The Invisible Empire Launches a Crusade of Militant Protestants

The Canadian Manifesto: The American Conservative Movement's Invasion of Canada

The 1918 midterm elections in the United States proved to be a turning point for American politics.

The Ku Klux Klan had been revived in 1915 and were enjoying enormous growth as they fed off the upheaval created by war and domestic migration - African Americans moving to Northern States, Yankee businessmen (many Jewish) to the Southern ones and destitute farmers into urban centres.

Immigration, which tripled between 1890 - 1910, had also changed the ethnic makeup of the country, fuelling people's fears.  Prior to that time most newcomers hailed from Northern and Western Europe, but by 1910,  Eastern and Southern Europeans made up 70 percent of the immigrants entering the country. 

Hungarians, Poles, Slovaks, Bohemians, and Italians flocked to the coal mines or steel mills, Greeks preferred the textile mills, Russian and Polish Jews worked the needle trades or pushcart markets of New York. Railroad companies advertised the availability of free or cheap farmland overseas in pamphlets distributed in many languages, bringing a handful of agricultural workers to western farmlands. But the vast majority of immigrants crowded into the growing cities, searching for their chance to make a better life for themselves. (1)

While those from Northern and Western Europe easily assimilated, since most were English speaking, this new group preferred to move into ethnic neighborhoods populated by their fellow countrymen, where they could converse in their native tongue, practice their own religion, and take part in cultural celebrations.

Exploited by industry as cheap labour, they also became easy targets for groups like the Klan, who fed into the xenophobia of a threatened nation.

Allan J. Lichtman, in his 2008 book, White Protestant Nation, traces the modern conservative movement to that time, when the Ku Klux Klan led a well organized and well financed resistance movement.  And what they resisted was open immigration, African Americans, ethnics, unions, liberalism, loose morals and non-Protestants.

Arguing that they were not bigots, they claimed to only "uphold the family and stop crime and vice from ruining their communities". (2)

The Political Arena

At the time of the 1918 midterm elections, the United States was at war, and Democrat Woodrow Wilson was in the White House.  Elections during war time are difficult, but Wilson made a huge mistake by suggesting that if Republicans gained control of either House, they would not support the President in his effort to fight the evil "Huns".

Political sniping was nothing new, but Wilson challenged the patriotism of the Republicans, and the backlash was immediate.  The Klan's new mantra of 100% American, helped to propel the GOP to power.  By 1920, there were 49 Republicans and  47 Democrats in the Senate, and 210 Republicans, 216 Democrats and 6 others in Congress.

But more importantly, Republican Warren G. Harding was the new President of the United States.

Many have suggested that Harding was actually a member of the Ku Klux Klan, based in part on the deathbed confession of former KKK member Alton Young.  He claimed to be there at Harding's swearing in ceremony, conducted at the White House, and that "Harding rewarded the members of the induction team with special War Department license plates that allowed them to run red lights."  It sounds just bizarre enough to be true.

Others argue that Harding championed "lynching laws" in an attempt to outlaw the practice, so was hardly a KKK sympathizer.  But then, so did the upper echelon of the Klan.

Whether Harding was a member of the organization or not, is irrelevant.  The Republican platform at the time, reflected the Klan's goals.    From Case File 28, Calvin Coolidge papers, there is a letter from Wizard Edward Young Clarke to President Calvin Coolidge, dated December 27, 1923, suggesting that the Klan was a political machine, that could be used to "up-build and develop spirituality, morality, and physically the Protestant white man of America.”

And at the 1920 Republican convention, many presidential hopefuls played to this "conservative" base, and the party:

... endorsed a platform that reflected the growing strength of conservatives in the party and the waning influence of its progressive wing ...  Along with the standard condemnation of Democratic policies, the platform advocated governmental economy, tax revision [and]  included a plank condemning strikes and lockouts as well as one promising immigration limits, especially for non-Europeans. (3)

Once elected, Harding made good on the promises and immigration was reduced to a trickle.

The Klan was not satisfied with just influencing politics in the United States, but branched out to New Zealand, Cuba, Mexico and even Germany.  However, according to the authoritative Klan historian, David Chalmers, only in Canada did the Ku Klux Klan evoke a "a substantial answering response".  (4)

Sources:

1. Immigration in the Early 20th Century, Eye Witness to History

2. White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement, By Allan J. Lichtman, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008, ISBN: 10-0-87113-983-7, p 42

3. National Politics: The 1920 Republican Nomination Race, 2001, Encyclopedia.com

4. Shades of Right: Nativist and Fascist Politics in Canada 1920-1940, By Martin Robin, University of Toronto Press, 1992, ISBN: 0-8020-5962-7, p. 2 

Next:  Reconstruction, Redemption, Deliverance and Resurrection

Reconstruction, Redemption, Deliverance and Resurrection

The Canadian Manifesto: How the American Conservative Movement Took Over My Country

On December 24, 1865, six young men, one of them the editor of the local newspaper, and several veterans of the Confederate army, formed the Ku Klux Klan in Pulaski, Tennessee, in opposition to post Civil War Reconstruction, which would give freed slaves and poor whites, democratic rights.

Taking their name from the Greek kuklos, meaning circle or band, they began as little more than a social club for "disaffected, wealthy young whites".

However, with the support of many prominent southerners, including Gen. John C. Brown, who would go on to become governor of Tennessee and president of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company, the Klan would become "the shock troops of a displaced Southern aristocracy determined to undermine a new popular order and restore the old way of life." (1)

The first Grand Wizard, was Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest of the Confederate army, a wealthy slave trader; and the first order of business was to prevent as many of the 700,000 freed former slaves, who had registered as new voters, from casting their ballots.  To do this they often resorted to bloodshed.   Yet despite the violence, 17 African Americans were elected to the General Assembly, 15 Representatives and two Senators.

The gains would be short-lived however, when the Compromise of 1877 initiated the period known as Redemption, which reduced  voting by blacks with the passing of more restrictive electoral and voter registration rules.  By 1900, they had lost the right to vote in every state in the South and not a single elected black official remained in office.

Ironically, it was the Democrats who were then working to restore and maintain white supremacy in the South, until Democratic President Lyndon Johnson stood up for civil rights in 1968, even though it meant losing the Southern vote. 

Deliverance

There is no doubt that the Klan played a major role in breaking the Reconstruction forces. Beatings, whippings and outright assassinations, helped to terrorize, both blacks and poor whites, who were seeking democratic reform.  The Klan also set fire to newly-built schoolhouses and killed teachers of former slaves.

However, once the plantation owners and southern aristocrats were back in power, the Klan's services were no longer required, and their membership dropped considerably, until they ceased to exist, except in the minds of the ex-hooded riders.

It would be several decades before the KKK would be called back into service, this time to deal with the social upheaval brought about by the Great Migration.

Beginning in 1910, African Americans left the South for the North in search of manufacturing jobs, 1.6 million in all between 1910 and 1930.  Because it was so many in such a short period of time, the new arrivals encountered significant discrimination.  Meanwhile, in the South, many poor farmers were being forced to move to urban areas for work and found that work at factories owned and run by migrated Northerners, mostly Jews.

