the height of the Cold War, opposition to interventionism was largely isolated to the anti-war Left. While marshaling an impressive analytic literature on the evils of US imperialism, particularly in the context of Viet Nam, the Left was suspect for its support of socialism and its sometimes overt sympathies for totalitarian regimes. On the right, things were different. Except for a noble band of libertarians lead by Murray Rothbard, conservatives and many libertarians were front and center in support of the security state and its nefarious activities. Now, virtually the entire right is opposed to interventionism. Traditionalists and even nationalist right-wingers are generally opposed to foreign military actions. The dominant anti-war force on the right is the growing number of explicitly isolationist libertarians, who want no truck with the warfare state on principle. The Weekly Standard acknowledged as much and identified Murray Rothbard as the guiding spirit behind today’s antistatist, antiwar movement. And the nonliberal left, lead by long-time noninterventionists like Noam Chomsky, remains opposed to US global hegemony. The neocons and their corporate liberal cronies are the only spokesman for militarism.

The grassroots are hated by the neocons for precisely that reason. The man on the street, the movement conservative, the Perot voter, the Libertarian Party man – they all want the troops brought home and the tyranny of the US empire brought to a halt. When the leaders of the empire try to talk down to normal people, they are jeered off the stage. The RRR position – no more war – is more and more the position of the American people. That’s a strike for peace and a strike for liberty.

Copyright © 1997 by the Center for Libertarian, Studies, Inc.