Beginning in 1943, the War Department published a series of pamphlets for U.S. Army personnel in the European theater of World War II. Titled Army Talks, the series was designed “to help [the personnel] become better-informed men and women and therefore better soldiers.”
Within a matter of a few years of the publication of "FASCISM!" the authors were under investigation by the resurgent Republican right as "communist agents". It happened right in front of everyone and he only ones who recognized it were silenced by the threat of being called "communists" and having their lives destroyed. We call it "McCarthyism" and think it died with him, but it didn't, and now it's so strong we live in fear of it taking formal power next year.
And remember - I write this at the risk of being most unpopular here - that Robert F. Kennedy was counsel to the McCarthy Committee, and as Attorney General he went on to approve the FBI’s relentless campaign of surveillance and blackmail of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as detailed in the new biography.
Anyone who wants to remedy their ignorance about Robert Kennedy's trajectory might benefit from reading Patricia Sullivan's JUSTICE RISING: Robert Kennedy's America in Black and White. He was an important mover in the Johnson administration's push for the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act of the mid-1960s.
But of course not everyone cares to change their views. RFK's early work with the Senate Permanent Committee on Investigations, a job he quit under pressure from Roy Cohn allows them to defend Cohn and Trump by using the old ploy of argument by changing the subject.
People can change. RF Kennedy did. To see the film of him speaking the night after the MLK assassination to calm a group in a large city (?Detroit) makes that abundantly clear. It is likely the change got him assassinated.
Indianapolis. It was the night OF the assassination: he was the one who gave the news to the crowd of mostly African Americans. The speech is on YouTube. It was mostly extemporaneous, and it's less than 5 minutes long. https://youtu.be/TtLHsYJ8pmc
What motivated his assassin was RFK's support for Israel. He was shot during the first anniversary of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. And as a top candidate for the Democratic nomination for president, he and his positions were very much in the public eye.
Thank you, Susanna. It was only recently that I saw the speech and was much moved by the words and the tone. Had never been aware of RFK’s stance on Israel and am a bit surprised that it was such an issue at the time. These days another matter.
Which is one reason RFK began to come into his own after JFK was killed. And EMK (better known as Teddy ;-) ) was a damn good senator despite his many personal failings. A lot of the JFK idolatry misses the context he was embedded in -- and the civil rights activism of the early-to-mid '60s, esp. '63 to '65, changed that context in a big way.
The Kennedy Bros along with Nixon were in the thick of “the Red Scare” and used it for their own purposes. Jack was the reluctant president, pushed by his bully father. Bobby was the enforcer for his big brother. Camelot was a myth. They spread the fear of the Domino Theory creating the foundation for the Endless War in Viet Nam as half the country draped themselves in the Flag and railed against educated protestors trying to stop the military industrial complex war macht
We don’t learn the lessons of history because politicians bury it
No, Robert F. Kennedy was not a counsel to the McCarthy Committee. The McCarthy Committee, officially known as the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, was led by Senator Joseph McCarthy and conducted investigations into alleged communist infiltration in the United States during the early 1950s.
Robert F. Kennedy, the younger brother of President John F. Kennedy, had a notable career in politics and law. However, he did not serve as a counsel or have any direct involvement with the McCarthy Committee. Robert F. Kennedy initially gained prominence as a counsel to the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, which focused on labor and management corruption in the late 1950s.
Later, Robert F. Kennedy served as Attorney General of the United States from 1961 to 1964 during his brother's presidency. He played a significant role in various policy initiatives, including civil rights, organized crime, and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
I’d prefer to believe this, not questioning your info here. These contrasting statements are why I spend now so much time in research and Heather’s Letters so enlightening. My age affords me a lot more time to read .
Hi Harvey. I am an admirer of Robert Kennedy, but you are wrong. Robert Kennedy was an assistant counsel to the Senate Committee chaired by Joe McCarthy. McCarthy was a close friend of the Kennedy family. He vacationed with them in Cape Cod. McCarthy dated two Kennedy sisters. As a result of his relationship with McCarthy, Robert was called "Bad Bobby" by his adversaries. Best.
I stand corrected: RFK worked as an assistant counsel to the subcommittee for several months, from January to June 1953. During this period, he was responsible for researching and investigating various matters related to the subcommittee's work, which included examining alleged communist influences in the Army Signal Corps. RFK's role was primarily focused on legal research and writing, rather than active participation in the hearings or McCarthy's controversial tactics.
However, it is worth noting that RFK became disillusioned with McCarthy's methods and tactics over time. He disagreed with McCarthy's aggressive and often reckless approach in pursuing alleged communists, and RFK ultimately left the subcommittee after six months due to his concerns about McCarthy's tactics and the damaging impact they had on individuals' lives.
But what we need to keep in perspective is that communism was this monolithic threat in the minds of everyone almost everyone. It included extremists and moderates as well. JFK and LBJ were products of that mindset. Ann Rand was its fanatic critic. There are demigods in every generation that we must be watchful of. Today, we are allowing social media run rampant and it’s breaking society into pieces and infecting children. I watched a couple of kids at a public event not long ago. Every two or three minutes, they instinctively grabbed their cell devises and God knows what they kept returning to. This behavior is destructive and parents are not even aware of this influence.
The difference to me was those politicians who could grow intellectually. Communism was a very scary thing then, with first Stalin then Khrushchev presenting as psychopaths. The Kennedys came to political power as Stalin was killing millions of his own people, and communism had half of Eurasia and a heavy presence in Africa. An enormous threat.
But both Kennedys (RFK & JFK) demonstrated a real capacity for change. This happened to be at a time when many American verities were being challenged. About the government’s unfettered right to make war, on the rights of women, on the rights of minorities, on the responsibilities of the government to protect the rights of minorities, and the role of the government in caring for its most vulnerable. JFK grew with these changes, but he died early. RFK continued his growth until his death.
Those posting comments that paint the entirety of their characters with a single aspect of their lives miss the point. You could do the same with MLK, FDR, Truman or any figure of the past. As someone once said, the past is a foreign country. You can’t navigate it with today’s thoughts and understanding.
The Kennedys wear halos because they were assassinated, but they were simply humans who handled political power in the same complex ways almost every politician does (except for Trump, who simply abused it). I remember being very angry with Obama and what I saw as his abuse of surveillance on American citizens.
