Ernie Lazar Posted October 30, 2013 Share Posted October 30, 2013 (edited) Paul: Anybody who knows anything about me -- knows that I have been a JBS critic for more than 40 years. Birchers have called me "a Communist", "a Communist sympathizer", "a New World Order stooge", "a neutralizer", "a disinformation agent" "a disinformer", "a Fed Gov agent", "a false patriot", "obsessed", "a government shill", "a xxxx", and "an agent of totalitarianism". And the JBS blocks me from posting messages on their website. <snip> Obviously, racism comes in many different forms. For some it is gutter language and behavior. For others it is indifference and lack of empathy for less fortunate people based solely upon skin color or perceived ethnic background. The Birch Society was never an explicitly racist organization. It did not use gutter language when referring to blacks, asians, latinos, etc. It welcomed as members ALL people who shared the views of the JBS -- no matter what their racial or religious or ethnic background. BUT, the JBS did defend white privilege and it was blind to the real-world consequences of Jim Crow laws and customs. Ernie, it's good to learn more about you. I take your point that not every JBS member was a racist. I also take your point that Robert Welch, who chose to expand his organization as far as possible, could not use OVERT racism as a tactic. He would have failed. Instead, he used COVERT racism. You yourself admitted that "the JBS did defend white privilege," so we are not far apart in opinion on this point. This was not a unique situation. The White Citizens' Councils (WCC) that started up in 1954 in Mississippi in reaction to Earl Warren's Brown Decision, openly stated in their by-laws that KKK members and tactics would be excluded, because they saw clearly that America would no longer tolerate the KKK (although the KKK still flourished in the South, just as they still flourish in some Southern counties to this very day). To that end, the WCC changed their name to Citizen Councils. They had the same platform -- to reverse the Brown Decision -- but they deliberately concealed their OVERT racism, and promoted a COVERT racism. The strategy worked -- they expanded their membership exponentially -- almost overnight (c.f. The Citizens Council, by Neil R. McMillen, 1994). It would be a mistake to underestimate the widespread influence of this pre-Dixiecrat movement in the 1950's -- it was massive throughout America. Their main message was that the Brown Decision was COMMUNISM. They advocated the impeachment of Earl Warren. Robert Welch openly said that he welcomed all forms of Anticommunists. He was probably aware of the fact that the Southern variety of Anticommunism had already been organized in "Citizens Councils." They formed a strong wing within the JBS. I do agree with you that they did not dictate policy to Robert Welch -- but they were welcomed with open eyes. I realize that because of these facts, one cannot say that the JBS was "racist," simply because they rejected any semblance of OPEN and OVERT racism (just as the WCC's did). Still, as you said, Ernie, "the JBS did defend white privilege." It remains a paradox that a Black intellectual would ever join a group that defended white privilege, but we know it does happen (just as homosexuals will join the Republican Party or some other political party that refuses to recognize full civil rights for homosexuals). I do recognize that nuances must be openly viewed -- and that is what I want to do with regard to the JBS -- their stand on the racial question in the USA is nuanced -- it is not easy to define. Most importantly, for purposes of this thread, I would point out that "Harry Dean's Confessions" clearly state that Harry himself saw no racism of any kind among Southern California JBS members. None. Zero. Zip. I accept Harry's account. The main US political focus in 1961-1963 was on Cuba -- and not on the Negro question -- although Martin Luther King made some of his greatest strides in 1963, and frightened many Father-Knows-Best Americans. This was simply viewed as COMMUNISM by the JBS (and by Harry). Racism was COVERT in the JBS, that is my point, and I think your comment is a concession to my point. Best regards, --Paul Trejo Paul: 1. To start with your "covert" racism argument with respect to the Citizens Councils movement --- it is ENTIRELY false and I am astonished that you subscribe to that position! 2. Citizens Councils were OVERTLY and EXPLICTLY racist organizations. You can see their explicit racist sentiments expressed in their articles of incorporation and in their bylaws along with their publications and the speeches of their most prominent officers -- AND -- in terms of the southern politicians whom they supported (see #4 below for one example). 3. For example, many local chapters of the Citizens Councils (along with the national organization HQ in Jackson MS) recommended publications by southern clergymen whose primary argument was that black Americans were morally, intellectually, and culturally inferior to whites. Consequently, blacks must be segregated because it was part of "God's plan" as revealed in the Bible. See, for example: Rev. Carey Daniels (Vice Chairman, Texas Citizens Council aka White Citizens Council of Dallas; he also was Pastor, First Baptist Church of West Dallas) who wrote: “God The Original Segregationist” Rev. Henry W. Fancher Sr.: “Segregation: God’s Plan and God’s Purpose” [Fancher spoke to 3/8/56 meeting of Dallas County AL Citizens Council and he declared that the Bible teaches segregation.] Rev. G.T. Gillespie: A Christian View on Segregation [President Emeritus, Bellhaven College, Jackson MS) 4. In May 1956, Governor Marvin Griffin of Georgia made the following comments to a regional Citizens Council meeting in New Orleans: “Let me say to you tonight as we counsel together, do not be concerned by what is said by the Communists, the pinkos, the radicals, the NAACP, the ADA, the one-worlders and all that motley group of crackpots who are clamoring for desegregation and mongrelization. These groups of organized minorities are chanting a chorus that opposition to the fraudulent order of the Supreme Court is defiance of law. Of course, that is not true. The decision of May 17, 1954 is not law. It is an attempt to make law where none existed before by a non law-making body.” … “You may take the map of the world today and look at all of the countries. Wherever you find a country that is populated by a black race, a colored race, or a mongrel race, the Christian religion has not been able to survive…I say without fear of contradiction, that the white race is the only race of people in history who have been able to perpetuate the Christian religion. Mongrelization of our people here in America will follow integration of the races in school and on the social level. When mongrelization of the races occurs---and God grant that it never will occur---it will bring with it the destruction of the Christian religion.” … “There are obvious and well-known differences between whites and blacks which no amount of glossing-over and covering up by subversive so-called anthropologists and pseudo-scientists can hide…There are many reasons why the white people object to their children having this close association with n children. Among them are: health; the Nigra’s high crime rate and disrespect for law; the lower mentality level; and the high rate of illegitimacy among Nigras.” … “I would like to, for just a moment, if you please, tell you very briefly what we are attempting to do in our State of Georgia. First, in Georgia, the Constitution and the laws of our state prevent the expenditure of state tax funds for the operation of mixed schools. Also, our General Assembly will never appropriate one dime for mixed schools. And let me say to you definitely and unequivocally, Georgia will have separate public schools or no public schools.” [Transcript of May 1956 Griffin speech before Southern Regional Citizens Council in New Orleans, pages 3-4; copy in my possession; Also see: Highlander Folk School papers microfilm, Roll 4, Slide 85 – State Historical Society of Wisconsin.] 5. The FBI recognized the explicit racist aspects of the Citizens Council movement. On March 22, 1955, J. Edgar Hoover sent a memo to 12 FBI field offices which pointed out that: “At the suggestion of the Department, the New Orleans and Memphis offices are conducting an investigation of the Association of Citizens Councils (of Mississippi) for consideration by the Department pursuant to Executive Order 10450. The Mobile office is also conducting an investigation of the Citizens Councils of Alabama….The Citizens Councils disclaim affiliation with or similarity to the Ku Klux Klan. The stated objectives include discouraging Negroes from voting and maintaining segregation in public schools. These objectives are being carried out by economic pressure brought to bear on Negroes seeking to vote or who are in favor of integration in schools. The Councils claim no violence will be used and only legal means employed." 6. JBS and "COVERT RACISM" Keep in mind that any overt expression of racist sentiments by a JBS member resulted in their prompt expulsion from the Society. Keep in mind Harry Dean's comment which reported that he witnessed no racism of any kind while he was a JBS member. Keep in mind that the ONLY official investigation ever conducted into the JBS (the 2-year investigation by the California State Senate Fact-Finding Subcommittee on Un-American Activities, published in 1963 (and, btw, the Subcommittee was controlled by Democrats...all of whom were HOSTILE toward the JBS) -- that Subcommittee concluded in its report that the JBS, as an organization, was NOT racist, fascist, or anti-semitic. Keep in mind that many extremely prominent and respected Americans joined the Society -- and nobody has ever accused any of them of harboring any racist sentiments (covert or overt). Also, many of the most prolific writers for JBS publications were Jewish -- and Jews are not known for joining or promoting bigoted racist organizations. At some point I will write a major article about this matter -- but, in conclusion for now, it simply is not accurate to portray the JBS as a racist organization (covert or overt)....although, admittedly, it did allow white southerners to join as long as they did not attempt to manipulate their local chapters into supporting their personal agendas. Example: In 1964, the JBS State Coordinator for Mississippi (J. Vernon Pace) contacted his local FBI field office. Pace told the FBI that KKK members were not allowed to become JBS members and “any current member of JBS who is revealed as a member of the Klan will be kicked out.” Pace referred to one KKK member in Laurel MS “about 3 years ago” whose JBS membership was terminated when it was discovered he also belonged to White Knights of the KKK of Mississippi. In 1968, Pace contacted the Jackson MS office of the FBI and reported the following information: “Mr. Pace further stated that he understood that various klansmen in the Meridian area nominated JBS members for officers in the White Citizens Council at Meridian MS which Pace felt was an effort to use the JBS as a front for the klansmen who would feel they could influence the JBS members that they had helped place in positions within the White Citizens Council. Pace stated that when this effort was brought to his attention, he immediately instructed the JBS members to resign their positions from the White Citizens Council; however, all did not do so. He stated this was also a contributing factor in the revocation of the JBS charter in Meridian MS.” As I previously acknowledged, the JBS did defend white privilege --as did many Americans during the turbulent fifties and sixties. Many Americans opposed "civil disobedience" in principle (no matter how seemingly justifiable from a moral perspective) because they thought such tactics undermined respect for law and would inevitably lead to violence or other unintended consequences. Today, we look back on all this with disbelief (especially younger Americans, i.e. anybody under 40 who has no personal experience with what happened 50-60 years ago.) But this issue is more complex than can be summarized by reductionist and absolutist conclusions. The JBS objection to the Warren Court was NOT based, primarily, upon the 1954 de-segregation decision. Much more emphasis was placed upon what the JBS believed was an undeniable PATTERN of decisions which adversely affected our internal security with respect to subversive individuals and groups. In fact, the EXACT same sentiments were expressed by the American Bar Association! So it is wildly irresponsible to portray the JBS as "racist" by cherry-picking ONE Supreme Court decision and then pretending that was the primary motivating factor for all subsequent JBS arguments against the Warren Court! Edited October 30, 2013 by Ernie Lazar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Trejo Posted October 30, 2013 Share Posted October 30, 2013 (edited) Paul: 1. To start with your "covert" racism argument with respect to the Citizens Councils movement --- it is ENTIRELY false and I am astonished that you subscribe to that position! 2. Citizens Councils were OVERTLY and EXPLICTLY racist organizations. You can see their explicit racist sentiments expressed in their articles of incorporation and in their bylaws along with their publications and the speeches of their most prominent officers -- AND -- in terms of the southern politicians whom they supported (see #4 below for one example). <snip> Today, we look back on all this with disbelief (especially younger Americans, i.e. anybody under 40 who has no personal experience with what happened 50-60 years ago.) But this issue is more complex than can be summarized by reductionist and absolutist conclusions. The JBS objection to the Warren Court was NOT based, primarily, upon the 1954 de-segregation decision. Much more emphasis was placed upon what the JBS believed was an undeniable PATTERN of decisions which adversely affected our internal security with respect to subversive individuals and groups. In fact, the EXACT same sentiments were expressed by the American Bar Association! So it is wildly irresponsible to portray the JBS as "racist" by cherry-picking ONE Supreme Court decision and then pretending that was the primary motivating factor for all subsequent JBS arguments against the Warren Court! Ernie, 1. Since I’m a baby boomer from Southern California, I know something about the John Birch Society simply by keeping my eyes open, long before I read their magazines and books. I know the people. While they weren’t Southern Klan folks, the Birchers I saw were clearly on the side of white privilege. To suggest that this is politically or socially innocuous is, IMHO, ingenuous. 2. As for the Citizens Councils COVERT racism, it should be crystal clear that they intended to hide their racist features – at least on the surface – by changing their name from “White Citizens Council” to simply “Citizens Council.” They increased their membership by doing so – not so much in the South as in the North. Within their by-laws they made an EXPLICIT plea to distance their membership from the KKK, which they openly recognized would damage or destroy their movement. 3. Although the Citizen’s Councils were OVERTLY racist in their aim of Segregating Public Schools, reversing the Brown Decision and Impeaching Earl Warren, they acted in a mildly COVERT manner by removing the term, ‘White,’ from their official, public-facing name. Now, some members of the KKK decided that the White Citizens Councils must therefore be Jewish-controlled – and they said so. I recognize that the same thing was charged against the John Birch Society by various rightist radicals. I’m aware of the so-called Christian racist movement in the USA, and I believe that scholars can trace their roots back to the Civil War and beyond. The novum of racist Christianity arose in defense of American Southern Slavery which retained some smoldering embers after the Civil War. It was not entirely extinguished – it merely moved underground. 