Now What Would George Orwell Have Made of the 'Amway' Myth? by David Brear

(This Blog Post by David Brear First Appeared on Quixtar Cult Intervention on November 10, 2008):

Now what would George Orwell have made of the ‘Amway’ myth? (The answer to this question, is everywhere) by David Brear

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‘Many people would sooner die than think. In fact, they do.’

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

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To the casual observer, it can seem surprising how often reference is made to George Orwell (1903-1950) in connection with ‘Amway:’

‘Amway Ministry of Truth;’
‘Amspeak;’
‘All Distributors are equal, but some Distributors are more equal than others;’
‘Freedom is Slavery;’ etc.

However, these irrefutable comparisons have merely been made by free-thinking commentators who, exactly like Orwell, whilst maintaining their sense of humour, were trying to expose a sombre truth behind a thought-stopping Utopian myth that seeks to crush individuality. Indeed, take a look at any common-sense analysis of the cult phenomenon, and Orwell’s shining presence is invariably there. In order to explain exactly why this quintessentially English author - who died more than half a century ago - is still rightly considered to be one of the most reliable guides to contemporary cultic labyrinths like ‘Amway,’ we first have to delve a little into history.

Karl Marx (1818-1883) was a German philosopher/economist, acknowledged to be the founder of ‘International Communism’ (i.e. the radical Socialist ideology, the adherents of which reject individual enterprise and advocate a world-wide revolution in which all private wealth will be abolished and the means of production, distribution and exchange, forcibly taken into collective ownership). Marx himself came from a wealthy and devout Jewish family. He studied, law, history and philosophy, but he was particularly influenced by the works of the German philosopher, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831). Using a form of radical thinking developed by Hegel (who sought to challenge received wisdom), Marx found early fame with his theory of ‘dialectical materialism,’ in which he stated that ‘political and historical events are due to a conflict of social and economic forces caused by man’s material needs.’ By 1844, Marx (aged 26) was openly challenging the establishment in his homeland; not least, by describing religion as ‘the opium of the people.’ Whilst exiled in Paris and then Brussels, he began to collaborate with Friedrich Engels (1820-1895). In 1848, Marx witnessed a series of major political and historical events: the second French revolution, the abdication of the Emperor, Louis-Phillipe, and the declaration of the second French republic. At this time, Marx (aged 30) and Engels (aged 28) published the ‘Communist Manifesto,’ calling for the total transformation of society by the abolition of private wealth. After radical Socialists failed to take control of Paris (May-June 1848), and moderate republicans installed Louis Napoleon Bonaparte as the Prince-President of France (1849), Marx withdrew first to Cologne and then to London. He developed a thought-provoking, new terminology for challenging the establishment’s own version of reality. In 1867, Marx (aged 49) published ‘Das Kapital’ (Volume 1). By the end of the 19th century, the collected works of Karl Marx had become preferred reading not only for authentic Socialists and intellectuals, but also for the latest generation of cult instigators. Unfortunately, it was possible to enslave the masses by peddling the myth of future redemption in an ‘International Communist’ Utopia; a problem that Marx recognised, but which he failed to stop prior to his death.

The ‘Bolsheviks’ (Russian for majority) were originally a self-righteous minority-group of ‘Marxist-inspired extreme-Socialists,’ led by Vladimir Ilitch Oulianov (1870-1924) a.k.a. ‘Lenin.’ They emerged from the many traumatized Russians, who, like ‘Lenin,’ had been exiled from their homeland for dissenting from the traditional myth that the ‘Tsar,’ and his heirs, were ‘anointed by God.’ ‘Lenin’ first infiltrated and then subverted the moderate Russian Social Democratic party, by packing a conference (held in ‘the Brotherhood Church,’ Hackney, London, August 1903) with his own followers. In 1912, the ‘Bolshevik/Russian Social Democratic party’ also became the ‘Russian Communist party.’ In July 1917, Tsar Nicholas II was compelled to abdicate. In October 1917, a provisional Russian government was overthrown in the ‘Bolshevik’ revolution.

The ‘Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’ was created by the leadership of the ‘Russian Communist party’ in July 1923. It comprised most of the Russian Empire overthrown in the 1917 revolution. ‘Lenin,’ who (in 1918) had been severely wounded in the head in a failed-assassination attempt, was the ‘USSR’s’ first ‘Comrade Leader.’ However, the new State was in ruins. A bloody civil-war had crippled both agriculture and industry, and millions were already dead or dying. ‘Lenin’ steadfastly pretended moral and intellectual authority whilst sanctioning a series of evermore heinous crimes, but, within a year, he was dead. A struggle developed between a faction led by Lev Davidovitch Bronstein (1879-1940) a.k.a. ‘Trotsky,’ and ‘Lenin’s’ nominated heirs, led by Joseph Vissarionovitch Djougachvili (1879-1953) a.k.a. ‘Stalin’ (‘Man of Steel’).

When, in 1929, ‘Trotsky’ was exiled and ‘Stalin’ took power, he might as well have of called himself ‘Tsar.’ To casual observers, the ‘USSR’ appeared to be governed by ‘democratic committees’ of which the ‘politburo’ (‘policy board’) was the most powerful. In reality, the ‘USSR’ was a one party totalitarian State maintained by the unquestioning obedience of its core-minority of well-fed ‘apparatchiks.’ The majority of subjects lived in squalor, manipulated by the reality-inverting Soviet press, ‘Pravda’ (Russian for ‘Truth’), and terrorized by the ‘KGB’ (‘Committee of State Security’). ‘Soviet’ children were obliged to attend State schools before they could talk. They were trained to denounce all dissidents (including their own parents). One of ‘Stalin’s’ favorite terms was ‘Economic Planning.’ Every ‘Plan’ was doomed to fail. When it did, another one was already in place with a different title: the ‘Two Year Plan’; the ‘Five Year Plan’; etc. According to ‘Pravda,’ prosperity would arrive in the future, if everyone forgot about themselves and worked for the collective good, but, in the ‘USSR,’ the future never came. In 1929, ‘Stalin’ (the son of a shoemaker and a former, trainee Orthodox priest) instigated a ‘Plan to collectivize agriculture and expand heavy industry.’ Within 12 months, he had created a famine in which probably more than 25 millions men, women and children perished. 1936-1938, ‘Stalin’ ordered the execution of at least 1 million ‘Comrades,’ (including approximately 35 000 army officers). 1929-1953, approximately 18 millions people were systematically categorized as ‘Saboteurs’, ‘Terrorists’, ‘Enemies of the People’, etc. They were put on show-trial and condemned to serve indefinite prison terms in the ‘Gulag’ system (‘Main Directorate of Camps’); probably 10 millions did not survive. Officially, none of this existed. When Soviet dissidents escaped to the West in the 1930s and testified to what was really occurring, they were systematically ridiculed by ‘International Communists,’ for whom the truth was unthinkable. ‘Trotsky’ spent 11 years traveling the world trying to organize an opposition to overthrow ‘Stalin,’ but in 1940, he was murdered by a ‘KGB’ agent in Mexico. In the late 1940s, escaped Soviet dissidents again published the truth in the West. For a while they were silenced by malicious lawsuits filed by ‘Stalin’s’ lawyers who were armed with compromising information gathered by the ‘KGB.’ After WW II, the Soviet myth infected Eastern Europe, spawning a series of reality-inverting ‘Socialist Republics.’ After ‘Stalin’s’ death, a new generation of ‘Comrade Leaders’ denounced his abuses. They accused him of having been at the center of ‘a personality cult.’ For a while, the new regime managed to repair old Utopian myth, but the ‘USSR’ went effectively bankrupt during the 1980s. By 1991, the ‘Soviet’ press could not maintain its absolute monopoly of information in the face of satellite television.

In 1920, more than 70 years prior to the demise of the ‘Soviet’ myth (and before it had even acquired its title), the Welsh philosopher and mathematician, Bertrand Russell, spent a month traveling in Russia. He followed a delegation of bedazzled, British Labour party members and trade-unionists. They’d been on a pilgrimage to witness the birth of what they believed was going to be the world’s first ‘Marxist’ Utopia. On his return to London, Russell published ‘The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism;’ a now largely-forgotten book, but which contained a remarkable insight:

‘I cannot share the hopes of the Bolsheviks any more than those of the Egyptian anchorites; I regard both as tragic delusions, destined to bring upon the world centuries of darkness and futile violence.… The principles of the Sermon on the Mount are admirable, but their effect upon average human nature was very different from what was intended. Those who followed Christ did not learn to love their enemies or turn the other cheek.… The hopes which inspire Communism are, in the main, as admirable as those instilled by the sermon on the Mount, but they are held as fanatically, and are likely to do as much harm.… The war has left throughout Europe a mood of disillusionment and despair which calls aloud for a new religion as the only force capable of giving men the energy to live vigorously. Bolshevism has supplied the new religion.’

In 1920, the words ‘totalitarian’ and ‘totalist’ were not available to Bertrand Russell. Although ‘totalitarian’ was originally coined circa 1922 by the leadership of the ‘Italian Fascist party’ to peddle their own myth, the word wasn’t recorded in its modern pejorative sense (of or relating to any centralized dictatorial form of government requiring complete subservience to the State — a person advocating such a system) until circa 1929.

In 1945, George Orwell (given name, Eric Arthur Blair) published ‘Animal Farm, A Fairy Story’ (Martin, Secker & Warburg, London). This best-selling book is the most-celebrated allegory of the 20th century. In it, Orwell exposed ‘Soviet’-style totalitarianism by presenting fact as fiction. With a perfect sense of irony, he described how, at a moment of vulnerability, any nation can need to accept fiction as fact.

‘Animal Farm’ begins in ‘England’ on the ‘Manor Farm,’ where animals live in ignorance and allow themselves to be exploited by their owner, Mr. Jones…. One night, a prize white boar, ‘Old Major,’ recounts his ‘Dream of an Animal Republic without whips, where no animal goes hungry and the strong protect the weak.’ He inspires his ‘Comrades’ to rebel. When ‘Mr. Jones’ gets so drunk that he forgets to feed them, the animals chase him off. Two literate young boars, ‘Comrades’ ‘Napoleon’ and ‘Snowball,’ take command by offering to build ‘Old Major’s Dream.’ They paint a line through the word, ‘Manor,’ on the farm gate, and paint the word, ‘Animal,’ in its place. They paint the ‘Seven Commandments of Animalism’ in white letters on the black wall of the barn:

1. ‘Whatever goes on two legs is an enemy.’
2. ‘Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.’
3. ‘No animal shall wear clothes.’
4. ‘No animal shall drink alcohol.’
5. ‘No animal shall sleep in a bed.’
6. ‘No animal shall kill any another animal.’
7. ‘All animals are equal.’


