The Subversion of
Political Activism in America
A Critical Analysis
Of
Anti-Establishment Movements
In America
by
Phillip Darrell Collins
Preface
Historically, a majority of anti-Establishment movements has
been largely unsuccessfully. For instance, despite the efforts
of the sixties counterculture to end the Vietnam War, the
Establishment managed to draw the conflict out for several years
and gain control of the lucrative drug trade in the Golden
Triangle. The same holds true for the anti-WTO movement, which
has only succeeded in vandalizing the businesses of small shop
owners. These ongoing successions of failure are the results of
the Establishment's subversive efforts and political activists'
own susceptibility to Hegelian manipulation.
The Sixties Counterculture
Romanticized by filmmakers like Oliver Stone and faithfully
emulated by Generation X, the sixties counterculture ostensibly
represented an enormous grassroots mobilization against the
elite. However, in reality, the movement was merely the integral
constituent of a Hegelian dialectic designed by the ruling
class. The elite laid this dialectical snare through the
following tactics:
h The Promulgation of a
Hegelian Meme - One of the weaknesses of the sixties
counterculture was its own feeble grasp of the political
spectrum. Exploiting this systemic Achilles' heel, the elite
infused sixties radicals with a meme (a virus of the mind,
so-to-speak) that would guarantee the movement's disintegration.
Many of the sixties activists were recruited from academic
institutions, which have been longtime disseminators of
Establishment propaganda. On college campuses abroad, political
scientists were already rigorously promoting a Hegelian view of
the political spectrum. According to this dialectical framework,
the political spectrum could be conceived of as straight line
with fascism occupying the far right pole and communism
occupying the far left pole. Nestled comfortably in between
these two polar extremes was the American system.
Communism !X!X!X American system
!X!X!X Fascism
This spectrum was patently false.
Where was there room for the absence of government (anarchy) on
this spectrum? Why did Americanism, which is predicated upon
limited government and individual liberties, find itself
sandwiched between two totalitarian systems? Clearly, this
spectrum was disproportionate with reality. In truth, the
spectrum drew itself out like this:
Communism !X!X!X Fascism !X!X!X
American system !X!X!X Anarchy
Communism and fascism are merely
kissing cousins of the left. The appellation of "communism"
comes from the Latin root communis, which means "group"
living. Fascism is a derivation of the Italian word fascio,
which is translated as "bundle" or "group." Both fascism and
communism are forms of coercive group living, or more
succinctly, collectivism. The only substantial difference
between the two is fascism's limited observance of private
property rights, which is ostensible at best given its
susceptibility to rigid government regulation. In 1933, the
Fuehrer candidly admitted to Hermann Rauschning that: !'the
whole of National Socialism is based on Marx!( (Martin, p. 239,
1990). Nazism (a variant of fascism) is derivative of Marxism.
The historical conflicts between communism and fascism were
merely feuds between two socialist totalitarian camps, not two
dichotomously related forces. This is the true nature of the
political spectrum.
Ayn
Rand probably provided the most eloquent summation of this
dialectic:
It is
obvious what the fraudulent issue of fascism versus communism
accomplishes: it sets up, as opposites, two variants of the same
political system; it eliminates the possibility of considering
capitalism; it switches the choice of !'Freedom or
dictatorship?!( into !'Which kind of dictatorship?!( - thus
establishing dictatorship as an inevitable fact and offering
only a choice of rulers. The choice - according to the
proponents of the fraud - is: a dictatorship of the rich
(fascism) or a dictatorship of the poor (communism) (Rand, p.
180, 1967).
