History

Carl Hagenbeck believed that animals should be housed in habitats that mimicked their natural environment. Earlier, he’d followed the same guiding philosophy when exhibiting Indigenous people in “human zoos”

At the turn of the 20th century, the great zoological gardens of Paris, London and New York City would have been hardly recognizable by today’s standards. Animals large and small—those that had evolved to sprint across plains and live half their lives submerged in water—were confined in rows of tiny, barren cages lined with metal bars. “They were often on their own and had nothing natural in their enclosures,” says Karen S. Emmerman, an expert on animal ethics at the University of Washington. At a time when it was difficult to keep exotic animals alive, let alone healthy, in such constrained conditions, giving the creatures freedom to roam outdoors was viewed as a death sentence.

But Carl Hagenbeck, a German animal trader and entertainment impresario, had a different vision of what zoos could be. These animals, he argued, should be able to engage in innate behaviors “in an environment which differed as little as possible from [their] own natural environment.” Ibexes needed mountains to climb. Lions needed grottos for bathing.

When Hagenbeck opened his Tierpark Hagenbeck in Hamburg, Germany, in 1907, it was unlike any zoo seen before. Instead of small indoor cages, he “recreated the natural landscape of faraway places,” says Nigel Rothfels, a historian at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the author of Savages and Beasts: The Birth of the Modern Zoo. Hagenbeck built “living habitats”: large outdoor enclosures with sturdy fake rocks and shallow artificial pools. He replaced cage bars with moats and dug deep pits that could be observed from above. He created the perception that the animals, while not exactly free, were living authentic lives that mirrored their experiences in the wild.

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Gutta Percha: The tree that shrunk the world

The little-known tree that revolutionised global communication forever.

In Singapore, 1842, Dr William Montgomerie was shown a strange latex by his gardener. This material, when placed in hot water, could be moulded to any shape you wanted, and, on cooling, would set solid. You could do this again, and again and it would happily mould to any shape desired. Unlike rubber, it didn’t crumble in salt water and stayed firm on setting.

This new wonder material was called Gutta Percha, after the tree that it came from, and it would blow Victorian minds.

We Germans are not the only ones in the sixth year of war. One may assume that the problems the war’s long duration have given us also affect the other combatant nations. Each warring nation is naturally eager to conceal this from the eyes of the enemy and present a façade that does not accurately reflect the true situation.

The war is having the same effects on all participating nations, but one can see those effects faster and more clearly in one’s own country than in the enemy’s. As we always say, the other side is no better than we are.

The German people loves the truth, indeed is fanatic about it. It therefore finds it hard to understand that in war everyone must play by the same rules to have a chance at success. Recently the U.S. military leadership admitted the loss of a 20,000-ton troop ship two years ago. That would not be possible with us.

The German people would not accept such silence on the part of its leadership. It wants to know exactly how things stand, sometimes forgetting that what is told to it is also told to the enemy. One can argue about which way in the long run is the most successful, but it is clear that our enemy knows how to stay silent better than we do, and that we as a result are inclined to think their situation is better than it in fact is.

As a result we must occasionally consider the war’s broad picture, not forgetting that it is likely that things are concealed from us by the enemy’s greater secretiveness. The fact that the enemy conceals his calamities from us does not mean they do not exist. They exist nonetheless and influence the overall state of the war, even if we do not know it.

The extent of total Soviet losses, which can be estimated at about 15 million, certainly has consequences for the Bolshevist military potential. If the Red Army continues to attack nonetheless, it does not mean that Soviet reserves are inexhaustible, but rather that the Kremlin is using everything it has to defeat us as quickly as possible in the hopes that it can carry out its planned extermination of the German people with what remains of its armed strength.

That is also true to a certain extent of the Western enemy. The resources of the military leadership grow steadily smaller because of the long duration of this gigantic war, and it is probably true that in the end the last regiment will decide the last battle.

The fact that we are still firmly on our feet and show not the least sign of collapse is sufficient proof that our enemies cannot do what they want, that they suffer from internal problems, and that they make such terrible threats only to keep us from noticing that.

