Report from Iron Mountain; Using fear to make people subservient to government. The following extract is taken from Chapter 24 of The Creature from Jekyll Island
G. Edward Griffin – The substance of these stratagems [for the weakening of the United States so it can be more easily merged into a global government based on the model of collectivism] can be traced to a think-tank study released in 1966 called the Report from Iron Mountain. Although the origin of the report is highly debated, the document itself hints that it was commissioned by the Department of Defense under Defense Secretary, Robert McNamara and was produced by the Hudson Institute located at the base of Iron Mountain in Croton-on-Hudson, New York. The Hudson Institute was founded and directed by Herman Kahn, formerly of the Rand Corporation. Both McNamara and Kahn were members of the CFR.
The self-proclaimed purpose of the study was to explore various ways to “stabilize society.” Praiseworthy as that may sound, a reading of the Report soon reveals that the word society is used synonymously with the word government. Furthermore, the word stabilize is used as meaning to preserve and to perpetuate. It is clear from the start that the nature of the study was to analyze the different ways a government can perpetuate itself in power, ways to control its citizens and prevent them from rebelling. It was stated at the beginning of the Report that morality was not an issue. The study did not address questions of right or wrong; nor did it deal with such concepts as freedom or human rights. Ideology was not an issue, nor patriotism, nor religious precepts. Its sole concern was how to perpetuate the existing government. The Report said:
Previous studies have taken the desirability of peace, the importance of human life, the superiority of democratic institutions, the greatest “good” for the greatest number, the “dignity” of the individual, the desirability of maximum health and longevity, and other such wishful premises as axiomatic values necessary for the justification of a study of peace issues. We have not found them so. We have attempted to apply the standards of physical science to our thinking, the principal characteristic of which is not quantification, as is popularly believed, but that, in Whitehead’s words, “…it ignores all judgments of value; for instance, all esthetic and moral judgments.” (1)
The major conclusion of the report was that, in the past, war has been the only reliable means to achieve that goal. It contends that only during times of war or the threat of war are the masses compliant enough to carry the yoke of government without complaint. Fear of conquest and pillage by an enemy can make almost any burden seem acceptable by comparison. War can be used to arouse human passion and patriotic feelings of loyalty to the nation’s leaders. No amount of sacrifice in the name of victory will be rejected. Resistance is viewed as treason. But, in times of peace, people become resentful of high taxes, shortages, and bureaucratic intervention. When they become disrespectful of their leaders, they become dangerous. No government has long survived without enemies and armed conflict. War, therefore, has been an indispensable condition for “stabilizing society.” These are the report’s exact words:
The war system not only has been essential to the existence of nations as independent political entities, but has been equally indispensable to their stable political structure. Without it, no government has ever been able to obtain acquiescence in its “legitimacy,” or right to rule its society. The possibility of war provides the sense of external necessity without which no government can long remain in power. The historical record reveals one instance after another where the failure of a regime to maintain the credibility of a war threat led to its dissolution, by the forces of private interest, of reactions to social injustice, or of other disintegrative elements. The organization of society for the possibility of war is its principal political stabilizer…. It has enabled societies to maintain necessary class distinctions, and it has insured the subordination of the citizens to the state by virtue of the residual war powers inherent in the concept of nationhood. (2)
A New Definition Of Peace
The report then explains that we are approaching a point in history where the old formulas may no longer work. Why? Because it may now be possible to create a world government in which all nations will be disarmed and disciplined by a world army, a condition which will be called peace. The report says: “The word peace, as we have used it in the following pages, … implies total and general disarmament.” (3)
Under that scenario, independent nations will no longer exist and governments will not have the capability to wage war. There could be military action by the world army against renegade political subdivisions, but these would be called peace-keeping operations, and soldiers would be called peace keepers. No matter how much property is destroyed or how much blood is spilled, the bullets will be “peaceful” bullets and the bombs – even atomic bombs, if necessary – will be “peaceful” bombs.
