Fourth Reich Archaeology

As promised, this is the second half of our play-by-play of Jack Ruby's manic wild ride leading up to his murder of Lee Harvey Oswald on live TV on November 24, 1963. We pick up right where we left off, deep into the night of November 22, with Ruby taking his roommate ("boyfriend"?), George Senator, and his employee-cum-tenant, Curtis Laverne "Larry" Cravard, on a quest to collect evidence of what he perceived to be an antisemitic false flag attempt to blame the Jews for Kennedy's assassination.We trace Jack's bizarre activities over the subsequent 32 hours leading up to the fatal moment at 11:21 AM on Sunday morning in the basement of the Dallas Police building. We get into some light speculation over what really happened, and what was going on in Jack's drug-addled, sleep-deprived, and desperate mind in the most decisive day and a half of his short life.Remember, if you want to hear the full 2+ hour Part 3 in its entirety, head on over to Patron.com/fourthreicharchaeology and sign up. We will be back soon with Max Arvo to cover the somehow-even-stranger events of the final years in Ruby's life, including his "treatment" by a team of spooked-up psychiatrists helmed by none other than Louis Jolyon "Jolly" West himself.

Friends, ‘Muricans, Countrymen. Or, for that matter, anyone lucky or unlucky enough to find themselves in the grips of the American Empire. We hope you enjoy this departure from our ongoing series (plural) to take stock of American independence on this anniversary of American “independence” (Luca Brasi voice). Dick and Don offer asynchronous reflections on the meaning and continuing viability of the so-called American Experiment as it descends into a place as dark as the one Frederick Douglass excoriated over 150 years ago.We also feature Douglass’s words, and those of one of his intellectual successors, Kwame Turé aka Stokely Carmichael, to hammer home the point that there can be no progress without the organization of the masses of the people, and only that organization can bring about Justice. Progress isn’t progressive at all if it isn’t built on a foundation of Justice, premised in turn upon a reckoning with the crimes of history. And that reckoning is precisely what we are trying to bring forth here on Fourth Reich Archaeology.

We are back with Part 3 of our deep dive into the life and times of Jack Ruby. Recall that in Part 1, we focused on Ruby’s early years in Chicago’s southwest side during America’s  Prohibition era. Ruby’s rough and tumble upbringing put him in the mix with kids who grew up to be well-connected guys in some of the most powerful and notorious mob families of the 20th Century.  We discussed how Ruby’s ties to the mob influenced his eventual move to Dallas and his decision to set up clubs in the city. In Part 2, we put Chicago in the broader context of postwar America and traced the mob’s westward and southerly expansion from hubs in Chicago and New York to towns like Las Vegas and Dallas. We further fleshed out the connections between Ruby and the mafia and set the scene for the tragic events of November 1963. In this episode, we jump into the action and focus on the timeline of events immediately leading up to the killing of Lee Harvey Oswald. At the time Ruby was, to say the least, a little stressed.  He had a massive debt with the IRS and faced serious problems with local unions and competitors in Dallas. But in the days leading up to JFK’s assassination, Ruby made a flurry of calls to his mob pals, some of whom he hadn’t spoken to in years. On November 17, he traveled to Las Vegas to see Lewis McWillie–a man with ties to Meyer Lansky and Santos Trafficante. When he returned from that trip, Ruby told his tax attorney that a “friend” (whom Ruby never identified) would cover his tax debts. Perhaps a sign of relief, Ruby spent the night of November 21st out on the town, dining at the famed Dallas restaurant, Campisi’s.  That brings us to November 22, 1963. When news of the assassination broke, Ruby closed his clubs and spent the day roving around town.  He famously visited both Parkland Hospital (where Kennedy’s body was taken) and the Dallas police station (where Oswald was being held).  In proper Jack Ruby form, he made a splash wherever he went. He cried on journalist Seth Kantor’s shoulder while at Parkland. He corrected another journalist during a presser at the Dallas police station. For two days and nights, Ruby roamed the streets of Dallas and wound himself up. And on the morning of November 24, he let himself loose on Lee Harvey Oswald.This one is another two-parter, with Side A available for free this week and Side B coming to you next week. But if you can't wait for next week, you can hear the entire episode (Sides A & B) right now by subscribing to our Patreon. So head on over to patreon.com/fourthreicharchaeology and make a donation to listen to the whole thing today!

Author and critic Malcolm Harris joins Don for a forward-looking, optimistic discussion on communism, the possibilities for leftist organizing in our fascist hellscape (including concrete steps YOU can take to contribute to the struggle), the buildup to war in Iran, and much more. If you’re not already familiar with Malcolm’s work, you should be. He is the author of four books including 2023’s Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World, and this year’s What’s Left: Three Paths Through the Planetary Crisis. He has also emerged as a leading critic of the “Abundance” rebranding of neoliberal technocracy, publishing a thoughtful review at the Baffler (https://thebaffler.com/latest/whats-the-matter-with-abundance-harris). In What’s Left, Malcolm proposes that the left must pursue a variety of strategic approaches to confronting the climate crisis and the root causes of extractive capitalism and militarism that have fueled the fires burning our world. We discuss how we might make these strategies “fit together like puzzle pieces” in harmony, with the goal of ecological survival and planetary justice, as well as some of the biggest obstacles in the way. We hope you enjoy, and that we’ll have a chance to catch up with Malcolm down the line to check in on how things go from here.As a treat, a never-heard original song from Don (aka Angleton’s Orchids) for the outro.Meanwhile, you can get Malcolm’s books at your local bookstore or library, follow him on Twitter @BigMeanInternet, on Tik Tok @MalcolmHarrisClips, or on the scene in Philadelphia - check philacal.com for events!Follow us on Twitter & Insta @fourthreichpod, email fourthreichpod@gmail.com, and sign up for our Patreon if you’re willing and able at patreon.com/fourthreicharchaeology. NO WAR WITH IRAN! END THE GENOCIDE NOW!!