4. So I agree that the Citizens Councils were OVERT racists in their meetings, but I still maintain that they were COVERTLY racist in their public face; outside their meetings. The key American political groups that remain OVERT racists without any COVERT tricks are the KKK the American Nazi Party who will refuse to hide the word, ‘White.’ For the radical right, it was wrong for the White Citizens Councils to change their name by dropping the word, ‘White,’ It was a sneaky trick to gain more members. Actually, it worked. By minimizing the racist element, and emphasizing the doctrine that the Civil Rights Movement was actually Communist, the Citizens Councils gained lots of members, lots of money and lots of influence. Congressmen supported them. Here is a video of General Edwin Walker speaking for a so-called Citizens’ Council television program in 1962. Notice the ‘Dixieland’ theme song and the Sarah Palin ‘wink’ by the moderator at the beginning. youtube.com/watch?v=ZeQKuJTJi48 5. Neil McMillen’s book on the Citizens Councils is thorough and objective. The FBI did recognize that the Citizens Councils were non-violent – they chose to enlist bankers and employers to penalize Black Civil Rights and NAACP supporters by firing them from their jobs and calling in their home loans. The Citizens Councils argued that this was far more effective than letting the KKK handle it. But the truth is that where the Citizens Councils had little clout in the South, the KKK would move right in. 6. You claim, Ernie, that “any overt expression of racist sentiments by a JBS member resulted in their prompt expulsion from the Society." Yet I’ve read that anti-Semitism was well-known within the cells of the JBS. Perhaps a person might argue that the anti-Semitism in the JBS was hush-hush, but that would strengthen my argument that there was COVERT racism in the JBS, instead of OVERT racism. I recognize, too, that Robert Welch didn’t want to deal with this problem – when a Jewish person complained that she was not welcome in her local JBS cell, Welch reportedly told her to “find another JBS cell.” There was no expulsion – there was tolerance. The real enemy, allegedly, was Communism, so these petty arguments about racism were simply unimportant, evidently. Welch wanted the alliance of the South against the Communist Enemy -- and Southern racists were a part of that formula. It would be naive to imagine that Robert Welch did not recognize this. I’m aware that offices like the HUAC concluded that the JBS was not anti-Semitic, but that is an official position based on Robert Welch’s policies – it does not necessarily reflect the behavior of the Bircher rank-and-file. Furthermore, there were plenty of Congressmen who were members of the JBS – who also demanded the Segregation of Public Schools and the Impeachment of Earl Warren. Congressman John Rousselot was one of them. We both recognize that Harry Dean perceived zero racism among the JBS members in Southern California when he was a member – however, I interpret this to mean that there was no OVERT racism. Harry Dean also shared with me a vinyl LP of a speech by Congressman John Rousselot, namely, “The Third Color – Red,” in which Rousselot plainly argues for the racial segregation of US public schools, and plainly accuses Martin Luther King Jr. of being a Communist. Here is the first part of that speech: youtube.com/watch?v=OoC2lNw113k Also, Ernie, you yourself admitted that the support of white privilege was an open feature of the John Birch Society, so it is really me who should be surprised at your position about the Birchers that, “nobody has ever accused any of them of harboring any racist sentiments (covert or overt).” As for the argument that no Jews would ever join or promote a bigoted racist organization, one need only refer to the history of the Third Reich and form a list of its misguided Jewish supporters. Such people have existed. Finally, to imagine that the enduring Bircher slogan, ‘Impeach Earl Warren,’ was somehow tangental in Warren’s Brown Decision, one need only listen to the full speech by Congressman John Rousselot that I posted above to settle that argument. Best regards, --Paul Trejo Edited October 30, 2013 by Paul Trejo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernie Lazar Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 (edited) Edited October 31, 2013 by Ernie Lazar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernie Lazar Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 (edited) Paul: 1. To start with your "covert" racism argument with respect to the Citizens Councils movement --- it is ENTIRELY false and I am astonished that you subscribe to that position! 2. Citizens Councils were OVERTLY and EXPLICTLY racist organizations. You can see their explicit racist sentiments expressed in their articles of incorporation and in their bylaws along with their publications and the speeches of their most prominent officers -- AND -- in terms of the southern politicians whom they supported (see #4 below for one example). <snip> Today, we look back on all this with disbelief (especially younger Americans, i.e. anybody under 40 who has no personal experience with what happened 50-60 years ago.) But this issue is more complex than can be summarized by reductionist and absolutist conclusions. The JBS objection to the Warren Court was NOT based, primarily, upon the 1954 de-segregation decision. Much more emphasis was placed upon what the JBS believed was an undeniable PATTERN of decisions which adversely affected our internal security with respect to subversive individuals and groups. In fact, the EXACT same sentiments were expressed by the American Bar Association! So it is wildly irresponsible to portray the JBS as "racist" by cherry-picking ONE Supreme Court decision and then pretending that was the primary motivating factor for all subsequent JBS arguments against the Warren Court! Ernie, 1. Since I’m a baby boomer from Southern California, I know something about the John Birch Society simply by keeping my eyes open, long before I read their magazines and books. I know the people. While they weren’t Southern Klan folks, the Birchers I saw were clearly on the side of white privilege. To suggest that this is politically or socially innocuous is, IMHO, ingenuous. 2. As for the Citizens Councils COVERT racism, it should be crystal clear that they intended to hide their racist features – at least on the surface – by changing their name from “White Citizens Council” to simply “Citizens Council.” They increased their membership by doing so – not so much in the South as in the North. Within their by-laws they made an EXPLICIT plea to distance their membership from the KKK, which they openly recognized would damage or destroy their movement. 3. Although the Citizen’s Councils were OVERTLY racist in their aim of Segregating Public Schools, reversing the Brown Decision and Impeaching Earl Warren, they acted in a mildly COVERT manner by removing the term, ‘White,’ from their official, public-facing name. Now, some members of the KKK decided that the White Citizens Councils must therefore be Jewish-controlled – and they said so. I recognize that the same thing was charged against the John Birch Society by various rightist radicals. I’m aware of the so-called Christian racist movement in the USA, and I believe that scholars can trace their roots back to the Civil War and beyond. The novum of racist Christianity arose in defense of American Southern Slavery which retained some smoldering embers after the Civil War. It was not entirely extinguished – it merely moved underground. 4. So I agree that the Citizens Councils were OVERT racists in their meetings, but I still maintain that they were COVERTLY racist in their public face; outside their meetings. The key American political groups that remain OVERT racists without any COVERT tricks are the KKK the American Nazi Party who will refuse to hide the word, ‘White.’ For the radical right, it was wrong for the White Citizens Councils to change their name by dropping the word, ‘White,’ It was a sneaky trick to gain more members. Actually, it worked. By minimizing the racist element, and emphasizing the doctrine that the Civil Rights Movement was actually Communist, the Citizens Councils gained lots of members, lots of money and lots of influence. Congressmen supported them. Here is a video of General Edwin Walker speaking for a so-called Citizens’ Council television program in 1962. Notice the ‘Dixieland’ theme song and the Sarah Palin ‘wink’ by the moderator at the beginning. youtube.com/watch?v=ZeQKuJTJi48 5. Neil McMillen’s book on the Citizens Councils is thorough and objective. The FBI did recognize that the Citizens Councils were non-violent – they chose to enlist bankers and employers to penalize Black Civil Rights and NAACP supporters by firing them from their jobs and calling in their home loans. The Citizens Councils argued that this was far more effective than letting the KKK handle it. But the truth is that where the Citizens Councils had little clout in the South, the KKK would move right in. 6. You claim, Ernie, that “any overt expression of racist sentiments by a JBS member resulted in their prompt expulsion from the Society." Yet I’ve read that anti-Semitism was well-known within the cells of the JBS. Perhaps a person might argue that the anti-Semitism in the JBS was hush-hush, but that would strengthen my argument that there was COVERT racism in the JBS, instead of OVERT racism. I recognize, too, that Robert Welch didn’t want to deal with this problem – when a Jewish person complained that she was not welcome in her local JBS cell, Welch reportedly told her to “find another JBS cell.” There was no expulsion – there was tolerance. The real enemy, allegedly, was Communism, so these petty arguments about racism were simply unimportant, evidently. Welch wanted the alliance of the South against the Communist Enemy -- and Southern racists were a part of that formula. It would be naive to imagine that Robert Welch did not recognize this. I’m aware that offices like the HUAC concluded that the JBS was not anti-Semitic, but that is an official position based on Robert Welch’s policies – it does not necessarily reflect the behavior of the Bircher rank-and-file. Furthermore, there were plenty of Congressmen who were members of the JBS – who also demanded the Segregation of Public Schools and the Impeachment of Earl Warren. Congressman John Rousselot was one of them. We both recognize that Harry Dean perceived zero racism among the JBS members in Southern California when he was a member – however, I interpret this to mean that there was no OVERT racism. Harry Dean also shared with me a vinyl LP of a speech by Congressman John Rousselot, namely, “The Third Color – Red,” in which Rousselot plainly argues for the racial segregation of US public schools, and plainly accuses Martin Luther King Jr. of being a Communist. Here is the first part of that speech: youtube.com/watch?v=OoC2lNw113k Also, Ernie, you yourself admitted that the support of white privilege was an open feature of the John Birch Society, so it is really me who should be surprised at your position about the Birchers that, “nobody has ever accused any of them of harboring any racist sentiments (covert or overt).” As for the argument that no Jews would ever join or promote a bigoted racist organization, one need only refer to the history of the Third Reich and form a list of its misguided Jewish supporters. Such people have existed. Finally, to imagine that the enduring Bircher slogan, ‘Impeach Earl Warren,’ was somehow tangental in Warren’s Brown Decision, one need only listen to the full speech by Congressman John Rousselot that I posted above to settle that argument. Best regards, --Paul Trejo Paul: 1. To start with your "covert" racism argument with respect to the Citizens Councils movement --- it is ENTIRELY false and I am astonished that you subscribe to that position! 2. Citizens Councils were OVERTLY and EXPLICTLY racist organizations. You can see their explicit racist sentiments expressed in their articles of incorporation and in their bylaws along with their publications and the speeches of their most prominent officers -- AND -- in terms of the southern politicians whom they supported (see #4 below for one example). <snip> Today, we look back on all this with disbelief (especially younger Americans, i.e. anybody under 40 who has no personal experience with what happened 50-60 years ago.) But this issue is more complex than can be summarized by reductionist and absolutist conclusions. The JBS objection to the Warren Court was NOT based, primarily, upon the 1954 de-segregation decision. Much more emphasis was placed upon what the JBS believed was an undeniable PATTERN of decisions which adversely affected our internal security with respect to subversive individuals and groups. In fact, the EXACT same sentiments were expressed by the American Bar Association! So it is wildly irresponsible to portray the JBS as "racist" by cherry-picking ONE Supreme Court decision and then pretending that was the primary motivating factor for all subsequent JBS arguments against the Warren Court! Ernie, 1. Since I’m a baby boomer from Southern California, I know something about the John Birch Society simply by keeping my eyes open, long before I read their magazines and books. I know the people. While they weren’t Southern Klan folks, the Birchers I saw were clearly on the side of white privilege. To suggest that this is politically or socially innocuous is, IMHO, ingenuous. 2. As for the Citizens Councils COVERT racism, it should be crystal clear that they intended to hide their racist features – at least on the surface – by changing their name from “White Citizens Council” to simply “Citizens Council.” They increased their membership by doing so – not so much in the South as in the North. Within their by-laws they made an EXPLICIT plea to distance their membership from the KKK, which they openly recognized would damage or destroy their movement. 3. Although the Citizen’s Councils were OVERTLY racist in their aim of Segregating Public Schools, reversing the Brown Decision and Impeaching Earl Warren, they acted in a mildly COVERT manner by removing the term, ‘White,’ from their official, public-facing name. Now, some members of the KKK decided that the White Citizens Councils must therefore be Jewish-controlled – and they said so. I recognize that the same thing was charged against the John Birch Society by various rightist radicals. I’m aware of the so-called Christian racist movement in the USA, and I believe that scholars can trace their roots back to the Civil War and beyond. The novum of racist Christianity arose in defense of American Southern Slavery which retained some smoldering embers after the Civil War. It was not entirely extinguished – it merely moved underground. 4. So I agree that the Citizens Councils were OVERT racists in their meetings, but I still maintain that they were COVERTLY racist in their public face; outside their meetings. The key American political groups that remain OVERT racists without any COVERT tricks are the KKK the American Nazi Party who will refuse to hide the word, ‘White.’ For the radical right, it was wrong for the White Citizens Councils to change their name by dropping the word, ‘White,’ It was a sneaky trick to gain more members. Actually, it worked. By minimizing the racist element, and emphasizing the doctrine that the Civil Rights Movement was actually Communist, the Citizens Councils gained lots of members, lots of money and lots of influence. Congressmen supported them. Here is a video of General Edwin Walker speaking for a so-called Citizens’ Council television program in 1962. Notice the ‘Dixieland’ theme song and the Sarah Palin ‘wink’ by the moderator at the beginning. youtube.com/watch?v=ZeQKuJTJi48 5. Neil McMillen’s book on the Citizens Councils is thorough and objective. The FBI did recognize that the Citizens Councils were non-violent – they chose to enlist bankers and employers to penalize Black Civil Rights and NAACP supporters by firing them from their jobs and calling in their home loans. The Citizens Councils argued that this was far more effective than letting the KKK handle it. But the truth is that where the Citizens Councils had little clout in the South, the KKK would move right in. 6. You claim, Ernie, that “any overt expression of racist sentiments by a JBS member resulted in their prompt expulsion from the Society." Yet I’ve read that anti-Semitism was well-known within the cells of the JBS. Perhaps a person might argue that the anti-Semitism in the JBS was hush-hush, but that would strengthen my argument that there was COVERT racism in the JBS, instead of OVERT racism. I recognize, too, that Robert Welch didn’t want to deal with this problem – when a Jewish person complained that she was not welcome in her local JBS cell, Welch reportedly told her to “find another JBS cell.” There was no expulsion – there was tolerance. The real enemy, allegedly, was Communism, so these petty arguments about racism were simply unimportant, evidently. Welch wanted the alliance of the South against the Communist Enemy -- and Southern racists were a part of that formula. It would be naive to imagine that Robert Welch did not recognize this. I’m aware that offices like the HUAC concluded that the JBS was not anti-Semitic, but that is an official position based on Robert Welch’s policies – it does not necessarily reflect the behavior of the Bircher rank-and-file. Furthermore, there were plenty of Congressmen who were members of the JBS – who also demanded the Segregation of Public Schools and the Impeachment of Earl Warren. Congressman John Rousselot was one of them. We both recognize that Harry Dean perceived zero racism among the JBS members in Southern California when he was a member – however, I interpret this to mean that there was no OVERT racism. Harry Dean also shared with me a vinyl LP of a speech by Congressman John Rousselot, namely, “The Third Color – Red,” in which Rousselot plainly argues for the racial segregation of US public schools, and plainly accuses Martin Luther King Jr. of being a Communist. Here is the first part of that speech: youtube.com/watch?v=OoC2lNw113k Also, Ernie, you yourself admitted that the support of white privilege was an open feature of the John Birch Society, so it is really me who should be surprised at your position about the Birchers that, “nobody has ever accused any of them of harboring any racist sentiments (covert or overt).” As for the argument that no Jews would ever join or promote a bigoted racist organization, one need only refer to the history of the Third Reich and form a list of its misguided Jewish supporters. Such people have existed. Finally, to imagine that the enduring Bircher slogan, ‘Impeach Earl Warren,’ was somehow tangental in Warren’s Brown Decision, one need only listen to the full speech by Congressman John Rousselot that I posted above to settle that argument. Best regards, --Paul Trejo PAUL: In reply to your comments in numerical order: (1) STRAW-MAN ARGUMENT. I never wrote (nor do I believe) that the JBS position on race relations in our country was "politically or socially innocuous". See chapter six of my JBS Report https://sites.google.com/site/ernie124102/jbs-3 where I spell out in mind-numbing detail how the JBS falsely accused individuals and organizations involved in our civil rights movement AND I used sources recommended by the JBS itself to falsify many of the most common JBS arguments. I have ALWAYS maintained that the JBS injected POISON into our public discourse and it sometimes affected public perceptions and public policies. (2) CITIZENS COUNCILS: They NEVER attempted to "hide" their racist features. Where in the hell do you get that idea? As previously stated, their articles of incorporation and their bylaws and their publications and their favorite politicians (e.g. Sen. Eastland of MS, Governor Wallace of AL, Governor Ross Barnett of MS, Cong. John Rarick of LA, etc.) were ALL EXPLICITLY RACIST. Be specific. Give me an example of ANY Citizens Council ANYWHERE which "hid" their racist beliefs. Many of the Citizens Councils were actually KKK-fronts and everyone in their communities was aware of it. You make a comment about "northern" Citizens Councils. Be specific. NAME ANY which "hid" their racist sentiments. Name ANY which altered their recommended literature list to exclude racist publications. Surely you are aware that all Citizens Councils recommended that its members and sympathizers subscribe to their national publication, The Citizen (formerly The Citizens Council). See this 1972 issue -- for the comment by Dr. Henry R. Garrett -- and THEN tell me again with a straight face that the Citizens Council movement EVER attempted to "hide" their beliefs! http://www.ferris.edu/ISAR/Institut/cca/may72cca.htm Surely you are aware that the Managing Editor of The Citizen for a long period of time was Medford Evans. Evans was a life-long racist and white supremacist and the articles which he wrote for The Citizen were explicitly racist. With respect to your comment about "White Citizens Council" -- I do not recall many Citizens Councils incorporating as "White Citizens Council". That term was used in media reports and by some authors to describe the Council movement because it was self-evidently a white supremacist movement. Significantly, the index to Neil McMillen's book lists only TWO "White Citizens Councils" (Tennessee and Arkansas) as an official name. 99.9% were organized without the word "White". Francis Wilhoit's 1973 book, The Politics of Massive Resistance does not list any "White" Citizens Council in its index. Instead it instructs readers to see Index section on "Citizens Councils" -- because that is how they were organized from the very beginning. (6) You conflated two different ideas and then falsely attributed them to me and in the process you created another straw-man argument. What I wrote is that the JBS attracted MANY very prominent and respected members of their communities and nobody ever accused any of those people of harboring racist sentiments (overt or covert). ROBERT WELCH: Welch went to extraordinary lengths to make it clear that anti-semites were not welcome in the JBS -- which is why so many of them were either expelled or they quit once they realized that the JBS was not an hospitable environment for their sentiments. See for example Welch's 1969 publication, "If You Want It Straight". Also, the JBS website used to have a webpage which addressed the Protocols of Zion as an anti-semitic forgery. In February 1966, Donald R. Gray, (the Birch Society's Wholesale Book Division Business Manager) sent a memo to all of the Birch Society's American Opinion Bookstores. The purpose of the memo was to identify the type of material that should NOT be sold in, or recommended by, JBS bookstores. Gray described such verboten material as follows: "On the other hand, most of the books and pamphlets with an anti-Semitic flavor which we omit from our booklist (that) are not of sufficient value in substance or scholarship to rise above the level of anti-Semitic invective or propaganda. Frankly, in our opinion, this applies to most of the books or pamphlets by Marilyn Allen, Richard Cotten, Myron Fagan, Kenneth Goff, Wickliffe Vennard, Eustace Mullins, Gerald L.K. Smith, Robert H. Williams, and Benjamin Freedman. For this reason you will not find anything by these writers among the hundreds of entries in our new booklist which you have just received. And to whatever extent you are willing to abide by our suggestions, we recommend that you too keep all such items out of your stock and your sales.” Among the first critics of the JBS were two well-known virulent anti-semites which Welch discussed In the October 1959 issue of the JBS Bulletin -- i.e. Elizabeth Dilling and Lyrl Clark Van Hyning. When Revilo Oliver resigned from the JBS in July 1966, his resignation letter included the following comment: "I now learn that you are not, in fact, head of the John Birch Society. I have ascertained that you are subject to the secret committee composed of Messrs. Blumenfeld, Kogan, Greener, and Solomon whose orders you must and do obey…I have written this letter in pain and anguish of heart. Whatever the causes that brought you to your present plight, I pity you. You have betrayed the great and noble Society that you founded. In deep sorrow, I bid you farewell.” Oliver then went on to write articles for explicitly neo-nazi publications and groups such as National Alliance and George Dietz's vicious anti-semitic Liberty Bell magazine. (Dietz, a former member of the Hitler Youth, wrote a letter to Welch in which Dietz described the JBS as ‘a Talmudic tool for the destruction of the White people of America." As the famous philosopher of science (Karl Popper) pointed out, one can ALWAYS find "confirmations" for what one prefers to believe in the universe of available data. But factual truth (aka reality) depends upon recognizing and explaining the CONTRADICTORY evidence. I think you have succumbed to Popper's "confirmation" fallacy in your arguments. You are selecting ONLY that data which conforms to what you believe and elevating that to cosmic truth proportions while simultaneously ignoring, dismissing, or de-valuing the mountains of contradictory evidence. Edited October 31, 2013 by Ernie Lazar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernie Lazar Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 Postscript for Paul: I forgot to address your comment about the JBS position on Martin Luther King Jr. 1. Yes, the JBS believed that MLK Jr was (at a minimum) a Communist sympathizer. 2. Many Americans do not know that King accepted Marxist economic doctrine. Many Americans also do not know that MLK Jr accepted advice and counsel from secret Communist Party members such as Stanley Levison. 3. It also is indisputable that senior officials of the Communist Party USA considered MLK Jr. to be someone they could influence and control -- particularly since King willingly accepted advice from Levinson. Levinson influenced King's position on Vietnam and on domestic economic policies in ways that conformed to CPUSA objectives. 4. Is it "racist" to acknowledge such unpleasant facts? 5. For more details re King's association with CPUSA members by well-known scholars see Dr. David J. Garrow's Pulitzer Prize winning 1987 book, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Also see his 1981book: The FBI and Martin Luther King, In addition, see: Douglas Strum: Martin Luther King Jr. As A Democratic Socialist Journal of Religious Ethics, Fall 1990, pages 79-105 Adam Fairclough: Was Martin Luther King A Marxist? History Workshop, Spring 1983, pages 117-125 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Trejo Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 (edited) Postscript for Paul: I forgot to address your comment about the JBS position on Martin Luther King Jr. 1. Yes, the JBS believed that MLK Jr was (at a minimum) a Communist sympathizer. 2. Many Americans do not know that King accepted Marxist economic doctrine. Many Americans also do not know that MLK Jr accepted advice and counsel from secret Communist Party members such as Stanley Levison. 3. It also is indisputable that senior officials of the Communist Party USA considered MLK Jr. to be someone they could influence and control -- particularly since King willingly accepted advice from Levinson. Levinson influenced King's position on Vietnam and on domestic economic policies in ways that conformed to CPUSA objectives. 4. Is it "racist" to acknowledge such unpleasant facts? 5. For more details re King's association with CPUSA members by well-known scholars see Dr. David J. Garrow's Pulitzer Prize winning 1987 book, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Also see his 1981book: The FBI and Martin Luther King, In addition, see: Douglas Strum: Martin Luther King Jr. As A Democratic Socialist Journal of Religious Ethics, Fall 1990, pages 79-105 Adam Fairclough: Was Martin Luther King A Marxist? History Workshop, Spring 1983, pages 117-125 Ernie, (1) Since you never wrote nor believed that the JBS position on race relations in our country was politically or socially innocuous, then we seem to agree on that one point. Since you admit that the JBS falsely accused individuals and organizations involved in our civil rights movement, and that the JBS "injected POISON" into the US public discourse, then we seem to agree on that point. Yet we still differ on most points. (2) You seem to have missed my point that the White Citizens Councils CLEARLY tried to hide their racist features with one single move -- they dropped the word 'White' from their name. I admitted that their meetings and propaganda went on as before, with no change in priorities or agenda. Yet it is CLEAR to the objective observer that by removing the word, 'White' from their name, that they opened themselves to more liberal contributions. It became possible for the "Citizens Councils" to interject themselves in polite social conversations, and to solicit funds for support, based on a persona that was wiped clean of its basic KKK roots. They could publish in Northern newspapers that their main goal was "State's Rights," and that theirs was a "struggle in the matter of Constitutional government". On this basis the Citizens Councils would receive respect and support. Yet imagine if they had allowed their name to remain the same -- "White Citizens Councils". It is obvious to the impartial observer that they would not have received the same financial support in the North. Even their membership numbers would have suffered, since no Northerner could boast of membership in a group with that name, while it was comparatively easy to boast of membership in a group called, "Citizens Council." That was my specific example in my last post, Ernie, and remains my example in this post, since there is no other example -- however, this is a powerful example. I am being specific here -- it is the NAME CHANGE, dropping the word, 'White,' that concealed their true FACE to the world. Once an interested citizen attended their first meeting with them, however, all became crystal clear. As told by Neil McMillen in his book, "Citizens Council," these groups remained largest in the South. Further, in those Southern Counties where American Blacks amounted to 40%, 50% and even 60% of the population, "Citizens Council" activities were always accompanied by the KKK. Regarding Medford Evans, he is of special interest because he was also a well-known writer for the Bircher magazine, "American Opinion," and he was also a defender of General Walker during the time Walker called for a massive resistance to JFK sending thousands of troops to Ole Miss University in September, 1962. Also, Ernie, if you don't believe that the original title was "White Citizens Council," then you simply don't know the history. It was the original title when founded in Mississippi by Robert B. Patterson of Indianola, Mississipi in July, 1954, in response to two events. The first event, of course, was 17 May 1954 when Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren passed the Brown Decision, mandating the racial integration of public schools throughout the USA. The second event, which occurred only weeks later, was the publication of the racist creed, "Black Monday," by Judge Thomas Brady. Brady was waiting for this decision for a full year with his book already prepared for publication. When the book appeared in June, 1954, it stunned and converted Patterson, who immediately formed the White Citizens Council in response, and Brady's book became the backbone of his organization. Patterson quickly gathered citizens to help him draft by-laws to keep the KKK out of its ranks, yet within their second year of operation they decided to drop the name "White" from their name. The local groups in Tennesee and Arkansas chose to restore the original name. (6) While Robert Welch would expel open Nazi sympathizers from his organization, there was little or nothing he did (or could do) about the countless misguided Christians who were also Antisemitic because of the doctrines promoted by their local pastors (and sometimes