Heck, I was disappointed with Obama when he only sent a few missiles against Assad for launching biological weapons against his own people. That was inadequate but probably had the excess of cowboy W Bush to restrain himself.
Yes, and don't forget the Soviet Union had the hydrogen bomb, we executed the Rosenbergs for a couple of crude drawings and we kids were being taught to "duck and cover" just as today's kids are being taught to hide, barricade and, as a last resort, confront mass shooters. I was a high schooler in Key West, Florida, during the Cuban Missile Crisis and watched troops and missiles pour onto the island for three days. My military father had the option of sending us kids away but decided against it because where were we going to go to be safe in the event of a nuclear war? There's a lot of context to apply to leaders in those very scary days when talking about communism and fascisms just as there is now.
In those days Communism was synonymous with fascism as an idea. It was understood to be tied to an authoritarian government and therefore the opposite of democracy. Still, governments don't have neat pretty actions, they are always a mixed bag, as are politicians.
An ongoing debate in my own head, which is based more about intent -good vs bad. Manipulation by evil forces , hmmm , do we recognize it from critical thought ability and/or from where does THAT begin. Good parenting? and is that opening yet another canned worms? I prefer ,currently, to think ‘woke’ (barely defined) is good. Not of manipulated opinion, but of good intent. Those who started this verbage being of the dark side/more ...having been manipulated through bad intents.
My understanding is that even at conception things can go ‘wrong’ , results -being born a girl or a boy in appearance isn’t one ‘gets what [you] see’. And those people are OK with me, I understand ( came from IMHO good parenting).
But the manipulation part gets tricky. The natural attraction is a tumultuous period for many/most? Can reading be a part of grooming? The word itself has now bad connotation . Is not good parenting part of good intent.
My point is in the muddling.
When good intent is muddled for control/money/perversion it then has become manipulation/bias/racism/etcs.
I’m interested in reading your book(s?) , and now Belefonte’s..he was ‘a first love’ of mine I think I was around 10-12 y.o.
Ellen Though I was a supporter of Bobby Kennedy in the 1968 presidential primaries, I was later aghast that he had pursued, with CIA (and, presumably, JFK’s approval), about two dozen schemes to assassinate Fidel Castro.
Although Castro had good reason to try to kill JFK, I am confident that Lee Harvey Oswald did this alone. I do acknowledge that Oswald had a strange relationship with the Soviets, but, especially after the Cuban Missile Crisis, it seemed extremely unlikely that Khrushchev would authorize such an action.
[On the evening of November 21st, Oswald went to the home of a friend of mine, where Oswald’s estranged wife was living. The next morning he took his gun from the garage and, as Ruth Paine observed, seemed normal as he went off to the book depository building. My friend wrote a small book about the Oswalds and the gun.]
Well, if RFK had a change of heart after MLK was assassinated, it had to happen quickly, because MLK was killed in April of 1968 & RFK himself was assassinated on June 6, 1968.
1968: The worst year of my life both privately and watching tragedy unfold month after month. It didn’t end. I think I’ll write this chapter for my memoirs. That why these comments are important for me. I use them as ideas to further write.
For insight into RFK's thinking read Harry Belafonte's autobiography. He and King worked to move RFK to take a more aggressive stance to protect civil rights even as King knew he was under surveillance by the FBI. Hardly any doubt after the tapes sent to him by Hoover and the letter urging him to commit suicide in advance of going to Stockholm to get the Nobel. And Belafonte himself took steps to use a safe phone. There were instances demonstrating that the movement had indeed gotten through to RFK after JFK's death and Birmingham, where he secretly intervened to help get kids out of jail in a way that certainly endangered his own job. . And the possibility that Hoover threatened to expose JFK's philandering in order to get the wiretapping approved. (Meanwhile at home Hoover was a cross dresser. You can't make this stuff up.) When I decided to read Belafonte 's book I had no idea it would contain so much inside information about major players, of which Belafonte himself was certainly one. He was a source for Taylor Branch too. The book tells a fascinating tale not only of Belafonte' s own story, which is pretty complicated, but of his perspective on and partipation in the civil rights struggle. It's not just another celebrity bio by any means.
It really infuriates me that even today all over the nation the FBI buildings carry the name of that FASCIST, J. Edgar Hoover. He had a dossier on Sammy Davis Jr. because he married a white woman. He was pure racist, hypocritical scum and should be buried with the rest of them.
One thing to remember about any successful politicians in office is that they didn’t get there using Gandhi love. All are calculating and they think in terms of how popular their actions will be. If you put any of these politicians in a room and listened to them privately you just might have a different perspective on them.
That was an amazing speech. The first time I heard it my first thought was to try to think of a single politician of today (this was in 2007) that could or would come close to that.
RFK’s quivering voice, when he spoke, for this then 12 year old, "got” me. Along with seeing the black horse with empty backward boots, really tore me up.
Ellen, you haven't lost any points with me. There's a great deal of trash in our background, and I remember well the FBI's defamation and blackmail of MLK. I'll add that the "beloved" Reagan ruined many Hollywood lives and careers when, as president of the Screen Actors Guild, accused many of being Communists, whether it was true or not. Thus, the beginning of his quest for the White House.
And Ellen, I will be equally unpopular when I suggest that our political side must or should let go of the newest and the far flung notions aka, “woke” issues for two reasons; 1. They are misguided and 2. They give ammunition to the enemy. And what I speak to is this new game fad of boys/men dressing as girls in order to play on female sports. I have no understanding why people can’t see this for what it is; exploitation of women. Even NOW seems to have swallowed this. I went to their site and someone commented in favor of this deception. I countered but don’t know if their moderator will approve my position. It was reasonable devoid of anger. The other most important point is allowing children to obtain gender reaffirming surgery. Children have been influenced by anything online and there is a terrible amount of destructive influences online.
We as a society had better begin policing this or our enemy will do it for us. Children are being manipulated pure and simple. And anyone who criticizes this is called a hater. Boy, have I heard that before. Point of fact, I have accepted gay and lesbian lifestyles all of my life. Friends are gay. It’s never been a big deal for me even when it was a big deal for society in general. I even ran away from home with hippie friends as a kid and enjoyed a week in PTown — the lesbian and gay capital of the East Coast. (I have the infamous claim to have spent overnight accommodations in the Provincetown jail for trying to sell LSD to the chief of police. The charges were quickly reduced to child delinquency, lol.)