In an article published on April 8, 1945, Goebbels once again suggested that the Allies were on the verge of collapse:

The general world crisis we experience is assuming ever more terrible forms, and not only for us, but also for the rest of Europe, and of course for the enemy states. As even English and American newspapers have to admit, well over half of our continent is starving.

Far-reaching political consequences result from that, which seem likely to throw the enemy camp into ever greater confusion. They have to win quickly if they are to win at all. That explains their so often repeated appeals on us to lay down our weapons and give up the battle.

But for us, that is only one more reason to ignore these cynical appeals so that the latent crisis they face, and that seems so dangerous to them, will reach its peak. It is naïve to believe that they can carry on the war as long as they want to, given their material superiority. Like us, they have strained their war potential to the utmost, and exhausted it.

Such a test of strength can only last for a certain while. It depends on who first loses his nerve and gives up. He will lose the war and bear all the fateful consequences.

(Emphasis added in all cases.)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Blake

Like how did you end up fighting in like 10 different revolutionary wars dude? How did you get any sleep?

I'm designing a garden bed for a pottery studio in a bird sanctuary. It's going to be a native plant pollinator garden based on year-round food supply for birds, but I wanted to take it up a notch and do something unique to incorporate pottery with horticulture. Garden pots were too obvious and the space is too moist for slow-release watering pots. Instead I'm going to try to work with the potters to make a dovecote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dovecote

Dovecotes are an awesome historical Eurasian/African permaculture technique. By providing a safe tower filled with nesting boxes, farmers could passively collect guano and meat throughout the year. We obviously wouldn't be eating the birds that roost there, but the guano would be used in surrounding beds and it would help to educate the public on alternative ways to use/fertilise their yards. I'd like to do a scaled down version of the Egyptian pigeon towers, maybe with some art nouveau detailing:

During the Soviet era, the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania occupied a unique and often privileged position within the USSR. Functioning, in many respects, as a "showcase for socialism" aimed at the West, these republics received substantial investment and strategic attention that significantly stimulated their economic growth, advanced their infrastructure, and elevated their living standards well above the average Union level. While their contribution to the overall Soviet GDP and industrial output was proportionally modest, the benefits reaped from the concentrated development efforts were significant and enduring.

The economic landscape of the Baltic states underwent a dramatic transformation under Soviet rule, particularly through rapid industrialization. Lithuania, for instance, surpassed its pre-war industrial output by 90% just two years after reaching pre-war figures in 1948, bolstered by a non-repayable Soviet subsidy of 200 million rubles for reconstruction. Latvia witnessed the construction of 20 industrial enterprises within two decades of 1940, a figure exceeding the entire Baltic region's industrial growth in the year preceding being absorbed into USSR. Estonia's gross industrial output saw an astonishing 55-fold increase, accompanied by a 30-fold surge in capital investment.

Key industrial giants emerged, such as the large oil refinery in Mažeikiai, Lithuania, supplied by pipelines from Russia, and the significant development of oil shale deposits and peat extraction in the Estonian SSR, feeding vital industries in Kohtla-Järve and Kiviõli.

Furthermore, Latvia became renowned for its trademarks, with enterprises like VEF, a leading manufacturer of electronics and machinery, employing over 14,000 people and generating substantial annual profits, and RAF (Riga Autobus Factory) producing essential minibuses for the entire USSR. These industries boosted economic output and provided widespread employment, contributing directly to the well-being of the population.

