Author Archives: Wayne Madsen

One major unsettling similarity between the Nazi Party of Adolf Hitler and the Republican Party of Donald Trump is that both would resist an independent investigation of the attacks on the respective legislatures of the two nations: the February 27, 1933, Reichstag Fire in Berlin and the January 6, 2021, storming by Trump loyalists of the U.S. Capitol complex. Hitler and his Nazis falsely claimed the Reichstag arson was carried out by a mentally deranged Dutch Communist named Marinus van der Lubbe, who was allegedly aided by German Communists. In the case of the U.S. Capitol attack, several far-right Republicans have claimed the attack was actually carried out by members of “antifa” (an acronym for “anti-fascist”) and Black Lives Matter (BLM). Using Nazi propaganda from 1933, some Republicans also falsely claim that BLM is a “communist” organization. Continue reading →

Across the United States, the Republican Party, through bills passed in state legislatures and signed by GOP governors, is adopting one of the central platforms of fascism, namely, the elimination of the powers of state officials, including secretaries of state, governors, and others. Continue reading →

Had the coup plotters of January 6, 2021, been successful, today the United States would have been under the rule of dictator Donald Trump. The traitorous retired General Michael Flynn would be vice president and be granted by Trump with unlimited powers to order arrests, seize private property, and rule states and cities by decree. Political purges of the armed forces, state and local governments, the courts, and corporations would be de rigueur. Continue reading →

Florida suffers from a problem greater than its infestation of Burmese pythons and bi-annual plague of love bugs. Right-wing Republican Cuban-Americans, whose Fulgencio Batista-supporting parents and grandparents were welcomed with open arms by the Central Intelligence Agency, have found the perfect home in the fascist Republican Party and, by default, Florida political power. Continue reading →

With the financial support of Mercer Family Foundation far-right heiress financier Rebekah Mercer, exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, U.S.-based Falun Gong cult leader Li Hongzhi, and the Dignitatis Humanae Institute, which is associated with the fascist Opus Dei Roman Catholic sect, Donald Trump’s sporadic political adviser, Steve Bannon, has implemented a multi-pronged approach to enabling fascist control of governments around the world. Bannon’s ideological approach to furthering fascism globally can be called “Bannonism.” Continue reading →

There are some key facts about the events of January 6, 2021, that must be made crystal clear as the fascist Republican Party embarks on a campaign of gaslighting America about the Donald Trump coup attempt against the government of the United States. Fascists are anathema to the historical record and attempts by Trump operatives and propagandists, particularly Steve Bannon, Dinesh D’Souza, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and others, to revise history are in full swing. On the eve of the annual neo-fascist love fest, the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) conference, held this year in Orlando, irrefutable facts must be laid on the table. Continue reading →

The history of modern political era coups and coup plots provides a great deal of insight in forming a conclusion that what occurred at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 was no mere “riot” or protest “gone wild.” Recent disclosures in federal charging documents of insurrection participants and leaders, as well as the feeble attempt by the Capitol’s three top law enforcement officials—who either resigned or were fired after the mêlée—to blame others for the lack of security all point to a coordinated operation involving the Trump White House, the political leadership of the Pentagon, far right extremist groups, and last, but not least, GOP congressional insiders, including senators and U.S. representatives and their staffs. Continue reading →

The U.S. Congress wants answers on what has been apparent foot-dragging by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) in answering congressional questions about NSA forcing the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) into incorporating a NSA-engineered back door into the Dual_EC_DRBG encryption algorithm standard developed for use in federal government computer systems and networks. On January 28, Democratic Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Cory Booker of New Jersey, along with eight of their Democratic colleagues in the House of Representatives—Tom Malinowski of New Jersey, Ted Lieu of California, Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts, Bill Foster of Illinois, Suzan DelBene of Washington, Yvette Clarke of New York, and Anna Eshoo of California—sent a letter to NSA director General Paul Nakasone requesting information on the forced introduction by NSA of the Dual_EC_DRBG algorithm into the products of Juniper Networks that permitted a massive breach of its customers’ systems in 2015, five years before a similar breach occurred with the products of SolarWinds, another vendor reliant on the same NSA-manipulated encryption algorithm. Continue reading →

From 1920 to 1945, the formal name of the German Nazi Party was the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, abbreviated NSDAP in German. Despite its name, there was nothing even remotely “socialist” or “workers” related about the Nazi Party. Its very foundation was to combat the influence of labor unions, particularly those closely-linked to the Socialists or Communists. Socialist ideology, whether it was of the social democratic or Marxist -Leninist version, was anathema to Nazi policy. Therefore, it was the height of hypocrisy that the Nazis, with their financial backing from Germany’s leading industrialists—Krupp, Thyssen, and Opel, to name a few—would appropriate the terms socialist and workers for their own designs. When “socialist” was added to the “National German Workers’ Party” in 1920, in a jaded attempt to appeal to lower middle class left-wing laborers, Adolf Hitler vehemently objected. The term “socialist” within the official name of the Nazi Party was more of a mockery of socialism than anything else. Continue reading →

