[lbo-talk] "Left" Believers In Warren Report

[Michael Pugliese]

   Mark Lane is married to Willis Carto' daughter. Represents the Liberty 
Lobby.
http://www.google.com/search?q=mark+Lane+Willis+Carto
http://www.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/left-n-fascism.html
The Left and the Far Right: Curious Bedfellows?
The Left has been very serious in its critique of American foreign policy 
and its cynicism. The basis of that policy has been, "if you are an enemy 
of communism, you are my friend," which has led America into cooperation 
with a whole range of tyrannical, military-backed dictatorships. But we 
should be very careful about the wisdom of that statement, because those on 
the Left should take heed too. Not everyone who speaks out against "the 
government" and "the State" is on our side. Indeed, they may have an 
entirely different agenda, of a decidedly fascist bent. Despite the fact 
that they may make statements against "capital" or "the finance class" or 
whatever else, their real enemy is liberal democracy, which they hate with 
a greater passion than even the most determined Stalinist on the left.

Now imagine this scenario. It's 1991, and you're at an anti-Persian Gulf 
"war" speakout. Someone gets up and starts blasting CIA involvement in the 
region and drug trafficking from the area, and everyone applauds. Then he 
starts saying things like "this is really the Zionists' war, fought for the 
Elders of Zion." Another man gets up and starts talking about the murderous 
policies of the IMF and World Bank in Middle East development, and the 
genocidal character of the war against Iraq. Some more applause. Then he 
follows up by saying how he sees "the hand of the Anglo-American cartel in 
all this." A third individual starts talking about the role of "capital" 
and how the war is a distraction from the S & L looters. A third round of 
applause. Then he starts talking about "international bankers" and the 
"Trilateralists" and their role in the war. At this point, you are severely 
confused. This war is probably about oil, the 'VietNam syndrome', maybe 
even Israel. But "the Elders of Zion?" What's going on?

None of these three people can, in any charitable sense, be called 'anti- 
war' or 'anti-intervention.' They are not interested in institutional 
analyses of the 'military-industrial' complex or the complexities of State 
Department policy and the extension of American power. The first belongs to 
the Liberty Lobby, publishers of the Spotlight paper, known to be anti- 
Semitic and anti-communist. The second is a LaRouchite (follower of 
jailbird Lyndon LaRouche), who speaks within a conspiratorial framework of 
incredible paranoid depth. And the third belongs to the 'Populist' party, 
which claims to represent workers & farmers, but is really xenophobic, 
nativist, and racist. As Chip Berlet, a researcher of Right wing movements, 
has noted, all three of these groups have grown in strength recently. What 
is really scary, though, is that people on the Left have begun listening to 
their diatribes. They often talk about some of the same things - government 
complicity in drug trafficking, the role of the CIA and 'Shadow 
Government', even the JFK assassination - but with a decidedly different 
"take" on what's going on.

Perhaps due to its marginalization within American politics, the democratic 
Left has tended to become interested in conspiracy theories, especially 
during the 1980s. We've all heard of them - October Surprise, Iran-Contra, 
JFK's assassination, the Samson Option, etc. - but we may not know that 
many of them have come from Rightwing sources, such as the Liberty Lobby's 
newspaper, in particular. Much of the Christic Institute's information in 
their "La Penca" case Avirgan v. Hull , which was filed by Daniel Sheehan 
to close down the 'secret team', came from a 'right-wing' military 
specialist, according to the affidavit. That source probably was Lt. Col. 
James "Bo" Gritz, a Vietnam vet whose adventures to rescue POWs and MIAs in 
southeast Asia probably provided the basis for the Rambo movies, or Air 
Force Col. Fletcher Prouty, who wrote in 1973 The Secret Team: The CIA and 
its allies in control of the U.S. and the world. Oliver Stone admits that 
Prouty, a former Pentagon 'insider,' was the basis for "X", his secretive 
informant, in the movie JFK. Unfortunately, Prouty and other CIA critics 
like Mark Lane, who recently defended the Spotlight against a libel suit, 
have begun to drift within the Liberty Lobby's orbit, with its theories 
about 'dual loyalty' and 'Jewish' control of American foreign policy.

