10 Organizations of Evil!

A Brief History

On May 14, 1955, eight communist nations in the orbit of the Soviet Union (USSR) signed a mutual defense pact military alliance, known as The Warsaw Pact. This gang of communist countries aligned with the USSR was organized as a counter to the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) mutual defense pact aligned with the United States and its Western allies in response to communist aggression and the stated goal of the USSR and other communist countries to forcibly convert the rest of the world to communism by any means possible. Today we take note of 10 times “evil” organizations or agreements were formed by those parties that either were in opposition to the good order and welfare of our society, including political opponents, or were criminal in nature. (Note: The use of the word “evil” does not really mean an inherently despicable and nefarious intention, but instead refers to someone or something associated contrary to the normal status quo of American and or Western life. Virtually any of the modern terrorist organizations, many religious cults, motorcycle gangs, drug cartels or racist oriented organizations could be included, but then the list would be too long!)

Digging Deeper

1. Warsaw Pact.

Under the idealistic guise of communism, with the noble goals of equality of all people and even distribution of the wealth of a society, with each person neatly fitted into the job they are best suited for and all people provided whatever they need to survive and prosper, the communist siren song attracted many gullible people over the years, but events in real life proved the dream to be illusory. Communist regimes were invariably dictatorships that were maintained for the benefit of those in power to the detriment of the “slave” populations of workers, in many ways worse than the oppressed masses due to the machinations of capitalists (ie., rich people) in the rest of the world. As stated so clearly by the British rock group, The Who, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” Instead of providing a mutual defense against capitalist Western aggression, the Warsaw Pact was more or less a mechanism by which member countries could bail out each other when their own people attempted to revolt, notably in Czechoslovakia in 1968, always under the careful tutelage of the Soviet masters. Member nations included the USSR, Albania, Bulgaria, Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Romania and Czechoslovakia.

2. Axis Powers.

During the Great Depression of the 1930’s, an obscure political radical named Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany, modeling himself on the Italian fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini. As Germany and Italy developed strong central governments with dictatorial powers and a penchant for building up their military might to reinforce their positions of power, the Rome-Berlin Axis was created by the voluntary association of an alliance the 2 strong totalitarian dictatorships in 1936, with Mussolini boasting (he often boasted) that “Europe would rotate on a Rome-Berlin axis.” The alliance was cemented in 1939 by a “Pact of Steel” military alliance agreement, and in 1940, Japan was added to the “Axis Powers” via the Tripartite Pact. Once World War II got underway, some other nations were coerced into joining the Axis Powers on the side of evil against the democratic “free world.” While the democratic nations (usually just called “The Allies”) that opposed the Axis during World War II were not exactly pure of heart when it came to racism and colonialism, the Axis powers were particularly racist and nationalist, quite brutal about that racism.

3. German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact.

When the phrase “A deal with the devil” is used, this shameful pact comes to mind! In 1939, in preparation for the German war plans of invading their peaceful neighbor, Poland, Adolf Hitler made a deal with the sworn enemy of Nazism, the communist Soviet Union under uber evil dictator Josef Stalin. Thus, 2 of the most evil men in all of history, each in charge of one of the most evil administrations in history, got together to make a pact that allowed each to attack Poland without provocation and split the spoils without having to worry about interference from the other nation, even though each of these nations was the natural enemy of the other. Once the “non-aggression” pact was signed, the fate of Poland was sealed. Hitler proved just how dangerous a deal with the devil could be, as he had no intention whatsoever of living up to the tenets of the pact, and initiated the largest invasion in human history when he sent his armies into the Soviet Union in 1941, effectively stabbing Stalin and the USSR in the back. “Hey, you knew I was a snake when you let me in!” (To paraphrase the Johnny Rivers song, “The Snake.”)

4. Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

The Japanese idea for “co-prosperity” with other Asian countries before and during World War II was really Japan prospers and other countries supply the resources and slave labor for Japan. Japanese hegemony extended to China, Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Burma, the Philippines and many other islands and countries, and if they had been more successful would have extended into India as well. Japan chafed under the European colonialism that controlled much of Asia, when Japan thought that the Japanese were the “rightful” rulers of those Asian lands. In many cases puppet governments were installed to do Japan’s bidding in the conquered lands. Murder, slave labor, forced prostitution, torture, arbitrary and inconsistent enforcement of laws and rules, and torture were common to the Japanese “Co-Prosperity” experience of those subjugated countries and territories. Worst of all was the dreaded Unit 731 that conducted human experiments on live Chinese victims of various effects of weapons, diseases, chemicals and extraneous tortures. The hypocrisy of the term “co-prosperity” is profound.

