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Hints of Ukrainian Fascism and CIA Spying Rise From Blacklist Case
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/hints_of_ukrainian_fascism_and_cia_spyin
g_rise_from_blacklist_case_20161208/
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Posted on Dec 9, 2016
By Mark Ames / AlterNet
(http://www.alternet.org/media/anonymous-blacklist-promoted-washington-post-
has-shocking-roots-ukrainian-fascism-eugenics-and)
A screenshot of a PropOrNot tweet from Nov. 17, 2016. The 1940s Ukrainian
fascist salute, Heroiam Slava!! (Glory to the heroes!) is displayed
above the image. (PropOrNot ID Service / Twitter
(https://twitter.com/propornot/status/799314450893438976) )
Last month, the Washington Post gave a glowing front-page boost
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-propaganda-effort-h
elped-spread-fake-news-during-election-experts-say/2016/11/24/793903b6-8a40-
4ca9-b712-716af66098fe_story.html?utm_term=.c46bfa5ea2fc) to an anonymous
online blacklist of hundreds of American websites, from marginal conspiracy
sites to flagship libertarian and progressive publications. As Max
Blumenthal reported
(http://www.alternet.org/media/washington-post-promotes-shadowy-website-accu
ses-200-publications-russian-propaganda-plants) for AlterNet, the anonymous
website argued that all of them should be investigated by the federal
government and potentially prosecuted under the Espionage Act as Russian
spies, for wittingly or unwittingly spreading Russian propaganda.
My own satirical newspaper was raided and closed down
(https://cpj.org/2008/06/englishlanguage-paper-closes-because-of-state-hara.
php) by the Kremlin in 2008, on charges of extremismakin to
terrorismwhich I took seriously enough to leave for home for good. What the
Washington Post did in boosting an anonymous blacklist of American
journalists accused of criminal treason is one of the sleaziest, and most
disturbing (in a very familiar Kremlin way) things Ive seen in this country
since I fled for home. The WaPo is essentially an arm of the American deep
state
(http://www.alternet.org/media/owner-washington-post-doing-business-cia-whil
e-keeping-his-readers-dark) ; its owner, Jeff Bezos, is one of the three
richest Americans
(http://fortune.com/2016/10/05/jeff-bezos-americas-second-richest/) , worth
$67 billion, and his cash cow, Amazon, is a major contractor with the
Central Intelligence Agency
(http://blackbag.gawker.com/amazon-is-the-scariest-part-of-the-cias-new-amaz
on-clo-1605847721) . In other words, this is as close to an official US
government blacklist of journalists as weve seena dark ominous warning
before they take the next steps.
Its now been a few days, and the shock and disgust is turning to questions
about how to fight backand who we should be fighting against. Who were the
Washington Posts sources for their journalism blacklist?
Smearing a progressive journalism icon
The WaPo smear was authored by tech reporter Craig Timberg, a former
national security editor who displayed embarrassing deference
(https://www.c-span.org/video/?323275-4/eric-schmidt-surveillance-national-s
ecurity) to the head of the worlds largest private surveillance operation,
billionaire Eric Schmidtin contrast to his treatment of his journalism
colleagues. Theres little in Timbergs history to suggest hed lead one of
the ugliest public smears of his colleagues in decades. Timbergs father, a
successful mainstream journalist who recently died
(http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/09/bob_timber
g_was_the_bravest_man_i_knew.html) , wrote hagiographies on his Naval
Academy comrades including John McCain
(http://www.mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=2243CD7B-50
4F-4D0D-BF62-8EB2205E09B3) , the Senates leading Russophobic hawk, and
three Iran-Contra conspiratorsOliver North, John Poindexter, and Robert
McFarlane, whose crimes Timberg blames
(http://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/17/books/books-of-the-times-5-famous-men-and
-what-they-learned-at-annapolis.html) on their love of country and
sacrifices in Vietnam.
WaPos key source was an anonymous online group calling itself PropOrNot
(i.e., Propaganda Or Not). It was here that the blacklist of American
journalists allegedly working with the Kremlin was posted. The Washington
Post cited PropOrNot as a credible source, and granted them the right to
anonymously accuse major American news outlets of treason, recommending that
the government investigate and prosecute them under the Espionage Act for
spreading Russian propaganda.