The Liberty Lobby recently got an award from Project Censored for its early 
reporting on the S & L crisis, and it was LaRouche's Executive Intelligence 
Review that released a lot of documents pertaining to October Surprise and 
Iran-Contra. Tony Avirgan and Martha Honey, the named plaintiffs in the 
Christic Institute's case, kept trying to get legal counsel Sheehan 'down 
to earth' by getting rid of right-wing conspiracy theories in his legal 
brief from sources such as Prevailing Winds' Guns and Drugs reader. 
Prevailing Winds is an anti-CIA group whose membership includes anti-Semite 
Eustace Mullins and Bo Gritz, and it claims that the CIA is really 
controlled by the Mossad and/or the KGB. In each of these cases, these 
right-wing groups were the first to break ground on stories that may be of 
extreme interest to the Left. But, in each case, the Left has to be very 
careful about some of the more fantastic conspiratorial assumptions offered 
by these groups, and stick to the facts.

Liberty Lobby's founder Willis Carto is also connected to the Institute for 
Historical Review (IHR), a 'revisionist' group which tries to prove the 
Holocaust never happened. LaRouche's outfit regularly lambasts not just 
George Bush and the IMF, but the Anti-Defamation League, Cult Awareness 
Network, the British Monarchy, and the "Greenie Nazis," meaning 
environmentalists. The Populist Party uses bank failures in the Midwest and 
elsewhere to whip people up into an irrational frenzy, and it has 
connections to neo-Nazi groups like Posse Comitatus and the Identity 
movement, as well as the John Birch society. All three of these groups are 
active in promoting conspiratorial theories, some of which are of interest 
to the Left; but we must be wary of their true agendas. Right-wing radio 
personality Craig Hulet has quite an audience on left-leaning Pacifica 
radio when he criticizes the "corrupt government" of George Bush. Sadly, 
Hulet also talks frequently (off radio) to right-wing audiences about 
'Z.O.G.,' the "Zionist Occupation Government," and how they control "most 
of the Left-wing groups in this country." Hulet is connected to Gritz and 
Carto, and other fascists who have tried to make coalitions with the Left 
in cynical ways.

The Left's conspiratorial imagination took off once more after the release 
of Oliver Stone's movie JFK. We were interested in renewing our critique of 
covert intelligence and the shadowy spook games of the CIA. Sadly, some of 
Stone's information comes from an article by Medford Evans in the New 
American in 1967, in which Evans argued Lyndon Johnson and the 'American 
Establishment' engineered the assassination in the interests of Big Oil, 
Big Business, the CIA, the media cartel, and Big Finance. Evans has 
recently written that he enjoyed Stone's film, but has criticized Stone for 
saying it was a right-wing plot, and especially for implicating anti-Castro 
Cubans, the Mafia, and hawkish Vietnam anti-communists: in Evans' view, you 
can clearly see "international communism" at work in the assassination, a 
view echoed by some Birchers who think Oswald was getting orders from the 
KGB and Castro. Jim Garrison is the other major source of Stone's info, and 
while Garrison leaned toward right-wing forces being involved in the plot, 
he makes a curious effort to point out that his cast of villains - David 
Ferrie, Clay Shaw, etc. - are homosexuals and part of "some perverted 
subculture." Garrison is as interested in their moral depravity as he is in 
(curiously) covering up the role of the New Orleans mob... Mark Lane, who 
recently wrote Plausible Denial implicating the CIA and Watergate veteran 
E. Howard Hunt in the assassination, and was consulted for the film, 
recently acted as legal counsel for the Liberty Lobby, and admits getting 
some assistance from them for his theories.

Lane and Sheehan are not the only lawyers on the Left to have defended some 
shady characters. Recently, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark has 
acted as legal defender for LaRouche's organization. Ramsey Clark, who was 
a vocal critic of the Gulf War and has spoken out on other issues (such as 
the L.A. riots), especially U.S. action in the Third World, may have 
drifted into the LaRouchians' ideological orbit, although he denies 
agreeing with their more extreme ideas. Other items of interest to the Left 
have suspicious connections. Seymour Hersh, who wrote in the Samson Option 
about the mysterious millionaire Robert Maxwell (who died in a suspicious 
'boating accident' recently) and his role in obtaining nuclear weapons for 
Israel, may have gotten some leads from Liberty Lobby people as well. James 
Earl Ray, MLK Jr.'s assassin, has recently tried (after 20 years!) to 
revive the theory that he, like Oswald, was a patsy, and people should 
really be looking at the FBI and their involvement in a conspiracy to kill 
King. But Ray's new book which tries to find the "real murderers" has a 
laundary list of right-wing sources in its bibliography, including books by 
Willis Carto's Noontide Press.