The report then raises the question of whether there can ever be a suitable substitute for war. What else could the regional governments use – and what could the world government itself use – to legitimize and perpetuate itself? To provide an answer to that question was the stated purpose of the study.
The Report from Iron Mountain concludes that there can be no substitute for war unless it possesses three properties. It must (1) be economically wasteful, (2) represent a credible threat of great magnitude, and (3) provide a logical excuse for compulsory service to the government.
A Sophisticated Form Of Slavery
On the subject of compulsory service, the Report explains that one of the advantages of standing armies is that they provide a place for the government to put antisocial and dissident elements of society. In the absence of war, these forced-labor battalions would be told they are fighting poverty or cleaning up the planet or bolstering the economy or serving the common good in some other fashion. Every teenager would be required to serve – especially during those years in which young people are most rebellious against authority. Older people, too, would be drafted as a means of working off tax payments and fines. Dissidents would face heavy fines for “hate crimes” and politically incorrect attitudes so, eventually, they would all be in the forced-labor battalions. The Report says:
We will examine … the time-honored use of military institutions to provide anti-social elements with an acceptable role in the social structure. … The current euphemistic clichés – “juvenile delinquency” and “alienation” – have had their counterparts in every age. In earlier days these conditions were dealt with directly by the military without the complications of due process, usually through press gangs or outright enslavement. …
Most proposals that address themselves, explicitly or otherwise, to the postwar problem of controlling the socially alienated turn to some variant of the Peace Corps or the so-called Job Corps for a solution. The socially disaffected, the economically unprepared, the psychologically uncomfortable, the hard-core “delinquents,” the incorrigible “subversives,” and the rest of the unemployable are seen as somehow transformed by the disciplines of a service modeled on military precedent into more or less dedicated social service workers. …
Another possible surrogate for the control of potential enemies of society is the reintroduction, in some form consistent with modern technology and political processes, of slavery. … It is entirely possible that the development of a sophisticated form of slavery may be an absolute prerequisite for social control in a world at peace. As a practical matter, conversion of the code of military discipline to a euphemized form of enslavement would entail surprisingly little revision; the logical first step would be the adoption of some form of “universal” military service. (4)
Blood Games
The Report considered ways in which the public could be preoccupied with non-important activities so that it would not have time to participate in political debate or resistance. Recreation, trivial game shows, pornography, and situation comedies could play an important role, but blood games were considered to be the most promising of all the options. Blood games are competitive events between individuals or teams that are sufficiently violent in nature to enable the spectators to vicariously work off their frustrations. As a minimum, these events must evoke a passionate team loyalty on the part of the fans and must include the expectation of pain and injury on the part of the players. Even better for their purpose is the spilling of blood and the possibility of death. The common man has a morbid fascination for violence and blood. Crowds gather to chant “Jump! Jump!” at the suicidal figure on a hotel roof. Cars slow to a near stop on the highway to gawk at broken bodies next to a collision.
A schoolyard fight instantly draws a circle of spectators. Boxing matches and football games and hockey games and automobile races are telecast daily, attracting millions of cheering fans who give rapt attention to each moment of danger, each angry blow to the face, each broken bone, each knockout, each carrying away of the unconscious or possibly dying contestant. In this fashion, their anger at “society” is defused and focused, instead, on the opposing team. The emperors of Rome devised the Circuses and gladiator contests and public executions by wild beasts for precisely that purpose.
Before jumping to the conclusion that such concepts are absurd in modern times, recall that during the 1985 European soccer championship in Belgium, the spectators became so emotionally involved in the contest that a bloody riot broke out in the bleachers leaving behind 38 dead and more that 400 injured. U.S. News & World Report gives this account:
The root of the trouble: A tribal loyalty to home teams that surpasses an obsession and, say some experts, has become a substitute religion for many. The worst offenders include members of gangs such as Chelsea’s Anti-Personnel Firm, made up of ill-educated young males who find in soccer rivalry an escape from boredom.