An event would take place in 1915 that would give the Klan the incentive and support, to rise up again.

The Knights of Mary Phagan

Fourteen-year-old Mary Phagan had been working since she was ten.  Her last job was at the National Pencil Company in Atlanta Georgia, where she worked 55 hours per week for a wage of $ 4.05; about a third of the national average.

On April 21, 1913, she was laid off, and on April 26, returned to the factory for her final pay, amounting to $ 1.20.

She was seen going in but not coming out. 

At about 3:17 a.m. the following day, her body was discovered by the night watchman, who called the police.

Unceremoniously dumped in the basement, battered and bruised, with wrapping cord around her neck, and her dressed hiked up; the police believed that she had been raped and then strangled so that she couldn't name her attacker.  After speaking with co-workers, they began to build a case against the company's superintendent,  Leo Max Frank.  Some of the girls had suggested that Frank was a bit of a flirt.

Though there was no physical evidence implicating him, the media spun the story to suggest that it was open and shut.  They even allowed the testimony of a black man, Jim Conley, to be entered against a white man,  a unique event in this region at the time.  But then that white man was a Jew.

Jim Conley was in all likelihood Mary's killer.  He was drinking heavily that day and was looking for cash.  Mary's purse with her wage packet was never found, and in later years, descendants of Conley claimed that he was indeed responsible.

So why was Frank convicted instead? 

Atlanta had the largest Jewish community in the South, many prominent business owners.  Frank himself was originally from New York, a graduate of Cornell, and president of the Atlanta chapter of the B'nai B'rith.

By contrast, many of the white Protestant citizens in the region were poor, uneducated farmers, who had left near destitute conditions in the Georgia countryside to find work in the city, and for many that work meant toiling for Jewish bosses.  The resentment was there, if not always visible.

Now they were being given an opportunity to put one of them in their place.  Jim Conley was a poor drunk who posed no threat to their standing as descendants of the "conquering race", while Frank was a symbol of the "foreign" exploiter making money from the labour of their children. 

Originally given the death sentence, the judge, who had doubts that Frank committed the crime, commuted  his sentence to life in prison.  Publisher Tom Watson, fanned the flames of anger, calling on the citizens of Georgia to take justice into their own hands and inflict the death penalty on this "Yankee Devil."  A virulent racist, he hurled anti-Jewish epithets at Frank, while making wild, unsubstantiated charges.

What happened next, was predictable.  On August 17, 1915, a caravan of eight vehicles with 25 armed men, arrived at the Georgia State Prison where Frank was being held. Calling themselves the Knights of Mary Phagan, they cut the telephone lines, surprised the guards and kidnapped Leo Frank.

At Frey's Grove near Mary Phagan's girlhood home, they hung him. Photographs were taken but newspapers refused to publish them since they implicated many prominent citizens. Frank's body was put on public display and postcards made of the lynching sold by the thousands. "Justice" was served.  The white Protestant was still boss.

Resurrection

After the sensationalized trial and subsequent lynching of Leo Frank, William Joseph Simmons, of Harpersville, Alabama, son of an original Klansman, decided that it was time to do something to protect the white Protestant heritage of America.  He claimed to have interpreted a pattern in the clouds as a divine command to save their honour.  (2)

He had watched D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation and was drawn to the heroic portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan.

It was Simmons who led the charge on October 16, 1915, up Stone Mountain, to burn a cross in honour of Mary Phagan, the young girl that Frank was wrongfully accused of murdering.

Cross burning was not a practice of the first Ku Klux Klan.  Griffith borrowed the idea from the Scottish Clans, who had burned crosses as a method of signalling from one hilltop to the next.

Simmon's cross burning, highly visible to the surrounding area on that fateful night, was the symbol of a religious rebirth, and the Invisible Empire of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan was brought to life .  It was to be a fraternity of native-born Anglo-Saxon or Celtic Protestants who would rid the country of at least the influence, of Blacks, Jews and Roman Catholics, or anyone else who "didn't belong".

Tom Watson, the publisher who had helped to incite the mob that lynched Leo Frank, had already began calling for the Klan's reorganization, creating an interest, and in 1920, with the help of the Klan, he was elected to the U.S. Senate.

The Leo Frank case, also resulted in the creation of the Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai B'rith, (3) the nemesis of the Ku Klux Klan and other like-minded groups.

Making a Mountain Out of a Mountain

Stone Mountain as the site for the first Klan cross burning was not without meaning.  Long held as a sacred place by indigenous groups, Creek and Cherokee leaders used the peak for political gatherings and religious rituals.

If Simmons was going to resurrect the Klan, he had to reclaim the mountain for white Protestants. 

Sculptor Gutzon Borglum, a Klan member himself, was charged with turning the mountain into a memorial to the Confederacy*, and began carving enormous images of Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson, right into the granite dome. (4)

Virginia Governor and promoter of the project, Elbert Lee Trinkle (in suit), shown shaking hands with  Borglum in 1923, described Stone Mountain as "consecrated ground that God himself has raised up", a "mecca of glory," a "sanctuary of truth," 'and a "sermon in stone," where the South's "golden age ... defied the future"  ( 4). It was no longer a holy place for the First Nations.  It had been conquered.

Gutzon Borglum would go on to create another masterpiece, again on sacred aboriginal ground, that would become one of the most visited sites in the United States:  Mount Rushmore.  Long a catalyst to the Native community, who still own the land**, the memorial was again a tribute to white supremacy.

Borglum had apparently been on Stone Mountain that fateful night and was a staunch anti-Semite and well known bigot.  His granddaughter inherited his papers, and says that she is often embarrassed by the things that he wrote.

Some have wondered why he would then include Lincoln on the carving, given that it was he who freed the slaves.  However, Abraham Lincoln was not really anti-slavery.  In fact, abolitionist Frederick Douglass, called Lincoln "the white man's president".   Lincoln only began to listen to the abolitionists, mid-way through the Civil War, when he realized that emancipation could speed victory for the North.  Almost 200,000 black soldiers then joined the fight.  Besides, the Klan themselves, are not pro-slavery, only pro-white Protestant. 

The  idea of this group was that they stood for the Glory of the United States.  Its Manifest Destiny.

Footnotes:

*Stone Mountain is now a popular theme park, fashioned after Gone With the Wind.  In 1995, the state privatized the management of the park, partnering with Herschend Family Entertainment, a Christian company that operates Dolly-wood and a number of theme parks in Branson, Missouri.

** The federal government has made several attempts to buy the land, but all offers have been refused by the indigenous people, since it goes against their religious beliefs to buy or sell land. 

Sources:

1.  White Hoods: Canada's Ku Klux Klan, By Julian Sher, New Star Books, 1983, ISBN 0-919573-13-4, p. 20

2. J. Edgar Hoover and the Klu Klux Klan, By R. J. Stove, National Observer, No. 47, Summer 2001

3. Website Names Alleged Lynchers of Leo Frank, Cobb Online

4. Grounding religion: a field guide to the study of religion and ecology, By Whitney Bauman, Taylor & Francis, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-4157-80162, p. 213

Kleagles, Wizards, Goblins and Dragons Rebirth a Nation

The Canadian Manifesto: How the American Neoconservatives Stole My Country

After the sensationalized trial and subsequent lynching of Leo Frank, William Joseph Simmons, of Harpersville, Alabama, son of an original Klansman, decided that it was time to do something to protect the white Protestant heritage of America.

