EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR SUNDAY, JANUARY 17, 2021

The Reichstag Fire of Jan. 6 in Washington, D.C.

Jan. 16, 2021 (EIRNS)—The following is an edited version of the presentation given by The LaRouche Organization’s Harley Schlanger to the weekly Saturday Manhattan Project Town Hall of The LaRouche Organization:

Harley Schlanger: I’m going to give a summary view of the intent of the military-industrial complex behind the Jan. 6th Reichstag Fire event at the U.S. Capitol, and the rush-to-judgment impeachment. What unfolded is classic British counterinsurgency strategy.

Let’s begin with Jan. 6. This was a pretext for the next phase of a fascist coup. This is something we’ll be discussing this afternoon, in the course of this meeting....

Let me take you back to some statements Lyndon LaRouche made in 1971, following Richard Nixon’s ill-fated decision to end the Bretton Woods system and move the United States into the economy of floating-exchange rates, speculation, and what was, in reality, a post-industrial economy. This is something that LaRouche was warning about, had forecast would happen, and when it happened, he was very clear on what needed to be done. Most importantly, what he identified as the contributing factors, were the decision of the global financial oligarchy to move into an era of environmentalism, post-industrial economy, and neo-Malthusianism—that is, global depopulation. And he identified that if this were not reversed, we would be heading to fascism. Not fascism as the image most people have of jack-booted soldiers marching with a swastika, but fascism as an economic system typified by the role of Hitler’s Minister of Finance Hjalmar Schacht who was the choice of the London-New York banking crowd to oversee the phase-shift in Germany, from an industrial republic to a destructive force, targetting all of Europe and the United States. It was that policy which was the policy of the corporate cartels.

What we’ve seen in the United States, since LaRouche made that warning in 1971, is a series of phase shifts economically and politically. I’m just going to identify a couple of those which are the more important ones. One of them, was the mid- to late-1980s, when the Democratic Party adopted what they called the Third Way, to dump the policies of Franklin Roosevelt and John F Kennedy, that were committed to the idea of uplifting the conditions for the whole of the population, and instead becoming “neo-liberals”—essentially dependent on money from Wall Street, and carrying out policies for the benefit of the wealthiest, including the bankers and financiers. That was the shift that brought us the Clinton Administration; Al Gore was key in setting that up.

The second phase-shift was after 9/11, and again, this had been forecast by LaRouche, that there would be a move toward a fascist policy following what he identified would be a “Reichstag Fire” event, which we saw with 9/11.

The Patriot Act, which was introduced then, was based on something that Joe Biden authored in 1995, called the Omnibus Counterterrorism Act, which called for an expansion of the FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act], but most importantly it identified terrorism as based on political beliefs. So, when the Patriot Act was passed and pushed by John Ashcroft, he contacted Biden as a means to get Democratic support for it. And of course, Biden agreed, when Ashcroft told him the Patriot Act was “based on your bill in 1995.” That was another phase-shift in the United States, and we know what it means to have not just the mass surveillance, but the use of social media to manipulate the way people think and act.

We also had the permanent wars launched as a result of the Reichstag Fire on September 11, 2001; permanent wars that we were in and still are in. But it became the basis of Donald Trump’s victory in 2016, appealing to the American people based on their being tired of war, tired of austerity, saying that “we are going to end these wars and rebuild our nation.”

That was responded to by the military-industrial complex, the Deep State, the swamp, or, what we call the British Empire, by launching Russiagate to get rid of Donald Trump. We identified this from the beginning as a regime-change coup, that intended not just to defeat Trump, but to change the country, to demoralize his supporters, and to prevent the United States from asserting its national sovereignty and building its economic power based on the principles of the American System.

Let’s jump ahead to what happened Jan. 6th. There was a perfectly legitimate contest in the Congress, which has been done by the Democrats before: This was not unprecedented, challenging the certification of the electors. The Democrats did it in 2004, in the Bush-Kerry election, and in 2016. To read the mass media, or watch the television coverage, it was as though this was some kind of absolute break with the traditions of American history, but it was a constitutionally defined action that was being taken.

What did happen was the event at the Capitol Building.

Now, there are many unanswered questions, and I just want to pose a couple of them, without going into great detail. These were brought up by the investigative journalist John Solomon. He pointed out that the New York Police Department, the Capitol Police, and the FBI all had advance warnings that there could be violent protests at the Capitol when these hearings took place on Jan. 6th. Keep in mind, on the FBI, this in itself can be somewhat suspicious, given that we know that the FBI repeatedly deploys people into organizations to be provocateurs. They did this with the civil rights movement; they did it with the people fighting the civil rights movement. They’ve done it with the left and right historically. As it does clearly appear as though there were provocateurs in these riots, just keep in mind that the FBI supposedly had advance notice.

But here are the questions you have to look at. Why was there not more robust security if there had been these advance warnings? The Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund reported that he went to the House and Senate security personnel, and suggested they bring in more police, possibly the National Guard and he was rebuffed. So, there was not an adequate police presence at the Capitol when this started. But secondly, if you look at the timeline, the first assault on the Capitol began while President Trump was still speaking. He was speaking for an additional 20 minutes when people started swarming into the Capitol Building. The question Solomon asked is: How can he be accused of inciting something that was preplanned, and started before he supposedly said the words that incited the crowd? This was not an incitement: It was a provocation. And that’s why we see this as a Reichstag Fire.