What we are witnessing today is a terrible breaking apart of society. We had better stop it, wake up, smell the coffee, and become rational folks again. My hunch is we won’t. It’s more likely that we will continue on this self-destructive path. I never understood Plato admonishment about Tyranny following Democracy as I do today. When push comes to shove, the trend is to go to the right rather than the left. This is what is in store for us if we don’t wake up . And please do read my book, “Donald’s Vanity Tantrums.” It’s only $15 maybe less on Amazon or ask me and I’ll mail you a copy email: bkatz321@gmail.com
Bill, with all due respect, you are as wrong as you could be on trans issues. Boys are not dressing as girls in order to play “female sports,” whatever those are. Children are not typically allowed to receive gender affirming surgery related to transition until at least age 16, and only then following years of both hormonal and psychological care - but breast enhancements are just fine (that is also gender affirming surgery). What trans children are allowed to do is take puberty blockers, to postpone puberty until they are old enough to receive other therapies, and to receive counseling to help with their gender dysphoria. Social transition alone isn’t an easy thing to do, and if you think about it clearly, I think you’ll conclude that few to no high school boys would transition socially just to play sports. That sounds pretty ludicrous, doesn’t it?
Further, you are talking about a tiny proportion of the population. 1.4% of the youth population identifies as trans. Not all of them are trans girls, and not all of them play sports. Estimates are that there are fewer than 100 teen trans athletes nationwide. (Source: https://www.newsweek.com/how-many-transgender-athletes-play-womens-sports-1796006.). This is not the huge problem you make it out to be. And further, being a trans athlete is no guarantee of winning in girls’ sport.
“The idea that women and girls have an advantage because they are trans ignores the actual conditions of their lives.” (Source, ACLU)
Full disclosure: I am the proud mother of a transitioning young adult. Believe me, this process is far from easy for her, and her athletic performance is the farthest thing from her mind. I fear every day for her, and ignorance makes her less safe.
Thanks for your report from the "front lines". I finished typing about 5 minutes after you posted. Gender expression is not a fad, and gender dysphoria is separate and distinct from gender expression.
Ally, thank you. Ignorance is awfully hard to combat. And for sure this is a complicated and strange thing. I can’t pretend to understand what my child is going through - how could I? But what I can do is inform myself, and love her unconditionally. Part of that includes battling ignorance.
KR, thanks for sharing these sources. I'll need to look at these and learn more. Honestly, I admit that I don't understand a lot about trans issues and it's tough for me to grasp, having been born and raised in a binary mode. I can't guarantee that I'll "get it" but I'm trying my best to understand better.
Having said that, right leaning politicians pointing to trans people as a grave threat to our nation, while waving off Putin's open hostility to our country, his interference in our election process, embracing dictators like Orban and attacking individual and civil rights is wrong. Not grasping a person's life shouldn't mean attacking it or their right to exist safely, like everyone else. This is wrong and making trans people a focal point for attacks is wrong.
Exactly, C! I don’t understand either, but I don’t have to understand in order to support my daughter. For sure I’ve taken the time to educate myself better, though, as you suggest. I want her to have the right to live her life as she sees fit. I trust her judgement; she’s a fine, intelligent person - and this is really hard. Literally nobody would choose to go through this in order to compete at synchronized swimming in high school.
I am not sure I need to “get it” in whatever degree of understanding or friend or family experience. I DO need to learn to accept it. That single issue is far more complicated and the difference in someone’s pretrans experience and my preteen/post teen experience, means I will never completely get it but I sure can learn to accept someone who is different in that regard.
Bless you, KR, for your being your daughter’s strong advocate! My great-nephew is trans and is so happy now. He despised his breasts as a teenager and felt “inadequate” as a girl. The entire family rallied behind him, which is amazing considering since his grandparents were Repubs. But, they love him for no matter what. That, is the key for a happy and successful person anyway, right?
KR, thank you for your non-judgmental and factual response. Your family is indeed fortunate to have you, and your approach will assist in your daughter's safe transition.
Thank you for responding to the inaccurate statements made by Mr. Katz. There are some very young children who experience a sense of being the "wrong" gender at a very young age, much to young to have been influenced by media.
Here's an article includes a lot of valuable information including an extensive list of sources on which the article is based:
"Young children do not get medical transition treatment, but they do have feelings about their gender and can benefit from support from those around them. “Children start to have a sense of their own gender identity between the ages of 2 1/2 to 3 years old,” Olezeski said." {snip} “Research substantiates that children who are prepubertal and assert an identity of [transgender and gender diverse] know their gender as clearly and as consistently as their developmentally equivalent peers who identify as cisgender and benefit from the same level of social acceptance,” the AAP guidelines say, adding that differences in how children identify and express their gender are normal." https://www.factcheck.org/2023/05/scicheck-young-children-do-not-receive-medical-gender-transition-treatment/
Oh really? I’m taking time out from my business to write several responses to sell a couple of books at the most and not one most likely while I could be engaging my day business with a 10 times or more rate of return. Maybe you are remiss that you haven’t written a book perhaps? Having said that and since you brought the matter up, it does rely on humor and satire along with illustrations something you don’t often find in detailing the goings on of the worst president in US history. And if you want a copy, I’ll personally autograph it at no extra charge. How does that grab ya? And just for you, I’ll pay the shipping.
You may not have meant it this way, but there seems to be in your writing a near association of society breaking apart and transgender issues. I believe that the story is far more complicated than that. American society is in a state of extreme tension at this moment as a result of a complex interplay of complex issues and extreme changes brought on by the (historically) rapid rise of technology.
In the last forty years there has been massive change in American life. The steady rise upward in economic and thus social status of a multitude of Americans has been rudely closed off. Part of it is extreme concentration of wealth and part is due to the huge changes in economic uncertainty brought about by the infiltration of technology into our lives. To focus on the effects of gender issues in sports is akin to being angry that a picture is hanging crookedly after an earthquake ha shattered much of your house.
Nobody reacts well to massive change. The right is fixating on gender issues, book banning, “immoral” teaching of American History as stalking horses for the major problems America faces - a widespread breakdown in family life, the diminishment in the spread of jobs that pay well, a sharp and extremely troubling rise in suicide, most especially by teenagers, a resurgence in open and blatant racism after Obama’s Presidency and a drug use problem that has spiraled out of control.
