Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

Amidst the heightened scrutiny on basically all structured crypto products following the blowup of FTX, many players in the crypto space are rushing to reassure their clients and the investing public that their assets are real, unencumbered and safe.

The grandfather of all bitcoin structured products, the hugely popular Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, has seen its discount to NAV plunge to almost -50% from about 0% in the beginning of 2021 as bitcoin has fallen in price.

In other words, if you want to buy bitcoin, and you trust that Grayscale’s assets are safe and sound, buying their trust here would essentially allow you to buy bitcoin for an additional 50% off its spot price.

It sounds too good to be true, right? That’s what many skeptics continue to point out. Why would the trust trade at such a massive discount? Could it be due to a reasonable explanation? Perhaps its just a technical glitch as many people are selling at any price do to the volatility in the space right now? Perhaps it is due to forced liquidations of people who held GBTC, opening the door for opportunities to those who have cash on the sidelines?

The truth is we just don’t really know. But…the simplest way for Grayscale to close the price/NAV gap would be to reassure investors that its trust’s holdings are exactly as they seem, making the case easy for arbitrageurs to pounce on what could be a significant discount not just if the price of bitcoin rises, but even if it falls less than the current discount but Grayscale is somehow able to shore up the difference.

As of yesterday, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust was trading at a massive 43% discount to its NAV, Peter Schiff, who has traded barbs with Grayscale CEO Barry Silbert on Twitter often, noted:

Today the #Grayscale Bitcoin Trust traded at a 43% discount to its NAV. With #Bitcoin trading at $16,700, shareholders of $GBTC were willing to sell their Bitcoin for the equivalent of $9,500. What does that tell you about retail and institutional investor confidence in Bitcoin?

And so on Friday after the market closed, Grayscale took to its Twitter account to try and make a statement to shore up investor confidence. I’m not sure the company got the reaction it was looking for.

The company’s entire Tweet thread can be viewed here. Grayscale said they were providing “additional information about the safety and security of the assets held by our digital asset products”.

They told readers that “each of Grayscale’s digital asset products is set up as a separate legal entity” and that the company’s “laws, regulations, and documents that define Grayscale’s digital asset products prohibit the digital assets underlying the products from being lent, borrowed, or otherwise encumbered.”

That’s a good start.

They also noted that all of their digital assets are being held by Coinbase Custody Trust Company, LLC. They provided a letter from Coinbase, dated November 18, 2022, that appeared to attest to the amount of digital assets Coinbase held for them – as of the end of September.

Also a good step in the right direction.

But that’s where the verification stopped. The company didn’t turn over any of its on-chain wallet information, instead noting that “Coinbase frequently performs on-chain validation”. It’s also unclear to me whether or not the Coinbase document attests to current holdings by the trust, as it appears to have everything dated as of September 30, 2022 – the last date of the quarter.

Of course, FTX’s blowup took place just weeks ago, and this is the pressure point of volatility that the industry is concerned about. Should any changes in the trusts have taken place due to FTX’s turmoil and the “run on the bank”, it would have likely been after September 30, 2022.

Grayscale continued: “Due to security concerns, we do not make such on-chain wallet information and confirmation information publicly available through a cryptographic Proof-of-Reserve, or other advanced cryptographic accounting procedure.”

They continued: “We know the preceding point in particular will be a disappointment to some, but panic sparked by others is not a good enough reason to circumvent complex security arrangements that have kept our investors’ assets safe for years.”

Then, they linked to the following document, with more information about their products.

“Due to recent events, investors are understandably inquiring deeper into their crypto investments. Custody of the digital assets underlying Grayscale’s digital asset products is unaffected, and our products’ digital assets remain safe and secure,” it reads.

It then appears to make a more recent, concrete attestation:

For example, this means that Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (OTCQX: GBTC) holds bitcoin — and only bitcoin — and each share is backed by a proportional amount of the trust’s holdings, approximately 0.00091502 BTC per share of GBTC, as of November 18, 2022. To be perfectly clear: these digital assets are owned by GBTC and GBTC alone. 

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I’m not one to try and weigh Grayscale’s statements versus the clarity of on-chain validation, but isn’t that what the point of the blockchain actually is? Wasn’t it sold to so many people under the guise that anybody could have access and validate anyone else’s assets?

If Grayscale has the assets it claims, and I’m not saying that they don’t, it still seems to be outside the spirit of the entire “decentralized” and “blockchain” cult that touts its transparency and openness as one of its biggest strengths.