Infrastructure development was another important aspect of Soviet investment in the Baltics. Strategically important seaports were developed, which continue to serve as key hubs for export and import trade today, further enhanced by the connection of oil pipelines in the 1970s and 1980s. The region boasted the highest quality roads in the USSR, with Lithuania benefiting from a 300-kilometer expressway considered the best in the Union, featuring modern overpasses and interchanges. Energy infrastructure saw significant expansion with the construction of major hydroelectric power plants (Pļaviņas, Kegums, Riga on the Daugava, Kaunas on the Nemunas) and thermal power plants (Baltic TPP, Estonian TPP, Lithuanian TPP). The laying of gas pipelines from other Soviet republics ensured a stable supply of natural gas, further underpinning industrial and domestic energy needs. The port of Klaipėda in Soviet Lithuania grew into one of Europe's largest fishing ports, and the Baltija shipyard, a Soviet-era construction, remains a vital employer today. These extensive infrastructure projects laid a robust foundation for continued economic activity and connectivity.

The tangible benefits of this focused development translated directly into higher living standards for the Baltic populations. Per capita consumption figures clearly illustrate this advantage: Estonia stood at 151% of the all-Union level, Latvia at 137%, and Lithuania at 127%. The massive capital investment in agriculture, particularly the six billion rubles injected into Estonian agriculture, led to a doubling of grain yields and harvests compared to 1939, improving food security and contributing to a better quality of life.

With the abandonment of central planning and the subsequent introduction of privatization under the capitalist regime following the dissolution of the USSR, many of these once-flourishing enterprises faced economic devastation, leading to widespread job losses and a severe decline in industrial output. This abrupt shift to market forces proved particularly harmful for the working majority, as previously guaranteed jobs gave way to mass unemployment, and the social safety nets of the Soviet system disintegrated, leaving many struggling to adapt to the new economic realities.

Should have doubled tapped Scalise

Hexbears. I need your help. I have a term paper that I need a topic for. Here's the rub: It's for US history, and the topic has to be US history before 1893. I wanted to write about labor unions, which took off in the US around the 1870s, but the real "history" of organized labor in the US takes place well past 1893. So the professor will very likely reject that.

I'm not a history person. I know, I know "those who don't learn from the past..." I don't want to write about the American civil war and all that shit though. It's been done to death. Any ideas on a topic I could pick that would be more interesting and more left-leaning?

Not asking for any help writing it. I just need some help picking a topic that would be interesting to research.

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/29784465

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/29784311

The Theatre Museum is a small museum located in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. I have had the pleasure to work with them on organizing their collection of tent theatre records and artifacts, as well as create a few videos for them. Super neat musuem with an incredibly unique collection.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1686601

Chipko movement (literally "hugging movement")

Bishnoi environmentalism

The analysis of the diaries shows how the national reunification of kindred people in the Leningrad area was based on the activists of AKS [Academic Karelia Society] ‘re-making national community’, based mostly on the earlier ‘dreams’ originating from ideology shared in the right-wing association in the interwar period in Finland. This was illustrated in how Jussi wrote about his enthusiasm regarding the saving of kindred people on his way to Ingria: “My heart is thrilled with the idea that I am on my way to Ingria of which liberation we dreamed in the school and student unions.”⁷⁴

In practice, the ‘liberation’ of kindred people was illustrated in the processes of national inclusion and exclusion in which mostly Ingrian Finns, Izhorians, and, in some cases, Votic people were segregated from the residents who were regarded as ethnic Russians. Remaking this national community outside the borders of the Finnish state had already [been] planned in the AKS ideology during the interwar period.

Although the ideology of kindred people was not clearly considered a practice of unifying racially accepted individuals to the ethnically unified nation ‘Volk’, the practices of remaking the national community reflected the idea of setting kindred people free from the enemy state and connecting them to the national body by gathering them together and bringing them back to the ‘fatherland’. Jussi and his co-workers were involved with the ethnic segregation processes in Ingria, which were often blurry⁷⁵ and sometimes hardly based on official agreements with the Germans.

