Official British Filing for Emerdata is HERE. Emerdata is presumed to be a new identity for the increasingly scandal-tainted Cambridge Analytica, in the tradition of Erik Prince’s Blackwater >Xe >Academi mercenary services. The papers indicate Emerdata has been in the works for over six months, but some Kossacks are saying today that Mueller has been looking into CA for longer than that, and it’s reasonable to assume current scandals were anticipated.
(By the way, THIS web page goes to a different EmerData company, based in Texas, founded 1985, doing business as EmerData since 2003. Their business is helping building managers prepare for fires and other emergencies. Their website is probably getting more traffic in past four days than it’s had in the previous 15 years.)
I think most who follow these stories would agree that Steve Bannon and Erik Prince—both closely associated with CA/Emerdata—probably qualify as the chief strategists for the reincarnation of fascism, this time based more firmly in the private sector and the plutocracy, with the “populist” bullshit as window dressing. (It seems to be working. Here’s a recent “Telephone Town Hall” with Congressman Lee Zeldin (NY-CD1) in which most listeners agreed that Trump is doing a marvelous job and America is on the right track.) We are familiar with the mobbish aspects of their movement, the ugly and violent scenes at Trump’s campaign rallies, etc., followed by the Nazi marchi in Charlottesville, all very reminiscent of the scenes of redneck radicalism of Sinclair Lewis’s “It Can’t Happen Here” (1934).
But there was another dystopian novel, “The Iron Heel” by none other than Jack London (who was himself a bit a of a left-wing proto-fascist) published way back in 1908 or so, when the Far Right was dominated by monarchists and Mussolini was still a socialist schoolteacher. Wikipedia sums up the Oligarchy, whose “Iron Heel” comes down hard on the working masses:
The Oligarchy is the largest monopoly of trusts (or robber barons) who manage to squeeze out the middle class by bankrupting most small to mid-sized business as well as reducing all farmers to effective serfdom. This Oligarchy maintains power through a "labor caste" and the Mercenaries. Laborers in essential industries like steel and rail are elevated and given decent wages, housing, and education. Indeed, the tragic turn in the novel (and Jack London's core warning to his contemporaries) is the treachery of these favored unions which break with the other unions and side with the Oligarchy. Further, a second, military caste is formed: the Mercenaries. The Mercenaries are officially the army of the US but are in fact in the employ of the Oligarchs.
That last bit is particularly relevant, with Erik Prince’s pioneering work in creating a force of mercenaries that sometimes seem to be a branch of the US Army but are actually serving the Oligarchy. Near the beginning of the book comes a speech to a private business group (a setting not unlike those “Global Initiative” gatherings sponsored by GoldmanSachs, the firm where Steve Bannon and other notable folks acquired their fortunes) in which a labor organizer is allowed to speak of the coming revolution and one of the Iron Heel oligarchs replies by explaining why there won‘t be a revolution.
As time goes on, the Oligarchy’s “iron heel’ state solidifies and gains in strength. London writes:
...the strength of the Iron Heel was developing. The labor castes, the Mercenaries, and the great hordes of secret agents and police of various sorts were all pledged to the Oligarchy. In the main, and ignoring the loss of liberty, they were better off than they had been. On the other hand, the great helpless mass of the population, the people of the abyss, was sinking into a brutish apathy of content with misery. Whenever strong proletarians asserted their strength in the midst of the mass, they were drawn away from the mass by the oligarchs and given better conditions by being made members of the labor castes or of the Mercenaries. Thus discontent was lulled and the proletariat robbed of its natural leaders.
The condition of the people of the abyss was pitiable. Common school education, so far as they were concerned, had ceased. They lived like beasts in great squalid labor-ghettos, festering in misery and degradation. All their old liberties were gone. They were labor-slaves. Choice of work was denied them. Likewise was denied them the right to move from place to place, or the right to bear or possess arms.
[The whole book can be found at www.gutenberg.org/... ]
Seems about right I guess. London’s book also predicted a world war against Germany starting in 1913, a year early, which created the conditions that led the Iron Heel to seize or consolidate power.
The rule of the Oligarchy lasts for 300 years, defying all the Marxist predictions of how history is supposed to happen—and, from a socialist viewpoint, ending human progress quite effectively.
What was the secret of the Iron Heel’s success and longevity? From the early days of its dictatorship, the ruling class is energized and disciplined, acquiring a sense of mission. The believe they are doing the right thing, fighting down the great wild beast of the proletarian mass, maintaining order against the riffraff. The book’s female narrator points out that no one on the socialist side ever predicted or understood this source of the enemy’s strength, the sense of rightness and responsibility inculcated into the oligarchy’s youth as they go about the bloody business of repressing the masses. We probably still fail to recognize it as we look back on the 20-25 years of Fascist power in Europe, from Mussolini’s rise to the Red Army’s conquest of Berlin. And who among us can imagine that righteousness could be what drives our own equivalent of the Iron Heel? Well, here it is, plain as day. Steve Bannon in this Spectator interview is high on the spread of “populist revolution” across Europe, and is one of the movement’s international stars and honored prophets. Quite a guy. By now I hope we are learning not to underestimate our enemies. Trump the clown suit, the front man; the Iron Heel is waiting backstage.