Why provide confirmation from the custodian but not verification on the blockchain?

I was also alarmed by the number of people who responded to Grayscale’s Twitter thread, thrashing the company for not providing more information.

“No one cares until you show exact on chain proof of reserves and state of your debt vs. reserves along with how much you are sucking out exactly to every executive and employee you have,” one person responded.

Other responses looked like these:

Another Twitter user wrote: “Making a public statement trying to quell fears while refusing to perform a proof of reserve is far worse than not making the statement. This will exacerbate the concerns and I expect the GBTC discount will reflect this sentiment.”

I spoke with the owner of the @Bitfinexed Twitter account, who has long been a skeptic of the industry and has predicted that blowups like FTX would be coming. When I asked them if the security angle was real, they replied:

“No, it’s not. Showing a public bitcoin address is zero risk.”

As an example, they provided me with Binance’s wallet address.

“Binance can sign a message to prove that address is under their control,” they told me. “Nobody can steal it and Binance can prove it is theirs.”

A second crypto expert, @MagooPhD on Twitter, told me that they did think there was some validity to the security argument. They told me “realistically if you expose where the coin is kept you let potential bad parties know where to start looking.”

They continued: “Like being able to see when coin movement is done. You can start to sync that to real world events and locations. It’s like disclosing where a safe is in a house – or even that there is a safe in a house.”

Despite this, they called Grayscale’s statement “kind of weird”, adding that no one had claimed their bitcoin didn’t exist to begin with.

Whether or not this attempt at shoring up confidence in the trust worked or not, we’ll likely know Monday morning. The important thing to watch won’t be the price of bitcoin, it’ll be the price/NAV of the trust. If the discount gets larger, the market likely isn’t buying what Grayscale has to say. If the discount closes, it means Grayscale has added little burst of confidence to the market.

But the old saying goes…trust, but verify. Personally, even if Grayscale’s assets are fine, as they say they are and may very well be, the company may have done itself a disservice in how they communicated this to the world, after market close, on a Friday.

Is it 9:30AM Monday morning yet?

—

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A federal judge in Florida partially blocked a law that forbids schools from telling students that certain people are “privileged or oppressed” due to their race or sex, calling it “positively dystopian.”

The Individual Freedom Act, previously called the Stop W.O.K.E. (Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees) Act and signed into law by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis this spring, also prohibits schools and workplaces from suggesting that any individual, by virtue of their race, color, sex or national origin, “bears responsibility for and must feel guilt, anguish or other forms of psychological distress” over historical acts of racism taught as part of Critical Race Theory. 

In a 139-page order issued Thursday, Tallahassee U.S. District Judge Mark Walker slammed Republicans, and blocked it from taking effect in the state’s public universities.

“The State of Florida’s decision to choose which viewpoints are worthy of illumination and which must remain in the shadows has implications for us all,” wrote Walker. “But the First Amendment does not permit the State of Florida to muzzle its university professors, impose its own orthodoxy of viewpoints, and cast us all into the dark.”

Walker called the bill “positively dystopian,” writing: “Striking at the heart of ‘open-mindedness and critical inquiry,’ the State of Florida has taken over the ‘marketplace of ideas’ to suppress disfavored viewpoints and limit where professors may shine their light on eight specific ideas.”

“And Defendants’ argument permits zero restraint on the State of Florida’s power to expand its limitation on viewpoints to any idea it chooses.”

Walker also quoted Orwell, writing “‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen,’ and the powers in charge of Florida’s public university system have declared the State has unfettered authority to muzzle its professors in the name of ‘freedom,'”

In August, eight Florida professors sued representatives of the state higher education system over the bill, according to NPR. In their suit, they called the legislation “racially motivated censorship” aimed at stifling “widespread demands to discuss, study and address systemic inequalities.”

Professor Adriana Novoa and student Sam Rechek, both from USF, argued the law was unconstitutional. The state countered that it has not harmed the plaintiffs and does not prohibit some of the discussions of the race-related topics mentioned in the lawsuit.

In Pernell’s lawsuit also challenging the act, the same defense lawyers wrote that because faculty members are employees of the state, “the First Amendment simply has no application in this context” because their employer “has simply chosen to regulate its own speech.” –Miami Herald

The state is expected to appeal Walker’s ruling.

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s reaction to the missile that hit Poland and killed two people led the Biden administration to warn his government to “tread carefully,” sources told CNN.

