Explore every episode of the podcast Fourth Reich Archaeology

This week we are joined by a special guest, TrueAnon’s Brace Belden, to take stock of the current and impending crisis and brainstorm ways that we might think creatively to meet the moment and face off against an admittedly much better organized fascist enemy. For those of us on the left seeking to exploit the next crisis to push back against the consolidation of wealth and power in the hands of our craven overlords, we must come to grips with the fact that there currently is no organized revolutionary movement; there’s not even a revolutionary working class. But that does not mean that we should give into fatalism. There are plenty signs of hope, and the demand for a unified front against fascism is higher than it has been in generations.

We discuss all of this and much more with Brace, including the magnetic pull of the spectacle towards compatible leftism, the prospects for armed struggle (including insights from Brace’s time in Syria), and how we can learn from the past without using history as a costume for revolutionary LARPing. We don’t have the answers, but we do have the will, and we hope you’ll tune in and join us.

Links: 

https://podcast.trueanon.com/

Brace’s Baffler Article, “The Hatred of Podcasting” https://thebaffler.com/outbursts/the-hatred-of-podcasting-belden

Lukacs “History and Class Consciousness” https://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/
Herbert Marcuse’s 1969 Berkeley Speech with Angela Davis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuyWj8BtjKc

Fourth Reich Archaeology Patreon: Patreon.com/fourthreicharchaeology

In Side A (listen if you haven't already!), we went all the way back to the country’s entree into modernity and its role as a nominally independent nation amidst and between competing empires in The Great Game. We also go a bit deeper into the political forces that gave rise to the first Shah of Iran, which is a real Fourth Reich fairytale involving Nazis, Brits, and of course that black gold, oil. 

You know we dug into the rise and fall of the great lost hope for democracy, Mohammed Mossadegh. All he wanted was for Iran to get half the profits from his country’s oil, and instead he got ousted and replaced by a 26-year long dictatorship, replaced by the Islamic Republic in 1979.

Basically we cover about 250 years of Iranian history and tell a story that we just have not been hearing in the news these days.

In Side B, we take it to the present day and give our analysis on the current protests and the factional formations popping up to prepare a hostile takeover of the roiling nation. It is a time for clear thinking, for historical understanding, for only through consciousness of our role in reality can we act in history. And act we must.

This week we dig deep into Iran. We go all the way back to the country’s entree into modernity and its role as a nominally independent nation amidst and between competing empires in The Great Game. We also go a bit deeper into the political forces that gave rise to the first Shah of Iran, which is a real Fourth Reich fairytale involving Nazis, Brits, and of course that black gold, oil. 

You know we dig into the rise and fall of the great lost hope for democracy, Mohammed Mossadegh. All he wanted was for Iran to get half the profits from his country’s oil, and instead he got ousted and replaced by a 26-year long dictatorship, replaced by the Islamic Republic in 1979.

Basically we cover about 250 years of Iranian history and tell a story that we just have not been hearing in the news these days. In Side B, we will take it to the present day and give our analysis on the current protests and the factional formations popping up to prepare a hostile takeover of the roiling nation. It is a time for clear thinking, for historical understanding, for only through consciousness of our role in reality can we act in history. And act we must.

This week we are dropping our episode early because there is just too much going on for us to sit on the sidelines until Friday.  Recorded on Sunday, January 4th, 2026, in this episode we weigh in on the outright violation of international law that occurred in the dead of night on Saturday, January 3rd in Caracas, Venezuela, when Nicolas Maduro and his wife were kidnapped by the United States Military Industrial Complex and brought to the center of empire to answer to federal charges of narcoterrorism. 

Even though we (and the rest of the world) knew this was a long time coming - and we predicted it in our Geopolitik 7 episode - the actual event was still a shock when it happened. Whatever happens next, this invasion marks the entry into a new era of U.S. world policing, one in which the United States will straight up go out and bag any head of state it dislikes, under cover of darkness, in order to get what it wants.  This is a violation of international law. It is a violation of domestic law. And beyond strongly worded letters and statements, the international community seems to be okay with letting it go unanswered.  At least for now, it seems like the United States’ policy of “might makes right” is going to carry the day. 

Meanwhile, the U.S. mafia-state under the helm of King of K-K-Krime Donald Trump is wearing its criminality like a mink coat. U.S. friendly drug dealers like the recently pardoned ex-Honduran kingpin/president Juan Orlando Hernandez, Ecuadoran billionaire/president Daniel Noboa, and crypto fraudster/torture-dungeon-master Nayib Bukele laugh their way to the bank. The empire’s reasons for flouting the law are beyond transparent, they are blatant and brazen. Under the laughable pretext of curbing drug trafficking into the United States, the Trump administration has openly asserted that the reason they took Maduro was to open up the Venezuelan oil and mineral market to multinational corporations. 

It’s all so basic. It’s all so annoying. We have come back to the 19th Century policy of going out and taking control over places and peoples simply so that we can extract their resources to enrich our psychotic rulers. And at this point, the default is that the billionaire class, the powers that be, and whatever hangers on who worship that group are just going to keep doing mafia shit to consolidate capital as long as everyone else goes along with the shakedown racket.

Let’s get digging. 

Happy New Year! This week we are releasing Side B of “Fourth Reich Political Theology,” which is our interview/collaboration with Marcus from the Return of the Repressed Podcast.  In it, Don and Marcus examine how “The Market” and people’s fealty to its bizarre logic has come into actual existence, almost alchemically, or religiously.  To put it bluntly, The Market today fills the role of God in our society. It is beyond human control, beyond reproach, and exercises an omniscient, omnipotent power over human affairs. To capitalists, The Market’s pure rationality also bestows it with benevolence. Don and Marcus explore the historical and theoretical bases for the development of this phenomenon, by examining the transition from feudalism to capitalism and the adaptation of religion to the economic mode of production and vice versa. 

And don’t forget to check out Marcus’s stuff over on P@treon! You can find the Return of the Repressed at: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/TheReturnOfTheRepressed⁠

It’s Christmas, 2025 is almost over, and the insanity of the world - the seemingly unaccountable criminality of our rulers - is on full display. Scan any newspaper, scroll the feed of your “favorite” social media app, and it’s hard not to feel an all-encompassing sense of dread and doom, and of powerlessness. Enter Dick and Don with some holiday “cheer.” Or, more than cheer, analysis and righteous indignation - our specialty.

In this episode, we take a look at the headlines from hell that have marked the past weeks to reiterate what our longtime listeners already know all too well: we ARE living in the Fourth Reich. Down South America way, yet another actual Nazi scion has been elected president of a whole-ass country, namely José Antonio Kast in Chile, son of a dyed in the wool ratline escapee with big plans to revive and resurrect the legacy of the cruel Pinochet dictatorship. That’s another domino felled by the AmerIsraeli empire in what we’re calling “Operation Condor 2.0.” Meanwhile, plans continue apace for the imperial conquest of Venezuela and the seizure of its oil, including a bill introduced by Bernie Sanders’s “good friend” Mike Lee (R-UT) to authorize the president to issue letters of marque, empowering Amerikan pirates to prowl the Caribbean once more.

Speaking of the Caribbean, we look at the latest Epstein document dumps and assess whether anything will happen in response. Seems unlikely, even though the pedophile government is more unpopular than ever. Like, who is still supporting these utterly degenerate freaks?

TPUSA - that’s who. And that’s where we end our episode, discussing the WWE style griftfest of Erika Kirk and friends. That’s also where we try to draw some hope for the future: the depravity, the artificiality, the totally vacuous performance that the Amerika-firsters put on display (not to mention the “night of the long knives” circular firing squad taking shape among the fascist ranks over support for Israel) is doomed to fail. But rather than let the craven democrats pick up the pieces of the wreckage, we need to build our own power base for humanity. And with that in mind, let’s onto 2026!!

Here it is folks! Side B of the first episode in our brand new series, “Down by Law.” In this one, we continue our dig into immigration and the modern legal regime for asylum. We start off by taking a good hard look at the history of asylum law in the United States.  Even though you’d never guess it by the federal government’s utter lack of regard for human rights in the administration of the immigration system, the USA is a party to the 1967 protocol to the treaty on the rights of refugees. That means it is “the supreme law of the land” - with which even the federal government must comply as with the Constitution itself - to afford broad rights to asylum-seekers in danger of death or serious harm in their home countries.  After completing a historical survey, we then turn to some current events and examine how the Trump administration has weaponized the asylum regime in the United States to push immigrants out of the country. 

As a reminder, we recorded this before the DC National Guard shooting put asylum into the headlines, but the issue is more salient than ever. As Trump essentially seeks to end asylum as we know it, we trace the bipartisan roots of the whittling-away of immigrant rights, especially under the Obama administration. Put on your lawyer hats, it’s once again time to get down by law.

We are coming in hot this week with a very special episode and a very special guest.  We are calling it Fourth Reich Political Theology, and we are absolutely honored to have Marcus from the Return of the Repressed podcast joining Don to do some serious digging.  

In this one, Don and Marcus examine how “The Market” and people’s fealty to its bizarre logic has come into actual existence, almost alchemically, or religiously.  To put it bluntly, The Market today fills the role of God in our society. It is beyond human control, beyond reproach, and exercises an omniscient, omnipotent power over human affairs. To capitalists, The Market’s pure rationality also bestows it with benevolence. Don and Marcus explore the historical and theoretical bases for the development of this phenomenon, by examining the transition from feudalism to capitalism and the adaptation of religion to the economic mode of production and vice versa. 