The animals are generally illiterate, but they are so willing to please that they trust ‘Comrade Snowball’ to form committees to run the farm.

He draws up a complex plan to construct a giant windmill. However, after defeating ‘Mr. Jones’ counter-attack, ‘Comrade Napoleon’ turns on ‘Comrade Snowball’ with the help of an ambitious young boar, ‘Comrade Squealer,’ and the mercenary farm dogs. ‘Comrade Snowball’ is exiled and diabolized. He is falsely accused of having been the secret agent of ‘Mr. Jones’ and he is blamed for every misfortune (including bad weather). Gradually, the animals are dissociated from external reality and driven into a state of paranoia. Their only source of information is ‘Comrade Squealer.’ The animals toil from dawn till dusk constructing the windmill believing that this will be for everyone’s benefit. However, the pigs move into the warm farmhouse and live off the fat of the land whilst the other animals are left to freeze and starve outside. ‘Comrade Napoleon’ employs a human lawyer and begins to trade the farm’s produce with neighboring human farmers. They cheat ‘Comrade Napoleon’ by giving him counterfeit money. The farm is then invaded by humans with guns and explosives. The animals suffer heavy losses. They fight-off the humans, but the windmill is destroyed. Two young pigs are obliged to make false confessions that they were ‘traitors.’ They are publicly executed by the farm dogs (on ‘Comrade Napoleon’s’ orders). A string of animals make false confessions of guilt, and they too are publicly executed. The rest of the animals are powerless — the ego-destroying truth that they’ve been deceived is unthinkable. ‘Comrade Napoleon’ begins to style himself as ‘Comrade Leader, the Father of all Animals’ and he pretends to be dying. The pigs start to wear clothes and to drink alcohol. Although he has been the bravest defender of the farm and its hardest worker, when he becomes too old and sick, the loyal cart-horse, ‘Comrade Boxer,’ is taken away to a glue factory. All along ‘Comrade Napoleon’ and ‘Comrade Squealer’ have been subverting the ‘Seven Commandments:’

‘No animal shall drink alcohol (to excess).’
‘No animal shall sleep in a bed (with sheets)’
‘No animal shall kill another animal (without just cause).’ etc.


Eventually, the ‘Seven Commandments’ are reduced to just one:


‘ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE
EQUAL THAN OTHERS’


‘Comrade Napoleon’ and the other pigs begin to walk on two legs. They are observed by the animals through the windows of Mr. Jones’ farmhouse, drinking alcohol and playing cards with a group of capitalist farmers. The humans praise the pigs for running a farm where the ‘lower animals work harder, and are fed less, than on any other farm in England.’ The capitalists even want to copy the pigs methods. ‘Comrade Napoleon’ decides to change the name on the gate back to the ‘Manor Farm.’ Finally, the animals look at the pigs’ faces and realise that they have become indistinguishable from humans.

‘Animal Farm’ is now generally regarded as a satire of the ‘Soviet’ Empire. ‘Old Major’ is Karl Marx, ‘Mr. Jones’ is Tsar Nicholas II, ‘Animalism’ is ‘Communism,’ the ‘Manor Farm’ is the Russian Empire, ‘Animal Farm’ is the ‘USSR,’ the ‘animals’ are the Soviet Peoples, ‘Comrade Napoleon’ is a combination of ‘Lenin’ and ‘Stalin’, ‘Comrade Snowball’ is ‘Trotsky,’ ‘Comrade Squealer’ is the Director of ‘Pravda,’ the ‘farm dogs’ are the ‘KGB,’ etc. Shortly before his death, Orwell explained exactly what he meant:

‘I thought of exposing the Soviet myth in a story that could easily be understood by almost anyone and which could be easily translated into other languages. However, the actual details of the story did not come to me for some time until one day… I saw a little boy, perhaps ten years old, driving a huge cart-horse along a narrow path, whipping it whenever it tried to turn. It struck me that if only such animals became aware of their strength we should have no power over them, and that men exploit animals in much the same way that the rich exploit the proletariat.'

George Orwell’s final book, ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ (Martin, Secker and Warburg, London, 1949), subtitled ‘A Novel,’ was originally to be entitled ‘The Last Man in Europe’ or ‘Nineteen Forty-Eight.’ In this, Orwell again presented fact as fiction. He set his story in ‘London,’ the chief city of ‘Airstrip One,’ the third province of ‘Oceania,’ itself one of 3 centrally-controlled Empires (including, ‘Eurasia’ and ‘Eastasia’) which are permanently at war with one another. In ‘Oceanea,’ drab austerity is the order of the day, but the smiling image of the ‘Leader’, ‘Big Brother,’ is everywhere, along with thought-stopping slogans:

‘WAR IS PEACE.’
‘FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.’
‘IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.’
‘BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.’


The book’s central character is ‘Winston Smith,’ a deluded bureaucrat working for the ‘Ministry of Truth’ (i.e. the State-run propaganda machine). ‘Winston’ is, however, secretly struggling to establish his individuality. Although it is absolutely forbidden, he writes down the procedures by which he has been programmed to accept and disperse fiction as fact. In ‘Oceania,’ ‘Ingsoc’ (the ‘English Socialist Party’) controls everyone’s mind. This is achieved by maintaining an absolute monopoly of information using a constant repetition of reality-inverting key words and images. The English language is gradually being pruned down to a formulaic, childish jargon, ‘Newspeak,’ designed surreptitiously to handicap its users’ capacity to think critically. ‘Emmanuel Goldstein’ is portrayed as the ‘Enemy of the People’ and ‘Commander of the Brotherhood’ (a ‘network of evil conspirators’)… All sexual desire and activity (other than for the purpose of procreation) is deemed a ‘sexcrime’… children are used to spy on their parents… ‘Oceania’ is following a never-ending series of ‘3 Year Plans’… clocks have 13 hours… society is ordered into 3 rigid groups — the majority ‘Proletariat’ (who live in poverty and total ignorance), a minority of unquestioning ‘Outer Party Members’ (who have had their memories wiped) and a smaller minority of ‘Inner Party Leaders’ (who alone have access to the truth). ‘Winston’ has a sordid affair with ‘Julia,’ a fellow ‘Outer Party Member’ who prefers to use sex as a means of rebellion. The couple meet an ‘Inner Party Leader,’ ‘O’Brien,’ who pretends to identify with them. He talks of ‘revolution.’ ‘O’Brien’ turns-out to be an agent provocateur. He has ‘Winston’ and ‘Julia’ arrested by the ‘Thought Police’ and tortured. Finally, something snaps in ‘Winston’s’ mind. He betrays ‘Julia’ and declares his ‘love’ for ‘Big Brother.’

Whilst most contemporary, left-wing, British intellectuals were unable to see beyond its external presentation, Orwell looked only at the quantifiable evidence and realised that, internally, the so-called ‘USSR’ was about as far removed from an authentic Socialist republic as it was possible to get. However, mainstream British Socialists of Orwell’s generation (i.e. the leadership of the Labour Party and the trade union movement), although influenced by Karl Marx, also traced their egalitarian beliefs to non-conformist Christian Churches. Consequently, it wasn’t that difficult for them to begin to face the truth when it first leaked out. In the UK, during the 1930s, ‘Stalin’ came to be almost universally recognised as a brutal despot. In 1939, all but the most-deluded British communists had to confront reality when ‘Stalin’ signed a ‘non-aggression pact’ with Adolf Hitler. After 1941, when the ‘Nazi’ myth invaded territory controlled by the ‘Soviet’ myth, and Britain and the USA became allied to the ‘Soviets,’ it became a matter of expediency to deny reality again. Consequently, in 1945, it was almost impossible for Orwell to get ‘Animal Farm’ published. By 1949, the international political climate had changed dramatically. In 1951, CIA agents acquired the rights to ‘Animal Farm’ and ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ from Orwell’s widow. Five years later, the former had been turned into an animated film and the latter into a motion picture. Ironically, these productions were secretly supervised by an organization known as the ‘American Committee for Cultural Freedom’ (i.e. the propaganda Dept. of the CIA).

Although Orwell included an extensive appendix to ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ entitled, ‘The Principles of Newspeak’ (in which he clearly explained that, in any totalitarian system, reality-inverting language and imagery are used to stop subjects from thinking), when the book was first published at the beginning of the Cold War, many westerners (particularly right-wing politicians and journalists) imagined it to be a criticism of Socialism. Orwell died within a few months of publication, and his American publishers did not attempt to correct this misconception (it was good for business). However, the following is what Orwell had to say in response to the first, crass reviews of ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four:’

‘My recent novel is not intended as an attack on Socialism or on the British Labour Party (of which I am a supporter) but as a show-up of the perversions to which a centralized economy is liable and which has already been partly realized in Communism and Fascism. I do not believe that the kind of society I describe will necessarily arrive, but I believe… that something resembling it could arrive.’

How right Orwell was, but (just like Bertrand Russell 30 years before) few people seem to have taken much notice of his timely warning.


Copyright David Brear 2008

"The 'American Way' is really no different to the 'Soviet Way', but then totalitarianism can be tailored to fit any period or situation." David Brear

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Final Thoughts (by  blog administrator quixtarisacult)

I asked David Brear for assistance in writing a few final thoughts on his expose. He was kind enough to provide me with some quotations of his own and a few from others. I am including them as they serve to put a ribbon and bow on the wonderful gift that his expose provides for anyone desiring to enter into the Graduate School of Amway Cult thought, and provide readers with a more insightful understanding of the Amway Cults and the Amway Myths, which are continuing to be perpetuated by the Amway Cult Instigators today. What follows are the words of David Brear:

I think what we want your readers to grasp is that 'totalitarianism itself is enduring, its camouflage is ephemeral.'

The 'American Way' is really no different to the 'Soviet Way', but then totalitarianism can be tailored to fit any period or situation.

The definition of democratic socialism is a political/economic system where the means of production, distribution and exchange are held in common ownership. In democratic capitalism, these are owned by individuals and commercial corporate structures, but independently regulated. Orwell worked out that if these economic factors are centrally-controlled by a perverted minority who cannot be held to account, or removed from office, then it's neither socialism nor capitalism and it's certainly not democratic.

For almost half a century the DeVos and Van Andel dynasties have controlled the means of production, distribution and exchange in their own totalitarian economy. In this respect, the only difference between them and 'Stalin' is that they have hidden behind 'capitalism' and American 'patriotism', but then capitalism in its purest form is crime and 'patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels.'

Remember, the pigs go down to the farm gate and change the name back to the 'Manor Farm' at the end of Orwell's allegory. It doesn't matter in the slightest what name is written over the entrance to any totalitarian system. The only word that is never written over the entrance to a totalitarian system, is 'totalitarian'.