There is a dangerous number of citizens now who have chosen the path of extreme individualism over the sticky but worthwhile struggles of belonging to a real community. They are lonely and afraid and and that leads to a heavy burden of anger - the dominant emotion in American public life today Add 400 million guns to that mix and you have an exponential increase in the threat of a social earthquake.
The political apparatus is trying to con Americans into believing that there is some magical path back to the simplicity of the Fifties, when POC knew their place, the economy was always strong, men were men and women were subordinate and so on. They want us to vent our fears and anger on issues of gender and sexuality because they do not have a fucking clue how to address the really big issues, some of which I listed above. They are delighted to see people twist themselves into pretzels over conspiracy theories that have become more and more ludicrous with each decade.
Unless this downward spiral into inanity is aborted, how will AI be thoughtfully addressed? How will climate change be reduced from apocalypse to disaster? How will the structural weaknesses in the American form of government - from elections to the Supreme Court - be muted? How will the dragon of financial inequality be slain?
Fundamentally America is hampered by a crippling imbalance. The ratio of thoughtful adults to mere grownups is getting smaller by the day.
I always wonder when the Republicans harken back to the magical 1950s what they think of the tax policies then that permitted such an explosion of the middle class post-war.
I'm curious, Bill. Who is manipulating what children, and what are they doing to manipulate them? Where are you seeing IMAB (Identified Male at Birth) children transitioning just to play on IFAB (Identified Female at Birth) sports teams? I know a fair number of people whose children have either identified as "gender fluid" with their expressions of gender or as those who are more "textbook" gender dysphoric that have supported them as loving parents. In none of these cases was participation in sports any part of the equation.
Ally, I’m not an expert here. I have always supported women in every aspect and guys slipping through the proverbial gate to play against women don’t set well with me and never will. And I’m frankly miffed why more women don’t get it. Perhaps because it’s a brand new (well not brand new) but new issue to address. Again, may we say what’s good for the goose is good for the gander? You will not likely see a trans man (biological woman) playing against men because they couldn’t compete. And if this simple point can’t be understood, I rest my case. I’m not going to stop being supportive of women on this issue. The guys that are signing on to women’s teams are gaming the system.
Bill Katz, you said that "guys that are signing on to women’s teams are gaming the system." Can you give any examples of guys signing on to women's teams? I have heard this before and would like to know the actual statistics. Thanks in advance.
I'll take your suggestions and I am, right now, actually smelling the coffee. And we are, right now, doing exactly what you said -- we are behaving as rational folks and having this discussion! As for the "woke" stuff, I do wish we had a better sense of where government should and should not be involved. For instance, even though the we get to see the results, live, on sports channels, how a private sports organization handles transgender issues should be entirely up to them. Since it's not a good issue for legislative action, there's no way to "win" a fight to pass or defeat it.
I note with interest your silence in the face of clear evidence that nearly everything you wrote is wrong. But then, you were really just posting that to hustle your book, weren't you?
I don't believe that transgender females should be competing in women's sports. However, I don't think that it is based on a "fad." These people have genuine gender issues, based on biology, that simply don't fit the norm as traditionally understood.
Richard, the Olympics has had rules on the participation of trans athletes since 2003. The Tokyo Olympics in 2021 were the first instance of trans athletes participating - it took almost 20 years. Male to female transition doesn’t magically make trans women dominate Olympic sport, never mind high school athletics.
Our increasingly open society is allowing people to live openly their true experiences for the first time. Personally, I don’t think it hurts anybody, and is no one’s business but their own. Transition is so hard. Nobody would choose that, given another path.
No, Robert F. Kennedy was not a counsel to the McCarthy Committee. The McCarthy Committee, officially known as the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, was led by Senator Joseph McCarthy and conducted investigations into alleged communist infiltration in the United States during the early 1950s.
Robert F. Kennedy, the younger brother of President John F. Kennedy, had a notable career in politics and law. However, he did not serve as a counsel or have any direct involvement with the McCarthy Committee. Robert F. Kennedy initially gained prominence as a counsel to the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, which focused on labor and management corruption in the late 1950s.
Later, Robert F. Kennedy served as Attorney General of the United States from 1961 to 1964 during his brother's presidency. He played a significant role in various policy initiatives, including civil rights, organized crime, and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
He worked for McCarthy in 1953. One source of many, in addition to Wikipedia, is a piece in the “American Experience” series on PBS.org entitled “RFK’s Enemies.”
And people make mistakes especially in the initial stage of careers — maybe? I’m not defending him. I agree that the patriarch of the family made a deal with the devil and it came back in a terrible way. Almost a Shakespearean tragedy.
Joseph Kennedy was the devil incarnate and just an all around piece of garbage. It’s the women who married into the family who suffered the most, beginning with Rose. That SOB husband of hers put their “special” daughter in an mental institution, without his wife’s approval. Their children were aghast! It prompted their daughter, Eunice Shriver, to start Special Olympics which has become an international and a national event.
Jonathan Eig’s newly released biography of King. See the Guardian’s review of May 27, and also an article in The Atlantic (July/August 2002), available online, for just two of many sources.
Thank you Ellen; I will review the cited sorces. That's an old habit of mine from trial work; I check the citations & the "pin cites".
I read 'The Guardian US' 5/27 article which contains some details of MLK's arrival at Dexter Baptist Church circa 1955 & his joining of boycott to support Rosa Parks at the start of 1956. Robert Kennedy became the Nation's AG over 5 years later afterJFK's inauguration .That leaves at least 5 yeats of the FBI's anti-MLK, unspecified sabotage of MLK ... PRIOR to Robert Kennedy's alleged "authorization".
First rule of behavioral science & form instruction to jurors "association is not causation".
A pinpoint citation, often called a pincite, is necessary to point the reader to specific the page(s) within the case. Pincites are placed after the page on which the case begins, separated by a comma and a space. A pincite may consist of a page range or multiple pages that are not consecutive.
Tearing off the veil of myths to expose the truths and realities is important to remind folks that revisionist history is not a new thing. If that makes you unpopular then people are not thinking. They are swallowing propaganda whole. Thanks for bringing this up.