We think that this one will be the start of an epic run of episodes with Marcus. The first hour is available for free, and the full nearly-three-hour-long episode is available today on P@treon: https://www.patreon.com/c/FourthReichArchaeology 

And be sure to check out Marcus’s stuff over on P@treon too! You can find the Return of the Repressed at: https://www.patreon.com/TheReturnOfTheRepressed

We are excited to announce that we are launching a brand new series called “Down by Law.” In it, we are going to talk about how laws and legal systems that create and enforce them are put in place to serve the ruling class, while producing a spectacle of “justice” to distract and pacify the masses. We believe that, despite the law’s ultimate impotence to bring about the type of revolutionary change needed to ensure collective survival for humanity, it is important to understand how the law functions in society. This series is our attempt at political/legal education, jumping between various areas of law that purport to regulate behavior in “civilized nations.”

It is certainly true that the legal system - from statutory legislation to the vast regulatory state to the judiciary - does impose restrictions on actors at all levels of the socioeconomic pyramid. We are not implying that the wealthy and powerful are entirely unfettered by the law. That would be an overstatement and would not reflect reality.

But the law, too, operates as spectacle. And to a larger degree than most lawyers, government bureaucrats, and policy wonks would like to admit, the real function of the law is spectacular. It serves to inflate the illusion of justice. In reality, the legal system plays referee between factions of the ruling class, while ensuring that overall control of the systems of power remain in the hands of that same class. 

We start our legal dig site with a dig into immigration and the modern legal regime for asylum. Even though you’d never guess it by the federal government’s utter lack of regard for human rights in the administration of the immigration system, the USA is a party to the 1967 protocol to the treaty on the rights of refugees. That means it is “the supreme law of the land” - with which even the federal government must comply as with the Constitution itself - to afford broad rights to asylum-seekers in danger of death or serious harm in their home countries.

We recorded this before the DC National Guard shooting put asylum into the headlines, but the issue is more salient than ever. As Trump essentially seeks to end asylum as we know it, we trace the bipartisan roots of the whittling-away of immigrant rights, spiking especially under the Obama administration. Put on your lawyer hats, it’s time to get down by law.

If you want to hear the full episode, head over to Patreon.com/fourthreicharchaeology and sign up today!

This week, we are getting back to the real roots of our project, which was initially conceived from Dick and Don's long phone conversations about current events. And that's largely what this episode is: we're out of the studio and back on the phone, real low-fi style.

But the substance of the conversation, we hope, will not disappoint. We cover the reasons why we're not releasing a full on polished episode like we usually do, and dive right into the hellscape that surrounds us this holiday season, focusing on the latest deep event: the shooting of two national guardsmen in Washington, D.C., by a CIA-trained Afghan national. It's Programmed to Kill all over again.

We hope you enjoy, that you stay sane this Thanksgiving and beyond, and that maybe - just maybe - you can use some of what we're putting down to break your friends and loved ones out of the haze of propaganda that has us all sleepwalking into yet another hot war on the flimsiest of pretenses to steal and exploit another country's national resources.

We're thankful for you, and we wish you all the best.

We are back with another installment of “She Harvey Oswald,” our ongoing miniseries about the two women who pointed a gun at President Gerald Ford in the fateful month of September 1975.  This week we continue our exploration into the life and times of the first of these two, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme.  This episode is “Side B” to part 2 of this miniseries, which covers Squeaky’s origins and which was only available to our P@treon community until today. 

Recall that in Side A, we started at the beginning, with Squeaky’s upbringing in the contradictory world of Westchester Los Angeles where the barbecues and manicured lawns were financed by the barbecuing of human flesh by the warplanes and munitions fabricated by southern California's booming aerospace industry.  It was against this backdrop that Squeaky developed a rebellious streak while in the custody of an overbearing and mentally unstable father.  As Squeaky entered her teenage years, the tensions at home escalated and she ultimately moved out of the house entirely. 

In Side B, we pick things up with Squeaky just as she is first approached by Mr. Helter Skelter himself, Charles Manson.  Manson clocked Squeaky on a bench at the beach, crying and distraught over her blowout fight with her dad.  From here, Squeaky would go on to join Manson and his growing “family” of girls, on a trip up to the Bay Area and the redwoods of Mendocino in the summer of love, 1967. Throughout their trippy times in the North, Charlie and the girls frequented the infamous Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic, which the likes of Dr. Jolly West had turned into a recruitment center for test subjects; a laboratory for human experimentation on unwitting, disposable hippies.

Squeaky’s coming of age under the wing of Charlie Manson gives us yet another sharpened lens through which to view the consolidation of the fourth reich, the integration of the spectacle, and the preemptive destruction of the burgeoning movement for radical social change that characterized the 1960s and 70s.

Let’s get digging.

This week, we return with another installment of “Fourth Reich Geopolitik,” our ongoing survey of the modern geopolitical landscape. In this one we unpack the United States’ recent military aggression against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.  As of this writing, the U.S. War Machine has killed no less than 76 people on the high seas off the coast of Venezuela and it has unilaterally–and with no apparent proof–designated these victims as “narco-terrorists.”  The stated goal of this military operation is to stop drug traffickers.  The actual goals appear to be regime change, sending messages to various audiences both foreign and domestic, and flouting the law as only the King of Crime knows how.

To be honest, we did not want to do a Venezuela episode at risk of stating the obvious (i.e., that the powers that be are yet again up to their same bag of dirty tricks to personally profit from unspeakable violence around the world). But then we spent some time digesting the mainstream media and academic analysis about the situation, heard some of the most outrageous propaganda imaginable, and realized, yet again, that perhaps it is important for us to discuss this stuff even if it seems obvious. 

In this episode, we first turn back the clock and lay a little historical foundation of the Monroe Doctrine, President James Monroe’s 19th Century declaration to the empires of Europe that the western hemisphere was off limits–to them, at least.  We thought we’d start off with a short primer on the Monroe Doctrine because it seems like anyone talking about Venezuela is invoking it, and it seems to us that most don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.  Next, we speed-run the history of U.S. imperialism in Latin America, and the long and storied U.S. tradition of destabilizing economies, overthrowing democratically elected leaders, and exploiting the land and its people to enrich the capitalist ruling class. We then focus specifically on the Spanish-American War at the turn of the 20th century, which really locked in the U.S. as the new kid on the block for the imperial powers, and use that as our jump off point to the modern day to talk about American Imperialism today.  

And this latest phase of American imperialism is goofy as hell.  In the age of purportedly “ending the forever wars” and putting “America first,” the Trump administration is going full on Leeroy Jenkins into Venezuela.  Nevermind that the stated purpose of combating drug traffickers is BS, the fact that the Trump administration is deploying the full force of the U.S. Navy to do so shows that the United States has no qualms about going head first into another military quagmire as though the only lesson from the Iraq War was “we can get away with this and nobody will stop us.” (Shoutout to the USS Gerald R. Ford.) 

As we said in our first episode, and as we’ve been saying it regularly ever since, it is as if we are all suffering from some collective, mass psychosis.  Those in charge say one thing, but do another.  But you know things are getting schizophrenic as hell when with each day that passes, Amerikkka’s fringe reactionary kooks—the likes of Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, and Candace Owens—are the only ones in the media that dare to call this out.  We are not here to praise these kooks for calling out the U.S. war machine for its hypocrisy. To the contrary, we fully reject their kind.  But that they have identified the problem while, say, the New York Times merely parrots the official narrative, tells you everything you need to know about the sad state of affairs today.

We are back with another installment of our ongoing series about the two women who were convicted of attempting to assassinate President Gerald Ford in September 1975.  Picking things up where we left off, we continue our focus on the first of these two ladies who shot their shot at Jerry, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme.  You will recall that Fromme emerged from the hippie counterculture of the 1960s, and more specifically, the so-called “Manson family.” As we’ve laid it out, it’s less of a cult than a criminal enterprise with hippie branding. And like any good American criminal enterprise, it has its ties to the intelligence services as well.

When we last left off Charlie Manson and several of his “Manson Girls” had been sentenced to death (of course, none of them were ever executed due to an intervening Supreme Court decision placing a moratorium on the death penalty).  Fromme and the Manson Girls who were not connected to the Tate and Labianca murders had shaved her heads in solidarity, etched Xs in their forheads, and were doing all they could to further Charlie’s message and help Charlie from the outside. Including by “taking care” of the Aryan Brotherhood members who agreed to protect Charlie in prison…

We will pick things up in the early days of the 1970s, with Fromme still living in L.A. alongside some of the other free Manson Girls. Meanwhile, Charlie, ever the schemer, was doing everything he could to get himself out of jail, and that included making a pact with the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang.  What this meant for Fromme was that she and the other Manson Girls were left to bunk with the Aryan Brotherhood gang members who were on the outside while the whole group planned and attempted several botched prison escapes for Charlie.  

What it also meant is that Fromme had effectively swapped out the hippie free love vibes that she was immersed in the late 1960s for a much more brutish and violent culture espoused by the white supremecist Aryan Brotherhood.  And so we spend much of this episode examining whether Fromme, who willingly shacked up and rubbed elbows with the Aryan Brothers, was going along with them wholly ignorant of the violence the Aryan Brotherhood left in its wake, or if she was much more attuned to what was going on than she would have you believe? 