What was the result of what happened on Jan. 6th? Well, the attempt to get rid of Trump moved ahead. The idea of impeaching someone in the last days in office is somewhat of a strange conception. But we know that Pelosi has been intending this for a long time. What makes this more than an attack on Trump, was an attempt to criminalize a movement. He got 75 million votes, and by presenting him as a madman, as a rioter, an insurrectionist, by implication they’re saying that anyone who voted for him was crazy, was an insurrectionist, was a potential danger. They criminalized the opposition to the policies, by making it appear that if you didn’t go along with the Pelosi-Schumer agenda – which by the way is the same agenda of a lot of the Republicans, as became clear in their weakness in defending the President from the impeachment—that if you go along with Trump, you’re a potential criminal, a potential terrorist. They’re out to change the Constitution, especially in the way elections are run.

And the censorship policy which was brought in, was designed to cut people off from an ability to communicate, to even discuss ideas! If you challenge the counting of the vote, you might be a terrorist, and suspect, and possibly get your access to internet platforms cut.

Finally, the effect of this will be to increase the radicalization of some Trump supporters, and set the stage for more violence in the future. It would be done to justify more surveillance, more preemptive measures, and so on.

Now look, what was the Trump movement? It was people who were angry, at watching the country go to hell, watching the cities collapse, the health care system be torn apart. Our young men and women being sent to wars that are unwinnable; fighting for goals that are never specified, by politicians who never served in the military, and really don’t care about the problems they’re creating for the nation. So, you create an environment of polarization and radicalization.

The other aspect of classic British gang-countergang strategy is, you do it with the left and the right. You have left and right radicals, who are fed by this process. We’ve seen it with the Black Lives Matter and Antifa. We see it on the right with the Q movement and militias. Many of the people who get caught up in these things are people who legitimately are concerned about what they see as a collapse of the system, collapse of society, but who feel helpless to act through standard political means, because the political system itself is so corrupted, by big money on both sides, the left and the right.

So, what happens? Let’s look at this QAnon just for a moment. I know this is going to aggravate some people, probably enrage others. But you better face it now. If you were angry and frustrated and looking for some answers, many people turn to QAnon, because it seemed to have an explanation, of what was going on in the attacks on Donald Trump. But what was it really? It’s a classic British operation of psychological warfare. It engaged people in a kind of political video-game: A “World of Warcraft” for politics, where people were encouraged to watch what was going on, were given drops of information, little bits and pieces, which, by the way, were available in other places besides the QAnon postings.

But think about what was said: There are 30 sealed indictments, 100 sealed indictments, 300 sealed indictments. Now I’m told they’re saying there are over 220,000 sealed indictments. That’s a lot of sealed indictments. How come people haven’t been going to prison? We were told there would be mass arrests. We were told that Biden and Hillary Clinton are wearing ankle bracelets. That Gina Haspel, the CIA Director, was killed in a nonexistent shoot-out in Frankfurt, Germany. If she wasn’t killed, she was sent down to Gitmo. Some of them say the Pope has been killed or replaced by a hologram.

And what we’re also told is, don’t worry about the chaos ahead, the good guys are coming to the rescue. Trust the plan. The hook was the attack on the corruption of a broken-down system, but there was not a strategic perspective. People were not organized around a counter-strategy, other than wait for the good guys and cheer them on, and in the meantime, become informed.

A lot of people did become awakened by the victory of Donald Trump and the events that took place afterwards. Much was exposed about the corruption in the intelligence community—the Clinton, Obama and Bush networks in both parties; the corruption coming from the United Kingdom. But there were diversions, attempts to point people in different directions. And instead of going after the people pulling the strings, you went after some of the puppets, who were the ones the string-pullers were putting in your face.

What is the ultimate plan of the people who ran this? This will be discussed coming up, but the basic point is to push through the Great Reset: To establish a global bankers’ dictatorship that will essentially give the power to the people behind the central banks, but also in the corporate cartels, give them the power over not only the circulation and the production of credit, but also where the money is spent. Eliminate the role of parliaments and governments and the Congress to make policy. Why? Because they’re too liable to try to answer some of the demands of their constituents. Put it instead in the hands of technocrats run by the banks, so that we can have the kind of austerity that will not only allow the banks to pay off their debts, but also kill off whole sections of the population. They don’t intend to have a sound economy! That’s not what the World Economic Forum and the Davos billionaires intend. They intend to radically reduce the world’s population. That’s their plan: a bankers’ dictatorship. So, while people were caught in the left-right gangs and countergangs, this is what has been going on in the background.

There are still people who are saying, “You’re wrong. You wait and see, there’s going to be an insurrection act, there’s going to be martial law, mass arrests in the next week.” Well, if it happens, we’ll see. I don’t believe it. And I think many of you are going to have a rude awakening, when you realize you’ve been played by the same people who ran the impeachment against Donald Trump. The same people who have wrecked our economy and put the United States into the category of a mere banana republic, with the manipulations they’ve carried out over the recent weeks and months.

We have a strategy at The LaRouche Organization; we have a program. And it starts with two points. Know your enemy and how they think, and how they manipulate you. And secondly, how do we revive the American System of physical economics, which was the great contribution that Lyndon LaRouche made in his many years in politics and statecraft in the United States.