We're In A Very Fascist Moment...Just Not The Way You Think
"Nazis. I hate these guys." --Indiana Jones
In an earlier piece I looked at contemporary expressions of outright fascism, as well as fascist-like (aka, “fashy”) movements. I explored Francis Fukuyama’s (in)famous End of History & Last Man thesis whereby liberal democratic capitalism had triumphed over fascism (WWII) and communism (Cold War). I looked at how Fukuyama failed to predict the ways in which capitalism had burrowed itself into democratic liberalism and once freed from the strains of the Cold War, was able to mutate and morph and realign itself with any and all forms of government: authoritarian, democratic, even fascistic.
That outlook raised questions of the degree to which contemporary fascists can be seen as the inheritors of the fascist legacy, insofar as actual fascism was an anti-capitalist system, in addition of course to being anti-democratic. This leaves contemporary fascists largely as social and cultural fascists who’ve largely surrendered to capitalism as an economic reality. Hence the postmodern-ese of “white identitarian” as the new euphemism for fascist and all the post-colonial "woke" language among those groups of whites needing “safe space”, “their own homeland”, etc.
In sum, that piece argued that capitalism co-opted fascism.
In this piece I want to take the complementary position, that is the flip side of that dastardly coin: how fascism co-opted capitalism.
I think this topic is centrally important to understand how we've ended up in this surreal, surveillance-oriented, paranoid-filled apocalyptic era we live in, where for example internet marketing is rooted in weaponized mind control techniques.
The scholars who I’m most indebted to in this analysis are Peter Levenda and Joseph Farrell. Their work has investigated the continuation of the Nazi (or Fascist International) state beyond the German borders since the end of World War II. And how that transnational, extra-territorial Nazi/Fascist state embedded itself within the deepest layers of the Western (esp, Anglo-American) system: corporate, intelligence, military, scientific and technological, even in the realms of the paranormal/occult.
The West made this deal with the fascist devil in order to use them in the fight against the Soviet Union. In so doing however the West, especially the United States (as well as the UK), started taking on more and more the feel and the ethos of fascists, particularly The Third Reich.
The list of influences of this Fascist International are far too many to name. But here are some key elements in the story:
Operation Paperclip: The recruitment of multitudes of Nazi scientists into the newly forming rocketry, space, and aeronautics industries of the United States. Of particular note here is the deep influence of Nazis (cough “former Nazis”) in the development of NASA, e.g. Werner von Braun.
The Nazification of the CIA
Allen Dulles, the wartime station chief in Zurich of the OSS (forerunner to the CIA) and later head of the CIA made a deal with the Nazi head of intelligence for the Eastern Front: Reinhard Gehlen. In essence Dulles “bought wholesale" and folded Gehlen’s entire intelligence apparatus in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union into the CIA. Overnight the GehlenOrg became in essence the CIA’s intelligence outfit against the Soviets, in their home turf. Unbelievably Gehlen was able to retain his command structure intact. The Gehlen Org eventually became the West German security apparatus and from there the core of NATO’s intelligence and counterintelligence operations.
Between the introduction of Nazi scientists and Nazi counterintelligence we see the immediate rise in the post-war US of mind control experiments and psychological warfare on its domestic civilian population as well as on civilian populations of foreign allies, not to mention adversarial regimes and their populations. Psychological warfare was a term invented by the Nazis (weltaschuungskrieg). Everyone is well aware of the gruesome and horrifying Nazi “medical” experiments. The United States military-industrial-intelligence complex also began its own medical experimentation on its own citizens (e.g. Tuskegee experiments).
The "Blind Eye" To The Ratlines
The Western Allied Powers gave an enormous green light for many key Nazis to flee prior to the end of the war (aka "the ratlines"). Elements within The Roman Catholic Church were instrumental in helping Nazis (and allied fascists like the Ustashi) to escape to Latin America and Middle East (esp. Egypt) in particular.
Supreme Court Justice Henry Jackson wrote to President Harry Truman saying that he had heard rumors of a potential escape by Martin Bormann, who by the end of the war had been Hitler’s #2. Bormann was the former secretary to Hitler’s original right hand man Rudolf Hess. Bormann was the leader of the post-war continuance of the Nazi international. Justice Jackson wrote to Harry Truman saying that the FBI should investigate Bormann’s whereabouts in South America. Why would Jackson suggest the FBI led a manhunt for Bormann when the FBI was supposed to be for domestic US interests while the CIA was designed for foreign intelligence operations? Well because the CIA was staffed with a huge number of “ex”-Nazis who would have passed on information to Bormann (see Reinhard Gehlen deal above) and Jackson knew that fact.