Beyond the facts, we spend a good deal of time discussing the white apologetics of Americans of the baby boom generation and how well buried is the bloody and disgusting history of the highest echelons of power adopting essentially Nazi views on race and White Supremacy.  

There is a lot of content in this one, so we are splitting it up into two parter.  Catch Side A for free, and subscribe to Patreon today to listen to the whole thing now! 

Here it is folks! Side B of our final episode of the Warren Commission Decided. We think you'll really like this one, and truth be told, it was a little tough to say goodbye to those 8 goofy fellas and the rotating cast of characters swirling around them after spending the better part of a year digging into their exploits. 

Recall from Side A that we have been navigating through the commissioners' executive sessions in roughly chronological order from December 1963 all the way up to when the commissioners presented their report to President Johnson in September 1964. The executive sessions were formal meetings, on the record, in which the commissioners discussed the case, made major decisions, and roadmapped their investigation. It is also where the Commission's chief counsel, J. Lee Rankin, broke the news that Lee Harvey Oswald was an undercover FBI agent.

In Side B, we lock in on our boy Jerry and all the work he was doing as the FBI’s man on the commission.  Jerry was devoted to Hoover and kept the FBI abreast of all the developments on the commission on a confidential basis. We explore all the dirt that Jerry (allegedly) did for Hoover while serving on the commission. And we explore a more salacious story about how Jerry (again, allegedly) was the target of a honeypot operation involving Ellen Romestch. It’s the end of the line folks, and we thought we ought to end things with a lil’ sexpionage. Enjoy! 

This week we are calling an audible and deviating again from our regularly scheduled programming to do a special episode on the (spectacle of the) No Kings March.  As we are always looking for opportunities for the practical application of Fourth Reich Archaeology theory we could not help but put on our hard hats, sharpen our pick axes, and get to examining what history’s largest protest REALLY means for Democracy.  

Of course we think it’s absolutely essential that people organize, gather, and show strength in numbers against the fascist agenda currently running roughshod over the United States and beyond. In fact we want to see much more organization, ideally organization with discrete goals, employing tactics actually designed to achieve them.  But in the wake of the No Kings March, we can’t help but feel like this one was just another performative, astroturfed event - a swan song for Progressivism, Inc. - that helps the powers that be enforce the two party model, funnel popular anger into electoralism (and the institutional Democratic Party), and distract the people from true organization.  

In this episode, as usual, we use the text of Guy Debord and track how his words have come to life in 2025.  Just as Debord saw in his time, it seems like it’s impossible to find anything authentic within the spectacle, and the spectacle has turned all of its subjects into its defenders. The No Kings March is the embodiment of that, complete with its Byzantine network of corporate donors.

Spoiler alert, we get pretty down and dirty in this one. Let’s get digging. 

Patreon: Pateron.com/fourthreicharchaeology

Twitter & Insta: @fourthreichpod

We are absolutely brimming with joy this week as we welcome back the indomitable journalist, researcher, and all around swell dude, Matt Farwell.  Our day one homies will know that Matt was the very first guest we had on the show way back when we were just a wee baby podcast.  And we need not tell most of you that Matt’s Substack is a must read for any respectable noided leftist. But what you might not know is that Mr. Hunt-For-Tom-Clancy is a native of Utah, which is the backdrop for our episode today. 

Our entry point into this one is, of course, the Charlie Kirk murder at Utah Valley University. But don’t worry, this is not another Charlie Kirk assassination episode. Kirk’s killing is simply the first step on our path to discussing the larger geopolitical forces that have come together to reshape Utah and the broader American West in the image of the Military Industrial Surveillance Technology Complex.  What was once the frontier for American genocidal expansion Westward has become home to the next frontier for the new Data Center Imperialism—the information frontier.

We start out by hearing from Matt about his on-the-ground experience in Orem, Utah in the aftermath of Kirk’s murder, and his observations of the eerily ubiquitous presence of the national security state around the otherwise unknown Utah Valley University.  And wouldn’t you know that right now the national security state, just like the entire rest of the US economy, is going bananas for AI. So we zoom out to talk about data center imperialism and the deep roots of the surveillance state in the American West.   We focus on the Utah Data Center in particular (thanks, Obama!). Finally, we set the stage for a part 2 of our excavation, wherein we will delve into the historical particularities - including the regions colonization by Mormons and other sects - that make the New Western Frontier prime for the picking by a new generation of billionaire barons and their doomsday preaching hired guns of the military industrial complex. 

Enjoy! 

Follow Matt on Twitter  @huntclancy

Buy Matt’s book https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/541784/american-cipher-by-matt-farwell-and-michael-ames/

Subscribe to his Substack https://thehuntfortomclancy.substack.com

We are back with another installment of our ongoing miniseries about the two women who pointed a gun at President Gerald Ford in the fateful month of September 1975.  This week we continue our exploration into the life and times of the first of these two, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme. 

One of our goals with this miniseries has been to trace the events and experiences that ultimately led these women to their actions, and weaving their lives and would-be assassinations into our larger narrative of the integrated spectacle.  As for Squeaky, we started out by setting the scene of her dystopian suburban upbringing in the 1950s and 60s.  Her father worked for weapons manufacturer, Northrop Aircraft, and was a weird guy to say the least.  He was abusive to Squeaky and the rest of his family (as well as anyone around them).  The tension that this created in the house led to regular blowout fights which ultimately led Fromme into the arms of Mr. Helter Skelter himself, Charles Manson.  When we left off last, Squeaky, Charlie, and the fledgling flock of Mansonites were living a nomadic life, traveling to various parks and remote wilderness locations, as well as cities and towns throughout the American West, as their “family” grew. 

In this episode we link up with Squeaky as the Manson family gives up the nomadic life and takes up residence in LA, first at Beach Boy Dennis Wilson’s estate, and later at the Spahn movie ranch in Hollywood. We discuss Squeaky’s unsettling role in the family’s sexual grooming of teenagers, and her later role as caretaker for the elderly George Spahn, pondering the parallels between Charles Manson and Jeffrey Epstein, and between Squeaky and Ghislaine Maxwell.  Finally, we will discuss how Squeaky - who claimed she never saw anyone kill anything in her life - lived through, processed, and pontificated about the family’s various homicides and highly spectacular trials therefore. Buckle up because this magical mystery tour is heading in some dark directions.

This week, we return with another installment of “Geopolitik,” our ongoing examination of the modern geopolitical landscape with a focus on matters both foreign and domestic. We would just as soon keep building the momentum of our She Harvey Oswald miniseries, but real talk, things are getting pretty damn weird, and your boyz needed to weigh in.   

We take stock of the sad state of affairs in the United States of Amerikkka in light of the Reich-coded speeches by President Donald J. Trump and Secretary of War Pete “Hog Sex”) Hegseth to U.S. military leaders.  Just last week, the War Secretary summoned all of the military brass to Quantico for untold reasons.  Rumors started to percolate that there would be a significant announcement. Perhaps a declaration of war. Maybe the formation of a new branch. In the end, this turned out to be another goofy-ass Trump rally. Cool… 

Trump went on his typical diatribe about Joe Biden and the “Radical Left.” He praised his own tariff policy. He praised his own ability to make peace notwithstanding his “disappointment” with Putin. He basically said the same list of six or seven things that he says literally to anyone on any occasion. And then, ominously, he suggested that Hegseth send the troops to American cities to handle the “enemy from within.”  

As for the “major announcement,” that came from the Defense Secretary when he said, in so many words, that the military is in desperate need of a glow-up.  Hegseth instituted physical training and regular tests because there are too many “fatties.” He also said that drill sergeants can lay their hands on recruits and get physical with them during training. As if we needed even more reasons to send our combat-trained young men into America’s streets with knowledge of guns and a chip on their shoulder. 

We then turn to the news of Trump’s “peace plan” for Gaza. We emphasize the quotes around “peace plan,” because this is basically just a ploy to bribe Arab leaders into acquiescence with the genocide of the Palestinians, get the Israeli hostages back (Trump says “dead or alive”) without exacting any concessions from Israel in return, shield that Genocidal terrorist state from accountability, and pave the way to lucrative beachfront real estate deals and offshore drilling for the ravenous blood-soaked beasts of the ruling class.

And all of this is happening in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination and a charged-up Republican party. With each day that passes, Amerikkka’s mainstream conservatives are looking more like fundamentalist reactionaries and are being more blatant about their white supremacist goals. It’s like 1972 all over again. Or maybe 1933?

We are back with another installment of our new series-within-a-series, beginning our excavation into the first lady-shooter who took aim at Gerald Ford in September 1975, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme (pronounced “frow-me,” rhymes with “throw me”). 

We start at the beginning, with her upbringing in the contradictory world of Westchester Los Angeles where the barbecues and manicured lawns were financed by the barbecuing of human flesh by the warplanes and munitions fabricated by southern California's booming aerospace industry. Lyn’s father was a stern, teutonic, probably abusive disciplinarian who worked as an engineer for Northrop aircraft (now part of Northrop Grumman), a mainstay in the military industrial complex. To escape from her fraught home life, Lyn partook in the art of dance, just like Betty Ford as our longtime listeners will recall.