Returning to our little anti-Gulf War speakout, the moral of the story is : 
look behind the rhetoric. When a speaker blasts the "government," does he 
want a more democratic, just, and equal system? Is he against power and 
privilege, or does he just want his group in charge? Does he oppose unfair 
or unjust government policies, or is he more concerned with government 
promotion of 'race mixing'? When he starts complaining about "Zionism," 
does he want to see Israelis and Palestinians living together in peace and 
cooperation, or is he really talking about 'the Elders of Zion' and 'ZOG'? 
When he complains about "the war lobby," is he an anti-militarist who 
supports Third World autonomy in political and economic development (and 
opposes U.S. interference for that reason) or an anti-war pacifist, or is 
he really an isolationist and nationalist - like Charles Lindbergh, whose 
"America First" movement wanted us to stay out of opposing the Nazis during 
WW II, for political, not pacifistic, reasons. If the speaker talks highly 
of Malcolm X, is it because he wants black empowerment in the economic 
system, or is he someone who admires black separatism, and likes blacks who 
want to live apart ('race pride')?

After he's done blasting the 'shadow government' and 'international 
finance,' ask him his attitudes about homosexuality, feminism, integration, 
freedom of expression, multiculturalism, the VietNam war, affirmative 
action, and social justice. You may be surprised (or frightened.) Does he 
feel we "betrayed our boys" in VietNam? Does he think the New World Order 
is to be "a one-world super-socialist State"? Does he think that one of 
America's greatest problems is immigration by non-European peoples, like 
David Duke or Pat Buchanan? Does he believe this is "a Christian nation, 
first and foremost"? Are his pet bugaboos the Trilateral Commission, the 
Bilderbergers, the Rockefellers & Rothschilds, the Council on Foreign 
Relations, etc.? If so, you may be dealing with a fascist nut. Many of 
these right-wingers have decided to play at being "wolves in sheep's 
clothing," and have infiltrated various Left coalitions, playing up (in a 
cynical way) supposed common agendas ("us against the center," in a way.) 
They also try and recruit among labor and the poor for their 'skinhead' 
legions. Fortunately, at least for the moment, the Far Right is even more 
marginal than the Left in this country. But the Left should not help them 
get one iota closer to power, because their racist, anti-Semitic, 
irrationally paranoid agenda could not be further from ours. If they start 
talking about crazy schemes to eliminate usury or purge 'dual loyalists,' 
run the other way!

These days, as one political commentator has noted, everybody running for 
president is a populist and an outsider, from Pat Buchanan to Jerry Brown. 
The question is, what do they see as the Establishment against which they 
are tilting their lance? Is that "establishment" the dominance of 
government by corporate money and the wealthy classes, or do they mean the 
"establishment" of the welfare state, affirmative action, and 'liberal 
special interests' (read: ethnic groups) in Congress? In many cases, it is 
the latter. "Populist" movements in America have had a record of 
xenophobia, nativism, racism, and paranoia, crusading against Catholics, 
Jews, Freemasons, and southern European immigrants, as well as "big 
business" and "big banking." Anyone who understands ideology, and remembers 
the crowds at the rallies at Nuremberg and the size of the fascist mass 
movement in the 1930s, knows that not every 'popular' movement is the 'will 
of the people.' Even today, European racists like Le Pen play at being 
populists, by exploiting French patriotism and enthnocentrism. David Duke 
ran as the Populist Party candidate in 1988. The Left should remain wary of 
the right-wing brand of populism, because much of it still smacks of the 
way Hitler used to talk about his volkisch fatherland and the horrors of 
the "Peoples'" State in Cambodia. They should stick to their principles: 
the enemy of their enemies, in this case, is most assuredly not their 
friend.

Steve Mizrach, aka Seeker1

-- 
Michael Pugliese