In December 1952, at his father's behest, Kennedy was appointed by family friend Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy as assistant counsel of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Kennedy disapproved of McCarthy's aggressive methods of garnering intelligence on suspected communists. This was a highly visible job for him. He resigned in July 1953, but "retained a fondness for McCarthy". The period of July 1953 to January 1954 saw him at "a professional and personal nadir", feeling that he was adrift while trying to prove himself to his family. ... After a period as an assistant to his father on the Hoover Commission, Kennedy rejoined the Senate committee staff as chief counsel for the Democratic minority in February 1954. That month, McCarthy's chief counsel Roy Cohn subpoenaed Annie Lee Moss, accusing her of membership in the Communist Party. Kennedy revealed that Cohn had called the wrong Annie Lee Moss and he requested the file on Moss from the FBI. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had been forewarned by Cohn and denied him access, calling RFK "an arrogant whippersnapper". When Democrats gained a Senate majority in January 1955, Kennedy became chief counsel and was a background figure in the televised Army–McCarthy hearings of 1954 into McCarthy's conduct. The Moss incident turned Cohn into an enemy, which led to Kennedy assisting Democratic senators in ridiculing Cohn during the hearings. The animosity grew to the point where Cohn had to be restrained after asking RFK if he wanted to fight him ....
Donald accused the Democrats holding a witch hunt, he being the witch - is he projecting again ?
The most commonly accepted etymology derives warlock from the Old English wǣrloga, which meant "breaker of oaths" or "deceiver"[2] and was given special application to the devil around 1000.[3] In early modern Scots, the word came to be used as the male equivalent of witch (which can be male or female, but has historically been used predominantly for females).[4][5][6] The term may have become associated in Scotland with MALE WITCHES due to the idea that they had made pacts with Auld Hornie (my note: remember pussy grabbing and that horney old devil - Epstein ?) and thus had betrayed the Christian faith and broke their baptismal vows or oaths.[7] From this use, the word passed into Romantic literature and ultimately 20th-century popular culture. A derivation from the Old Norse varð-lokkur, "caller of spirits", has also been suggested,[8][9][10] but the Oxford English Dictionary considers this implausible due to the extreme rarity of the Norse word and because forms without hard -k, which are consistent with the Old English etymology ("traitor"), are attested earlier than forms with a -k.[11] - witch hunt" - wikipedia
The British called the American revolutionaries Yankees. Subsequently the Americans owned the epithet and sang Yankee Doodle as they attacked the British.
So lets own the epithet Witch Hunt
because Donald has graduated from Flim Flam Man to Warlock by definition. We can beat the evangelicos to the punch. I'm tired of trying to be like the Quakers and be gentle and peaceful . I don't think that is appropriate behavior anymore with cowardly Republican bullies. It's time to fight fire with fire.
I was thinking of referring to individual and collective Republicans as warlocks when they use name callimg and, character assassination to misinform and manipulate their followers. I don't believe in witches. I suspect that now-a-days women who are considered "sensitive" may have a well developed sense of what event or behavior to expect. I
But if Donald's behavior or words fit the definition of warlock, let's use it and just see how they wiggle out of that one. But in this case, we'd be justified.
Those things you mention that they do: name calling, character assassination and deliberately misinforming and manipulating their followers. That’s a Warlock or a bad Witch. There are good witches too. Those who with no one knowing, seek to improve your life by their actions.
Thank you, Heather for sharing the 1943 War Dept pamphlet !!! It describes exactly what is going on before our very eyes!!! We MUST work hard to get out the vote in spite of the GOP gerrymandering and voter restrictions. Our Democracy and freedoms depend on our votes. I will crawl to the polls if I have to do so!!!! We are truly on the edge of the
destruction of “by the people and for the people”. It is terrifying and, Heather, thank you for giving us such a definitive description of the horrific this fascism virus that is oozing it’s way into our lives germ after germ and drip by drip!!!!! 😳
I thought about Memorial Day. I thought about the people who gave up their lives for our freedom. Then I thought what about our people in Congress fighting for our freedom, right now, their only weapons being our laws, clear thinking, and trying to hold their calm. That is a real war too. I thought of them on Memorial Day. My heart goes out to them. It must be nearly intolerable.
is hideous playbook with all of the items you have mentioned. If Netflix still has it, watch Call Roger Stone which dates Stone’s influence to Trump back in the 1980’s. It is chilling to watch.😳
Trump also learned that exact hideous playbook from Roger Stone back in the 1980’s. If Netflicks still has it, watch Call Roger Stone to see the horrible thread to Trump from Stone!!!!😳
Tom In the 1950s I experienced and fought against “McCarthyism.” Recently I have witnessed another shade of “McCarthyism” in the Republican House. They both attack the soul of America.
Keith, agree but my mantra ad nauseam, is that we on the rational side, must stop pushing weird woke positions that feed the enemy. But I’m afraid we won’t. Societies have a predestination to crumble sooner or later.
Bill, I don't think you understand either the origin of "woke" or what it means. It sounds as if you've bought into right wing attempts to demonize the term (a tactic they turn to often in their attempts to delegitimize honest concepts and short-circuit discussion), very akin to earlier attempts to make socialism the boogeyman. I'm happy to see and hear thoughtful people claiming the term "woke", using it in its appropriate context, pushing back on right wing efforts to make it the 21st century equivalent of Joe McCarthy's "red" and "pinko".
Ok, so I will end the use of “woke.” Especially if it diminishes my argument. So you are correct on that point. I spent 3 years plus writing and castigating Trump for what he stands for so I can’t or shouldn’t be suspected of being someone which I am not. But clearly, I don’t fit easily into any ideology. I’m clearly a centrist (I think for myself not what I’m read I should be) and my belief is that we are losing the center line or have already lost it and this doesn’t bid well.
Bill, some months back I was speaking to a friend who was out of the country asking me what was happening here. I tried to explain and likened what was going on to a spinning top….it keeps going (spinning) as long as it is mostly centered…..but too much leaning to the left OR right and it tumbles. Too bad we seem to be forgetting that lesson!
Quite frankly, Annie, the term was introduced by black people. When the word is used by Repubs, it is to demonize the black culture. The Repubs are truly the abhorrent and revolting party.
Thank heavens someone finally said it. Sammy Davis used to call Sinatra “my woke friend”. He was, for the day. Not so much these more enlightened days.
woke" feel uncomfortaev with the new use of "woke", as aekwardhrammer, so I just dontbusecut. It's just easier for me to day"aware, or sympathetic, or considetate. IWoke is the past tense of wake , as in"I woke up". I hope this new misuse of the word is just a fad and will eventually be replaced.
