Berlet: Conspiracies, Demonization & Scapegoating

[Sweejak]

I like Tarpley's geopolitical analysis, I like some of the stuff produced by EIR too, though it's not a place I visit frequently enough to form a strong opinion.

Ex SDSer Tarpley is often plain wrong when he gets mixed up in battles with activists where he seems to do a great deal of conclusion jumping without decent research. His take on Sheehan is one example. When a poster on a Camp Casey forum flamed Truthers in a fit of fear it was taken as if it were Sheehan's own words and made the rounds in cyberspace. Sheehan actually has a pretty nuanced take on it and is careful to avoid traps.

On the other hand, from a witness at the ridiculous Kennebunkport Warning insanity I was told that the warning was signed with full knowledge, though how that can be ascertained I don't know.

Tarpley is a big 9-11 truth pusher, it was a standard feature on his radio show, and I mean every freaking show. Now it's Obama and a segment with Phil Berg. Frankly I'm just tired of it and wish he'd stick with deep geopolitics, a topic that I think he does very well.

On economics I think he is right there with Joe Cannon, though I'm sure they'd never speak to each other because of very opposite views on 9-11.

Well, you take info and analysis where you will. Goering had some great analysis, so did Stalin.

[compared2what?]

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Ahem.

(Adjusting my League of Nations lapel pin and signalling for time from the chair...)

Before this gets into WMD rhetoric and irreversible bad vibes, I recommend a break.

During this time, HMW should research the history of LaRouche as a persistent, powerful and pervasive COINTELPRO-like force of disruption within the left and other US opposition movements, as well as the patriarch's cozy relationship with certain arms-making lobbies, as well as the facts about Webster Tarpley's relationship to the whole (and his apparent inability to drop the LaRouche style and tactics in his attacks on perceived competitors)...

and c2w? should read this:
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ST/

If you don't mind. But please stop at any point, if you hit anything that reeks to you of Protocols. Because I don't believe you will.

It is a look into the structure and workings of the post-1947 national security state intelligence sector, by a well-placed insider. Regardless of what more-than ugly associations the author may have later picked up, I daresay his earlier associations as Pentagon logistics liason to the CIA "operations" branch involved a great deal more complicity in murder and felony than his later associations as a writer seeking publishers, even odioous ones (or, for all I know, as a curmudgeon going down multiple wrong tracks). None of it changes the fact that the work stands on its own as an insider's look into... (go back to the beginning of this paragraph and repeat).

I'd love it if we started a little reading circle where we went chapter by chapter through books like this one together, including the part where we deconstruct'em for all they're worth.

I submit the above as a temporary ceasefire proposal, pending a later escalation into open hostilities and serial name-calling.

---

Apropos the last, and largely as a tangent, but for the record, I am equally happy with characterizations of Berlet as...

"mostly harmless" or rather: just one of a much larger harmful herd of "conspiracy panickers" (Jack Bratich) whose influence derives from the platforms he's routinely given and not from his sorry-assed stringing together of fallacious argument and false association

...as I am with "sack of shit."

While the attack on the right's subversion of the left via grand conspiracy narratives and their pernicious and indeed often deadly influence (as c2w? also presents) is fully warranted, I submit for Berlet that is not at all an end, but a means to stigmatize all those who would question certain myths central to both the CIA and capitalism. He's not in it to show why the von Brunns are bad, he's in it maliciously to tie the von Brunns to a not-necessarily related population group that would pretty much include everyone at RI, for a start. In this regard, he has no more scruple than Glenn Beck. I mean, just look at how neatly he tries to banish as "anti-Semitic" any words describing the very concept of a powerful and corrupt international financial sector ("bankster" I might add was FDR's coinage, and it is beyond apt!).

But that is neither here nor there.

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Jack --

I don't question that Prouty's info is enlightening. And thanks for the link. I look forward to checking it out. I'd also like to repeat that I don't even need to know Chip Berlet's pedigree to recognize that what he does is both insidious and malignant. Because drawing attention to the dangerous political doctrines and activities of various factions of the populist right exclusively by documenting the instances in which they've successfully infiltrated an assortment of outposts on the left is insidious and malignant on its face, as a matter of plain common sense. Since his putative good intentions wouldn't ameliorate that and his putative bad intentions wouldn't exacerbate it, I don't presently actually feel any need to know why he does what he does with any precision. It harms whom it harms and helps whom it helps, and I take it as granted that his own interests are attached to those of a person or entity in the latter category. And for the moment, what the hell, I'm as willing to proceed under the assumption that he's CIA as not.

