Usaid And The National Endowment For Anti-democracy (dcc71): The History Of Usaid, The Face Of Empire, And An Uplifting Young Man

USAID and the National Endowment for Anti-Democracy (DCC71)

Episodes of Devil’s Chess Club–and all American Exception podcast episodes–are available first on Patreon [ https://www.patreon.com/americanexception ]. Aaron is joined by Ben Thomason [ https://x.com/BenThomason95 ]. Ben recently earned his doctorate in American Cultural Studies from Bowling Green State University.

I would like to share this video. I don’t know about you, but it really uplifted me, and I hope it will also give you hope for the future. Seeing the younger generation had made me lose hope, and witnessing what is happening to young people is truly depressing. That’s why this video gave me a bit of hope — seeing such a young man continue the fight that some of us are still trying to fight.

This video tells the story of USAID and how it manages the public face of the empire. It also touches on a subject I have written about many times: the imaginary Communists and Leftists in the U.S. and the EU. They see fascist interventions that serve corporations and call them communism — this is the imaginary communism I have discussed before.

I still don’t understand how people can call structures that work for private corporations “socialist” or even “communist” when they are the literally opposite of what socialism and communism stand for. Socialism is based on state intervention for the benefit of workers and small businesses, while fascism is the opposite — state intervention against workers and small businesses, solely for the profit of big capital and large corporations.

I have asked before: how can anyone call the U.S. or the EU socialist or communist when corporations like Amazon pay less tax than their small competitors?

Anyway, this piece discusses how the American empire hides its true face behind so-called democracy promotion while fighting this imaginary communism. Enjoy.

1:24:40
“These Europeans might want to, you know, have trade, security, and peace on their continent, but that’s not really our concern. We need to maintain tension so we can keep the Europeans in our back pocket. Yeah, and then there’s all the liberal cultural promotion and all that crap they’re doing. But additionally, especially in terms of relations with the East, they’ll just kill leaders who advocate for East-West integration.

Take Alfred Herrhausen, for example. He was assassinated in the 1980s in Russia. He was a Deutsche Bank oligarch who favored massive public infrastructure investment in East Germany, which had just been reunited or was in the process of being reunited. He also supported increased German trade with Russia—essentially, German industry aligned with Russian natural resources. Then they blew up his armored car in a convoy using a very sophisticated military-grade explosive, and they blamed it on some Communists. But come on, would Communists really assassinate one of the most progressive-minded elite figures Germany had seen in decades?

Something similar happened in Sweden a few years earlier when Olof Palme started getting too close to the Soviets. He had an internationalist approach and was essentially working to thaw the Cold War. Suddenly, submarines started popping up around Sweden, and the narrative was that the Soviets were violating Swedish waters. This created a more anti-Soviet public sentiment, and then, eventually, Palme was assassinated—by all appearances, at least.

So, sure, they’ll promote democracy, but if it comes down to it, they’ll blow you up or shoot you in the head. I mean, what are we really talking about when we say “promote democracy”? This whole empire game has always been extremely gangster. But for the sake of soft power, you need pretexts, ways to dress it up so you look good and legitimate—especially if you have domestic elections to worry about. The result is that U.S. politics is basically one giant rolling cover story for what the U.S. actually is.

I guess the last thing I’d ask you as we wrap up is: what do you make of Trump’s efforts to shut down USAID? Do you take them seriously? Do they represent a real change in government? Or is this just some attempt to privatize these things or push them further underground into the clandestine world, where transparency disappears?

I noticed that even before Trump took office, USAID—or maybe it was NED, I don’t remember—removed a lot of its funding databases. If memory serves, that happened just before Trump. So what do you think has changed since then? Do Trump’s actions signify a real shift in how the U.S. operates, or is it just a continuation of past policies, only darker and worse?

I have conflicting thoughts on this, and I think it’s still a little too early to fully grasp what’s happening. But it’s strange—though I suppose it makes sense, given his base—that Trump and Musk have framed USAID as some kind of radical Marxist organization trying to destroy America. That rhetoric is classic John Birch Society.

People used to say the same thing about the CIA and the Council on Foreign Relations. The John Birch Society believed the CFR was basically a front for Standard Oil and Wall Street interests. There’s a historical tradition in the U.S. of viewing anything vaguely liberal or Marxist as a grave threat, an infection within the system. Historian Richard Hofstadter wrote about this in The Paranoid Style in American Politics. If liberals within institutions say liberal things for soft power reasons, some people take that as proof that the institution has been infiltrated by crypto-communists.

It’s bizarre that they talk this way. I can’t imagine they seriously believe that USAID is full of radical Marxists. That seems absurd. But could they be high on their own supply—completely bought into this John Birch Society paranoia? It’s possible. Still, I wouldn’t underestimate these people.

Historically, Republicans and conservatives have been very effective at soft power. A lot of the CIA’s cultural Cold War operations were set up by Republicans. The whole democracy promotion apparatus? That was a Reagan Administration initiative. Reagan came in dismissing Carter’s human rights policies as crypto-communist and a threat to national security. But instead of scrapping them, he rebranded them as “democracy promotion,” giving them a more Republican-friendly flavor and making them palatable for bipartisan support. It was a nuanced and effective move—an elegant way of consolidating elite consensus.