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote:

'We need lies....in order to live.'

Adolf Hitler (an admirer of Nietzsche) wrote :

'The broad mass of the people will more easily fall victim to a big lie than a small one.'

The ancient, Athenian poet, Agathon (a man who lived 2500 years ago) wrote:

'Even God is deprived of this one thing only: the power to undo what has been done.'

We might not be able to undo what has been done, but, if we follow the example of Orwell, we do have the power to undo the big lies which make vulnerable people do wicked things. ...David Brear

Just How Absurd and Dangerous is 'Amway?'

...by QCI contributing author, David Brear:

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‘A lie can be half-way round the world before the truth has got its boots on.’


James Callaghan (1912-2005)

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Readers who are unfortunate enough to have come into contact with ‘Amway’s’ handful of fanatical Internet apologists know that their devious motto is:


Always attack, never defend!


At the same time, these financially-illiterate sophists (led by David Steadson a.k.a. ‘ibofightback’ a.k.a.‘Insider’ etc.) invert reality by excluding all quantifiable evidence to the contrary whilst steadfastly pretending that the ‘Amway Business’ is an innocent victim under attack from outrageous lies spread by a jealous minority of violently anti-capitalist lunatics who know nothing whatsoever about commerce. In support of this typically-paranoid totalitarian fantasy, the apologists (who pose as independent) sneer arrogantly and wield reams of ‘statistics’ the origin of which can only be ‘Amway’s’ own bleating flock of reality-inverting apparatchiks. However, on closer inspection, this mystifying material turns out to be so absurd, that it almost beggars belief that anyone (outside the most-deluded of ‘Amway’s’unquestioning adherents) can fall for it.


For decades, the ‘Amway’ Ministry of Truth has proudly proclaimed millions of ‘Independent Business Owners’ conducting billions of dollars of ‘Sales’ in dozens of countries. Yet, given the accepted, average annual drop-out rate (approximately 50%), it is possible to extrapolate that, in the adult world of quantifiable reality, tens of millions of aspiring ‘Amway Distributors’ have vanished down the years, to be replaced by an endless chain of wide-eyed would-be millionaires. Only a 1-2% core-group of claimed adherents have remained bedazzled for periods exceeding 5 years and, in the end, even they have abandoned all (false) hope of achieving future redemption in the (non-existent) ‘Amway’ Utopia. Informed readers will notice the remarkable similarity between this ridiculous, self-inflating ‘Amway’ propaganda and that of ‘Scientology.’ Tellingly, the parent ‘Amway Corp.’(including its ever-expanding labyrinth of subsidiaries) has never voluntarily released any accurate, verifiable information as to what percentage of the organization’s (apparently impressive) global market has comprised authentic retail transactions (i.e. sales to persons who are not transient players of the ‘Amway’ game of make-believe). Sadly, it’s not just the ‘Amway’ faithful who have swallowed these sugar-coated lies. Despite having once paid a total of C$70 millions to avoid extradition and imprisonment for perpetrating the largest tax-fraud in Canadian legal history, the co-authors of the ‘Amway’ myth, Richard (‘Rich’) Marvin De Vos (b. March 4th. 1926) and Jay Van Andel (b. June 3rd. 1924. d. December 7th. 2004), and latterly their heirs, have been fêted as philanthropic billionaire-industrialists and exemplary Christian conservatives by an alarming number of casual observers in the international media and political, legal and religious establishment.


Back in the 1970s, when subjected to long-winded investigation by agents of the Federal Trade Commission (who had apparently twigged that the ‘Amway’ myth is a far too good to be true), it was discovered that ‘Amway’s’so-called ‘Multilevel Marketing Scheme’ was, in fact, strangely familiar. Exactly like its Soviet namesake,‘Amway’s’ own ‘Policy Board’/ Politburo (comprising members of the De Vos and Van Andel clans) held absolute control over the means of production, distribution and exchange. FTC agents also discovered that the price and quality of the ‘exclusive’ products being exchanged within ‘Amway’s’ Soviet-style command economy, were maintained in such a way as to render them (effectively) unsaleable on the open market. Contrary to what‘Amway’s’ own reality-inverting apparatchiks and propaganda constantly repeated, the organization’s grinning proselytisers were about as far removed from being ‘Independent Business Owners’ as it was possible to get. They were de facto slave-recruiters indoctrinated unconsciously to accept the following fiction as fact and to exclude all free-thinking individuals and quantifiable evidence challenging its authenticity:


You can buy ‘Amway’ products at a ‘wholesale price’ and then ‘retail’ them to your social contacts at ‘30% profit.’ This ‘short-term strategy’ is fine for some, but, in the end, it’s a ‘waste of time.’ If you are really serious about making big money, there’s ‘no need to sell anything.’ You can ‘Follow a Proven, 2-5 year Business-Building Plan’ and consume a regular quantity of ‘Money-Saving Products’ yourself whilst offering your friends and relations a ‘Helping Hand’ by bringing them onboard. In turn, your recruits can ‘Duplicate Exactly the same Plan’ and consume a regular quantity of ‘Money-Saving Products’ themselves whilst ‘Helping’ their own social contacts to do the same, etc… as ‘Amway’ undertakes to pay its ‘Distributors’ a escalating percentage commission on the totality of their monthly ‘Business Volume’ and on that of their recruits, and on that of the recruits of their recruits, etc… if the ‘Business Building Plan’ is ‘Followed’ correctly, payments automatically multiply in an infinitely-expanding geometric progression. The more people you ‘Help:’ the more money you earn!


In simple terms, vulnerable Americans (who, for whatever personal reasons, needed to believe in the self-perpetuating and self-gratifying ‘Amway’ myth of ‘total financial freedom in 2-5 years’), were actually being peddled infinite shares in what could only be their own finite dollars. Since the centrally-controlled ‘Amway’ market was deliberately designed to produce no real external revenue, no matter how the cash in that hermetic system was divided by its all-powerful treasurers, it was a mathematical impossibility for the overwhelming majority of its powerless participants to receive a profit. The whole of ‘Amway’s’ fiercely complex ‘Compensation Plan’ was, therefore, nothing more than thought-stopping hocus-pocus, but the po-faced agents at the FTC apparently never fully-grasped how the trick was pulled.


Consequently, after 10 years of less-than-intellectually-rigorous FTC enquiries and hearings, ‘Amway’ was merely fined a derisory sum for ‘price-fixing,’ and its greedy rulers were not only allowed to keep their counterfeit company registered in the USA, but also to expand their counterfeit commercial activities overseas. This was because their attorneys steadfastly pretended affinity with the federal regulators and drafted a ‘rule’ which appeared to oblige ‘Amway’ agents to sell-on at least 70% of their own purchases to non-agents before they could qualify to receive commission payments. Interestingly, the US regulators can’t have been completely duped by this devious tactic, because they also compelled ‘Amway’s’ corporate officers to publish accurate and verifiable information about the actual derisory average levels of commission payments. Obviously, this part-regulation only applied in the USA (where ‘Amway’ recruitment took such a dramatic nose-dive that it eventually had to become ‘Quixtar’), whilst all the subsequent evidence proves that the ‘70% rule’ might as well not exist, because, unbelievably, the FTC omitted to introduce any independent instrument to enforce it, or to warn the regulatory authorities internationally of what had really been occurring in the USA. Thus, when ‘Amway’s’ counterfeit commercial activities were recently investigated in the UK, it was discovered that (just as in the USA in the 1960s and 1970s) the organization’s so-called ‘Multilevel Marketing Scheme’ was, in fact, still a ‘Soviet’-style command economy (centrally-controlled by the ‘Amway’ Politburo in the USA), and that the price and quality of the products being exchanged within it, were maintained in such a way as to render them (effectively) unsaleable on the open market. Approximately 96% (and possibly even more) of all ‘Amway UK’s’ claimed ‘Sales,’ were a puerile fiction. Over a period of 35 years, the secret, rolling failure-rate for powerless participants in the premeditated ‘Amway’ closed-market in the UK was (effectively) 100%. Yet again, contrary to what‘Amway’s’ reality-inverting apparatchiks and propaganda constantly repeated, vulnerable British citizens were being peddled the same old Utopian fiction as fact. They were also being indoctrinated to exclude all free-thinking individuals and quantifiable evidence challenging its authenticity.


Mysteriously, senior civil servants in Britain’s Ministry for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (who, off the record, freely-accept that it is impossible to make money in ‘Amway’ and that its core-adherents are brainwashed pawns) chose only to challenge ‘Amway UK’ in the civil courts, rather than try to trigger a diplomatically-embarrassing, international criminal enquiry. However, Lawyers acting for the UK government, like their American counterparts, again failed to explain to both the UK High Court and the UK Appeal Court that, without external revenue (due to the deliberately banal quality and exorbitant pricing of products) ‘Amway’s’ so called ‘Business Model’ is fundamentally fraudulent and that the so-called ‘Compensation Plan’ is utter nonsense. This time, ‘Amway UK’ escaped closure by announcing the expulsion a couple of over-zealous ‘Diamond Distributors’ (including Jerry Scriven) as well as steadfastly pretending innocence and by promising to reform its future activities. However, the counterfeit company is now obliged to publish accurate and verifiable information about the actual, derisory, average levels of commission payments, and its current claimed ‘Distributor’ numbers have dropped to an almost insignificant level.


Unbeknown to the UK High Court and Appeal Court, the identical closed-market swindle was uncovered in France in the mid-1980s; when a minority of confused former ‘Amway’ core-adherents approached consumer, and cult, advice associations complaining of massive financial losses and dissociation from their friends and families. At that time, ‘Amway’ dodged official investigation in France by announcing the expulsion of an over-zealous ‘Diamond Distributor,’ Jean Godzich, and around 80 other over-zealous ‘Distributors,’ for breaking the ‘Amway Code of Ethics.’ The company then steadfastly pretended innocence and promised to reform its future activities, but its claimed numbers of ‘Distributors’ fell from ‘90 000’ to less than ‘5000.’ Godzich went on to operate the identical close-market swindle, complete with (effectively) unsaleable products and a ‘Code of Ethics,’ using a mystifying labyrinth of corporate structures labelled, ‘le Groupement,’ before his re-branded, counterfeit commercial activities were challenged.