As she grew up, the tensions with her father grew and so did her time away from home, engaged in productive pursuits like poetry and remunerated work, as well as escalating acts of teenage rebellion. Finally, she moved out of the house entirely and met Charlie Manson almost immediately. She’d join him on a trip up to the Bay Area and the redwoods of Mendocino in the summer of love, 1967. Throughout their trippy times in the North, Charlie and the girls frequented the infamous Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic, which the likes of Dr. Jolly West had turned into a recruitment center for test subjects; a laboratory for human experimentation on unwitting, disposable hippies.

Squeaky’s boomer childhood gives us yet another sharpened lens through which to view the consolidation of the fourth reich, the integration of the spectacle, and the preemptive destruction of the burgeoning movement for radical social change that characterized the 1960s and 70s.

Well, folks, we are back in Jerryworld, and we are right on to the next series within a series. The one you’ve been waiting for. The one we’ve been waiting for. It’s She. Harvey. Oswald. Our deep dive into the two assassination attempts on Gerald Ford just over a year into his presidency. We are just in time for the 50th anniversary of “almost-bloody September” 1975. 

On September 5, 1975, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme - one of the original members of the Manson family, then aged 26 years old - pointed a .45 caliber pistol at Jerry Ford as he pressed the flesh outside the California state house in Sacramento. She said she did it for the redwoods, and insisted she didn’t intend to hurt anyone.

Just 17 days later, on September 22, a 45-year-old accountant named Sara Jane Moore fired a shot at Jerry with a .38 pistol outside of San Francisco’s St. Francis Hotel. She missed by a mere six inches. Moore had spent the California years of lead deeply embedded in the revolutionary left-wing scene in the Bay Area… as an informant for the FBI. 

There is so much to these deepest of deep events, and we will get into all of it in this miniseries, but first, in this episode, we will set the stage. That proprietary Fourth Reich Archaeology lens, fully equipped with some extensive quotation by Guy Debord, and a zoomed-out snapshot of the development of the spectacle between November 63 and September 75. This episode really has it all. Gerald Ford, geopolitical mise-en-scene, female assassins, radical leftists, parallels to the present day, and so much more.

Patreon: Pateron.com/fourthreicharchaeology

Twitter & Insta: @fourthreichpod

The time has come to say farewell to our ragtag team of commissioners and to close out our ongoing miniseries, The Warren Commission Decided. We wrap things up much as we started them, with Commissioner Gerald R. Ford as our guide. 

In this episode, with Jerry in the driver's seat, we navigate through the commissioners' executive sessions in roughly chronological order from December 1963 all the way up to when the commissioners presented their report to President Johnson in September 1964. The executive sessions were formal meetings, on the record, in which the commissioners discussed the case, made major decisions, and roadmapped their investigation. It is also where the Commission's chief counsel, J. Lee Rankin, broke the news that Lee Harvey Oswald was an undercover FBI agent.

We use the executive sessions as our final dig site because these sessions really showcase what the Warren Commission was all about – covering up any whiff of conspiracy. The executive sessions also show how little these guys cared about getting to the truth. Goal one was to package up a narrative they could sell to the public. As for our boy Jerry, this episode goes even deeper on his almost supernatural ability to rise to the occasion and serve the powers that be.  It’s also another great lesson of how all is not what it seems when it comes to Gerald Ford.

This one is going to be another two-parter, with Side A available now for free and the full package dropping exclusively on our P@treon imminently. 

And with that, let's get digging. . . 

Here it is folks! The end of the line for our series within a series within a series, You Don’t Know Jack (Ruby). Finally, we reach Jack’s tragic end. Just months after his conviction was overturned in October 1966, Jack was beset with a sudden and rapidly spreading form of cancer that would kill him by January 1967 before he got the new trial he had won. Meanwhile, his strong intimations of a conspiracy were muddled amidst his psychotic ramblings about a honky-tonk Kirstallnacht rampaging through the streets of Dallas. One thing Jack got absolutely right, though, was that the country he grew up in and served in uniform had been taken over by Nazis. He’d never get the chance to speak his truth except as a novelty, and we hope that we’ve done him some justice, warts and all. 

It is somewhat bittersweet to say it, but we’ve come to the end of the line with old Jack Ruby, and in this two-part episode, we will close out his saga in style with returning guest and Ruby expert Max Arvo. Side A comes in hot with a deep discussion of CIA mind control experiments, psychopathic psychiatrists, and Jack’s vivid visions of an American Holocaust, leaving his Warren Commission testimony and final denouement for Side B.

We pick up where we left off after Jack’s conviction and death sentence. He fires Melvin Belli and hires the lawyer/psychiatrist Hubert Winston Smith to take his case on appeal. He tries to fire the mountain of a man, Joe Tonahill, too, but Joe refuses to go and sticks around. The first order of business after Jack is put on death row (besides filing his appellate papers) is to put him under hypnosis. And who better to do that than the CIA’s favorite super-shrink, Mr. MKULTRA himself, Dr. Louis Jolyon “Jolly” West. Coincidentally or not, Jolly just so happens to show up right after Jack suffers an acute psychotic break, including vivid audio-visual hallucinations. Thereafter, everything Jack says - including (and especially) all of Jack’s talk of a larger conspiracy - is taken with a heaping portion of salt and largely discarded by everyone around him. 

This is important because, as we’ve previewed heavily in past episodes, Jack’s Warren Commission testimony raises a lot of eyebrows, as we will cover in depth in Side B among other salient and lesser-known aspects of the end of Ruby’s life. If you want to full 3+ hours in one piece, head on over to Patreon and sign up to get early access! 

We know you’ve all been waiting patiently for Side B of the Big Con(gress) 3, and it’s finally here! As a reminder, this series reflects our ongoing exploration of that putrid cesspool on the Potomac, the United States Congress, and this episode is focused on the ongoing genocide in Palestine. With us again is Andrew Myslik, a former congressional staffer and our man in Washington.

In Side B, Don refreshes the episode with a newly recorded intro segment that both fills in for the time-lag since Side A dropped and issues a warning against forgetting. The forces of forgetting would like to keep all of us, and all of you, distracted and unable to focus on any of the atrocities being carried out in our name with our money. We must resist that urge. 

Picking back up with the back end of Don’s and Andrew’s conversation, then, Andrew walks through the process whereby a meager number of members of Congress joined with Rashida, Cori Bush, and others to call for a ceasefire. We consider what it means that this issue divides not only “Democrats,” but even “Progressives” in Congress, as the lies have the upper hand on the truth by a longshot. Finally, we ruminate on the meaning of the recent right-wing embrace of anti-genocide rhetoric with the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene taking the torch and expressing compassion for Palestinians in Gaza while calling for the torture and imprisonment of Latin Americans here in the U.S. The left cannot let these Nazis occupy the anti-genocide lane, but what can we do to stop them? Join us as we ponder this and many other questions.

This episode is just as timely today as it was when recorded last month. Enjoy!

This week, we are back with the fifth installment in our miniseries about that amateur dog breeder and professional weirdo turned assassin–Jack Ruby. Having set the table in episodes one through four about the events leading up to Ruby’s big day in court, the time has now come for the trial of the century. And you know we’ve got to don our noided lawyer hats for this one. 

As always, we take a more expositional approach rather than a bare recitation of the facts and chronology of Ruby’s trial. We do so by doing what we do best—studying the people involved. Because we ended episode four with a focus on Ruby’s defense team, we pick things up in this episode by taking a good, long look at both the district attorney who prosecuted Ruby and the judge who presided over the trial. We also take a look at the witnesses each side decided to put up–a colorful cast of characters that included cops, strippers, and Ruby’s rabbi. 

With cameras flashing, mics hot, and all of America watching, the Jack Ruby trial was set to be a spectacle for the ages. In the end, the trial was a shit show. And in this episode, we go deep into that shit to bring us all one step closer to knowing Jack.

We are back with side B of episode 4 of our excavation into the man who killed Lee Oswald, Jack Ruby. With us again is Max Arvo, and in this one we take a close look at Max's original research on the subject of Jack. Together, we cover the formation of Jack's legal and psychiatric team.

As a reminder, Max's series of articles on Ruby can be found here: https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/jack-ruby-a-review-and-reassessment-part-

It's our birthday! Well, technically, it's not until this Saturday, but given everything going on in the world, we think we deserve a pass for celebrating early. And considering the monumental occasion, we decided it is time for some R&R. This week, we shut off our lamps, hang up our hard hats, and take some time to reflect on the past year, the present moment, and what’s to come. 

Since our very first episode, our view has been that it is high time that we wise up and realize that there is a complete disconnect between the purported ideals of the United States and the reality of the actions taken by the American government, namely the horrific history of enslavement, exploitation, and the series of successive genocides.  It is now, more than ever, difficult to square the American ideals of truth, justice, and equality with the American actions of slavery, genocide, and forced migration. In this episode, we take it back to the basics and reflect on what this project means to us and what we consider its core values.  As a result, we think this episode is another good one to help new listeners dip their toes in our project.  Because we walk through the foundational pillars, new listeners will leave with a capsule course on what Fourth Reich Archaeology is all about. 