Featured alongside those anonymously accused of treason by PropOrNot, among
a long list of marginal conspiracy sites and major news hubs, is Truthdig.
This news and opinion site was co-founded by Zuade Kaufman and the veteran
journalist Robert Scheer, who is a professor
(http://annenberg.usc.edu/faculty/communication/robert-scheer) of USCs
Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and former columnist for
the LA Times. It would not be the first time Scheer has come under attack
from dark forces. In the mid-late 1960s, Scheer made his fame as editor and
reporter for Ramparts, the fearless investigative magazine that changed
American journalism. One of the biggest bombshell stories that Scheers
magazine exposed was the CIAs covert funding of the National Student
Association (http://www.unz.org/Pub/Ramparts-1967mar-00029?View=PDF) , then
Americas largest college student organization, which had chapters on 400
campuses and a major presence internationally.
The CIA was not pleased with Scheers magazines work, and shortly
afterwards launched a top-secret and illegal domestic spying campaign
(https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/nsa-whistleblowers-for-dummies-ii/)
against Scheer and Ramparts, believing that they must be a Russian Communist
front. A secret team of CIA operativeskept secret even from the rest of
Langley, the operation was so blatantly illegalspied on Scheer and his
Ramparts colleagues, dug through Ramparts funders lives and harassed some
of them into ditching the magazine, but in all of that they couldnt find a
single piece of evidence linking Scheers magazine to Kremlin agents. This
secret illegal CIA investigation into Scheers magazine expanded its
domestic spying project, code-named MH-CHAOS, that grew into a monster
targeting hundreds of thousands of Americans, only to be exposed by Seymour
Hersh
(https://pando.com/2015/05/14/lapdogs-redux-how-the-press-tried-to-discredit
-seymour-hershs-bombshell-expose-of-the-cias-domestic-spying/) in late
1974, leading to the creation of the Church Committee hearings and calls by
Congress for the abolition of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Its one of the dark ugly ironies that 50 years later, Scheer has been
anonymously accused of working for Russian spies, only this time the
accusers have the full cooperation of the Washington Posts front page.
PropOrNots Ukrainian fascist salute
Still the question lingers: Who is behind PropOrNot? Who are they? We may
have to await the defamation lawsuits that are almost certainly coming from
those smeared by the Post and by PropOrNot. Their description sounds like
the About tab on any number of Washington front groups that journalists
and researchers are used to coming across:
PropOrNot is an independent team of concerned American citizens with a wide
range of backgrounds and expertise, including professional experience in
computer science, statistics, public policy, and national security affairs.
The only specific clues given were an admission that at least one of its
members with access to its Twitter handle is Ukrainian-American. They had
given this away in a handful of early Ukrainian-language tweets, parroting
Ukrainian ultranationalist slogans, before the group was known.
One PropOrNot tweet, dated November 17, invokes a 1940s Ukrainian fascist
salute Heroiam Slava!!
(https://twitter.com/propornot/status/799314450893438976) to cheer a news
item on Ukrainian hackers fighting Russians. The phrase means Glory to the
heroes and it was formally introduced by the fascist Organization of
Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) at their March-April 1941 congress in Nazi
occupied Cracow, as they prepared to serve as Nazi auxiliaries in Operation
Barbarossa. As historian Grzgorz Rossolinski-Liebe, author of the definitive
biography
(https://cup.columbia.edu/book/stepan-bandera-the-life-and-afterlife-of-a-uk
rainian-nationalist/9783838206844) on Ukraines wartime fascist leader and
Nazi collaborator
(http://www.wiesenthal.com/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=lsKWLbPJLnF&b=444
1467&ct=7922775&printmode=1) Stepan Bandera, explained
(http://carlbeckpapers.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/cbp/article/view/204/0) :
the OUN-B introduced another Ukrainian fascist salute at the Second Great
Congress of the Ukrainian Nationalists in Cracow in March and April 1941.
This was the most popular Ukrainian fascist salute and had to be performed
according to the instructions of the OUN-B leadership by raising the right
arm slightly to the right, slightly above the peak of the head while
calling Glory to Ukraine! (Slava Ukra?ni!) and responding Glory to the
Heroes! (Heroiam Slava!).