In the early 1990s, a complaint was filed against ‘le Groupement’ by a government-funded, French, cult advice group, ‘UNADFI’ (National Union of Associations for the Defence of the Family and the Individual), in conjunction with a consumer advice association, the Women’s Social and Civic Union, on behalf of around 300 destitute former core-adherents. This led to a police enquiry. A French parliamentary report soon revealed that more telephone enquiries (almost 1000 per year) were being made to UNADFI about ‘le Groupement,’ than about ‘Scientology.’ Godzich and 12 associates steadfastly protested their innocence, but they were eventually charged with operating a pyramid scam. In the mean time, the counterfeit company was successfully sued in the civil courts by its victims, but its declared assets were insufficient to pay its debts. ‘Groupement’ was bankrupted and compulsorily wound-up in 1995. A warrant was issued for the arrest of Jean Godzich, but he had already escaped to the USA with a large amount of cash. At this time, approximately 1500 deeply-deluded core-adherents picketed the offices of UNADFI in Paris. The building was occupied, files stolen and a senior UNADFI volunteer, Mathieu Cossu, was held prisoner for several hours and obliged to make a video statement that ‘le Groupement was not a cult.’ Prior to this Jean Godzich had tried to give UNADFI a donation one million French francs (approximately 160 000 Euros). When this blatant bribe was refused, Jean Godzich financed the creation of an (apparently independent) ‘anti-mental manipulation association.’ It was generally believed by paranoid core-adherents that Groupement was the victim of an anti-capitalist conspiracy and that UNADFI was a form of extreme-socialist cult itself.


Some of the other tactics used by Godzich to try to maintain his absolute monopoly of information in France were classics of a cultic movement. A code of silence was introduced along with an internal system of dispute resolution to discourage more dissidents from coming forward. Malicious lawsuits were filed against all external critics in which Godzich posed as victim. Traditional culture was infiltrated via gifts to charity, sponsorship of sport, etc.


The criminal case against Jean Godzich (in absentia) and his associates, didn’t come to trial until the Summer of 2000. At this time, no evidence was presented by the prosecution relating to the much larger ‘advanced fee fraud’ hiding behind ‘le Groupement,’ and the pyramid fraud charge was dropped on technicalities. Amazingly, French law recognizes counterfeit ‘investment schemes’ (or Ponzi schemes) without external revenue or profits to divide, but it does not yet accept that counterfeit ‘marketing schemes’ without external revenue or profits to divide are just a more-sustainable variation of essentially the same crime. However, in January 2007, Jean Godzich received a custodial prison sentence (by default) of 3 years from the Correctional Tribunal of Evreux (Dept. of Eure, Normandy), for illegally transferring around 6 millions Euros of his French-registered company’s social funds to the USA (prior to its compulsory closure in 1995). An international arrest warrant was issued for Godzich (a citizen of both France and the USA) and he was given an additional fine of 500 000 Euros for failing to turn up for his trial in October 2006. Three of his former associates were given suspended prison sentences ranging from 8 months to 2 years along with fines ranging from 10 000 to 80 000 Euros.


At this point, I should like to mention former White House Adviser (on the ‘Religious Right’ to the Bush administration), Doug Wead, who has recently found it necessary to post reality-inverting material on one of his own propaganda Blogs, in which he begins to refer to the Godzich/‘Groupement’ affair, but, tellingly, not by name. In fact, Wead’s propaganda (like that of ‘Amway’s’ instigators) is far more interesting from the point of view of what is excluded rather than what is included. That said, Wead casually acknowledges that he was once an ‘Amway Diamond Distributor’ and that he remains a ‘friend’ of Dexter Yager. However, he steadfastly pretends to be an innocent victim under attack from lies posted by ‘Amway critics’ on the Net. Apparently, it has been suggested (by certain ‘critics’) that Wead helped set up ‘Amway’ and then ‘le Groupement’ in France, and that a warrant was issued for his arrest in France. I should like to set the record straight. Although it is true to say that Wead’s name never appeared on any of the incorporation documents of the counterfeit companies that comprised the French chapter of the ‘Amway/Groupement’ myth, his name did feature on countless books, magazines and recordings sold to hundreds of thousands of ‘Amway’ and ‘Groupement’ victims in France (first during the 1980s and then during the 1990s). He even co-authored books with Dexter Yager and Jean Godzich. Wead was also a regular paid-speaker at ‘Groupement’ mass-rallies. Wead was undoubtedly a major beneficiary of a conspiracy to commit, and occult, an ‘advanced fee fraud’ using a mystifying labyrinth of ever-expanding and changing (apparently independent) corporate structures designed to prevent, and/or divert, investigation and isolate beneficiaries like himself from liability. Just as in the UK, it was Wead’s acknowledged ‘friend,’ Dexter Yager, who received the lion’s share of the illicit cash. Whether, he was the final beneficiary, is still a matter of conjecture. Yager led the ‘Amway Network’ of which Godzich and Wead were members. Yager continued to supply the identical books and recordings to Godzich, even after he’d been publicly expelled from ‘Amway France.’ These fraudulent materials were French translations produced by Canadian companies controlled by Yager. In the mid-1990s, French network television journalists traced Jean Godzich to Phoenix Arizona, where they discovered that he and Wead shared an office and that they were both regular ‘Prosperity Gospel Preachers’ at the ‘First Assembly of God.’ During a 10 year period, thousands of deluded core-‘Groupement’ adherents had been peddled grossly-over-priced tickets to visit Phoenix via a Belgian-registered travel agency owned (on paper) by Godzich and his (then) wife. These individuals had received full-immersion baptism into the ‘First Assembly of God’ from Jean Godzich’s brother, Pastor Leo Mark Godzich. The sinister ceremonies were caught on film by hidden cameras, but (when interviewed by a French television journalist) Godzich steadfastly denied their existence.


Given their track records, one would have to be pretty naïve, and/or dim, to believe anything that Messrs. Yager, Godzich or Wead has to say on any subject, let alone ‘Multilevel Marketing.’ Interestingly, Wead now claims to have long-since retired from ‘Amway’ to become a ‘best-selling author and American historian; However, if by ‘historian,’ Wead means someone who is concerned to discover the truth about the past and to give as accurate a representation of it as possible, then, in respect of ‘Amway,’ he is not a historian. However, Wead is not just another pathetic little narcissist (like David Steadson), steadfastly denying the ‘Amway’ financial holocaust - he’s one of the shameless racketeers responsible for it.


As stated in a previous article, two High Court Judges in the world’s largest democracy have already deduced that what purports to be the ‘World’s Largest Direct Selling Company,’ is actually a global fraud. Exactly the same alarming evidence has been uncovered in India as was found in the USA in the 1960s and 1970s, in France in the 1980s and 1990s and in the UK at the beginning of the 21st. century. Confused Indian victims have come forward to complain of massive financial losses coupled with dissociation from friends and family. However, on this occasion, although all the usual devious tactics are being pursued by the corporate officers of ‘Amway India Enterprises’, and their aggressive echelon of attorneys, in a desperate attempt to maintain their paymasters’ absolute monopoly of information (including the issuing of two malicious, High Court writs to block a police investigation), Chief Justice C.S. Singhvi, and Justice C.V. Nagarjuna Reddy, of the High Court of Judicature, Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad, have concluded that ‘Amway’s’ so-called ‘Multilevel Marketing Scheme’ is in breach of well-conceived, Indian legislation (dating from the 1970s) which bans all ‘money circulation schemes,’ no matter how ingeniously they are disguised. The High Court has ordered that the Hyderabad Criminal Investigation Dept. should be allowed to continue to follow whatever procedures are permitted by Indian law to hold the corporate officers of ‘Amway India Enterprises’ to account.


Currently (just as in Britain and France in the recent past), the sanctimonious little gang of Bible-thumping, US-based charlatans behind the ‘Amway’ myth remain out of reach of the Indian authorities. It is to be hoped that the new Obama administration will not permit this pernicious international racket to continue for much longer.



Copyright David Brear April 2009

Selling Broken Dreams: The Amway Legacy

(This blog post by quixtarisacult first posted on Quixtar Cult Intervention March 25, 2008)




Failing to learn from history dooms one to repeat it. One thing is clear about Amway, which plans to celebrate its first fifty years in existence, is that we have a clear view of what it is and has done. It is not the new kid on the block. We have seen it in action and results of its operation are known.

Regardless of the paid public relations "dream spinners" at Alticor, which paint Amway as a glorious success, the opposite is true. If you are in the founding family, you are looking down on a business that has made wealthy men of the founders, Rich Devos and the now late Jay Van Andel and their families. From their standpoint, business has been good.

From the standpoint of the major tool kingpins, looking down from their position at the pinnacle of distributors who feed upon tapes, books, DVD, Cd's and function tickets, life is good. They have benefited by selling a training system that continually "conditions" those people who buy them to keep on buying them over and over. These Business Service Materials are the Lays Potato Chips of the Network Marketing Industry. You just can't eat one. You must eat the whole bag and then buy another bag and on and on it goes. That is great if you are selling potato chips and Business Service Materials.

From the standpoint of the so called Independent Business Owner--a term that is incredibly misleading--business is not be so good. These folk do almost all the buying in this industry: the products and the tools. It is at their level looking up at the successful business tycoons above them that they see two different groups of people. They see the Amway Corporation and they see the Top Distributor "Kingpin" sellers of the Business Service Materials. Obviously they know these two groups are wealthy, and there is no secret how this wealth was made.

IBOs are the unpaid work horse in the Amway hierarchy. They purchase all the of the products and mostly self consume them. Might they be part of the small minority that actually retails some product to outside consumers, they still absorb most, if not all, the business expense involved in these sales. IBOs do all of the recruitment of new distributors and eat all of the costs. IBOs pay for their own training by buying the BSMs and attending meetings, functions and conventions. IBOs are the givers. They make the sacrifice of time and money which only benefits the successful people who provide the products and BSMs.

Where is the real compensation for this IBO group? This third group does not operate like normal business does because they are not a normal business. They operate not like a business, but as consumer in their relationship with the Corporation and the Motivational Tool Sellers.

I ask this question: What are the IBOs expecting to receive for all this devotion and sacrifice? Sacrifices are made to gods are they not? Will such incredible sacrifices be rewarded by their gods at some future time? Possibly, but in the case of Amway, most likely not. There is nearly fifty years of history to base a judgment of Amway results upon.

Are the supposed success stories in Amway to be believed? Why have so many so called successful people quit and are now revealing stories of deception and woe? Statistically, over the long history of Amway, less than 1% ever reach the Emerald pin level of the business. Of these, many have quit and/or are still working regular jobs. They may have had their moment in the sun so to speak at a big Amway Rally, but they are mere mortals and remain that way to this day. These people have been used in one of the largest Bait and Switch Deceptions ever devised by the imagination of man. The Selling of Broken Dreams is the Amway legacy.

