Dividing from the Right
Dividing from the Right
“I know 14 letters of the American alphabet, and my IQ once hit 88!”
Do you think the United States has a Nazi problem?
I mean, if you’re reading this, then odds are pretty good you’ve heard of Operation Paperclip, so you’re probably inclined to say yes. If not, don’t feel bad: I just think it’s uncommon knowledge, and I think of my readers as uncommon people. For those unaware, Operation Paperclip was a covert program conducted by the U.S. after World War II to recruit German scientists, engineers, and technicians from the defeated Nazi regime and bring them to the U.S., famously satirized in the titular character of Dr. Strangelove.
Their expertise in fields such as rocketry, aerospace engineering, and other advanced technologies, the U.S. believed, would give it a technological advantage during the Cold War, leading to the relocation of over 1,600 scientists and their families to the U.S., where they contributed to various scientific and military projects.
But that was sixty years ago, right? Besides, I haven’t found anything yet saying that Nazis relocated during Operation Paperclip went on to found any neo-Nazi organizations in the U.S., so, y’know… whatever.
Though, in the 21st century, there was the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, VA. Organized by white nationalists and far-right groups, it aimed to protest the removal of a Confederate statue. That rally turned violent as clashes erupted between white supremacists and counter-protesters, resulting in the tragic murder of Heather Heyer, who was killed when a white supremacist drove his car into a crowd. The event sparked nationwide outrage and discussions about hate groups, racism, and the need to address these issues in the United States.
Even more recently, the Associated Press reported in June 2022 the arrest of 31 members of a neo-Nazi group called the Patriot Front on charges of conspiracy to riot at a Gay Pride event in northern Idaho.
So… yeah, the U.S. kind of has a Nazi problem.
Or, like, a variety of them. The last evidence of it to hit my own feed showed up in early September, when neo-Nazis rallied in Altamonte Springs, FL for the U.S.’s Labor Day weekend. As journalist Ashleigh Nicole reports in her coverage for NewsBreak:
The rally, which featured at least 50 masked individuals carrying swastika flags, performing Roman salutes, and shouting hateful slogans, is a chilling testament to the persistence of extremist ideologies.
Nicole also links to video from Brendan Gutenschwager recording an interviewer’s interaction with Christopher “Hammer” Pohlhaus, leader of the Blood Tribe group that helped organize the rally, evidently having felt the need to encourage neighbors of their preferred ethnicity to “stick up for your fucking self.”
Asked to elaborate, Pohlhaus argues that this doesn’t necessarily imply violent force. However, it appears that, in his eyes, such violence would be a just response to his perceived oppression:
POHLHAUS: All of our goals can be achieved non-violently […] The reason that you presuppose that there would be violence [to achieve our goals] is because you are ready to use violence to stop us.
INTERVIEWER: When you say “you,” who are you referring to?
POHLHAUS: You and all of the people on that side of the fence: white subjugators. You work for that team: k----, Jewry, capitalism, billionaires. That’s your side. I know it’s your side, ’cause you still have a job.
Discerning readers may read Pohlhaus’ description of his opposition and recall a past dispatch of Radio Free Pizza discussing what we called the traditionalist-reactionary dialect spoken in conservative discourse. Our analysis then focused on the tendency of that dialect’s speakers to use “communism” as an umbrella term capturing all manner of oppressive and authoritarian ideologies, regardless of whether or not those ideologies are fundamentally opposed to communism. Therefore, it’s interesting to note here that Pohlhaus identifies “capitalism” as the ideology of oppressive “white subjugators,” though of course it’s unsurprising that this should come paired with garden-variety antisemitism, with “Jewry” deployed as a metonym for “billionaires” in Pohlhaus’ extremist variant of the traditionalist-reactionary dialect.
Recalling also a more recent dispatch, we see here that Pohlhaus’ own ideology rests on a framework of dyadic morality. He perceives that intentional agents—the team of “white subjugators”—cause harm to the vulnerable patients of his preferred ethnicity. In Pohlhaus’ racist worldview, those agents embody the oppressive ideology that subjugates him because of his complexion.
When asked about the 2024 election, Pohlhaus expresses a preference that one might not expect from a white nationalist. “I think Biden’s better than Trump because he sends rockets to Ukraine,” he says with a smile. “Hail Ukraine, hail Azov.”