In the Kattila district, there is no one, like Major Sperling, to take care of German affairs. He would have looked after the interests of the Ingrians, even if there were hardly any Finns in Hatsina. Here, the Germans do not know the special regulations concerning the evacuees and the agreements between the states, and it is difficult to get them sympathize with the transfer. The technical performance of the transfer and the agreements between the states are strange to me. I took the necessary papers from the folders and familiarized myself with them. While Sirkiä stayed in Kattila to segregate the Finns from the Russian transports, and I left by car to organize the Finnish and Izhorian transports.⁷⁶
15.11.1943 Komsekina, Konnunkylä

According to Jussi’s report, it seemed [that] the Germans acting at the grassroots level in wartime actions were unfamiliar with the AKS ideology behind the transfer and the ethnic practices regarding the segregation processes. In contrast, Jussi and his Finnish colleagues were unfamiliar with the official transfer protocol; however, they selected Ingrian Finns and Izhorian people from Russians—a practice based on the AKS ideology of kindred people and the Finnish race.

The main mission of the Finnish AKS activists was to gather Finno-Ugric people for the transfer, although they hardly knew about the ‘agreements between the states.’ The Finnish actors are represented as an ethnically uniting force, gathering all the possible [suffering] members of the national community.

Typically, AKS members, such as Jussi, acted like legal authorities in the [Axis]-occupied area, using politically and religiously motivated reasoning to make the local Finno-Ugric people favourable to the transfer. For instance, at the beginning of the transfer, the Finnish AKS activists and individuals near the AKS ideology spread the religious message and the spirit of AKS in the Lutheran confirmation festivities celebrated with Ingrians in the villages.

[Katri] Korhonen and [Albert] Hämäläinen and his wife had come to the confirmation ceremony in the Niemi’s truck, on which we sang hymns and Finnish hymns while driving through Russian villages. I believe that the AKS’s march⁷⁷ and Kytösavun aukeilla mailla ⁷⁸ never echoed in these lands before.⁷⁹
13.6.1943 Hatsina

These writings illustrated how Jussi’s preaching in confirmation ceremonies was intertwined with spreading right-wing nationalist ideology, such as by singing songs that included resistance towards the historical Russian persecutor as well as clearly political messages based on the extreme right-wing ideology and culture related to building Greater Finland with other politically like-minded Finnish people.

In many contexts in different parts of Ingria, the diaries illustrate well how the Lutheran services were utilized to shape the local people’s political opinions and to stimulate their willingness to leave their homes to ‘repatriate’ to Finland. Lutheran churches and other public and private spaces were used to preach the ‘gospel of Greater Finland’ and racial reunification to the local people. The ‘home’ of all Finno-Ugric people in Ingria and Karelia had already been ideologically and politically built and established during the interwar period.

In AKS ideology, suffering Ingrian Finns, Votic, and Izhorian people desired to become members of the national body — the national community that would become racially unified. However, according to the ideology concerning the national body, the members of the body seemed to be hierarchically organised in various ways in different periods.

Before the transfer, [an Axis] authority, Major Jaening, told Jussi that Ingrians were the most civilised, trustworthy, and purest population in the occupied area.⁸⁰ Specifically after his arrival to Ingria, Jussi made enthusiastic notions of some Finnish families based on their positive attitudes and supporting actions towards the Finnish state.

I also visit the agronomist Lohi’s home where they share the strong Finnish national spirit. During the Winter War, many people prayed for Finland and sent us economic support.⁸¹
4.4.1943 Narva

As the sequence from the diary illustrates, the positive writings concerned Finnish Lutheran residents in Ingria who had been politically, economically, and religiously active in supporting Finland during the wars, for instance. Jussi also appreciated Ingrian Finns’ national feelings and expressed interest in Finland.

However, Jussi’s diaries also show how disappointed AKS activists were in the local population in many ways, specifically at the end of the transfer when kindred people were unwilling to leave their homes after the [Axis] had given the evacuation order. Many local people resisted the ‘national reunification’, specifically in the second phase of the transfer, by fleeing to the forests⁸² and pretending they were ethnically Russians.⁸³

Jussi wrote that he continued his ‘preaching’ related to evacuation after the Lutheran ceremonies. His attitude was paternalistic, specifically towards orthodox Izhorian women who often resisted the transfer operation in a variety of ways.