HOW AMWAY FRAUD WORKS: THE BAKKER'S ADVANCE FEE FRAUD

(The following blog post by guest blogger and guide to the Amway Labyrinth, David Brear, first appeared on Quixtar Cult Intervention on November 3, 2008)

‘It is the wisdom of the crocodiles, that shed tears when they would devour.’
Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

In the Bible, a story is told of Jesus feeding 5000 people with just a handful of loaves and fishes, and of basketfuls of leftovers being gathered after the feast. However, it is important to understand that, in the biblical tale, all Jesus asks for in return, is unquestioning belief in ‘future redemption.’ Should some sanctimonious performer require of 5000 individuals the same unquestioning belief in ‘Jesus the Redeemer,’ but exploit their faith to extract $1000 per head entrance to ‘The Miracle Buffet,’ then he/she would gross $5 millions. Unless the sanctimonious performer really does possess the superhuman power to turn the finite into the infinite, then his/her activity is an ‘advanced fee fraud’ (a form of theft). Sadly the De Vos and Van Andel clans and their associates (with the Bible in one hand and the Stars and Stripes in the other) have not been alone in committing this, the most absurd, but nonetheless grotesque, of American crimes.

James (‘Jim’) Orson Bakker (b. 1939) is the son of Michigan ‘Dutch Pentecostalists’. In 1962, Bakker (aged 23), became a pastor in the ‘Assemblies of God.’ His diminutive wife was, Tamara (‘Tammy’)-Faye LaValley (1942-2007), the daughter of (divorced) Minnesota ‘Pentecostalists.’ The couple met at ‘North Central Bible College.’ They went on to found a ‘joint-ministry’ in N. Carolina. From 1964 until 1973, the fresh-faced young pastors worked in Virginia at ‘CBN’ (‘Christian Broadcasting Network’) for Pat Robertson. They were founder members of ‘The 700 Club’ (a televangelist programme in the style of a variety show). They also hosted ‘Come On Over’ - a daily programme for children, in which a glove puppet, ‘Susie Moppett,’ was used to explain ‘the Word of the Lord.’ However, the Bakkers’ enormous success and their intimate friendship with Pat Robertson created a lot of jealousy at ‘CBN.’ They decided to go to California where they coined the catch-phrase, ‘PTL’ (‘Praise The Lord’), for ‘TBN’ (‘Trinity Broadcasting Network’) owned by Paul and Jan Crouch. Within a year, the Bakkers moved back East and created their own show, ‘The PTL Club.’ This soon generated a multi-million dollar income; it was screened by around 100 television stations. The Bakkers went on to found their own ‘PTL Television Network’ a.k.a. ‘The Inspirational Television Network’ in Charlotte, N. Carolina.

In 1982, Jim and Tammy-Faye Bakker used their popular cable programmes, ‘The PTL Club’ and ‘The Jim and Tammy Show’ (which were eventually beamed into 13.5 millions American homes via 200 television stations), to launch ‘Heritage USA,’ the ‘World’s Largest Christian Theme-Park/Retreat Center’ to be built on a 4 square-mile site at Fort Mill, S. Carolina. To finance this, the Bakkers asked their television audience to send a minimum of one voluntary contribution per year to become a ‘Partner in Ministry’ (i.e. a person with the right to access ‘Heritage USA’). Jim Bakker created a series of corporate structures, including ‘Heritage Village Church and Missionary Fellowship’ to run the project. As the head of a tax-free religious organization, Bakker had no legal obligation to supply any material benefit in return for unspecified, voluntary donations. An estimated 1 million people contributed over a period of 6 years. The number of ‘Partners in Ministry’ stabilized at approximately 600 000. In this way, Bakker lawfully acquired absolute control of sufficient capital assets to build his Utopian project. Eventually, ‘Heritage USA’ employed almost 3000 people. After ‘Disney Land’ and ‘Disney World,’ it was the third most-visited theme-park in the USA - boasting a reconstruction of ‘Old Jerusalem,’ a ‘Crystal Palace’ 30 000 seat Conference Center, a 1 500 seat television studio, a ‘Crystal Tower’ Resort Hotel, a ‘Heritage Island Inspirational Water Park’ with Bible teaching on an artificial beach, etc. Bakker even bought the childhood home of Dr. Billy Graham, and had it rebuilt as a shrine at ‘Heritage USA.’

In 1984, the Bakkers made another ‘offer.’ In return for one mandatory minimum ‘contribution’ of $1 000, ‘Partners in Ministry’ could become ‘Lifetime Partners in Ministry’ (i.e. persons with the additional right to ‘3 nights free accommodation annually in exclusive luxury hotels on the Heritage USA site for the rest of their lives’). This Christian time-share scheme was open to the public and involved a sales contract. Although this stated (in small print) that ‘accommodation was subject to availability,’ the officers of ‘Heritage USA’ were bound by federal law to supply what they’d sold. However, ‘Heritage USA’ president, pastor Jim Bakker, and his vice-president, pastor Richard Dortch, set no limits on the number of contracts. Between 1984 and 1987, approximately 153 000 people paid the $1 000 (certain individuals are now known to have given as much as $7 000), but only one 500 room hotel was ever completed. The odds against getting a room were, in fact, more than 300/1. Not one single contributing participant filed a complaint — the truth was unthinkable. Bakker’s image stared directly out of the slick advertising material, smiling benignly with his wife, son and daughter around him. He styled himself as ‘America’s Favourite Televangelist… Spiritual Adviser to: Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George Bush.’ Tammy-Faye’s trademarks were her outrageous hairstyles, kitsch outfits and doll-like makeup. At the end of each ‘PTL’ show, she would sing a heart-rending hymn and pray that ‘God’ would ‘bless Heritage USA’ before fixing the camera and bursting into floods of mascara-stained tears. Behind this apparently absurd façade, between 1984 and 1986, the Bakkers awarded themselves over $5 millions in ‘salaries and bonuses.’ On one occasion, a private jet was chartered by the ‘PTL’ organization at a cost of $100 000, just to fly the couple’s wardrobes across the USA. They now advocated a ‘Gospel of Prosperity.’ This ostensibly ‘Christian’ doctrine was used as the false justification for buying a $200 000 Rolls-Royce, 3 Cadillacs, various condominiums in California and a $600 000 villa in Palm Springs. The gold plate in the bathrooms of the Bakkers’ 6 homes was alone, reputed to have cost $60 000 whilst their pet dog slept in an air-conditioned kennel. Tammy-Faye’s shopping addiction led to her being ridiculed as the ‘Imelda Marcos of televangelism.’

In 1987, Jim Bakker was dragged into a sordid sex scandal by Jessica Hahn (b. 1959), the glamorous secretary of another ‘Pentecostalist’ pastor, Eugene Profeta. Hahn (who later bared-all in ‘Playboy Magazine’) claimed that, whilst attending a national conference of Christian ministers in Florida in 1980 (when she was 21), she’d been drugged and raped for 15 minutes by Bakker and another preacher, John Wesley Fletcher, and that Bakker and Fletcher had then taken it turns to sodomise one another in front of her. Hahn approached a journalist at the ‘Charlotte Observer’ and threatened to file a multi-million dollar civil lawsuit. Bakker denied rape, but admitted that, in 1980, he’d had a 15-20 minute (one to one) consensual sexual encounter with Hahn in a hotel room in Clearwater Florida. ‘PTL’ lawyers made a secret out-of-court settlement totalling $265 000 to keep Hahn from going to court. However, Bakker’s competitors (in the cut-throat televangelist business) acquired this intelligence. He was obliged to resign from his presidency and from his ministry. Jerry Falwell (1933-2007), ‘Baptist Minister,’ co-instigator and self-appointed leader of ‘The Moral Majority’ and the rising star of the ‘Religious Right,’ appeared to be taking over the ‘PTL’ Empire, but at Jim Bakker’s own request. However, at the last moment, Bakker changed his mind. A bitter struggle then ensued to seize Bakker’s television network which was, in effect, a licence to print money. Leading the pack was Jerry Falwell who now described Bakker as ‘a liar, embezzler, sexual deviant…the greatest scab and cancer on the face of Christianity in 2000 years of Church history.’ Falwell subsequently took over the ‘PTL Network’ and ‘Heritage USA.’ He promptly sacked all Bakker’s existing staff. With his Utopian dream-world falling apart (Tammy-Faye was in the ‘Betty Ford Clinic’), Bakker faced more, traumatic public revelations. He had been sexually-abused from the age of 11 by a male adherent of his parents’ church. When Jerry Falwell failed to have the ‘PTL’ Empire placed in voluntary receivership, he passed confidential, internal documents to federal agents proving there had been serious financial irregularities during Bakker’s rule. A series of investigations led to ‘Heritage USA’ being compulsorily placed in receivership and its tax-free status was revoked. All assets were sold-off at a fraction of their cost. Pastors Bakker and Dortch faced federal indictment for fraud, tax-evasion and racketeering.

In 1989, Bakker was convicted of fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud. He was fined $500 000 and sentenced to 45 years federal prison. In effect, Judge Robert Potter ruled that, although Bakker and Dortch had been fêted as philanthropic millionaires and exemplary Christian conservatives by an alarming number of unthinking observers in the US media, and the political and religious establishment, the pair had unlawfully obtained at least $158 millions by peddling ‘future accommodation’ in largely non-existent hotel rooms. In his defence, it was claimed that Bakker had reinvested most of these vast ill-gotten gains in ‘Heritage USA,’ and that he’d only received a $200 000 salary and kept $3.7 millions ‘bonus’ for himself. However, Bakker’s lawyer accepted that his client had deliberately attempted to conceal his illegal activities by maintaining two sets of accounts. Before he was led (in chains between two US Marshals) to a waiting car, Bakker was found crying and whimpering on the floor in the foetal position. He later claimed to have been experiencing hallucinations in which the crowds outside the Charlotte Courthouse had ‘transformed into demons and wild beasts.’ As Bakker tried to hide from reality on the back seat of the Marshal’s car, a small group of his most-bedazzled followers tried to throw themselves in its path. For a while, it was feared that there might be a collective suicide. In 1991, Bakker’s appeal against conviction for fraud and conspiracy was denied by another federal court, but his original sentence and fine were deemed too severe, and waved. At a later hearing, he was re-sentenced to 18 years federal prison.

Jim and Tammy-Faye divorced in 1992. In 1993, Tammy Faye married Roe Messner, one of the contractors who had built ‘Heritage USA.’ After serving less than 5 years behind bars, Jim Bakker was released on parole for ‘good behaviour.’ Billy and Franklin Graham (who had previously visited Bakker in prison) supplied him with a house and car. In 1995, Bakker spoke to a conference on ‘Christian Leadership’ and received a standing ovation from 10 000 clergymen. In 1996, a N. Carolina jury rejected a class action filed against the Bakkers on behalf of 160 000 people who had entrusted the pair with money. In 2005, it was calculated by the US Internal Revenue Service that the Bakkers still owed $3 millions in unpaid taxes, fines and interest from what they had falsely declared to be ‘non-profit-making’ activities back in the 1980s.


