Interview with Flemming Blicher, June 29, 2026 - Wall Street, the Nazis, and the Crimes of the Deep State, Part 3

Thanks, Flemming.

Yeah, that's surprising that you've not heard of him.

He's, he's quite a well-known character.

Um, I mean, he didn't force things through exactly.

You know, he, he wasn't kind of single-handedly powerful in all of this, but he did play a prominent role, um, a much more prominent role, I think, than is generally understood in the advent of the US National Security state.

So in 1947, Kennan was appointed the inaugural director of policy planning at the State Department, and when you read particularly the academic literature on Kennan, he's normally remembered through these kind of cliches like the godfather of containment, and he's remembered for things like his long telegram of 1946 and an article he published in 1947 called The Sources of, of Soviet Conduct.

And the tenor of both of those pieces was that the Soviet Union poses a kind of implacable threat that has to be, quote unquote, "contained at all costs." And so it's quite easy to see Kennan as a kind of [chuckles] defender of the, quote unquote, uh, "free world against this kind of Soviet aggression." And he, you know, he was one of the key kind of propagators of, of, of this myth early on.

[clears throat] However, there were other sides to George Kennan which have received much less attention and which I kind of bring to light, uh, in my book.

For example, um, in 1938, Kennan proposed an authoritarian form of government in the United States.

He wanted suffrage to be withdrawn from what he quote, "bewildered and ignorant women, immigrants, and African Americans." Uh, he was a fan of the fascist regime in Austria, and in his words, quote, "If malicious despotism had greater possibilities for evil than democracy, benevolent despotism had greater possibilities for good." End quote.

[chuckles]

So he's kind of overtly in favor of despotism.

He was the architect of the reverse course in Japan, reinstating the pre-war political class with all of its class A war criminals, and he said that the US occupation in Japan could, quote, "dispense with bromides about democratization." End quote.

So again, in Japan, not interested in democracy.

Quite happy to have a, an authoritarian regime.

Uh, in terms of Germany, um, he said that he would, quote, "prefer to remain ignorant," end quote, of Nazi war crimes rather than purging Nazis from post-war German governments.

He said it would be better to, quote, "hold pr- the present ruling class of Germany strictly to its task and teach it the lessons we wish it to learn." So again, in Germany, as in Japan, no interest on Kennan's part in democracy.

Despite all of the kind of the public facade, he was in favor of, of, of authoritarian rule and subordination to, to US, specifically Wall Street power.

Um, he personally intervened to obtain a high-level security clearance for Gustav Hilger, who had served in the Nazi foreign minister von Ribbentrop's personal secretariat and played a role in the Holocaust.

Kennan took this man's advice on East-West policy.

So [chuckles] he had no problems, obviously, with the Nazis.

When it came to Latin America, Kennan advocated, quote, "harsh measures of repression Even though this would not stand the test of American concepts of democratic procedures.

So across all of these different parts of the world, we see Kennan is basically a fascist, and he's pushing for fascism and authoritarianism wherever he can.

So we've got to get beyond this image of Kennan as this wonderful kind of defender of the free world against Soviet aggression, allegedly.

So he certainly paved the way for all those characters we talked about in the last session that got prominent role in NATO and in Europe and in international affairs after the war.