After the [Lutheran] service held in Komsekina a couple of weeks ago, the Lutherans of Komsekina have no longer doubted the evacuation. On the other hand, old Izhorian [Orthodox] women still didn’t really understand their situation and didn’t want to pack their belongings. I had to preach to them for a long time. Men began to understand their own best. But women are hopeless. Even though the evacuation order had already been given, they couldn’t take it seriously.⁸⁴
15.11.1943 Komsekina, Konnunkylä

The diary reveals repeating ethnic and gender differences concerning the local people’s attitudes towards the ‘national reunification’ implemented by the AKS activists. Clearly, many local Finno-Ugric individuals, families, and communities did not understand and support the ideologies that had spread to the Ingrian villages.

Moreover, the enemy of national unity and solidarity⁸⁵ were the Ingrian ways of forming communities like kettles.⁸⁶ Jussi’s diaries condemned Ingrians for their ‘cattle spirit’⁸⁷ and ‘group thinking’⁸⁸. The cattle spirit of Ingrians seemed to be the opposite of the morally accepted national unity and solidarity typical among AKS members.

The Russian and Ingrian nature is hard to understand without considering the strange village communities. People are thinking and acting “according to the cattle spirit”. [– –] Belonging to the village community has forced people to act as villages. However, it has not developed real solidarity but the cattle spirit.⁸⁹
8.4.1943 Jaama

While lesbianism could be found in any of the camps, since women were put in bunkers together, the camp of Ravensbrück was particularly known for its lesbianism. Ravensbrück was the women’s concentration camp, and so many stories have come out after the Holocaust of the same-sex relationships that went on in the camps.

The concentration camps were a very scary and unpredictable place. If women weren’t sent directly to the gas chambers, they were often separated from their families and children. The women relied on friendship with each other for comfort and survival.⁸³

Women were in extremely close quarters to each other, sleeping three or more to a bed, so they were often found cuddling together for warmth and companionship. Some women’s relationships, however, went beyond that of friendship. Emotional and physical relationships formed within the camps.

Many of the prisoners told stories of these relationships. One prisoner recalls that, “As they lay crammed together in their beds, they could not avoid seeing and hearing the lovemaking, ‘sometimes shameless and unrestrained.’ On occasion, if one got up at night to use the toilet, one had to wait because the ‘little couples’ (Pärchen) were in the small compartment with the doors locked.”⁸⁴

This was a common story among many prisoners. Others recalled finding couples together, embracing, kissing, having sex, not only in bed at night but behind the blocks too. In other memoirs, prisoners describe having crushes on other prisoners, and thinking of fantasies between them. These fantasies would sustain the women and make them happy. Sometimes, the fantasies even became reality, and for a brief time, the women would have love and joy in their lives.⁸⁵

Not all of the women in relationships or engaging in same-sex sexual relations identified as bisexual or lesbian, but they engaged in this behavior to ease the loneliness and tension of the camps. However, it was documented that some prisoners had “firmly established identities as lesbians or bisexuals before ever arriving at Ravensbrück.”⁸⁶

This behavior within the camps was not punished by the guards. The [Fascists] just let this behavior happen since these women could not be producing children anyway, and it was not thought of as making them “weak”, as was the case with male homosexuality. The women could still do the work they were assigned even with these little “pet” relationships, as they were seen.

No comment.

Quoting Russ Bellant’s Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party: Domestic Fascist Networks and U.S. Cold War Politics, pages xvii–xviii:

It’s May 17, 1985: President Reagan has been back in the nation’s capital less than two weeks from his much-criticized trip to the Bitburg cemetery in Germany. Now, floodlights and television cameras that are part of a President’s entourage are waiting at the Shoreham Hotel, as are 400 luncheon guests.

Ronald Reagan had recently characterized the Nazi Waffen SS as "victims." It seemed a rewrite of the history of World War II rather than a recommitment to its painful lessons. Reagan’s comments held special meaning for some of his afternoon luncheon guests. Although it was a Republican Party affair, it was not the usual GOP set, but a special ethnic outreach unit, the National Republican Heritage Groups (Nationalities) Council (NRHG{N}C). The Republican Heritage Groups Council is an umbrella for various ethnic Republican clubs and operates under the auspices of the Republican National Committee.