5. Murder, Inc.

An assassination squad for the Mob headed up by ruthless killer “Lord High Executioner” Albert Anastasia, the hit men for the Mob was originally headed up by Louis Lepke before Anastasia, also known as “The Mad Hatter,” took over. Operating from the 1930’s until Anastasia himself was gunned down in 1957, the killers sometimes known as “The Brownsville Boys” iced somewhere between 400 and 1000 victims. Murder, Inc., or alternately Murder Incorporated, hit a rough patch in the 1940’s when several of their number were sent to prison, largely due to Abe “Kid Twist” Reles who ratted them out to the cops. Reles “accidentally” fell to his death. Thomas E. Dewey, a New York prosecutor and state governor came to prominence by prosecuting the killers, earning himself the Republican nomination for President in 1944, though he lost the election to incumbent Franklin Roosevelt. Murder, Inc. had its origins in the Jewish Mob during the 1920’s, and morphed into a Jewish/Italian crime assassination ring based in New York City, doing the “wet work” for both the Jewish and the Italian gangsters in the 1930’s and 1040’s. Not limited to gunning down victims, the murderers from Murder, Inc. also used a variety of other devices such as knives and ice picks to do in their marks. The assassins were paid a regular salary, with a bonus for each killing, usually between $1000 and $5000. The most prolific of the assassins is said to have been Harry “Pittsburgh Phil” Strauss, who allegedly killed between 100 and 500 people at the behest of the Mob. (Just to have an excuse to name some of the colorful nick-names used by these ruthless killers and their victims, we list a few here: Max “the Jerk” Golob, Sidney “Fats” Brown, John “Spider” Murtha, Jacob “Kuppy” Migden, Jack “the Dandy” Parisi, Vito “Socko” Gurino, Angelo “Julie” Catalano, “Joe the Baker” Liberto, George “Whitey” Rudnick, “Dukey” Maffetore, and Abe “Pretty” Levine. Only special mobsters such as Albert Anastasia deserved more than one nick-name!)

6. The Mafia.

Contrary to repeated assertions by the late FBI director J. Edgar Hoover that there was/is no such thing as the “Mafia,” numerous books, television shows and movies say otherwise! We are referring here to the Italian-American organized crime world that operates in the United States, although also has ties to Italy, Sicily and other places, such as formerly Cuba. Sometimes called simply “The Mob,” the Mafia is often also labeled as “The American Mafia” or “The Italian-American Mafia” to differentiate it from so many other crime organizations that have picked up the generic title of “Mafia,” such as “The Russian Mafia” or Elvis Presley’s posse, “The Memphis Mafia.” The one we refer to here is the granddaddy of “mafias,” the real deal. The origins of the Mafia date back to the 1860’s in the New Orleans area, where Italian immigrants were treated as “colored” and had to scramble to make a living. An influx of Sicilian and Italian immigrants with a background in various forms of murder, racketeering, extortion and crime in general coalesced into organizations that in turn coalesced into a larger criminal organization known as “The Black Hand.” New York City became the next hot spot of Italian-American immigration and those criminal types among them found each other and formed criminal enterprises often based on pre-existing criminal organizations from back in Italy or Sicily. The Prohibition Era created a golden age of mobsterism (my invented word) in the US, fertile ground for the Mafia to make enormous sums of money expand their numbers, wealth and influence. The rise of Mussolini in Italy also sent many Italians fleeing to the US, both law abiding types and criminals. With branches in almost all major cities and regions, with New York and Chicago dominating the US mob scene, “Lucky” Luciano managed to unite the various Italian mobs under his banner into an umbrella “Mafia” crime organization with a sort of rule book and set of norms to follow for the benefit of all members. Also known among the criminal world as “The Commission,” the Mafia leadership called Luciano capo di tutti capi, or “boss of all bosses.” Under the big boss were the bosses of individual crime “families,” often actually run by a real family. By the 1950’s, 26 such families existed. The Mafia easily survived the end of Prohibition as they branched out into all aspects of crime, growing in power and wealth all the time, infecting many aspects of the US economy and social structure, including labor union activities, entertainment and politics. Mafia influence was especially pervasive in the establishment of Las Vegas as the gambling and entertainment capital of the US. The 1970 RICO law enabled prosecutors to prosecute mobsters successfully and make inroads against the Mafia stranglehold on American crime, with many prominent Mafiosi sent to prison, notably John Gotti, although the crime organization continues unabated. Sorry, J. Edgar Hoover, the Mafia was and is real.

