Reflections and Warnings: An Interview with Aaron Russo (2009)

Aaron Russo (February 14, 1943 – August 24, 2007) was an American entertainment businessman, film producer and director, and political activist. He was best known for producing such movies as Trading Places, Wise Guys, and The Rose. Later in life, he created various political documentaries, including Mad as Hell and America: Freedom to Fascism.

Russo was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a Sephardi Jewish family. Growing up on Long Island, Russo worked for his family’s undergarment business.

In April 1968, Russo opened the nightclub Kinetic Playground in Chicago, Illinois, originally naming it the Electric Theater. He booked numerous prominent rock groups and musicians at the club such as The Grateful Dead, Iron Butterfly, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin, King Crimson, Vanilla Fudge, Rotary Connection, and The Who.

In addition to owning his own nightclub, Russo managed several musical acts throughout the 1970s including The Manhattan Transfer and Bette Midler.

Russo then moved into producing and directing movies, six of them receiving Academy Award nominations and two receiving Golden Globe Award nominations.

Russo became involved in political issues in the early-1990s when he produced and starred in the documentary entitled Mad As Hell in which he criticized the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the federal government’s War on Drugs, the concept of a National Identity Card, and government regulation of alternative medicine.

In 1998, Russo took his political interests to a higher level, running for governor of the state of Nevada as a Republican. Placing second in the Republican primary with 26% of the vote to candidate Kenny Guinn. Russo later endorsed the Democratic nominee, then-Las Vegas mayor Jan Laverty Jones, who would eventually lose to Guinn. Russo was planning to run again for Nevada governor in 2002 as either an Independent or Libertarian but was sidelined by cancer.

In January 2004, Russo declared his candidacy for the President of the United States initially as an independent but then as a Libertarian. At the Libertarian National Convention in May 2004, Russo received 258 votes to Michael Badnarik’s 256 votes and Gary Nolan’s 246 votes, short of the majority required to receive the presidential nomination. Russo would eventually lose the nomination on the convention’s third and final ballot to Badnarik by a vote of 423–344.

On February 14, 2004, Russo gave his full endorsement to the Free State Project, saying in his letter, “I encourage my fellow Libertarians and all freedom-loving Americans to consider joining the Free State Project.”

Regarding the organization, Russo said his goal was to “try and get the word out to the public about what’s happening to America – and give them an opportunity to try to change things”.

In 2006 Russo was interviewed by alt-right radio show host Alex Jones. In the interview with Jones, Russo denounces the Council of Foreign Relations, criticizes the 9/11 War on Terrorism, as well as a “plan for global bankers’ domination”.

In the Alex Jones interview, Russo recounts a discussion held between Nicholas Rockefeller and himself, eleven months before the attacks of September 11, 2001, explaining, among other things, the remarks made by Nick Rockefeller: how “an event was going to occur […] and how from this event we (the United States) were going to invade Afghanistan, build pipelines to bring oil from the Caspian Sea, that we were going to invade Iraq to take control of oil in the Middle East and be able to establish ourselves there and integrate this region into a new world order and then we would deal with Chavez, Venezuela and Iran. I remember him telling me that we would see soldiers searching caves in search of those responsible, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and all those regions. There would then be a war on terrorism where there would be no real enemy. It would all be a hoax. It would be a way for the government to control the Americans ”.

Nick Rockefeller also told him that his plans for the future were to reduce the world’s population by half and replace paper money with subcutaneous chips where all the person’s personal information would be stored. All of this being a roundabout way of controlling what Nicholas Rockefeller referred to as “serfs”, “slaves” when speaking of the world’s population.

In 2007, Russo created the political grassroots organization, Restore the Republic, to fulfill the political ambitions laid out in his final film America: Freedom to Fascism, a political documentary critical of the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Reserve System, and warning about the coming of the New World Order.

After a six-year period with cancer, Russo died at the age of 64 of cancer on August 24, 2007, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.