Two months after formalizing this salute, Nazi forces allowed Banderas
Ukrainian fascists to briefly take control of Lvov
(http://www.academia.edu/1314919/The_Lviv_Pogrom_of_1941_The_Germans_Ukraini
an_Nationalists_and_the_Carnival_Crowd) , at the time a predominantly Jewish
and Polish citywhereupon the Ukrainian patriots murdered, tortured and
raped thousands of Jews
(http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/to-see-what-ukraines-futur
e-may-be-just-look-at-lvivs-shameful-past-9178968.html) , in one of the most
barbaric
(http://www.vintag.es/2016/10/30-shocking-historical-photos-of-lviv.html)
and bloodiest pogroms ever.
Since the 2014 Maidan Revolution brought Ukrainian neo-fascists
(http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26468720) back into the highest rungs
of power
(http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/us-backing-neo-nazis-ukraine) ,
Ukraines Nazi collaborators and wartime fascists have been rehabilitated
(https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-05-19/nazis-triumph-over-commu
nists-in-ukraine) as heroes
(http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/17459) , with major
highways and roads named after them
(http://www.timesofisrael.com/kiev-renames-major-street-to-honor-russian-naz
i-collaborator/) , and public commemorations. The speaker of Ukraines
parliament, Andriy Parubiy
(https://ukraineantifascistsolidarity.wordpress.com/2015/10/13/who-is-andriy
-parubiy-protest-uk-visit-of-ukrainian-politician-with-far-right-links/) ,
founded Ukraines neo-Nazi Social-National Party of Ukraine
(https://www.channel4.com/news/svoboda-ministers-ukraine-new-government-far-
right) and published a white supremacist manifesto, View From the Right
(https://vk.com/doc-109759920_437182445) featuring the parliament speaker
in full neo-Nazi uniform in front of fascist flags with the Nazi Wolfsangel
symbol. Ukraines powerful Interior Minister, Arsen Avakov, sponsors
(https://www.thenation.com/article/the-ukrainian-far-right-and-the-danger-it
-poses/) several ultranationalist and neo-Nazi militia groups like the Azov
Battalion
(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/11025137/Ukraine-c
risis-the-neo-Nazi-brigade-fighting-pro-Russian-separatists.html) , and last
month he helped appoint another neo-Nazi
(http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Kiev-regional-police-head-accused-of-neo-Nazi
-ties-381559) , Vadym Troyan
(https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/757496246802190336) , as head of
Ukraines National Police
(http://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-defense/2122205-interior-minister-avakov-in
troduces-new-acting-chief-of-national-police.html) . (Earlier this year,
when Troyan was still police chief of the capital Kiev, he was widely
accused (https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/757496246802190336) of having
ordered an illegal surveillance operation on investigative journalist Pavel
Sheremet just before his assassination by car bomb
(https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/20/ukraine-journalist-pavel-sher
emet-killed-kiev-car-bombing) .)
A Ukrainian intelligence service blacklist as PropOrNots model
Since coming to power in the 2014 Maidan Revolution, Ukraines US-backed
regime has waged an increasingly surreal war on journalists who dont toe
the Ukrainian ultranationalist line, and against treacherous Kremlin
propagandists, real and imagined. Two years ago, Ukraine established a
Ministry of Truth
(https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/19/-sp-ukraine-new-ministry-trut
h-undermines-battle-for-democracy) . This year the war has gone from surreal
paranoia
(http://mashable.com/2014/12/02/ukraine-ministry-of-truth/#2dQFiEdwZkqH) to
an increasingly deadly
(http://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-attacks-on-journalists-media-landscape-press
-freedom/27923284.html) kind of terror.
(https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/maxim-eristavi/terror-against-ukrai
ne-s-journalists-is-fueled-by-political-elites)
One of the more frightening policies enacted by the current
oligarch-nationalist regime in Kiev is an online blacklist
(https://myrotvorets.center/579804-spisok-zhurnalistov-akkreditovannyx-terro
risticheskoj-organizaciej-dnr/) of journalists accused of collaborating
with pro-Russian terrorists.
(http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/01/opinion/ukraine-declares-war-on-journalis
m.html?_r=1) The website, Myrotvorets
(http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/01/opinion/ukraine-declares-war-on-journalis
m.html?_r=0) or Peacemakerwas set up by Ukrainian hackers working with
state intelligence and police, all of which tend to share the same
ultranationalist ideologies as Parubiy and the newly-appointed neo-Nazi
chief of the National Police.
