Tune in to WBAI Wednesday mornings at 9 and you might hear some pretty weird stuff, maybe an occasional interview with former Infowars Washington Bureau Chief/Q Anon promoter Jerome Corsi or a rambling editor from the “Journal of 9/11 Studies” questioning the science behind Covid lockdowns. Or maybe you’ll catch the type of guests who appeared on a recent episode, one of whom engaged in Holocaust denial while the other outlined a vast Jewish conspiracy with a hidden hand controlling much of history, including WWI, the JFK assassination, 9/11 and even the fringe 9/11 “truth” movement.
“Guns and Butter” is a rather tedious show which was reportedly booted off KPFA, Berkeley, California’s Pacifica affiliate for, among other things, rampant anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. The show’s supporters see terms like “anti-Semitism” and “Holocaust denial” as catch phrases employed by “Zionists” (i.e., anyone who call this stuff out) in an attempt to stifle their free speech. Since this crowd tends to claim all use of their own words is out of context, I’m going to present direct audio clips from that recent episode of “Guns and Butter.”
The following snippets are from the June 30 “Guns and Butter,” which consisted of pre-recorded lectures given by Swedish conspiracy theorist and Holocaust denier Ole Dammegard and American conspiracist Kevin Barrett. A note on the audio: We have not altered any of these recordings. There are a few instances where Dammegard’s speech appears to have been truncated. This could have been an audio or video glitch during recording or it could have been edited for the “Guns and Butter” episode.
The shoes, the shoes, the shoes!
“People said to have been killed in the death camps”
While laying out a bizarre theory that the presence of shoes at atrocities is part of a grand conspiracy, Ole Dammegard cuts to the chase. “The first time I really encountered these shoes were when it comes to the Holocaust, where they had been used massively in history books and so on [illegible] people who are said to have been killed in these death camps and so on.”
Shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes…Charlottesville was an inside job
In this clip, Dammegard recites his boorish incantation: shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes. He must find this amusing, he repeats the phrase multiple times. Unable to keep from cracking himself up, Dammegard informs listeners that the Boston Marathon Bombing and the “Charlottesville alleged car attack” were all part of the cover up. The inclusion here of the 2017 Charlottesville attack, might surprise some of WBAI’s listeners. When a white supremacist plowed through a crowd of protestors killing Heather Heyer, WBAI’s airwaves were filled with programming denouncing the fascist “Unite the Right” march that took place that weekend. Dammegard continually absolves contemporary Nazis of responsibility for their actions. In the same segment (not included in this audio clip), the sniveling crank also dismisses a racist attack by European neo-Nazis as part of this same false flag conspiracy. Dammegard has consistently dismissed far-right terror attacks since he first got internet notoriety for his apologia for the 2011 massacre of 77 civilians by a right-wing extremist. WBAI-supporting leftists who are seduced by the allure of these conspiracy theories should note that the majority of the victims of these attacks were leftist youths who were attending a summer camp for Norway’s social-democratic Labor Party.
Dammegard and the Holocaust “lie”
Ole Dammegard sees false flags everywhere. Miami condo collapse? The shoes, man, the shoes! The murders of John Lennon and Bob Marley? All part of the conspiracy. Dammegard is also a documented Holocaust denier. In a 2017 interview with white nationalist hate outlet Red Ice on “Making Critical Thinking Illegal: Questioning the Holocaust,” he refers to the mass murder of Jews as a “lie.” On par with the “moon hoax,” Dammegard sees the Holocaust as a myth concocted with help from “Hollywood.” He claims the conspiracy is so deep that “I’ve had people killed around me” for daring to question such things.
Even plane crashes are staged (the shoes!)
Who could possibly be behind all of this?
“So who, who on earth has the power to coordinate all these things?” The answer: Benjamin Netanyahu. (I should note that I am no fan of Netanyahu, I’d like to see him behind bars, but this conspiracy mongering is insane.)
“When you look at these up comes, every single time, the Mossad is there…”
The Jews, the Jews, the Jews!
In the second half of the 6/30 episode of “Guns and Butter,” Kevin Barrett drones on about “the domination of international organized crime and secret societies, banking and politics, again by ethnically Jewish people, many, if not most of whom have some degree of loyalty to the state of Israel.”
