Historiness: "Freedom to Fascism" part 2

Here is part 2 of the response I wrote to Aaron Russo's America: Freedom to Fascism.

A few words of preface. Right-wing conspiratology is a simpler beast than it may appear. Basically, the Wilson presidency marked the end of the robber barons, the gilded age. Those who lost out -- or who had dreams of being among the barons -- justified their positions with lies and conspiracy theories designed to besmirch real and perceived opponents.

Something quite similar occurred in an earlier era, when those under attack during the French Revolution and in the revolutions of 1848 sought psychological refuge in anti-Jewish, anti-Masonic and anti-Illuminati conspiracy theories. Those theories found their way into the writings of Nesta Webster, who transported them into the modern era.

Historians marginalize the importance of such theories, yet they can have a profound impact on society. For example, in France, during the Monarchist/Republican conflict of the Third Republic, anti-Masonic and anti-Jewish theories prospered. The end result was the Dreyfus affair. Theodor Herzl covered the Dreyfus trial, witnessed mobs screaming for Jewish blood, and concluded that anti-Semitism was an immutable part of the Gentile soul. That conclusion led directly to the founding of Israel.

Similarly, the anti-IRS historical revisionism proffered by Aarron Russo, though valueless in and of itself, could have profound impact on our society if widely believed. Orwell warns us against the dangers of putting history into a ideologically-driven rewrite.

As we noted in Part 1, Russo's films contains, in its opening section, a fake quote in which Wilson supposedly warns his listeners in 1916 against the Federal Reserve. In fact, the accurate parts of the quote stem from a 1913 book (written earlier; Wilson was busy establishing his presidency in that year) in which he damned the economic system in place before he and his new Democratic congress enacted reforms. (The Dems gained 61 seats that year, which makes last November's victory seem rather tepid.) Among those reforms was the Federal Reserve Act. Wilson was proud of it, and of the income tax bill he helped to pass, and of the anti-trust legislation he signed.

Woodrow Wilson always considered the creation of the Fed one of his greatest achievements. Yet Russo -- probably an innocent dupe of some not-so-innocent liars -- has tried to convince an ill-read generation that Wilson's beliefs were exactly the opposite of what they were.

In other words, we can see Freedom to Fascism as just another artifact of Bushworld: Reality is what you want it to be. Stephen Colbert contrasted truth with his concept of truthiness. I would argue that, instead of history, the conspiracy-mongers give us historiness. You can have the past you prefer. Not a past you study in a library, but the past you get from your gut.

If you have any interest in what actually went down, here's the rest of my response to Russo-ized history. As you will recall, the first part parsed only the pre-credit sequence. Here, much more rapidly, is the rest.

(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)

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I don’t have time for a formal point-by-point on every topic covered. So I’ll be more general than I was last time:

1. RFID chips -- The film is here accurate. I am very concerned about this.

2. Bush’s executive orders -- Accurate, and extremely troubling.

3. Vote fraud -- Accurate. In fact, this film only touches on the surface. If you want to do a documentary on this subject, the man you should go to is Brad Friedman. He’s done more than anyone else to promote the Clint Curtis story. This is the one area where Russo does not sensationalize ENOUGH.

Now for the bad news:

4. The Tax Code. A careful viewing of Russo’s film reveals that he is being disingenuous about the tax code, as are most people within the tax protest movement.

Over and over, he asks: “Where is the law that says working people must file an income tax form?” He offers a $50,000 reward to anyone who can cite such a law.

Then he notes that people are being tried for not paying their taxes. Well, you can’t be tried unless a court document specifies the law that you are accused of breaking.

Listen close during one interview, and you learn that there IS a law -- but Russo doesn’t think it should apply, due to his interpretation of a 1920 Supreme Court decision. He cannot therefore assert that no such law exists!

It’s simple. Income tax is covered in Title 26 of the U.S. Code.

The law that says you have to file a return is Title 26, Subtitle A, Chapter 1, Part 1, §1: “Tax imposed.”

I doubt that I am going to win the $50,000 prize! Ideologists devoted to casuistry will always find a way to weasel out of such an offer.

Does the 1920 Supreme Court ruling impact this law in any way? No.

Here’s a simple explanation I found online (I don’t have the URL to hand, but you can get it with a little googling):

Prior to 1939, Congress passed tax laws in the form of a series of self-contained revenue acts. In 1939, Congress passed the Internal Revenue Code of 1939, which was the first wholly organized federal tax law. The Internal Revenue Code has been reorganized twice: in 1954 and in 1986. The Internal Revenue Code of 1986 (IRC), as amended, contains the existing federal tax law and is codified in Title 26 of the United States Code...

Obviously, a Supreme Court Ruling in 1920 does not impact legislation written in 1939, 1954, or 1986. Since no challenge to the legislation passed in those years has reached the Supreme Court, then lower court rulings are all we have. And none of them have challenged Title 26 of the U.S. Code.

5. Russo says the tax code does not define income.

In the first place, a law does not have to define every damn word. Ordinary dictionary definitions suffice for most purposes in court.