And what it is all about is friendship. As we say many times in this episode, this project is powered by friendship–the friendship shared between Dick and Don, but equally important is the friendship we've forged with all of you who tune in week after week. In this next year, we hope to deepen those bonds. We really don't want this to be a one-way street. We want to hear what is on your mind. To that end, we are excited to launch the Fourth Reich Archaeology Hotline. To access the number, sign up on our Patreon. We look forward to hearing from you.

We are thrilled to be back with our friend from across the pond, researcher Max Arvo, for another installment of our excavation into the man who killed Lee Oswald, Jack Ruby. It's another split episode that you can find in all its 2+ hour glory on Patreon, or wait until Side B comes up here in the future.

We start off by recapping and taking stock of our speculative findings thus far, from the motivating force behind Jack's desperate spate of phone calls to old mob pals, to whether and how he was brought into a larger conspiracy, to what was going through his mind as he took the fatal shot and surrendered his body to his friends on the Dallas Police Department.

Then we pick up with our factual narrative where we left off in Part 3, including a deep rumination on the spectacular implications of this being the first-ever murder caught on live TV. To really drive the point home, we have condensed some of the best tidbits of ABC News's live coverage of the events of November 24, 1963 in one of our best Fourth Reich Archaeology mashups yet. Remember, that Sunday, Americans were glued to their TV sets to watch the president's casket carted from the White House to the Capitol, and Ruby's killing of Oswald interrupted the broadcast.

Side B will cover the formation of Jack's legal and psychiatric team. Again, you can access the full episode today at patreon.com/fourthreicharchaeology. Otherwise you will have to wait.

As a reminder, Max's series of articles on Ruby can be found here: https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/jack-ruby-a-review-and-reassessment-part-1

We are back with another installment of the Big Con(gress)—our ongoing exploration of that putrid cesspool on the Potomac, the United States Congress.  In this episode we turn our focus back to the ongoing genocide in Palestine in the wake of yet another visit to Washington by notorious international war criminal, mass murderer, and genocidaire extraordinaire, Benjamin Netanyahu. With us again is Andrew Myslik, a former congressional staffer and our man in Washington.

We are now well into the second year of the Palestinian genocide. The utter lack of humanity that the members of Congress have shown to the Palestinian people is despicable. Rather than call for Netanyahu’s arrest and condemn Israel’s war crimes, which to be clear is absolutely warranted under international law, both the Trump administration and the vast bulk of both parties in Congress have, once again, rolled out the red carpet for the man. Join us as we look into not only why that is but also how this blind loyalty has played out over the last 20 months. We start with the obvious—the Israel lobby is moving a lot of money and effectively steering the ship when it comes to US political discourse about the Middle East. But we also dig deeper, and discuss the many different forms of moral and mental gymnastics that US Politicians must engage in to justify their acceptance of Israeli blood money. 

This one gets a little spicy, so we’ve decided to only release part of the episode on the free feed.  Head on over to Patreon.com/fourthreicharchaeology and subscribe to listen to the whole thing.

As promised, this is the second half of our play-by-play of Jack Ruby's manic wild ride leading up to his murder of Lee Harvey Oswald on live TV on November 24, 1963. We pick up right where we left off, deep into the night of November 22, with Ruby taking his roommate ("boyfriend"?), George Senator, and his employee-cum-tenant, Curtis Laverne "Larry" Cravard, on a quest to collect evidence of what he perceived to be an antisemitic false flag attempt to blame the Jews for Kennedy's assassination.

We trace Jack's bizarre activities over the subsequent 32 hours leading up to the fatal moment at 11:21 AM on Sunday morning in the basement of the Dallas Police building. We get into some light speculation over what really happened, and what was going on in Jack's drug-addled, sleep-deprived, and desperate mind in the most decisive day and a half of his short life.

Remember, if you want to hear the full 2+ hour Part 3 in its entirety, head on over to Patron.com/fourthreicharchaeology and sign up.

We will be back soon with Max Arvo to cover the somehow-even-stranger events of the final years in Ruby's life, including his "treatment" by a team of spooked-up psychiatrists helmed by none other than Louis Jolyon "Jolly" West himself.

Friends, ‘Muricans, Countrymen. Or, for that matter, anyone lucky or unlucky enough to find themselves in the grips of the American Empire. We hope you enjoy this departure from our ongoing series (plural) to take stock of American independence on this anniversary of American “independence” (Luca Brasi voice). Dick and Don offer asynchronous reflections on the meaning and continuing viability of the so-called American Experiment as it descends into a place as dark as the one Frederick Douglass excoriated over 150 years ago.

We also feature Douglass’s words, and those of one of his intellectual successors, Kwame Turé aka Stokely Carmichael, to hammer home the point that there can be no progress without the organization of the masses of the people, and only that organization can bring about Justice. Progress isn’t progressive at all if it isn’t built on a foundation of Justice, premised in turn upon a reckoning with the crimes of history. And that reckoning is precisely what we are trying to bring forth here on Fourth Reich Archaeology.

We are back with Part 3 of our deep dive into the life and times of Jack Ruby. Recall that in Part 1, we focused on Ruby’s early years in Chicago’s southwest side during America’s  Prohibition era. Ruby’s rough and tumble upbringing put him in the mix with kids who grew up to be well-connected guys in some of the most powerful and notorious mob families of the 20th Century.  We discussed how Ruby’s ties to the mob influenced his eventual move to Dallas and his decision to set up clubs in the city. 

In Part 2, we put Chicago in the broader context of postwar America and traced the mob’s westward and southerly expansion from hubs in Chicago and New York to towns like Las Vegas and Dallas. We further fleshed out the connections between Ruby and the mafia and set the scene for the tragic events of November 1963. 

In this episode, we jump into the action and focus on the timeline of events immediately leading up to the killing of Lee Harvey Oswald. At the time Ruby was, to say the least, a little stressed.  He had a massive debt with the IRS and faced serious problems with local unions and competitors in Dallas. But in the days leading up to JFK’s assassination, Ruby made a flurry of calls to his mob pals, some of whom he hadn’t spoken to in years. On November 17, he traveled to Las Vegas to see Lewis McWillie–a man with ties to Meyer Lansky and Santos Trafficante. When he returned from that trip, Ruby told his tax attorney that a “friend” (whom Ruby never identified) would cover his tax debts. Perhaps a sign of relief, Ruby spent the night of November 21st out on the town, dining at the famed Dallas restaurant, Campisi’s.  

That brings us to November 22, 1963. When news of the assassination broke, Ruby closed his clubs and spent the day roving around town.  He famously visited both Parkland Hospital (where Kennedy’s body was taken) and the Dallas police station (where Oswald was being held).  In proper Jack Ruby form, he made a splash wherever he went. He cried on journalist Seth Kantor’s shoulder while at Parkland. He corrected another journalist during a presser at the Dallas police station. For two days and nights, Ruby roamed the streets of Dallas and wound himself up. And on the morning of November 24, he let himself loose on Lee Harvey Oswald.

This one is another two-parter, with Side A available for free this week and Side B coming to you next week. But if you can't wait for next week, you can hear the entire episode (Sides A & B) right now by subscribing to our Patreon. So head on over to patreon.com/fourthreicharchaeology and make a donation to listen to the whole thing today!

Author and critic Malcolm Harris joins Don for a forward-looking, optimistic discussion on communism, the possibilities for leftist organizing in our fascist hellscape (including concrete steps YOU can take to contribute to the struggle), the buildup to war in Iran, and much more. If you’re not already familiar with Malcolm’s work, you should be. He is the author of four books including 2023’s Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World, and this year’s What’s Left: Three Paths Through the Planetary Crisis. He has also emerged as a leading critic of the “Abundance” rebranding of neoliberal technocracy, publishing a thoughtful review at the Baffler (https://thebaffler.com/latest/whats-the-matter-with-abundance-harris). 

In What’s Left, Malcolm proposes that the left must pursue a variety of strategic approaches to confronting the climate crisis and the root causes of extractive capitalism and militarism that have fueled the fires burning our world. We discuss how we might make these strategies “fit together like puzzle pieces” in harmony, with the goal of ecological survival and planetary justice, as well as some of the biggest obstacles in the way. We hope you enjoy, and that we’ll have a chance to catch up with Malcolm down the line to check in on how things go from here.

As a treat, a never-heard original song from Don (aka Angleton’s Orchids) for the outro.

Meanwhile, you can get Malcolm’s books at your local bookstore or library, follow him on Twitter @BigMeanInternet, on Tik Tok @MalcolmHarrisClips, or on the scene in Philadelphia - check philacal.com for events!

Follow us on Twitter & Insta @fourthreichpod, email fourthreichpod@gmail.com, and sign up for our Patreon if you’re willing and able at patreon.com/fourthreicharchaeology. 

NO WAR WITH IRAN! END THE GENOCIDE NOW!!

We are back with another installment of our excavation into the U.S. Congress with guest Andrew Myslik, who worked for Rep. Rashida Tlaib as a staffer for her first 7 years in office. Our anchor point for discussion is Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.”

Without getting too in the weeds, we cover what’s in it, who wins and who loses. Spoiler alert: the winners, as always, are the ruling class. Billionaires, multinationals, military-industrial-tech-surveillance-infotainment-industrial complex. The losers are everybody else, especially the poor and marginalized. We hear from Andrew about how the game is rigged against democracy, how corporate interests take ownership and exercise control over the so-called people’s representatives.