Copyright David Brear 2008

(Author David Brear has provided the following footnote):

The author of the article is fully-aware of the many direct connections between various 'Amway' Kingpins and the Bakkers; particularly, Dexter and Birdie Yager, Doug Wead and Don Storms. Before its demise, the 'Heritage USA Conference Centre' was the venue for countless pay-through-the-nose-to-enter 'Amway' events. Tellingly, Bakker himself, remains an enthusiastic supporter of the 'Amway' myth.

David Brear and Quixtarisacult Exchange Views On Amway

Blog post first appeared on Quixtar Cult Intervention on January 30, 2009)


Quixtarisacult:

Didn’t Amway recently complain to the Indian Government that regulations be invoked against their competitors for operating chain letter type scams that were competing unfairly against their supposedly legit business? Couldn’t happen to a better bunch of schemers and scammers?


David Brear:

Since the original police investigation of Amway in Andhra Pradesh became public knowledge, David Steadson (a.k.a. Insider a.k.a. IBOFightback etc.) has been steadfastly pretending on his multiple Websites that it was purely the result of a malicious complaint made by a vindictive individual involved in a marital dispute.

Since the criminal charge against Amway India was confirmed, which blows this sinister lie out of the water, Steadson/Insider/IBOFightback has been posting comments on numerous Websites in which he now pretends that ‘it’s business as usual for Amway in India.’

In reality, Amway’s Indian agents are abandoning the organization in droves, whilst the corporate officers of Amway India now risk prison sentences. Meanwhile, the American authors of the Amway myth cannot be touched by the Indian authorities.

Quixtarisacult:

Dave, obviously this David Steadson* fellow can not be trusted on any point of fact involving the Amway business. It seems like so much of what goes on in the Asian MLM market is like a black hole. Hopefully there are some Indian citizens that might read this blog post and keep us up to date on what exactly is going on over there with Amway. Sounds like Amway has been put out of business, at least in this one State.

Amway likes to portray itself as being something so much more superior than the run of the meal “money circulating” and “Ponzi” schemes that seem to be popular in Asia. Amway always tries to differentiate their product based pyramid schemes from other scams and schemes. Obviously at least the regulatory authorities do not buy their arguments, at least not yet. Maybe regulatory oversight isn’t for sale in India as it is in the US?

David Brear:

The terms: ‘money circulating’ and ‘Prize Chit’ are used in Indian law to identify what should be more accurately described as a ‘Premeditated Closed-Market Swindle’. In Boston in the 1920s, Carlo Ponzi sold bonds printed in denominations up to $50 000. These promised a 50% profit in 12 months. Ponzi claimed that he could take the investors money and buy international postal coupons in countries with weak economies and then ship them to the USA to be exchanged for 4 times what they’d cost. This was a lie. There were no external profits. Ponzi retained absolute control of the means of exchange Amway’s instigators.

Ponzi retained absolute control of the means of exchange in a premeditated closed-market. Amway’s instigators have made this type of swindle even more complex, but, essentially, it remains the same. There are no external profits, because Amway’s products have always been deliberately priced too high. Amway’s instigators have retained absolute control over not only the means of exchange, but also the means of production and distribution in a premeditated closed-market.

What lies behind Amway’s closed-market swindle is a secondary, much larger, ‘advanced fee fraud’ using essentially the same tactics as the Nigerian bank scam. This has been operated behind a labyrinth of (apparently independent) corporate structures in order to prevent, and/or divert, investigation and isolate Amway’s instigators from liability. If you read the written statement given to the High Court by a senior company officer of Amway UK, she pretended that she had no idea what was occurring and anyway Amway UK could not be held responsible for the illegal activities of other companies (IBS, etc.) and the individuals who run them. This was Perjury. I made the company officers of Amway UK fully aware of what was occurring as long ago as the mid 1990s. At that time, Amway’s UK lawyers described my accusations as ‘foolish notions’ and circulated a letter which pretended that I’d invented everything as a result of a family dispute.

n the UK in the early 1990s, Amway also pretended to be opposed to pyramid scams and money circulating schemes. The company employed a Conservative UK member of parliament, Andrew Rowe, as a consultant ($20 000 annually). Rowe made several misleading statements in the House of Commons (concerning Multilevel Marketing in general and Amway in particular) when changes to the UK law concerning pyramid scams were being debated. At the same time, hoards of deluded UK Amway adherents contacted their members of parliament. Since the early 1990s, Amway UK has also also employed the directors of two (apparently independent) UK charities (Ian howarth, ‘Cult Information Centre’, and Graham Baldwin, ‘Catalyst’) as consultants. These charities pretend to offer advice and accurate information to members of the public, journalists, academics about cultic groups. Both directors have never openly declared their connections to Amway, but they have openly refused to categorize Amway as a cult. It is certain that Amway has followed similar information monopoly tactics in India.

Quixtarisacult:

Why not say that Amway operates a monopoly product based pyramid scheme? Seems so much easier. Recently I’ve taken to calling Amway a monopoly business since their products do not really compete against similar products in a fair and free market.

Distributors are taught to be product loyal customers and consumers of their own wares and therefore the products generally only compete against other products in the Amway catalog. When “negative” products are excluded from consideration, then high priced monopoly products are the obvious end result. For evidence we can turn to the Amway catalog prices which–even with the distributor discount–are priced exorbitantly higher than brick and mortar store products of similar value. ($78 retail for a one month’s supply of Double X vitamins. Even at distributor cost, this is a total money extracting ripoff!)

Since regulators refuse to recognize the obvious pyramid scheme aspects of Amway, they should then investigate the monopoly product aspects of the Amway scheme. The secondary tool and function business should be investigated in like fashion.

Amway has provided cash cow handouts to Congressmen who then stand in the shadows behind regulators, whom we all know to be asleep at the controls, allowing thousands upon thousands of American citizens along with citizens of the World to be victimized by this worst of all American Scams! Amway is a clearing house for political payoffs much the same way Al Capone was a clearing house for graft in Chicago in days of old.

Amway’s tactics of complaining about other pyramid, Ponzi, money circulating, prize chit scams is a cover to separate themselves from the pack of other predators chasing the same wildebeests! It just boggles my imagination that countries, states, courts, and regulative bodies haven’t stepped in and put an end to these criminal activities before now. Amway has deep pockets to buy hordes of lawyers and special interest lobbyists to keep the scheme rolling forward.

Politicians accept MLM money in a shameless manner. Even Presidents schedule sit down visits to the Ada, Michigan Amway Pooh Bah, Rich Devos, to accept political donations. What a shame for the Grand Old Party! To even consider accepting money that has been extracted by massive consumer fraud makes the magnitude of Amway corruption of insane proportions!

The same lack of regulative oversight which lead to the current fiscal nightmare currently allows any number of MLM pyramid schemes (to include Amway) to continue in operation long after they should have been shut down. The Federal Trade Commission does not enforce its own rules and allows Amway distributors to disregard retail selling rules which the FTC had imposed to insure that Amway does not operate as a pyramid scam.

David Brear:

The term ‘monopoly-based pyramid scheme’ is not sufficiently accurate. Even the more-accurate term, ‘Premeditated Closed Market Swindle’, only begins to explain the problem. In reality, what ‘Amway’ offers is a form of economic pseudo-science, but presented using a constant repetition of reality-inverting ‘commercial’ words and images. What ‘Amway’s’ deluded core-adherents actually believe is that a finite amount of their own money can be infinite. Since they are effectively unsaleable on the open market, ‘Amway’ products are irrelevant. In the final analysis, all closed-market swindles are based on shutting down victims’ critical and evaluative faculties in order to create a belief in essentially the same puerile fiction. Although blief in a ‘Ponzi scheme’ can be temporarily sustained by using the later victims’ cash to pay out the earlier victims, classically, the perpetrators are forced to abscond with the cash when the authenticity of their fictitious claims are challenged and too many victims re-enter reality and demand their fictitious profits.

The perpetrators of the ‘Amway’ fraud have sought to avoid this problem and sustain their activities by arbitrarily defining their victims as ‘Independent Business owners’. To casual observers it then appears that the victims are reponsible when they fail to make money. Victims are also conditioned to accept unconciously that they can only achieve prosperity, happiness and freedom if they believe totally in ‘Amway’. Consequently, when inevitably they fail most can be easily persuded that it was their own fault. This form of closed-logic trap is classic of many cultic movements and totalitarian regimes. Long-term adherents of the ‘Amway’ myth are, in reality, insolvent de facto slaves, but their own egos will not allow them to accept this. Core adherents who manage to break with ‘Amway’ and to confront the ego-destroying reality that they have been deceived and exploited are invariably destitute and dissociated from all their previous social contacts.

Quixtarisacult:

Cognitive dissonance either does one of two things. Allows victims of MLM schemes to continue on in the “Closed Market Swindle” (as you call it) or eventually see through the deception, blame themselves and flush themselves out of the scheme. I follow your reasoning and description of how it works very well. Adherents are conditioned to blame themselves for the failures of the system. Heavy mind manipulation must go on to keep people paying to play in a game so heavily stacked against them.

I have pointed out the deception of calling oneself an “Independent Business Owner” as well. There is nearly zero independence involved in signing a contract with Amway. They have carefully constructed these contracts to place themselves in nearly complete control of “their” business. To think one is operating their own independent business if a sign of insanity. Amway controls almost every aspect of the business arrangement to include product, pricing, and promotion. An independent businessman makes the rules, doesn’t abide by rules set in stone by another. Being an IBO is the biggest joke on the duped group of suckers that get fleeced by this scheme.

David Brear:

...You demonstrate a high-level of understanding how the trick is pulled. The essence of mental manipulation is gradually to take control of its individual subject’s means of thought (i.e. his/her words and images) shutting down their critical and evaluative faculties whilst giving them the illusion that they are making free-choices. The great paradox of cultic movements is that their core-adherents are totally convinced that no one is coercing or controlling them. However, the term ‘Amway’ (corruption of the American Way) is itself an inversion of reality. The mere fact that ‘Amway’ is still being dealt with by commercial regulators is already a victory for its instigators. In order to understand and expose any cammouflaged totalitarian movement it is vital to use accurate deconstructed terms at all times. Any commentator who repeats the reality-inverting shielding-terminology of any cultic group, but without detailed qualification (or heavy irony) demonstrates that he/she remains at a pitifully low level of understanding. sadly, it is impossible for many former cult adherents to describe their experieces using terms other than those which they were conditioned to use in their group. ‘The most powerful weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed’.

