Edwin Black: On Human Rights

For more than a half century, Edwin Black has been researching and writing about the underlying forces that impact human rights. During those same decades of dogged journalism and historical investigation into the tragic world of human rights, he has focussed on the arrogance of corporate complicity, academic fraiud, and philanthropic abuse. “My goal has always been to uncover the obscure forces that shape our world and the world of our ancestors—in the hope of making a better place for our descendants,” says Black.

He writes, “My long journey through the heart-breaking field of human rights has observed one paramount guidance: all people are entitled to equal human rights regardless of their religion, national identity, race, identity, or social class. No group has a monopoly on human rights. None may be disenfranchised. All blood is red. All tears taste of salt. All despair dims the human spirit. For these reasons, I have investigated the pain of so many disparate groups who have suffered throughout time. So many groups. So much anguish. But in this fractious world, perspective matters.

“My perspective began most earnestly with an examination of the Holocaust, not just its heinous atrocities, but more specifically the enabling corporate and governmental complicit conduct and collaborations.I was the first to examine the financial aspect of the Holocaust. These investigations led to a probe of the 1914 Armenian genocide at the hand of the Turks—a topic I wrote about in my first book, The Transfer Agreement, first published in 1984. I detailed this crime years before the mass murder of more than a million defenseless Armenian civilians became a regular discussion point among human-rights groups.

“In my subsequent book, the eugenics chronicle War Against the Weak, I found the victims crying out for justice were Americans. Poor whites, brown-haired Appalachians, African Americans, Mexicans, Native Americans, Asians, and those of mixed lineage were all targeted for biological elimination by virtue of an elitist complex of laws and institutional programs that coordinated coercive sterilization, marriage prohibition, incarceration, and euthanasia. The culprits were not men wearing white sheets, but rather men wearing white lab coats and three piece suits.

“In another book that prepared me for this task, Banking on Baghdad, I delved further into the anguish of Iraq and the entire extended Middle East. I traced the generation-to-generation nightmare—not just to the wars of modern times, but back 7,000 years to the recession of Ice Age glaciers that enabled the first cradles of civilizations. The disconsolate revelation that emerged was that, over the centuries, there has never been a generation in the Mideast that did not victimize or become victimized. This sad truth continued during the fiery rise of Islam and its turbulent schism into Shi’a and Sunni worlds. Unhappily, those cyclical clashes were interrupted by the colonizing West, which coveted the geography and geology of the region."

Black continues, “Ethnic and religious groups are not the only victims in the world of human rights. For this reason, I have devoted myself to the plight of the deaf, the disabled, and disadvantaged.”

He adds, “The compulsion to investigate human-rights abuses, for me, is powered by my own background as the child of Polish Holocaust survivors and as a chronicler of Hitler’s war against the Jews. I have written many works on the historical antecedents and submerged forces at work in the mass murder of six million Jews and the persecution of so many other peoples. My questions have always been not just who did it, but who helped? Here, again, I follow the money.

“As a lifelong investigative reporter, I’ve discovered that when one follows the money streams, the ultimate sources generally reside atop the highest mountains of commerce. The rogue's gallery of those complicit in corporate genocide includes IBM, Ford, General Motors, and British Petroleum. Each of those firms worked hand-in-glove with the Nazi regime to propel Hitler’s war against civilization. The unhappy intersection of big inhumanity and big money finds its most ironic dynamic in philanthropic abuse. It’s a sad reality that some of the world’s greatest charitable nameplates have earned front row positions in the hall of shame as the indispensable enablers of genocide.

“In my eugenics book, War Against the Weak, I revealed that the campaign to extinguish the existence of unwanted minorities and social classes—the so-called "unfit"—was continuously orchestrated and financed by the prestigious Carnegie Institution and the gilded Rockefeller Foundation. The Carnegie Institution powered the rise of a fake science called eugenics and its implementation as the law of the land. The Rockefeller Foundation joined Carnegie in the effort to make the world a better place by destroying most of its inhabitants to clear the way for domination by blond, blue-eyed Nordics. Then, the Rockefeller Foundation went further and transplanted its genocidal racism into Nazi Germany. Rockefeller even funded the Reich’s most notorious and murderous doctors—including the program that sent Mengele to Auschwitz—all in the name of progressive improvement.

“Within the photons of their corporate gleam, the shining names of business and philanthropy too often conceal a shameful particle. This hidden dark matter lurks deep beneath the albedo. That is the opacity that must be scrutinized.”