Condemned by the Committee to Protect Journalists
(https://www.cpj.org/2016/05/hackers-lawmaker-put-reporters-at-risk-in-ukrai
ne.php) and numerous news organizations in the West and in Ukraine, the
online blacklist includes the names and personal private information on some
4,500 journalists
(http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/05/12/ukraine-tries-to-terrify-j
ournalists-who-cover-the-war.html) , including several western journalists
(http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/01/opinion/ukraine-declares-war-on-journalis
m.html?_r=0) and Ukrainians working for western media. The website is
designed to frighten and muzzle journalists from reporting anything but the
pro-nationalist party line, and it has the backing of government officials,
spies and policeincluding the SBU (Ukraines successor to the KGB), the
powerful Interior Minister Avakov and his notorious far-right deputy, Anton
Geraschenkoq.
Ukraines journalist blacklist websiteoperated by Ukrainian hackers working
with state intelligenceled to a rash of death threats against the doxxed
journalists, whose email addresses, phone numbers and other private
information was posted anonymously to the website. Many of these threats
came with the wartime Ukrainian fascist salute: Slava Ukraini! [Glory to
Ukraine!] So when PropOrNots anonymous researchers reveal only their
Ukrainian(s) identity, its hard not to think about the spy-linked hackers
who posted the deadly Myrotvorets blacklist of treasonous journalists.
The DNCs Ukrainian ultra-nationalist researcher cries treason
Because the PropOrNot blacklist of American journalist traitors is
anonymous, and the Washington Post front-page article protects their
anonymity, we can only speculate on their identity with what little
information theyve given us. And that little bit of information reveals
only a Ukrainian ultranationalist threadthe salute, the same obsessively
violent paranoia towards Russia, and towards journalists, who in the eyes of
Ukrainian nationalists have always been dupes and stooges, if not outright
collaborators, of Russian evil.
One of the key media sources
(https://www.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-hacked-emails-of-dnc-oppo-researcher-p
oint-to-russians-and-wider-penetration-154121061.html) who blamed the DNC
hacks on Russia, ramping up fears of crypto-Putinist infiltration, is a
Ukrainian-American lobbyist working for the DNC. She is Alexandra
Chalupadescribed as the head of the Democratic National Committees
opposition research on Russia and on Trump, and founder and president of the
Ukrainian lobby group US United With Ukraine Coalition, which lobbied hard
to pass a 2014 bill increasing loans and military aid to Ukraine, imposing
sanctions on Russians, and tightly aligning US and Ukraine geostrategic
interests.
In October of this year, Yahoo News named Chalupa
(https://twitter.com/AlexandraChalup/status/790616716678225920) one of 16
People Who Shaped the 2016 Election
(https://www.yahoo.com/news/16-people-who-shaped-the-2016-election-alexandra
-chalupa-171541199.html?soc_src=social-sh&soc_trk=fb) for her role in
pinning the DNC leaks on Russian hackers, and for making the case that the
Trump campaign was under Kremlin control. As a Democratic Party consultant
and proud Ukrainian-American, Alexandra Chalupa was outraged last spring
when Donald Trump named Paul Manafort as his campaign manager, the Yahoo
profile began. As she saw it, Manafort was a key figure in advancing
Russian President Vladimir Putins agenda inside her ancestral homeland
and she was determined to expose it.
Chalupa worked with veteran reporter Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News to
publicize her opposition research on Trump, Russia and Paul Manafort, as
well as her many Ukrainian sources. In one leaked DNC email
(https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/3962) earlier this year, Chalupa
boasts to DNC Communications Director Luis Miranda that she brought Isikoff
to a US-government sponsored Washington event featuring 68 Ukrainian
journalists, where Chalupa was invited to speak specifically about Paul
Manafort. In turn, Isikoff named her as the key inside source
(https://www.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-hacked-emails-of-dnc-oppo-researcher-p
oint-to-russians-and-wider-penetration-154121061.html) proving that the
Russians were behind the hacks, and that Trumps campaign was under the
spell of Kremlin spies and sorcerers.
(In 2008, when I broke the story
(https://www.thenation.com/article/mccains-kremlin-ties/) about the
Manafort-Kremlin ties in The Nation with Ari Berman, I did not go on to to
accuse him or John McCain, whose campaign was being run by Manaforts
partner, of being Manchurian Candidates under the spell of Vladimir Putin.
