The Plot Against American Democracy That Isn't Taught in Schools

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/coup-jan6-fdr-new-deal-business-plot-1276709/


Smedley Butler knew a coup when he smelled one. He had been involved in many himself. He had overthrown governments and protected “friendly” client ones around the world on behalf of some of the same U.S. bankers, lawyers, and businessmen apparently now looking for his help.

For 33 years and four months Butler had been a United States Marine, a veteran of nearly every overseas conflict back to the war against Spain in 1898. Respected by his peers, beloved by his men, he was known as “The Fighting Hell-Devil Marine,” “Old Gimlet Eye,” “The Leatherneck’s Friend,” and the famous “Fighting Quaker” of the Devil Dogs. Bestselling books had been written about him. Hollywood adored him. President Roosevelt’s cousin, the late Theodore himself, was said to have called Butler “the ideal American soldier.” Over the course of his career, he had received the Army and Navy Distinguished Service medals, the French Ordre de l’Étoile Noir, and, in the distinction that would ensure his place in the Marine Corps pantheon, the Medal of Honor — twice.

Butler knew what most Americans did not: that in all those years, he and his Marines had destroyed democracies and helped put into power the Hitlers and Mussolinis of Latin America, dictators like the Dominican Republic’s Rafael Trujillo and Nicaragua’s soon-to-be leader Anastasio Somoza — men who would employ violent repression and their U.S.-created militaries to protect American investments and their own power. He had done so on behalf of moneyed interests like City Bank, J. P. Morgan, and the Wall Street financier Grayson M.P. Murphy.

And now a bond salesman, who worked for Murphy, was pitching Butler on a domestic operation that set off the old veteran’s alarm bells. The bond salesman was Gerald C. MacGuire, a 37-year-old Navy veteran with a head Butler thought looked like a cannonball. MacGuire had been pursuing Butler relentlessly throughout 1933 and 1934, starting with visits to the Butler’s converted farmhouse on Philadelphia’s Main Line. In Newark, where Butler was attending the reunion of a National Guard division, MacGuire showed up at his hotel room and tossed a wad of cash on the bed — $18,000, he said. In early 1934, Butler had received a series of postcards from MacGuire, sent from the hotspots of fascist Europe, including Hitler’s Berlin.

*snip*

[brush]

1. Woohoo. Butler was a hero in exposing the fascist American Liberty League.

FDR took it from there and threaten to out the treachery of the prominent industrialists...Sloan, du Pont, Prescott Bush and others...if they didn't back off. He was able to get the New Deal programs through because of the dirt he had on them.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

3. If biden wants his bbb bill

Passed as a 4 trillion or more plan,out the greedy selfish motherfuckers that wont help the people. Tell what they do and have done.

Let the treacherous get what they so deserve expose thier shit for all to see.


And the bbb plan should pass with no problem. Play harder ball than they do.

[brush]

4. I'm with you. Play hard ball with Manchin and his family's coal mine...

shenanigans. Plus there's the hook-up his daughter has with Big Pharma's dirty dealings. And there's Sinema and her fundraising to feather her own pockets.

FDR famously said, "I welcome their contempt" of the rich who called him a traitor to his class. Joe should just go for it...threaten to expose the two holdout senators and if they don't get on board, put their dirty business in the street as we'll never have another chance in decades to get a bill like the BBB done.

[Solly Mack]

2. K&R

[Kid Berwyn]

5. BBC broadcast a good summary...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007tbs0

Muckrock also rocks…

https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2017/aug/29/smedley-butler-fbi/

More data…

THE BUSINESS PLOT TO OVERTHROW ROOSEVELT

In the summer of 1933, shortly after Roosevelt's "First 100 Days," America's richest businessmen were in a panic. It was clear that Roosevelt intended to conduct a massive redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor. Roosevelt had to be stopped at all costs.

The answer was a military coup. It was to be secretly financed and organized by leading officers of the Morgan and Du Pont empires. This included some of America's richest and most famous names of the time:

Irenee Du Pont - Right-wing chemical industrialist and founder of the American Liberty League, the organization assigned to execute the plot.

Grayson Murphy - Director of Goodyear, Bethlehem Steel and a group of J.P. Morgan banks.

William Doyle - Former state commander of the American Legion and a central plotter of the coup.

John Davis - Former Democratic presidential candidate and a senior attorney for J.P. Morgan.

Al Smith - Roosevelt's bitter political foe from New York. Smith was a former governor of New York and a codirector of the American Liberty League.

John J. Raskob - A high-ranking Du Pont officer and a former chairman of the Democratic Party. In later decades, Raskob would become a "Knight of Malta," a Roman Catholic Religious Order with a high percentage of CIA spies, including CIA Directors William Casey, William Colby and John McCone.

Robert Clark - One of Wall Street's richest bankers and stockbrokers.

Gerald MacGuire - Bond salesman for Clark, and a former commander of the Connecticut American Legion. MacGuire was the key recruiter to General Butler.

The plotters attempted to recruit General Smedley Butler to lead the coup. They selected him because he was a war hero who was popular with the troops. The plotters felt his good reputation was important to make the troops feel confident that they were doing the right thing by overthrowing a democratically elected president. However, this was a mistake: Butler was popular with the troops because he identified with them. That is, he was a man of the people, not the elite. When the plotters approached General Butler with their proposal to lead the coup, he pretended to go along with the plan at first, secretly deciding to betray it to Congress at the right moment.

What the businessmen proposed was dramatic: they wanted General Butler to deliver an ultimatum to Roosevelt. Roosevelt would pretend to become sick and incapacitated from his polio, and allow a newly created cabinet officer, a "Secretary of General Affairs," to run things in his stead. The secretary, of course, would be carrying out the orders of Wall Street. If Roosevelt refused, then General Butler would force him out with an army of 500,000 war veterans from the American Legion. But MacGuire assured Butler the cover story would work:

"You know the American people will swallow that. We have got the newspapers. We will start a campaign that the President's health is failing. Everyone can tell that by looking at him, and the dumb American people will fall for it in a second…"

The businessmen also promised that money was no object: Clark told Butler that he would spend half his $60 million fortune to save the other half.

Continues…

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/Coup.htm

The rich think they own the planet and all that is on, in, around, and near it — and to them that includes governments.

[Wounded Bear]

6. "he would spend half his $60 million fortune to save the other half."

Here's the thing. Nobody has ever been taxed out of the millionaire class. No millionaire has been pauperized through taxation.

At most, he would lose like what? 3-5% of that fortune to taxes, if that?

The gov't will never take "half" of anyone's fortune. We don't have a wealth tax anyway. The gov't taxes income, and all the high percentage brackets are in the upper echelon of incomes.

[crickets]

7. It boggles the mind how some wealthy people will throw gobs of money around

as campaign contributions and the like rather than just paying the same amount (or perhaps less) in taxes. It's sad that there are people so allergic to contributing to the common good.

[electric_blue68]

8. I probably heard heard about Smedley Butler on Air America re Thom Hartman

[Boomerproud]

9. I came across this in a magazine article. No mention in

history books written and approved by Texan publishers.

[rgbecker]

10. You'll want to read Kinzer's "Overthrow" to get background on our history.

America, not what is advertised.

[link:https://www.amazon.com/Overthrow-Stephen-Kinzer-audiobook/dp/B000G6BJXK/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Overthrow&qid=1641161055&s=books&sr=1-1|