189 lines
9.0 KiB
Plaintext
189 lines
9.0 KiB
Plaintext
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Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 1 Num. 3
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("Quid coniuratio est?")
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[CN Editor -- The local all volunteer radio station, WEFT 90.1
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FM, has a 1-hour show at 10 A.M. on Saturday mornings called
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"News From Neptune." The following is a partial transcript of
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their June 4, 1994 broadcast. Co-hosts are Paul "The Truth" Muth,
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and Carl Estabrook.]
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MUTH:... what you thought the most egregious misrepresentation of
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America's role. Actually, I was thinking more of a discussion of
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post-war... something we return to in... our namesake for the
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show, "News From Neptune," Noam Chomsky, says it ought to start
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with some of the betrayals of the movements that fought against
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Hitler.
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ESTABROOK: Absolutely.
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MUTH: Whether the Truman Doctrine in Greece -- Greek partisans --
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the deals with the mafiosi in the south of France, in Marseilles,
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where the left people who fought against Nazis were betrayed and
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beaten by thugs.
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ESTABROOK: Absolutely. No, you're right, Paul. I mean the myth
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making this week around D-Day has just been remarkable. And I
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don't know what I find more appalling: the myth making itself or
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the general ignorance -- the sort of inchoate recognition on the
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part of a lot of people who are listening to this that it *is*
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myth making and therefore they shouldn't pay any attention to it.
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And an awful lot of people are still going to be sadly pressed if
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you ask them what D-Day was or what the situation was 50 years
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ago that is the occasion for all this rhetorical excess that
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we're hearing from both the news media and from our chief
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magistrate [Clinton] who is running around England at the moment,
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apparently, excessing rhetorically.
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I don't know. I mean ignorance as a defense against propaganda,
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you know, is a counsel of despair, it seems to me. But that's
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what we're dealing with.
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MUTH: I was dismayed by the blessing of the new Italian
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government...
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[CN Editor -- In Italy, so-called "Neo Fascists" have recently
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gained control of the government. 50 years ago, we were fighting
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World War II against these same sorts of people. Where is
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Clinton's first stop for the 50-year D-Day carnival? Italy. Who
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does he meet with first? Fascists.]
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...What was the line, uh...
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ESTABROOK: Yes!
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MUTH: "Well a lot of political parties have their origins in less
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than wholesome..." I don't know.
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ESTABROOK: Maybe he's talking about the Democratic party and its
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support for slavery [pre-American Civil War] in this country.
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MUTH: I suppose. There is that reference, I guess, that's sort of
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a defense of his remark. [CN Editor -- Apparently Clinton made
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some sort of remark, in the context of his meeting with the
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Italian "Neo-Fascists," as some sort of an excuse for the
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absurdity of his situation.] But the Neo-Nazis...
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ESTABROOK: I mean, it is... The irony is very great, Paul. I mean
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for him to be embracing the leader of a government that includes
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a fascist... and all this "neo-fascist" talk just means that
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these fascists weren't born when the... when Mussolini was
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running Italy.
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It is an important irony, an important contradiction, because it
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shows up the falseness of most of our accounts of World War II. I
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mean, if some accounts are to be believed, what World War II was
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primarily about was it was some sort of a brawl between Hitler
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and the B'nai B'rith. And it seems to me that it's much more
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important to try to see what World War II *was* about and to see
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that the United States never went to war to protect Jews, it
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never went to war to overthrow Hitler -- the U.S. was perfectly
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complacent with the Hitler government throughout the '30s. It
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didn't go to war for any of these "defense of Freedoms" that have
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been talked about. Remember: The war had been on for several
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years; at least 2 years if you talk about Europe and many more if
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you talk about Japanese expansion into China. The war had been on
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for several years before the U.S. got involved in it. And its
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motive for getting into the war had nothing to do with freedom or
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oppressed groups within the Reich. What it had to do with was the
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fact that a military base belonging to the U.S. was attacked in
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the Pacific and that 2 Capitalist powers struggled over which was
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to control the business of the Pacific. We won.