But this shouldn’t surprise us. Indeed, the history of Nazism in Ukraine became mainstream news again just last month when Canada’s House of Commons invited Yaroslav Hunka, a 98-year-old Ukrainian immigrant introduced as “a war hero who fought for the First Ukrainian Division”—which turned out to have been the SS 14th Waffen Division that fought alongside the Nazis. Due scandal ensued, with commentators once again observing that Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister, descends from a grandfather who, she wrote in a 2015 essay, left Ukraine after 1939, though she neglected to mention that (as memorialized the Province of Alberta’s Ukraine Archival Records) he went from there to Poland to edit the Krakivski Visti, a propaganda newspaper printed on presses that the Nazis seized from Jewish Poles. That and other such papers, notes the Los Angeles Holocaust Museum, were run by “editorial boards [that] carried out a policy of soliciting Ukrainian support for the German cause.” After the end of World War II, as Canadian historian Irving Abella told NBC’s 60 Minutes in 1997, “one of the ways of getting into the country of Canada […] was by showing the SS tattoo. This proved that you were an anti-Communist.”
It shouldn’t surprise us either to learn of a link between neo-Nazis in the U.S. and in Ukraine. As Tim Lister explains in the abstract to his “The Nexus Between Far-Right Extremists in the United States and Ukraine” (2020) for the CTC Sentinel, from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point:
Neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups in the United States and Europe have become more active and dangerous in the last decade and have developed a much deeper online presence. This has helped them establish closer transnational contacts. One common preoccupation for both individuals and groups has been the conflict in Ukraine, where a well-established far-right extremist movement and its associated militia have consistently engaged with and welcomed far-right ideologues and fighters from other parts of Europe and North America.
Upon noting the date of Lister’s article, it seems that neo-Nazis have been preoccupied with Ukraine since before the U.S. had a Biden Administration to send it any rockets. Using his experience from “nearly a dozen reporting trips the author made to Ukraine between 2014 and 2019,” Lister recounts the growth of far-right extremist politics in Ukraine since the Maidan coup of 2014 following then President Viktor Yanukovych’s suspension of a trade deal with the European Union, and examines the affection that American neo-Nazis have for their Ukrainian counterparts:
In 2014, as pro-Russian groups began to seize parts of the Donbas, a neo-Nazi group that called itself Patriot of Ukraine formed a battalion to reinforce the beleaguered Ukrainian army […] The group soon became better known as the Azov Regiment […] The Azov Regiment enjoyed support from within the government of then President Petro Poroshenko and the security services, despite well-documented reports of human rights abuses […] The emergence of such an overtly far-right white nationalist militia—publicly celebrated, openly organizing, and with friends in high places—was electrifying to far-right individuals and groups in Europe, the United States, and further afield […] The message of the far right in Ukraine has certainly struck a chord among white supremacists in the United States. The recent hack of the defunct ironmarch.org has provided thousands of posts and messages from far-right activists around the world and is a useful window into their thinking.
Lister describes how, through that defunct website, American neo-Nazis like Brandon Russell, founder of the Atomwaffen Division—which the Southern Poverty Law Center calls “a series of terror cells that work toward civilizational collapse [whose] members […] believe that violence, depravity and degeneracy are the only sure way to establish order”—contacted a representative of the Azov Regiment and asked for “‘some advice from you about my militia that I lead in [the U.S.]’”
Others, however, forged more direct connections. “The Azov Regiment has attracted far-right activists from across Europe and the United States,” Lister tells us, with many inspired “by the white supremacist or neo-Nazi messaging of far-right extremist groups.” As an example, Lister describes the case of Craig Lang and Alex Zwiefelhofer, two former U.S. soldiers who traveled to Ukraine after the Maidan coup and fought with another far-right group:
Lang arrived in Ukraine in 2014 and was one of several foreigners to join the Georgia National Legion, a volunteer group prohibited by Ukrainian authorities from taking part in combat operations. Lang later joined the Right Sector but by 2016 had returned to the United States because—in his words—the conflict had “got too slow” and “became trench warfare” […] According to U.S. court documents, another former U.S. soldier, Alex Zwiefelhofer, arrived in Ukraine and met Lang in late 2016 or 2017 […] In April 2018, Lang and Zwiefelhofer allegedly killed a married couple in Florida. Both men were indicted by a federal grand jury on charges related to the killings, including conspiracy to commit violence, but not actual murder charges. By then, Lang had returned to Ukraine, where he awaits extradition back to the United States.