Still, the British do not have a patent on soccer violence. On May 26, eight people were killed and more than 50 injured in Mexico City,… a 1964 stadium riot in Lima, Peru, killed more than 300 – and a hotly disputed 1969 match between El Salvador and Honduras led to a week-long shooting war between the two countries, causing hundreds of casualties.
The U.S. is criticized for the gridiron violence of its favorite sport, football, but outbursts in the bleachers are rare because loyalties are spread among many sports and national pride is not at stake. Said Thomas Tutko, professor of psychology at California’s San Jose State University: “In these other countries, it used to be their armies. Now it’s their competitive teams that stir passions.” (5)
Having considered all the ramifications of blood games, The Report from Iron Mountain concluded that they were not an adequate substitute for war. It is true that violent sports are useful distracters and do, in fact, allow an outlet for boredom and fierce group loyalty, but their effect on the nation’s psyche could not match the intensity of war hysteria. Until a better alternative could be found, world government would have to be postponed so that nations could continue to wage war.
Finding A Credible Global Threat
In time of war, most citizens uncomplainingly accept their low quality of life and remain fiercely loyal to their leaders. If a suitable substitute for war is to be found, then it must also elicit that same reaction. Therefore, a new enemy must be found that threatens the entire world, and the prospects of being overcome by that enemy must be just as terrifying as war itself. The Report is emphatic on that point:
Allegiance requires a cause; a cause requires an enemy. This much is obvious; the critical point is that the enemy that defines the cause must seem genuinely formidable. Roughly speaking, the presumed power of the “enemy” sufficient to warrant an individual sense of allegiance to a society must be proportionate to the size and complexity of the society. Today, of course, that power must be one of unprecedented magnitude and frightfulness. (6)
The first consideration in finding a suitable threat to serve as a global enemy was that it did not have to be real. A real one would be better, of course, but an invented one would work just as well, provided the masses could be convinced it was real. The public will more readily believe some fictions than others. Credibility would be more important than truth.
Poverty was examined as a potential global enemy but rejected as not fearful enough. Most of the world was already in poverty. Only those who had never experienced poverty would see it as a global threat. For the rest, it was simply a fact of everyday life.
An invasion by aliens from outer space was given serious consideration. The report said that experiments along those lines already may have been tried. Public reaction, however, was not sufficiently predictable, because the threat was not “credible.” Here is what the report had to say:
Credibility, in fact, lies at the heart of the problem of developing a political substitute for war. This is where the space-race proposals, in many ways so well suited as economic substitutes for war, fall short. The most ambitious and unrealistic space project cannot of itself generate a believable external menace. It has been hotly argued that such a menace would offer the “last best hope of peace,” etc., by uniting mankind against the danger of destruction by “creatures” from other planets or from outer space. Experiments have been proposed to test the credibility of an out-of-our-world invasion threat; it is possible that a few of the more difficult-to-explain “flying saucer” incidents of recent years were in fact early experiments of this kind. If so, they could hardly have been judged encouraging. (7)
This report was released in 1966 when the idea of an alien presence seemed far fetched to the average person. In the ensuing years, however, that perception has changed. A growing segment of the population now believes that intelligent life forms may exist beyond our planet and could be monitoring our own civilization. Whether that belief is right or wrong is not the issue here. The point is that a dramatic encounter with aliens shown on network television – even if it were to be entirely fabricated by high-tech computer graphics or laser shows in the sky – could be used to stampede all nations into world government supposedly to defend the Earth from invasion. On the other hand, if the aliens were perceived to have peaceful intent, an alternative scenario would be to form world government to represent a unified human species speaking with a single voice in some kind of galactic federation. Either scenario would be far more credible today than in 1966.