In the second place, there IS a very full definition of income in the tax code! Right here:

Title 26, Subtitle A, Chapter 1, Subchapter B > Part I > § 61: “Gross income defined.”

Now let’s go to more examples of “false quotation syndrome.”

6. “To defend the New World Order...U.S. soldiers will have to kill and to die.” Arthur Schlesinger 1995 Council on Foreign Relations Journal.

False.

Here is the actual quote:

"In the United States, neo-isolationism promises to prevent the most powerful nation on the planet from playing any role in enforcing the peace system. If we refuse a role, we cannot expect smaller, weaker, and poorer nations to ensure world order for us... We are not going to achieve a new world order without paying for it in blood as well as in words and money."

The periodical in question, by the way, is Foreign Affairs. Russo should know that.

One of the common gambits of right-wing conspiracists is the presumption that every word printed in that (really very dull) journal is the secret Voice of the Grand Cabal, as opposed to the opinion of one author.

For some reason, members of the John Birch Society and other rightist conspiracy mongers just LOVE to use the term "New World Order" (which they usually capitalize). When the rightists use that phrase, they refer to an international cabal of bankers which, in their mythology, would force the United States to give up sovereignty.

But Schlesinger was probably ignorant of the way rightists interpret that term. In this case, we can see that Schlesinger meant something quite different. The full article is here, although you have to pay to get the bulk of it:

From the part that is available, the author's intention is pretty clear. You have to look at the piece in context. At that time, Republicans in congress wanted to nettle Clinton any way they could. In particular, they wanted hamper any role Clinton might play on the international scene. Clinton felt that the United States had a role to play in Haiti and elsewhere. His Republican opponents thus went into a strict isolationist mode. Basically, Schlesinger wrote to justify Clinton’s position that the U.S. could play a peacekeeper role in cases of international aggression or genocide.

You may agree. You may disagree. Hell, I go both ways on that question myself.

But what Schlesinger wrote had nothing to do with international banking conspiracies!

7. Kissinger quote: “Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy.”

Russo implies in his film that this was said at a meeting of the CFR.

Misleading and partially false.

This case is a bit complicated. Basically, the alleged quote has nothing to do with the CFR. The quotation marks are in the wrong place. And the words were not Kissinger’s, but Alexander Haig’s. Haig was characterizing what he felt was Kissinger’s attitude.

The first thing you have to understand is that in the Nixon years, a group of high-ranking military men -- including Haig and Admiral Thomas Moorer -- HATED Kissinger. They didn’t trust him because he was Jewish, because he sought détente, and because the CIA’s James Jesus Angleton believed Kissinger to be a Soviet spy. (Angleton believed that about pretty much everyone. He probably mistrusted the neighbor's dog.)

The words derive from this passage in Woodward and Bernstein’s The Final Days:

In Haig's presence, Kissinger referred pointedly to military men as "dumb, stupid animals to be used" as pawns for foreign policy. Kissinger often took up a post outside the doorway to Haig's office and dressed him down in front of the secretaries for alleged acts of incompetence with which Haig was not even remotely involved. Once when the Air Force was authorized to resume bombing of North Vietnam, the planes did not fly on certain days because of bad weather. Kissinger assailed Haig. He complained bitterly that the generals had been screaming for the limits to be taken off but that now their pilots were afraid to go up in a little fog. The country needed generals who could win battles, Kissinger said, not good briefers like Haig.

So we don’t know that Kissinger actually said these words, only that Haig offered this characterization when speaking to Woodward. Haig, as we know, is an emotional guy.

I have no idea what actual words Kissinger may have used during one of their stupid spats, nor do I much care. I do know this: I wouldn’t trust anything said by Alexander Haig about Kissinger, I wouldn’t trust anything Kissinger says about Haig, and Aaron Russo should place within quotation marks only the words that can actually be attributed to the person quoted.

8. “The New World Order will be built...but an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old fashioned frontal assault.”

Misleading and partially false.

The actual quote does not represent the “Voice of the Conspiracy,” but rather the views of one Richard Gardener, writing in the April, 1974 issue of Foreign Affairs. (Note what I said above about that journal.) Here is the actual quote, with a little more context:

If instant world government, Charter review, and a greatly strengthened International Court do not provide the answers, what hope for progress is there? The answer will not satisfy those who seek simple solutions to complex problems, but it comes down essentially to this: The hope for the foreseeable lies, not in building up a few ambitious central institutions of universal membership and general jurisdiction as was envisaged at the end of the last war, but rather in the much more decentralized, disorderly and pragmatic process of inventing or adapting institutions of limited jurisdiction and selected membership to deal with specific problems on a case-by-case basis ... In short, the 'house of world order' will have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down. It will look like a great 'booming, buzzing confusion,' to use William James' famous description of reality, but an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assault.

In a wider context, the meaning is clear. Gardener was saying that the U.N. and international courts had basically failed because they had no real power. That’s pretty much what we all already knew.