He had watched D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation and was drawn to the heroic portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan.

It was he who led the charge on October 16, 1915, up Stone Mountain, to burn a cross in honour of Mary Phagan, the young girl that Frank was wrongfully accused of murdering.

Cross burning was not a practice of the first Ku Klux Klan.  Griffith borrowed the idea from the Scottish Clans, who had burned crosses as a method of signalling from one hilltop to the next.

Simmon's cross burning, highly visible to the surrounding area on that fateful night, was the symbol of a religious rebirth, and the Invisible Empire of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan was brought to life.  It was to be a fraternity of native-born Anglo-Saxon or Celtic Protestants who would rid the country of at least the influence, of Blacks, Jews and Roman Catholics, or anyone else who "didn't belong".

As Grand Wizard, Simmons created titles like Kleagle (organizer and field worker) Kloncilium (supreme advisory board) and Klonsel (legal counsel), while maintaining the Goblins, Dragons, etc. of the original Klan.  For his services he was provided with a home called Klan Krest and a monthly salary of $1,000.00. (3)

The Klan had gone from obscurity, to a well organized and well financed resistance movement.

In October of 1921, concern with the Klan's popularity led to a federal hearing, where Simmons repeatedly stressed the benevolent and fraternal nation of the Klan, himself denouncing the violence.  After his appearance, letters poured in from across the country, with requests for assistance in creating local chapters.  The Klan then garnered over a million new members.  Simmons would later say that "Congress made us". (1)

In 1922, the torch was passed to Edward Young Clarke, an advertising executive from Louisiana.

Clarke was the ultimate promoter, but alas turned out to be the ultimate swindler. 

In 1922, Louisiana Governor John M. Parker, sent J. Edgar Hoover (then Assistant Director of the Bureau of Investigation), a request for help in dealing with the Ku Klux Klan, that had grown so powerful in his state that it effectively controlled the northern half. Initially, the feds did not want to get involved, believing it to be a state matter, until Parker reminded them of their duty to protect the states from domestic violence. (2)

Once they started digging, they found that Clarke had been skimming off the top, keeping $ 8.00 of every $10.00 membership fee, and cashing in on the sale of "uniforms" (white bed sheets?).  The only thing they could convict him on, however, was transporting a mistress across state lines, in violation of the 1910 Mann Act; legislation that prohibited white slavery and the interstate transport of females for “immoral purposes”.

A Change in Direction

Though lynchings remained popular throughout the 1920s, despite attempts to create anti-lynching laws, the membership of the "new" Klan was more urban, and publicly denounced the practice. 

The Klan's hierarchy instead decided to become more political, by promoting candidates with a shared vision of the United States as a White Protestant Nation.  In his book of that name, Allan Lichtman, traces the Conservative movement back to those days.

From 1920 to 1925 the Ku Klux Klan grew more explosively than any political or social movement in U.S. history. In these few years the Klan recruited some three million to six million white Protestants from across America's working and middle classes, representing those who founded and "own this country" ...  Klan leaders used modern marketing techniques to build thriving chapters in both cities and small towns. The Klan flourished not only in the South but also in Maryland, Indiana, Pennsylvania, California, Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey, Illinois, Oregon, Colorado, and Kansas ... [they] sometimes resorted to violence but more commonly participated in direct civic action and electoral politics ... defended Nordic Americans and their traditional culture from Catholics, blacks, and Jews ... (4)

With ambiguous messaging, and a tough on crime stance, they reached out to middle America.

The Klan had an intensely local appeal as it worked to enforce traditional Protestant values by upholding Prohibition, fighting crime, and shutting down dance parlors, pool halls, and brothels. It backed public schools and hospitals and clean government but also boycotted Jewish and Catholic-owned businesses. Klan members benefited from this strategy, which sustained their economic privileges as white Protestant Americans." (4)

They also decided that it was time to change the system from within:

Klan members donned white robes of purity, hid their identities under hoods, burned crosses, exchanged secret handshakes and greetings, and spawned a rich bestiary of leaders termed kleagles, wizards, goblins, and dragons. But underneath the lavish ritual lurked a serious political operation. The Klan elected thousands of endorsed candidates to school boards and local governments and extended its reach to state and national offices.  Outside the solidly Democratic South, the Klan linked arms with anti-Pluralist Republicans.  Statistical analysis of all nonsouthern counties that white Protestants, both fundamentalist and mainstream, provided the vote for Klan-sponsored candidates.  Race and religion, not class or urban-rural residence, distinguished the Klan vote from support for other candidates.  At its height in 1924 the Klan swept nearly every major election  in which it had endorsed a candidate. (4)

Using side show tactics, like parading a goat around wearing the name of a candidate they opposed, or launching boycotts and whisper campaigns, the Klan referred to their political activism as "guerrilla warfare", a term that continues to be used by the conservative movement today.  Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition said of his activism to garner the white Protestant vote:  "I want to be invisible. I do guerrilla warfare. I paint my face and travel at night. You don't know it's over until you're in a body bag. You don't know until election night."  (5)

The media dismissed the Klan in the 1920s and mocked their rallies, in the same way that they allowed Reed to fly under their radar.

" ... and by the time it finally caught their attention, Reed's Christian Coalition controlled both houses of Congress and would later play a major role in putting George W. Bush in the White House, not once but twice. (6)

Gerry Nicholls, VP of the National Citizens Coalition when Stephen Harper was its president, also refers to the tactics used by the NCC as "guerrilla warfare".  (7)

This doesn't mean that Reed or the NCC supported the KKK, but does validate Lichtman's claim that the conservative movement did not begin in the 1940's as many believe, but the 1920s, when the toned down Klan attempted to recreate America in their image, by working to elect conservative candidates.

And they did not confine their activism to America, but crossed into Canada at the same time, said to be instrumental in electing the conservative government of James Thomas Milton Anderson, in Saskatchewan.  Though Anderson denied any involvement with the Klan, his policies reflected their "values".  Values which  included opposition to Catholics and the French language being taught in schools.

Later Pat Emmons, a Grand Wizard of the Saskatchewan Klan, scheduled a public meeting at which he said he would expose the alleged link, but "couldn't make himself heard over the shouts and jeers." (8)

Another Political Rebirth

When it was learned that former Canadian Klan leader, Wolfgang Droege, was the Reform Party's Ontario policy chair (9), Preston Manning immediately denounced him, claiming not to know.  He also purged the party of Droege's new group, the Heritage Front.  However, according to former Heritage Front member Al Overfield, he “let the Reform Party executive know about his political past, and they had no problems with it."  He also stated that Stephen Harper was well aware of his involvement in far right groups.

