The Radical Right: Report On The John Birch Society And Its Allies PDF
Preview The Radical Right: Report On The John Birch Society And Its Allies
By Benjamin R. Epstein COLD POGROM (translated from the German) COLLECTED ESSAYS ON MASARYK (translated from the German) By Arnold Forster ANTI-SEMITISM-1947 A MEASURE OF FREEDOM By Benjamin R. Epstein and Arnold Forster THE TROUBLEMAKERS CROSSCURRENTS SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS . . . DANGER ON THE RIGHT REPORT ON THE KU KLUX KLAN REPORT ON THE JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY 1966 THE RADICAL RIGHT Report on the John Birch Society and Its Allies Benjamin R. Epstein and Arnold Forster THE RADICAL RIGHT Report on the John Birch Society and Its Allies RANDOM HOUSE M i New York 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 © Copyright, 1966, 1967, by The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in New York by Random House, Inc., and simultaneously in Toronto, Canada, by Random House of Canada Ltd. Manufactured in the United States of America by the Colonial Press, Inc., Clinton, Massachusetts Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 67-20361 To the Memory of Adlai E. Stevenson Democracy itself will always defy definition just because every citizen has a built-in right to formulate definitions of his own. But today democracy here at home and around the world is being strained and tested as never before. What are the dangers it must overcome? I think on the basis of our own American ex perience we can begin by disposing of certain imaginary dangers . . . fears, compounded of fact and fiction. . . . From the extreme right we still hear that the income tax is socialism, socialism is communism, and so freedom is already done for. Or we hear that the real threat is not in the truculent power of Moscow or Peking, but in the freedom of unpopular opinion—or in any authority, be it President or Supreme Court, which refuses to punish error as if it were treason. Or we hear that the United Nations is a big Communist plot. Some plot—to organize all those votes against yourself. If you follow that line to the end, you conclude with the dis covery that the worst danger of all is democracy itselfl What a pity it is that the nerves of even one American should be frazzled with these mythical dangers, when there are so many real and deeper dangers for democracy to face in our time! —Excerpt from an address given to the Anti-Defamation League of B*nai B'rith on January 14, 1962, in New York City by Ambassador Stevenson on the occasion of the presentation to him of ADL’s America’s Demo cratic Legacy Award. Foreword This book is a current report on the Radical Right—its activities, spokesmen and schemes. It brings up to date our 1966 Report on the John Birch Society and sketches in the Radical Right milieu within which it is operating. To grasp the meaning of the Radical Right one should understand that its leaders—and their followers—are politi cal and social nihilists. They are “anti” to the point where they would damage society as we know it and government as we have it. With piety they profess allegiance for the Constitution. However, a close examination of their agenda indicates they are against the major institutions and social instru ments which have been created under the Constitution’s benign umbrella. In their mouths the word Constitution be comes an abracadabra to be mumbled but not understood or utilized for the construction of a secure society and a free government. The road the Radical Rightists travel runs backward in time into a world that never was and hopefully never will be. It is a world in which nothing is ever what it seems. Everything is weighed down by the irresponsibility which grows out of a conspiratorial interpretation of history. Yet the Radical Rightists, in their efforts to stem human prog ress in our nation, run the gamut from such irresponsibility to the merely perverse. In such a world it is easy enough to confuse efforts to improve the civil rights of minorities with Red revolution. ix FOREWORD The statement that all of Washington and the churches and the schools and the libraries and the Supreme Court are 80% in the hands of Communists becomes an article of faith. Such faith breeds fear and, consequently, a program that calls for the impeachment of the Chief Justice, an end to the fluoridation of water, the ousting of the United Na tions from the United States and the condemnation of almost anyone who does not quite agree with these con clusions. The Radical Rightists are a mixed bag, indeed, each with his own formula for salvation. There are the propa gandists, the political activists, the moneymakers. Following them are the kooks, from the gun-toters to the midnight phone callers who, like the Scottish ghoulies, go bump in the night, disturbing with their harassments the sleep of decent citizens. The latter are not the concern of this book. For Kent Courtney and his “Conservative Society of America,” salvation lies in the development of a new Right-Wing third party to displace one of the two present national parties. For the Liberty Lobby it lies in the cap ture of one of the present parties. For The John Birch Society it lies in the distortion of political thought and the assumption of power by infiltration. Billy James Hargis, mixing political extremism with re ligion, likes to travel a gold-lined road; Robert DePugh gets satisfaction out of playing with dynamite (the real thing) even if it should land some of his Minutemen in jail. For the nation as we know it, that sensible America which travels the democratic road, there will be jeopardy unless it meets the Radical Right’s challenge to orderly progress toward social justice for all men. It is true that America has survived extremist challenges, of Right and Left, in the past—starting with the Salem witch trials of three centuries ago—but not without national pain, temporary damage and deep and sometimes violent x FOREWORD conflict. Out of control, the damage can be much more than superficial or temporary. To check the destructiveness of Radical Rightism, to reduce the damage, to alleviate the pain, every American needs to understand who the Radical Rightists are, what they stand for and how they are proceeding with their divisive tactics. This book puts their blueprint on record. DORE SCHARY
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