_______________________________ ANTIFA INFO-BULLETIN News * Analysis * Research * Action _______________________________ SPECIAL EDITION - May 31, 2000 - * * * ____________________________________________________________________ THE CIA'S NEO-NAZIS ____________________________________________________________________ by Martin A. Lee IntellectualCapital.com World View Features Thursday, May 25, 2000 http://www.intellectualcapital.com/issues/issue377/item9461.asp In March of this year, on the 62nd anniversary of Nazi Germany's annexation of Austria, several hundred neo-Nazis paraded through a Turkish neighborhood in Berlin, shouting anti-foreigner, anti-European and anti-Semitic slogans. They also sang the banned ultra-nationalist verses of the German national anthem at a rally organized by the National Democratic Party (NPD), the most radical of several German far-right political parties. The NPD called for the demonstration to show its support for Joerg Haider, the charismatic fuehrer of the Austrian Freedom party, a party that had recently entered that country's national governing coalition. Compared to Haider's suit-and-tie fascism, the German NPD represents a much rougher brand of extremism. Several NPD leaders have served -- or are currently doing -- jail time for denying the Holocaust. The NPD's closest U.S. ally is Dr. William Pierce, author of the notorious hate novel, The Turner Diaries, which the FBI has called "the blueprint for the Oklahoma City bombing." In 1998, Pierce traveled to Germany to attend the NPD's national convention. While NPD candidates have won a few local council seats in Brandenburg and Saxony, the party's involvement in electoral politics primarily functions as a legal cover for grass-roots neo-Nazi cadre-building -- with an emphasis on direct action, street confrontations and physical attacks against immigrants and anti-fascists. NPD campaign rallies typically resemble skinhead rock concerts crammed with rowdy youth. The CIA's former friend On May Day, the NPD tried to take its game onto the turf of the Left by staging "pro-worker" demonstrations in several German cities, including Berlin, where the star speaker was veteran neo-Nazi agitator Friedhelm Busse. Formerly one of the youngest members of the Hitler Youth, Busse, 71, roused the crowd with anti-foreigner and anti-American vitriol that elicited loud cheers from shaven-head teenagers and 20-somethings who waved illegal imperial German black-and-white flags. Violence erupted after Busse ended his pep talk with a line from an old Nazi song: "We're marching for Hitler day and night because of the need for freedom and bread." Busse's status as an elder statesman among hard-core neo-Nazis in Germany is all the more troubling given that his checkered past includes a controversial stint with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Back in the early 1950s, Busse joined the Bund Deutscher Jugend (BDJ), an elite, CIA-trained paramilitary organization composed largely of ex-Hitler Youth, Wehrmacht and SS personnel in West Germany. Busse and his fellow Bundists were primed to go underground and engage in acts of sabotage and resistance in the event of a Soviet invasion. But instead of focusing on foreign enemies, Busse's "stay behind" unit proceeded to draw up a death list that included future Chancellor Willi Brandt and other leading Social Democrats (West Germany's main opposition party), who were marked for liquidation in case of an ill-defined national security emergency. The Bund's cover was blown in October 1952, when the West German press got wind that U.S. intelligence was backing a neo-Nazi death squad. Embarrassed State Department officials, who tried to cover up the full extent of American involvement with the youth group, admitted privately that the scandal had resulted in "a serious loss of U.S. prestige." An abhorrent legacy West German "stay behind" forces quickly regrouped with a helping hand of the CIA, which recruited thousands of ex-Nazis and fascists to serve as Cold War espionage assets. "It was a visceral business of using any bastard as long as he was anti-Communist," explained Harry Rostizke, ex-head of the CIA's Soviet desk. "The eagerness to enlist collaborators meant that you didn't look at their credentials too closely." The key player on the German side of this unholy espionage alliance was Gen. Reinhard Gehlen, who served as Adolf Hitler's top anti-Soviet spy. During World War II, Gehlen was in charge of German military-intelligence operations on the eastern front. As the war drew to a close, Gehlen sensed that the United States and USSR would soon be at loggerheads. He surrendered to the Americans and touted himself as someone who could make a decisive contribution to the impending struggle against the Communists. Gehlen offered to share the vast information archive he had accumulated on the USSR. U.S. spymasters took the bait. With a mandate to continue spying on the East just as he had been doing before, Gehlen re-established his espionage network at the behest of American intelligence. Incorporated into the fledgling CIA in the late 1940s, the Gehlen "Org," as it was called, became the CIA's main eyes and ears in Central Europe. Despite his promise not to recruit unrepentant Nazis, Gehlen rolled out the welcome mat for thousands of Gestapo, Wehrmacht and SS veterans. Some of the worst war criminals imaginable -- including cold-blooded bureaucrats who oversaw the administrative apparatus of the Holocaust -- found employment in the Org. Headquartered near Munich, the Org subsequently morphed into the Bundesnachtrichtendienst, West Germany's main foreign intelligence service. Gehlen was appointed the first director of the BND in 1955. While dispensing data