Any successful movement, left or right, needs the radicals and Canada's conservative movement was no different.  In fact at a Reform Party assembly, they actually passed a motion that would allow extremists to join. When someone stood up and asked "What about Doug Christie?" the response was "Ah, leave him in. We may need to use him later." (10)

Doug Christie was the controversial lawyer and monarchist, who defended most of Canada's neo-Nazis, including James Keegstra, the school teacher who taught his students that the Holocaust was a hoax.  Christie was also the founder of Western Canada Concept, a separatist party calling for Western provinces and territories to break away and form their own country (or join the United States).  Stockwell Days' father was a candidate for the Party.

It can be very tempting for politicians to tap into the passion and energy of these extremist groups, to help them get elected.  The problem is what to do with them after.

They are Still an Important Part of History

According to Robert O. Paxton, the Ku Klux Klan was the first known  fascist movement. 

The Klan constituted an alternate civic authority, parallel to the legal state, which, in its founders' eyes, no longer defended their community's legitimate interests. In its adoption of a uniform (white robe and hood), as well as its techniques of intimidation and its conviction that violence was justified in the cause of the group's destiny, the first version of the Klan in the defeated American South was a remarkable preview of the way fascist movements were to function in interwar Europe. It is arguable, at least, that fascism (understood functionally) was born in the late 1860s in the American South. (11)

What was unique about fascism as a political theory, was that unlike other isms, that have clear formulated doctrines, fascism "introduced no systematic exposition of its ideology or purpose other than a negative reaction against socialist and democratic egalitarianism." (12) 

Seymour Martin Lipset said of the "radical right" involved with the conservative movement, that they are far from having a unified ideology.  The common denominator that unites the Radical Right is the identification of the policies which it opposes. (13)

In the 1920's the KKK opposed non-white immigration, Negroes, ethnics, liberalism, loose morals and non-Protestants.  They claimed to "uphold the family and stop crime and vice from ruining their communities". (4)

How is that any different from the Right's goals today?  They have included Jews and Catholics but only of the Orthodox variety.  Paxton states that religion plays a much greater role in authentic fascism in the United States than in the first European fascisms (11).  Many other respected authors and journalists, also refer to the Religious Right and the modern conservative movement as fascism.

No matter how we sugar coat it, by seeking alternative monikers, like neoconservatives, corporatists, or the least threatening term of all, "conservatives", used to differentiate them from Republicans or Tories, they are still fascists.

In fact, Paxton believes that we are doing history a grave injustice by not recognizing that.

A real phenomenon exists. Indeed, fascism is the most original political novelty of the twentieth century, no less. It successfully gathered, against all expectations, in certain modern nations that had seemed firmly planted on a path to gradually expanding democracy, a popular following around hard, violent, antiliberal and antisocialist nationalist dictatorships. ....We must be able to examine this phenomenon as a system. It is not enough to treat each national case individually, as if each one constitutes a category in itself. If we cannot examine fascism synthetically, we risk being unable to understand this century, or the next.

Allan Litchman in White Protestant Nation opened the door, by tracing the conservative movement to the albeit temporary rebirth of the KKK in the 1920s.  A time when Fascism was gaining popularity across Europe, before Mussolini and Hitler made it a dirty word.

The vast majority of today's conservatives would not support the violence of the Nazis or the KKK, but they need to understand that their political actions are just as undemocratic.  Even if they do refer to it as "direct democracy", it is the use of money, radicalism and religious authority, to dictate policy.  It doesn't get any moer fascist than that.

Sources:

1.The White Separatist Movement in the United States: "White Power, White Pride!", By Betty A. Dobratz and Stephanie L Shanks-Meile, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000, ISBN:  13: 978-0801865374, p.38

2. A Byte Out of FBI History,Imperial Kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan in Kustody, FBI Files, March 2004

3. KU KLUX KLAN: Simmony? Time Magazine,February 25, 1924

4. White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement, By Allan J. Lichtman, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008, ISBN: 10-0-87113-983-7, pp 42-42

5. Inside the Christian Coalition, By Frederick Clarkson, Institute for First Amendment Studies, Jan/Feb 1992

6. The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada, By: Marci McDonald, Random House Canada, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-307-35646-8 3, p. 5

7. How to wage political guerrilla warfare, By Gerry Nicholls, Report Magazine, June 5, 2008

8. Klan Gained Hold in Saskatchewan,  By Ron MacDonald, Winnipeg Free Press, May 8, 1965. p.14

9. Preston Manning: Roots of Reform, By: Frank Dabbs, Greystone, 2000, ISBN -13-97815-50547504

10. Of Passionate Intensity: Right-Wing Populism and the Reform Party of Canada, By Trevor Harrison, University of Toronto Press, 1995, ISBN: 0-8020-7204-6

11. The Five Stages of Fascism, By Robert O. Paxton, Columbia University, The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 70, No. 1. (Mar., 1998), pp. 1-23.

12. Fascism: Origins of Fascism, The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia

13. The Radical Right, Edited by Daniel Bell, Doubleday, 1964

How Dare They?

The Canadian Manifesto: How the American Neoconservatives Stole My Country

There has been a renewed interest in the famous Dreyfus Affair, that sent an innocent French military officer, of Jewish descent, to prison for treason in 1894.

Given today's media hyped "culture wars", this affair divided France, in the same way that we are increasingly being divided; with lines drawn between conservatism and liberalism; right and left.

Louis Begley's 2009: Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters, reminds us of the anti-Semitism behind the affair, and he's absolutely right.  But he parallels the injustice with the Bush era and the practices of torture at Guantánamo Bay.

Dreyfus was indeed tortured by the inhumane conditions while imprisoned on Devil's Island, but the comparison ends there.

Frederick Brown's 2011:  For the Soul of France: Culture Wars in the Age of Dreyfus, traces the affair to France's humiliating defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, that split the country into "cultural factions that ranged from those who embraced modernity to those who championed the restoration of throne and altar."

The Eiffel Tower, built in 1889, stood taller than cathedrals, a visible reminder of the diminished stature of the Catholic Church.  More importantly was the financial threat imposed by the collapse of the Catholic investment bank, Union Generale, in 1882.  It  was blamed on the Rothschild banking firm, that had financed the reparations to Germany after the war, and was emerging as the dominant financial institute of the day.  Anti-Semitism heightened as economic woes continued, and a portion of the French public was quick to see the guilty hand of Jewish financiers at every turn.

Oxford University historian, Ruth Harris, in her new book: Dreyfus: Politics, Emotion, and the Scandal of the Century, suggests that the affair that divided France was more complex and drawing on original letters, she showed that Dreyfus supporters were often critical of their "left-leaning" friends for not backing their fight, as the sentiment against the Jewish officer crossed many faiths and political beliefs.

That anti-Semitism was at the root of the Dreyfus Affair, is undebatable, however, I think there was also something else at play.  What I call the "how dare they?" factor.

While prejudice itself is the product of ignorance and fear, at the very heart of prejudice is a notion of superiority and power based on that superiority.  Whether race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, age, or social class, are at the core; power goes to the predominant societal group.  And to hold on to that power they must constantly prove that they are supreme, and therefore deserving.