Because they werent; instead, they were sleazy, corrupt, hypocritical
politicians who followed money and power rather than principle. A media hack
feeding frenzy turned Manafort from what he wasa sleazy scumbaginto a
fantastical Kremlin mole
(http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/paul-manafort-ukraine-kiev-russia-kon
stantin-kilimnik-227181) , forcing Manafort to resign from the Trump
campaign, thanks in part to kompromat material leaked by the Ukrainian SBU
(http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/15/us/politics/paul-manafort-ukraine-donald-
trump.html) , successor to the KGB.)
Meanwhile, Chalupas Twitter feed went wild accusing Trump of treasona
crime that carries the death penalty. Along with well over 100 tweets
hashtagged #TreasonousTrump (http://www.alternet.org/media/blank) Chalupa
repeatedly asked powerful government officials and bodies like the
Department of Justice
(https://twitter.com/AlexandraChalup/status/791280907021905921) to
investigate Trump for the capital crime of treason. In the weeks since the
election, Chalupa has repeatedly accused
(https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10157855450785389&id=614520388)
both the Trump campaign and Russia of rigging the elections, demanding
further investigations. According to The Guardian
(https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/29/us-election-recount-trump-h
acking) , Chalupa recently sent a report to Congress proving Russian hacked
into the vote count, hoping to initiate a Congressional investigation. In an
interview with Gothamist
(http://gothamist.com/2016/11/17/russia_hackers_election_trump.php) ,
Chalupa described alleged Russian interference in the election result as an
act of war.
To be clear, I am not arguing that Chalupa is behind PropOrNot. But it is
important to provide context to the boasts by PropOrNot about its Ukrainian
nationalist linkswithin the larger context of the Clinton campaigns
anti-Kremlin hysteria, which crossed the line into Cold War xenophobia time
and time again, an anti-Russian xenophobia shared by Clintons Ukrainian
nationalist allies. To me, it looks like a classic case of blowback: A
hyper-nationalist group whose extremism happens to be useful to American
geopolitical ambitions, and is therefore nurtured to create problems for our
competitor. Indeed, the US has cultivated extreme Ukrainian nationalists as
proxies for decades, since the Cold War began.
As investigative journalist Russ Bellant documented in his classic exposé,
Old Nazis, New Right, Ukrainian Nazi collaborators were brought into the
United States and weaponized
(https://www.thenation.com/article/seven-decades-nazi-collaboration-americas
-dirty-little-ukraine-secret/) for use against Russia during the Cold War,
despite whatever role they may have played in the Holocaust and in the mass
slaughter of Ukraines ethnic Poles. After spending so many years
encouraging extreme Ukrainian nationalism, its no surprise that the whole
policy is beginning to blow back.
WaPos other source: A loony, far-right eugenicist think tank
Besides PropOrNot, the Washington Posts Craig Timberg relied on only one
other source to demonstrate the influence of Russian propaganda: the Foreign
Policy Research Institute (FPRI), whose fellow Clint Watts is cited by
name, along with a report he co-authored, Trolling for Trump: How Russia is
Trying to Destroy Our Democracy.
Somehow, in the pushback and outrage over the WaPo blacklist story, the FPRI
has managed to fly under the radar. So much so that when Fortunes Matthew
Ingram correctly described
(http://fortune.com/2016/11/25/russian-fake-news/) the FPRI as proponents
of the Cold War he was compelled to issue a clarification, changing the
description to a conservative think tank known for its hawkish stance on
relations between the US and Russia.
In fact, historically the Foreign Policy Research Institute has been one of
the looniest (and spookiest) extreme-right think tanks since the early Cold
War days, promoting winnable nuclear war, maximum confrontation with
Russia, and attacking anti-colonialism as dangerously unworkable. One of the
key brains behind the FPRIs extreme-right Cold War views also happened to
be a former Austrian fascist official who, upon emigrating to America,
became one of this countrys leading proponents of racial eugenics and white
supremacy.