CIA/JFK/Mossad/”Jewish Mafia” connection
In a dizzying rant, Barret ties together the “Russian Jewish mafia,” the JFK assassination, the Israeli Mossad, David Ben Gurion and former CIA head James Jesus Angelton (a “CIA Mossad infiltrator”). It all leads to 9/11, of course.
The “secret Jewish intelligence network”
Barrett claims there is a secret intelligence network consisting of “hundreds of thousands of Jewish people around the world, many in the very highest positions who are willing to volunteer free of charge to do anything for the Israeli Mossad. Then there’s media dominance. Those who run the media decide which lies stand and which lies fall. And media in the Western World is heavily dominated by people who are ethnically Jewish with some degree of loyalty to Israel…” This is some real Protocols of the Elders of Zion shit, almost as unoriginal as it is hate-filled and embarrassing.
Barrett claims the conspiracy can be traced back to “Jewish scripture.”
The National Front a victim of false flags?
Barrett dismisses the 2015 attacks on Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket in France as concocted attempts to garner support for Israel. He then claims an attack by French neo-Nazis was a false flag attempt to take down far-right French party the National Front in order to boost the political career of then president Nicholas Sarkozy.
“Inside job” was an inside job
Here Kevin Barrett claims the Zionist reach is so deep its tentacles reach into the “9/11 truth” movement (the fringe that believes the September 11 terror attacks were part of a broader conspiracy).
“And another kind of hijacking that occurred is hijacking the truth movement…the inside job phrase…is a catchphrase invented by Israel precisely to threaten the American government with massive destabilization if anyone in the American government tires to come forward with the truth about 9/11, which is that it was primarily an Israeli operation. Then they’re in a position to bring down the American house by having prepared this truth movement, saying inside job, inside job, inside job, it was the Americans that did it.”
The Left Forum affair
Both Ole Dammegard and Kevin Barrett were among the speakers kicked off the roster at the 2017 Left Forum conference where left-wing intellectuals and activists present papers and talk shop. At the time, leftist journalist Dave Lindorff took to Counterpunch to decry the Left Forum’s caving to “Zionist pressure.” People like Dammegard and Barrett (and their enablers) use “anti-Zionism” to couch their hideous ideology. Some gullible supporters of justice for the Palestinians might be taken in by this nonsense. There is nothing, however, in the noxious ideology of either of these theorists, or the “Guns and Butter” program which promotes any type of racial justice, for the Palestinians, or otherwise. (The author of this post/editor of this site is decidedly not a supporter of the state of Israel, but that is not relevant to the topic at hand).
What gives, WBAI?
WBAI Program Director Linda Perry did not respond to a request for comment on this story. In Perry’s defense, WBAI’s overall programming has been much better under her tenure that at any point in the last decade or so. This website has probably written more positive things about the worthwhile programming on WBAI than anyone else (few people care enough to document this stuff anymore). I don’t think Perry shares the repugnant views expressed on “Guns and Butter.” I do think she is caught in the middle of various difficult personalities and political factions at a station that is in perpetual economic and political crisis.
At some point post-9/11, the conspiracy theorists took hold at WBAI. The worst of this period occurred under the leadership of program director Tony Bates, when WBAI aired excerpts from fundraising premiums by conspiracy peddler David Icke, who believes the world is run by a secret cabal of “lizard people” who all just happen to have conspicuously Jewish surnames. Thankfully, programming under Linda Perry has largely eschewed this sort of thing (though the station is still far too reliant on soylent green health cures and Gary Null infomercials).
We’ve devoted much space on this website to right-wing programming on the NYC airwaves. Nothing we’ve heard on the AM dial is as far right as some of the content on “Guns and Butter.” During his brief 2020 stint on WSNR notorious Nazi Hal Turner didn’t even engage in the type of rhetoric heard in the clips presented here. Paradoxically, the most far-left station on NYC radio is broadcasting some of the most far-right content to be found on the airwaves.
Maybe “Guns and Butter” brings in a good yield at fundraising time. Or maybe someone on the station’s board loves the show. Regardless of the reason, the inclusion on WBAI’s airwaves of a program broadcasting Holocaust denial and unhinged anti-Semitism is inexcusable.
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For more of our take on conspiracy theories on the radio,
check out our essay, More Thoughts on Radio and Survival in a Burning World.
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