Utopian in Power: Henry Wallace, New Deal, and the Sacred Union of the East

0:00The story I'm going to bring to your attention today is a bizarre story. On the surface, it has nothing to do with American economic history, but at the same time, this bizarre story will give us insights in the mind of the people who were doing the New Deal, which laid the foundations of the modern American welfare state. In the late summer of 1934, a strange party was traveling through Manchuria and Mongolia. You can see the map here. At that time, Manchuria and Mongolia were occupied by Japan. The party was headed by a man who spoke with a heavy Slavic accent like myself.

0:52And the party represented itself as an expedition, a botanical expedition, working on behalf of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Their official mission was to collect drought resistant plants to fight the soil erosion back in the United States. Yet the party was more interested in monitoring local political situation, collecting local and Military Intelligence and the head of the party very much wanted to plug himself into local indigenous prophecies, especially he was interested in one Professor, Buddhist Professor called Shambhala, which mentioned the end of the world and the coming of a glorious redeemer who would save the people of inner Asia from the people of the alien faith.

1:50Of course, it raised the eyebrows of the Japanese intelligence service. It also raised a lot of questions on the part of Britain and other nations. It was a very sensitive, the area was a hot spot because after Japan occupied northeastern China, Manchuria and a part of Chinese Mongolia, so United States denounced it, broke relations with Japan and here we have an expedition working on behalf of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This strange enterprise was, the man who was in charge of this party was Nicholas Roerich. So here you see the people in the military uniform and Roerich, this man with this charismatic appearance who built himself as a local messiah, so he wanted to plug himself in local indigenous Prophecies, which arouse suspicions of Japanese intelligence.

2:59This strange expedition, botanical expedition, quote unquote, was backed up by Henry Wallace, Secretary of Agriculture, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. That's where my story begins. Wallace's name is usually associated with this, no less bizarre, but at least they made sense to him, measures attempted by Agricultural Adjustment Administration, infamous slaughtering of six million pigs, then plowing the farmer's crops in hope to keep the prices up. Wallace's name is also mentioned in connection with the 1948 blunder when he was running He tried to run for US President on the Progressive Party ticket.

3:53I'm going to argue in my brief talk that this bizarre expedition, botanical expedition, which is normally treated as some kind of an aberration in the biography of otherwise progressive politician. I'm all going to argue that this bizarre episode was, and in fact a manifestation of this crackpot philosophy and the mindset of the people who were swarming to Washington in 1933 to try the magical curative devices to provide quick fixes for social and political problems. I'm arguing that this quote unquote botanical expedition should be included in the list of, again, no less bizarre experiments conducted, especially in the early New Deal, like Arthur Dale in Virginia, an attempt to build the New American Man Collective community, or NRA measures, or for that mad Indian New Deal.

5:01You may have heard about John Collier, U.S. Commissioner for Indian Affairs, FDR's Commissioner for Indian Affairs, who wanted to build so-called Red Atlantis, which might be an interesting topic to research for somebody. Recent scholarship eradicated this sacred war that New Deal had in the minds of public and libertarian scholarship did a lot in this direction including Tom Woods and Robert Higgs and in fact I wanted to mention that Robert Higgs in one of his recent books against Leviathan he writes that those people who, so called brain trust of FDR, those people who came came to Washington in 1933.

5:58In fact, a lot of them were infested with this crackpot philosophy, which was responsible for many blunders in the first years of the New Deal. Wallace, Henry Wallace, was one of those brainy guys. Robert Higgs called them brainy guys in his lectures. My story, essentially, about how these brainy guys, how this brainy guy, whom FDR, for some reason, called Old Common Sense, that's how he liked to call him, how he sent this expedition which almost ended in diplomatic embarrassment for US government and cost not so much but at least it was a waste, $79,000.

6:46Documentary records reveal recently opened archives In Rutgers, there were papers recently discovered, one of Aurorich's associates revealed that Henry Wallace, who was admitted in the Aurorich circle under the esoteric name Galahad, after the famous Seeker of the Holy Grail, knew about the painters, Aurorich was a painter about Aurorich's geopolitical project and backed it up and later did everything to eliminate and his correspondence or manuscripts which he had that could compromise him. Why did he support it? So first of all, why did he support this reckless experiment which later he tried to hide?