Even still. His reporting is checkable. Almost all of it covers terrain on which I have enough prior experience to recognize that his interest in it doesn't extend further than the use he can make of its features, which, incidentally, makes him a despicable asshole, as far as I'm concerned. But wrt the basic factual representation of who's who, what's what, and -- if applicable in a basic factual sense-- when, where, why and how the who and the what had a dynamic interaction of some kind, he's generally reliable as far as he goes. By which I mean his perception isn't so distorted that he makes major errors wrt the nature or import of his material, or reaches unsupported or unrecognizably exaggerated conclusions, or anything along those lines. In short, he does conventionally reliable reporting, which has little to recommend it apart from not being wrong. But which isn't wrong.

I also assert emphatically and without qualification that any person whose blind faith in the bona fides of L. Fletcher Prouty is so blind that it regards pointing to Prouty's career-long maintenance of ties to covertly spook-ridden and/or destructive fascist groups as an act that is, in itself, such certain and damning proof of CIA complicity that it actively lends credibility to the less-than-sensible proposition that Prouty's virtuous dedication to exposing covertly spook-ridden and/or destructive fascist conspiracies compelled him as a matter of honor to work for groups and people who were engaged in them may very well have one-million-and-one stellar attributes. But reliability isn't one of them.

I was going to go into more concrete Prouty detail, but obviously wouldn't be doing so on the basis of the best available information if I hadn't yet availed myself of the book. Which I'll now go do.

[compared2what?]

Okay. I'm taking a break at Chapter 3 of Part II. Made some notes, will research through later. But Jack --

How long has it been since you read that book and concluded that it stood on its own as an insider's account? And what insider truths struck you as persuasive and/or valuable? The part about how the Bay of Pigs should have succeeded and would have, if only we had had disciplined top-down command by great and clear-eyed fearless leaders of men, seasoned by battle, to whom such authority ought solely to be reserved?

Because it's not inconsistent with what preceded it at all. Indeed, if the readers who are attracted to the book because they have objections to a foreign policy driven by preemptive unauthorized covert military actions that are based on something other than its inefficiency hadn't already been lulled by the quiet drumbeat of which it's a part while most of their attention was focused on the diverting melody of "I've Got a Secret," it would probably strike most of them as a fucking shocking thing to say. Or so I'd imagine, anyway.

[nathan28]

I submit for Berlet that is not at all an end, but a means to stigmatize all those who would question certain myths central to both the CIA and capitalism. He's not in it to show why the von Brunns are bad, he's in it maliciously to tie the von Brunns to a not-necessarily related population group that would pretty much include everyone at RI, for a start. In this regard, he has no more scruple than Glenn Beck. I mean, just look at how neatly he tries to banish as "anti-Semitic" any words describing the very concept of a powerful and corrupt international financial sector ("bankster" I might add was FDR's coinage, and it is beyond apt!).

Total agreement.

[compared2what?]

I submit for Berlet that is not at all an end, but a means to stigmatize all those who would question certain myths central to both the CIA and capitalism. He's not in it to show why the von Brunns are bad, he's in it maliciously to tie the von Brunns to a not-necessarily related population group that would pretty much include everyone at RI, for a start. In this regard, he has no more scruple than Glenn Beck. I mean, just look at how neatly he tries to banish as "anti-Semitic" any words describing the very concept of a powerful and corrupt international financial sector ("bankster" I might add was FDR's coinage, and it is beyond apt!).

Total agreement.

Then there's pretty much unanimity on that score. Hey! If we all confine ourselves to a narrow consideration of it, I think we can achieve the RI equivalent of world peace.

Let's have champagne.

[JackRiddler]

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Now I have to read it again.

In possible idiocy, yours etc.

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[sunny]

[compared2what?]

Hey, Hugh --

Are you going to be doing your part of the only-fair reading trade-off and if so do you want links?

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Hey, Hugh --

Are you going to be doing your part of the only-fair reading trade-off and if so do you want links?

