by RAUL DIEGO
With his latest SCOTUS nomination, Trump advances the designs of a clique of ultra-conservatives with ties to a Catholic secret society and Cold War stalwarts leading the US to the brink of overt fascism.
The Trump White House wasted no time in nominating Amy Coney Barrett, a devout Catholic, to the Supreme Court after RBG’s passing gave this administration an unprecedented third bite at the SCOTUS apple. Barring an improbable successful challenge by Democrats, Barrett is on her way to becoming a Supreme Court justice and tipping the scales of the highest court in the land in favor of Conservatives by a margin of seven to two.
As the American media lurches forward onto the predictable spectacle that such a lopsided court will, no doubt, elicit from the irredeemably partisan media, it is worth shining a spotlight on the links Barrett has to an organization described by a defector as a “totalitarian” group “imbued with fascist ideas turned to religious purposes” with direct involvement in the darkest activities of what some call the permanent or “deep” state.
The man who is said to vet the president’s list of SCOTUS candidates, Leonard Leo, is the executive vice president of the arch-conservative Federalist Society, which has figured in the appointment of all but one of the conservative justices currently sitting on the Supreme Court, including Trump’s two now-installed nominees, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.
While the Federalist Society itself has plenty of dubious relationships with individuals like Charles Koch and his network of billionaire oligarchs hell-bent on reshaping American politics to serve their ends, it is Leo’s association to another organization that reveals links to far older and more powerful networks that harken back to the most recondite history of Cold War politics and the CIA in their ostensible fight against communism through an “unholy alliance” between the intelligence agency, the Vatican and the Mob.
Sordid connections
Leonard Leo is a board member of the Opus Dei’s Catholic Information Center (CIC), where sitting U.S. Attorney General, Bill Barr, and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, also once served. The Catholic lay group has been described as one of the world’s “most powerful and politically committed” secret societies, with direct ties to the Vatican as a “personal prelature,” an official status awarded by John Paul II that made sure the group only answers to the Pope himself.
Founded in 1928 by a Spanish priest and lawyer, Opus Dei, wouldn’t become the agent of global fascism until later in the twentieth century when the CIA began funneling money to an Opus Dei think tank in Chile called the Chilean Institute for General Studies (IGS) after it drew support for the overthrow of democratically elected president Salvador Allende from Chilean bishops, and was a pivotal cog in the implementation of Operation Condor – a transnational intelligence operation running through Southcom to aid South American right-wing dictatorships in the 1970s. Many of the members of IGS went on to become cabinet officials in Pinochet’s military junta.
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