by their governing church bodies). The story I told about the Jewish person seeking a racially open JBS cell near her home is a true one. Like the White Citizens Councils (who changed their name by dropping the word, 'White') who attempted to expel KKK elements from their rolls because they knew such affiliation would drive good people away, the Birchers also attempted to expel Nazi elements from their rolls for the same reason. Yet nuances were not observed -- that is why impartial observers can recognize the insincerity of the move. White privilege was still observed, still expected and still demanded. Naturally this would be confusing to intellectuals like Revilo P. Oliver (who also testified before the Warren Commission regarding the assassination of JFK). Oliver was an OVERT white supremacist, who had felt at home within the John Birch Society for years, until it became crystal clear to him that Third Reich principles were not really welcome - despite some appearances to the contrary. In other words, Revilo P. Oliver, a dedicated white supremacist, apparently held out some hope for the Birchers -- for years -- that they would respond more fully to their own implicit demand for white privilege. In no way am I seeking confirmation for my beliefs, Ernie. I'm responding to the facts before me in an objective manner. On the contrary, I find that your criticism of the JBS does not complete its agenda. (7) Regarding Martin Luther King Jr., I sincerely doubt that MLK "accepted Marxist doctrine." First, MLK's policy of non-violence itself transcends the Marxist call to revolt. Secondly, MLK did not advocate an uprising of the industrialised proletariat, but a protest on behalf of a racial minority. Only the bias of the times could make MLK into a "Marxist," in my honest opinion. Regarding the biased charge (possibly from the FBI, or even Hoover himself) that MLK "accepted advice and counsel from secret Communist Party members such as Stanley Levison," the charge itself is ambiguous. Accepted advice on what? On non-violent tactics? On what life was like in the 1960's for Black Americans in Mississippi and Alabama? On what shoes to buy? The charge is non-specific and therefore suspect. It isn't racist to point out these charges, Ernie, although I certainly would not call them "facts" until they are clearly spelled out. Finally, I have no doubt that one can find many false charges against MLK in many books, including those by J. Edgar Hoover himself. Yet history has been kinder to MLK than his critics have been. Best regards, --Paul Trejo Edited October 31, 2013 by Paul Trejo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Trejo Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 (edited) One final point. The reason that the John Birch Society (JBS) is relevant in this thread about Harry Dean, is that Harry Dean claims in his new eBook that he is an eye-witness to a deliberate plot against JFK by radical elements within the JBS. One of those JBS members was the resigned General Edwin Walker (the only US General to resign in the 20th century) who was also a favorite speaker of the Citizens Councils in the South, as well as of the States Rights parties and supporters in Mississippi and Louisiana. In this case, the JBS and the so-called Citizens Councils worked hand in glove. By making this specific link between the JBS and the so-called Citizens Councils, we bring General Walker into the foreground, along with (i) the Ole Miss racial riot of 30 September 1962 against James Meredith and Medgar Evers; (ii) the unjust acquittal of General Walker by an all-white Mississippi Grand Jury in January 1963; (iii) the attempted assassination of Walker on 10 April 1963; (iv) the Civil Rights Speech of JFK on the night of 11 June 1963; (v) the assassination of Medgar Evers on midnight that same night by Byron De La Beckwith, a Citizens Council and KKK supporter. Best regards, --Paul Trejo Edited October 31, 2013 by Paul Trejo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Brancato Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 Paul - I downloaded and read Harry Dean's book - very interesting. I think this discussion about the JBS, Citizens Councils etc. has gotten a bit off track, but still I have enjoyed reading the back and forth. Thanks for trying to bring this thread back to Dean and Walker. I am more inclined to think that Oswald actually did try to kill Walker, though still not enamored of your theory that it was Volkmar Schmidt and DeMohrenschildt that put him up to it. Without derailing this too much, does Paul Trejo think that Judyth Vary Baker's story is credible? And also, do you think Gary Wean's account of a fake attempt on JFK credible? Just curious. I have tried to see whether these two stories conflict or support Dean's tale, and I think I could fit them into the same picture. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernie Lazar Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 Postscript for Paul: I forgot to address your comment about the JBS position on Martin Luther King Jr. 1. Yes, the JBS believed that MLK Jr was (at a minimum) a Communist sympathizer. 2. Many Americans do not know that King accepted Marxist economic doctrine. Many Americans also do not know that MLK Jr accepted advice and counsel from secret Communist Party members such as Stanley Levison. 3. It also is indisputable that senior officials of the Communist Party USA considered MLK Jr. to be someone they could influence and control -- particularly since King willingly accepted advice from Levinson. Levinson influenced King's position on Vietnam and on domestic economic policies in ways that conformed to CPUSA objectives. 4. Is it "racist" to acknowledge such unpleasant facts? 5. For more details re King's association with CPUSA members by well-known scholars see Dr. David J. Garrow's Pulitzer Prize winning 1987 book, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Also see his 1981book: The FBI and Martin Luther King, In addition, see: Douglas Strum: Martin Luther King Jr. As A Democratic Socialist Journal of Religious Ethics, Fall 1990, pages 79-105 Adam Fairclough: Was Martin Luther King A Marxist? History Workshop, Spring 1983, pages 117-125 Ernie, (1) Since you never wrote nor believed that the JBS position on race relations in our country was politically or socially innocuous, then we seem to agree on that one point. Since you admit that the JBS falsely accused individuals and organizations involved in our civil rights movement, and that the JBS "injected POISON" into the US public discourse, then we seem to agree on that point. Yet we still differ on most points. (2) You seem to have missed my point that the White Citizens Councils CLEARLY tried to hide their racist features with one single move -- they dropped the word 'White' from their name. I admitted that their meetings and propaganda went on as before, with no change in priorities or agenda. Yet it is CLEAR to the objective observer that by removing the word, 'White' from their name, that they opened themselves to more liberal contributions. It became possible for the "Citizens Councils" to interject themselves in polite social conversations, and to solicit funds for support, based on a persona that was wiped clean of its basic KKK roots. They could publish in Northern newspapers that their main goal was "State's Rights," and that theirs was a "struggle in the matter of Constitutional government". On this basis the Citizens Councils would receive respect and support. Yet imagine if they had allowed their name to remain the same -- "White Citizens Councils". It is obvious to the impartial observer that they would not have received the same financial support in the North. Even their membership numbers would have suffered, since no Northerner could boast of membership in a group with that name, while it was comparatively easy to boast of membership in a group called, "Citizens Council." That was my specific example in my last post, Ernie, and remains my example in this post, since there is no other example -- however, this is a powerful example. I am being specific here -- it is the NAME CHANGE, dropping the word, 'White,' that concealed their true FACE to the world. Once an interested citizen attended their first meeting with them, however, all became crystal clear. As told by Neil McMillen in his book, "Citizens Council," these groups remained largest in the South. Further, in those Southern Counties where American Blacks amounted to 40%, 50% and even 60% of the population, "Citizens Council" activities were always accompanied by the KKK. Regarding Medford Evans, he is of special interest because he was also a well-known writer for the Bircher magazine, "American Opinion," and he was also a defender of General Walker during the time Walker called for a massive resistance to JFK sending thousands of troops to Ole Miss University in September, 1962. Also, Ernie, if you don't believe that the original title was "White Citizens Council," then you simply don't know the history. It was the original title when founded in Mississippi by Robert B. Patterson of Indianola, Mississipi in July, 1954, in response to two events. The first event, of course, was 17 May 1954 when Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren passed the Brown Decision, mandating the racial integration of public schools throughout the USA. The second event, which occurred only weeks later, was the publication of the racist creed, "Black Monday," by Judge Thomas Brady. Brady was waiting for this decision for a full year with his book already prepared for publication. When the book appeared in June, 1954, it stunned and converted Patterson, who immediately formed the White Citizens Council in response, and Brady's book became the backbone of his organization. Patterson quickly gathered citizens to help him draft by-laws to keep the KKK out of its ranks, yet within their second year of operation they decided to drop the name "White" from their name. The local groups in Tennesee and Arkansas chose to restore the original name. (6) While Robert Welch would expel open Nazi sympathizers from his organization, there was little or nothing he did (or could do) about the countless misguided Christians who were also Antisemitic because of the doctrines promoted by their local pastors (and sometimes by their governing church bodies). The story I told about the Jewish person seeking a racially open JBS cell near her home is a true one. Like the White Citizens Councils (who changed their name by dropping the word, 'White') who attempted to expel KKK elements from their rolls because they knew such affiliation would drive good people away, the Birchers also attempted to expel Nazi elements from their rolls for the same reason. Yet nuances were not observed -- that is why impartial observers can recognize the insincerity of the move. White privilege was still observed, still expected and still demanded. Naturally this would be confusing to intellectuals like Revilo P. Oliver (who also testified before the Warren Commission regarding the assassination of JFK). Oliver was an OVERT white supremacist, who had felt at home within the John Birch Society for years, until it became crystal clear to him that Third Reich principles were not really welcome - despite some appearances to the contrary. In other words, Revilo P. Oliver, a dedicated white supremacist, apparently held out some hope for the Birchers -- for years -- that they would respond more fully to their own implicit demand for white privilege. In no way am I seeking confirmation for my beliefs, Ernie. I'm responding to the facts before me in an objective manner. On the contrary, I find that your criticism of the JBS does not complete its agenda. (7) Regarding Martin Luther King Jr., I sincerely doubt that MLK "accepted Marxist doctrine." First, MLK's policy of non-violence itself transcends the Marxist call to revolt. Secondly, MLK did not advocate an uprising of the industrialised proletariat, but a protest on behalf of a racial minority. Only the bias of the times could make MLK into a "Marxist," in my honest opinion. Regarding the biased charge (possibly from the FBI, or even Hoover himself) that MLK "accepted advice and counsel from secret Communist Party members such as Stanley Levison," the charge itself is ambiguous. Accepted advice on what? On non-violent tactics? On what life was like in the 1960's for Black Americans in Mississippi and Alabama? On what shoes to buy? The charge is non-specific and therefore suspect. It isn't racist to point out these charges, Ernie, although I certainly would not call them "facts" until they are clearly spelled out. Finally, I have no doubt that one can find many false charges against MLK in many books, including those by J. Edgar Hoover himself. Yet history has been kinder to MLK than his critics have been. Best regards, --Paul Trejo Paul: 1. Let's focus first upon your assumption that the Citizens Councils "CLEARLY tried to hide their racist features". The only "feature" which you have mentioned is their supposedly dropping the word "White" from their name. So please tell me what individuals you think joined a Citizens Council that would NOT have joined if the official name of every Citizens Council was "White Citizens Council". What you seem to be missing is that everyone (repeat: everyone) who joined the Citizens Council movement was PRO-segregation. Now, why were they pro-segregation? Because they believed in preserving white supremacy as it had developed over many decades of laws and customs and habits. Mayor Joseph Shelley of St. Augustine FL observed: “I consider myself a segregationist. God segregated the races, as far as I am concerned when he made skins a different color. You don’t find bluebirds and redbirds feeding together at the same trough and you certainly don’t see them breeding together." Do you think he cared what name the organizations he joined operated under? He was an officer in the Florida Coalition of Patriotic Societies. No "white" in their official name but, nevertheless, it was designed and operated as a white supremacy organization. Ditto for all the other anti-black organizations which were created around the country under such names as "North Carolina Defenders of State Sovereignty" (a successor to the The Patriots of North Carolina, Inc.), "Federation For Constitutional Government", the various "state sovereignty commissions", the Georgia Education Commission, The Anti-Communist Christian Association (a KKK-front), the National Association For The Advancement of White People, American States Rights Association, Tennessee Society To Maintain Segregation, National States Rights Party, States Rights Council of Georgia, etc. In 1956, the President of the States Rights Council of Georgia (R. Carter Pittman) wrote an article published in The Alabama Lawyer entitled "All Men Are Not Created Equal". He told told the Atlanta Constitution on 10/22/55 that: “…the South has no racial problem and has had none for a half century. Its racial problems were solved by segregation.” The official position of the North Carolina Defenders was stated by its President, (Rev. James F. Dees) as follows: "If you believe in racial segregation, States’ Rights, and Constitutional government, then we invite you to become a member of our organization. Unless we are willing to fight to preserve our southern and democratic society, then the NAACP and the Communist Party and their ‘liberal’ and left-wing adjuncts will bring upon us a mongrel society, neither white nor truly colored, along with an authoritarian dictatorship.” When a Los Angeles chapter of the Citizens Councils was organized in June 1964, the national HQ in Jackson MS distributed a press release which described the Citizens Councils of America as: “a nationwide pro-segregation organization dedicated to the twin principles of ‘States’ Rights and Racial Integrity’ The President of the Citizens Councils of Alabama (Dr. John H. Whitley) was the featured speaker at a Shades Valley Citizens Council meeting in February 1957 in Homewood AL. During his speech, he made the following comment reported in local news media: “... we are getting ready to purge the voting lists of niggers. We figure we can get about 85% off the rolls in time.” Whitley also indicated that voting lists would be purged of anyone who ever had a venereal disease or was born out of wedlock. So, again...what, exactly, did the CCA or its local chapters and its affiliated organizations "hide"? Whom do YOU think joined these organizations (without "White" in their names) -- that was NOT aware of their racist origins and pro-segregation sentiments? Give me a SPECIFIC EXAMPLE of "liberal contributions" you are referring to -- which would NOT have occurred if the word "White" preceded Citizens Council or "White" was appended to any of the other organization names (some listed above) -- but WAS made because of the absence of the word "White". 