Missing the Target: None Dare...pg. 47-49

 The hardest thing about this book is writing after I've rejected the premise. The whole book is essentially that, but each chapter is a new claim. Way back in September we started this chapter on the Russian Revolution in which Allen took five pages to get into the actual Revolution. Now, we've passed the Revolution but we still have to continue on about the Soviet Union. I've got one word for you Allen: EDITOR.

The last post should have ended the chapter. The Revolution was over, the war was over, and the Russian Empire had become the USSR. If you want to talk about the USSR, fine, but it's another chapter. Nevertheless, we must persist. 

Conspiracy theorists do this trick in their mammoth tomes. They begin a statement like this, "We may assume that..." or "In theory X could be responsible..."   then further down the line they'll refer back to it like this "Having established X..." or "We know that X..."

The first part is honest. You make an assumption and tell the reader that this is an assumption. What isn't honest is referring back to that thing as being an established fact. In logic, assumptions have to be discharged, we assume p & q, but later we have to actually establish that p & q are legitimate. Allen opens the next paragraph (after the one on Ian Fleming) with, "We do know this, however. A clique of American financiers not only helped establish Communism in Russia but has striven mightily ever since to keep it alive." 

No mother fucker we do not know that. Two pages earlier you introduced that idea saying, "It is only logical to assume that if they financed it and do not fear it, it must be because they control it." Notice the two qualifiers there: "assume" and "if." That is how a conspiracy theorist establishes a fact. 

Is there proof of this: no? Allen cites Antony Sutton of Stanford University and his three-volume Western Technology and Soviet Development 1945-1965  as evidence. While I have not read through this entire book, the reviews on the wiki page for it are very telling. Sutton's work was widely accepted...well the first two volumes anyway the third reads like a conspiracy history rather than actual history. Sutton ignored any development from the Soviets technologically, which is impressive given their strides in the space race alone. Allen claims that Sutton was put out to pasture because "they" didn't want to hear the truth--when in fact, he was becoming a crank with a belief that Skull and Bones secretly ran the US. 

I've repeated this before but it needs to be said again. If you want to argue that wall street bankers, international financiers, and mega-corporations have too much power in the world--I'm with you 100%. However, we need to keep those criticism grounded in reality. Adding COMMUNISM or Skull and Bones to the claim does not help. It actually absolves the bankers because they are now taking orders from a secret society and not doing X from their own greed. 

The conspiracy then alleges that the reason FDR recognized the Soviet Union in 1933 was because of these bankers. It's of course, an overly simplified version of events. There was some economic opportunity for the US and Russia once the Revolution had finally ended. There were debts the Tsars owed the US but were never recovered. The possibility of trade was more open than it had been underneath the mercantilist Tsarist empire. That business wanted recognition is the same kind of thing that motivated President Clinton to give China "Most Favored Nation" status.

Greed doesn't explain COMMUNISM, so it's not just bankers. Allen gives us the usual suspects here: "Starting with Voltaire and Adam Weishaupt and running through John Ruskin, Sidney Webb, Nicholas Murray Butler, and on to the present with Henry Kissinger and John Kenneth Galbraith, it has always been the scholar looking for avenues of power who has shown the 'sons of the very powerful' how their wealth can be used to rule the world."

Before we get to the list, no, this is not a thing that has always been said. It has been said a few times in this book but that is because Allen hates education and the educated--like all conservative conspiracy theorists. If he thinks international bankers are the problem, then let's regulate the banks--but that's never the solution for people like him. 

Voltaire is a fun addition to this list: Voltaire was an academic and satirist; his writings argued against religion, monarchy, aristocracy, and the like. Voltaire left wing for his day would still be left-wing in this day. Yet, Voltaire never held any power or authority. So, swing and a miss on this one. The other odd name is Kissinger. This is a book that thinks Nixon is too much of a liberal and now thinks that Henry Kissinger is as well? You can say what you want about Kissinger, but claiming that he was a liberal or that he was soft on Communism isn't a defensible claim that you can make. I know a little about Kissinger and literally, none of that information would point to his sympathies with the USSR. 

Allen concludes the chapter by accusing liberals of believing that these robber barons will fix prices, rig the market, tread on the workers, establish monopolies, etc. but "they won't believe that they want to rule the world or use Communism as the striking edge of their conspiracy." 

They don't believe this because it's not true and it doesn't need to be. Even though Bill Gates seems like a liberal politically, I don't know a single lefty that thinks he should have that much money. I don't know a single one of them that excuses his treatment of employees but also thinks that he means well. This idea that the mega-rich are a problem is more of a socialist concern than it is with people like Allen who resort to a no true Scotsman fallacy when it comes time to regulate them. We don't mean that rich guy he's a competitive free market banker, not an international financier seeking world domination. Allen's problem is that his purported enemy is easily identifiable but his real enemy is a nebulous idea. I can't believe that this book is this influential.