to his avid American patrons, Gehlen helped thousands of fascist fugitives escape to safe havens abroad -- often with a wink and a nod from U.S. intelligence. Third Reich expatriates subsequently served as "security advisers" to repressive regimes in Latin America and the Middle East. Ironically, some of Gehlen's recruits would later play leading roles in neo-fascist groups around the world that despised the United States and the NATO alliance. Friedhelm Busse went on to direct several ultra-right-wing groups in Germany, while another Gehlen protégé, Gerhard Frey, also emerged as a mover-and-shaker in the post-Cold War neo-Nazi scene. A wealthy publisher, Frey currently bankrolls and runs the Deutsche Volksunion (DVU), which was described by U.S. army intelligence as "a neo-Nazi party." During the past two years, the DVU scored double-digit vote totals in state elections in eastern Germany, where the whiplash transition from Communism to capitalism has resulted in high unemployment and widespread social discontent. Embittered by the disappointing reality of German unification, a lost generation of East German youth comprise a Nazi Party in waiting. Even before Frey formed the DVU in 1971 with the professed objective to "save Germany from Communism," he received behind-the-scenes support from Gehlen, Bonn's powerful spy chief. But when the Cold War ended, the DVU chief abruptly shifted gears and demanded that Germany leave NATO. Frey's newspapers started to run inflammatory articles that denounced the United States and praised Russia as a more suitable partner for reunified Germany. Frey also joined the chorus of neo-fascist leaders who backed Saddam Hussein and condemned the U.S.-led war against Iraq in 1991. A deal with the devil In American spy parlance, it is called "blowback" -- the unintended consequences of covert activity kept secret from the U.S. public. The covert recruitment of a Nazi spy network to wage a shadow war against the Soviet Union was the CIA's "original sin," and it ultimately backfired against the United States. An unforeseen consequence of the CIA's ghoulish tryst with the Org is evident today in a resurgent neo-fascist movement in Europe that can trace its ideological lineage back to Hitler's Reich through Gehlen operatives who served U.S. intelligence. Moreover, by subsidizing a top Nazi spymaster and enlisting badly compromised war criminals, the CIA laid itself open to manipulation by a foreign intelligence service that was riddled with Soviet agents. "One of the biggest mistakes the United States ever made in intelligence was taking on Gehlen," a CIA official later admitted. With that fateful sub rosa embrace, the stage was set for Washington's tolerance of human-rights abuses and other dubious acts in the name of anti-Communism. * * * ____________________________________________________________________ HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ADOLF ____________________________________________________________________ by Martin A. Lee IntellectualCapital.com World View Features Thursday, April 20, 2000 http://www.intellectualcapital.com/issues/Issue366/item9093.asp Eight hundred guests gathered in Munich's Loewnbraeukeller, one of the biggest and most famous beer halls in Bavaria, to celebrate Adolf Hitler's birthday on April 20, 1990. To the delight of the assembly, several people wearing donkey outfits entered the premises and scampered between the tables. The masked marauders had come to mock the Nazi Holocaust. Those who accepted the fact that the Nazis killed 6 million Jews during World War II were depicted as donkeys that would believe anything. Although blatant displays of Holocaust denial are illegal in Germany, the proprietors of the Loewnbraeukeller had made arrangements with the police not to intervene while the keynote speaker, British author David Irving, trivialized Nazi atrocities in a smarmy, joke-filled address that drew a standing ovation from the audience. A decade later, Irving made a complete ass of himself in a London courtroom, which rejected the libel suit that he had brought against American academic Deborah Lipstadt, who wrote an unflattering expose of Holocaust negationists. The judge ruled in no uncertain terms that Irving is an "active Holocaust-denier, an anti-Semite and a racist" with extensive ties to neo-Nazis in Europe and North America. White-collar skinheads Irving's cynical attempt to relativize the Holocaust has made him a welcome speaker on numerous far-right platforms. Despite his courtroom setback, Holocaust denial screeds and other kinds of hate literature will continue to circulate like political pornography among extreme right organizations, which range from violent skinhead gangs and underground terrorist cells to mass-based electoral movements. The number of hardcore neo-fascists in Germany grew by 10% in 1999 to 9,000 and, according to government statistics, far-right violence is also on the rise. Membership in far-right political parties increased from 49,000 to 51,400 last year (but this figure does not include the 40,000 members of the extreme-right Republikaner Party). The situation is particularly troubling in economically depressed eastern Germany, where 15% to 20% of young men vote for neo-fascist parties. "To say that one third of East German youth is now prone to the extreme right is an understatement," warns East Berlin criminologist Berndt Wagner. "The point of no return has already been reached for many. It's very depressing. It's growing. It's getting worse." Even more dangerous in some ways than crazed outbursts of racist thuggery by neo-Nazi youth are what Nobel Prize-winning novelist Guenter Grass describes as the "white collar skinheads" who occupy positions of power in