2. NORTHERN NEWSPAPERS (a) Give me an example of a northern newspaper that published an article about the citizens council movement (or any specific chapter in its territory) WITHOUT mentioning its racist beliefs and objectives. ( Give me a specific example of someone whom YOU claim gave "respect and support" to their local citizens council because they DID NOT understand that it was explicitly a white supremacy and pro-segregation movement. © Give me a specific example of "financial support" being given to a Citizens Council by someone who was NOT aware (according to you) of the racist origins and principles and objectives of the Citizens Councils movement. 3. ORIGINAL BEGINNINGS OF CITIZENS COUNCILS You declare that I "simply don't know the history" of the origins of the movement. Oh really Paul? I have TENS OF THOUSANDS of pages of original primary source documents -- including their articles of incorporation listing officers and directors of each Council and including the bylaws of many individual chapters which were filed with their state governments. PATTERSON and INDIANOLA CHAPTER The first Citizens Council (in Indianola MS) was created as "Indianola Citizens Council" per the FBI summary memo in HQ file 100-34237, serial #5 (which is a very detailed 60-page memo which quotes extensively from original incorporation documents along with news media reports and Citizens Council publications). The information in that memo comes from the Constitution and Bylaws of the organization. Then, on July 2, 1954, the "Citizens Council of Simpson County Mississippi" was organized per documents filed with the Mississippi Secretary of State. MY SOURCES My personal library includes not only the McMillen book, but DOZENS of other books and doctoral dissertations pertaining to this subject matter plus THOUSANDS of newspaper articles about the Citizens Councils movement. [i particularly recommend one of the newer books, i.e. Clive Webb's, "Rabble Rousers: The American Far Right In The Civil Rights Era" [university of Georgia Press, 2010]. And if all that was not enough, I have the entire FBI HQ file (5200 pages) which is captioned "Citizens Councils Movement and States Rights Organizations" -- i.e. HQ file 100-34237 -- which I have posted online here: http://www.buildingdemocracy.us/archive/dox/far%20right/000%20FBI-XR-A__Z/ (scroll down to "C" section) --- along with DOZENS more FBI sub-files from that main file on individual Citizens Councils chapters along with their statewide organizations such as: Association of Citizens Councils of Mississippi, etc. I also have FBI HQ and field office files on many other pro-segregation organizations (and their officers). To be more specific, here is a partial list of sub-files from the primary Citizens Council file which I have obtained -- and I will welcome YOUR report of what YOU have: HQ 105-34237- Sub-File # / FBI Field Office file 2 = Atlanta 3 = Baltimore 4 = Birmingham 8 = Charlotte 10 = Cincinnati 13 = Denver 15 = Detroit 19 = Houston 24 = Knoxville 25 = Little Rock 26 = Los Angeles 27 = Louisville 32 = New Haven 34 = New York City 35 = Oklahoma City 41 = Richmond 42 = St Louis 45 = San Antonio 46 = San Diego 47 = San Francisco 49 = Savannah 53 = Washington field 54 = Jackson 56 = Norfolk 64 = Tampa 66 = Charleston PAUL: I have NO problem whatsoever with any criticism you wish to make of what I write in response to your comments but please do not insult me by claiming that I am somehow mentally deficient about the history of this movement. I suspect that your knowledge about all this is basically limited to the book by McMillen and perhaps some others and perhaps some documents you discovered during your research into Edwin Walker. By contrast, I have the PRIMARY SOURCE documents which McMillen and others often refer to in their footnotes or bibliography. The "original title" was NOT "White Citizens Council" for most of these groups (as mentioned above). They were incorporated under many different names but very few were officially named "White Citizens Council" in their incorporation documents -- which is why the index to books published by knowledgeable authors (such as Neil McMillen and Clive Webb and others) and particularly those folks who wrote their doctoral dissertations on the movement) do not list them in their books under the name "White Citizens Councils". 4. MEDFORD EVANS Yes, he is "of special interest" but I seriously doubt that you have a fraction of the information I have on him. Many years ago I wrote an article which revealed information that is not (to my knowledge) published anywhere else. 5. JBS SINCERITY Paul, there simply is not enough time or space to respond appropriately to your pejorative assumptions and conclusions. I will simply mention this: Every indisputable neo-nazi or anti-semite who joined the Birch Society OR who wrote articles about the JBS and Robert Welch, UNIVERSALLY condemned Welch and the JBS. The reason was obvious. The JBS was NOT an hospitable environment for their sentiments. ALL large organizations usually deal with "boarding parties" who think they can manipulate an organization to reflect their personal views and political objectives. Obviously, the JBS was a magnet for many of these type of individuals because the JBS was, arguably, the best financed, the best organized, and the largest membership organization of its kind during the 1960's. Yes, Revilo Oliver was a racist, an anti-semite and, interestingly, an anti-Christian atheist. But Welch chose to ignore whatever he knew about Oliver as long as Oliver kept his bigotry to himself. Let me be very blunt; The JBS never had an equivalent mechanism such as employed by the KKK, i.e. the Klan Bureau of Investigation. There were no "background checks" or purity tests. Anybody who claimed to support JBS principles was welcome. AFTER they became members, IF they revealed their personal bigotry, they were expelled. This process was quite similar to what happened with respect to left-wing groups and labor unions during the 1940's and 1950's as they purged Communists from their ranks. The ACLU went through this. The NAACP went through this. The AFL-CIO went through this. But no rational person uses the examples of Communists who infiltrated left-wing organizations as "proof" that those organizations were "Communist fronts" OR "Communist controlled" or that they "welcomed" political extremists of any sort. You are making highly pejorative conclusions about the JBS based upon sensational examples which are widely known. I could provide you with MANY more examples which you are not aware of. But that simply does not refute my basic premise -- i.e. there was nothing about the JBS as an organization which required its membership to believe or accept bigoted ideas or practices. The JBS never used crude language to describe blacks, asians, latinos, or others. It never described black Americans as intellectually or morally inferior to whites. It never endorsed segregation as a permanent feature of our society. It certainly never cheered or condoned violence against blacks. It never sympathized with people who bombed synagogues or churches or castrated, lynched or murdered black men, women, children. In fact, it was a JBS member (Rev. Delmar Dennis) who infiltrated the most violent Klan in our country for the FBI and Dennis was responsible for putting many Klan members in jail. After his FBI service, he was employed by the JBS as a speaker and as a Coordinator and he travelled the country to discuss his experiences within the Klan. Nevertheless, Delmar Dennis WAS a segregationist. He was a product of his small-town Mississippi beliefs, customs, and values. But his religious background trumped his personal bigotry toward black Americans because he was sickened by the violence of the Klan. Because of his FBI services and his subsequent testimony, the church in Meridian MS which he founded kicked him out, he could not find work and had to move out of Mississippi, he had his life threatened by the local Klan, his wife divorced him, he fell deeply into debt and had to sell his family home and he was estranged from family and lifetime friends. DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING COMPARABLE TO REPORT ABOUT YOUR OWN LIFE? Obviously, it is easy to caricature the JBS because of its political extremist ideas and conspiracy theories which most Americans find repellant. But Paul, (with respect), you DO NOT KNOW Birchers as individual human beings. You merely have created a caricature. MARTIN LUTHER KING Paui - if you do not know that King accepted Marxist economic doctrine, then you have never done any significant research into the matter. Even King's father acknowledged that many years ago when interviewed about King Jr. after his death. Perhaps you are familiar with the King Research and Education Institute at Stanford University? Here is one brief excerpt from their encyclopedia which touches on this subject: "King first studied communism on his own while a student at Crozer Theological Seminary in 1949. In his 1958 memoir, he reported that although he rejected communism’s central tenets, he was sympathetic to Marx’s critique of capitalism, finding the ‘‘gulf between superfluous wealth and abject poverty’’ that existed in the United States morally wrong (Stride, 94). Writing his future wife, Coretta Scott, during the first summer of their relationship, he told her that he was ‘‘more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic. And yet I am not so opposed to capitalism that I have failed to see its relative merits’’ (Papers 6:123; 125)." In addition, this comment in a 1963 FBI memo from Hoover to the Attorney General is significant: HQ 100-106670, #203 (8/2/63 JEH to AG): “This report contains information to the effect that MLK Jr. was described as a confirmed Marxist-Leninist as of June 1963. This description of King as a confirmed Marxist-Leninist was made by one man, Stanley Levison, a New York attorney and businessman who is a secret member of the Communist Party and a close associate of King. He made the statement twice, first in 1962 and again in 1963. In this connection, your attention is invited to my letter of February 14, 1962, in captioned matter and to my letter of July 17m 1963, captioned ‘Request From Senator Monroney Concerning Current Racial Agitation’ both of which contain information to the effect that Levison has characterized King as a ‘wholehearted Marxist’ who has studied Marxism, believes in it but cannot publicly espouse it because of his position.” YOUR FINAL POINT Yes, Walker was a racist and he was a favorite speaker at Citizens Council events. You may not know this, but he was offered the position of Grand Dragon of the Texas KKK -- and he seriously considered the offer before rejecting it. Yes, there are many connections between Citizens Councils officials and the JBS. But, in many cases, the JBS severed ties to people they thought were pursuing their own (racist) agenda instead of the Birch Society's. In case you do not know, the official JBS position about the Klan is that the Klan was led by and controlled by "Communists". Quoting from the May 2008 JBS Bulletin: "Just as the John Birch Society showed in the 1960's that the communists basically ran both the civil rights movement and the KKK, the strategy was nothing new. The former was used to transfer power to Washington DC in the name of civil rights and the latter provided a pretext for transferring power to Washington. You cannot get a really good conflict started unless you control both sides of the argument." Also, as I have previously reported, once Walker starting associating himself with known anti-semites, Welch told his National Council members that he had counseled Walker against such affiliations and Welch indicated that the JBS was dissociating itself from Walker because of Walker's unsavory extremist connections. This is not unusual. Welch terminated the relationship he had with many people once their bigotry became associated with the JBS -- including Westbrook Pegler, Revilo Oliver, Willis Carto, and many others who briefly became JBS members until they realized that the JBS was NOT going to allow them to promote their personal hatreds within the JBS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Trejo Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 (edited) Paul - I downloaded and read Harry Dean's book - very interesting. I think this discussion about the JBS, Citizens Councils etc. has gotten a bit off track, but still I have enjoyed reading the back and forth. Thanks for trying to bring this thread back to Dean and Walker. I am more inclined to think that Oswald actually did try to kill Walker, though still not enamored of your theory that it was Volkmar Schmidt and DeMohrenschildt that put him up to it. Without derailing this too much, does Paul Trejo think that Judyth Vary Baker's story is credible? And also, do you think Gary Wean's account of a fake attempt on JFK credible? Just curious. I have tried to see whether these two stories conflict or support Dean's tale, and I think I could fit them into the same picture. First, Paul B., I want to thank you for reading Harry Dean's new eBook, Harry Dean's Confessions: I Might Have Killed JFK, since this answers many questions that keep arising among those who don't know Harry Dean's story. Secondly, you ask for my opinion about Judyth Vary Baker's story about Lee Harvey Oswald. I think that there is some truth in her story, as well as some "enhancement." In other words, I find it plausible that Judyth Vary Baker spent a few weeks with Oswald during the summer of 1963 (just as Ron Lewis spent a few weeks with Oswald during that period). I also find it plausible that they would develop a crush on each other in that time frame, and that their relationship would not last. I suspect that Baker thought more of their casual relationship than Oswald did -- but that is to be expected. I also believe that Oswald was involved in a plot to kill Castro, just as Baker says. I find it plausible that she was also involved in the same plot. I also find it plausible that Guy Banister and David Ferrie played substantial roles in the lives of both youths. I tend to stop my agreements at this point. In my humble opinion, when Lee Harvey Oswald broke off their casual relationship, he broke it off cold -- he was a married man and this would have been a short-lived affair for him. Still, the main part of her story -- that both were involved in a right-wing plot to kill Fidel Castro and take Cuba back from the Communists -- I find plausible and even certain. To that degree her story is valuable -- that is, from the moment she met Lee harvey Oswald until they day they parted ways, Baker's story should be of historical interest to readers. What happened before and after that is less interesting to me, and I suspect it contains a fair amount of filler to keep her story moving. In summary, her claims involve a few weeks of Oswald's life. I can say the same for the writings of Ron Lewis in his 1996 book, FLASHBACK: The Untold Story of Lee Harvey Oswald, in which Lewis calls himself Oswald's "best friend." I find it plausible that they knew each other for a matter of weeks during the summer of 1963, yet I doubt the portrait of Oswald as otherwise lonely and friendless. Oswald kept lots of secrets -- even from Marina -- but he