As late as the 1960s Martin Bormann was cashing cheques at a Chase bank (via Deutsche Bank) in Argentina, approved by the head office Chase Manhattan bank. By the way, Nelson Rockefeller was CIA chief for South America then—seriously a Rockefeller.
Embedded in these various places globally, Fascist operatives were the boots on the ground in the coups against Mosaddeqeh in Iran (pretty relevant in the present moment) and Allende in Chile. Those were CIA operations carried out by “former” Nazis. The resulting installed puppet regimes of The Shah in Iran and Pinochet in Chile were of course very fascistic.
Former Nazi operatives (e.g. Otto Skorzeny) were instrumental in the development of multiple Islamists terrorist organizations. This policy had its roots earlier in WWI German anti-British colonial training and funding of jihad, as well as the development of a fully Muslim SS contingent under Hitler. (That group eventually became core to the Kosovo and Albanian militias in former Yugoslavia).
Elements of the current regime in The Ukraine have deep historical ties to the Nazis. Seen in that light the whole Russian-Ukrainian conflict comes into a different light: as does the Color Revolution in Ukraine, Russiagate, Trump’s holdup of the Ukrainian aid, the Impeachment saga, etc.*
The Nazi Loot and The Missing Trillions
Farrell has explored how part of the bargain with Bormann and the Fascist International was a deal around Nazi loot. Farrell has argued, quite persuasively in my view, that the original impetus behind the founding of The Bilderberg meetings was to coordinate the laundering and flow of this illegal money into the West. The Bilderberg meetings were chaired by Prince Bernard of the Netherlands, who during the war was Nazi SS.
Right after the war, President Truman created a secret system of finance—ostensibly as a covert means of financing the Cold War (but also very likely around the UFO phenomenon)—which was heavily funded through ill-gotten Nazi gain.
The Fascist International’s deep ties to the criminal underworld set the template for the nexus of the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies to work with the criminal underground and self-fund off books black operations through the global drug trade, human slavery/sex slavery, blackmail (think Epstein), and gun running.
Catherine Austin Fitts has shown, through her research, how the Cabinet department of Housing and Urban Development was/is a massive laundering operation for the drug trade. (Which of course was itself deeply implicated in the financial crash of 2008).
As Farrell has noted the SS were the prototype of the first “state within a state” or “breakaway civilization”. As per Farrell’s research, the Nazis had two space programs. A somewhat secret yet more public(ish) one, led by von Braun himself, which included the development of the V-2 rocket. Never forget that von Braun was SS. The Nazis in addition had a second “super secret” series of black budget research projects: e.g. the Nazi Bell. (Points of contact here again to the UFO phenomenon). These super secret programs were held within the purview of the SS. In other words, The Nazis basically had the forerunner to DARPA, an exotic weapons/tech research think tank. Incredibly, just as with Gehlen, Von Braun was able to replicate his exact command structure in NASA.
This Nazi model creates the prototype for the potential development of a parallel two track Western space program and the secretive black budget one being coordinated with intelligence agencies. Remember that NASA in its founding charter was a military organization not a civilian one as we tend to think of it now.
Farrell and Fitts have argued that this black budget financial world is being sipphoned off to create a space-based economy. President Trump’s recent announcement of the Space Force is directly relevant in that context.
The Nazi (Oc)Cult
At the root of Levenda’s and Farrell’s research is the understanding that the Nazis were (and are) a cult. There is a religious fervor at heart of the Nazi enterprise that provides understanding to the long term vision and dogged commitment to the cause, long after the seeming defeat of the Nazis.
The Nazis were also into the occult. That’s a whole topic unto itself but for the purposes of this piece the key piece is the way in which the Nazis in addition to researching exotic technology and physics were deeply involved in experiments seeking to weaponize occult and psi phenomena. The US intelligence apparatus here again followed the Nazi lead in the hidden study of weaponizing psi phenomena. Operations Artichoke, Bluebird, MK Ultra, MK Often, and Stargate (among others) all involved the research into the weaponization of psi phenomena. (The Soviets incidentally also had their own version of psychotronic research modeled after the Nazis.)
The SS in particular were a “state beyond borders”, a “hidden state within a state”, a “breakaway civilization”, involved in exotic technology research, covert funding and operations, psychological warfare, human slavery and experimentation, as well as weaponized occult magical practices. They became the model for the development of the US national security and later surveillance state.
The history of the 21st century makes deep though horrifying sense in light of the study of the Nazis.