The hierarchy of the French military at the time was predominantly Catholic and somewhat aristocratic, based on wealth and birth.  Alfred Dreyfus broke that mold.  The son of a peddler who had made a fortune in textile manufacturing, he was an "aristocrat" through education, paid for with "new money".   And he was Jewish.

When it was discovered that there was a spy in their midst, who was selling secrets to Germany, they automatically looked to Dreyfus, who not only spoke with a slight German accent, but fit an ill-conceived profile.  And there was a score to settle.   A superior officer, Colonel Pierre-Elie Fabre, while recognizing Dreyfus's intelligence and talent,  condemned his "pretentiousness, unsatisfactory attitude, and faults of character." (1)

As the only Jewish officer trainee on the French General Staff, he should have been more appreciative.  "How dare he" assume that he was entitled to this honour?  A spy scandal, presented an opportunity to put him in his place.

It was later discovered that the cash strapped Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy was the real spy and the fact that Esterhazy was never convicted, resulted in charges of a cover-up.  But it was too late.  Dreyfus was already guilty in the court of public opinion.

AFTERMATH - In the hyper charged anti-Semitic climate, many wanted it to be Dreyfus.  As a result, capitalizing on the emotions of prejudice, several right-wing groups found prominence, including the Action Française (French Action) counter-revolutionary movement, that fought for a return to the monarchist system, and a reversal of the achievements of the French Revolution,  that gave Jews and other minority groups equal rights.  They remained active until WWII, working as "Nazi collaborators", responsible for the arrest of Dreyfus's Jewish granddaughter, Madeleine Levy, by the Gestapo. Madame Levy was sent to Auschwitz, where she died in January of 1944.

The affair also saw the emergence of the "intellectuals" - academics and others who took positions on grounds of higher principle. (2)

A more profound result however,  came from an  Hungarian-Jewish journalist Theodor Herzl, who had been assigned to report on the trial.  Though opposed to organized religion, Herzl was responsible for the birth of the Zionist movement and the creation of the state of Israel.

The Knights of Mary Phagan

Fourteen-year-old Mary Phagan had been working since she was ten.  Her last job was at the National Pencil Company in Atlanta Georgia, where she worked 55 hours per week for a wage of $ 4.05; about a third of the national average.

On April 21, 1913, she was laid off, and on April 26, returned to the factory for her final pay, amounting to $ 1.20.

She was seen going in but not coming out. 

At about 3:17 a.m. the following day, her body was discovered by the night watchman, who called the police.

Unceremoniously dumped in the basement, battered and bruised, with wrapping cord around her neck, and her dressed hiked up; the police believed that she had been raped and then strangled so that she couldn't name her attacker.

After speaking with co-workers, they began to build a case against the company's superintendent,  Leo Max Frank.  Some of the girls had suggested that Frank was a bit of a flirt.

Though there was no physical evidence implicating him, the media spun the story to suggest that it was open and shut.  They even allowed the testimony of a black man, Jim Conley, to be entered against a white man,  a unique event in this region at the time.  But then that white man was a Jew.

Jim Conley was in all likelihood Mary's killer.  He was drinking heavily that day and was looking for cash.  Mary's purse with her wage packet was never found, and in later years, descendants of Conley claimed that he was indeed responsible.

So why was Frank convicted instead?  I believe that it was another case of "how dare they?"

Atlanta had the largest Jewish community in the South, many prominent business owners.  Frank himself was originally from New York, a graduate of Cornell, and president of the Atlanta chapter of the B'nai B'rith.

By contrast, many of the white Protestant citizens in the region were poor, uneducated farmers, who had left near destitute conditions in the Georgia countryside to find work in the city, and for many that work meant toiling for Jewish bosses.  The resentment was there, if not always visible.

Now they were being given an opportunity to put one of them in their place.  Jim Conley was a poor drunk who posed no threat to their standing as descendants of the "conquering race", while Frank was a symbol of the "foreign" exploiter making money from the labour of their children. 

Originally given the death sentence, the judge, who had doubts that Frank committed the crime, commuted  his sentence to life in prison.  Publisher Tom Watson, fanned the flames of anger, calling on the citizens of Georgia to take justice into their own hands and inflict the death penalty on this "Yankee Devil."  A virulent racist, he hurled anti-Jewish epithets at Frank, while making wild, unsubstantiated charges.

What happened next, was predictable.  On August 17, 1915, a caravan of eight vehicles with 25 armed men, arrived at the Georgia State Prison where Frank was being held. Calling themselves the Knights of Mary Phagan, they cut the telephone lines, surprised the guards and kidnapped Leo Frank.

At Frey's Grove near Mary Phagan's girlhood home, they hung him. Photographs were taken but newspapers refused to publish them since they implicated many prominent citizens. Frank's body was put on public display and postcards made of the lynching sold by the thousands. "Justice" was served.  The white Christian was still boss.

AFTERMATH - Tom Watson, the publisher who had helped to incite the perpetrators, began calling for the reorganization of the Ku Klux Klan.  So on November 25, 1915, the Knights of Mary Phagan met atop Stone Mountain, burned a cross, and initiated the new invisible order of the Ku Klux Klan.  Soon after, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith was founded in New York; its creation based largely on the Leo Frank case. (3)

And in 1920, Tom Watson was elected to the U.S. Senate.

Black Wall Street Goes up in Flames

During the oil boom of the 1910s, the area of northeast Oklahoma around Tulsa flourished, including Greenwood, an all black neighborhood.  Because of segregation laws, despite being affluent, residents of Greenwood were forbidden to shop in white business sections, so instead created their own commercial district, that was so successful, it became known as Black Wall Street.

By 1921, Greenwood boasted 21 churches, 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores, a hotel, 2 movie theaters, a hospital, a bank, a post office, libraries, schools, law offices, a half dozen private planes and even a well organized bus system.  In all 600 businesses thrived.

However, what was also thriving at the time, was the Ku Klux Klan, whose recruiting came easy with the affront of  the people of Greenwood believing that they could be successful on their own, without the help of white masters.  "How dare they?"

Things came to a boil on May 30, 1921, when a black man named Dick Rowland, stepped into an elevator operated by Sarah Page, a white woman. Rowland worked in a shoeshine store across from the building, and had been given permission to use their washroom.

The story goes that he stepped on Page's foot, throwing her off balance. When he reached out to keep her from falling, she screamed, and nervous, Rowland ran from the building.  The media sensationalized the story, by turning it into a full blown sexual assault, and like the Leo Frank case, began calling for "lynch justice".

The next day, Rowland was arrested and held in the courthouse lockup.   Outside the courthouse, 75 armed black men mustered, offering their services to protect Rowland, but the Sheriff refused the offer.  When a white man tried to disarm one of the black men, the gun discharged, sparking one of the worst riots in American history. (4)

Led by the Klan, the community of Greenwood was destroyed, most businesses burned to the ground.  As many as 176 people were killed, mostly black, including Dr. A. C. Jackson, who had received praise from the Mayo clinic for his medical skills.

Hundreds of  photographs were taken and again sold as postcards, including the one above:  'Runing (sic) the Negro out of Tulsa', though this was not so much about the negro, but the successful negro.  Had this been simply anger over a black man assaulting a white woman, they would have lynched Rowland, but there was a bigger score to settle. 

