The Rise of the Fourth Reich

by Jim Marrs

  Much of this attitude was due to unanswered questions concerning the attacks, such as:

  Who was truly behind the creation of al-Qaeda, terrorists whose origins are connected to a Nazi intelligence organization and later the CIA? Recall it has been previously shown that al-Qaeda was taken over by Nazi intelligence before World War II and, after the war, passed by British intelligence to the American CIA.

  Who authorized the war-game exercises for the morning of September 11, 2001? Various exercises with names like Vigilant Warrior, Vigilant Guardian, Northern Vigilance, and Tripod II were being conducted by the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and other government agencies that morning. According to Sergeant Lauro Chavez of the U.S. Central Command, these exercises included a scenario of hijacked commercial airliners being used to crash into prominent U.S. buildings, specifically naming the World Trade Center towers. Chavez, who worked with the command center’s computers, also noted that false images called “inputs” representing hijacked planes were placed on military radar screens, causing much initial confusion. Chavez said, much to the surprise of the military, it was announced shortly before 9/11 that command over NORAD, normally a military position, had been assumed by Vice President Cheney.

  Who sent the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s emergency response team and military rescue units to New York City as part of the Tripod II exercises the evening before 9/11?

  Who authorized the flight of more than two dozen members of the bin Laden family across the United States during the “no fly” period when Americans were not permitted to fly?

  If a Boeing-757 with a wingspan of 124 feet and a height of 44 feet hit the Pentagon, why did photos taken the day prior to the collapse of the west wall show only one hole, approximately 15 ´ 20 feet, in the ground floor, with no evidence of wings, engines, or wheel assemblies?

  Who told New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani to evacuate his temporary command center because the Twin Towers were about to collapse, as he stated to Peter Jennings of ABC News that afternoon?

  Why has no other steel-reinforced building in the history of the world collapsed due to only fire, and why did the firefighting industry publication Fire Engineering describe the FEMA investigation of the towers collapse as “half-baked farce”?

  Why has there been such controversy over what caused the symmetrical collapse of the forty-seven-story World Trade Center Building 7 at 5:25 P.M. on 9/11? Although it was not hit by airplanes, it fell neatly between the Verizon Building and the U.S. Post Office, neither of which suffered critical damage. Why did the official government study of the collapse of Building 7 conclude their “best hypothesis has only a low probability of occurrence”?

  Why did the short-selling of stock in American and United Airlines suggest foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks, and why was it not properly investigated once it was learned these sales were made by persons connected to the CIA?

  These comprise only a short list of the more pertinent questions that have not been addressed or adequately explained. Evidently, the “watchdog” mass media has been cowed by its corporate masters. Nor have these and many other questions been answered by any of the official government investigations, including President Bush’s handpicked panel, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, popularly known as the 9/11 Commission. Bush initially tried to appoint globalist Henry Kissinger to head his commission but was thwarted by public outcry.

  The growing 9/11 Truth Movement, joined by many of the victims’ families, remains divided in their view of the real conspiracy, sometimes referred to as LIHOP (Let It Happen on Purpose) and MIHOP (Made It Happen on Purpose). The LIHOP argument is that certain individuals within the federal government had foreknowledge of the attacks—more than a dozen nations, including Israel, Cuba, and even the Taliban in Afghanistan attempted to warn Washington of the coming attacks—yet did nothing to prevent them, as the attacks furthered their political agenda, while the MIHOP supporters took notice of the close relationships between the Bush and bin Laden families, as reported in the Texas media, as well as the role of Saudi Arabia and the CIA in the creation of al-Qaeda. They argue that the attacks were actually precipitated by elements within the U.S. government.

  The controversy over the truth of the 9/11 attacks undoubtedly will continue for many years, but how long it will take before the corporate mass media are allowed to objectively investigate and report on this festering scandal is anybody’s guess.

  The major corporations that control the mass media, like the other corporations previously discussed, are for the most part filled with honest and honorable people. They, like most of their corporate superiors, are men and women with credible backgrounds. They are capable managers, but they have little inkling of who truly controls their corporate structure—i.e., the fascist globalists’ banks and foundations that seek to control every major aspect of modern life, including energy, transportation, communications, education, religion, pharmaceuticals, and health.

  EPILOGUE

  AMERICA TODAY IS A NATIONAL SOCIALIST’S DREAM COME true.

  Individuals are computerized, databased, logged, and categorized. Video cameras, motion sensors, metal detectors, and spy satellites monitor our movements, while think tanks and foundations study our every habit. We are constantly bombarded with “official” pronouncements and advertising. Television is everywhere—in bars, waiting rooms, airports, and usually constantly on in our very living rooms. In our fast-paced society, no one has time to think, much less read deeply.

  Business, especially corporate business, is king. Giant corporations, governed by faceless directors answering to shadowy owners, control everything, from water to wing nuts. Even the time-honored profession of soldiering has been usurped by private corporate armies like Blackwater, in 2007 already being accused of becoming America’s version of the Nazi Brownshirts.