It might have come as a shock to the old Obama administration global interventionists who have landed top foreign policy positions in the Biden administration that the world has moved on from 2016. Whether it likes it or not, the Biden foreign policy team is dealing with a world that no longer reacts to every move made in Washington, DC. In fact, the U.S. capital city is now viewed as a place where a far-right insurrection nearly toppled constitutional rule and imposed a dictatorial regime rife with neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members, private militias, and other societal nasties. So much for lectures from U.S. ambassadors about the need to maintain a civil society. Continue reading →

For many of the far-right insurrectionists who stormed and briefly occupied the U.S. Capitol on January 6, the day represented only their first battle in what they believe will be their successful quest of bringing down the U.S. government and replacing it with a nightmare dictatorship that would mix extreme libertarianism with white supremacy as its core doctrine. Facilitating this sedition is the Republican Party, which, in its present incarnation, has shown itself to be incapable of governing and a threat to the security, health, and welfare of the United States and its people. Continue reading →

The Republican Party of the United States has reconstructed itself as the party of Donald Trump and, as such, has become no different than the minority rule political parties of Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa. Continue reading →

Lying at the heart of the increasingly discredited ideology of Trumpism is the bankrupt politics of libertarianism. Like the old joke about the dog chasing the car and finally catching up with it, the seething crew of armed and deranged Donald Trump supporters who managed to temporarily seize control of the upper and lower chambers of the U.S. Congress on January 6 were unsure of what to do with their briefly captured prize. Some decided to rifle through Senate desks in search of some holy grail of secret documents. Others were content with snatching laptop computers from offices. A few felt encumbered to aim canisters of destructive caustic bear spray at priceless oil paintings of Presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams. Continue reading →

America is just starting to discover that it came within a hair’s breadth of witnessing its Constitution upended and a fascist dictatorship declared by Donald Trump as a result of the January 6 insurrection targeting the U.S. Capitol. Indeed, it is all but certain that Trump was borrowing a page from Adolf Hitler’s playbook in ordering Brown Shirts to set fire to the Reichstag in Berlin in 1933 and blaming the arson attack on “Communists” as a reason to suspend the democratic guarantees contained in the Weimar Constitution. According to those few witnesses to Trump’s expletive-laden rants in the Oval Office, the would-be dictator continues to blame the non-existent “antifa” for the attack on the Capitol. Bogus “antifa” attackers in 2021 are as much a propaganda device for Trump as fake “Communists” were for Hitler in 1933. Continue reading →

Founded in 1844, the American “Know Nothing Party,” officially known as the Native American Party—not to be confused with the indigenous native Americans—rallied around the causes of anti-immigration, xenophobia, and anti-Catholicism. Its name derived from the party’s secretive membership list and political operations. When non-members of the party queried a member about specific details of the organization, they were to reply, “I know nothing.” Continue reading →

On early Christmas morning a vehicle bomb exploded in downtown Nashville, Tennessee. The target was the AT&T metropolitan area network hub “Batman” building, a 33-story structure—the tallest building in Tennessee—which resembles the fictional cape crusader’s cowl. The bomber turned out to be a 63-year-old white man. Anthony Quinn Warren, who blew himself up in the terrorist attack, apparently subscribed to the babble from the pro-Donald Trump “Qanon” group of far-right conspiracy advocates who believe that Fifth Generation (5G) wireless communications networks are linked to both the COVID pandemic and electronic surveillance. Continue reading →

History books record that there were a mere handful of cases in which generals plotted the overthrow of a far-right regime to institute moderate or leftist government. In the vast majority of cases, however, generals’ putsches are fascist affairs having dire consequences for the rule of law and human rights. Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and Donald Trump national security adviser, circulated an on-line petition calling for Trump to suspend the U.S. Constitution, declare martial law, and have the Pentagon oversee a “re-vote” of the presidential election, one that would assuredly have Trump “win” over the current President-elect, former Vice President Joe Biden. Continue reading →

The reconstitution of Executive Outcomes (E.O.), the South Africa-based mercenary firm that was involved in civil wars in Sierra Leone, Angola, and Rwanda in the 1990s, is troubling news for not only Africa, but other nations that have seen their fair share of mercenary force destabilization. Amid an outcry over its activities in Africa and other nations, E.O. ceased operations in 1998. The cessation of the firm’s activities came after South Africa passed legislation, the “Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Act,” which required mercenary firms like E.O. to have South African government authorization prior to signing contracts with foreign entities. Continue reading →