Louis Begley compares the Dreyfus Affair to the Bush Administration and the removal of civil liberties at Guantánamo Bay.  However, if we wanted to give any of the above stories a modern context, it would be when Rush Limbaugh referred to Michelle Obama as "uppity".

According to the Urban Dictionary,  the term is used to denote someone "Taking liberties or assuming airs beyond one's place in a social hierarchy. Assuming equality with someone higher up the social ladder."

How dare she assume that she can share status with the other 43 First Ladies, who were white?

Alfred Dreyfus, Leo Frank and the citizens of Greenwood were also "uppity", and paid heavily for the crime, not of believing that they were better than everyone else, but only equal to other military officers, plant bosses or business people.

How dare they?

In his 2008, White Protestant Nation, Allan Lichtman traces the Conservative movement to this time in history, when the "national identity" was being threatened.  Hannah Arendt referred to it as the "conscientiousness of common origin".

The right-wing mobilized and went from an assortment of fringe groups to what Lichtman called "the most powerful network of media, fundraising and intellectual organizations [think-tanks] in the history of representative government."  He also reminds us that the conservative ideology is not as many believe, lower taxes, limited government and the free market, but rather a "vision of America as a white Protestant nation".

Canada's conservative movement now represented by the Conservative Party of Canada, shares that vision.  From Sun TV's "white people", "Christian nation" rhetoric, to the new direction taken by immigration head Jason Kenney, and the renewed prominence of the Monarchist League. 

We are taking a huge leap backward.

Sources: 

1. "Why The Dreyfus Affair Matters", by Louis Begley, The Denver Post, November 8, 2009

2. Dreyfus Affair, Wikipedia

3. Website Names Alleged Lynchers of Leo Frank, Cobb Online

4. The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921, Montgomery College

5. Of Passionate Intensity: Right-Wing Populism and the Reform Party of Canada, By Trevor Harrison Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995. ISBN: 0-8020-7204-6, pp 170-171

In Which a Gaggle of Bankers and Oil Execs Try to Put Children in Their Place

In 1922, a political group was formed called the Sentinels of the Republic, whose aim was to stop federal encroachment on big business.  Of course that's not really how they sold it, but instead vowed to "stop the growth of socialism" and "prevent the concentration of power in Washington through the multiplication of administrative bureaus under a perverted interpretation of the general welfare clause". 

Quite a mouthful.

The Sentinels was actually a right-wing front group for the corporate sector, formed to handle the PR against any government legislation that might impede their ability to become filthy rich.  Or should I say filthier?

One of their first campaigns was to oppose Child Labour Laws, framing it as concern for poor families whose children must work to keep them fed, and stating among other things that they "would prevent children from doing chores at home", and was "socialistic, communistic and Bolshevistic."  A "Commie plot"

Those advocating for children knew what they were up against.  According to Time Magazine in January of 1925:

Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, Honorary Chairman of the League of Women Voters, told her pro-Amendment following: "The amendment is as good as dead and buried and the obsequies performed, unless something is done about it and done quickly." Experienced observers were inclined to confirm her prediction. The opponents of the Amendment have succeeded to a marked degree in generating a real fear of its consequences. Fear is a tremendously important political asset ... In pushing the idea of the evil consequences of the Child Labor Amendment to the fore, its opponents have placed its proponents entirely on the defensive. (1) 

A classic strategy of the Right.  The Sentinels were part of the noise and their efforts resulted in squashing the Amendment, meaning that companies could continue to exploit children. 

One of the financiers of the Sentinels of the Republic, was J. Howard Pew, the man who helped Ernest Manning with the conservative takeover of the Social Credit Party in Alberta, and who had become a close personal friend of the Premier's.  Pew is also the man, through his Sun Oil (Suncor), to give Canada the tarsands.  A gift that keeps on giving.

The Sentinels would continue to challenge everything from the New Deal to the creation of the Department of Education, until it was determined that they also had a dark side.

According to Our Magazine "The Sentinels of the Republic were a fascist front group funded largely by the du Ponts, the Pitcairn family and J. Howard Pew."  Gerald Colby says in his book: Du Pont Dynasty: Behind the Nylon Curtain (Lyle Stewart, 1984) that:

... the Sentinels of the Republic [were] an anti-Semitic organization which constantly warned the country of "the Jewish-Communist" menace. In 1936 the Senate Lobbying Committee  released Sentinels' files revealing fascist sympathies. "The Jewish threat is a real one…. I believe our real opportunity lies in accomplishing the defeat of Roosevelt." wrote its president, Boston banker Alexander Lincoln to Cleveland Runyon, who replied that the people were crying for leadership: "The Sentinels should really lead on the outstanding issue. The old line Americans of $1,000 a year want a Hitler."

Those Missing Links

Historian Peter Viereck, in a 1955 essay, attempted to piece together the elements of the radical right, and determined that the missing link was Father Charles Couglin, the controversial priest who was a supporter of Adolf Hitler and a sworn enemy of FDR and the New Deal. 

When on a tour of the United States in 1935, to help spread the gospel of Social Credit, Alberta premier William Aberhart, met with Coughlin, coming away with a favourable impression. "He has a keen intellect and is absolutely fearless. He has a correct appraisal of world conditions."  (2)

We have to remember that Social Credit was the only political party to be based almost entirely on the notion of a Jewish Conspiracy (3), and while Aberhart himself claimed not to be anti-Semitic, his sermons suggested otherwise.

"The JEWISH RACE must yet acknowledge that the CHRIST who was crucified to the CROSS of Calvary was the SON of GOD, their MESSIAH. Until they will acknowledge that they must expect the curses of the world and can not expect the Blessings of GOD." (4)

and

Personally, I have little doubt that in working through Jews, the Jewish financial group has sacrificed its own people on the altar of its greed for power and this group is preeminently responsible for the poisonous anti-Semitism which is rampant in the world today. (5)

Aberhart also published three articles written by Father Coughlin in his Social Credit Chronicle, a paper he created to counter what he deemed to be bias against him from the mainstream press.

However, while Viereck saw Coughlin as the missing link that tied the radical right together in the United States, it was actually John Howard Pew, who began the link that tied American Conservatism to the new Canadian Conservatism.

A close friend and confidant of Aberhart's successor, Ernest Manning, Pew had a huge influence on Manning's political theories, and according to the Anti-Defamation League, Pew himself was anti-Semitic, helping to finance not only the Sentinels of the Republic, but several other "conservative" and anti-Jewish causes. (6)  Many of these operated as part of the Christian anti-Communist Crusade.

However, Pew also strengthened the idea of a right-wing infrastructure.  A myriad of think tanks and advocacy groups whose purpose was to promote conservatism while tearing down liberal ideas.

He has been called a philanthropist; a heavy contributor to non-profit groups.  However, following is a list of some of the those groups who benefited from Pew's generosity. 

America First Committee - An isolationist group that lobbied the U.S. government to stay out of WWII, and leave Hitler alone to do his job, which was to destroy Communism.