  Meanwhile, the American taxpayer is footing the bill, even though, as convincingly shown in Aaron Russo’s 2006 documentary America: Freedom to Fascism, there is no law requiring Americans to pay an income tax. Of course, the IRS, through its myriad rules and regulations, can drag into court and even jail those who fail to fulfill “voluntary compliance.”

  “[F]ascism’s principles are wafting in the air today, surreptitiously masquerading as something else, challenging everything we stand for. The cliché that people and nations learn from history is not only overused, but also overestimated; often we fail to learn from history, or draw the wrong conclusions. Sadly, historical amnesia is the norm,” stated author Dr. Laurence W. Britt, in an article for Free Inquiry, a long-standing publication of the Council for Secular Humanism, which promotes secular humanist principles.

  Following a careful study of the regimes of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Papadopoulos’s Greece, Pinochet’s Chile, and Suharto’s Indonesia, Britt concluded that these fascist governments had observable similarities. “Analysis of these seven regimes reveals fourteen common threads that link them in recognizable patterns of national behavior and abuse of power,” he noted. “These basic characteristics are more prevalent and intense in some regimes than in others, but they all share at least some level of similarity.”

  Britt’s fourteen characteristics of a fascist regime, many sounding ominously close to what’s happening today in the United States, include:

  Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism.

  From the prominent displays of flags and bunting to the ubiquitous lapel pins, the fervor to show patriotic nationalism, both on the part of the regime itself and of citizens caught up in its frenzy, was always obvious. Catchy slogans, pride in the military, and demands for unity were common themes in expressing this nationalism. It was usually coupled with a suspicion of things foreign that often bordered on xenophobia. Examples of such patriotic zeal may be found in the ever-present yellow ribbons showing support for U.S. troops to the plethora of American flags and bunting at large p
ublic events such as the Super Bowl.

  Disdain for the importance of human rights.

  The regimes themselves viewed human rights as of little value and a hindrance to realizing the objectives of the ruling elite. Through clever use of propaganda, the population was brought to accept these human rights abuses by marginalizing, even demonizing, those being targeted. When abuse was egregious, the tactic was to use secrecy, denial, and disinformation. In November 2007, former federal judge Michael B. Mukasey was sworn in as attorney general of the United States, despite contentious confirmation hearings focused on the issue of torturing prisoners. He replaced Alberto R. Gonzales, who was criticized for his part in crafting the Bush administration’s secretive legal arguments permitting the torture of suspects. Mukasey, who served eighteen years as judge of U.S. district court for the Southern District of New York, presided over the trials of Omar Abdel Rahman and El Sayyid Nosair, the convicted bombers of the World Trade Center in 1993; the trial of José Padilla, the man declared an “enemy combatant” by President Bush and the only person convicted in connection with the 9/11 attacks; and the lawsuits between World Trade Center leaser Larry Silverstein and several insurance companies over damages stemming from the 9/11 attacks.

  Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause.

  The most significant common thread among these regimes was the use of scapegoating as a means to divert the people’s attention from other problems, to shift blame for failures, and to channel frustration in controlled directions. The methods of choice—relentless propaganda and disinformation—were usually effective. Often the regimes would incite “spontaneous” acts against the target scapegoats, usually communists, socialists, liberals, Jews, ethnic and racial minorities, traditional national enemies, members of other religions, secularists, homosexuals, and “terrorists.” Active opponents of these regimes were inevitably labeled as terrorists and dealt with accordingly. Examples of such tactics can be heard from the mouths of those who constantly use racial slurs. Afghanistan’s former “freedom fighters” have semantically changed into “insurgents” then into “al-Qaeda terrorists” in the news columns, while such epitaphs as “rag head” and “sand nigger” are commonly used in the general population.

  The supremacy of the military and avid militarism.

  Ruling elites always identified closely with the military and the industrial infrastructure that supported it. A disproportionate share of national resources was allocated to the military, even when domestic needs were acute. The military was seen as an expression of nationalism, and was used whenever possible to assert national goals, intimidate other nations, and increase the power and prestige of the ruling elite. The U.S. military budget for many years has consumed the bulk of the national spending. President Bush’s 2008 budget provides $439.3 billion for the Department of Defense’s base budget—a 7 percent increase over 2006 and a whopping 48 percent increase over 2001. This figure does not include military-related expenditure such as nuclear weapons research or the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Neither does it count trust funds, anticipated costs of Social Security, and Veterans Administration costs of services to veterans. “The government practice of combining trust and federal funds began during the Vietnam War, thus making the human-needs portion of the budget seem larger and the military portion smaller,” according to literature from the War Resisters League (WRL), an antiwar organization founded in 1923. By totaling all government figures relating to the military, the WRL estimated that more than half (51 percent) of all federal spending goes to the military.

  Rampant sexism.