We consider how the simultaneous loss of legitimacy by the fascist state and worsening of conditions for Americans - especially Black and Brown people - is leading to a new Amerikan Apartheid. Just one piece of a larger movement for global Apartheid bearing down on us from the “civilized” Western world. Many of our rulers want that, and we’re all but powerless to stop them through the traditionally conceived “democratic” channels. So what then?

Support us on Patreon: Patreon.com/fourthreicharchaeology

Follow us on X and IG @fourthreichpod

Welcome back for Part 2 of our excavation into Jack Ruby with Max Arvo! In Part 1, we dug up the surface layer of Ruby’s biography and followed his life trajectory from Chicago’s Southwest side (b. 1911) to Dallas’s club scene in the early 60s. In this episode, rather than going broader, we go deeper. This episode is really about adding some much-needed nuance to the often simplistic picture of American Organized Crime, and how it fits into the nexus between the business and intelligence networks that fueled the rise of the postwar American Empire.

We put the City of Chicago in the broader context of postwar America and trace the mob’s westward and southerly expansion from hubs in Chicago and New York. We also examine some of Ruby’s oldest and closest friends from the school of hard knocks - guys like Lenny Patrick, Dave and Sam Yaras, and the hulking Barney Baker. These were street toughs who grew up alongside the Rubenstein kids in the ghetto gauntlet of Capone’s town, and they’d serendipitously pop back up in Jack Ruby’s life in Fall 1963. We also take roll call on Jack’s other bosom pals he met along the way from Chicago to Dallas and beyond - brainier guys like Paul Roland Jones and Lewis McWillie.

All of these characters have direct lines to mob royalty: whether it’s Patrick & Yaras’s wet work for Sam Giancana, Baker’s muscle work for Jimmy Hoffa, or McWillie’s work running casinos for Meyer Lansky. They constituted a layer between the higher-ups in the Cosa Nostra and disposable dummies like Ruby.

We do our best to really flesh out these connections and go beyond the corkboard, so that we (and you, listener!) can really understand just how “the men who put [Jack Ruby] in the position [he was] in” did so. With this episode the stage is set to pick back up next time in 1963 and go deep on the factual narrative of the Oswald hit. Enjoy!

Sign up for our Patreon here: Patreon.com/fourthreicharchaeology.

Read Max’s investigative series on Ruby here: https://www.kennedysandking.com/content/author/415-maxarvo.

And find Max’s other work here: https://maxarvo.com.

The Warren Commission Decided Series is back with another installment of our ongoing series within a series within a series on Jack Ruby. The great Max Arvo joins us in the excavation once again. 

Max is a writer, researcher, musician, poet, and more, and you can find all of his work at his website here: https://maxarvo.com. We all have Max to thank for one of the most substantial original contributions to JFK research in a generation - namely, the degree to which CIA psychiatrist and MKULTRA heavyweight Louis Jolyon West became involved in the “treatment” and handling of Jack Ruby. Max has been in the Jolly West archives, he has stared into the abyss, and he has agreed to guide us like Dante’s Virgil through the hellscape of Jack Ruby’s life. 

His series of articles is brilliant; they’re all available for free, and you really should read them here: https://www.kennedysandking.com/content/author/415-maxarvo.

In Side B of Part 1, we pick up where we left off, laying the foundation for this epic excavation into the Ruby mines. We begin with another excerpt from Jack’s Warren Commission testimony as it keeps getting weirder and weirder. Then, we follow Jack from his unremarkable service as a mechanic stateside in WWII, to his riding a southerly wave of mafia migration to Dallas, to his neurotic struggle to stay afloat in Dallas’s club scene. Most people don't know that Ruby played host to music legends like The Band, Hank Williams, and more, besides just strippers. And we end off with his “Cuban exploits" of the late 50s bringing him smack-dab in the middle of the CIA-Mafia war on Castro. You will not want to miss it.

Hear the whole Part 1 by signing up for our Patreon here: Patreon.com/fourthreicharchaeology.

We are cross-posting Dick and Don's first ever podcast guest spot from the Coexist, Inc. podcast, hosted by friend of the pod, Isaac Eger. Isaac has been censored from the free spaces of the Internet and has bunkered down over at Patreon, so consider giving him a sub over there (https://www.patreon.com/c/user/about?u=6112951). He gets great interviews with a wide range of guests on many topics, making him a real fixture in the noided-left podcast space.

In this episode, recorded way back in October 2024 (before the election, let alone before Trump 2.0!), we get into the usual (anti-) Nazi stuff, Gerald Ford, the Ian Carroll psyop, and much more. Check it out!

The Warren Commission Decided Series is back from an extended hiatus with our newest series within a series within a series. This time our object of study is Jack Ruby. We’ve teased it a few times over the past several months, and it’s finally here. And not only that, but we are joined on this journey by a very special guest, Max Arvo. 

Max is a writer, researcher, musician, poet, and more, and you can find all of his work at his website here: https://maxarvo.com. We all have Max to thank for one of the most substantial original contributions to JFK research in a generation - namely, the degree to which CIA psychiatrist and MKULTRA heavyweight Louis Jolyon West became involved in the “treatment” and handling of Jack Ruby. Max has been in the Jolly West archives, he has stared into the abyss, and he has agreed to guide us like Dante’s Virgil through the hellscape of Jack Ruby’s life. 

His series of articles is brilliant; they’re all available for free, and you really should read them here: https://www.kennedysandking.com/content/author/415-maxarvo.

In this first part - the entirety of which is up on Patreon and side A of which is up for free - we lay the foundation for our excavation into the Ruby mines. We start with our first-ever Fourth Reich Archaeology cold open, reading straight from Jack’s Warren Commission testimony where he gives good reason to question any simplistic narrative about his choice to kill Lee Harvey Oswald on November 24, 1963, in the basement of the Dallas Police building amidst dozens of cops. Then, we cover Jack’s biography through the 1950s, and begin to introduce some of the recurring cast of characters in Ruby’s mobbed up world. From his immigrant upbringing in Chicago’s ethnic ghetto in the shadow of the Chicago outfit, to his trip out West. From his unremarkable service as a mechanic stateside in WWII, to his riding a southerly wave of mafia migration to Dallas, to his neurotic struggle to stay afloat in Dallas’s club scene. And we end off with his “Cuban exploits” (free listeners will need to wait for this bit!). You will not want to miss it.
Hear the whole thing on Patreon here: Patreon.com/fourthreicharchaeology.

This week marks the fifth installment of our ongoing Geopolitik series. More so than any of our other excavations, we’ve been proceeding with Geopolitik as if it were an actual archeological dig. Recall that we began with a surface level survey on the field of geopolitics itself, tracing the pseudoscience back to its roots in the British Empire, its passage through the Third Reich, and its handoff from the Nazis to the American empire. We went on to examine the geopolitical goals of the Trump administration in Europe, in Latin America, and here at home, always paying attention to the inadequate and ultimately collaborationist alternative on offer from the Democratic party. We then explored the lifeblood that powers the expansion and progression of the Fourth Reich–the successive series of genocides that the United States has been responsible for since before this place was even a country. Last week, we discussed the use of genocidal ideology to get away with this genocidal project, drawing on white supremacist myths of racial superiority and the dehumanization of any group of people that got in the way. 

In this episode we dig through yet another level of substrate, and unearth the foundation on which ideology rests–culture and identity. In modern society, culture and identity are developed, cultivated, and largely manipulated by media (movies, tv, music, books). And in the 21st century, media can be best understood as spectacle. We turn to the work of the legendary Marxist theorist, Guy Debord, and his foundational work “Society of the Spectacle.” 

We’ve referenced Debord’s work in prior episodes and we often talk about spectacle during our excavations, but never have we dug into Debord like we do in this one. As if it were written yesterday, Debord’s Society of the Spectacle so accurately describes the current state of affairs where spectacle serves as both the result and the justification of the existing mode of production. It exists to keep working class folks alienated, numb, and incapable of doing anything other than consume. In a late stage free market democracy like ours, converting citizens into passive consumers would not be possible were it not for spectacle. 

Buckle up because this one has another cover by Don. As always, we are so thankful for our listening audience. If you’re able, please consider throwing us some dollars on Patreon to help keep our engines running: www.patreon.com/fourthreicharchaeology 

You can read Society of the Spectacle here: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/society.htm

And Comments on the Society of the Spectacle here: https://monoskop.org/images/3/3b/Debord_Guy_Comments_on_the_Society_of_the_Spectacle_1990.pdf

We're back this week with the fourth installment of our ongoing Geopolitik series. Picking up where we left off, we continue our exploration into the normalization of genocide in the Fourth Reich. Despite the fact that genocide is reviled as one of (if not THE) worst crime against humanity, as we discussed in Part 3 it is hard to remember a time when the United States was not involved in genocidal violence in its relentless quest for global hegemony and imperial domination. 

This time, we approach the subject through the lens of ideology—specifically, white supremacist and Nazi ideology—and examine the dialectical relationship between genocidal tendencies in American foreign policy and the resurgence of white supremacist ideology within American society. Beginning well before the United States officially became a country, it has always relied on racialized violence in pursuit of economic exploitation, territorial expansion, and eventually the expansion of markets in which to plunder natural resources and discipline masses of workers. 