If President Reagan needed a boost after the Bitburg fiasco, this was the crowd to supply it. To the assembled media, Reagan’s visit that afternoon appeared as a routine stop, perhaps paying a re-election debt. The Republican Heritage Groups Council did, in fact, help elect Reagan. And they gave him a long standing ovation that afternoon at the Shoreham. To some of those attending the 1985 Council meeting, Reagan’s rehabilitation of the Waffen SS must have offered a sense of personal and historic vindication.

The Republican Heritage Groups Council has a special type of outreach. It appears to have consciously recruited some of its members—and some of its leaders—from an Eastern European émigré network which includes anti­-Semites, racists, authoritarians, and fascists, including sympathizers and collaborators of [the] Third Reich, former [Axis personnel], and even possible war criminals. The persons in this network represent only a radical right fraction of the ethnic communities [that] they claim to represent.

These antidemocratic and racialist components of the Republican Heritage Groups Council use anticommunist sentiments as a cover for their views while they operate as a de facto émigré fascist network within the Republican Party. Some of these less savory antidemocratic personalities were part of the 1987 Republican Heritage Groups Council meeting as well as that 1985 luncheon audience; and some would later join the 1988 election campaign of George [H.W.] Bush.

Ronald Reagan said that it wasn’t what it looked like when he saluted those dead Axis soldiers, but as I am about to show you, we have plenty of reasons to suspect that he was lying about that, such as how he endorsed the so‐called ‘Captive Nations’, which was littered with neofascists and antisemites:

[I]n 1980, Ronald Reagan launched his successful presidential campaign at a Labor Day “ethnic festival” at Liberty State Park in Jersey City. According to Jersey City’s Ukrainian Weekly newspaper, “The majority of the more than 20 ethnic groups taking part in the festival were affiliated with the Captive Nations Committee of New York.” Ivan Dochev died in 2005, but on paper he remains an honorary president of the Captive Nations Committee of New York, which the AF–ABN established in the 1950s.

With a friend of the “captive nations” finally in the White House, the 25th annual Captive Nations Week was dedicated to the fake 40th anniversary of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations, and ABN leader Yaroslav Stetsko got an invitation to Washington where he shook hands with President Reagan and Vice President Bush. According to Old Nazis, New Right, and the Republican Party by Russ Bellant, the BNF-affiliated VOC trustee, Radi Slavoff, arranged Ivan Dochev’s 1984 visit to the White House as executive director of the Republican Heritage Groups Council, the GOP’s “special ethnic outreach unit.”

There was possibly some significant overlap between the Republican Heritage Groups Council and the now defunct World Anti-Communist League, of which Ronald Reagan was undeniably a member:

Members of the World Anti-Communist League (WACL) — a right wing international cartel of sorts — include[d] such luminaries as Ferdinand Marcos, Rev. Sun Myung Moon, and Adolfo Calero, commander in chief of the armed forces of the FDN contras. The WACL’s roots [went] back to 1954 with the establishment of the Asian People’s Anti-Communist League. [In the 1980s,] the WACL [grew] to six regional organizations with affiliates in more than 90 countries.

One of the most important people in the WACL [was] retired U.S. Major General John Singlaub. Singlaub began his military and intelligence career as an OSS member during World War II. In 1976, he became Chief of Staff of both the United Nations and U.S. Army Forces in South Korea. He was removed in 1977 after he publicly criticized President Jimmy Carter’s withdrawal of troops from Korea.

Singlaub joined WACL in 1980 and formed an American chapter called the United States Council for World Freedom. Singlaub was elected president. Singlaub [gave] the WACL credibility in several ways:

• President Reagan began calling the contras “freedom fighters” in 1983, a term the WACL and others on the far right have used for years.

• When U.S. Congress temporarily cut off Nicaraguan contra funding in 1984, a group of various American conservative leaders raised $25 million in private “contributions.” Singlaub and the WACL were at the center of the campaign.

