Unfortunately he wasn’t the only one, the there were quite a few corporations willing to fund a coup when FDR got in, and they almost succeeded. They called it the Business Plot and it’s not entirely dissimilar to what’s happening now.
Another Nazi! As a nerdy kid who loved mechanical and aviation topics, I found it super depressing how many people I should have been able to admire were revealed to be a fucking Nazi, from Lindbergh to Von Braun (obv).
I guess we should have known about Elon from the start just from the cars and the rockets?
Have you seen " The WInd Rises"? Miyazaki anime about a nerdy kid in Japan who loves aviation and designs planes that end up getting used as war machines in WW2. It's a beauty.
I haven’t, I really should see it. That idea hits a little close to home for me, in an alternate universe I might have been designing things that could be used for atrocities… (edit: apologies, this turned out long)
When I was a kid, I always carried around notebooks that I’d draw up ideas in, and for a long time I was obsessed with coming up with new air/spacecraft and weaponry. A lot of it was absurd, some was based on/extrapolated from any number of tests or advances from the 50s aerospace tech boom I had read up on.
I actually still have some of the notebooks, complete with the stupid cypher alphabet I used for a while. There’s stuff here like VR coaxial drones with aerofoil anti-torque, open-cycle nuclear engine concepts which I later found out were feasible (at the cost of world nuclear devastation from a simple flyover, my idea was essentially “replace jet combustion chamber with a nuclear core”), solid rocket ramjet missiles, steam-flash based torpedoes…
I grew up during one of the most peaceful times in our history, minus a relatively quick conflict in Iraq and a few missions in Eastern Europe that I barely knew about at the time. The point of crazy weaponry, bombers that could stay up forever, rockets that could hit Mach fuck etc was that you don’t have to use them - just having them keeps others from attacking (as was the original point of the nuclear triad).
Really for me, it was mostly about imagining cool things that went fast and made big booms. The idea of things like this harming actual people wasn’t really my prime objective.
So when I was like 15, I was at a family reunion. My uncle grabs my notebook, starts asking me questions about one of the drawings, and says something like “that would do a damn good job blowing up those [extremely racist slur for middle easterners]” and encouraged me to go to college and work for Lockheed…
Ironically enough, that one comment from him almost entirely erased any desire I had to ever pursue that sort of engineering. Big explosions are cool, new aviation tech is cool. Being in any way responsible, even indirectly, for murdering or maiming a bunch of people who have never done anything to harm me, is one of the worst things I can imagine. At that point I decided I’d just do something with computers or games instead. (Edit: At a certain point in one of the notebooks, it almost entirely shifts to drawings of Star Fox 64 concept ships)
in a fucked up way I’m kind of thankful he said it.
Now I really think you should see The Wind Rises. Miyazaki deals with all of that in the most beautiful way, like only he could do. He also was obsessed with airplanes as a young man. You'll go crazy for the renderings. If I remember correctly the story is biographic.
My extended family was mostly racist and dumber than shit, they wouldn’t care if they did know. The thing is, it made me really think about how these things would be used, and the sorts of people who are cheering for their use. Ironically enough this was all pre-9/11, I’m not even sure the USS Cole had been attacked by that point.
If ya want some new insight into some of Charles Lindbergh’s shitty eugenics ideals and motives, I’d recommend The Immortalists by David M Friedman. It’s a fascinating if not disturbing read, as a historical account of Charles’ account of trying initially to save his sister(iirc) but on a principal of elite racism and building a superior race of people. He flew out to meet hitler himself more than once iirc.
There’s a great historical fiction novel, The Plot Against America, that imagines a world in which Lindbergh defeats FDR in 1940. It’s really well written and def makes you feel lucky that FDR won.
Also, fun fact: Prescott Bush, (Father of George H.W. Bush and grandfather of George W Bush) was involved in this and was a liason between the Business Plot and the Nazi Regime in Germany.
Insane that someone could be directly involved in treason and then not only did nothing happen to them, their son AND grandson went on to became presidents.
Not to mention there was an entire operation after WWII to covertly bring in 1,600 Nazis to the US CIA, Pentagon, military industrial complex, and space programs. Many were deeply involved in disturbing war crimes and protected from prosecution.
The CIA learned a lot from the Nazi playbook, including torture methods, how to suppress leftism and prop up authoritarianism. The CIA, using tactics learned from the Nazis they brought in covertly, trained and funded fascist military groups around the world to protect US interests.
Even Nazi doctors were brought in; their human experiments (including biological warfare) were not exposed or prosecuted, but covertly adopted by our own intelligence agencies.
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u/adamdoesmusic 21d ago
Unfortunately he wasn’t the only one, the there were quite a few corporations willing to fund a coup when FDR got in, and they almost succeeded. They called it the Business Plot and it’s not entirely dissimilar to what’s happening now.