German government and society. These gentrified fascists have longer hair and dress in respectable suits and ties, but their bigoted worldview has much in common with violent neo-Nazi lumpen. The new poster boy The leaders of the more successful neo-fascist movements in Europe have deliberately softened their image and tailored their message to appeal to mainstream voters. Joerg Haider, the charismatic fuehrer of the Austrian Freedom Party, certainly does not conform to the stereotype of a hollywood Nazi. He is far too cagey to advertise an explicit allegiance to the fascist creed. With Haider at the helm, the Freedom Party recently muscled its way into Austria's national governing coalition after it won 27% of the vote. In the last elections, it emerged as the top vote-getter among the Austrian working class and people under 30 in what proved to be the strongest showing of a right-wing extremist party in Europe since World War II. Much like disgraced historian Irving, who is held in high regard within the Freedom Party, Haider has likened Winston Churchill to Hitler and equated the Nazi Holocaust with the postwar expulsion of ethnic Germans from eastern border zones. When asked if 6 million Jews had died, Haider shrugged, "If you like." Haider's remark about the Holocaust was in keeping with several sympathetic statements he made in reference to Hitler's employment policies, the "decency" of the notoriously brutal Waffen SS, and how all soldiers, no matter which side they were on, had "fought for peace and freedom" during the World War II. After each so-called gaffe, the Freedom Party fuehrer flip-flopped and belatedly issued a half-hearted apology, only to make another outlandish comment soon after without actually admitting that he had said anything erroneous in the first place. Instead of Haider, the media should scrutinize other Freedom Party members Instead of fixating on Haider's verbal pirouettes, news media should scrutinize some of the hard-core extremists who occupy positions of influence within the Freedom Party. To cite a few examples: Haider's adviser on cultural affairs, Andreas Molzer, was until recently the publisher of Zur Zeit, a virulently racist Vienna newsweekly, which raved about "the dogma of the six million murdered Jews" and the "epoch-making economic and political successes of the great social revolutionary," a reference to Hitler. Markus Ertl, a Freedom Party councilor in Spittal an der Drau, claimed at a veteran's reunion that only 74,000 people died at Auschwitz, and they were killed by Anglo-American air raids. Helmut Kowarik and Barbara Schoepfnagel, Freedom Party representatives in Vienna's regional parliament, are also active members of the Austrian Landsmannschaft, a group that promotes Holocaust-denial and commemorates Hitler's birthday in its newspaper. The time is right for the far right Even outside Austria, neo-fascists and right-wing extremists have reason to be pleased as they mark Hitler's birthday anniversary this year. After wallowing in the political wilderness during the Cold War, they have posted significant gains at the ballot box and are now a force to be reckoned with in several European states. The Swiss Peoples Party scored a major electoral breakthrough, besting all contestants with 23% of the vote last October. Far-right parties have also tallied 15% or more nationwide in Norway, France and Italy. And the Vlaams Blok, another radical right-wing populist party with openly fascist roots, outpolls its rivals with more than 30% of the vote in Antwerp, Belgium's second largest city. In Western Europe today, there are 50 million poor people, 18 million unemployed, and 3 million homeless -- and post-Communist Eastern Europe is faring much worse. Such conditions are ripe for exploitation by ultra-right-wing demagogues. Scapegoating immigrants and railing against globalization, a new breed of fascists posing as national populists has touched a raw nerve in a post-Cold War world that is still wobbling from the collapse of Soviet-bloc Communism, the reunification of Germany, major economic restructuring and fast-paced technological change. "Neo-fascism and neo-Nazism are gaining ground in many countries -- especially in Europe," says Maurice Glele-Ahanhanzo, special rapporteur of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. Of particular concern, Glele-Ahanhanzo noted in a recent report to the U.N. General Assembly, is the "increase in the power of the extreme right-wing parties," which are thriving in "an economic and social climate characterized by fear and despair." Among the key factors fueling the rise of the far right, according to the U.N. report, are "the combined effects of globalization, identity crises, and social exclusion." Even when they lose elections, neo-fascists are like a toxic chemical in the water supply of the European political landscape, polluting public discourse and pressuring establishment parties to adopt heretofore extremist positions to beat off challenges from the hard right. By the time the Austrian Freedom Party grabbed the reins of national power in February 2000, it had already seen the previous centrist governing coalition implement much of its anti-immigration and law-and-order platform. Moreover, it is increasingly difficult to discern any substantive policy differences between Haider's minions in Austria and a growing right-wing faction within the conservative opposition in Germany, which has openly endorsed the Freedom Party. If someone with Haider's charisma emerged on the German political scene, there is little reason to doubt that he would do rather well. Martin A. Lee is the author of The Beast Reawakens, a book about neofascism. 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