The Foreign Policy Research Institute was founded by Robert Strausz-Hupé and
set up on the University of Pennsylvania campus, with backing from the
Vicks chemical company, funder of numerous reactionary rightwing causes
since the New Deal began. And, as the New York Times reported
(http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9405E3DA113CE53BBC4152DFB466
838C679EDE&legacy=true) , the FPRI also was covertly funded by the CIA
(https://www.evernote.com/shard/s1/sh/34e7654d-b7be-4450-95b8-1b91268a62d9/2
a2bdcb65435e6fa) , a revelation that would lead to student protests and the
FPRI removing itself from Penns campus in 1970.
The FPRIs founder, Strausz-Hupe, emigrated to the US from Austria in the
1920s. In the early Cold War years, he became known as an advocate of
aggressive confrontation with the Soviet Union, openly advocating total
nuclear war rather than anything like surrender or cohabitation. In a 1961
treatise A Forward Strategy for America that Strausz-Hupe co-authored with
his frequent FPRI collaborator, the former Austrian fascist official and
racial eugenics advocate Stefan Possony, they wrote
(https://books.google.com/books?id=ZWAHmLuZeIoC&q=catonic#v=onepage&q=straus
z&f=false) :
Even at a moment when the United States faces defeat because, for example,
Europe, Asia and Africa have fallen to communist domination, a sudden
nuclear attack against the Soviet Union could at least avenge the disaster
and deprive the opponent of the ultimate triumph. While such a reversal at
the last moment almost certainly would result in severe American casualties,
it might still nullify all previous Soviet conquests.
But it was Russian propaganda that most concerned Strausz-Hupe and his FPRI.
In 1959, for example, he published a three-page spread in the New York
Times, headlined Why Russia Is Ahead in Propaganda,
(http://www.nytimes.com/1959/09/27/archives/why-russia-is-ahead-in-propagand
a-the-struggle-for-mens-minds-is-a.html) that has odd echoes of last
months paranoid Washington Post article alleging a vast conspiracy of
American journalists secretly poisoning the publics mind with Russian
propaganda. The article argued, as many do today
(http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/29/world/europe/russia-sweden-disinformation
.html) , that America and the West were dangerously behind the Russians in
the propaganda arms raceand dangerously disadvantaged by our open and free
society, where propaganda is allegedly sniffed out by our ever-vigilant and
fearless media.
The only way for America to protect itself from Russian propaganda, he
wrote, was to massively increase its propaganda warfare budgets, and close
the alleged propaganda gapechoing again the same solutions being peddled
today
(https://foreignaffairs.house.gov/hearing/hearing-confronting-russias-weapon
ization-of-information/) in Washington
(http://www.interpretermag.com/the-menace-of-unreality-how-the-kremlin-weapo
nizes-information-culture-and-money/) and London:
[W]ithin the limitations of our society, we can take steps to expand and
improve our existing programs.
These programs have been far from generous. It has been estimated, for
example, that the Communists in one single propaganda offensivethe
germ-warfare campaign during the Korean conflictspent nearly as much as the
entire annual allocation to the United States Information Agency. We should
increase the austere budget of the U.S.I.A. We should give our information
specialists a greater voice in policy-making councils. We should attempt to
coordinate more fully and effectively the propaganda programs of the Western
alliance.
A few years later, the FPRIs Strausz-Hupe published a deranged attack
(http://www.nytimes.com/1964/02/16/moviegoers-diagnoses-of-dr-strangelove.ht
ml) in the New York Times against Stanley Kubricks film Dr. Strangelove,
calling it the most vicious attack to date launched by way of our mass
media against the American military profession. The FPRIs founding
director went further, accusing Kubrick of being, if not a conscious Russian
agent of propaganda, then a Soviet dupe undermining American democracy and
stabilitythe same sort of paranoid accusations that FPRI is leveling again
today. As Strausz-Hupe wrote:
Anyone who cares to scan the Soviet press and the Communist press in other
lands will note that it is one of the principal Communist objectives to
drive a wedge between the American people and their military leaders. Mr.
Kubricks creation certainly serves this purpose.
Reading that then, knowing how the Soviet Union eventually collapsed on
itself without firing a shotand seeing the same paranoid, sleazy lies being
peddled again today, one is dumbstruck by just how stagnant our intellectual
culture is. Weve never thawed ourselves out from our Cold War pathologies;
were still trapped in the same structures that nurture these pathologies.