Reagan was unique in that he wasn’t a Birch Society extremist, but he managed to unite various factions under the banner of American conservatism. He had the support of the hardcore right-wingers, like the John Birch Society types, but also the WASPy establishment figures like George H.W. Bush, who was CFR-connected. Then there were people like George Shultz—free-trade, neoliberal, commercial-utopian conservatives who were pro-big business but not necessarily pro-war in the same way as the neocons. Reagan successfully brought together the neocons and the neoliberals, at least for a time. But something shifted with Iran-Contra—that seemed to be a schism.

I actually think Iran-Contra represents something we don’t fully understand yet. Why did it turn into such a scandal? Usually, Congress tries to cover these things up as quickly as possible. But in this case, they dug in. When you ask why, you have to consider who might have wanted it exposed. Was Israel involved in some way?

The point is, American democracy itself is combustible. That has to affect how democracy promotion works abroad. Maybe that’s what we’re seeing now. Trump seems to be moving away from the Reagan-era NED-style approach. That suggests his faction isn’t fully aligned with the old model. But why? And what comes next?”

Right now, some people blindly believe that Trump is somehow a force for good, which scares me. But this is the dialectic I wrote about in my last posts. They create extreme chaos and deliberately go overboard, only to later introduce someone who appears to bring so-called change, gaining the support of the population. In reality, that person continues those same horrible policies but presents and describes them as something different. I used Obama as an example in a comment on one of my last posts, saying:
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“Obama’s finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence and your role in it.

He is not word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair.

The other great leaders guide us towards better politics, but Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves—to the place where America exists as a glittering ideal, and where we, its honored inhabitants, seem capable of achieving it, and thus of sharing in its meaning and transcendence.” – Daniel Kalder

Now, people feel the same way about Trump as they once did about Obama. Just as Obama inspired people, making them believe he was bringing positive change, Trump is now inspiring people in the same way. I am a realist, and I don’t want people to fall victim to this manipulation. This is the dialectic that is mentioned in the post.

Stop believing that some rich asshole, deeply embedded in the establishment, will save you. You can tell me Obama was evil and Trump is good, but ask yourself—are you not being naive in believing that? They sought to manipulate people by appealing to their emotions, just as they did with Obama.

Ask yourself: don’t you feel the same emotions toward Trump as described in this quote? And then ask yourself—aren’t those emotions blinding you to the truth?

The Oath to Adolf Hitler
Speech by Rudolf Hess on 25 February 1934

“Do not seek Adolf Hitler with your mind. You will find him through the strength of your hearts!”
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“Do not seek Obama with your mind. You will find him through the strength of your hearts!”
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“Do not seek Trump with your mind. You will find him through the strength of your hearts!”

Do not think, just believe and have faith!
“

During Bush Jr.’s presidency, the U.S. was openly imperialist and interventionist, going overboard with it. Then, they presented Obama as someone different, bringing change. Now, they are deliberately going overboard with identity politics and all this liberal nonsense, and here comes Trump to fight it—just like Obama was supposed to fight U.S. imperialism and internationalism. But we all saw how Obama’s so-called change ended, and I suspect the same thing will happen now.

It’s not much different from what I wrote about before — how they intentionally create crises, like the migrant crisis in the U.S. and EU, and later use public resentment to implement the institutional changes they desire. They own and rule this world, but they still need our support, which is why they rely on this dialectic. They deliberately create crises — whether economic, migratory, or ideological, such as imperialism, interventionism, or extreme liberal policies like transgenderism — and later introduce someone who is supposed to fix it. In reality, that person is chosen by them and is meant to implement the changes they want, but they need public support to do so.

A great example of this is so-called liberals who claim to support freedom but now cheer for private companies having access to all their private information from the government. How is giving private corporations access to your data — like a Social Security number — libertarian? This completely contradicts libertarian principles, yet now libertarians are cheering for Elon Musk having access to their Social Security numbers. It is the same thing as described in the earlier mention quote about Hitler: “Do not seek Adolf Hitler with your mind. You will find him through the strength of your hearts!” They do not think; they simply feel with their hearts, placing blind faith in figures like Elon Musk and Trump, believing they are on their side and will save them.

This is all manipulation—an emotional dialectic designed to create public support by playing on people’s feelings.

I would also like to share a lecture by Michael Parenti, who speaks about the true face of the empire.

The Face of Imperialism-Michael Parenti- part 1

The Face of Imperialism “Michael Parenti’s The Face of Imperialism is a powerful, frightening, and honest book. It will be hated by those who run the Empire, and it will be loved by people who are searching for truth amidst the piles of garbage of Western propaganda.

The Face of Imperialism-Michael Parenti- part 2

The Face of Imperialism- part 1 “Michael Parenti’s The Face of Imperialism is a powerful, frightening, and honest book. It will be hated by those who run the Empire, and it will be loved by people who are searching for truth amidst the piles of garbage of Western propaganda.

“Knowledge will make you be free.”
― Socrates
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“Knowledge isn’t free. You have to pay attention.”
― Richard P. Feynman
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“Freedom is not free, you need to pay attention.”
― Grzegorz Ochman

Please pay attention, and may God bless you all.

“Into one land, our blood has soaked—a land equally dear to both sides, equally loved by all. (…) May God, in His mercy, forgive our sins and turn away His punishing hand, and we shall return to our work, which strengthens and renews our land.”
― Józef Piłsudski