We are back with another installment of our excavation into the U.S. Congress with guest Andrew Myslik, who worked for Rep. Rashida Tlaib as a staffer for her first 7 years in office. Our anchor point for discussion is Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” Without getting too in the weeds, we cover what’s in it, who wins and who loses. Spoiler alert: the winners, as always, are the ruling class. Billionaires, multinationals, military-industrial-tech-surveillance-infotainment-industrial complex. The losers are everybody else, especially the poor and marginalized. We hear from Andrew about how the game is rigged against democracy, how corporate interests take ownership and exercise control over the so-called people’s representatives. We consider how the simultaneous loss of legitimacy by the fascist state and worsening of conditions for Americans - especially Black and Brown people - is leading to a new Amerikan Apartheid. Just one piece of a larger movement for global Apartheid bearing down on us from the “civilized” Western world. Many of our rulers want that, and we’re all but powerless to stop them through the traditionally conceived “democratic” channels. So what then?Support us on Patreon: Patreon.com/fourthreicharchaeologyFollow us on X and IG @fourthreichpod

Welcome back for Part 2 of our excavation into Jack Ruby with Max Arvo! In Part 1, we dug up the surface layer of Ruby’s biography and followed his life trajectory from Chicago’s Southwest side (b. 1911) to Dallas’s club scene in the early 60s. In this episode, rather than going broader, we go deeper. This episode is really about adding some much-needed nuance to the often simplistic picture of American Organized Crime, and how it fits into the nexus between the business and intelligence networks that fueled the rise of the postwar American Empire.We put the City of Chicago in the broader context of postwar America and trace the mob’s westward and southerly expansion from hubs in Chicago and New York. We also examine some of Ruby’s oldest and closest friends from the school of hard knocks - guys like Lenny Patrick, Dave and Sam Yaras, and the hulking Barney Baker. These were street toughs who grew up alongside the Rubenstein kids in the ghetto gauntlet of Capone’s town, and they’d serendipitously pop back up in Jack Ruby’s life in Fall 1963. We also take roll call on Jack’s other bosom pals he met along the way from Chicago to Dallas and beyond - brainier guys like Paul Roland Jones and Lewis McWillie.All of these characters have direct lines to mob royalty: whether it’s Patrick & Yaras’s wet work for Sam Giancana, Baker’s muscle work for Jimmy Hoffa, or McWillie’s work running casinos for Meyer Lansky. They constituted a layer between the higher-ups in the Cosa Nostra and disposable dummies like Ruby.We do our best to really flesh out these connections and go beyond the corkboard, so that we (and you, listener!) can really understand just how “the men who put [Jack Ruby] in the position [he was] in” did so. With this episode the stage is set to pick back up next time in 1963 and go deep on the factual narrative of the Oswald hit. Enjoy!Sign up for our Patreon here: Patreon.com/fourthreicharchaeology.Read Max’s investigative series on Ruby here: https://www.kennedysandking.com/content/author/415-maxarvo.And find Max’s other work here: https://maxarvo.com.

The Warren Commission Decided Series is back with another installment of our ongoing series within a series within a series on Jack Ruby. The great Max Arvo joins us in the excavation once again. 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 Side B of Part 1, we pick up where we left off, laying the foundation for this epic excavation into the Ruby mines. We begin with another excerpt from Jack’s Warren Commission testimony as it keeps getting weirder and weirder. Then, we follow Jack 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. Most people don't know that Ruby played host to music legends like The Band, Hank Williams, and more, besides just strippers. And we end off with his “Cuban exploits" of the late 50s bringing him smack-dab in the middle of the CIA-Mafia war on Castro. You will not want to miss it.Hear the whole Part 1 by signing up for our Patreon here: Patreon.com/fourthreicharchaeology.

We are cross-posting Dick and Don's first ever podcast guest spot from the Coexist, Inc. podcast, hosted by friend of the pod, Isaac Eger. Isaac has been censored from the free spaces of the Internet and has bunkered down over at Patreon, so consider giving him a sub over there (https://www.patreon.com/c/user/about?u=6112951). He gets great interviews with a wide range of guests on many topics, making him a real fixture in the noided-left podcast space. In this episode, recorded way back in October 2024 (before the election, let alone before Trump 2.0!), we get into the usual (anti-) Nazi stuff, Gerald Ford, the Ian Carroll psyop, and much more. Check it out!

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.htmAnd 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