was not a lonely operator. He had many friends and many *accomplices*. So, the story by Judyth Vary Baker does indeed advance the claims of Harry Dean. Lee Harvey Oswald was a fake member of a fake FPCC in New Orleans, and he got involved in rightist political characters related to the Cuban reaction against Fidel Castro -- characters like Ed Butler, Carlos Bringuier, Loran Hall and Larry Howard. Harry does not claim any eye-witness evidence about New Orleans, Ed Butler or Carlos Bringuier, but Harry does claim eye-witness evidence about Loran Hall and Larry Howard. These two characters were openly part of the anti-Castro movement in the USA, and would have killed Fidel Castro themselves if they could only get close enough. Thirdly, you ask about the 1987 book by WW2 sailor and LAPD cop, Gary Wean, namely, There's a Fish in the Courthouse. For our purposes, his key narrative is about "John" (whom he refused to further identify in the book) who in December 1963 allegedly told Audie Murphy, Sherrif Bill Decker and Gary Wean the truth about Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald was all CIA, working for E. Howard Hunt since his early days at Atsugi. Hunt's obsession in 1963 was to kill Fidel Castro. E. Howard Hunt staged the Walker shooting to build Oswald's credentials, claimed "John," and then pulled Oswald into New Orleans to further build those credentials using a fake FPCC and a fake FPCC officer status recorded in newspapers, police reports, radio and television. Hunt also arranged a phony trip to Mexico to get Oswald close to the Cuban Embassy, which would further implicate Fidel Castro. According to "John," our hero E. Howard Hunt planned a "fake" assassination on JFK, in which Oswald was to shoot some bullets into the air. Then, after Oswald was arrested, all painted as a Communist, Fidel Castro would be blamed for this "attempt" on JFK's life, and the USA would invade Cuba, kill Castro and be done with it. According to "John," something went "horribly wrong." Somebody had intercepted the plan, killed JFK, and then killed Lee Harvey Oswald who never understood what went wrong. To prove his point, "John" gave Murphy, Decker and Weal a manila folder with documented proof -- but on their flight back to Los Angeles, they tore up the contents and threw them out of the airplane. So - we're expected to believe this? The story itself comes out in 1987, after Mark Lane, Jim Garrison, Harold Weisberg, Sylvia Meagher and many others had already composed dozens of plausible theories about Lee Harvey Oswald that included the CIA and H.L. Hunt. It's far more plausible -- in my opinion -- that the story is, at least in part, a clever invention. (If there is a more limited truth in the story, it would have been better to tell the limited truth than to try to embellish it, IMHO.) It helps very little that Wean claimed years later that "John" was Senator John Tower of Texas, since Tower died in 1991, and could not confirm, deny or discuss these allegations made in his name. Are the claims possible? Yes! Are they plausible? I can think of some aspects that I agree with -- for example, the conspirators who killed JFK wanted more than anything else to invade Cuba and kill Fidel Castro. So that part is plausible. Also, E. Howard Hunt, who was part of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, would probably have done anything to take Cuba back from Fidel Castro. That part is plausible. It is also plausible that Lee Harvey Oswald worked at some level for the CIA since his days at Atsugi -- well, sort of. This is where the model begins to break down. Lee Harvey Oswald was a broke ex-Marine who could not hold down a steady job. He struggled for money. This is not the profile of a person who had a well-situated CIA backer since 1958. Also, it doesn't match the sworn testimony we have about Oswald from either George De Mohrenschildt or the accounts from FBI agent James Hosty. One can try to use a crow-bar to make the plethora of Warren Commission testimony fit this story by "John" through Gary Wean, but it won't fit. So - without further confirmation I tend to doubt Wean's story. Best regards, --Paul Trejo Edited November 1, 2013 by Paul Trejo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Brancato Posted October 31, 2013 Share Posted October 31, 2013 Paul - what I find interesting about Weal's story is that it explains why Oswald, a man with no grudge against JFK, would bring a rifle to the TSBD that day. John Tower is also an interesting choice, because Oswald appealed to him for help in leaving the USSR. Haslam, whose book I am sure you read, points out that Oswald had a much harder time leaving the Soviet Union than entering it. Haslam conjectures that whoever was running him at first dropped him later, leaving Oswald to pick up the pieces. It seems clear to me that Angleton ran him after his return. Tower referred Oswald's letter to the State Dept, and left a clear paper trail that he had done so, almost too clear. I know there are lots of problems with Weal's story, but that is true with all of these personal stories. The Northwood false flag idea fits well with the notion that an attempted assassination would work as well as a real one, as long as it could be pinned on Castro. But of course no invasion of Cuba followed, even though the trail to Castro had been carefully laid by Phillips and others, and JFK was really dead. LBJ made every effort to leave behind documents showing how carefully he came to the conclusion that only a lone nut theory would keep us out of war with the Soviets. Again, almost too clear, considering how much of his history was excised by him. And doubtless LBJ was the biggest beneficiary of the assassination, but he would have been out on his rear end and facing jail time if the assassination had only been an attempted one, rather than the real thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Trejo Posted November 1, 2013 Share Posted November 1, 2013 (edited) Paul: <snip> 3. ORIGINAL BEGINNINGS OF CITIZENS COUNCILS You declare that I "simply don't know the history" of the origins of the movement. Oh really Paul? I have TENS OF THOUSANDS of pages of original primary source documents -- including their articles of incorporation listing officers and directors of each Council and including the bylaws of many individual chapters which were filed with their state governments. PATTERSON and INDIANOLA CHAPTER The first Citizens Council (in Indianola MS) was created as "Indianola Citizens Council" per the FBI summary memo in HQ file 100-34237, serial #5 (which is a very detailed 60-page memo which quotes extensively from original incorporation documents along with news media reports and Citizens Council publications). The information in that memo comes from the Constitution and Bylaws of the organization. Then, on July 2, 1954, the "Citizens Council of Simpson County Mississippi" was organized per documents filed with the Mississippi Secretary of State. MY SOURCES My personal library includes not only the McMillen book, but DOZENS of other books and doctoral dissertations pertaining to this subject matter plus THOUSANDS of newspaper articles about the Citizens Councils movement. [i particularly recommend one of the newer books, i.e. Clive Webb's, "Rabble Rousers: The American Far Right In The Civil Rights Era" [university of Georgia Press, 2010]. And if all that was not enough, I have the entire FBI HQ file (5200 pages) which is captioned "Citizens Councils Movement and States Rights Organizations" -- i.e. HQ file 100-34237 -- which I have posted online here: http://www.buildingdemocracy.us/archive/dox/far%20right/000%20FBI-XR-A__Z/ (scroll down to "C" section) --- along with DOZENS more FBI sub-files from that main file on individual Citizens Councils chapters along with their statewide organizations such as: Association of Citizens Councils of Mississippi, etc. I also have FBI HQ and field office files on many other pro-segregation organizations (and their officers). <snip> MARTIN LUTHER KING Paui - if you do not know that King accepted Marxist economic doctrine, then you have never done any significant research into the matter. Even King's father acknowledged that many years ago when interviewed about King Jr. after his death. Perhaps you are familiar with the King Research and Education Institute at Stanford University? Here is one brief excerpt from their encyclopedia which touches on this subject: "King first studied communism on his own while a student at Crozer Theological Seminary in 1949. In his 1958 memoir, he reported that although he rejected communism’s central tenets, he was sympathetic to Marx’s critique of capitalism, finding the ‘‘gulf between superfluous wealth and abject poverty’’ that existed in the United States morally wrong (Stride, 94). Writing his future wife, Coretta Scott, during the first summer of their relationship, he told her that he was ‘‘more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic. And yet I am not so opposed to capitalism that I have failed to see its relative merits’’ (Papers 6:123; 125)." <snip> YOUR FINAL POINT Yes, Walker was a racist and he was a favorite speaker at Citizens Council events. You may not know this, but he was offered the position of Grand Dragon of the Texas KKK -- and he seriously considered the offer before rejecting it. Yes, there are many connections between Citizens Councils officials and the JBS. But, in many cases, the JBS severed ties to people they thought were pursuing their own (racist) agenda instead of the Birch Society's... Ernie, You say you have thousands of pages of documentation on topic of the White Citizens Councils, Ernie, and I won't try to compete with that. I have only some notes on the textbooks of Neil McMillen, Clive Webb, J.W.V. Zanden, Lothrop Stoddard, J.D. Sayers, Madison Grant, C.C. Josey, Adam Fairclough, Numan V. Bartley, "Judge" Tom Pickens Brady and a few others. In light of the plethora of documents you can produce, and of the paucity of my notes and the imperfection of my memory, I'll defer to your judgment on this minor point -- that the "original title" was not "White Citizens Council" but "Citizens Council," and that only a few of these groups in various States chose to incorporate under the name of "White Citizens Council." As for Medford Evans, I hope to read your paper on him one day. As for the Anti-Semitic element in American politics, you claim that the JBS was "not a hospitable environment for their sentiments," yet you also admit that Revilo P. Oliver, a strident Anti-Semite, was a long-time member of the JBS, and that he was not expelled, but rather quit on his own. I think this counts as a contradiction. You say that "Welch chose to ignore whatever he knew about Oliver as long as Oliver kept his bigotry to himself," yet that would be next to impossible unless Oliver was carefully monitored in the JBS cells he frequented. In other words, what really happened was that Oliver was allowed to circulate freely until and unless an open scandal broke out. You admit that there were no "background checks," and that "the JBS was a magnet" for these sorts of individuals. You claim that "if they revealed their personal bigotry, they were expelled," and yet you also say that "white privilege" was upheld throughout the JBS. I think that counts as another contradiction. I recognize that you aren't defending the JBS, Ernie, and that you're actually critical of them. You refuse to call them "rational" when they used examples of Communist infiltration of as "proof" that the infiltrated organizations were "Communist fronts" or "Communist controlled." So I will admit the same about the JBS -- they were infiltrated by racist elements (e.g. Revilo P. Oliver, General Edwin Walker and others), yet this cannot be any final proof that the JBS cells were "Nazi fronts" or "Nazi controlled." I recognize the logic of that. My only remaining point on this topic is that any tolerance of Evil is a slippery slope. Getting back to the topic at hand, Harry Dean's new eBook, Harry Dean's Confessions: I Might Have Killed JFK, also supports your point when he maintains that in all of his interactions with the JBS in Southern California, he was never presented with any racist element, statement, slur, epithet, joke or proposition. He would have quit in a huff if any of that had happened. Therefore, on the basis of all these observations, I'll stipulate that on the topic of the John Birch Society, Ernie, your work is more authoritative than mine. Insofar as you're willing to be critical of the JBS, and admit that they introduced political POISON into the American social body, I find your conclusions to be compatible with my own. Now, about Martin Luther King, Jr., the citations you cited about his alleged "Marxism" are weak and poorly argued. Was his father an expert on the topic of Marxism when he offered his opinion? I sincerely doubt it. Also, the quote you offered about MLK from Stanford is ambiguous. It says that MLK "first studied communism on his own while a student at Crozer Theological Seminary in 1949," and a biased person could conclude that MLK passively accepted whatever he studied. Yet actually J. Edgar Hoover also studied Communism, and this is solid proof that simply studying Communism cannot make a person a Communist. Further, that Stanford report admitted that MLK "rejected communism’s central tenets," which is clearly catastrophic to any claim that MLK was really a Marxist. It is strictly impossible for anybody to be a Marxist while rejecting Communism's "central tenets". Further, insofar as MLK was, "sympathetic to Marx’s critique of capitalism, finding the gulf between superfluous wealth and abject poverty that existed in the United States morally wrong," this cannot make anybody a Marxist, either. Actually, millions of patriotic Americans decry the increasing gulf between billionaires and the common working person in America. They aren't Marxists because of that. They don't call for open revolution, but they decry the moral outrage, based on an unprecedented disparity. To accuse such a person of Marxism is as irrational as accusing the average Bircher of Nazism. Further, MLK told Coretta Scott that he was, 'more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic,' and yet he immediately qualified this to add that he was, 'not so opposed to capitalism that I have failed to see its relative merits’. Anybody who accuses MLK of Marxism based on these weak arguments alone cannot be thinking objectively. Also, I maintain that anything published by J. Edgar Hoover about MLK will be politically biased. To the best of my knowledge, J. Edgar Hoover spied on MLK more than any other American in FBI history. This amounted to an obsession for which Hoover ought to be pitied. Of course, Hoover had to claim that MLK was a Marxist, a Marxist-Leninist, and a true-believer in Karl Marx, in order to justify his illegal spying and wire-tapping on MLK. Here is a concise definition: a real Marxist advocates the violent overthrow of the industrial bourgeoisie by the industrial proletariat. No other definition is good enough. Also -- you claim that General Walker "terminated the relationship he had" with Anti-Semites to please Welch, but that cannot be accurate because General Walker held a decade-long relationship with his publisher, Robert Allen Surrey, who was also a publisher for the American Nazi Party. Finally, Ernie, I hope we can turn this thread back toward the topic of Harry Dean, because as I recall you claimed over the years in this very Forum that the FBI had no records about any interaction with Harry Dean of any kind. In other words, you called Harry Dean a xxxx. Do you still maintain that position? Best regards, --Paul Trejo Edited November 1, 2013 by Paul Trejo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Trejo Posted November 1, 2013 Share Posted November 1, 2013 (edited) Paul - what I find interesting about Wean's story is that it explains why Oswald, a man with no grudge against JFK, would bring a rifle to the TSBD that day. John Tower is also an interesting choice, because Oswald appealed to him for help in leaving the USSR... Well, Paul