National Association of Manufacturers: A fascist-linked network of industrialists who were at the heart of many anti-New Deal campaigns. (7)

Christian Freedom Foundation - Sought to "rally the support of Prostentant clergymen for rugged individualism" and for years was "supported almost entirely by J. Howard Pew of the Sun Oil Company and members of his family.  They have contributed well over a million dollars to its operation." (8)

The Foundation for Economic Education - Formed in 1946, it was described as an extremely conservative organization that issued a "huge volume of material aimed at overcoming state interventionism".  Pew was not only a major contributor but was also on their board of trustees.

Christian Economic Foundation - After failing to move the National Council of Churches to the far right, Pew helped create the CEF. In the 1960s, it sowed the seeds of the Christian Right by sending its free magazine, Christian Economics, to clergy across the U.S.

The John Birch Society - And Anti-communist organization still involved with the conservative movement today.

The National Review - Paper of William F. Buckley Jr.

American Opinion magazine - described by the ADL as a radical right, extreme conservative publication, it was the official magazine of the John Birch Society.

Young Americans For Freedom - Activist group that helped to create the Leadership Institute, on which Preston Manning's Democracy centre was fashioned.

Intercollegiate Society of Individualists - A Paleoconservative group that keeps book lists.  Those young conservatives should read and those they must avoid.

Though J. Howard Pew died in 1971, his Pew Foundation continues to support right-wing causes, including: 

American Enterprise Institute: A conservative think tank founded in 1943, that became a home to arch-conservatives like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, David Frum, Dick Cheney, and more.  Both Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush plucked staff from the AEI

The Heritage Foundation: Created in 1973 by Joseph Coors, and headed by people like Paul Weyrich.

The British-American Project for the Successor Generation: Founded in 1985 by devotees of Reagan and Thatcher, it grooms right-wing U.S. and British youth as leaders.

The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research: Founded in 1978 by William Casey, who later became Reagan’s CIA director, it promotes privatization, deregulation and cuts to social welfare programs.

It has been said that the conservative movement is very linear, and visiting right-wing sites, many associated with the Tea Party, it's hard not to agree.  The goals are almost identical to those of similar groups established decades ago.  Several still exist and others have seen a revival.

The Sentinels of the Republic are back, and Republican Senator Jane Cunningham, wanted to roll back Missouri's child labour laws suggesting that they are infringing on parental rights.  She should meet Kelly Block.

We only began really paying attention to Canada's conservative movement, when Stephen Harper was named prime minister.  However, his victory was the culmination of sixty years of hard work.

American conservatism is not a good fit for the majority of Canadians.  In fact, it's not even a good fit for the majority of Americans, because it's based on fear, anger, deception and just plain nonsense.

There will always be dissident voices heard in the land, expressing opposition without alternatives, finding fault but never favor, perceiving gloom on every side and seeking influence without responsibility. Those voices are inevitable.  But today other voices are heard in the land—voices preaching doctrines wholly unrelated to reality, wholly unsuited ... We cannot expect that everyone, to use the phrase of a decade ago, will "talk sense to the American people." But we can hope that fewer people will listen to nonsense. —Excerpt from text of undelivered speech scheduled for presentation in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, by the late President John F. Kennedy.

Sources:

1. Labor:  A 20th Amendment, Time magazine, January 25, 1925

2. Bible Bill: A Biography of William Aberhart, By: David R. Elliot and Iris Miller, Edmonton: Reidmore Books, 1987, p. 213

3. Social Discredit: Social Credit and the Jewish Response, Janine Stingel, Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-7735-2010-4, p. 13

4. Stingel, 2003, p. 20

5. A Trust Betrayed: The Keegstra Affair, By: David Bercuson and Douglas Wertheimer, Doubleday Canada, 1985, ISBN: 0-385-25003-7, pp. 34-38

6. The Radical Right, Various Authors, Criterion Books, 1963

7. Pew - Facing the Corporate Roots of American Fascism, J. Howard Pew (1882-1971), By Richard Sanders, Our Magazine

8. Danger on the Right: The Attitudes, Personnel and Influence of the Radical Right and Extreme Conservatives, By Arnold Forster and Benjamin R. Epstein, Random House, 1964

The Problem With Conspiracy Theories

The Canadian Manifesto: How the American Neoconservatives Stole My Country

On February 15, 1933, Franklin Roosevelt was delivering a speech in Miami Florida. A lone gunman, described as "a deranged Italian immigrant", named Giuseppe Zingara, opened fire in his bid to make history.

"I have the gun in my hand. I kill kings and presidents first and next all capitalists."

Zingara was clearly gunning for the president, but being short, he was forced to stand on a chair, and would later say that a woman had knocked his arm, throwing off his aim. Instead of hitting FDR, one of the bullets felled Chicago mayor Anton Cermak, who died a month later. Zingara would spend just 10 days on Florida's Death Row, before being executed.

Even today, conspiracy theories abound, with the most popular being that the Masons were behind it (aren't they behind everything?) Original accounts suggested that Zingara was an unemployed brick layer, but were later corrected, because in fact he was just a Freemason.

Others have suggested that Cermack was the target all along and that this was a mob hit. But come on. If this was a mob hit they would not have sent someone like Giuseppe Zingara.

Coincidence or Conspiracy?

On March 30, 1981, John Warnock Hinkley shot a .22 caliber revolver six times at Ronald Reagan as he left the Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C.

Wounded were Reagan's press secretary James Brady, police officer Thomas Delahanty, and Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy. Hinckley did not hit Reagan directly, but seriously wounded him when a bullet ricocheted off the side of the presidential limousine and hit him in the chest. Hinckley made no attempt to flee and was arrested at the scene. All of the shooting victims survived, though Brady was left paralyzed on the left side of his body.

This incident inspired the Brady Bill, signed into law by Bill Clinton on November 30, 1993, going into effect on February 28, 1994. The guts of the bill was that background checks would be required before the sale of a handgun.

However, another side to Hinkley's story, became fodder for a popular conspiracy theory.  Hinkley's dad was the owner of Vanderbilt Oil, and a staunch supporter of George Bush Sr..  Apparently he had donated to Bush's leadership bid and was disappointed when Reagan got the nod.

What made the story even more bizarre, was that Hinkley's brother Scott was supposed to be having dinner with Neil Bush, the son of then Vice-President George H. Bush, on the evening following the shooting.  Needless to say, it was cancelled.

And to add still more fuel to the fire of a "cover-up", the Hinkley family was under investigation for price gouging, that could have seen them being hit with a $2 million fine (1). Apparently, government auditors had met with Scott the very day that Reagan was shot by his brother, which prompted many to believe that John had been put up to the assassination, in an attempt to both remove a political rival, and to halt an investigation into the family's finances.

John Hinkley was mentally unbalanced, and by his own admission, hoped to kill Reagan to impress actress Jodie Foster, a woman he was obsessed with. It's possible that dinner table conversations of the family's dislike for Reagan and fear of the pending investigation, may have made him believe that this would also end his family's problems, but it's highly unlikely that he was coerced by anyone.