Not sure what you're asking.

I went and got my copy of Mark Lane's 'Plausible Denial' book and he has extended comments about Willis Carto, Lane's own work against racism, and Lane's contempt for the mainstream media-tolerated bigotry of William F. Buckley.

Point being:
About Mark Lane's integrity, not about Liberty Lobby which is Berlet's diversion.

Because Chip Berlet lies. That's his job, to badjacket people you'd learn about CIA from.

[compared2what?]

I'm asking whether you're interested in reading material about what Lyndon LaRouche, Willis Carto, and Scientology do that wasn't written by (a) someone who works with or for one or more of them, such as Lane or Prouty; or (b) Chip Berlet.

Who does not, in fact, do all that much lying. He does mind-fuckery. On the facts, he's generally correct. On the suggestions, he's insidious.

However, fuck him. I meant: Sources who have no political axe to grind.

[streeb]

I'm asking whether you're interested in reading material about what Lyndon LaRouche, Willis Carto, and Scientology do that wasn't written by (a) someone who works with or for one or more of them

I'm interested! In that I'm sincerely interested in what you'd recommend.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

I'm asking whether you're interested in reading material about what Lyndon LaRouche, Willis Carto, and Scientology do that wasn't written by (a) someone who works with or for one or more of them, such as Lane or Prouty; or (b) Chip Berlet.

Who does not, in fact, do all that much lying. He does mind-fuckery. On the facts, he's generally correct. On the suggestions, he's insidious.

However, fuck him. I meant: Sources who have no political axe to grind.

Remember the op? Chip Berlet? That's who I'm trying to expose.
I already KNOW about LaRouche, Carto, Scientology.

Hey, I didn't know about decades of LaRouchery when I first arrived at RI in 2005 having read just a few of his lengthy convoluted essays. A few usernames slammed me for my ignorance. Now I do.

Because it is very important to be able to distinguish deliberate mind-benders from every one else.

Seems you didn't know about the professional tactics of Chip CIA Berlet and why he was targeting Mark Lane and Lt. Col. L. Fletcher Prouty since 1992 when Oliver Stone ripped open the JFK cover up permanently.
Lane and Prouty give us the skinny on that crime against democracy that will haunt the CIA forever. And they are not 'anti-semitic rightwingers peddling the Protocols' even though Berlet pushes that line to prevent newbies from learning from those two men.

Berlet even admits that there is nothing anti-semitic in Prouty's 1973 'Secret Team' book in one of his crappy essays using 'damned with faint praise' implying he is anti-semitic somewhere else.
False. Prouty never espoused anything bigoted up to his death in 2001.
Right in the middle of Berlet's lying steaming pile he puts a paragraph of the truth to cover his ass. As if we wouldn't notice-

http://www.publiceye.org/rightwoo/rwooz9-14.html

Critics of the Christic thesis say the "Secret Team" was not a cabal operating against the will of the president or the CIA, but was an illegal, secret government-sponsored operation established by CIA director William Casey and coordinated by White House aide Oliver North, with assistance from a network of ultra-right groups who were determined to circumvent the will of Congress. This "Enterprise" at times worked closely with the Mossad and carried out clandestine counterinsurgency missions. Some of these counterinsurgency missions were based on the same model of pacification used by U.S. Special Forces and clandestine CIA operations in Vietnam. It is just this emphasis on counterinsurgency and clandestine operations rather than direct military battles that forms the basis of criticism in Fletcher Prouty's book Secret Team. Prouty criticized the CIA for promoting covert action techniques which he traced to the influence of the British intelligence service MI5 on the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), precursor to the CIA. Prouty said such meddling and convoluted efforts at fighting communism resulted in the needless deaths of American servicemen. There is no evidence of any obvious anti-Jewish conspiracy theories in the original Prouty book.

Didja get that oblique lie?
"...no evidence of any OBVIOUS anti-Jewish conspiracy theories..."
PROUTY NEVER UTTERED OR WROTE A WORD OF BIGOTRY.

But Prouty did identify CIA men in Dealey Plaza photos who were assassination and coup experts, the Operation Mongoose team, like Lansdale. Ouch. That hurts CIA. So Berlet's gotta shoot the messenger with a smear.