We begin our excavation by examining the recent backlash to “DEI” initiatives. We point the finger at the hypocritical weaponization of “anti-racism” discourse to shift the blame for racial inequality and strife away from the economic system and its beneficiaries and onto the subjective beliefs and behaviors of the working class. We then trace how this paradigm teed up the opportunity for the political right to use anti-DEI and anti-woke rhetoric as a trojan horse for laundering Nazi-aligned beliefs into the mainstream. With Trump and his allies practically begging to kick off a constitutional crisis and claim even more dictatorial powers, the danger of this rising tide of American Nazism cannot be overstated.

From there, we take a historical turn to analyze the white nationalist immigration policies emerging from the Trump administration, tracing their roots back to the inception of U.S. border policy—which, unsurprisingly, was grounded in deeply entrenched racist attitudes toward Mexicans and other immigrants of color. So pervasive is the Trump administration’s ideological commitment to white supremacy that it has shown a willingness to turn against its own, including judges appointed during Trump’s first term, to push its agenda forward.

Throughout our discussion, as always, we bring you our analysis using the one-of-a-kind Fourth Reich Archaeology lens, and once again this episode features some original music from our co-host, Don. 

The outro song was produced by friend of the pod Compost Ghoul: https://soundcloud.com/compost-ghoul

We remain deeply grateful to our listening audience for your continued encouragement and support. If you’re able, please consider donating to help sustain this project: www.patreon.com/fourthreicharchaeology

This week Don is back with another guest: Andrew Myslik - a former legislative aide to Representative Rashida Tlaib. Andrew joined Rashida’s Congressional staff at the very beginning of her career on the hill, spending several years in her office until leaving recently. This will be the first installment of yet another Fourth Reich Archaeology excavation into the workings of Congress, that Amerikan Reichstag. 

In this episode, we dig into the inner workings of Congress and begin to explore how the corruption machine works to ensure that the so-called “People’s House” is run for the benefit of corporate persons (who, since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, have all the rights of human beings) rather than us flesh-and-blood mortals. Since Congress is ultimately so monomaniacally geared towards the enrichment of war profiteers and the glorification of Israel and its genocidal exterminationist agenda, we also spend time exploring how and why that is. 

This is Andrew’s podcast debut, and we feel privileged to be the first pod to have him on to share his insights into the inner-workings of the legislative branch. If you can believe it, we’re even able to find a glimmer of hope in the morass, and we look forward to continuing the discussion with Andrew in future installments of this series.

Patreon: www.patreon.com/fourthreicharchaeology

Email: fourthreichpod@gmail.com

Socials: @fourthreichpod

This week, we are back with another excavation into the present moment, and once again, we are digging deep into its historical roots. The theme of the episode is genocide. First, we give a snapshot of the current moment within the broader trajectory of the US/Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people. In Gaza, in the West Bank, and even in the diaspora. Physically and intellectually. But as our listeners should know by now, we are not just “reading the news” out here. Instead, we are utilizing genocide as a lens to understand the Fourth Reich.

Unfortunately, the current ongoing genocide is not the first genocide that has taken place since the Nazi Holocuast. In fact, genocide is a persistent and ongoing feature on the landscape of the Fourth Reich just as it was for the Third Reich. After all, the persistence of genocidal violence is an essential piece of the capitalist machinery that traps billions of poor people around the world in misery to prop up the extractive, exploitive apparatus of the “modern,” purportedly “civilized” lifestyles of the ruling class. 

So we situate the current genocide in its historical context and take head-on the liberal finger-wagging hypothetical that “the left” bears responsibility for Trump’s openly fascist excesses due to its rejection of Kamala Harris and refusal to support the institutional Democrat party. We’re calling BULL on that allegation, and in our deconstruction thereof, we spare no targets of our analytical ire.

This is one of our most personal episodes yet. There are times when the discussion gets emotional. We are living in trying times, in times of great upheaval and the potential for great advancement. The two-faced fascist beast whose right hand (Republicans) and left hand (Democrats) strangle the life of the people, has shown its monstrosity for all the world to see. Genocide is always central. Its unpunished commission itself undermines the rule of law more than any policy position the Trump administration could take, no matter how extreme.

We hope you enjoy. The episode also includes three original compositions and recordings from our very own “Angleton’s Orchids” aka Don. Now let’s let the truth be the wind under our wings and take to flight!

This week, we're taking a break from the Warren Commission, but don't worry; JFK stuff still comes up as relevant context at the present moment. But mostly, we're back into current events to cover the inauguration of the new regime. Trump 2.0. On the one hand, as we've consistently argued, the U.S. is not a democracy but a corporate state investing the bare minimum to maintain a mere image of democracy. So in that sense, Trump is no different from Biden: both are just actors filling roles in the spectacle of politics.

We begin the episode saying farewell and f-off to Joe Biden and his entire rotten, genocidal administration. We discuss Biden's and Blinken's farewell addresses, Kamala's uncertain future, and the bravery of journalists standing up for the victims of genocide in the face of violent arrest and slander. We live in a time when "freedom of speech" is being redefined to mean "freedom to espouse and inculcate hardcore racist and genocidal beliefs," while free-speech activity like protesting genocide is being redefined to mean "crime and terrorism." Biden certainly has a role in that, and Trump seems like more of the same.

Then we cover the inauguration and first day of President Donald John Trump, "the king of crime." After a banger of a musical number underneath "pig man" Trump's imperial inaugural address, we cover the MANY parallels between Trump and Reagan, including but not limited to their near-identical initiatives to privatize the government under the direction of literal Nazis. We discuss some of the day-one executive orders and issue predictions about what we might see next (including initial thoughts on JFK disclosure!!). Disclaimer: any predictions may very well change; this damn world is crazy as hell! Nevertheless, the Fourth Reich Archaeology thesis - albeit dire - is vindicated daily. Enjoy!

Finally, we land on the original Warren Commission Defender, junior staff member Wesley J. (“Jim”) Liebeler. Liebeler, 24 years younger than his senior partner, Albert Jenner, came to the Commission from U. Chicago law school, specifically recommended by his lawschool classmate, one Kenneth Dam. Both Dam and Liebeler were acolytes of the “law and economics” school - a legal theory fusing libertarian jurisprudence with the neoliberal, neoclassical economics of the “Chicago school” of shock-doctrine disaster capitalism.

We discuss how Liebeler embodied the “gunner” lawyer prototype and how he brought that attitude to his work. He was a guy who knew how to play the middle to please everybody and advance his own star. For example, even though he went on record, writing a memo to Lee Rankin raising some serious questions about the Warren Report’s evidentiary weaknesses, he also took it upon himself to tie up some of the very loose ends he was concerned with in a way that tamped down evidence tending to show a conspiracy.

In this regard, we take a deep dive into the “Odio incident,” wherein Dallas Cuban Silvia Odio was visited by a man she identified as Lee Harvey Oswald in September 1963, among a group of anti-Castro Cubans talking about wanting to assassinate the President. Liebeler’s conduct in that affair paints a disturbing picture of the man and his ethics, which casts further suspicion over his long and illustrious post-Commission career defending the Warren Report in the court of public opinion all over the country. 

This episode ties off our excavation into the Warren Commission staff attorneys for now, so we conclude it by zooming out to revisit the question we started with way back in Episode 7: How is it possible that all of these independent-minded professional men with no ulterior motives but to find the Truth about the President’s assassination could countenance a coverup of a conspiracy?

We return this week with another installment of our deep dive into the impact of Bert Jenner, the Warren Commission lawyer responsible for preparing the Report’s profile on Lee Harvey Oswald.  And boy has this one taken us places.   Recall that we started out this journey in The Warren Commission Decided Episode 10, by illustrating the deep connection between Jenner and General Dynamics, the company that was awarded a record-breaking $7 billion dollar contract to build a state of the art fighter jet out of its facility in North Texas.  When General Dynamics made this deal, Jenner was lead counsel to the company and its controlling shareholder, Henry Crown, and he also sat on its Board of Directors. 

This matters because a key focus of Jenner’s investigation was the White Russian colony that formed the Oswalds’ social circle in Dallas in the months leading up to JFK’s assassination, and his key witness from that milieu was Lee Oswald’s good friend, George de Mohrenschildt. We spent much of the last two episodes establishing de Mohrenschildt’s ties to the intelligence community, which had a heavy footprint in Dallas and in the Texas oil industry, and which unsurprisingly overlapped with Jenner’s corporate sugar daddy – General Dynamics.  

Having taken a brief contextual detour to explore the de Mohrenschildts, their connection to the underbelly of the corrupt Texas military-industrial-oil-intelligence complex, and Lee Harvey Oswald, we return to Jenner this week and cover the nitty gritty of the work he did interrogating the de Mohrenschildts. In some ways, this episode provides a master class on how to interrogate a witness either to elicit – or avoid – certain testimony.  Whether through intimidation, exhaustion, or even weaponized incompetence, Jenner was learned in all the ways.  And in this episode, we show how Jenner deployed all these tricks to divert investigation away from the North Texas intelligence community and get George de Mohrenschildt to provide exactly the testimony he needed to prop up LHO as the deranged love scorned maniac who shot Kennedy. 