Not a Conspiracy Theory

The problem with conspiracy theories is that they can often distort historical facts, and that's what happened to a less known incident that took place in 1933-34. As bizarre as it sounds, a group of wealthy Americans, attempted to stage a military coup to remove FDR from the White House, and replace his administration with a fascist government, led by a military dictator.

Just typing that sounds crazy, however, the facts of the case are a matter of public record; the findings of the McCormack-Dickstein Commission.   The man who blew the whistle on the operation, was then the most decorated marine in the country, Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, who was to be FDR's replacement. (2)

Butler reported that on July 1, 1933, two American Legion officials visited him at his home, Bill Doyle, the commander of the Massachusetts branch, and Gerald C. MacGuire, former commander of the Connecticut department.  Both decorated veterans, they initially only wanted Butler to convince WWI vets, to force the president to maintain the gold standard. 

They knew that he was already involved with the Bonus Army, a populist group attempting to have their promised bonuses as veterans of WWI, paid early, and hoped to convince him that in a position of power, he could accomplish that mission.  They simply wanted an additional requirement, that the bonuses be paid in currency backed by gold.

Butler was told that they had a lot of financial backing and could make it worth his while.

Of course they weren't really there as advocates for vets, but as representatives of the banking industry. MacGuire was in the employ of Grayson Mallet-Prevost Murphy, a leading New York brokerage firm, and Doyle was with JPMorgan.  Wall Street not only opposed FDR's elimination of the gold standard but also his plans to nationalize the federal reserve. (3)

Testimony from the McCormack-Dickstein Commission revealed that the notion of a fascist takeover, was not a 'cocktail party conspiracy' as some suggested, but a very serious attempt by Wall Street, to take control of the country.

A JPMorgan partner, Thomas Lamont, had delivered a speech to the Foreign Policy Association, in which he praised Benito Mussolini, and suggested that Fascism, as an economic and political policy, worked.

“We count ourselves liberal, I suppose ...  Are we liberal enough to be willing for the Italian people to have the sort of government they apparently want?” asked Lamont.  Fascism, or some variant of it, he said, was not to be ruled out as policy for the United States. (2)

It was also revealed that Morgans had established a fund to market $24 million in securities for Mussolini.  However, while the Committee determined that Butler's accusations were correct, no one was charged.

It's hard to say how history would have unfolded, had the coup been successful.  I mean, after all, are Americans not now being governed by the corporate sector, especially the banking industry?  Are Canadians not?

Conspiracy theorists like to link Giuseppe Zingara's attempt to assassinate FDR, with the House of Morgan, and often include it when writing of this failed coup.  They also try to attribute the entire story to the House of Bush.

But if we just relate the facts, they speak for themselves.  Corporate America was drawn to Fascism at a time when many others felt that it was the best system to fight against a Communist threat.  This was before Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia, and the Holocaust.

George W. Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, did make his fortune financing the Nazis, no doubt with the same belief that Fascism was the answer.  Scott Hinkley did plan to dine with G.W.'s brother, and George H. Bush did attend a Carlyle Group meeting that included Bin Laden’s Brother, Shafig bin Laden, on the morning of September 11, 2001.

Those are the facts.  But none of that means that the Bush family supported the Holocaust, conspired to off Reagan or plotted the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre.

There is enough real evidence of wrong doing without going off into too many directions, making even known facts, appear to be nonsense.

Not Fascism But Corporatism

Everything about this conservative movement cries Fascism, but as soon as you suggest that they are Fascists, you are accused of hyperbole.  However, Mussolini himself referred to Fascism as "Corporatism", and that's a more comfortable term to use, if we want people to start paying attention.

Says Dr. Walker F. Todd:

The main unifying principle of classic corporatism was the idea that Marxist or Dickensian visions of class struggle could be avoided if, somehow, corporate owners and managers, agricultural interests, and urban laborers could be brought together cooperatively under the benign auspices of government. Mussolini's contribution to the evolution of the older corporatist model was to organize a political party devoted to that principle, but with a somewhat more forceful vision of the government's role. Mussolini believed that the otherwise intractable and irreconcilable conflict between management or capital and labor could be resolved, or at least controlled, if they could be brought together in a "corporation" under state control. Fascism was seen as a way of binding together the disparate elements of society and thus strengthening the whole, but it violated an ancient, Aristotelian precept of justice under the Rule of Law by tolerating an involuntary conscription or elimination of those inclined to dissent from this political economy model. (4)

Tougher laws, more focus on punishment, especially for dissidents; less or no debate on government decisions.  What former Chilean Dictator Augustus Pinochet, referred to as "Authoritarian Democracy".

Welcome to Canada

Paul Krugman in his book, The Conscience of a Liberal, suggests that the "new" Conservative movement, which is the antithesis of cultural conservatism, began in the 1940s.  However, others believe it began in the 1920s, which was the era of the "shirts".

Brown shirts, black shirts, green shirts, blue shirts; all wore the uniform of Fascist supporters.  In many ways the Alberta government of William Aberhart was a kind of benign Fascism (though it was based on the notion of a Jewish Conspiracy).  When Ernest Manning took over the party, he adopted the philosophies of the American Conservative Movement, with the help of his friend J. Howard Pew.

Fueled by anti-Communist/anti-Socialist sentiment and the belief in an Anglo Judeo-Christian hierarchy, under corporate rule; the ideology of the movement has only changed slightly, mainly in the people they hate.  It began with Jews, then blacks, and finally Muslims, but has always included feminists, humanists, liberals, "immigrants" and multiculturalism.  In Canada we are also now seeing an increase in native bashing, spurred on by Sun TV and their "white people" against "Indians" rants.

Historian Peter Viereck once said of the movement, "Ethnic intolerance only decreases as ideological intolerance increases."  The movement has seen its highs and lows, coming to within a hair of hitting bottom, but when they realized that anti-Semitism and segregation, etc. could result in their destruction, they stepped back, though grudgingly, then set out to find new prey.

They need what Todd referred to as the disparate elements of society; those who harbour the prejudices, in order to create the waves necessary for success.

Many in the media are now realizing that the Harper government has shifted policy to better reflect Western political views.  But this goes beyond the history of his Reform Party and simple "western alienation".  This thesis will show a direct and continual link between the American and Canadian "new" conservatives, and by using facts, not conspiracy theories.

We have a concise history of the CCF/NDP, Liberals, Bloc and Tories; but where did Harper's Conservatives come from?

I know and this is me sharing.

To be continued ...

Sources:

1. Family 'Destroyed' By Assassination Attempt, By John Mossman, The Associated Press, April 1, 1981.

2. The Plot to Sieze the White House: The Shocking TRUE Story of the Conspiracy to Overthrow FDR, By Jules Archer, Syhorse Publishing, 1973, ISBN: 10-1-60239-036-3

3. Franklin Delano Roosevelt vs. the Banks:  Morgan's Fascist Plot, and How It Was Defeated Part II , by L. Wolfe, The American Almanac, Vol. 8, No. 25, July 4, 1994 

4. From Constitutional Republic to Corporate State: The Federal Reserve Board, 1931-1934, By Dr. Walker F. Todd

5.  The Radical Right: The Revolt Against the Elite, By Peter Viereck, 1955