The US, NATO, and Poland have concluded that it was most likely a Ukrainian air defense missile that landed in Polish territory, but when the news first broke, Zelensky and his senior advisors framed the incident as a deliberate Russian attack and called for action. They also had help from a US intelligence official who told The Associated Press that the missile was Russian, a story quietly corrected by AP.

“Hitting NATO territory with missiles. … This is a Russian missile attack on collective security! This is a really significant escalation. Action is needed,” Zelensky said during his nightly address on Tuesday.

Sources told CNN that National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan “quickly called Zelensky’s office after those remarks, and urged officials to tread more carefully with how they were speaking about the incident.” The sources said that President Biden did not speak with Zelensky on Tuesday night or Wednesday despite requests from the Ukrainian leader for a call.

Sullivan’s comments to Zelenky’s office didn’t seem to have much impact as Zelensky insisted on Wednesday night that the missile wasn’t Ukrainian even after Kyiv’s Western backers said it was. The US and NATO were also careful not to blame Ukraine for the incident, saying Russia was “ultimately responsible,” but Zelensky still rejected their conclusion.

“I have no doubt that it was not our rocket,” Zelensky told reporters, adding that his assessment was based on reports from his military commanders. “I believe that it was a Russian missile based on the credibility of the reports of the military.”

President Biden publicly pushed back on Zelensky’s claim when asked about them by reporters. “That’s not the evidence,” the president said when he arrived back in Washington after the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia.

An unnamed diplomat from a NATO country expressed frustration with Zelensky after he denied the missile was Ukrainian.

“This is getting ridiculous. The Ukrainians are destroying [our] confidence in them. Nobody is blaming Ukraine and they are openly lying. This is more destructive than the missile,” the diplomat told Financial Times.

On Thursday, Zelensky backtracked on his position slightly, saying he was not totally sure whose missile it was. “I do not know exactly what happened this time 100%. The world doesn’t know 100% either. I’m pretty sure it was a Russian missile,” he said, according to Interfax Ukraine. He added that Ukrainian specialists will be able to take part in the investigation.

‘Free speech absolutist’ Elon Musk has decided to ask the public whether Donald Trump – a former president and ostensibly Joe Biden’s 2024 GOP challenger – should be allowed to speak freely on Twitter, instead of, you know, just restoring Trump’s account on day one.

The former president was banned from the platform because a group of fed-infiltrated Trump supporters were allowed into the Capitol and wreaked havoc on January 6, 2021, after Trump gave a speech in which he said “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

Reinstate former President Trump

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 19, 2022

Musk’s poll on whether he should reinstate former President Donald Trump to the platform has received more than 11 million votes in less than 24 hours.

While Trump took a large early lead, the vote tightened over Saturday morning, and currently stands at 52.3% ‘yes’ to 47.7% ‘no.’

Dems are going to need to stop the count so they can haul in some mail-in votes pic.twitter.com/MFP9vqid8w

— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) November 19, 2022

“Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” Musk tweeted in a follow-up, which means “the voice of the people is the voice of God.’

Vox Populi, Vox Dei

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 19, 2022

The poll is set to run for 24 hours.

Musk’s departure from ‘free speech absolutism’ is undoubtedly due to the realities of the advertising market – with major companies having already suspended their campaigns on Twitter over Musk himself taking over the platform. According to Insider, advertising made up 89% of Twitter’s revenues in 2021.

In response, Musk assured advertisers in late October that Twitter “will not become a free-for-all hellscape.”

While Alex Jones won’t be allowed back on the platform, the Babylon Bee is back after their ban over a transgender joke, as is Jorrdan Peterson and Kathy Griffin.

Maybe Elon should do an Alex Jones poll next? The frogs did, after all, turn out to be gay.

At a time when Musk is cutting hundreds if not thousands of workers on a weekly basis, early on Friday Europe delivered some unexpected news to the world’s richest man: according to Thierry Breton, the EU’s internal market commissioner, Musk will have to increase the number of moderators in Europe, a continent which long ago gave up all pretense of having free speech.

“He is in the process of reducing a certain number of moderators, but he will have to increase them in Europe,” Breton told Franceinfo in an interview, Bloomberg reported.

Breton added that Musk “will have to open his algorithms. We will have control, we will have access, people will no longer be able to say rubbish.”

By “rubbish” he meant anything that Europe’s unelected technocrats disagree with, which these days is anything not endorsed by the World Economic Forum.