However, the counterculture
unconsciously subsumed the Establishment's Hegelian meme and
assessed the political climate of the time according to the
Establishment's Hegelian model of the political spectrum. The
memory of Nazi Germany and the atrocities of fascism during
World War II were still floating on the surface of public
conscious. Frightened by the chimera of "right-wing fascism,"
sixties radicals aligned themselves with the crypto-Marxist
left. Thus, the counterculture only further promulgated the
Hegelian dialectic of communism against fascism. Both of these
polar extremes represent variants of the same political
doctrine: statism. Cloistered within this dialectical framework,
the counterculture enshrined the very socialistic machinations
of the State that would empower the ruling class.
h Control Through Elite
Financing - Although the sixties counterculture mounted
opposition against the Establishment, its adherents received
funding from the plutocrats themselves. In 1970, an Illinois
commission report revealed "!Kthat $192,000 in Federal money and
$85,000 in Carnegie Foundation funds were paid to [the] Students
for a Democratic Society!Kduring the fall of 1969" (Epperson,
p.403, 1985). When undercover police intelligence operative
David Gumaer investigated the sources of SDS financing, he:
!Ksoon discovered it came through
radicals via the United Nations, from the Rockefeller
Foundations, the Ford Foundation, United Auto Workers, as well
as cigar boxes of American money from the Cuban embassy
(Epperson, p. 403, 1985).
In his The Strawberry
Statement: Notes of A College Revolutionary, former
revolutionary Kunen provided the following account of the 1968
S.D.S. (Students for a Democratic Society) national convention:
Also at the convention, men from
Business International Roundtables-the meetings sponsored by the
Business International for their client groups and heads of
government-tried to buy up a few radicals. These men are the
world's leading industrialists and they convene to decide how
our lives are going to go. These are the boys who wrote the
Alliance for Progress. They're the left wing of the ruling
class. They agreed with us on black control and student
control!K
They want McCarthy in. They see fascism as the threat, see it
coming from Wallace. The only way McCarthy could win is if the
crazies and young radicals act up and make Gene more reasonable.
They offered to finance our demonstrations in Chicago.
We were also offered Esso (Rockefeller) money. They want us to
make a lot of radical commotion so they can look more in the
center as they move to the left (pg. 116).
Before the House and Senate
Security Committees, former Communist Party member and FBI
informant James Kirk made the following statement:
They (sixties radicals) have no
idea they are playing into the hands of the Establishment they
claim to hate. The radicals think they are fighting the forces
of the super-rich, like Rockefeller and Ford, and don't realize
that it is precisely such forces which are behind their own
revolution, financing it, and using it for their own purposes
(Griffin, 1995, pg. 107-108).
Eventually, a few of the sixties
radicals became aware of this manipulation. One such radical was
the leader of SNCC, Stokely Carmichael. James Kirk made the
following observations concerning Carmichael:
Mr. Carmichael was obviously in
the middle of something very important which made him more
nervous and tense than in the past!KHe started speaking of
things which he said he could not have said before because his
research was not finished!K
He repeated the line from the song he liked so well, "Something
is happening here, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr.
Jones?" He kept hitting on the theme that a very large monopoly
capitalist money group, the bankers to be exact, was
instrumental in fomenting (the) idea that the Jews are the ones
actually behind the oppression of the blacks!KIn the agencies of
this power, he cited banks, the chief among which were Morgan
Guaranty Trust and Chase Manhattan. And the foundations
connected with these monoliths (Griffin, 1995, pg. 108).
Apparently, Carmichael's revelations presented a distinct threat
to the hidden manipulators. According to researcher Des Griffin:
"Within weeks Carmichael had been mysteriously removed from SNCC
and the Black Panthers. He had learned too much" (pg. 108)!
h Neutralization by
COINTELPRO - Carmichael was but a microcosm of the paradigm
shift gradually taking place amongst the sixties radicals. Like
many of the power organisms that had originated with the ruling
class, the counterculture was developing autonomy. Recognizing
this tectonic shift, the elite decided that the movement was no
longer a useful machination. In fact, the sixties counterculture
had become a potential threat to the ruling class. The movement
had to be neutralized. This was accomplished through COINTELPRO,
a counter-insurgency program within the FBI. Ostensibly,
COINTELPRO was presented as an anti-Communist
"counterintelligence program." According to the chief of the
COINTELPRO unit:
We were trying first to
develop intelligence so we would know what they were doing
[and] second, to contain the threat.... To stop the spread
of communism, to stop the effectiveness of the Communist
Party as a vehicle of Soviet intelligence, propaganda and
agitation (Wolf, 2002).