7:35First and foremost is that for him, if you read Wallace's books and memoirs, the essence of the modern and progressive for Wallace revolved around the planned society based and Collectivism, society that should be navigated by the enlightened masters and he viewed himself as one of the enlightened masters. Of course you know Wallace was anti-capitalist, of course you know if you read about New Deal that Wallace had a sympathy for socialism, but it's not the whole story. Unlike he shared, in this case he shared the same ideas of FDR's circle, or at least ideas of Many People Who Belong to the Brain Trust. What set him aside is that the new order that he contemplated for the United States should be linked to a new spiritual revolution, to a new spiritual revolution, which means establishment of the new universalist religion.

8:36So that's how he plugged himself into this geopolitical experiment of Nicholas Rohr. Okay, here is a few things that give us the better picture of Henry Wallace, agriculturalist, frustration about mainstream Christianity. That's what brought him to spiritualism, universal religion, and eventually encouraged him to support Nicolas Roerich. So he believed in cooperatives. He came to the conclusion that light comes from the East. He talked a lot about environment, talked about the new order. In this case, he reminds me of this, to some extent, one of the current type of left liberal politician who trashes Western civilization, who makes environmentalism into his or her secular religion, who dubs into Buddhism or some non-Western cultures, like El Gork would would be a good example of this new type of politician.

9:40Okay, the scheme that Nicholas Roerich tried to promote in the heart of Asia is so-called the Sacred Union of the East. And Wallace, as recent documentation, proves that he knew about it, he knew about it. And they exchanged letters where they called this geopolitical experiment as Kansas, then the Great Plan, the most frequently used phrase, the new contract. It was contemplated this new state based on the new order and the new universalist religion was contemplated as a theocracy which would show the humankind this new spirituality. And the plan of Roerich was to build this huge theocracy from Siberia to Himalayan Mountains from Eastern China to India, and the economic foundation of the society would be cooperatives, ideologies, universalist ecumenical religion.

10:39Roerich courted the US establishment for a long time. If you're familiar with US history, you know that Wallace and Roerich are also a spearheaded so-called Roerich Peace Pact. is an analogy of the red cultural cross to fly a peace flag over the cultural sites to be protected in a time of conflict. There is also, and it's not proven yet, that Wallace and Roerich participate in designing the U.S. dollar bill. This phrase, Novus Ordo Seclorum, New Secular Order, supposedly was dropped into by Roerich and Wallace in this all-seen eye. But again, there is no documentation for this, I'm not going to speculate.

11:25Alright, so this is my major argument, that Wallace Tagwell, these brainy guys, attempted the reckless experiments in the Sacred Union of the East, or quote-unquote, botanical expedition, was an integral part of this. East Asia, as I said, was a hot spot at that time. A lot of things were going on. Mongolia and Manchuria were in revolt. Mongolia was revolting against Red Russia. Mongols at the same time were revolting against the Chinese, against land encroachment. Japan established a puppet state, Mongol puppet state in Manchuria. So all these things gave hope to Rory and Wallace to establish this theocracy as a counterbalance to Japan.

12:15and a picture of Rory Armageddon, so it's an expected Armageddon. So he built himself, Rory, as the leader of this new theocracy. And that's a picture of himself. He pictures himself as the new, like a Christ-like figure. All right, so here's the conclusion. So why such reckless experiments? Again, it's a bizarre incident. It might be treated by some as an aberration. But here is the zeitgeist. I remember this German word zeitgeist, the spirit of the time. I'm trying to show that if you put this bizarre incident in the context of time, so everything will be clear, so here is the spirit of the time, big is beautiful, cultural planning, so cultural planning became an article of faith, from San Francisco to the Ural Mountains and people, millions of people supported it, so it was taken for granted that social engineering planning would be the radiant future, worship of science and of course, and the cult of the enlightened mass. It could be Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin or FDR. Thank you.