Breton earlier warned that Twitter would have to “fly by our rules,” shortly after Musk closed his $44 billion takeover last month.

The EU’s Digital Services Act gives governments power to enforce rules governing how tech companies moderate content and to decide when they must take down illegal content. The DSA specifically will also force companies to moderate content in the languages they operate in, according to Bloomberg.

If Musk doesn’t comply, Twitter will face fines of as much as 6% of annual sales and could even be banned.

Breton said he had proposed establishing a “working relationship” with Musk to discuss Europe’s expectations of the social media platform.

“He knows perfectly well what the conditions are for Twitter to continue operating in Europe,” Breton said, and he is right: Europe is one so-called “Democracy” where nobody even pretends there is freedom of speech even as it bashes authoritarianism in places like China and Russia; and sadly it’s a preview of what is coming to the US.

Authored by Robert Aro via The Mises Institute,

A cashless society would be the nail in the coffin for liberty and freedom, offering centralization, the likes of which Marx could only dream.

The existence of a government backdoor or spyware becomes a real possibility, and given the State’s track record, a real likelihood.

Then, of course, the ability to track, freeze, and even set expiry dates on money, will be marketed as “features” to protect the public.

As for the 5.9 million Americans considered “unbanked,” i.e., those who have no checking or savings accounts, (the poor, weak, and vulnerable) they can expect life to get more difficult. This is the price we pay for free market intervention.

Earlier in the week, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York made the announcement:

Members of the U.S. Banking Community Launch Proof of Concept For A Regulated Digital Asset Settlement Platform

The explanation may only make sense for those well versed in crypto technology:

Members of the U.S. banking community today announced the launch of a proof of concept (PoC) project that will explore the feasibility of an interoperable digital money platform known as the regulated liability network (RLN). Using distributed ledger technology, the proposed platform would create innovation opportunities to improve financial settlements and would include participation from central banks, commercial banks of various sizes and regulated non-banks.

Basically, Fedcoin is advancing and is now in the testing stage:

The 12-week PoC will test a version of the RLN design that operates exclusively in U.S. dollars where commercial banks issue simulated digital money or “tokens” – representing the deposits of their own customers – and settle through simulated central bank reserves on a shared multi-entity distributed ledger.

Some of the largest financial institutions are involved in this 12-week program:

BNY Mellon, Citi, HSBC, Mastercard, PNC Bank, TD Bank, Truist, U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo.

Plus:

The technology is being provided by SETL with Digital Asset, powered by Amazon Web Services. Swift, the global financial messaging service provider, is also participating in the initiative to support interoperability across the international financial ecosystem.

From Bitcoin to Dogecoin, there seems little long term hope for those who love privacy and autonomy when the largest corporations and fintech firms work with the Federal Reserve to roll out a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).

Would you like to know who else is was working with the Feds? Courtesy Coindesk:

Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was, until last week, a major political donor – he gave $5.2 million to U.S. President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign and spent another $40 million supporting mainly Democratic candidates ahead of the November midterm elections – and an influential figure in Washington.

Bankman-Fried regularly met with regulators and lawmakers, weighing in on how the crypto industry should be regulated. He was a vocal supporter of one bill, in particular: the bipartisan Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act (DCCPA), a still-in-progress bill…

We know for certain CBDCs are coming, as well as more regulation. And given the trajectory of both, a cashless society is too. What is less certain is whether or not Sam Bankman-Fried, for his culpability in what may amount to one of the largest thefts of all time, will ever see jail time. 

People across Buffalo, New York, and the surrounding metro areas are waking up Saturday morning to snowmageddon that dumped between 5-6 feet of snow over the last few days. 

The latest from the Weather Prediction Center warned extreme snowfall “will produce near zero visibility, very difficult to impossible travel, damage to infrastructure, and may paralyze the hardest-hit communities.” 

An insane amount of snow was dumped on Highmark Stadium, where the Buffalo Bills play, situated in Orchard Park, New York, in the Southtowns of the Buffalo metro area. The newest reports recorded 77 inches or about 6.5 feet. 

“Can you imagine 60-70 inches of snow in 24 hours!? That 66″ in Orchard Park (where the Buffalo Bills play) could be verified as a 24-hour record for New York State. (The U.S. record is 75.6 inches in Silver Lake, Colorado on April 15, 1921.),” meteorologist Matthew Cappucci tweeted. 

