Dot.Kameradschaft USA: German Corporate Control Over the Internet

Audio

1. Further develop­ing a line of inquiry pursued for the last couple of years, this broadcast examines the role of corporate Germany in controlling internet content.

2. The title of the program derives from a Third Reich organization of returned German émigrés. “The Kameradschaft’s main task was to help German nationals from America (the Ruckwanderers, or returnees) resettle in the Fatherland. It also served as a kind of shadow intelligence agency . . . The full extent of Kameradschaft activity will never be known, since a substantial part of the files concerning Ruckwanderers from around the world ‘was either destroyed or has never been recovered.’” (Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International, Autonomedia, copyright 1999, p. 114.)

3. This organization worked with the better-known German-American Bund and served as a “kind of shadow intelligence agency.” (Idem.)

4. The founder of the organization, Fritz Gissibl, was an SS officer and worked for a Nazi publishing house. “ ‘Upon his return to Germany, Gissibl was considered for a position at the DAI. Though never a full-time mem­ber of the staff, he worked with the leadership of the Institute and established the Kameradschaft-USA in 1938. He also held a position in the Tarnungsverlag (Stuttgart), a Nazi publishing house; in 1937, he was appointed SS Haupsturmfuhrer (captain), and after 1941 he was an SS Obersturmbannfuhrer [lieutenant colonel] (SS number 309, 051).’” (Ibid., p. 120.)

5. The broadcast’s title is an obvious pun, based on Gissibl’s organization. One should note that Gissibl’s background is not altogether dissimilar from that of Heinrich Mohn, the patriarch of the German Bertelsmann firm, a central element of the discussion in FTR-242.

6. Mohn was in the SS and the firm was the largest publisher of books for both the SS and the Wehrmacht during World War II (The Nation, 12/28/98).

7. Discussion begins with an article about a Bertelsmann high-tech venture capital arm called BV Capital. (Wall Street Journal, 7/5/2000, p. C19.)

8. Headed by Jan Buettner, the firm is linked to numerous American and German institutions, and is deeply involved with the financing of second and third generation internet technology. (Idem.)  (more...)

Dot.Kameradschaft USA: German Corporate Control Over the Internet

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