7. Axis of Evil.

In his first State of the Union national address after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, in January of 2002, U.S. President George W. Bush made a point of labeling foreign governments and organizations that supported or encouraged terror activities as an “Axis of Evil.” He included such nations as North Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran, and implied that any other country that supported these nations were part of the problem. Calling out these nations not only for the terror and mayhem they generate outside of their countries, he also considered them “evil” for the way they treated their own citizens, with little or no regard to the rule of law, human rights and even human decency. Any country that harbored terrorists or refused to cooperate with the US and its allies against global terror would earn a first class seat on the Axis of Evil train. Other politicians and pundits jumped on the bandwagon to label countries and organizations part of the Axis of Evil, and comedians were quick to create satires and parodies of the concept and the term. Syria would later often be referred to as being part of this evil axis. (We would include Washington, D.C., but what do we know?)

8. Symbionese Liberation Army.

The SLA was the radical group that had kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst and turned her into one of their minions. Led by an escaped African-American criminal, Donald DeFreeze, known to his members as “General Field Marshal Cinque” (and apparently the duped group members did not find this hilarious?), DeFreeze was in fact the only Black member of the “army.” The SLA was to be a representative organization of all left wing radical groups, protesting racism, capitalism, and sexism. To further these goals, the SLA engaged in bank robberies and murder, along with plotting other acts of violence. A notable 1973 SLA murder was of a school superintendent that had planned to issue students ID cards, a “racist” program in the eyes of the SLA. Sadly, the victim, Marcus Foster, was himself African-American and a respected educator by the Black and Left communities. The high profile kidnapping of Patty Hearst in February of 1974 and her subsequent involvement in bank robberies that followed brought national attention to the SLA and the heat from law enforcement turned up considerably. A botched shoplifting event at a sporting goods store led to Hearst shooting her gun to help cover the escape of SLA members, generating sensational news. The shoplifting incident led to tips about the whereabouts of the SLA ‘safe house’ and on May 17, 1974, over 400 police officers descended upon the scene at East 54th Street and ordered the allegedly heavily armed occupants out by bullhorn. An older man and child exited, with the child spilling the beans about armed people inside. Those suspected occupants failed to respond to orders to vacate the house, so tear gas was fired into the house, eliciting automatic gunfire back at the cops. The 6 SLA members inside were indeed heavily armed and had fully automatic (machine gun) M-1 carbines among their large cache of firearms. SLA members also threw home-made grenades at the police, without wounding any cops. After 5000 rounds fired by the police and 4000 rounds fired by the SLA, dozens of tear gas canisters launched into the house by the police, creating fires, the 6 SLA members were finally all killed from gunshots or smoke inhalation, including Donald DeFreeze who had shot and killed himself during the shootout. Incredibly, not one single police officer had been hit by any bullets, nor were any bystanders hit with errant shots. (This incident has to be the all-time record of shots at police without hitting any cops.)

9. The Manson Family.

Wannabe musician and general loser, Charles Manson somehow managed to create a cult following him in California, a group he called his “family.” This gang of losers and druggies engaged in all sorts of nefarious activities, culminating in the “Helter Skelter” murders of actress Sharon Tate and 8 others in 1969. In addition to being dangerous, Charles Manson was clearly delusional. He thought his mediocre musical skills were good enough to collaborate with the Beatles and other major rock stars. He was also convinced that blacks would rise up and conquer white people in a war of the races, and then leave Manson in charge to rule the victorious blacks because somehow they would not be smart enough to do it themselves. How contradictory and insane is that? Even if normal people see how crazy this all this, his nutty followers obviously do not; in addition to a bunch of them slaughtering Sharon Tate and her friends, another one of them was later convicted of trying to kill President Ford. Manson was convicted of murder, even though he was not personally present at the killings, and sentenced to death, but a Supreme Court decision that threw out California’s death penalty spared his life. He died in prison in 2017.

10. Lord’s Resistance Army.

The LRA, also known as The Lord’s Resistance Movement, is an African cult-like rebel group based on heterodox Christian principles that terrifies central Africa, especially the Congo and Uganda, claiming to want to establish a government ruled by the 10 Commandments. Notable criminal activities of this nutty group include murder, abduction, mutilation, and child-sex slavery, often involving the kidnapping of children and murder of adults. Many of the kidnapped children are forced to become “soldiers” for the organization, led by Joseph Kony, a charismatic cult leader claiming to be a prophet of God, he has been called “Africa’s David Koresh.” Established in 1987, the group was originally labeled United Holy Salvation Army and Uganda Christian Army/Movement. Activities of the LRA have been somewhat curtailed in recent years, with Kony probably hiding in the Sudan or somewhere. (While other crazy and dangerous African groups of thugs exist, notably Boko Haram, we limit ourselves to a single group to represent what is worst in Africa.)

Question for students (and subscribers): What organizations would you include on this list? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.

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