And yet, despite the lack of a governing world body, nations still had incessant disputes about trade, the extension of international waters, and so forth. Alas, the post WWII dream of one world body solving these international disputes was, by the 1970s, in tatters. Instead, there would have to be smaller organizations, pacts, treaties, institutions of more limited scope.

Examples? The first ones that pop into my head would be the Kyoto Accords, or the Law of the Sea Treaty.

That is the point Gardener was trying to make. It's quite the opposite of Russo's fantasy version. It's a FAR cry from right-wing fear-fantasies about international banking conspiracies!

By the way, note that the term “New World Order” was INSERTED. Right-wingers have often used as a code word to replace the old concept of “International Jewry.” I'm sure Russo is ignorant of the term's anti-Semitic heritage.

There is no New World Order. It’s a myth. Whenever you see the phrase, you are probably dealing with an asshole.

That said, other people have used the phrase without reference to banking conspiracies. G.H.W.B used it to refer to the post cold-war single-superpower world. Noam Chomsky used it as a way of referring to U.S. hegemony over less powerful nations -- which is precisely the opposite of the meaning you’ll find in right-wing publications.

9. Strobe Talbot: “In the next century, nations will be obsolete”

Actually, this one is true-ish.

But not completely true. The wording is inaccurate, and the meaning rather different from that conveyed by Russo.

He wrote this in Time magazine, in June of 1992. Here’s some context:

Here is one optimist's reason for believing unity will prevail over disunity, integration over disintegration. In fact, I'll bet that within the next hundred years (I'm giving the world time for setbacks and myself time to be out of the betting game, just in case I lose this one), nationhood as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. A phrase briefly fashionable in the mid-20th century--"citizen of the world"--will have assumed real meaning by the end of the 21st century.

Obviously, what we are dealing with here is an informal bit of speculation. Somewhat akin to science fiction.

Here’s a bit from later on in the piece:

The price of settling international disputes by force was rapidly becoming too high for the victors, not to mention the vanquished. That conclusion should have been clear enough at the battle of the Somme in 1916; by the destruction of Hiroshima in 1945, it was unavoidable.

Once again great minds thought alike: Einstein, Ghandi, Toynbee and Camus all favored giving primacy to interests higher than those of the nation. So, finally, did the statesmen. Each world war inspired the creation of an international organization, The League of Nations in the 1920's and the United Nations in the '40s.

The plot thickened with the heavy breathing arrival on the scene of a new species of ideology--expansionist totalitarianism--as perpetrated by the Nazis and the Soviets. It threatened the very idea of democracy and divided the world. The advocacy of any kind of world government became highly suspect. By 1950 "one-worlder" was a term of derision for those suspected of being wooly-headed naïfs, if not crypto-communists.

At the same time, however, Stalin's conquest of Eastern Europe spurred the Western democracies to form NATO, history's most ambitious, enduring and successful exercise in collective security.

Me, I vote for the “wooly-headed naïf” descriptor. Do I think Talbot’s predictions will come true? No. Do I think he was part of a conspiracy? Of course not.

10. Rockefeller quote: "The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries.”

Almost certainly false.

You will find this one on a lot of right wing sites, but none of them cite a specific publication. They only say that it was said by David Rockefeller at the Bilderberger conference in 1992 or '91.

As I recall, this quote appeared in the Spotlight, an anti-Semitic newspaper, in ’92 or ’93. There was some discussion of the Bilderberg conference at the time, becasue Dan Quayle and Bill Clinton were both supposed to have attended. And in those days, Spotlight always had a report on the Bilderberg meeting, filled with dubious details.

This site is the only one I could find that deals with the veracity of this quote. The writer admits that he has no proof that Rockefeller actually said it. He offers specious arguments along the lines of, “I challenge anyone to prove that Rockefeller DIDN’T make the comment.” (Anyone who says crap like that deserves to hear the standard speech on the burden of proof.) He also admits that accuracy is not important to him because he is interested in a “Paradigm shift.” Which is the sort of argument any propagandist would make.

The site then goes on to talk about Freemasons and reptilian aliens.

Personally, I think the Rockefeller quote is absurd on its face. It conveniently puts into Rockefeller’s mouth all the words that his enemies would WANT to put into his mouth. It’s a fantasy version of something that a far-rightist might think he might say.

You know that scene in the James Bond movies where the villain, instead of just killing Bond, explains the details of his fiendish plan? In real life, people don’t talk that way. And this quote, in my view, is of a similar nature. I just don't think Rockefeller would talk that way.

10: The Communist Manifesto called for a graduated income tax.

Indeed it does. It also calls for the abolition of child labor. It also calls for free education in public schools. It also calls for “the improvement of soil generally.”

So, must we eschew ALL ideas that appear in the Manifesto?

By the way, the Manifesto also calls for “Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.” (Believe it or not!) These days, only those on the right would agree with that sentiment.

There’s a lot more, but I think I’ve given Aaron Russo enough of my life by this point. I certainly do NOT advise you to do anything that would cause you to lose money on this project. Parts of his movie are actually quite good.

But much of it is AWFUL. I would advise you to keep your name out of it.