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Kall: What about the money? What about the 700, 800...
Wolf: Oh, thank you. You’re exactly right. The definition of a police state is that the leader has his own military and his own treasury. What we’re seeing now—and again it’s so under-reported; this is being sent to me in e-mails—is that billions are being given to banks, not to lend it to hurting consumers, but to buy weakened banks, which by the way is exactly what they did in Germany: they weakened the businesses of Jews deliberately, and then when they were wounded and devalued, the state moved in and snapped them all up and made huge profits.
Kall: Now NPR has reported that you’ve--Now I was listening on NPR today; also you’ve got these private investing companies, and they basically are predators, like jackals, going after weakened companies or even taking strong companies and forcing them to allow themselves to be acquired and then selling them off for the parts, or what have you. Really, this is a way to get rid of diversity in business, the way to consolidate power. It’s all bad stuff.
Wolf: I’d actually flip what you’re saying around. It would be a way to get rid of diversity in business if we were a strong democracy, but what you’re seeing is the behavior of a Latin American oligarchy. This is exactly how they do things in Latin American dictatorships: they grab a chunk of the assets and nationalize them, and then a small group of cronies basically hand out the goods to one another. What people have to understand about a police state is – we’re so used to thinking, “Well, they would never do that because it’s bad for the economy,” or “It will destroy the middle class because people won’t be able to keep their homes”—in a police state they don’t care about having a strong middle class. They’re better served by depleting or erasing the middle class and having either this tiny oligarchy or people in misery.
Kall: And you talk about there being war against the middle class, and Bill Moyers has talked about it too of course. Do you want to talk about that?
Wolf: I’m not sure I distinguish war against the middle class from a general war against citizens. I suggest that’s a subset of what we need to understand the bailout is, which is not a stupid move in a strong capitalist democracy; it’s the conventional act of Latin American oligarchs seizing the treasury. I mean, look at the Philippines, look at Haiti: people go in, and they plunder the treasury, and they give the stuff to their friends, and there’s no accountability, and they don’t care if it destroys the economy. They don’t care as long as they’re in their gated communities with the treasury parceled out among themselves. People have to get what they’re looking at: they’re looking at normal behavior in a police state in terms of the financial transactions.
Kall: So what can we expect to see in the next one, two, three months, between now and the Inauguration?
Wolf: Well—God. I mean, it depends on us. I think what citizens have to realize is that, as they’re waking up, they’re beating back some of the worst of it, but they have to stay vigilant. For instance, there was this horrible bill, H.R. 1955, which was going to criminalize speech like this conversation, the “thought crimes” bill. And citizens woke up, and they pushed it back and resisted, so it hasn’t come down the pipe yet. If we stay passive, I’m afraid we’re going to see some deployment of the First Brigade somewhere in America or some tampering with the election or, God forbid, a declaration of martial law or a state of emergency. Why not?
Kall: I predict that the first use of that First Brigade will be one that looks legitimate, the use of it after a hurricane or a blizzard or something like that?
Wolf: They actually did that already, because Karl Rove is so smart. They deployed them actually after a hurricane, I believe in Alabama, to kind of get us used to the idea that they’re here for good. But those jobs are jobs that are done by the National Guard and by certain medical corps and emergency corps. It affected this fascinating discussion that I blogged about among military people and National Guard people saying, “Why does the First Brigade have to come in and do this? We’re taking care of those jobs.”
You’re quite right: We’re going to get eased into it initially in benevolent circumstances, and then suddenly you’ll have a Praetorian Guard. So that’s what I’m afraid of, God forbid. I’ve been saying for a year that, in a closing society, leading up to an election, you start to see, in the last weeks and months, hyped threats, crises, and instability to give the leader a chance to intervene, to give the leader a chance to tamper with the vote.
People don’t understand that dictators love elections. They’re always having elections; they just make sure the elections are corrupted and that their guy or girl gets in. And that’s how I see Sarah Palin, as the kind of heir to this police state push. Not so much John McCain; I think they’re calculating that he won’t—I wrote a blog about the nature of his illness and his demographic, and I think they’re calculating that—
Kall: I wrote one about Sarah Palin and the Siamese fighting fish: when they mate, the female kills the male after they’re done. That’s what I see Sarah Palin doing. McCain won’t last two years.
Wolf: That’s profound.
Kall: She won’t kill him. She’ll find out something about him that forces him to resign.
Wolf: Well, she’s already stabbing him in the back. It’s extraordinary, because she feels like she’s got an independent platform, which was my argument, and yours. But you know, flipping it around—that’s what I foresee in case of, God forbid, a hyped threat or a staged threat or a staged terrorist attack, because believe me, it happens. The British Empire staged attacks against their own people continually to justify their own agenda.
