The Warren Commission Decided Series is back from an extended hiatus with our newest series within a series within a series. This time our object of study is Jack Ruby. We’ve teased it a few times over the past several months, and it’s finally here. And not only that, but we are joined on this journey by a very special guest, Max Arvo.

Max is a writer, researcher, musician, poet, and more, and you can find all of his work at his website here: https://maxarvo.com. We all have Max to thank for one of the most substantial original contributions to JFK research in a generation - namely, the degree to which CIA psychiatrist and MKULTRA heavyweight Louis Jolyon West became involved in the “treatment” and handling of Jack Ruby. Max has been in the Jolly West archives, he has stared into the abyss, and he has agreed to guide us like Dante’s Virgil through the hellscape of Jack Ruby’s life.

His series of articles is brilliant; they’re all available for free, and you really should read them here: https://www.kennedysandking.com/content/author/415-maxarvo.

In this first part - the entirety of which is up on Patreon and side A of which is up for free - we lay the foundation for our excavation into the Ruby mines. We start with our first-ever Fourth Reich Archaeology cold open, reading straight from Jack’s Warren Commission testimony where he gives good reason to question any simplistic narrative about his choice to kill Lee Harvey Oswald on November 24, 1963, in the basement of the Dallas Police building amidst dozens of cops. Then, we cover Jack’s biography through the 1950s, and begin to introduce some of the recurring cast of characters in Ruby’s mobbed up world. From his immigrant upbringing in Chicago’s ethnic ghetto in the shadow of the Chicago outfit, to his trip out West. From his unremarkable service as a mechanic stateside in WWII, to his riding a southerly wave of mafia migration to Dallas, to his neurotic struggle to stay afloat in Dallas’s club scene. And we end off with his “Cuban exploits” (free listeners will need to wait for this bit!). You will not want to miss it.
Hear the whole thing on Patreon here: Patreon.com/fourthreicharchaeology.

This week marks the fifth installment of our ongoing Geopolitik series. More so than any of our other excavations, we’ve been proceeding with Geopolitik as if it were an actual archeological dig. Recall that we began with a surface level survey on the field of geopolitics itself, tracing the pseudoscience back to its roots in the British Empire, its passage through the Third Reich, and its handoff from the Nazis to the American empire. We went on to examine the geopolitical goals of the Trump administration in Europe, in Latin America, and here at home, always paying attention to the inadequate and ultimately collaborationist alternative on offer from the Democratic party. We then explored the lifeblood that powers the expansion and progression of the Fourth Reich–the successive series of genocides that the United States has been responsible for since before this place was even a country. Last week, we discussed the use of genocidal ideology to get away with this genocidal project, drawing on white supremacist myths of racial superiority and the dehumanization of any group of people that got in the way.

In this episode we dig through yet another level of substrate, and unearth the foundation on which ideology rests–culture and identity. In modern society, culture and identity are developed, cultivated, and largely manipulated by media (movies, tv, music, books). And in the 21st century, media can be best understood as spectacle. We turn to the work of the legendary Marxist theorist, Guy Debord, and his foundational work “Society of the Spectacle.”

We’ve referenced Debord’s work in prior episodes and we often talk about spectacle during our excavations, but never have we dug into Debord like we do in this one. As if it were written yesterday, Debord’s Society of the Spectacle so accurately describes the current state of affairs where spectacle serves as both the result and the justification of the existing mode of production. It exists to keep working class folks alienated, numb, and incapable of doing anything other than consume. In a late stage free market democracy like ours, converting citizens into passive consumers would not be possible were it not for spectacle.

Buckle up because this one has another cover by Don. As always, we are so thankful for our listening audience. If you’re able, please consider throwing us some dollars on Patreon to help keep our engines running: www.patreon.com/fourthreicharchaeology

You can read Society of the Spectacle here: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/society.htm

And Comments on the Society of the Spectacle here: https://monoskop.org/images/3/3b/Debord_Guy_Comments_on_the_Society_of_the_Spectacle_1990.pdf

We're back this week with the fourth installment of our ongoing Geopolitik series. Picking up where we left off, we continue our exploration into the normalization of genocide in the Fourth Reich. Despite the fact that genocide is reviled as one of (if not THE) worst crime against humanity, as we discussed in Part 3 it is hard to remember a time when the United States was not involved in genocidal violence in its relentless quest for global hegemony and imperial domination.

This time, we approach the subject through the lens of ideology—specifically, white supremacist and Nazi ideology—and examine the dialectical relationship between genocidal tendencies in American foreign policy and the resurgence of white supremacist ideology within American society. Beginning well before the United States officially became a country, it has always relied on racialized violence in pursuit of economic exploitation, territorial expansion, and eventually the expansion of markets in which to plunder natural resources and discipline masses of workers.

We begin our excavation by examining the recent backlash to “DEI” initiatives. We point the finger at the hypocritical weaponization of “anti-racism” discourse to shift the blame for racial inequality and strife away from the economic system and its beneficiaries and onto the subjective beliefs and behaviors of the working class. We then trace how this paradigm teed up the opportunity for the political right to use anti-DEI and anti-woke rhetoric as a trojan horse for laundering Nazi-aligned beliefs into the mainstream. With Trump and his allies practically begging to kick off a constitutional crisis and claim even more dictatorial powers, the danger of this rising tide of American Nazism cannot be overstated.

From there, we take a historical turn to analyze the white nationalist immigration policies emerging from the Trump administration, tracing their roots back to the inception of U.S. border policy—which, unsurprisingly, was grounded in deeply entrenched racist attitudes toward Mexicans and other immigrants of color. So pervasive is the Trump administration’s ideological commitment to white supremacy that it has shown a willingness to turn against its own, including judges appointed during Trump’s first term, to push its agenda forward.

Throughout our discussion, as always, we bring you our analysis using the one-of-a-kind Fourth Reich Archaeology lens, and once again this episode features some original music from our co-host, Don.

The outro song was produced by friend of the pod Compost Ghoul: https://soundcloud.com/compost-ghoul

We remain deeply grateful to our listening audience for your continued encouragement and support. If you’re able, please consider donating to help sustain this project: www.patreon.com/fourthreicharchaeology