-07 Oct 08




If you enjoyed reading David Brear, there is more of his work that can be found by clicking on these links:

The Worlds Largest Automobile Factory Was A Fraud

Next to the Amway Mob Madoff Is An Amateur

Mother Of Mercy, Could This Be The End of Amway?

Scientology Challenged in France and Australia: But Apologist Pose as Innocent Victims

How Amway Fraud Works: The Bakker's Advanced Fee Fraud

The World's Largest Automobile Factory Was A Fraud

(Originally posted on Quixtar Cult Intervention on February 22, 2009)

...by QCI contributing guide to the Amway Labyrinth, David Brear:



_____________

‘If you tell a big enough lie and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.
Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945)

______________

When I first began to examine the disturbing, ritual images (clean-cut, heterosexual couples with perfect smiles and perfect children, posing beside their shiny new ‘Dream’: cars, houses, pools, boats, etc.), which have been used to keep the vulnerable and unwary swallowing the ‘Amway’ myth, I was struck by the frightening similarity between this kitsch, Utopian propaganda and the sugary pictures once used to coat another poisonous lie. According to the ‘Amway’ myth: everyone, no matter what their class, profession or property can become the owner of an ‘Independent Business’ which (only through effort and unquestioning belief) has been proven to bring ‘Total Financial Freedom in 2-5 years.’ On closer inspection, this ambiguous fairytale turns out to have been adapted from a very specific, and revealing, pattern. In unambiguous terms, according to the same closed-logic of the movement’s controlling scenario: everyone who fails to achieve economic redemption in ‘Amway’, has only himself/herself to blame. Unfortunately (over a period spanning 6 decades), a veritable mountain of quantifiable evidence has proved the so-called ‘Amway Business Opportunity’ to be nothing more than a premeditated, closed-market swindle shielded by (effectively) unsaleable products and mystifying mathematics. The plain truth of the matter is that, behind all the reality-inverting ‘Amway’ propaganda, lurks a self-perpetuating, self-gratifying and progressively-more-expensive-to-play game of make-believe which has been rigged so that no one can win, except the sanctimonious little gang of charlatans who set it up. However, this soul-destroying, totalitarian racket is neither original nor unique. Therefore, it cannot be fully-understood in isolation.

Immediately after usurping absolute power in Germany, Adolf Hitler declared that ‘May 1st 1933’ would be the first ‘National Labour Day.’ Since the end of the 19th century, May Day had been the workers’ festival in Germany and many other European countries. Although the event was traditionally marked with mass-parades of trade-unionists, Socialists and Communists, Hitler now made a typically ambiguous promise - ‘National Labour Day would be celebrated as never before.’ During the final days of April 1933, the leaders of Germany’s trade-unions (agricultural and industrial), along with large delegations of workers, were summoned to Berlin. To give them the illusion that they were making a free-choice, many were offered airline, and train, tickets and accommodation, whilst (for the benefit of the totally positive ‘Nazi’ news-reels) a select few were welcomed at the Chancellery by a smiling ‘Führer’ with beer and sausages. On May 1st, Hitler gave one of his mesmerizing performances in front of an audience of over 100 000 cheering workers at Berlin’s Tempelhof airfield. His reality-inverting script was entitled: ‘Honour Work and Respect the Worker.’ The following morning, every German trade-union office was overrun by hordes of heavily armed ‘Nazi’ agents. At a stroke, all unions were demolished to make way for Hitler’s ‘National Socialist’ Utopia. Union funds were seized and democratically-elected union leaders captured en-mass, beaten-up and packed-off to ‘concentration camps.’ Hitler’s main partner in setting this treacherous trap was one of his most-obsequious acolytes, Dr. Robert Ley (1890-1945). Ironically, in German, Ley is pronounced ‘Lie’.


Robert Ley was born in rural Westphalia. He was the 7th child of 11 children in a family of poor peasant farmers. As a youth, he had escaped his humble origins and attended the Universities of Jena and Bonn to study chemistry. At the outbreak of WWI, Ley (aged 24) was one of the first to volunteer to go to the Western Front. After 2 years in the artillery, he then volunteered to become a pilot, but in the summer of 1917 he was shot down and taken prisoner. It is generally believed that Ley (who returned home with an incurable speech impediment) suffered brain damage when his aeroplane crashed. Despite gaining a shameful reputation as an overbearing, and vindictive, lecher, drunkard and bully, in 1920, Ley received a Doctorate in chemistry from the University of Westphalia. He went on to work as a food chemist for an arm of the I. G. Farben Chemical company in Leverkusen in the Ruhr. However, he couldn’t live with the fact that the Treaty of Versailles had awarded this region to the French. Thus, in 1924, Ley turned to extreme nationalism. When he lost his job (because of his drinking), he became a full-time ‘Nazi’ proselytizer. With his respectable academic title, Ley was welcomed into the fledgling movement with open arms. He immediately found himself in a position of power in a organization presented externally as a ‘political party’, but which internally was totalitarian (i.e. it was centrally-controlled and required of its core-adherents an absolute subservience to the group and its patriarchal leadership above all other persons). ‘Nazi’ recruiters generally targeted alienated veterans. They could be more-easily persuaded to buy into the self-gratifying delusion that Germany and Austria hadn’t lost WWI militarily…. The ‘Aryan race’ had been betrayed and forced to surrender in 1918, by industrial strikes which crippled arms production and supply…. These strikes were instigated by trade union leaders who were the agents of an evil international Communist/Freemasonic conspiracy controlled by sub-human Jews. In 1925, Hitler appointed Robert Ley ‘Gauleiter of the Southern Rhineland.’ He was subsequently appointed ‘Reichsorganizationsleiter’ (‘party organization chief’) and elected to the Reichstag. The celebrated American journalist and author, William L. Shirer (1904-1993), who met Ley on numerous occasions, described him as:

‘repulsive… tough, excitable, vulgar - a brawling roughneck. He seemed to me to have the instability, the sense of insecurity, that was common to most of the men around Hitler.’

Before the end of 1934 (as part of Hitler’s secret plan to tear up the Treaty of Versailles to reignite, and win, WWI), the defunct German unions were replaced by a single corporate structure. This was headed by Ley (who could not be held to account by his membership), presented externally as a non- profit-making association protecting the rights of all workers and arbitrarily defined by the ‘Nazi’ leadership as the ‘Deutsche Arbeitfront’ or ‘German Labour Front’ (‘DAF’). Over 25 millions workers, business owners and professionals were effectively forced to join - no one could legally work in the ‘Nazi’ Utopia without a ‘DAF Work Book.’ In reality, this document was part of a vast intelligence-gathering operation. At the same time, ‘Nazi’ labour-laws took away workers’ rights and reduced them to the position of serfs in a latter-day feudal system. As German employers were given the right to retain ‘DAF Work Books,’ employees were (effectively) barred from changing jobs. Collective bargaining was ended and strikes were outlawed. Powerless German workers could now be allotted an increasingly smaller share of the national income (i.e. the cost of living increased, but wages were frozen). Eventually, most were obliged to live at little better than subsistence level. By 1939, the total annual figure being systematically extracted from ‘DAF’ members in ‘dues’ has been estimated to have exceeded 1 billion Reichsmarks (about $200 millions). The ‘DAF’ had 7000 employees, but it relied on 135 000 ‘volunteers.’ In this way, the ‘Nazi’ leadership eventually acquired absolute control over a capital sum estimated at 5 billions Reichsmarks (about $1 billion).

In order to distract the population from reality, the ‘Nazi’ leadership created a parallel corporate structure, ‘Kraft durch Freude’ (‘Strength Through Joy’ ) or ‘KdF’ — a non-profit-making association providing a range of benefits and amenities for the German working-classes and their families. In 1937, this organization received 29 millions Reichsmarks from the ‘DAF.’ Obviously, this was mostly the workers’ own money. An avalanche of thought-stopping words and images was used to maintain the illusion that redemption was on hand. Concerts, operas, art exhibitions, etc. were organized. Many workers were given ‘free’ gymnastics and football training, whilst others received access to previously exclusive sports (golf, tennis, sailing, etc.). A number of gigantic ‘classless holiday-camps,’ etc., were also constructed. These gained prizes in international, architectural competitions. Hundreds of beach, lake and ski resorts were requisitioned along with ten ocean liners to take German workers on Atlantic, Baltic and Mediterranean cruises. The ‘Nazi’ Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, focused everyone’s attention on what were described as ‘the world’s first, purpose-built, classless cruise-liners,’ the ‘Wilhelm Gustloff’ and the ‘Robert Ley.’ The launch of the 25 000 ton ‘Wilhelm Gustloff’


in Hamburg on May 5th 1937, was an international event attended by tens of thousands of bedazzled believers along with a flock of bleating propagandists. ‘Nazi’ news-reels, newspapers, brochures, magazines, posters, etc., all reflected the same ritual images of prosperous workers and their happy families enjoying the pure air and freedom of the high seas onboard their dream boats. For a short period, ‘KdF’ was the largest travel agency in the world. The holidays it supplied, although Spartan and tightly regimented, were amazingly cheap. Meanwhile, the ‘Nazi’ leadership was free to embezzle huge amounts of workers’ cash from the ‘DAF.’ Robert Ley gave himself an enormous salary. As well as private railway carriage, a fleet of luxury cars and villas in a number of cities, Ley bought himself a country estate near to Cologne and began hoarding art and antiques. His drinking, womanizing and boasting now knew no bounds.


In February 1933, whilst attending the Berlin Motor Show,


Hitler had made another ambiguous promise: Only 1 in 50 men owned an automobile in Germany, compared with 1 in 5 in America.… every German would, therefore, be given the opportunity to own a car… these would be sold for less than 1000 Reichsmarks (the cost of a motorcycle at that time) and make no profits. Although most free-thinking observers recognised this as being impossible (the cheapest, German-produced car on the open-market was 1 500 Reichsmarks), over the next few years ‘Nazi’ propagandists elaborated the ‘Volkswagen’ or ‘People’s Car’ lie until the truth became almost unthinkable. Obviously, many oppressed workers needed to believe in the ‘People’s Car,’ and the concept had existed prior to the Hitler usurping power. As early as 1927, the renowned Austrian automotive engineer, Dr. Ferdinand Porsche (1875-1951),


published a series of sketches of a proposed, lightweight, low-maintenance, rear-engine, family vehicle, capable of 100 kph. By the early 1930s, some prototypes had been built to his designs; first by Zündapp (whose directors withdrew because of problems with the 3 cylinder water-cooled engine), then by NSU (whose engineers introduced a revolutionary torsion suspension and a flat 4 cylinder, air-cooled engine, but whose directors withdrew because of the depressed economic climate). At this time, Ferdinand Porsche seems to have been deliberately targeted by the ‘Nazi’ leadership. All alone and with his design company on the verge of liquidation, he was encouraged to request a meeting with the ‘Führer’ himself. Porsche was easily seduced. In 1934, he signed a government contract containing the following terms:

1). 3 prototype cars had to be available within 10 months.
2). They had to have a carrying capacity of 4 adults, or 2 adults and 3 children,
or 3 soldiers and a machine gun.
3). They had to be able to cruise at 100 kph.
4). Average fuel consumption had to be no more than 8 litres per 100 km.
5). The engine had to be air-cooled.
6). The retail price had to be less than 1000 Reichmarks.