• Several WACL members [had] been appointed as ambassadors to the Bahamas, Costa Rica, and Guatemala by Reagan.

Then, at the 17th Annual WACL Conference, held in San Diego, California, Singlaub read a letter which said in part, “The World Anti-Communist League has long played a leadership role in drawing attention to the gallant struggle now being waged by the true freedom fighters of our day. Nancy and I send our best wishes for every future success.” The letter was signed by Ronald Reagan.

The WACL [was] so extreme — according to Scott and Jon Lee Anderson who wrote INSIDE THE LEAGUE, an exposé of the WACL — that the John Birch Society […] shunned it and advise[d] its members to do likewise.

Geoffry Stewart-Smith, a staunch British anti-communist, left the WACL because it is “largely a collection of Nazis, fascists, anti-Semites, sellers of forgeries, vicious racialists and corrupt self-seekers. It has evolved into an anti-Semitic international […] the very existence of this organization is a total disgrace to the free world.”

Reagan knew what he meant when he said that the Abraham Lincoln Brigade fought on the ‘wrong side’ in the Spanish Civil War. While he might have been demented as early as the 1980s, it is absurdly unlikely that anybody would willingly associate with these types all by mistake.

Aside from these and a former HJ member whom he very briefly employed before firing for unrelated reasons, some of Reagan’s other associates included

J. Peter Grace — A scion of the Grace fortunes, he [was] head of Reagan’s commission to study domestic economic cuts.[56] For 30 years his company employed Otto Ambrose, [an Axis] war criminal from the German drug cartel I.G. Farben. Ambrose, a chemist, developed “Zyklon B,” the actual gas used in the chambers to kill the Jews and others deemed “inferior.”[57] The German steel group, Flick, which has extensive [Axis] ties in the past and whose scandals [were] rocking German politics [in the 1980s], hold a controlling stock interest in the Grace company.[58]

The Grace family is intimately involved with the formation of the anti-Communist American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD).[59] AIFLD played a key rôle in the Kissinger plan to overthrow Allende in Chile, and insert the ruling [para]fascist Pinochet.[60] After the coup, which involved American Green Berets,[61] Kissinger sent a Mr. Rauff from the State Department to advise the newly formed Chilean secret police (DINA). Rauff had been in charge of the “mobile ovens” used to kill [Roma] and Jews, homosexuals and political dissidents in Eastern Europe for the [Third Reich].[62] These same forces were later involved in the assassination of Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C.[63]

Helene von Damm — Personal White House appointment secretary long-time personal secretary to Ronald Reagan, she stands to be appointed Ambassador to Vienna, and controls all cabinet level appointments in the Reagan administration.[64] She came to the United States in the 1950s in the company of Albrecht Otto von Bolschwing, and worked for him as a translator.[65] Von Bolschwing gave the direct orders to Adolph Eichmann in the dread[ed] Eisenstatz, group, the SS killers.[66] Helene’s husband, Christian von Damm, ran the Bank of America in La Paz, Bolivia, which defaulted on a huge U.S. loan.[67]

The Reagan régime had no interest in pursuing Axis war criminals. Quoting Eric Lichtblau’s The Nazis Next Door: How America became a Safe Haven for Hitler’s Men, chapter 12:

Ignored for decades, [Axis officials] in America had suddenly become a political flash point by the time Ronald Reagan was in the White House, with anger fomenting on all sides. The vigilantes leaving bombs on the doorsteps of ex-Nazis were only part of the firestorm.

Many conservative Cold Warriors were furious, too, but for very different reasons. While the Jewish militants were angry that the American justice system hadn’t gone far enough to track down ex-Nazis, the conservatives were upset that it had gone too far, playing right into the hands of the Communists, they charged. Inside the gates of the White House, the conservative critics found a fierce ally in President Reagan’s own firebrand advisor, Pat Buchanan.