  Beyond the simple fact that the political elite and the national culture were male-dominated, these regimes inevitably viewed women as second-class citizens. They were adamantly anti-abortion and also homophobic. These attitudes were usually codified in draconian laws that enjoyed strong support by the orthodox religion of the country, thus lending the regime cover for its abuses. This practice is less prevalent in the United States today, although many women still find it difficult to break through what has been termed the “glass ceiling,” in which they can see higher positions in the workplace but never seem to get there. Modern America also differs from Nazi Germany and other cultures in that women are beginning to fill the corporate chairs formerly held by men. Many seem agreeable to advancing fascist and globalist philosophy.

  A controlled mass media.

  Under some of the regimes, the mass media were under strict direct control and could be relied upon never to stray from the party line. Other regimes exercised more subtle power to ensure media orthodoxy. Methods included the control of licensing and access to resources, economic pressure, appeals to patriotism, and implied threats. The leaders of the mass media were often politically compatible with the power elite. The result was usually successful in keeping the general public unaware of the regimes’ excesses. As previously detailed, the American corporate mass media today is essentially in the hands of six giant multinational communications corporations. The owners of these corporations are proponents of “free trade” in business policies, yet coverage of alternative news and views is mostly ignored. “One of our best-kept secrets is the degree to which a handful of huge corporations control the flow of information in the United States. Whether it is television, radio, newspapers, magazines, books, or the Internet, a few giant conglomerates are determining what we see, hear, and read. And the situation is likely to become much worse as a result of radical deregulation efforts by the Bush administration and some horrendous court decisions,” warned Congressman Bernie Sanders, adding, “This is an issue that Congress can no longer ignore.”

  Obsession with national security.

  Inevitably, a national security apparatus was under direct control of the ruling elite. It was usually an instrument of oppression, operating in secret and beyond any constraints. Its actions were justified under the rubric of protecting “national security,” and questioning its activities was labeled unpatriotic or even treasonous. While all Americans should be concerned about national security, many see it as a pretext to strip away constitutional rights. Thoughtful persons also worry about a man like Michael Chertoff, son of a Jewish rabbi, who has been accused of having dual citizenship (American and Israeli) and was a major architect of Bush administration policies, being named secretary of the Homeland Security Department.

  Religion and ruling elite tied together.

  Unlike communist regimes, the fascist and protofascist regimes were never proclaimed godless by their opponents. In fact, most of the regimes attached themselves to the predominant religion of the country and chose to portray themselves as militant defenders of that religion. The fact that the ruling elite’s behavior was incompatible with the precepts of the religion was generally swept under the rug. Propaganda kept up the illusion that the ruling elites were defenders of the faith and opponents of the “godless.” A perception was manufactured that opposing the power elite was tantamount to an attack on religion. Earlier in this work, the obvious parallels have been drawn between the use of religion in Nazi Germany and modern America to support government policies.

  Power of corporations protected.

  Although the personal life of ordinary citizens was under strict control, the ability of large corporations to operate in relative freedom was not compromised. The ruling elite saw the corporate structure as a way to not only ensure military production (in developed states) but also as an additional means of social control. Members of the economic elite were often pampered by the political elite to ensure a continued mutuality of interests, especially in the repression of “have-not” citizens. According to the Federalism Project of the American Enterprise Institute, a group that conducts and sponsors original research on American federalism, “Consumer advocates, plaintiffs’ attorneys, and state officials argue that broad federal preemption claims—often by federal regulatory agencies, without a clear congressional mandate—interfere with the states’ historic role in protecting
citizens against corporate misconduct. Corporations and federal agencies respond that preemption is often the only viable safeguard against unwarranted state interferences with the national economy.” In a 2006 article in the Los Angeles Times, Alan C. Miller and Myron Levin noted how a series of steps by federal agencies were meant to “shield leading industries from state regulation and civil lawsuits on the grounds that they conflict with federal authority.”

  Power of labor suppressed or eliminated.

  Since organized labor was seen as the one power center that could challenge the political hegemony of the ruling elite and its corporate allies, it was inevitably crushed or made powerless. The poor formed an underclass that was viewed with suspicion or outright contempt. Under some regimes, being poor was considered akin to a vice. As previously noted, antilabor actions of the Bush administration prompted Jack Heyman, an official of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, to state that “Bush is effectively declaring war on the working class here.” Those with long memories know that labor news has largely dropped from the mainstream media’s radar screen.

  Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts.

  Intellectuals, and the inherent freedom of ideas and expression associated with them, were anathema to these regimes. Intellectual and academic freedom were considered subversive to national security and the patriotic ideal. Universities were tightly controlled, politically unreliable faculty harassed or eliminated. Unorthodox ideas or expressions of dissent were strongly attacked, silenced, or crushed. To these regimes, art and literature had to serve the national interest or they had no right to exist. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, many conservative groups on college campuses denounced academic freedom, according to a report by John K. Wilson, coordinator of the Independent Press Association’s Campus Journalism Project. Other academics were fired or reprimanded for merely speaking out on the issues of war or questioning the official story of 9/11.