Susan, the term "woke" in this context has been in use for decades (probably at least back to the 19th century) in many black communities. It's a rational use of a term that originally referred (as I understand it) to self-awareness as a fully realized human being, and took on an expanded meaning over time to include awareness of others and what their experiences in a world of inequity entails. It's more than sympathy and more than considerate and it has a strong component of selfhood. There are nuances there that I am ill-equipped to explain. If you feel uncomfortable with it, by all means, use the term that you feel comfortable with. But no, it is not a fad. It will be used as long as a there is a need for a term that has that meaning.
I was only using it because it’s a word that is used. No, I haven’t condescendingly bought into the negative use of it. As I’ve explained, I’m a centrist. We centrists don’t have many allies on either side as you can see from a few negative reactions to my concerns. I was just reading in a NYT comment how some folks are just tired of being lectured n how we all are supposed to believe. Don’t want or need to regurgitate but there are many rally tired of being told that we are wrong if we don’t measure up. And we will lose if we don’t slap ourselves out of these issues that by their nature, are designed to sow resistance. But fundamentally, I do have a pessimistic outlook and I think we all are all so infused with a sense of righteousness (it’s my rightism) that we are destined on a downward spiral.
Mr. Katz, I think you've raised some sub-issues within the very important question, "What is a proper role of government?" Would you care to take a stab at defining why transgender issues are not a proper target of government, but sex discrimination is? I'm not trying to be merely argumentative. I think we would both agree (and please humor me if we don't) that there's something smelly about wading into transgender sports participation and pediatric gender reassignment, but something quite righteous about outlawing sex discrimination in employment. How would you characterize the difference?
For me, this is one of the critical current differences between the present-day Dems and Repubs, that the former has a genuine working theory of government, while the latter has no idea what government is or how to run one. But I think a lot of Dems are also very fuzzy about where government should intervene in a situation versus when to leave it alone, not matter how painful it is for those involved.
You may call me Bill no formalities here. Dick, I don’t have all the answers. I’m not a historian. Indeed, I’m more self-educated than degreed. I do frequently question the role of government. But I’ll try and respond. Maybe I should back up and recite a line from the Declaration of Independence, “… Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness.” But that’s a cop out. Everyone has a right to be happy and free. But what if my happiness doesn’t fin the definition of your happiness. So we revisit the role of government. For awhile we thought that a women had a natural right to their bodies. Or that the EPA could actually protect citizens by enacting standards to protect us from hazardous developments. But that has all changed for awhile.
What you hear on the right is less government, less regulations but this translates into those who can afford to develop whatever they want, get to do so. Let’s take the 5th amendment and the use or misuse of eminent domain. My original family lost our land and we were issued a sheriff rite to vacate our home in the dead of winter in 1970 or our belongings were to be placed on the curb and we had 2 weeks to accomplish this. My father didn’t want to move after losing in court then on appeal. So the government took the whole neighborhood to be sold to a company that decided to more out of our city anyway.
What’s the role of government you ask? One role is to protect its citizens. That creates happiness, I guess. Today, we have so much information (both good and bad) entering the marketplace of ideas. No more should a gynecologist be threatened for saving a woman’s life by performing an abortion than permitting a child who yet needs a developed mind to decide if he is a she or visa versa. Children do not have this capacity. And I dare anyone to show me evidence that they do. Their minds are yet to be developed. So the question becomes should we ban these gender-changing operations? There was a time when hermaphroditism was the sole reason for surgery. Now it’s checking out Tik tok to see how cool it can be to make a change. My God. To your question; yes, I believe we can not leave these surgeries to the medical profession (think profits) any more than we can leave developing wetlands into housing developments to developers because the waters are not contiguous and besides, our super duper Facismo Supreme Court says it restricts profits of private enterprise.
Bill Warm thanks for your personal values commentary. I read it as common sense about the values of a diverse country. I abhor the word ‘woke.’ It is part of Trumpublican bloviating, which demands that we ignore how our country has evolved over more than two centuries.
“Woke’ is a shibboleth for white supremacists (especially male). The fact is that ‘whites’ will be a minority in America by about 2040. The Stench Court, with its false ‘originalist’ focus, is now reflecting this absurd ‘anti wokeism.’
I have lived my life with ideals and integrity. Some of my early views have changed in concert with the enhancements within my country over nearly 90 years. As a youth, I applauded Marian Anderson performing at the Lincoln Memorial, thanks to Eleanor Roosevelt. Recently I was thrilled that our country could elect and re-elect Barack Obama.
In 1948 Harry Truman shocked the military by ordering desegregation. Two generations later General Colin Powell was chairman of the Joint Chiefs and now General Austin is Secretary of Defense.
Bill—you and I may differ on the breadth and scope of changes that have and are occurring in our country.
I respect your views and, many years ago, put my life on the line so that you, me, and countless others have the opportunity to exercise our rights as American citizens.
If you lived nearby, I’d delight in sharing views with you. After listening to you, I might even ‘refine’ some personal views that I have accrued over 89 years.
Well said, Keith. At 80 and I chorus your mention..to make a point. We continue to learn, refine, even change ...as it should be. Educating or being educated happens quite often brings such by the sudden outcrop of things like ‘woke’ . I once was reading to a group of 10 y.o. In the Phillipines, at the end a student came up and said I ‘looked like a witch’, the poor teacher started to reprimand, I waved it off...it was a marvelous opportunity to teach/make the student actually do some critical thinking. ‘Well, Thank you’ I said. ‘How many witches do you know of...?’ He looked at me , I could see the thinking going on ...I said, ‘do you know the story of The Wizard of Oz, how many witches were in that’ he answered correctly , and I continued..’ well I’m from the East , the Good Witch. So there’s lots of Witch stories and likely witch people about , you just got be careful which witch you notice or talk with’. The teacher laughed. ..perfect moment..... I’ve been called Witch several more times in my life btw...still said, ‘Thank you’. 😉
You mentioned Marian Anderson singing on the Mall. Well would you believe that after writing a song about freeing Leonard Peltier, about this Native Indian falsely convicted in the shooting deaths of two FBI agents, a group from Rapid City asked me to come to Washington to perform my song at a rally in November. Of course I said yes but I was kind of demoted to performing it across from the White House at their press conference. It was an honor still.
You should really stop pontificating about transgenderism, since you clearly know nothing about and and have, so far, demonstrated no interest in learning anything.