Here’s what people in Western New York state woke up to this morning:

My mom in Orchard Park, NY has gotten just a little bit of snow this weekend pic.twitter.com/0gJekz0MhE

— Wendy E Wallace (@WendyEWallace1) November 19, 2022

My car is under there…somewhere pic.twitter.com/uyJy4P0HNO

— Marlee Tuskes (@MarleeTuskesTV) November 19, 2022

the continuing saga of the snow mushroom… #buffalosnow #LakeEffectSnow #buffalo #LetsGoBuffalo (8 foot fence in the background) ❄️❄️❄️ pic.twitter.com/agnGjo5EMF

— MaryAnn (@n1temare74) November 19, 2022

What 6’ of snow looks like#BuffaloNY #buffalosnow #buffalolakeeffect #Buffalo #LakeEffectSnow #BuffaloStorm2022 pic.twitter.com/rNlsoaSyDL

— BuffaloWeather (@weather_buffalo) November 19, 2022

Something was venturing out in the snow this morning.
More lake effect coming late tonight…

“These are the ghosts who haunt us
As we live & as we breathe
These are the ghosts of the wood
& to us forever they cleave”
From “Ghosts” by CMP [me]#BuffaloStorm2022 pic.twitter.com/iMqmusj73B

— ♪ark roa♪/Viccin© together since 1999 🦊BluesBirds (@Viccin) November 19, 2022

Boston Mass had the “big dig” but we got one going on in East Aurora, NY too. It’s absolutely gorgeous & since we got no place to go….❄️❄️❄️ #BuffaloStorm2022 #LakeEffectSnow #SnowBelt pic.twitter.com/QODeh213x1

— Trish Lewis (@poodlewalker10) November 19, 2022

Gotta admit when I heard the @BuffaloBills were moving their game to #Detroit I thought they were wimping out.

Nope.#BuffaloStorm2022 #Buffalo#Bills #NFL pic.twitter.com/In8c1PudEf

— Norman Hermant (@NormanHermant) November 19, 2022

Almost 9 cans of beer deep in south Buffalo NY!! Hahaha pic.twitter.com/xBZgH0k9hT

— Roy Gregory (@BbqhonchoRoy) November 19, 2022

At least six million people are still under winter weather alerts across six Great Lakes states — Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York — this morning. 

Ahead of what we believed was going to be a historic storm, we wrote “”Paralyzing Snowfall” Could “Cripple” Buffalo With Feet Of Snow” and “New York Declares State Of Emergency Ahead Of Snowmageddon,” suggesting to readers in the region to get supplies and hunker down. 

Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

A hotelier in the U.K. has rejected an offer in excess of £1 million from an agency acting on behalf of the Home Office to convert his hotel into accommodation for asylum seekers, it has emerged.

Richard Martin, who owns the 3-star Blazing Donkey Country Hotel in Sandwich, Kent, revealed he had been offered £1,080,000 and a guarantee of 100 percent occupancy for at least 12 months at the hotel if he permitted it to be used exclusively to house asylum seekers.

The hotel boss said he turned down the proposal as he “couldn’t think of anything more absurd.” He explained that he would have had to lay off staff at the restaurant and cancel hundreds of weddings booked at the venue.

“We spent 30 years building up the business, but the money doesn’t come into it,” Martin told local media outlet Kent Online.

“We didn’t consider the offer (…) at all, as our reputation would have been shattered overnight.

“Quite honestly, my wife and I felt repulsed and very angry that they would think I would ever consider it,” he added.

Martin said he “could not believe they even approached us, as the agency acting on behalf of the Home Office “must have known” that to convert the accommodation into a facility for asylum seekers would result in the redundancy of some staff and canceling hundreds of weddings.

There are now over 200 hotels across the U.K. who have accepted contracts to house asylum seekers at a cost of £7 million per day to the U.K. taxpayer.

Martin accused the government of “effectively becoming disruptors in the hotel industry” and added that he hopes “no other hotelier in the county worth their salt considers this sly approach.”

Finland has announced it will “build the wall” – along its lengthy border with Russia as relations between the two continue rapidly deteriorating due to the Ukraine war and Finland’s bid to join NATO.

The plan, unveiled Friday, is a 200-kilometer ‘high security’ fence along its border with Russia, which in total is 1,300km in distance. This comes amid fears that Moscow could use migrants to exert pressure on Finland, concerns that grew after President Putin’s ‘partial mobilization’ order was issued in September. 

