This week the neo-fascist paper Junge Freiheit features an interview with Rita Marker, whom the paper describes as "an American protector of life" (amerikanische Lebensschützerin). Marker is the Executive Director of the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide. In the interview she comes across as a sincere defender of Terri Schiavo’s parents and their quest to keep their comatose daughter alive through artificial means. But what is Rita Marker’s true mission? In the immortal words of Deep Throat in All the President’s Men: Follow the money! It turns out that Rita Marker and her organization are funded by groups affiliated with The Philanthropy Roundtable, a consortium of right-wing foundations with $2 billion in assets. As Jon Eisenberg, the lawyer for Terri Schiavo’s husband, writes on the Bioethics blog:
The Philanthropy Roundtable is a collection of foundations that have
funded conservative causes ranging from abolition of Social Security to
anti-tax crusades and United Nations conspiracy theories. The Roundtable
members’ founders include scions of America’s wealthiest families,
including Richard Mellon Scaife (heir to the Mellon industrial, oil and
banking fortune), Harry Bradley (electronics), Joseph Coors (beer), and
the Smith Richardson family (pharmaceutical products).
It is ironic that in the Junge Freiheit interview Rita Marker singles out billionaire activist George Soros as the evil force behind the "Euthanasia Movement". Richard Mellon Scaife of the Philanthropy Roundtable is the right-wing billionaire who hounded Bill Clinton throughout his presidency and nearly brought him down by financing bogus investigations.
It seems as though Junge Freiheit is reaching out to reactionary forces within the US as part of its campaign to achieve a status of legitimacy in the German media. This development is worth watching closely.