The reality is that transgenderism appears to have been a part (albeit a very small one) of human makeup for pretty much as long as there have been humans (e.g. https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/outcasts/downloads/betancourt_transgender_lives.pdf). Because the percentages of people who were actually transgendered has always been minuscule (around 1% or less). As the size of the human population has increased, however, the absolute numbers of transgendered people have increased (that's simple arithmetic). Add in the fact that it has only been in the last 50-60 years or so that medical science has started to get a grip of what it actually is and what the indications are (at least here in the west) and the omnipresence of the Internet, at it's easy for those with a political agenda to grotesquely exaggerate the phenomenon or, more absurdly, present it as some kind of "fad" or "threat."
I have some personal knowledge of this having worked for the Psychiatry Department of the Washington U. Medical School for a while after obtaining my graduate psych degree. I was a research technician and a project was just gettin started looking at data on transgenderism and trying to separate it from superficially similar conditions such as cross-dressing, etc. That's how primitive the knowledge base was back then.
Here are some sources that might clarify things for you, should you be open to facts. You will note that I have avoided sources with a political agenda.
There is quite a lot of factual information out there. You might want to seek some of it out before repeating falsehoods and fantasies. E.g. (e.g. "There was a time when hermaphroditism was the sole reason for surgery. Now it’s checking out Tik tok to see how cool it can be to make a change." This is unmitigated bleat.
At this this juncture, no one will be reading this but for the record, although I am not as you said well read on topic but actually you stated much worse and are inaccurate with that statement, one point that I have repeated these new transgender on teams and using bathrooms. Where the heck did this come from. Males who for whatever reasons, identify as female, have operations no objections here. For children, absolutely not. 100% not. It’s you that seems to be so entrenched in your one-sided studies.
Keith, the mention of McCarthyism brings memories of what my father experienced in Washington during the late 1940s. He was an army officer stationed at the Pentagon during the late 1940s. He experienced the intense pressure and insanity in Washington during the beginning Cold War, the Iron Curtain, and McCarthy.
As an aside, I think you might be interested in the new comment I just posted about WWII propaganda as relates to HCR's mention of the pamphlet FASCISM.
TCLA, often I want to "share" HCR's letters, like this one, with my mother in Florida, who wrote to me this past week that DeSantis (and I quote) "just wants to keep us safe."
And then I stop and remember the songs my family would sing, songs like "A corner up in heaven" for the little pickaninnies. I swear - they think they're "good Christians."
My Florida great-grandparents were loyal Klan members, good Southern Baptists who relegated Blacks to little more than animals. Don't tell me not to judge.
As I read Heather’s incredible documentation of the pamphlet “FASISM,” I realized I was reading of yet another marvelous product of the pro Government era of FDR’s “New Deal.”
I also became aware of pretty similar tactics by the Republican Party’s extremist ultra conservatives since their idol, Barry Goldwater’s defeat. He may not have subscribed to the tenets of the John Bircher’s but they were highly involved with his development and campaign.
Is it not remarkable that the current extreme Right Wing Republicans use accusations redolent of the McCarthy era: Commies, Socialists ,etc, to dismiss the truly Democratic efforts by President Joe Biden.
The January 6, coup attempt was plainly a Nazi type tactic to use legitimate government offices to seize absolute power.
Read Rick Perlstein's excellent historic trilogy on the rise of the American Right to power: "Before the Storm" (Goldwater), "Nixonland" (you know who), and "the Invisible Bridge" (Reagan).
The most important words in HCR's message are “Fascism thrives on indifference and ignorance,” That is why today's Republican Party manages to represent what the WW2 pamphlet pointed out as dangers to democracy: (1) sowing domestic discord, (2) phony ultra-nationalism, and (3) polarized thinking with totalitarianism at both extremes Fight indifference and ignorance and you are fighting fascism.
Perhaps the most egregious example of "indifference" is the ongoing indifference of people around here to American complicity in the most far-reaching genocide in history, with George H.W. Bush at the apex of his career during the worst of "our own peculiar Holocaust" (quoting senior I.M.F. official Davison Budhoo).
The father of George H.W. Bush was a banker for the Nazi military industry, before and DURING World War II, until his Union Banking Corporation got shut down by the federal government.
Prescott Bush was caught but never exposed; how deep does Nazi-loving fascist rot go in the American Deep State?
Prescott Bush worked for Averell Harriman, the "king of Wall Street." The Harriman family was a big contributor to the Nazi-loving Eugenics movement, devoted to racial purification and forced sterilization.
The Bush and Harriman families weren't the only ones with wartime Nazi business connections. Can you think of a family name that ends with "ockafeller"?
And it wasn't just Harvard: Nazi lawyers carefully studied southern "Jim Crow" racial segregation laws, so they could more effectively stick it to the Jews:
Harvard professors falsely teach that the Slavepower philosopher John Locke (a beneficiary of the African slave trade) was the preeminent influence on the U.S. Declaration of Independence:
Did Harvard and Yale stop being toxic cesspools of elitist racism? Are Harvard and Yale alumni potentially unfit for high positions of government responsibility? (If so, then Florida's Governor DeSantis, rumored to be a closet neo-con, could be doubly unqualified.)
And of course, Harvard and Yale both reflect and shape the views of the elite powerful families.
"Among the so-called upper and leisure classes, noticeably among the university group, the birth rate is strikingly low. Among the Slavonic and Latin immigrants, on the other hand, it is relatively high. We seem thus to be letting the best blood thin out and disappear."
-- Claude Feuss, headmaster at George H.W. Bush's elitist prep school, 1939
"The less prolific races will have to defend themselves against the more prolific by means which are disgusting even if they are necessary."
--Lord Bertrand Russell of the British Empire, 1924
"I think there is some feeling among some of the more militant civil rights people that any effort in family planning is going to be to try to breed them out of existence."
-George H.W. Bush, 1967
George H.W. Bush graduated from Yale University, where his father was an active alumnus. Yale was the nerve center for the Nazi-loving Eugenics movement, which had fallen into disrepute because of Hitler.
In 1966, George H.W. Bush, a Connecticut carpetbagger in Texas, was elevated to the U.S. Congress. This was made possible by a redistricting lawsuit that resulted in a custom-made congressional district just for George.
Who has that kind of power?? It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Wall Street "Eugenics" grouping, which continued to do business with Nazi Germany during World War II, continued to have far-reaching clout into the 1960s and beyond:
Once in Congress, George H.W. Bush spearheaded an effort to revive the discredited Eugenics movement. But first Bush's father called the chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee so George could become a member.
