By Jeremy Harding, Freethought Project

For my first piece here, I believe it’s best to start on the right foot and discuss the long-established spiral toward total fascism. Part of this is based on the long-held alliances between the Nazis and the West™. From aiding them during the war to funding and employing them post-war, the US and NATO have gone to great lengths to protect their fascist allies in return for maintaining a neoliberal and neoconservative global order. There are well-known and lesser-known aspects of this relationship. Many are surprising to people when mentioned, so I’ll provide a concise yet powerful list of three ways the West has consistently empowered and emboldened Nazis.

However, before diving in, I find it necessary to state that the state often distracts its citizens from its growth by pointing fingers at the left. Many proponents of right-libertarian thought overlook this diversion or falsely claim the state is leftist, which is far from accurate. This truth is something on which both Noam Chomsky and Murray Rothbard can agree. Chomsky, in “FAILED STATES: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy”, states:

“With the Cold War no longer available, it was necessary to reframe pretexts not only for intervention but also for militarized state capitalism at home… The costs and risks of the upcoming phases of the industrial economy were to be socialized, with eventual profits privatized…”

He points out how the Cold War justified vast military spending and state expansion. Once expanded, the state found new adversaries and venues for foreign ventures. The US government has consistently found reasons for growth, using agencies like the CIA to generate future threats, like the Middle Eastern “terror threat”^[1], always ready to combat “communists” and counteract the Red Menace in Russia. Sounds familiar?

Rothbard, in “Capitalism Versus Statism”, highlights:

“If we are to keep the term ‘capitalism’ at all, then, we must distinguish between ‘free-market capitalism’ on the one hand, and ‘state capitalism’ on the other. The two are as different as day and night in their nature and consequences. Free-market capitalism is a network of free and voluntary exchanges in which producers work, produce, and exchange their products for the products of others through prices voluntarily arrived at. State capitalism consists of one or more groups making use of the coercive apparatus of the government — the State — to accumulate capital for themselves by expropriating the production of others by force and violence.”

He further explains that the state has always been a tool for whoever wished to dominate the economy, leading to various economic models, concluding:

“the State has its inception in naked banditry and conquest, after which the conquerors settle down among the subject population to exact permanent and continuing tribute in the form of ‘taxation’ and to parcel out the land of the peasants in huge tracts to the conquering warlords, who then proceed to extract ‘rent.'”

Using these two perspectives on state capitalism, from opposite ends of the ideological spectrum but aligned on anti-authoritarianism, we can discern the underlying issue and why many events on the forthcoming list transpired. The West had a state capitalist empire to protect and created adversaries to justify expansion and the subsequent increased control. In reality, the West and the Nazis were closely aligned. Their propaganda often shared striking similarities in racial and sexual imagery, as long as the subjects were the “Other Team™”. The ideologies, business dealings, and post-war arrangements weren’t so different, making the Nazis’ post-war transition from foes to allies smooth. This transition even started during the war. Let’s delve into the list, beginning with:

1. WWII is big business – let’s do business with the enemy!

Many people are aware that American businesses traded with the Nazis, but few realize the extent of this cooperation. It wasn’t just a few companies – it was some of the very pillars of the modern American economy that helped exploit minority populations for additional profit and global positioning.

Take IBM, for example. They created the punch card system that the 20th-century salaryman knows and loathes. A US Census Bureau employee conceived the idea as a way to simplify population documentation and control. The business changed hands from its founder, Herman Hollerith, who sold it to Charles Flint, who then hired Thomas J. Watson to manage the company. They immediately started working with Hitler’s regime, both before and after Adolf Hitler came to power. Willy Heidinger, CEO of the German IBM subsidiary “German Hollerith Machine Corporation,” oversaw this collaboration, with IBM owning 90% of that company. When trying to control a minority, a census is crucial to identify who is who. The Census Bureau-originated company was more than willing to employ its systems not only to assist with the census but also to manage the organization of the concentration camps.^[2] Every camp had a “Hollerith Department,” keeping watch over the inhabitants under the genocidal gaze of the Nazis. In 2012, Edwin Black, who wrote the book on this topic, stated in the Huffington Post^[3]:

“The punch cards, machinery, training, servicing, and special project work, such as population census and identification, were managed directly by IBM headquarters in New York and later through its subsidiaries in Germany, known as Deutsche Hollerith-Maschinen Gesellschaft (DEHOMAG), Poland, Holland, France, Switzerland, and other European countries.”

In essence, the foundation of modern American computing received substantial funding and initial global market share by participating in genocide. How’s that for a “Cathedral”?

And speaking of American foundations, let’s talk about the Bush family. Prescott Bush played a pivotal role in supporting the Nazis, assisting them in acquiring and hiding their money and providing the coal and steel necessary to construct the tracks and infrastructure of their concentration camps. The father of George H.W. Bush and grandfather of George W. Bush, Skull and Bones alumnus, he worked for Brown Brothers Harriman, helping Fritz Thyssen finance Hitler’s rise to power. He was also the director of Union Banking Corporation, which represented Fritz and his U.S. interests, and had ties to the Consolidated Silesian Steel Company, which provided much of the material for Nazi operations, including building concentration camps and powering the war machine.^[4] Without all of this assistance, the Nazis would have struggled to secure the money and resources required for the Reich. So not only did Bush orchestrate 9/11, but his grandfather enabled Nazi Germany. That was an inside job too.

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