(As of 28 February 2022—four days after Russia launched its military campaign—Lang remained in Ukraine.)
So, of course Christopher Pohlhaus approves of the U.S. government providing weapons to Ukraine: they’re arming his confederates.
For that reason, I’d argue that in many ways the U.S. relationship to Nazism in Ukraine—just one among the U.S.’s variety of Nazi problems—doesn’t resemble Operation Paperclip so much as it does Operation Gladio.
(Follow me on this one: the resemblance is faint until you place it, but after that, the familiarity makes it easy to recognize.)
For those unaware, Operation Gladio established a NATO-sponsored, anti-communist network after World War II, consisting of secret “stay-behind” armies composed of paramilitary fighters and intelligence personnel, ostensibly to counter potential Soviet aggression by conducting sabotage, guerrilla warfare, and intelligence activities in the event of a Soviet invasion or communist uprising in Western Europe. As Daniele Ganser’s NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation GLADIO and Terrorism in Western Europe (2005) demonstrates, these operatives worked as far-right terrorists to manipulate the public opinion and domestic policies of postwar Europe. These operations remained largely hidden for decades and were only widely acknowledged in the 1990s, leading to significant political controversies and debates about the balance between security and democracy during the Cold War.
Threads of that story continue even today: as Denis Voltaire reports, a 66-year-old Swiss resident will soon go to trial on charges “grounded on the accusation that NATO bases in the region of Veneto provided orientation, training and support to infamous right-wing terrorist organizations” which bombed an anti-fascist rally in Piazza della Loggia in May 1974, when the accused was just 17 years old.
Voltaire explains the motive behind this bombing and others, and how they supported the larger project of Operation Gladio:
The bombing was part of a wave of terrorist acts supported by U.S. military intelligence, the CIA and NATO. In this case a main purpose appears to have been to intimidate Italy’s political left. A December 1969 bombing at the Piazza Fontana in Milan, which killed 17 people, was directly blamed on Italy’s left—which had been gaining in political strength—in an attempt to discredit it.
The U.S. and NATO were promoting a “strategy of tension” that aimed to create a climate of public fear that would enable passage of draconian anti-terrorist laws while tilting the political balance rightward.
Returning to the resemblance I described above, you might think it’s a stretch for me to suggest now that U.S. intelligence has replaced the anti-communist terrorists of Operation Gladio opposed to the Soviet Union with the neo-Nazi militias of post-Maidan Ukraine opposed to the Russian Federation in an attempt to support its own imperial project.
But if you think it’s a stretch, can you tell me what the National Endowment for Democracy was doing in Ukraine before the Maidan coup?
As the late Robert Parry reported in 2014, “The National Endowment for Democracy, a central part of Ronald Reagan’s propaganda war against the Soviet Union three decades ago, has evolved into a $100 million U.S. government-financed slush fund that generally supports a neocon agenda.” For Ukraine, Parry tells us, that investment went toward pressuring then President Yanykovych into establishing the aforementioned trade deal with the European Union that he ultimately suspended—but in the service of even grander ambitions:
NED has invested in projects in Russia’s close neighbor, Ukraine, that fueled violent protests ousting President Viktor Yanukovych, who won election in 2010 in balloting that was viewed by international observers as fair and reflecting the choice of most Ukrainian citizens […] For NED and American neocons, Yanukovych’s electoral legitimacy lasted only as long as he accepted European demands for new “trade agreements” and stern economic “reforms” required by the International Monetary Fund […] Last September, NED’s longtime president, Carl Gershman, took to the op-ed page of the neocon-flagship Washington Post to urge the U.S. government to push European “free trade” agreements on Ukraine and other former Soviet states and thus counter Moscow’s efforts to maintain close relations with those countries. The ultimate goal, according to Gershman, was isolating and possibly toppling Putin in Russia with Ukraine the key piece on this global chessboard.
(Hey, look, it’s the IMF again!)