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MUTH: Well, but that does bring up the question of what was the
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motive in Europe, though. I thought you were going to say... I
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mean, the precipitating thing, Pearl Harbor [September 7th, just
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ask George Bush -- CN Editor], I think we can set aside. Anything
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could have precipitated. So it's not, that's not a major causal
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thing. The latter is just the fighting over the Capitalist
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spoils. But that's true in Europe as well.
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ESTABROOK: Well exactly. You're quite right about that. I'm not
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sure I agree that anything could have precipitated it. I mean, it
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seems to me that it was the [economic] struggle between the U.S.
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and Japan that the U.S. was essentially winning. And that the
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Japanese struck out against militarily that produced the military
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confrontation in the Pacific. The U.S. had trammelled up the
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Japanese economy in the Pacific and was doing its best to do so.
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And it was the Japanese strike, military strike, against that
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that led the U.S. into the war.
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The alliance of Japan and Germany turned our attention then to
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the... to Europe. Because the real motive of the U.S. in Europe
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was not particularly, or not immediately, for the defeat of
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Germany. What the U.S. was most interested in, in Europe, was the
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British empire. Who was going to control the colonial empires of
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the declining Capitalist states of Europe when the war ended? The
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U.S. was sure it was going to be that sort of "residuary legatee"
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of 19th century colonialism; that the British empire was going to
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be ours. The Germans were fighting to see that that empire would
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be theirs, that they would have an economic control over that,
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over that empire. We won that one, too. That's the reason we were
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in Iran. That's the reason we were in Vietnam. I mean, the
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question of the Second World War could be summarized as "The War
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of British Succession in Europe"; who was going to succeed to the
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British empire. We won that one, too.
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[...]
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[Still Estabrook speaking]:
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And I think the understanding of what the war was about, and the
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understanding (as you suggested earlier) of what the real outcome
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of the war was, seems to me to be vital and against the
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mythology.
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To take just one example: *Time* magazine this week has a picture
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of Dwight David Eisenhower on the front of it with the legend,
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"The Man Who Beat Hitler." Well, that's very interesting. Bertolt
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Brecht wrote a famous poem. "The Remarks of a Worker Who Reads"
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contains the lines:
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Caesar conquered Gaul.
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(Didn't he even have a cook with him?)
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So "The Man Who Beat Hitler" is... at once, falls under Brecht's
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quite legitimate stricture.
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There's another issue, too. For all this talk about the invasion
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of France on the 6th of June, 1944, by 150,000 troops (a minority
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of whom, by the way, were Americans), um, for all the talk about
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this, the notion grows in American circles that *that* was what
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overthrew Nazi-ism. Well, in fact, what overthrew Nazi-ism was
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the Russian army. Even *after* D-Day, from June 6, 1944 to May 8,
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1945 -- from D-Day to the very end of the war -- the majority of
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German troops were in the east, not in the west. Even after all
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the Allied armies had moved into France and so forth -- all the
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British and American armies (Anglo-Saxon armies, we probably
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should say) had moved into western Europe -- the majority of
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German troops were still in the east because the German's knew
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quite well [that] the real threat came from the east. And it was
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when the eastern front crumbled, when the Russian army -- at
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immense cost, cost of 20 million war dead -- when the Russian
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army finally moved into Berlin, that the war was over.
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Now this is not to say that what was going on, the difficulties
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in the western half of Europe, weren't serious difficulties for
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the Reich. They certainly were. But if you ask, "Who won the
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Second World War?" (the question), the short answer is not
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Eisenhower, "The Man Who Beat Hitler," but the Red army. It
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should have a picture of General Zhukoff, or worse yet, Joe
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Stalin, on the front of *Time* magazine if you wanted to be...
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even if you wanted to buy this way of talking.
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Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt.
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Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et
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pauperem. -- Liber Proverbiorum XXXI: 8-9
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