However, COINTELPRO's objectives were delineated in such an
elastic fashion that they could be extended to encompass almost
any form of activism. This elasticity was especially evident in
COINTELPRO's use of the vague appellation "New Left." The Select
Committee to Study Governmental Operations commented on this
elasticity:
As discussed earlier, the Bureau
did not define the term "New Left," and the range of targets
went far beyond alleged "subversives" or "extremists." Thus, for
example, two student participants in a "free speech"
demonstration were targeted because they defended the use of the
classic four-letter-word. Significantly, they were made
COINTELPRO subjects even though the demonstration "does not
appear to be inspired by the New Left" because it "shows obvious
disregard for decency and established morality" (Wolf, 2002).
Thus, COINTELPRO became America's
"morality police." However, the techniques employed by
COINTELPRO were anything but moral. William C. Sullivan, former
assistant to the Director, provided a candid description of the
program's tactics:
This is a rough, tough, dirty
business, and dangerous. It was dangerous at times. No holds
were barred.... We have used [these techniques] against
Soviet agents. They have used [them] against us. . . . [The
same methods were] brought home against any organization
against which we were targeted. We did not differentiate.
This is a rough, tough business (Wolf, 2002).
The Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations provided a
brief synopsis of COINTELPRO's strategy:
The Bureau approved 2,370 separate
counterintelligence actions. Their techniques ranged from
anonymously mailing reprints of newspaper and magazine articles
(sometimes Bureau-authored or planted) to group members or
supporters to convince them of the error of their ways, to
mailing anonymous letters to a member's spouse accusing the
target of infidelity; from using informants to raise
controversial issues at meetings in order to cause dissent, to
the "snitch jacket" (falsely labeling a group member as an
informant) and encouraging street warfare between violent
groups; from contacting members of a "legitimate group to expose
the alleged subversive background of a fellow member to
contacting an employer to get a target fired; from attempting to
arrange for reporters to interview targets with planted
questions, to trying to stop targets from speaking at all; from
notifying state and local authorities of a target's criminal law
violations, to using the IRS to audit a professor, not just to
collect any taxes owing, but to distract him from his political
activities (Wolf, 2002).
While many researchers
characterize COINTELPRO as a "right-wing conspiracy," it must be
understood that so-called "left-wing" Communist regimes employed
the same tactics. Recall William C. Sullivan's statement: "We
have used [these techniques] against Soviet agents. They have
used [them] against us. . . ." (Wolf, 2002). This fact
reinforces the chimerical nature of the traditional left vs.
right dialectic. Totalitarianism is totalitarianism,
irrespective of whatever Hegelian appellation the orthodoxy of
political science might assign it.
The Anti-WTO Movement
The elite's Hegelian strategy of ideological divide and
conquer is also evident in the case of the World Trade
Organization. Exploiting the intrinsic irrationalism of partisan
affiliations, the oligarchs promulgated another fraudulent
dialectical struggle between the right-wing and the left-wing.
h "Right-wing" Manipulation
- Republicans, neo-conservatives, and other so-called
"right-wingers" selectively overlooked the genuine threat posed
by the WTO: the further erosion of national sovereignty and
destabilization of national economies. Why would they turn their
heads and ignore such an obvious danger? Simple. Support of the
WTO constituted loyalty to the Republican Party. After all,
didn't George Bush support free trade? Doesn't a good Republican
support everything that a Republican president supports,
irrespective of the economic, political, or moral ramifications?
The National Review and other neo-conservative rags
printed avid defense polemics for the WTO, thus reiterating a
dictum espoused by both major political parties: "Our way or the
highway." This rigidity endemic to the two-party system has
already resulted in the ostracism of two dissenting voices,
Patrick Buchanan and James Trafficant. Such is the irrationality
of strict adherence to partisan affiliations.
h "Left-wing" manipulation
- Meanwhile, many of the left-wing anti-WTO protesters had no
qualms with world government or globalism. They certainly were
not heartbroken by the fact that globalist machinations such as
the WTO undermined national sovereignty and subordinated
national economies to the authority of an onerous global entity.