So, the NED destabilized Ukraine for the IMF to exploit, and in the interest of encouraging regime change in Russia. I understand, of course, if you don’t yet see the resemblance here with the goals of Operation Gladio. But, as Parry reveals, far-right paramilitaries like that which became the Azov Regiment were integral to the success of this project:
In furtherance of these goals, NED funded a staggering 65 projects in Ukraine, according to its latest report […] [These] created for NED what amounted to a shadow political structure of media and activist groups that could be deployed to stir up unrest when the Ukrainian government didn’t act as desired […] This NED shadow structure, when working in concert with domestic opposition forces, had the capability to challenge the decisions of Yanukovych’s elected government, including the recent coup spearheaded by violent neo-Nazis that overthrew him. Presumably, NED wanted the “regime change” without the neo-Nazi element. But that armed force was necessary for the coup to oust Yanukovych and open the path for those IMF-demanded economic “reforms.”
Of course, that resemblance might be clearer if I had something to show you demonstrating that U.S. intelligence operatives worked directly with those paramilitaries. Nonetheless, that the NED carries out its work on behalf of the CIA is far from a controversial claim. Kit Klarenberg summarized it well in a report last year, updating Parry’s research for events in Ukraine since his death in 2018:
Founded in November 1983, then-CIA director William Casey was at the heart of NED’s creation. He sought to construct a public mechanism to support opposition groups, activist movements and media outlets overseas that would engage in propaganda and political activism to disrupt, destabilize, and ultimately displace ‘enemy’ regimes. Subterfuge with a human face, to coin a phrase.
Underlining the Endowment’s insidious true nature, in a 1991 Washington Post article boasting of its prowess in overthrowing Communism in Eastern Europe, senior NED official Allen Weinstein acknowledged, “a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”
I believe that should clarify the resemblance I see between Operation Gladio and the U.S.’s relationship to neo-Nazis in Ukraine, for the more demanding readers.
However, I’d even take the comparison one step further, and argue that a resemblance also exists between Operation Gladio and the relationship of U.S. intelligence to those neo-Nazis’ American confederates, such as Pohlhaus, Lang, and Zwiefelhofer.
Recall for a moment what Voltaire described above as Operation Gladio’s “‘strategy of tension’ that aimed to create a climate of public fear that would enable passage of draconian anti-terrorist laws while tilting the political balance rightward.” Viewed in this context, I believe certain criminal cases take on a new light.
I’m speaking, of course, about those cases related to the election fraud protesters at the U.S. Capitol on 6 January 2021. Now, I know I can’t call it a neo-Nazi rally… oh, wait! There was apparently (at least one) neo-Nazi involved! Thus, following from the viral proverb transmitted by Dr. Jens Foell—“As we say in Germany, if there’s a Nazi at the table and 10 other people sitting there talking to him, you got a table with 11 Nazis”—I believe you must allow the comparison to stand.
Anyway, as I’m sure you all know, on 6 January 2021 supporters of then President Trump marched on the U.S. Capitol to protest (and, if possible, prevent Congress from ratifying) the results of the 2020 election. Moreover, I think you probably all know too that these protesters were encouraged to march on the Capitol by both Trump and a suspicious character named Ray Epps, who later texted his nephew, “I was in the front with a few others. I also orchestrated it”—but who, despite the evidence of his inciting and participating in the storming of the U.S. Capitol and his confession to arranging it, wasn’t charged with a crime until 18 September 2023, more than two-and-a-half years after his offense. While in the same timeframe others would be tried, convicted, and sentenced to multiple decades’ imprisonment without even being in Washington D.C. at the time, Epps plead guilty two days later to a single count of disorderly conduct, for which he faces a maximum of six months’ imprisonment.
Look at that neo-Nazi lummox with his antisemitic face… I say they should give him the chair!
(Curiously enough, as of this writing, @VillainReport has been suspended.)
I think you can see now why I see fit to compare Operation Gladio to the U.S. intelligence community’s relationship with neo-Nazis and other far-right groups: having seen the same strategy used abroad to justify instituting anti-terrorism laws (and whatever police-state measures would have accompanied them), it’s easy enough to identify at home. Hence why, six months after suspicious actors encouraged Trump supporters to crash Congress’ certification of the election results, the U.S. Capitol Police began expanding its footprint to Florida and California.
For these reasons, I’d say that, yes, the U.S. has a few Nazi problems—and the biggest is its willingness to use Nazis, and the threat they pose, as an instrument for implementing its imperialist and authoritarian agenda, both overseas and at home.