B., if you want a plausible story to explain why Oswald, a man who supported the Civil Rights movement in conversations with others, would bring a rifle to the TSBD that day, my favorite story on that topic is from Gerry Patrick Hemming. Hemming claims that he offered Lee Harvey Oswald double the asking price for his rifle if Oswald would bring it to the TSBD that day, for a secret buyer. Insofar as Hemming was also an associate of Loran Hall and Larry Howard, whom Harry Dean claims were manipulating Oswald since late September 1963 through the JFK assassination, I think that Gerry Patrick Hemming's story is the most plausible, as it identifies suspected street-level players. Best regards, --Paul Trejo Edited November 1, 2013 by Paul Trejo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernie Lazar Posted November 1, 2013 Share Posted November 1, 2013 Paul: <snip> 3. ORIGINAL BEGINNINGS OF CITIZENS COUNCILS You declare that I "simply don't know the history" of the origins of the movement. Oh really Paul? I have TENS OF THOUSANDS of pages of original primary source documents -- including their articles of incorporation listing officers and directors of each Council and including the bylaws of many individual chapters which were filed with their state governments. PATTERSON and INDIANOLA CHAPTER The first Citizens Council (in Indianola MS) was created as "Indianola Citizens Council" per the FBI summary memo in HQ file 100-34237, serial #5 (which is a very detailed 60-page memo which quotes extensively from original incorporation documents along with news media reports and Citizens Council publications). The information in that memo comes from the Constitution and Bylaws of the organization. Then, on July 2, 1954, the "Citizens Council of Simpson County Mississippi" was organized per documents filed with the Mississippi Secretary of State. MY SOURCES My personal library includes not only the McMillen book, but DOZENS of other books and doctoral dissertations pertaining to this subject matter plus THOUSANDS of newspaper articles about the Citizens Councils movement. [i particularly recommend one of the newer books, i.e. Clive Webb's, "Rabble Rousers: The American Far Right In The Civil Rights Era" [university of Georgia Press, 2010]. And if all that was not enough, I have the entire FBI HQ file (5200 pages) which is captioned "Citizens Councils Movement and States Rights Organizations" -- i.e. HQ file 100-34237 -- which I have posted online here: http://www.buildingdemocracy.us/archive/dox/far%20right/000%20FBI-XR-A__Z/ (scroll down to "C" section) --- along with DOZENS more FBI sub-files from that main file on individual Citizens Councils chapters along with their statewide organizations such as: Association of Citizens Councils of Mississippi, etc. I also have FBI HQ and field office files on many other pro-segregation organizations (and their officers). <snip> MARTIN LUTHER KING Paui - if you do not know that King accepted Marxist economic doctrine, then you have never done any significant research into the matter. Even King's father acknowledged that many years ago when interviewed about King Jr. after his death. Perhaps you are familiar with the King Research and Education Institute at Stanford University? Here is one brief excerpt from their encyclopedia which touches on this subject: "King first studied communism on his own while a student at Crozer Theological Seminary in 1949. In his 1958 memoir, he reported that although he rejected communism’s central tenets, he was sympathetic to Marx’s critique of capitalism, finding the ‘‘gulf between superfluous wealth and abject poverty’’ that existed in the United States morally wrong (Stride, 94). Writing his future wife, Coretta Scott, during the first summer of their relationship, he told her that he was ‘‘more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic. And yet I am not so opposed to capitalism that I have failed to see its relative merits’’ (Papers 6:123; 125)." <snip> YOUR FINAL POINT Yes, Walker was a racist and he was a favorite speaker at Citizens Council events. You may not know this, but he was offered the position of Grand Dragon of the Texas KKK -- and he seriously considered the offer before rejecting it. Yes, there are many connections between Citizens Councils officials and the JBS. But, in many cases, the JBS severed ties to people they thought were pursuing their own (racist) agenda instead of the Birch Society's... Ernie, You say you have thousands of pages of documentation on topic of the White Citizens Councils, Ernie, and I won't try to compete with that. I have only some notes on the textbooks of Neil McMillen, Clive Webb, J.W.V. Zanden, Lothrop Stoddard, J.D. Sayers, Madison Grant, C.C. Josey, Adam Fairclough, Numan V. Bartley, "Judge" Tom Pickens Brady and a few others. In light of the plethora of documents you can produce, and of the paucity of my notes and the imperfection of my memory, I'll defer to your judgment on this minor point -- that the "original title" was not "White Citizens Council" but "Citizens Council," and that only a few of these groups in various States chose to incorporate under the name of "White Citizens Council." As for Medford Evans, I hope to read your paper on him one day. As for the Anti-Semitic element in American politics, you claim that the JBS was "not a hospitable environment for their sentiments," yet you also admit that Revilo P. Oliver, a strident Anti-Semite, was a long-time member of the JBS, and that he was not expelled, but rather quit on his own. I think this counts as a contradiction. You say that "Welch chose to ignore whatever he knew about Oliver as long as Oliver kept his bigotry to himself," yet that would be next to impossible unless Oliver was carefully monitored in the JBS cells he frequented. In other words, what really happened was that Oliver was allowed to circulate freely until and unless an open scandal broke out. You admit that there were no "background checks," and that "the JBS was a magnet" for these sorts of individuals. You claim that "if they revealed their personal bigotry, they were expelled," and yet you also say that "white privilege" was upheld throughout the JBS. I think that counts as another contradiction. I recognize that you aren't defending the JBS, Ernie, and that you're actually critical of them. You refuse to call them "rational" when they used examples of Communist infiltration of as "proof" that the infiltrated organizations were "Communist fronts" or "Communist controlled." So I will admit the same about the JBS -- they were infiltrated by racist elements (e.g. Revilo P. Oliver, General Edwin Walker and others), yet this cannot be any final proof that the JBS cells were "Nazi fronts" or "Nazi controlled." I recognize the logic of that. My only remaining point on this topic is that any tolerance of Evil is a slippery slope. Getting back to the topic at hand, Harry Dean's new eBook, Harry Dean's Confessions: I Might Have Killed JFK, also supports your point when he maintains that in all of his interactions with the JBS in Southern California, he was never presented with any racist element, statement, slur, epithet, joke or proposition. He would have quit in a huff if any of that had happened. Therefore, on the basis of all these observations, I'll stipulate that on the topic of the John Birch Society, Ernie, your work is more authoritative than mine. Insofar as you're willing to be critical of the JBS, and admit that they introduced political POISON into the American social body, I will find your conclusions to be compatible with my own. Now, about Martin Luther King, Jr., the citations you cited about his alleged "Marxism" are weak and poorly argued. Was his father an expert on the topic of Marxism when he offered his opinion? I sincerely doubt it. Also, the quote you offered about MLK from Stanford is ambiguous. It says that MLK "first studied communism on his own while a student at Crozer Theological Seminary in 1949," and a biased person could conclude that MLK passively accepted whatever he studied. Yet actually J. Edgar Hoover also studied Communism, and this is solid proof that simply studying Communism cannot make a person a Communist. Further, that Stanford report admitted that MLK "rejected communism’s central tenets," which is clearly catastrophic to any claim that MLK was really a Marxist. It is strictly impossible for anybody to be a Marxist while rejecting its "central tenets". Further, insofar as MLK was, "sympathetic to Marx’s critique of capitalism, finding the gulf between superfluous wealth and abject poverty that existed in the United States morally wrong," this cannot make anybody a Marxist, either. Actually, millions of patriotic Americans decry the increasing gulf between billionaires and the common working person in America. They aren't Marxists because of that. They don't call for open revolution, but they decry the moral outrage, based on an unprecedented disparity. To accuse such a person of Marxism is as irrational as accusing the average Bircher of Nazism. Further, MLK told Coretta Scott that he was, 'more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic,' and yet he immediately qualified this to add that he was, 'not so opposed to capitalism that I have failed to see its relative merits’. Anybody who accuses MLK of Marxism based on these weak arguments alone cannot be thinking objectively. Also, I maintain that anything published by J. Edgar Hoover about MLK will be politically biased. To the best of my knowledge, J. Edgar Hoover spied on MLK more than any other American in FBI history. This amounted to an obsession for which Hoover ought to be pitied. Of course, Hoover had to claim that MLK was a Marxist, a Marxist-Leninist, and a true-believer, in order to justify his illegal spying and wire-tapping on MLK. Here is a concise definition: a real Marxist advocates the violent overthrow of the industrial bourgeoisie by the industrial proletariat. No other definition is good enough. Also -- you claim that General Walker "terminated the relationship he had" with Anti-Semites to please Welch, but that cannot be accurate because General Walker held a decade-long relationship with his publisher, Robert Allen Surrey, who was also a publisher for the American Nazi Party. Finally, Ernie, I hope we can turn this thread back toward the topic of Harry Dean, because as I recall you claimed over the years in this very Forum that the FBI had no records about any interaction with Harry Dean of any kind. In other words, you called Harry Dean a xxxx. Do you still maintain that position? Best regards, --Paul Trejo Paul, the "contradictions" which you perceive come about as a result of you dismissing the context of what I wrote. 1. Let's start with Revilo Oliver. Herbert Philbrick told the FBI that he considered Revilo Oliver an anti-communist extremist and virulent anti-semite based upon his contacts with Oliver in 1959. However, when Oliver joined the Birch Society and was the primary author of many of its American Opinion articles (especially the annual Scoreboard issue), his Jew-hatred was not expressed in those JBS writings -- which is why Welch (assuming he knew all the details about Oliver's personal beliefs) never took any action against Oliver. Yes, Oliver submitted his resignation -- but that came about because of Welch's letter to Oliver which made it clear that both he and the JBS did NOT agree with Oliver's views. Specifically, here is what Welch wrote to JBS National Council members in August 1966 about Oliver's resignation: In a memo addressed “To A Number of Friends Who Have Written Us About Dr. Oliver’s Speech”, Welch wrote that the precipitating incident (i.e. Oliver's speech at the July 4th New England Rally For God, Family and Country) was not a function of the JBS even though about half the sponsors were Birchers. Welch stated that he didn’t even know Oliver would be a speaker at that event. “Dr. Oliver was speaking entirely on his own, and not in any way expressing the views of the John Birch Society…We do not subscribe at all to Dr. Oliver’s ‘racial superiority’ theories, nor to his views concerning the degeneracy of the human race. We are quite proud of the brilliant (and extremely patriotic) Jewish writers who work full-time on the staff of the Society and of our several hundred Jewish members, many of whom are among our finest Chapter Leaders. Despite our long and growing disagreement with Dr. Oliver over the subject matter of this letter, we have accepted his resignation from the Council with a considerable and natural reluctance. For he is an earnest anti-communist, as well as one of the world’s greatest scholars in the fields of classical languages and literature.” So, as I have previously explained, once Oliver made his personal bigotry so public that it could not be disputed -- then Welch acted -- as he did with other JBS members. Yes, Welch gave supporters of the JBS the benefit of being accepted into the Birch Society family -- PROVIDED they subscribed to general JBS principles, values, and beliefs and did not promote their own personal agenda inside the JBS. However, once they violated that trust and started making obnoxious PUBLIC statements -- particularly in venues where JBS members and sympathizers were predominant (such as the annual New England Rally) -- then Welch dropped them. 2. WHITE PRIVILEGE -- Perhaps you do not understand how I am using that term. One could say (accurately) that virtually ALL of American society during the 1950's and early 1960's upheld or justified white privilege. Even in locations where de jure segregation was outlawed, there was, nevertheless, tremendous prejudice and animus against black Americans in employment, in housing, in education, in resources expended for public services. There is no "contradiction" in acknowledging that many (perhaps even most) JBS members were insensitive to the legitimate grievances of black Americans because Birchers were NOT exposed to the real-world consequences of their cherished right-wing dogma about our civil rights movement. About 2-3 years ago, an official of the JBS (Jim Capo) posted a comment on the JBS website which was quite extraordinary (if you are familiar with the JBS). Capo acknowledged that the JBS position regarding the proper method to redress Jim Crow laws and segregation would not be likely to be welcomed or accepted by the victims of segregation and racism. As Capo wrote: “Admittedly, that route would likely have taken longer and left the many victims of Jim Crow laws wanting. And yes, we admit that most of the leaders of The John Birch Society not being directly affected by the worst elements of segregation, could more freely choose to stand on the principle that the Federal government, restricted by the U.S. Constitution, had no authority to enact the civil rights laws.” My quarrel with Capo's comment (as I stated in a reply to him posted on the JBS website) was that his reference to "most" JBS leaders should have been changed to "ALL JBS leaders". However, that is the FIRST time (to my knowledge) that any JBS official has ever admitted publicly that the official JBS position on segregation or race relations was based upon their personal experiences and perceptions which were NOT "directly affected" by segregation --- so. in short, for typical white Birchers, this was entirely an abstract ideological argument, devoid of practical considerations regarding the real-world consequences which JBS ideology (defending white privilege) produced for ordinary human beings. Two JBS members DID understand however, One was George S. Schuyler, the black conservative columnist who wrote (accurately) in 1961: “The White Citizens Council which has branches or cells everywhere, controls by terror such states as Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and to a lesser extent, Virginia…It has defied and disrupted the operation of the laws of the land. It has used threats and vicious economic reprisals…It has become a legal arm of Mississippi’s Government.” [4/22/61 Schuyler column in Pittsburgh PA Courier] The other JBS member (ironically) was Rev. Delmar Dennis (previously discussed) who