At that time Finland reported surges of border crossing traffic as young men attempted to flee potential conscription to fight in the war in Ukraine. Since then, there have been widespread reports that many have returned, given the Kremlin declared the end of the mobilization period. 

According to the AFP, “The fence will be over three meters tall with barbed wire at the top, with particularly sensitive areas being equipped with night vision cameras, lights, and loudspeakers, project manager Ismo Kurki explained during a press conference.”

Finland shares the longest stretch of border with Russia among any EU member.

The political push to establish a high tech fence gained momentum and consensus especially last month, when Prime Minister Sanna Marin explained the following: 

“We were in agreement about the need,” Marin said after the meeting. “Now the government will bring concrete proposals to parliament.” Funding for the pilot section would be voted on by the start of next month, she said.

“It is a question of securing proper surveillance of Finland’s border,” Marin said. “We want to ensure our border guard has sufficient support to carry out appropriate and effective border control, and we need to be prepared for any disruptive situations.”

Below: the initial proposed distance considered and debated in October…

BREAKING:

The main political parties of Finland jointly agreed today to build a border fence with Russia.

The fence will cover 260 km of the border’s total length on 1300 km.

Initially, a trial stretch will be built and the entire fence should be completed within 4-5 years. pic.twitter.com/MDyMpy5j0c

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) October 18, 2022

The projected price for the 200km long stretch of fence is nearly $400 million, and is to be completed in three phases. Per the APF, “First, a pilot fence three kilometers long will be built at the Imatra border crossing in March 2023.” And following this, “Based on that experience, the second phase will see the construction of a further 70 kilometers of fence in areas near border crossings, starting in late 2023.” The final phase is expected to be complete by 2026 if the prior phases go as planned. 

Russia previously warned its Arctic neighbor against militarizing the border in relation to the controversial NATO bid. The Kremlin further stated that NATO positioning military assets and weaponry there risked setting off a nuclear arms build-up in the Baltic region. 

Authored by Robert Kogon via The Brownstone Institute,

After Germany’s “first” public television network, ARD, compared Elon Musk reducing Twitter censorship to “letting rats out of their holes,” Germany’s “second” public television network, ZDF, has now compared Musk to Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels! (The network’s name Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen literally means “Second German Television.”)

Thus, last Friday, ZDF’s would-be comedy program, the “Heute Show,” posted the below tweet and photoshop.

The Tweet reads: “Thanks to Elon Musk, you’re allowed to say anything again on Twitter! Total freedom of speech! #heuteshow.” The caption, whose color scheme and font invoke Nazi-era propaganda, reads “Do you want total tweet?”

It is an allusion to Goebbels’s 1943 speech at the Berlin Sportspalast, in which the Nazi Minister of Propaganda famously shouted, “Do you want total war?” – in response to which audience members leapt to their feet shouting “Yes!” and raising their arms in the Hitler-salute.

The background image appears to show a Nazi Party rally with the swastikas replaced by the Twitter bird logo. Two smaller swastikas are still visible in the lower left-hand corner of the full-size image.

Leaving aside the extreme mental contortionism required to associate freedom of speech with Nazi Germany, if ever there was a don’t-throw-stones-in-glass-houses moment, this was it. For, as so happens, during the Second World War, the founding director of ZDF, Karl Holzamer, himself served in one of the propaganda units that none other than Goebbels’s Ministry of Propaganda embedded with the different divisions of the Germany military. 

Holzamer served in a propaganda unit of the Luftwaffe or German air force. As noted in a 2012 article titled “Goebbels’s Soldiers” in the German daily Die Frankfurter Rundschau, Holzamer was embedded with the Luftwaffe during its April 1941 bombing of Belgrade and was “the first” to report on the German subjugation of the Yugoslav capital.

The online Lexikon der Wehrmacht, which also notes Holzamer’s service in the propaganda troops, cites Goebbels himself, who explained that “the Wehrmacht’s propaganda troops ensure the coordination between propaganda warfare and armed warfare in the theater of operations.”

As touched upon in my previous post here, Germany has been leading the global push for online censorship in recent years: notably, in the name of “combatting misinformation.” It is thus ironic that one of the explicit tasks of the propaganda troops in which Holzamer served was precisely to spread misinformation. According to the Lexikon der Wehrmacht, these tasks included: “war reporting…, combat propaganda (influencing the enemy)…, combatting enemy propaganda, camouflaging [German forces’] own operations by using targeted misinformation.”