This article appears in the May 13, 2022 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
Bannon-Thiel Duo Rig Ohio Election for Military-Industrial Complex
[Print version of this article]
May 7—There are two lessons to be drawn from the Ohio Republican Primary held on May 3. That day, James David (J.D.) Vance, a protégé of billionaire Peter Thiel, won the nomination for U.S. Senate candidate in a 7-way race, after Thiel and his cohort Steve Bannon succeeded in dragging Donald Trump into endorsing Vance, even though Trump’s own base in the state overwhelmingly rejected Vance’s candidacy. Trump apologized to angered supporters who had won the state for him with tireless door to door organizing in 2016, and who circulated a public statement asking Trump to withdraw his endorsement. Trump lamely claimed that Vance—who attacked Trump in 2016 with all the well-known vituperations—was the only candidate who could win a Republican Senatorial seat from Ohio in November. Note that Vance’s vote return after Trump stepped up in his behalf rose to only 32 percent, while the two leading next contenders (both of whom came from the pro-Trump state machine), pulled in together 47 percent of the vote. Hardly a victory for Trump’s effort.
The first lesson is this: Thiel, who has a 10-year association with Steve Bannon, is acting in sync with Bannon as an asset of the privatized military-industrial conglomerates in the U.S., whose corporate divisions aim to prolong the current U.S./NATO deployment of Ukraine against Russia, to then conduct a showdown with China. These corporations are interfering in the electoral process, using Thiel, who made public in March 2021 a list of 17 candidates he is promoting for election by disbursing over $20 million in funds to tightly controlled Super-PACs. (There is no limit on how much Super-PACs can spend.) Next to Vance, Thiel’s other top candidate is Blake Masters from Arizona, who has been told that Trump will endorse him prior to the primary in August. (According to CNN, Trump and Thiel have met three times in the last year.) Vance and Masters are both long-term employees of Thiel’s string of corporate IT firms that suck revenue from military contracts generated by the “endless wars” since 9/11.
Thiel/Bannon shaped Vance’s campaign,—which Thiel financed with $15 million in donations, the largest donation ever made to a Senatorial primary campaign—to amplify the war propaganda barrage being run by the NATO apparatus through an arsenal of public relations firms operating in both the U.S. and Europe (see accompanying article). Though Vance voiced dissent with the Biden Administration’s fixation on Ukraine in a Feb. 15 podcast with Bannon—“[I don’t] care what happens to Ukraine one way or another,” he stated—which went viral on the internet, Vance has become famous for other militaristic ravings. Namely, that he fully supports a military mobilization of U.S. forces on the border with Mexico and thinks that the U.S. must prepare for a showdown with China.
Second lesson: that the best ray of hope for using this year’s election process to benefit a safe and prosperous future for Americans and the rest of humanity, is coming from those candidates and national leaders who are rejecting foolish partisanship, as the “fish bowl” from which no solutions can be conceived or motivated that address the life-threatening economic and strategic crises we face.
The best example of such leadership is the Diane Sare campaign in New York State against worn-out, hopelessly corrupted “Chuck” Schumer. Sare has drawn together the most diverse combination of angry activists and morally devoted citizens from across the political spectrum. She is actually doing what Tulsi Gabbard, former Democratic Congresswoman from Hawaii, and strong opponent of NATO war policies, has called for. Gabbard recently posted on Twitter: “With upcoming elections, the power is in our hands to stop this insanity by supporting those, D or R, who are committed to ending this war with Russia and use our treasure for the American people.” Sare has succeeded in assembling an alliance rooted in the moral determination of individuals to fight for what is being banned by censorship and press control, namely truthful dialogue on solutions.
The LaRouche Organization (TLO) has meanwhile launched an initiative for mass inundation of Congress with letters and phone calls to halt the weapons deliveries to Ukraine, and to motivate immediate negotiations to end what Russia is rightfully calling a “U.S. proxy war via Ukraine.” In doing so, TLO is intersecting and strengthening what began as a somewhat timid intervention by eight Republican Congressmen grouped around Thomas Massie of Kentucky, to challenge and halt heavy weapons deliveries to Ukraine. Massie, in concert with Gabbard, has stated he is taking this stand in order to diminish the danger of nuclear war. Recently, Massie received significant support from an old conservative organization in Washington, The Committee for the Republic, and is expanding his efforts.
CNN has issued a rumor that Thiel is now going to cool off and back down, for the time being, from public involvement in the 2022 election. Such rumors about his life are frequently fed to the press. Perhaps he is feeling heat from drawing too much attention to his activities.
Whatever Thiel may do, he and Bannon deserve scrutiny and investigation. As documented in the excellent biography of Thiel assembled courageously by New York journalist Max Chafkin, Thiel and Bannon interacted starting in 2013, in London, through cutouts that created the public relations firm Cambridge Analytica. Thiel’s premier company Palantir was under financial pressure, in part because military officials in the U.S. Army preferred to reject Palantir software in favor of sticking with older, standard contractors for battlefield security in Iraq. Thiel’s representatives went to London to check out what Bannon and the Mercer family were doing in working with the shady outfit Cambridge Analytica to influence the U.S. 2016 election. This is one of the roots of how the “Russiagate” attack on Trump was forged. Everything that has to do with Thiel indicates that his Palantir empire, as well as the whole privatized system of the military-industrial complex running wars around the globe, must be put under the most stringent and rigorous Congressional investigation, if we are to protect the Constitution, rebuild the economy, and prevent nuclear war.