told his FBI case agent: "The Klan in Mississippi has completely infiltrated every phase of the legal, political, social and economic system in Mississippi. The membership in the Klan ranges from common laborers and criminals, to judges, lawyers, doctors and political leaders. While they may not be active members, they are secret members who use their influence to further Klan efforts and aid Klan activities, for example, it is generally known in Klan circles that supervisors who pick juries use their influence to get Klan members on the jury panel.” So, what did the JBS propose to address this grave situation as reported by Dennis and Schuyler? Absolutely nothing! Which makes them deserve shame and dishonor for their role in perpetuating social and economic injustice in our country --- despite all their pretense to believing in "freedom" and "constitutional principles", etc. But, as I said, one could make a similar argument about MOST of America. There were huge problems in virtually all of our large cities (de facto segregation) -- despite the fact that Democrats or liberals were the predominant political force. Even the sainted JFK was reluctant to intervene on behalf of MLK Jr when King was in jail. 3. COMMUNISM versus MARXISM Sorry, Paul, but either you are VERY confused or you do not understand the difference between the two terms. Many democratic socialists accept the premises of Karl Marx's analysis of capitalist societies. There are NUMEROUS Marxist historians employed by our colleges and universities. However, almost none of them are Communists. Marxist economic theory preceded communist ideology as refined by Lenin. So here, once again, you are conflating two entirely different subjects. Your "definition" is a MAJOR false predicate which obviously is corrupting your entire thought process, i.e. "Here is a concise definition: a real Marxist advocates the violent overthrow of the industrial bourgeoisie by the industrial proletariat." There are numerous Marxist economists, political scientists, historians, and social/political activists who totally reject your ideas about the "violent overthrow of the industrial bourgeoisie" BUT they nevertheless accept the economic theories of Karl Marx. MLK Jr. was one of them. With respect to the quality of evidence I cited, I used shorthand just to pique your interest in further research. Obviously, the Stanford University Center is a major repository of MLK Jr. documents (his private papers) and they have spent the better part of two decades mining the enormous amount of data in their possession. However, as you know, I sent you a personal email where I attached the Adam Fairclough article (previously mentioned) which gives considerably more details about King's Marxist beliefs. And, yes, I think King's father (MLK Senior) knows a lot more about his son's beliefs than either you or I. No serious historian disputes what I have written to you --- so I suggest you contact anybody of YOUR choice to confirm what I have presented. WALKER / JBS I did not write that Walker terminated the relationships he had with anti-semites or virulent racists because he did NOT do so. [Although Robert Surrey and his wife did terminate THEIR relationship with Walker.] I wrote that Welch told his National Council (in 1962) that if Walker continued to associate with the type of people whom Welch described as bigots, the Birch Society would distance itself from Walker! [Among the people whom Welch specifically mentioned by name as persons who were advising Walker and Welch considered them to be providing "unsound" advice -- were Medford Evans and J. Evetts Haley. Welch also wrote: "Not only does that advice seem to many of us to leave much to be desired in the matter of soundness; but much more recently Walker has also been listening to advice from another source and refusing to pay attention to those who have tried to caution him about this source, and it is one which we do not trust at all, even as to good intentions." Welch then described the potential for "very serious embarrassment to conservatives and the conservative cause in general if Walker continues to listen to that advice." This was a reference to the succession of anti-semitic owners of American Mercury magazine, i.e. first, Russell Maguire and then Gerald Winrod's organization, Defenders of the Christian Faith and later Willis Carto's Legion for the Survival of Freedom. In fact, as the years progressed Walker became even more extremist in his beliefs and actions and associations. For example, in 1965, Walker assisted with the formation of a new right-wing paramilitary group called American Royal Rangers (Bossier City, LA) – which was designed to take the place of the Klan and to be organized along military lines. Members were assigned military-style uniforms and they were to be armed with rifles. As the FBI memo on the Rangers pointed out: “…General Edwin Walker is to be a five-star general having jurisdiction over the entire organization, but he will remain in the background and will not be openly connected with it.” [HQ 157-2905, #19; 4/26/65 SAC New Orleans to JEH; also New Orleans 157-3751; and HQ 157-2905, #29, 7/22/65] By May 1965, Walker's activities were so troubling that the FBI sent its standard form FD-376 on Walker to the Chief of the U.S. Secret Service. The FBI checked off the category, “Subversives, ultrarightists, racists, and fascists who meet one or more of the following criteria” – and it marked box © which is: “Prior acts (including arrests or convictions) or conduct or statements indicating a propensity for violence and antipathy toward good order and government.” Copies were also sent to military intelligence agencies. HARRY DEAN / FBI Your characterization of what I have written about Dean over the years is not entirely accurate. What I have written may be seen in message #123 (page 9) of this thread -- posted in June 2010. The bottom-line continues to be what I first wrote, i.e. (1) There is no verifiable factual evidence available in FBI files on the Birch Society (HQ or Los Angeles field) which supports Harry Dean's statements about his alleged association with the FBI. (2) Furthermore, an Assistant Director of the FBI (Los Angeles field office) explicitly stated that Harry Dean was never an FBI informant or undercover operative and the FBI in Los Angeles did not call upon Harry to provide any services to the FBI. That letter may be seen on my Harry Dean webpage here: https://sites.google.com/site/ernie124102/dean -- It comes from the FBI Los Angeles field file on the JBS (i.e. 100-59001) (3) The FBI never opened an official investigation on the JBS. Normally, FBI informants (or "undercover operatives") were used when the FBI had an ongoing investigation in progress. (4) Delmar Dennis was an example of an actual FBI informant and you can see in the HQ and field office files on Dennis the type of documents which were ROUTINELY created by field offices when they actually sought permission from HQ to use an informant or to continue using one or to pay somebody for their services or for information they obtained (including travel expenses, publications, etc.) See examples of Delmar Dennis documents here: https://sites.google.com/site/ernie124102/dennis NONE of that type of documentation appears in ANY FBI--Birch Society file -- for a very simple reason. The FBI closed its preliminary inquiry into the JBS in late 1959 or early 1960. There was nothing left to "investigate" so they did not need to use an "informant" or "undercover operative" to obtain information about the JBS or to continue to monitor the JBS for general intelligence purposes. [FBI field offices were instructed by HQ to keep abreast of the local activities of their JBS chapters by using normal procedures -- i.e. monitoring media reports, public records (such as Who's Who or corporate articles of incorporation) or using "established sources" (i.e. these were people who were known to be reliable sources and they usually had some specific knowledge about people who joined an organization but they were not members of the organization themselves.] I have often posed this question: WHAT information did the FBI supposedly want about the JBS that it could NOT obtain through normal procedures? Those normal procedures would not potentially embarrass the Bureau or reveal its interest in a person or subject (which is why it was standard Bureau practice to use ordinary sources instead of "informants" or "undercover operatives"). What desired information could ONLY be obtained for the FBI from an "undercover operative" as Harry has described himself?? And lastly, the FBI never used ONE single source to report on a person or organization or event. There were always MULTIPLE sources. [At the peak, the FBI had 433 live informants inside the Communist Party; but if you combine all the various "security informants" and "probationary security informants" used by the FBI for all purposes, their total number was in excess of 2000 at any one point in time.] Consequently, the statistical reports on its informants which appear in confidential and secret FBI internal memos beg the question: IF, as Harry Dean claims, he was an "undercover operative" for the FBI inside the JBS in southern California -- then how could it be possible that he was apparently the ONLY person ever used by the FBI in that capacity? Why wouldn't other people ALSO be used by the FBI to provide them with multiple sources inside the JBS? Just like they did with respect to the Communist Party or Klan groups or even with respect to legitimate (non-subversive) organizations such as NAACP and ACLU? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Trejo Posted November 1, 2013 Share Posted November 1, 2013 (edited) <snip> HARRY DEAN / FBI Your characterization of what I have written about Dean over the years is not entirely accurate. What I have written may be seen in message #123 (page 9) of this thread -- posted in June 2010. The bottom-line continues to be what I first wrote, i.e. (1) There is no verifiable factual evidence available in FBI files on the Birch Society (HQ or Los Angeles field) which supports Harry Dean's statements about his alleged association with the FBI. (2) Furthermore, an Assistant Director of the FBI (Los Angeles field office) explicitly stated that Harry Dean was never an FBI informant or undercover operative and the FBI in Los Angeles did not call upon Harry to provide any services to the FBI. That letter may be seen on my Harry Dean webpage here: https://sites.google.com/site/ernie124102/dean -- It comes from the FBI Los Angeles field file on the JBS (i.e. 100-59001) (3) The FBI never opened an official investigation on the JBS. Normally, FBI informants (or "undercover operatives") were used when the FBI had an ongoing investigation in progress. (4) Delmar Dennis was an example of an actual FBI informant and you can see in the HQ and field office files on Dennis the type of documents which were ROUTINELY created by field offices when they actually sought permission from HQ to use an informant or to continue using one or to pay somebody for their services or for information they obtained (including travel expenses, publications, etc.) See examples of Delmar Dennis documents here: https://sites.google.com/site/ernie124102/dennis NONE of that type of documentation appears in ANY FBI--Birch Society file -- for a very simple reason. The FBI closed its preliminary inquiry into the JBS in late 1959 or early 1960. There was nothing left to "investigate" so they did not need to use an "informant" or "undercover operative" to obtain information about the JBS or to continue to monitor the JBS for general intelligence purposes. [FBI field offices were instructed by HQ to keep abreast of the local activities of their JBS chapters by using normal procedures -- i.e. monitoring media reports, public records (such as Who's Who or corporate articles of incorporation) or using "established sources" (i.e. these were people who were known to be reliable sources and they usually had some specific knowledge about people who joined an organization but they were not members of the organization themselves.] I have often posed this question: WHAT information did the FBI supposedly want about the JBS that it could NOT obtain through normal procedures? <snip> Ernie, I think we have exhausted the topic about the ratio of racism within the John Birch Society. Officially it was none -- but in practical terms "white privilege" was expected and observed. You've admitted that much, so I'm willing to leave it at that. My main interest here is what you say about Harry Dean. To that end I'll review one of your posts on this thread - message #123: 1. It seems that you misunderstood Harry Dean to mean that the FBI asked Harry to infiltrate the JBS for them, and provide a report. Harry never claimed that. Harry claimed that the FBI was interested in some of the INDIVIDUALS that Harry knew who were connected with (i) the John Birch Society, JBS; (ii) the Minutemen; (iii) the FPCC; and (iv) Cuba activists. 2. It seems that you misunderstood Harry Hean to mean that he was a *paid* informant to the FBI when he supplied information about (i), (ii), (iii) and (iv) above from 1959-1963. Harry never claimed that - rather, the reverse. It is my understanding that Harry acted out of patriotic concern rather than "time and materials". The Assistant Director of the FBI Los Angeles field office correctly stated that Harry Dean was never an FBI undercover operative -- that is, in the strictly formal sense of that term. Harry Dean never claimed to be a formal, official, paid undercover operative for the FBI. Harry did describe his activity of reporting to the FBI as 'undercover operations' in the informal sense, referring to the fact that his reports to the FBI were secrets kept from all others. As for the FBI report that the FBI in Los Angeles never called upon Harry Dean to provide any services to the FBI, this report should be weighed against rules and regulations about classified information. Naturally the FBI would not just give out classified information for the asking. 3. It seems you misunderstood Harry Dean to mean that the FBI held a formal investigation of the JBS, of which Harry was part. That is not what Harry claimed. First, we know that the FBI did investigate the JBS, at least informally, because J. Edgar Hoover published memoranda stating clearly that no FBI officer could be a member of the JBS. That would have been unthinkable without some level of investigation and research. Secondly, Harry Dean only claimed that he was asked by the FBI about specific INDIVIDUALS that Harry knew who were connected with (i), (ii), (iii) and (iv) above from 1959-1963. 4. I doubt that the case of Delmar Dennis, an actual FBI informant, can shed light on the instance of Harry Dean whose case is arguably classified because his reports involved the JFK assassination, and named names. Delmar Dennis is not in the same category. So, it appears you may have been looking in the wrong places, Ernie. The JBS as a group was not Harry's concern -- only INDIVIDUALS in the group. Harry does say that the FBI asked him for information, both in Chicago and in Los Angeles. If those FBI reports are not readily available for public consumption, well, neither are the FBI reports on Lee Harvey Oswald, and Harry Dean used the name of Lee Harvey Oswald in some of his reports. We do possess *some* FBI records about Harry Dean, Ernie. I presume that in the course of your research you have seen them, too, and you know which ones I refer to. Again -- Harry Dean never claimed he was an official, paid, "undercover operative" for the FBI who infiltrated the JBS in Southern California. He always stated that he was first a dedicated member of the John Birch Society, until he witnessed events that he believed he should report to the FBI agents who had previously asked him about FPCC activities. Only in that informal sense was Harry an "undercover operative." Best regards, --Paul Trejo Edited November 1, 2013 by Paul Trejo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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