Fascism and the Republican Party

Both Democrats and Republicans are corporate-controlled parties. However, the Republicans have a deeper historical involvement with fascist individuals and groups from World War 2, including former SS officers. When Nazi troops conquered the Eastern European countries, they found and nurtured fascist parties like the Romanian Iron Guard, Hungarian Arrow Cross, Croatian Ustashi, Bulgarian Legion, Latvian Legion, Byelorussian Belarus Brigade, Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and Cossack SS officers. These fascists helped the Nazis carry on their atrocities, such as the extermination of Jews, communists, Gypsies, disabled people and others considered to be undesirable. Also, they formed Waffen SS divisions to fight against the Soviet Union.

The Republican Heritage Groups Council, a part of the Republican National Committee, has had members like Laszlo Pasztor from the Hungarian Arrow Cross, Florian Galdau of the Romanian Iron Guard and Nicolas Nazarenko, the leader of a Cossack SS division. Other members include Walter Melianovich affiliated with the Belarus Brigade, Method Balco associated with Slovak fascists from their puppet Nazi government and Philip Guarino, an Italian fascist leader of the P-2 Masonic Lodge. After World War 2, this P-2 organization in cooperation with the CIA conducted a series of terrorist bombings in Italy (Operation Gladio), which were blamed on leftists. These incidents effectively diminished the stature of the Italian Communist Party, which was on the verge of winning elections. All of this information is in a well-documented book called Old Nazis, the New Right and the Republican Party by Russ Bellant.

Remember when Republican President Ronald Reagan visited Bitburg cemetery in Germany, where Nazi SS troops were buried, and called them "victims" and stated that American soldiers who fought for the International Brigades in Spain were on the wrong side. Every once in a while, these people forget themselves and reveal where their true sympathies lie.

A carefully kept secret is the strong sympathy and corporate connections that existed between many of the most powerful American capitalists and German capitalists and their fascist system. Rockefeller-owned Standard Oil of New Jersey had close patent and other ties to I.G. Farben, the giant German corporation that used slave labor at Auschwitz. Standard Oil delivered oil to the Nazis through Switzerland and Spain and even refueled German submarines at Teneriffe in the Canary Islands. At the back of a book called Trading With the Enemy by Charles Higham is a photocopy of an intelligence document from an American officer complaining about this refueling operation and the presence of Nazi officers on Standard's oil tankers. Standard Oil also made tetraethyl lead and synthetic rubber available to the Nazis. Tetraethyl lead is an essential ingredient in aviation gasoline. Standard Oil was investigated several times by Congressional committees for trading with the enemy, but they were too powerful for anything substantive to be done. Chase Bank, also owned by Rockefeller, stayed open in Paris all during the war and helped finance the Nazis.

Rockefeller is far from alone in this collaboration with the Nazis. Both Henry Ford and Edsel Ford were great admirers of fascism, and Ford built trucks and armored cars for the Nazis in France. General Motors, owned by the DuPont family, manufactured tanks and the aircraft engines for the Junkers bombers at the Adam-Opel plant in Russelsheim,Germany. ITT supplied fuses for artillery shells and all sorts of communications equipment to the Nazis. In addition, they built the Focke-Wulf bombers for the Luftwaffe. Sosthenes Behn of ITT was a major financier of the Swedish ball bearing firm SKF, which preferentially supplied the Nazis with ball bearings and denied them to the US military.

These American capitalists were so important and influential in Nazi Germany that Hitler awarded the Order of Merit of the Golden Eagle to both Henry Ford and James Mooney, the director of operations for General Motors in Europe.

Irenee du Pont organized the Black Legion in the United States. This was a fascist organization that terrorized and murdered union leaders and disrupted union organizing campaigns. The members wore hoods and black robes with skull and crossbones. Another of his organizations was the American Liberty League, which taught hatred of blacks and Jews, love of Hitler and loathing of the Roosevelts. The DuPont and Morgan families even approached Major General Smedley Butler through an intermediary to determine if a military coup could be organized against President Roosevelt because Roosevelt's programs for the poor and working class were so hated by DuPont and other important American capitalists. Major General Butler was deeply offended and reported the plot to Roosevelt.

German and American capitalists were as thick as thieves, often sitting on the boards of directors of the same corporation. They repeatedly tried to get a peace agreement between the United States and Germany that would allow a world fascist government and destroy the common enemy-socialism in the Soviet Union. Hitler obstructed these efforts. It should come as no great surprise to people that after World War 2, the CIA utilized Nazi war criminals in their covert wars against leftists worldwide or that the Republican Party, which represents fascist capitalists like the DuPonts and Fords, should accept a large number of these European fascists into their ranks.

To bring this matter of fascism and the Republican Party up to date, both George W. Bush's grandfather and great-grandfather were on the board of Brown Brothers Harriman, which was so flagrant in its financing of the Nazis that two of its subsidiaries, Union Banking Co. and Hamburg-Amerika Shipping Line, were seized under the Trading With the Enemy Act. Now, the present administration is pushing ahead with its war for empire under the disguise of a "war on terrorism." It is fervently attempting to destroy civil liberties in this country using the same excuse. They can now imprison US citizens as enemy combatants with no charges, no access to lawyers and one's family and friends not knowing where one is imprisoned. One is essentially "disappeared," similar to what the CIA-sponsored death squads did in Latin America, except one is not killed. With the second Patriot Act, they can even take away one's citizenship. What I am saying is this. The present US administration is not just sympathetic to fascism. They are fascists, and their war agenda in an age of nuclear weapons is extremely dangerous to our survival as a species!