Majorities of the protesters were eco-zealots (i.e., watermelon
Marxists, green on the outside and red on the inside) whose only
problem was the global elite's disregard for the environmental
chimera they dubbed "Gaia." New Republic journalist
Robert Wright made the following observation concerning Ralph
Nader and other phony left-wing WTO protesters:
"Nader and most of the Seattle
left would gladly accept a sovereignty-crushing world body
if it followed the leftist model of supranational governance
found in the European Union" (Wright, 2000).
To appease the puppets of this
artificially contrived opposition, President Bill Clinton
"espoused a future WTO whose member nations would meet global
environmental and labor standards or else face sanction"
(Wright, 2000).
If anything, the WTO conflict
represented a feud between elite factions: the Anglo-American
Establishment of the west and the European Union of the east. Of
course, there is further fragmentation into smaller
sub-factions, but these two camps seem to be the major players.
Both the eastern and western elites desire a world government.
However, the western ruling class seeks to establish what they
call a Pax Americana, a New World Order headquartered in
America. The eastern elite wants a Pax Europa with the
locus of power firmly embedded in Europe.
The masses rallied in one of the
two camps. The so-called "right-wing" (i.e., conservatives,
Republicans, nominal Christians, etc.) aligned themselves with
the Anglo-American Establishment. Meanwhile, the so-called
"left-wing" (i.e., liberals, radical environmentalists,
Democrats, traditional Marxists, etc.) aligned themselves with
the oligarchs of the European Union. It must be understood that
both sides are intrinsically irrational and wrong. Both are
facilitating the formation of a one world socialist totalitarian
government. Either way, the free republic of America is doomed
should one of these camps succeed. This is the anatomy of the
elite's Hegelian dialectic, an ongoing process of divide and
conquer.
Political Activism and the
Second Gulf War
There can be little debate over the illegitimacy of the
latest American military campaign in Iraq. Clearly, the war was
illegal because it was antithetical to the principles of
Americanism. It was never the policy of the Founding Fathers to
attack other nations without provocation. Iraq did not overtly
attack the United States and the contention that it did through
the surrogate apparatus of al-Qaida has never been
substantiated. Moreover, a guiding axiom of Americanism has been
the avoidance of entangling alliances abroad. The so-called
"coalition of nations" that fought Saddam represented one such
entangling alliance. Unilaterally, bilaterally, or
multilaterally, America's initiation of the war was still wrong.
However, infected by Hegelian memes and controlled through elite
financing, the antiwar movement only helped to further realize
the ruling class' objectives.
h Empowering the UN -
Many of the left-wing "antiwar" protesters argued that the
United States could not go to war without the approval of the
United Nations. Moveon.org trumpeted mantras such as
"Inspections work. Wars don't!" Win Without War urged people to
tell congress: "Supporting the current UN disarmament mission in
Iraq is critical" (Jasper, 2003). Yet, perhaps the most
blatantly pro-UN statement was made by Peace Action:
The US must do its part to
strengthen international legal systems in order for them to
be as effective as possible. This means immediately paying
US back dues to the United Nations (UN) and working through
the UN to strengthen international laws on terrorism and the
means to enforce them. The US should also support the
International Criminal Court (ICC).... (Jasper, 2003).
This contention was a Trojan horse
of the UN's globalist masters. The Constitution, Bill of Rights,
and other Freedom documents constitute the only legitimate law
of the land, NOT any of the edicts or decrees of the United
Nations. This was an obvious ploy to empower the United Nations
as a world government and further undermine the sovereignty of
the United States. In truth, the so-called "antiwar" protesters
would have had little or no trouble with the war had it been
officially sanctioned by the United Nations, which has always
been a conduit for elitist interests.
h Elite Financing - The
left-wing antiwar activists fancied themselves as some sort of
grass roots movement, another populist crusade for the
twenty-first century. However, a recent article in the
Washington Post painted quite a different portrait.
Journalist Julia Duin observed: "The American antiwar movement
is decked out with all the elements of the counterculture, but
it is getting some very establishment funding" (Duin, p. 1,
2003).