Remember, we are doing all of this to challenge one of the most persuasive anti-conspiracy lines deployed against Warren Commission critics, which is “how could all of those staff lawyers on the Commission really be in on a coverup? They’re independent-minded guys, and respectable attorneys, with no political bag to carry!” We tie it all back together to show that contrary to the popular argument against the Warren Commission cover up, there is ample evidence to show that all it took was a few key individuals like Jenner or Arlen Specter in the right places.  Even without imputing treasonous or criminal intentions to these cover-uppers, we illustrate how they played a crucial role in controlling the narrative of the Commission’s investigation and the ultimate conclusion that Oswald was the lone nut who capped Jack. 

Only our most loyal fans would have read this far, and if we’ve got that right, please consider giving us a donation on Patreon so that we can keep this project going: www.Patreon.com/fourthreicharchaeology

We think you’ll agree when we say that now more than ever the world ought to know how and why it came to be that we are, most unfortunately, living in the Fourth Reich.

Last week, we talked about how President Lyndon Johnson came to put together a top-flight blue ribbon commission to cover up the Kennedy assassination. For the next two episodes, we go around the table and introduce the listener to each of the seven members of that  commission. As we do, we also receive a masterclass on how to lie, manipulate, coerce, and outright strongarm to get your way. At the head of the class is LBJ. 

Along with its chairman, Earl Warren, the Warren Commission consisted of two members from each chamber of Congress: one Democrat and one Republican. The Commission also had “two members of the public.” This week we cover the Warren Commission’s chairman, its members who served in the House of Representatives, and its Democrat Senator. 

First, we introduce Chief Justice Earl Warren, who was the ringleader of the ragtag team of spooks, drunks, racists, and rats. Warren was the perfect man to lend his name to the cover-up. He had spent the last 10 years building the public’s trust by overseeing the most progressive shift in the history of Supreme Court jurisprudence, including classics like Brown v. Board of Education and Gideon v. Wainwright. 

For his Democratic Senator pick, LBJ chose Senator Richard “Dick” Russell of Georgia. Russell mentored LBJ in the Senate and was a logical pick to serve as LBJ’s “inside man.” There was just one problem. Russell was a Dixiecrat and staunch segregationist, which made him Earl Warren’s arch-nemesis. LBJ bullies him like a boy. We play the tapes. It’s incredible.

For the Democratic Congressman, LBJ picked Hale Boggs of Louisiana. Where Russell was an offensive pick, Boggs was a defensive one. In the days leading up to the announcement of the Warren Commission, Boggs - who had been a great admirer of the slain JFK - was vocal about the need to initiate an independent, unbiased investigation. To nip that in the bud, LBJ neutralized Boggs by bringing him in the fold. 

And you know we had to save the best for last. Our day one homie, Jerry Ford. Jerry was the Republican Congressman pick, and LBJ chose him for all the reasons we’ve discussed in Jerryworld. At this point Jerry was a national brand, with a reputation for being a team player, a hard worker, and a straight shooter. In fact, in LBJ’s eyes, Jerry looked like the perfect mark to be his bagman–after all Jerry was still a young up and comer. Little did LBJ know that Jerry was playing him for a fool and serving as mole to none other than J Edgar Hoover.

Published on the 50th Anniversary of his ascension to the highest office in the world, this is the first installment of our excavation into the life, times, and meaning of the presidency of Gerald R. Ford, Jr.  Ford is an ideal case-study for the consolidation of the Fourth Reich through the vessel that is the quintessential modern American everyman. 

In this episode, we first discuss some of the major recurring themes that mark our exploration of Ford's life. Those are:

• American Exceptionalism (aka American Imperialism) and settler colonialism

• The "Greatest Generation" and the myth of Good Guys (Freedom & Democracy) vs. Bady Guys (Totalitarianism)

• Freemasonry, other Secret Societies, and their role in American political life

• American expansionism and the promise of unending growth

We will also explore the early years of Gerald Ford’s biography. We touch on the traumas from Jerry’s early days and the horrific events that indelibly marked his psyche: the fraught relationship between his birth parents, the settler-colonial ideology and pedigree of his forebearers, and his ultimate upbringing in a household striving to ascend the socio-economic ladder in middle America straddling the first world war. 

Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/fourthreicharchaeology

In this episode, we start off with a geographical and cultural tour of Grand Rapids, Michigan - Jerry's real hometown - with a little narrative help from the words of Grand Rapids native, Paul Schrader, spoken by the great George C. Scott. The class-based and ethnic lines demarcating the city's neighborhoods, plus the Calvinist work ethic pervading its business community, shaped the man Jerry would grow into.

We consider Jerry's choice of the working-class South High School over the more affluent Central High, and run into his early anti-communist sentiments and actions. Jerry became a football star, and with that stardom came popularity. His popularity (and a little willingness to bend the rules) would eventually win him his first trip to the nation's capitol.

But it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows for young Jerry - we'll also dig into Jerry's traumatic reunion with his deadbeat birth-father, Leslie Lynch King, and discuss how Jerry began balancing his budding sense of class-resentment with his instinctive political knack for maintaining good terms with all potential allies.

After graduating high school in 1931, it was off to the University of Michigan for Jerry, where he worked his way through school, worked his way into a popular fraternity, and worked his football team to back-to-back national championships. We'll explore the much-mythologized relationship between Jerry and his Black friend and teammate, Willis Ward with a little cameo from none other than George W. Bush.

Finally, we will follow Jerry's relationship with the man he'd later refer to as his "real father" forward in time and watch him put his conflict-resolution skills to the test.

Patreon: www.patreon.com/fourthreicharchaeology

Join us this week in the first installment of what will be a periodic series focused on current events within our Reich, and the historical precedents in Reichs past.  We’re calling it “Fourth Reich Geopolitik.” 

After a little catch-up on some of the latest expressions of fascism in American politics, we go back to basics and wipe off our patented Fourth Reich lenses.  Recall that when we say “Fourth Reich,” what we refer to is a regime with the same capacity for cruelty and destruction as the high watermark of those qualities: the Third Reich.  To put a finer point on it, our modern US-led global capitalist world order–with the Trump administration at the helm–represents a continuation of the Nazi quest for world domination and the consolidation of capital that dates back to well before the industrial revolution.  We illustrate this continuity by a quick recounting of the “science” of Geopolitics, from the British Lord Halford Mackinder to the Nazi Karl Haushofer, to Haushofer’s American Jesuit acolyte, Edmund A. Walsh, the namesake of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

With our lenses polished, we turn to the real focus of this episode: making sense of the latest developments in the Trump administration’s foreign and domestic policy. 

As to foreign policy, we look at the war in Ukraine and see the imperial maneuvering of US foreign police reduced to tabloid-level spectacle.  While some might see Trump “sidling up to dictators” or “abandoning our allies,” we see him pulling a reverse-Nixon: Rather than opening up to China to push back on Russia’s global influence, the Trump team is teaming up with Russia to help it knock down the dominoes on the way to Beijing.

We then turn inward, looking at domestic policy, and dissect how it is exactly that the Republican party went from the country club party of rich old white men to counting among its ranks the young tech crowd.  For this, we need not look further than Elon Musk.  With Musk, Trump gets not only a jester with a devout silicon valley following but also a vehicle to the growing concern his voter base has with fraud and corruption.  But while Trump and Musk claim they have a mandate from the people to hack away at the federal government to eliminate fraud and waste, their cuts reveal that they are focused largely on agencies–like the Dept. of Education and the CFPB–that have been on Donald Trump’s shit list since the early days of his campaign. We also look at the rhetorical ruse of the Populist Front of the Republican Party led by the likes of Steve Bannon, dissecting their ability to speak several truths only to lull people into a false sense of security and bait-and-switch into fascist eugenics.

We try to maintain a positive attitude throughout it all, though admittedly, it is getting harder with every day. The time is nigh to make moves and organize strategically to build power, and if we are to make any progress in the right direction, we need to unfetter ourselves from the corrupt genocidal Democrat Party. 

Dig in and enjoy! And if you like what you are hearing please drop us a line, give us some support on Patreon, and spread the word! 

Fourth Reich Archaeology email: fourthreichpod@gmail.com

Fourth Reich Archaeology Patreon: patreon.com/fourthreicharchaeology

It's Fourth Reich Archaeology's first interview, and it's with the great Clancy-hunter himself, Matt Farwell. Matt and Don grab their shovels and break a little ground on Propaganda. We talk about super-spook Frank Wisner, into whose life and archives Matt has been plunging, and the way Wisner played the press like a "Mighty Wurlitzer" before losing his mind, first figuratively, then literally. We connect the dots from CIA to the media, the newspapers, and the major publishing houses, and - of course - tracing it all back to the Nazis and Perfidious Albion. Continuity strikes again.

Don takes a detour to Paris 1919 (with a little John Cale, of course) to recount the tale of Three Young Fellas - John Foster Dulles, his brother Allen, and a publicist named Edward Bernays - who lucked out on front-row seats to the peace conference that set the stage for war (yay, markets!). That British voice you hear is Adam Curtis, in "Century of the Self" - speaking of limited hangouts...

And Matt brings us forward in time, to that glorious period about which Dr. Strangelove is truly a documentary, giving us an aural tour of the Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia, and its midcentury Führerbunker  built to house Congress in the event of a nuclear blast or other Continuity-of-Government type situation.

Follow Matt Farwell @HuntClancy

Subscribe at https://thehuntfortomclancy.substack.com/

Buy book at https://www.amazon.com/American-Cipher-Bergdahl-Tragedy-Afghanistan/dp/0735221049

Enjoy!!