The Fascist-Aware Lens
These are only a small sample of all the points of contact with the Fascist International and it’s influences on the present moment. This point of view is one that in Western mainstream history, politics and analysis is basically never mentioned. It is occulted. As I’ve talked about before there are conspiracy hypotheses and conspiracy theories (i.e. valid conspiracy hypotheses). This perspective is a conspiracy theory in the deepest sense. In fact we could say the real conspiracy is why this is never discussed publicly. Sure specific elements of the story like Operation Paperclip or the Ratlines are known but there is never a systematic, cohesive view of the impact of this continuing international fascist reality across it’s many octopus-like tentacles. That cohesive systemic view is what Levenda and Farrell offer.
All the noise, dissonance, disinformation and fog of confusion that lies heavy on the world in this moment is perfectly understandable with a deep study of the Nazis. And I don’t mean in that some simplistic Naomi Wolf Trump = Hitler nonsense, nor the “we’re inches away from the Handmaid’s Tale” insanity of the “Resistance” which I’ve critiqued elsewhere.
I mean it much much deeper than that very superficial and ideological “analysis.” Consider the example of the internet. I’ve written before on how the quest to gain human attention through internet-based marketing was rooted in techniques of weaponized mind control. Let’s bring that analysis into touch with this one. The internet was created by DARPA—originally known as Arpanet (and later Darpanet). DARPA, as just mentioned, is based off a Nazi example at the nexus of covert tech, secret science, and weapons creation. Also keep in mind the deep overlap in terms of personnel and location with the creation of the internet and Project Stargate (weaponized psi/occult phenomena) at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI). This combination is an exact replica of the Nazi SS prototype.
It’s important to understand then that the roots of the creation of the internet are in surveillance, covert operations, and psychological warfare. So over time the internet is now core to the rise of the security and surveillance state. Contrary to the popular mythology—which is a psychological operation—the internet was not created by a bunch of ex-hippes tech nerds to be a digital utopia of freedom and self-expression. It was intentionally designed to help foster a surveillance state, which is exactly what it has done. The internet's "genetic roots" lie with the Nazis after all (dark pun very much intended).
At end of World War II the Anglo-American corporate/military/intelligence elite felt that they could co-opt Fascism in order to fight the perceived greater enemy of Soviet Communism. In the end however the Fascist penetration into the depths of the Western corporate, governmental, intelligence, scientific, military, and intelligence apparatus slowly but surely co-opted the Western system to fascism.
Whether a republic could withstand the creation of a national security apparatus, whether those two are even compatible is an open-question, way beyond the bounds of this piece. It would be an interesting theoretical political discussion. What is certain however is that a national security system that bases itself on a fascist prototype and invites a multitude of those fascists into it’s very foundations has no chance of working with a republican system. It will inevitably over time eat away at the very foundations of such a constitutional order. In it’s most nefarious insight (learned from the failure of Nazism) it will leave in place the spectacle and the above ground nature of democratic procedures—mostly media-fueled elections—while leaving the hidden, fascistic, deeper state untouched.
Fukuyama argued that the 20th century was fascism, communism, and democratic liberal capitalism fighting it out for supremacy. Instead we now see that fascism went underground within capitalism and ate away the democratic-liberal-constitutional kernel leaving it as only a husk of itself. This joint fascist-corporatist market alliance defeated communism, thereby freeing capitalism to ditch the constitutional mask and roam freely across and any all forms of government.
What that leaves us with is an increasingly technocratic fascist corporate model running the world with its own factions that fight each other but with essentially no competition left. For all the talk of the present moment being so ambiguous and grey and tangled and opaque, all that is really needed to understand the global present moment is two key pieces:
1. Capital’s ability to morph and shape and weave it’s way into any and all forms of governance.
2. Fascism’s continued existence and it’s deep co-opting of the corporate reality of the West.
Fascism and capitalism have in their various ways co-opted and morphed each other into an ultimately pathological symbiotic relationship. That is what must be understood to truly grasp the present moment and start to conceive of ways forward.
—
* This more comprehensive fascist look also helps illuminates Russia’s contemporary position in the world as the anti-globalist pro-nationalist leader given that it sees globalism as a fusion of Anglo-American and Fascist International interests, both of which it spent much of the 20th century fighting. This is not to promote Putin or Putinism. Quite the opposite. Putin has his own version of an intelligence, criminal/mafia, corporate crony capitalist paranoid surveillance state. That would require a whole separate piece unto itself but to state it simply and clearly: in this case, the enemy of my enemy is definitely NOT my friend.