The Institute for Policy Studies,
which is a left-wing think tank with a budget of $2.2 million,
had circulated numerous anti-war polemics in recent months
(Duin, p.1, 2003). Among the various Establishment institutions
financing this entity were the Turner, Ford, MacArthur, and
Charles Stewart Mott foundations (Duin, p.1, 2003). The
Institute for Policy Studies finds its very origins with the
ruling class. New York banks provided the money necessary to
establish the IPS as a branch of the Bertrand Russell Peace
Foundation (Dope, Inc., p. 547, 1992). James Warburg, son of
first Federal Reserve chairman Paul Warburg, was a founding
trustee of IPS (Dope, Inc., p. 540, 1992).
Eli Pariser, the international
campaigns director of Moveon.org, openly admitted that his
organization had an operating budget of $300,000 a year (Duin,
p. 2, 2003). One major accomplishment that this group boasted
was its $3.5 million grossing fund-raiser for liberal political
candidates during the 2002 election (Duin, p. 2, 2003). No
doubt, these grateful politicians were also major contributors
to Moveon.org's $300,000 operating budget. After all,
reciprocity is the key to any healthy relationship.
h Manufactured Opposition
- Of course, it would be both biased and flatly incorrect to
assert that elite manipulation has remained confined solely to
the left-wing. The so-called "right-wing" also played an
integral role in the manipulation surrounding Bush's war in
Iraq. Meanwhile, on the other end of the bogus political
spectrum, the Establishment had manufactured its own synthetic
opposition. Suddenly, from Fort Wayne to Cleveland and Atlanta
to Philadelphia, "pro-war" rallies were launched to support
Bush's Iraq campaign (Burkeman, p. 1, 2003). Was this a grass
roots response to the antiwar demonstrations? Journalist Oliver
Burkeman answers this question:
But many of the rallies, it
turns out, have been organized and paid for by Clear Channel
Inc. - the country's largest radio conglomerate, owning
1,200 stations - which is not only reporting on the war at
the same time, but whose links with President Bush stretch
back to his earliest, much-criticised financial dealings as
governor of Texas. The company has paid advertising costs
and for the hire of musicians for the rallies (Burkeman, p.
1, 2003).
Predictably, many conservatives,
Republicans, and so-called "Christians" flocked to this
dialectical camp. As the hawks and the doves engaged in the
harlequin antics of a fraudulent ideological melee, the power
elite strengthened their grip on society.
Conclusion
It is painfully clear that political activism in the United
States has been rendered ineffective or, in some cases,
detrimental to the activists themselves. A portion of the blame
rests on the shoulders of the Establishment, which has
controlled movements through elite funding. However, a larger
portion of the blame must be shouldered by the activists
themselves. Contaminated by Hegelian memes and trapped in
dialectical snares, activists continue to help the very
plutocrats they claim to hate. Only when activists learn to
transcend partisan affiliations and develop some autonomous
aptitude will America finally see the fruits of any political
activism.
Sources
Cited
Burkeman, Oliver, "Bush backer
sponsoring pro-war rallies,"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4633514,00.html,
March 26, 2003.
Duin, Julia, "Foundation cash
funds antiwar movement,"
http://dynamic,washtimes.com/twt-print.cfm?ArticleID=20030402-42181748,
April 2, 2003.
Editors of Executive Intelligence
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Griffin, Des, Fourth Reich of
the Rich, Emissary Publications, Oregon, 1995.
Kunen, James, The Strawberry
Statement, Random House, New York, 1968.
Jasper, William F. "Recycling
Radicalism," The New American Magazine Online,
http://thenewamerican.com/tna/2003/03-24-2003/vo19no06_radicalism.htm,
2003.
Martin, Malachi,
The Keys of this Blood, Simon and Schuster, New York,
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Rand, Ayn, Capitalism: The
Unknown Idea, New American Library, Reissue edition, July
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Wolf, Paul, Supplementary
Detailed Staff Reports On Intelligence Activities And The Rights
Of Americans,
http://www.cointel.org,
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Wright, Robert, "Continental
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http://www.tnr.com/011700/coverstory011700.html,
September 17, 2000.
Author's Biography
Phillip Darrell Collins was the
chief editor of The Hidden Face of Terrorism, a book by
Paul David Collins. He can be contacted at
thefaceunveiled@excite.com.
The Hidden Face of Terrorism can be purchased at
www.1stbooks.com/bookview/13401.