His full name was Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi (actually it was Richard Nikolaus Eijiro, Count of Coudenhove-Kalergi), and he is considered one of the founding fathers of the European Union.

I had never heard this name until I read Archbishop Vigano’s interview with The War Room on June 30, 2022 (today). I haven't dug too deeply yet, but here's some of what I found from his wiki page (which shouldn't be trusted, but this should get us to a good start).

Richard was the son of an Austro-Hungarian Diplomat, Heinrich von Coudenhove-Kalergi, and Mitsuko Aoyama, the daughter of a Japanese oil merchant. His original name was Aoyama Eijiro and he didn’t become a Czech citizen until 1919. He would later marry the Jewish-Viennese actress Ida Roland nee Klausner.

He’s interesting for several reasons:

1. He was influenced by Immanuel Kant, Oswald Spengler, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Friedrich Nietzsche – among others. "His original vision was for a world divided into only five states: a United States of Europe that would link continental countries with French and Italian possessions in Africa; a Pan-American Union encompassing North and South Americas; the British Commonwealth circling the globe; the USSR spanning Eurasia; and a Pan-Asian Union whereby Japan and China would control most of the Pacific. To him, the only hope for a Europe devastated by war was to federate along lines that the Hungarian-born Romanian Aurel Popovici and others had proposed for the dissolved multinational Empire of Austria-Hungary. According to Coudenhove-Kalergi, Pan-Europe would encompass and extend a more flexible and more competitive Austria-Hungary, with English serving as the world language, spoken by everyone in addition to their native tongue. He believed that individualism and socialism would learn to cooperate instead of compete, and urged that capitalism and communism cross-fertilise each other just as the Protestant Reformation had spurred the Catholic Church to regenerate itself." [emphasis added by me]

2. He was a freemason (joined in 1921)

3. In 1922, he supposedly co-founded the pan-European Union with Otto von Habsburg.

4. "According to his autobiography, at the beginning of 1924 his friend Baron Louis de Rothschild introduced him to Max Warburg who offered to finance his movement for the next three years by giving him 60,000 gold marks."

5. Supposedly, Hitler hated him.

6. His story is the basis for the character ‘Victor Laszlo’ in the movie Casablanca.

7. Worked with NYU Professor Ludwig von Mises regarding currency problems for Kalergi’s pan-European movement.

8. “In his 1925 book Practical Idealism, [he] envisioned an all-encompassing race of the future made up of "Eurasian-Negroid[s]," replacing "the diversity of peoples" and "[t]oday's races and classes" with a "diversity of individuals."

In the War Room interview with Archbishop Vigano, His Excellency says this about Kalergi: “Richard Kalergi, one of the founding fathers of the European Union, wanted to pursue social engineering policies aimed at modifying European national societies through immigration and cross breeding, driving migration waves with the attractiveness of cheaper labor costs. ”

9. Influenced Japan, particularly the Kajima Corporation, NHK, and Daisaku Ikeda (of Soka Gakkai).

10. His favorite song was Beethoven's "Ode to Joy".

Tidbit Thursday! Has anyone else heard of this guy?