This past weekend I indulged in rather gratuitous minor vices by viewing some deliciously decadent TV offerings: film noir classics at Turner Classic Movies (TCM) Summer of Darkness, (which can be viewed here) and six episodes of AMC’s series, The Making of the Mob: New York which appeared on the Sundance Channel. The latter is an eight-part docudrama (stylistically reminiscent of the History Channel’s egregious The Men Who Built America) that begins in 1905 and spans more than 50 years, tracing the original five Mafia families that led to the modern American organized crime syndicate (and its enforcement arm of Murder, Inc.), including the rise of Charles “Lucky” Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, Frank Costello, and Vito Genovese.
One dynamic noticeably missing from the The Making of the Mob series was the covert connection between the “crusading” New York special prosecutor of Luciano, Thomas E. Dewey, and his subservience to the Rockefeller interests in Gotham. Dewey’s role as compliant tool and quintessential “Rockefeller Republican” enemy of the Old Right was something repeatedly emphasized by keen power elite analysts such as Murray N. Rothbard (see here, here, and here).
It is the intersection of the “underworld” of organized crime with the “upperworld” of the power elite (with the connecting link being narcotics, the intelligence community and covert action operations), that fleshes out the “hidden history” of the American Deep State, with its vast noirsh archipelago of corporatist intelligence contractors and criminal syndicates networking across the North American continent.
Dewey and the Rockefellers were fitted like hands and gloves. The Bureau of Social Hygiene was incorporated by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. in 1913 as a result of his service on a special grand jury to investigate “white slavery” in New York City in 1910. The purpose of the Bureau was “the study, amelioration, and prevention of those social conditions, crimes, and diseases which adversely affect the well-being of society, with special reference to prostitution and the evils associated therewith.” A grant-making agency that emphasized research and education, the Bureau did not have an endowment but was dependent on financial backing from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Spelman Fund of New York, the New York Foundation, and individuals such as central bankster Paul Warburg and Rockefeller, Jr., the main contributor.
From 1911 to 1928, the Bureau’s main targets were prostitution, vice, narcotics, and police corruption. Between 1928 and 1934, the Bureau shifted its emphasis towards criminology, crime reporting, juvenile delinquency, social hygiene, and narcotics. The Bureau ceased making new appropriations in 1934, and by mid-1937 all previous commitments had been brought to a close.
Rockefeller was an early supporter of population control and eugenicist Margaret Sanger. LRC readers are advised about three very intriguing books which further explore this subject: Edwin Black, War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign To Create a Master Race; Edwin Black, Nazi Nexus: America’s Corporate Connections to Hitler’s Holocaust; and Jerry Leonard, Hitler Is Winning: How Hitler’s Plan For A Master Race Was Created By The West And Is Being Implemented Today.
3:39 pm on July 27, 2015