Buchanan, a former Nixon aide with a rapier tongue and a pugnacious personality, didn’t mask his disdain for what he called the “revenge-obsessed” and “hairy-chested Nazi hunters” at the Justice Department. He believed that the entire Nazi-hunting team should be abolished, and from his prominent perch in Washington—as a top aide to Reagan at the White House, in his nationally syndicated newspaper columns, and in his frequent cable-TV appearances—he launched what amounted to a one-man PR assault through the 1980s. The Justice Department had better things to do than “running down seventy-year-old camp guards,” Buchanan wrote, or “wallowing in the atrocities of a dead regime.”

(Emphasis added in most cases.)

Reagan’s last fifteen minutes of shame came out in 2019, when Timothy J. Naftali published a telephone conversation that Governor Reagan had with President Richard Nixon, in which Gov. Reagan ridiculed Africans. (Reagan supported presidential candidate Richard Nixon in the 1960s, and ex-president Nixon would return the favor in the 1980s.) A less well known example was when Gov. Reagan dismissed three Jewish chaplains, understandingly provoking accusations of antisemitism:

Governor Ronald Reagan’s dismissal of three Jewish chaplains, the entire complement ministering on a full time basis to patients of that faith in California’s 14 mental hospitals, is a “blatant act of anti-Semitism.” That was the statement today of Percy Moore, executive director of Oakland’s anti-poverty program and the president of the California Community Action Program Directors Association, a state-wide organization composed of anti-poverty leaders.

Moore, who is black, said that the elimination of all three Jewish chaplains, effective July 1, while some 33 Catholic and Protestant chaplains are retained for full-time work in the mental hospitals, is “nothing more than a blatant act of anti-Semitism that is right in line with other recent acts of the Governor that discriminate against the poor and the sick, and with special impact of those of the minority groups.”

Rabbi Harry Hyman agreed. Of course, given Reagan’s tokenization of Jews, and more importantly, his support for the occupation of Palestine, too many people were willing to forgive or forget this episode. Nevertheless, Reagan’s support was not for Jews in general, but Herzlians like the Hebrew fascist Zeʻev Vladimir Jabotinsky, whom he admired:

“Few are the leaders who in their own lifetime have become a legend. Zeʻev Vladimir Jabotinsky to whom you pay tribute was such a leader. He was a soldier, statesman and poet who believed in the sanctity of the individual. He was a visionary who dreamt of a free Israel in its historic homeland, a society based on justice and the spirit of the ancient prophets. I extend to you may very best wishes for the success of this historic event.”

Needless to say, this topic merely exposes Ronald Reagan’s associations with fascists and neofascists. A definitive iconoclasm would take hours to read, even though it would help explain why neofascists like the Daily Stormer admire Reagan, as did fascists like Léon Degrelle, who wrote in 1992 that

Enrichment follows investment, not the other way around. Since Hitler, only Ronald Reagan has seemed to understand this. As President, he realized that to restore prosperity in the United States meant boldly stimulating the economy with credits and a drastic reduction in taxes, instead of waiting for the country to emerge from economic stagnation on its own.

‘Prosperity’ indeed. Between further impoverishing the lower classes, wasting money on anticommunist terrorism, embracing apartheid, neglecting the AIDS crisis by demonizing homosexuals, and impoverishing scores of millions of Easterners, it is easy to understand why antisocialists consecrate this white supremacist.

Quoting Gabriella Romano’s The Pathologisation of Homosexuality in Fascist Italy: The Case of ‘G’, page 29:

Virility, [George L.] Mosse argued, became a national symbol during the régime, embodied by the dictator’s himself, his physique, his behaviour and way of addressing the crowds, his gestures; dandyism, weakness, effeminacy were perceived as anything that stood in the way, anything that was anti-Mussolini and his ideology.

Furthermore, as the régime concentrated on demographic campaigns, homosexuality came to be perceived as sterile and therefore essentially anti-fascist and selfish, against what was good for the nation. The New Italian Man’s actions were to be inspired by his love for the country: private life was considered a responsible act towards the nation, sexuality had to be aimed at procreation.