The Environmental-Pollution Model
The final candidate for a useful global threat was pollution of the environment. This was viewed as the most likely to succeed because it could be related to observable conditions such as smog and water pollution– in other words, it would be based partly on fact and, therefore, be credible. Predictions could be made showing end-of-earth scenarios just as horrible as atomic warfare. Accuracy in these predictions would not be important. Their purpose would be to frighten, not to inform. It might even be necessary to deliberately poison the environment to make the predictions more convincing and to focus the public mind on fighting a new enemy, more fearful than any invader from another nation – or even from outer space. The masses would more willingly accept a falling standard of living, tax increases, and bureaucratic intervention in their lives as simply “the price we must pay to save Mother Earth.” A massive battle against death and destruction from global pollution possibly could replace war as justification for social control.
Did The Report from Iron Mountain really say that? It certainly did – and much more. Here are just a few of the pertinent passages:
When it comes to postulating a credible substitute for war … the “alternate enemy” must imply a more immediate, tangible, and directly felt threat of destruction. It must justify the need for taking and paying a “blood price” in wide areas of human concern. In this respect, the possible substitute enemies noted earlier would be insufficient. One exception might be the environmental-pollution model, if the danger to society it posed was genuinely imminent. The fictive models would have to carry the weight of extraordinary conviction, underscored with a not inconsiderable actual sacrifice of life. … It may be, for instance, that gross pollution of the environment can eventually replace the possibility of mass destruction by nuclear weapons as the principal apparent threat to the survival of the species. Poisoning of the air, and of the principal sources of food and water supply, is already well advanced, and at first glance would seem promising in this respect; it constitutes a threat that can be dealt with only through social organization and political power. …
It is true that the rate of pollution could be increased selectively for this purpose. … But the pollution problem has been so widely publicized in recent years that it seems highly improbable that a program of deliberate environmental poisoning could be implemented in a politically acceptable manner.
However unlikely some of the possible alternative enemies we have mentioned may seem, we must emphasize that one must be found of credible quality and magnitude, if a transition to peace is ever to come about without social disintegration. It is more probable, in our judgment, that such a threat will have to be invented. (8)
Authenticity Of The Report
The Report from Iron Mountain states that it was produced by a Special Study Group of fifteen men whose identities were to remain secret and that it was not intended to be made public. One member of the group, however, felt the Report was too important to be kept under wraps. He was not in disagreement with its conclusions. He merely believed that more people should read it. He delivered his personal copy to Leonard Lewin, a well-known author and columnist who, in turn, negotiated its publication by Dial Press. It was then reprinted by Dell Publishing.
This was during the Johnson Administration, and the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs was CFR member Walt Rostow. Rostow was quick to announce that the report was a spurious work. Herman Kahn, CFR director of the Hudson Institute, said it was not authentic. The Washington Post – which was owned and run by CFR member Katharine Graham – called it “a delightful satire.” Time magazine, founded by CFR-member Henry Luce, said it was a skillful hoax.
Then, on November 26, 1967, the Report was reviewed in the book section of the Washington Post by Herschel McLandress, which was the pen name for Harvard professor John Kenneth Galbraith. Galbraith, who also had been a member of the CFR, said that he knew firsthand of the Report’s authenticity because he had been invited to participate in it. Although he was unable to be part of the official group, he was consulted from time to time and had been asked to keep the project a secret. Furthermore, while he doubted the wisdom of letting the public know about the Report, he agreed totally with its conclusions. He wrote:
As I would put my personal repute behind the authenticity of this document, so would I testify to the validity of its conclusions. My reservations relate only to the wisdom of releasing it to an obviously unconditioned public. (9)
Six weeks later, in an Associated Press dispatch from London, Galbraith went even further and jokingly admitted that he was “a member of the conspiracy.”(10)
That, however, did not settle the issue. The following day, Galbraith backed off. When asked about his “conspiracy” statement, he replied: “For the first time since Charles II The Times has been guilty of a misquotation. … Nothing shakes my conviction that it was written by either Dean Rusk or Mrs. Clare Booth Luce.” (11) Continue reading . . .
Original source Freedom Force International
SF Source ZenGardner.com Dec 2015
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