So the credibility considerations of Berlet vs Lane/Prouty are HUGELY important in the post-JFK age of exposing spook culture.
Likewise, Berlet is important as a CIA professional doing deceptive defense against the truth.

Cool. No biggie. So we're all catching up to the same page.

[compared2what?]

No, we're not. First of all, only one of us is thoroughly acquainted with a very wide range of information about the historical and present-day operations and entites of (let's call it) "the intelligence community," which only one of us has culled and continues to cull from a large number of diverse sources that sometimes cause only one of us to revise a previously held view. Only one of us is open to being proved wrong, and in fact welcomes it, out of a genuine desire not to be wrong. And only one of is capable of admitting to a mistake, evidently. Since only one of us has a track record of admitting to them.

So stay in your safe, self-reinforcing bubble of info if you're happy there. I like you. And even if I didn't, I wouldn't want you to be anything but happy.

I reserve the right to point out your errors when I can't manage, much to my regret, to convince myself that they're not so far off base on a subject that potentially puts vulnerable people, including you, at risk to give them a pass. And I sincerely hope that never happens.

FYI, I have a security tip for you. When you're dealing with information that's dangerous enough that your personal security depends on secure communications, there are a few traditional practices you might like to try:

Don't talk about that information on the telephone. Ever. It's dangerous.

And if, for some reason, you've been reckless enough to disregard that tradition, and therefore have some reason to believe that your security has thus been compromised:

Don't post the details on a publicly accessible message board. Because you might as well just be writing up your itinerary and faxing it to Langley.

Your personal security is too precious and the stakes are too high to just jump in the pool and start swimming with sharks. So I'd be much obliged to you if you respected yourself enough to lead by example.

However, since I don't expect or want you to oblige anyone other than yourself, and am in no position to say what obliges you, it's purely up to you whether you decide to take that advice or leave it alone.

I think I'm done here for a while. Though I may be wrong. Which I'll admit, if it's the case. But if I'm not wrong, hey: Go nuts to hell and back, Hugh. Rock that boat. Or float it. Whatever gets you there is fine by me. Just have a care for yourself and other people, as much as you can manage to do. You won't regret it, I guarantee. It pays dividends like you would not believe. It's kind of amazing, really.

[Hammer of Los]

Brrr, anyone feel a chill in the air?

I've read Larouche. I always took it with a large pinch of salt. And Skolnick, what a case he was! And sure, the Christic Institute's Iran Contra case does seem to have been something of a botch job.

But when we discover that a writer has some "association" with an organisation that has been accused of neo-naziism, far-right-ism, racism, white supremacy and/or anti-semitism, must we then regard all the information they present as false? Or might we not be able to look elsewhere for corroboration, from sources that suffer from no such taint? Or is information thus tainted to be avoided as toxic, even if true?

Yeah, maybe it is. So, I aint gonna read Prouty. Brr. No way man. That info is too dangerous.

Damn. Now I gotta make sure my comms are secure. Hell, I don't think I even have the latest version of Zonealarm. I'm in big trouble!

[compared2what?]

Brrr, anyone feel a chill in the air?

I've read Larouche. I always took it with a large pinch of salt. And Skolnick, what a case he was! And sure, the Christic Institute's Iran Contra case does seem to have been something of a botch job.

But when we discover that a writer has some "association" with an organisation that has been accused of neo-naziism, far-right-ism, racism, white supremacy and/or anti-semitism, must we then regard all the information they present as false? Or might we not be able to look elsewhere for corroboration, from sources that suffer from no such taint? Or is information thus tainted to be avoided as toxic, even if true?

Yeah, maybe it is. So, I aint gonna read Prouty. Brr. No way man. That info is too dangerous.

Damn. Now I gotta make sure my comms are secure. Hell, I don't think I even have the latest version of Zonealarm. I'm in big trouble!

I don't recommend avoiding Prouty. And if you think you're replying to any point I've made, I either didn't make them well or you didn't try very hard to grasp them.

I'm tired of this, as I've just said elsewhere. I'm not at all sure no one will think the worse of me if I therefore excuse myself for some restorative resting. In fact, I'd be surprised if at least someone didn't take this opportunity to vent some negative energy in whatever form is customary to them.

That's not what I'd wish for. But it's not about me. So rock on.