Too many careers and salaries depend on it
But Strausz-Hupe was the voice of reason compared to his chief collaborator
and co-author at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Stefan Possony. He
too was an Austrian emigre, although Possony didnt leave his homeland until
1938. Before then he served in the Austrofascist governments of both
Dollfuss and Schuschnigg, but left after the Nazi Anschluss deposed the
native fascists and installed Hitlers puppets in their place.
Possony was a director and fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute,
and according to historian Robert Vitalis recent book White World Power
[Cornell University Press], Possony co-authored nearly all of the FPRIs
policy research material until he moved to Stanfords Hoover Institute in
1961, where he helped align the two institutions. Possony continued
publishing in the FPRIs journal Orbis throughout the 1960s and beyond. He
was also throughout this time one of the most prolific contributors to
Mankind Quarterly, the leading race eugenics journal in the days before The
Bell Curveand co-author race eugenics books with white supremacist
Nathaniel Weyl
(https://thinkprogress.org/nathaniel-weyl-79d3cf8a8b67?gi=7a8ef36c7cee#.25r8
o5vkp) .
So even as he was publishing aggressive Cold War propaganda for the Foreign
Policy Research Institute, Possony wrote
(https://books.google.com/books?id=mBTRCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT271&dq=%22Strausz-Hup%C
3%A9%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwitvcq25svQAhVo34MKHXkiAbM4ChDoAQgsMAM#v=onepag
e&q=%22Strausz-Hup%C3%A9%22&f=false) elsewhere that the average African
Negro functions as does the European after a leucotomy [prefrontal lobotomy]
operation In other articles, Possony described the people of the Middle
East, Latin America and Southeast Asia as genetically unpromising because
they lack the innate brain power required for mastery and operation of the
tools of modern civilization[.] . . . For this reason he and Strausz-Hupe
opposed the early Cold War policy of de-colonization: The accretion of
lethal power in the hands of nation states dominated by populations
incapable of rational thought could be a harbinger of total disaster.
Instead, they argued
(https://books.google.com/books?id=mBTRCgAAQBAJ&dq=%22Strausz-Hup%C3%A9%22&q
=strausz#v=snippet&q=strausz&f=false) that white colonialism benefited the
natives and raised them up; western critics of colonialism, they argued,
were merely fashionable dupes who would be responsible for a genocide of
local whites.
As late as a 1974 article in Mankind Quarterly
(http://www.unz.org/Pub/MankindQuarterly-1974jul-00032?View=PDF) , Possony
was defending race eugenics loon William Shockleys theories on the
inferiority of dark skinned races, which he argued could prove that spending
money on welfare was in fact a waste since there was no way to improve
genetically inferior races. Around the same time, Possony emerged as the
earliest and most effective advocate of the Star Wars anti-ballistic
missile system adopted by President Reagan. The way Possony saw it, the Star
Wars weapon was entirely offensive, and would give the United States
sufficient first strike capability to win a nuclear war with Russia.
It was this history, and a 1967 New York Times exposé on how the Foreign
Policy Research Institute had been covertly funded by the CIA, that led US
Senator Fulbright in 1969 to reject Nixons nomination of Strausz-Hupe as
ambassador to Morocco. Fulbright denounced
(http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/26/world/robert-strausz-hupe-envoy-and-cold-
war-stalwart-98.html) Strausz-Hupe as a Cold War extremist and a threat to
world peace: the very epitome of a hard-line, no compromise. However, he
gave in a couple of years later when Nixon named him to the post of
ambassador in Sri Lanka.
Today, the Foreign Policy Research Institute proudly honors
(http://www.fpri.org/contributor/robert-strausz-hupe/) its founder
Strausz-Hupe, and honors his legacy with blacklists of allegedly treasonous
journalists and allegedly all-powerful Russian propaganda threatening our
freedoms.
This is the world the Washington Post is bringing back to its front pages.
And the timing is incredibleas if Bezos rag has taken upon itself to
soften up the American media before Trump moves in for the kill. And its
all being done in the name of fighting fake news ... and fascism.
Mark Ames is the co-host of the Radio War Nerd podcast
(https://www.patreon.com/radiowarnerd) . Read more of his work at
eXiledonline.com (http://exiledonline.com/) . He is the author of Going
Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion: From Reagans Workplaces to Clintons
Columbine and Beyond. (http://alternet.bookswelike.net/isbn/1932360824)
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