Hitler was completely unqualified to design a car. He couldn’t even drive, but, for obvious reasons, Porsche felt obliged to play along with the story that the ‘People’s Car’ was originally the Führer’s own concept. At the same time, the ‘Nazi’ regime massively expanded the construction of the high-speed, Autobahn, road system. Again, this project (although touted as the part of the ‘Führer’s great vision to free the masses and unify the Reich’), had existed (albeit in a reduced form) prior to Hitler usurping power.

Predictably, Porsche’s design company, in reluctant partnership with the ‘German Auto Manufacturers Association’ (RDA), found it (effectively) impossible to remain within the 1000 Reichsmarks price limit. The 3 prototypes didn’t appear until 1936; thus, missing the 10 month deadline. The Porsche company and the RDA were in breach of contract, so the project could be conveniently restructured under the banner of a further off-shoot of the ‘DAF’, ‘Gesellschaft Zur Vorbereitung des Deutschen Volkswagen’ or ‘German People’s Car Planning Group Inc.’ (‘GeZuVor. GmbH.’). The ‘Nazi’ propaganda machine went into overdrive - 300 millions marks of accumulated ‘DAF’ funds would be committed to building the ‘Largest Automobile Factory in the World’, it would employ 70 000 people and be capable of producing ‘1.5 millions vehicles a year; Greater Capacity than Ford.’ Daimler-Benz was subcontracted to build 30 test-vehicles. In 1937, the Stuttgart coachbuilders, Reutter, delivered 30 exhibition prototypes in the form of saloons, drop-head coupés and open-tourers. Meanwhile, the workers’ ‘DAF’ money financed a team of architects and engineers (some of whom had been recruited from Ford in the USA) to plan the construction of a vast Utopian factory/metropolis. On May 26th 1938, Hitler laid the cornerstone at the little town of Fallersberlen (birthplace of Heinrich Hoffman, the composer of ‘Deutschland uber Alles’). A flock of around 150 ‘Nazi’ propagandists were in attendance along with a claimed 70 000 people. A smiling ‘Führer’ was filmed in the passenger seat of an open-tourer mobbed by his deluded admirers.


To wild cheering and thunderous applause, Hitler proudly declared that his new car would be called the ‘KdF-Wagen,’ and his new factory/metropolis, ‘KdF-Stadt.’
In reality, this carefully stage-managed event was just a cruel charade, because (whilst it remained in ‘Nazi’ hands) the ‘People’s Car’ was the bait in one of the most-devious advance-fee frauds in history. The switch soon appeared — a counterfeit direct sales scheme or ‘savings plan’ instigated and controlled by the ‘Nazi’ leadership. At this time, there were about 75 exhibition prototypes in existence and they were constantly being shipped around to fairs and festivals all over Germany. Millions of convincing brochures and magazines were circulated. These featured strangely-familiar, ritual images of prosperous workers and their smiling families enjoying the pure air and freedom of the open road in their dream cars. Similar posters appeared in factories and public places.

‘Strength Through Joy announcement (August 2nd. 1938)’

1. ‘Each German, no matter what their class, profession or property can become the buyer of a People’s Car’.
2. ‘The minimum weekly payment, including insurance, will be 5 marks. Regular payment of this sum will guarantee, after a period which is yet to be determined, the acquisition of a People’s Car’.
3. ‘Application for the People’s Car savings plan can be made at any DAF or KdF office, where further details can also be obtained. Factories and shops can submit collective orders’.

‘A People’s Car for every German — let that be our goal. That is what we want to achieve. Will all of you help in that; it shall be our way of saying thank-you to the Führer’;

During the latter months of 1938, masses of Germans felt obliged to apply for the ‘savings plan;’


no one was refused. The propaganda steadfastly pretended that 10 millions Germans would have a car by 1948. The authenticity of this fairytale could not be challenged in the totally positive world according to Hitler. However, the same fiction was widely-reported as fact internationally which, sadly, made it appear even more convincing. In this way, the ‘Nazi Propaganda Minister’ easily maintained an absolute monopoly of information. In reality, many Germans never actually began to pay for their ‘KdF Wagens’ whilst a huge percentage soon dropped-out, simply because the average worker had barely enough money to survive. It was then announced that, after 3 years, ‘regular savers’ would receive a ‘priority contract’ guaranteeing a ‘KdF-Wagen (subject to availability)’… production would ‘begin in September 1939.’ In the spring of 1939, Robert Ley gave a typically sanctimonious speech:

“Our God is the wonderful Law of Creation whose amazing unity of all things shows itself in wonderful flowers, in growing trees, in new born children, in the secrets of a mother, in the growth of our people, in work and accomplishment and creation, in life itself. It is joy we have in everything. How beautiful everything is. Do you feel the same way? I am so happy to be alive. A priest recently asked me: ‘but what about eternity?’ I replied: ‘A day in National Socialist Germany is better for me than all your Heaven.”

At the start of September 1939, less than 350 000 unquestioning Germans were actually still struggling to make their payments, convinced that in 2 more years they would be driving down an Autobahn in a shiny new ‘KdF’ dream car. The propaganda soon claimed that 50 ‘KdF Wagens’ had already been delivered (albeit to ‘special customers’). Even if these had been available to regular ‘contract holders,’ then the odds against getting one would have been almost 7000/1. In reality, Hitler was busy ensuring that the fulfilment of his ‘KdF’ fantasies would be postponed indefinitely, because, at precisely this moment, his long-planned invasion of Poland (facilitated by the Autobahn system) forced the leaders of Britain and France to declare war on the ‘Third Reich.’ The ‘Nazi’ leadership immediately posed as innocent victims – the Fatherland was being attacked by the agents of an ‘evil international Jewish/Freemasonic conspiracy’…. To save the ‘Aryan race,’ ‘KdF-Stadt’ would have to be turned-over to armaments manufacture…. The classless cruise ships, ‘Robert Ley’ and the ‘Wilhelm Gustloff’ (which had already been requisitioned to bring ‘Nazi’ volunteers home from the Spanish Civil War), would have to turned-over to the navy. In this way, not one of Hitler’s ‘KdF’ offers was honoured and not one cent was refunded. The majority of victims couldn’t face the ego-destroying reality that their admired and respected ‘Führer’ had deliberately cheated them. Those who could were obliged to remain silent. All free-thinking individuals challenging the authenticity of the closed-logic ‘Nazi’ myth risked systematic categorization, exclusion and destruction as ‘Traitors.’

During the early 1940s, some 65 000 all-terrain and amphibious, ‘type 82’,


‘type 128’ and type ‘166’ military vehicles (converted from Porsche’s designs) were supplied to the German army. There was also a ‘type 87’ military saloon car for high-ranking ‘Nazi’ officers. By 1943, ‘KdF Stadt’ was principally fulfilling the secret military objective for which it had always been intended - an aircraft repair factory, safe from attack because it did not feature on most RAF maps. However, during 1945, production of the notorious ‘V1’ flying-bomb began at ‘KdF Stadt.’ More than 3500 of these hit London, and the factory became a priority target for the RAF and USAF. After the War, the remains of ‘KdF-Stadt’ and the ‘People’s Car’ project were discovered by a British army officer, Major Ivan Hirst.


He was looking for ideas to rebuild the German economy, but which wouldn’t threaten British jobs. Although several people, including Robert Ley and Ferdinand Porsche, were arrested as a war criminals (12 000 – 20 000 POWs had been forced to work as slaves at ‘KdF-Stadt’ and many deaths had resulted) the ‘Volkswagen Beetle’ eventually became a world-beating product. Porsche was held without indictment for 20 months in Dijon, whilst Ley hanged himself in Nuremberg before his trial. ‘KdF-Stadt’ was renamed Wolfsburg.

In 1961, after a protracted lawsuit, the surviving victims of the ‘People’s Car’ swindle were offered the choice of a cheque for 100 Deutche marks or a discount of 600 Deutche marks on a new ‘VW Beetle.’ Also in 1961, Volkswagen paid the Ringhoffer-Tatra group of Czechoslovakia 3 millions Deutsch marks. In the face of overwhelming evidence, members of the Porsche family accepted that a significant amount of the original ‘People’s Car’ design (particularly, the body styling, torsion suspension and rear-mounted air-cooled engine) was, in fact, copied by Ferdinand Porsche from the revolutionary designs of Professor Hans Ledwinka. These had been patented by Tatra in the early 1930s, and had featured on the ‘T97 Tatra’, first produced in 1936. Prior to WWII, although faced with a mystifying labyrinth of corporate structures which was deliberately designed to isolate the ‘Nazi’ leaders from liability, the directors of the Tatra company had filed a lawsuit against ‘KdF,’ but this automatically disappeared when Hitler’s forces rolled down his nice new Autobahns into Czechoslovakia.

In 1998, to avoid several immense lawsuits filed in the USA, Volkswagen set up a $12 millions private relief-fund to compensate the slaves whose misery had helped establish the corporation in world markets during the ‘Nazi’-era. Conveniently, by this time, only a few former-slaves remained alive.

As for Joseph Goebbels: In the spring of 1945 (as the Red Army approached Berlin), along with his wife, Magda, and 6 children,


he withdrew into the ‘Führerbunker.’ When Hitler shot himself on April 30th 1945, Goebbels was named as ‘Reich Chancellor’ in the ‘Führer’s’ will. The following day, Goebbels ordered an SS doctor, Helmut Kunz, to inject his 6 children with morphine and then break an ampoule of cyanide in each of their mouths. Kunz later claimed that Hitler’s own doctor and the children’s mother had actually administered the poison. About 15 minutes afterwards, Goebbels (probably) shot himself whilst his wife (probably) took cyanide. Their bodies (which were only partially burned due to a lack of petrol), were later identified by Vice Admiral Hans-Erich Voss.

Copyright David Brear 2008
(End)


'If you tell a big enough lie and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.'





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