"During his four years in Congress, Bush not only introduced key pieces of legislation to enforce population control both at home and abroad. He also continuously introduced into the congressional debate reams of propaganda about the threat of population growth and the inferiority of blacks..."
Bush was beginning his career as a race warrior, in the spirit of Bertrand Russell: "The less prolific races will have to defend themselves against the more prolific by means which are disgusting even if they are necessary."
In 1971, George Bush became Ambassador to the United Nations, becoming a so-called "Kissinger clone." Henry Kissinger, former Harvard professor and "the high priest of imperialism and neocolonialism," was Nixon's National Security Advisor.
Kissinger was succeeded as National Security Advisor by another Harvard professor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who hawkishly advocated U.S. expansion into eastern Europe at the expense of Russia. To what extent is American foreign policy thinking still influenced by the neo-imperialism of former National Security Advisors Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski?
The Trilateral Commission was founded in 1973 by David Rockefeller and Brzezinski, who made Jimmy Carter a member and promoted Carter to become President. Kissinger allegedly said, "The Trilateral Commission is President of the United States."
Paul Volker, as Chairman of the Fed, raised interest rates to over 20%. This had the effect of bankrupting developing countries who had taken out variable-rate dollar-denominated loans because of the oil price shocks of the 1970s. This set the stage for the most far-reaching genocide in history (starting in 1982), dwarfing what the Nazis did, with George H.W. Bush at the pinnacle of power as acting President and then President in his own right.
A bit earlier, in 1975, George H.W. Bush, now the CIA Director, was called on to help implement Henry Kissinger's National Security Study Memorandum 200, which called for population control programs in thirteen targeted countries. If the population in these 13 (darker-skinned) countries kept growing, they would want to control their own resources.
The 13 countries targeted for population control programs were Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Turkey, Nigeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia.
And thus the stage was set for the most far-reaching genocide in history, "our own peculiar Holocaust," carried out by the International Monetary Fund (based in Washington D.C. with the U.S. government having dictatorial voting power over its affairs), starting with the international Debt Crisis of 1982.
The 'indifference' that we must avoid includes not being aware that German racism culminating in the Holocaust was inspired by the Eugenist movement in the United States.
Living on Long Island for years a few miles from the Cold Spring Harbor laboratories, I always assumed they were an academic and scientific operation. Only later did I learn that prior to 1939, it was the nexus of the eugenics movement in the United States, devoted to the pseudo-scientific documentation of white supremacy.
Yes. The discord entertained by not only the media but its consumers/creators(in the form of Internet-disseminated communications) serves to distract and exhaust and frustrate the energies of those who should be fighting today's threat. Focus on today's actors and actions, on what you want to preserve or to achieve in a democratic republic. "United we stand. Divided we fall."
Interesting observation. The Nazi support system be it companies like Bayer, Daimler or people like vonBraun were ‘cleansed’ of their role in creating Hitler’s mass destruction machine. Fast forward to recent times we see the names of the generals removed from military bases across the land. Why were they there in the first place? As many of HCR’s epistles have enlightened us, the North won victory on the battlefield, however racist policies have been imbedded in our country’s DNA!
The reason for the Confederate Generals names being on forts in the South is that these were all built in preparation of World War II, and the Congress was controlled through seniority by the "Solid South" - the names were given them to get them funded.
Teneo , founded to replicate Federalist Society court capture for all aspects of American society - a Hawley, Stefanik, Republican Attorneys General Association, Republican State Leadership Committee and Turning Point USA et al production, funded by Charles Koch et al through Leonard Leo.
It led me to Consumers Research, the non-profit that Leonard Leo has pumped with money to fight "woke capitalism," including companies who inflict climate-friendly investments on our country.
Really, the most pertinent news from that front. The ProPublica investigators have done a formidable job.
Republicans are fear mongering lies about armed IRS agents breaking down the doors of ordinary citizens - they don't want IRS to hire expert auditors to go through tax returns which run to thousands of pages. Does anyone know the extent of Leonard Leo's dark money network? Or how much goes into his own pocket?
The real heroes are people at TrueNorth, ProPublica, AccountableUS, The Progressive, and even reporters for the NYTimes like Kenneth Vogel - who do the investigate heavy lifting.
The 'google Leonard Leo = Corrupt Courts' chalk outreach project is up and running for the Bar Harbor tourist season. Other activists have organized protests on Mt Desert Island throughout the year.
We can't live next door to Leo and say nothing. It is not even about Leo (in person a creepy little man) but about spotlighting his network and its far reaching destructive impact on democracy.
Ohhh…I love that the tourist season will be offset with these protests and chalk events! But, lin, you still are my heroine even if other people are involved. 💞
Fascinating update on Leonard Leo’s and his cronies’ new efforts to undermine democracy, Lin. Leo, along with Charles Koch, et al., fly under the radar too often. For the precursors to this, people can read Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains, Jane Mayer’s Dark Money, and Anne Nelson’s Shadow Network. Problem is too many voters remain unaware of how they’re being manipulated by these people and huge amounts of increasingly unlimited amounts of dark money.
Absolutely. It is why we all need to write Letters to the Editor to our local and national papers, to put the spotlight on Koch/Leo/GOP et al's far reaching grab. Hawley and Stefanik might well run for president some day. Yikes. A Stepford ticket much sleeker than Cruz et al.
How long did it take you to know that today's Letter -- highlighting the War Department's pamphlet for U.S. Army personnel in the European theater of World War II, on the subject of “FASCISM!” -- is the one to broadcast to Americans today, tomorrow and always.
'...hatred at the root of fascism “fulfills a triple mission.” By dividing people, it weakens democracy. “By getting men to hate rather than to think,” it prevents them “from seeking the real cause and a democratic solution to the problem.” By falsely promising prosperity, it lures people to embrace its security.' (the false promise of fascism). (Letter)
“Fascism thrives on indifference and ignorance,” the a series of pamphlets for U.S. Army personnel warned, Freedom requires “being alert and on guard against the infringement not only of our own freedom but the freedom of every American. If we permit discrimination, prejudice, or hate to rob anyone of his democratic rights, our own freedom and all democracy is threatened.” (Letter)
'Fascism, the U.S. government document explained, “is government by the few and for the few. The objective is seizure and control of the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the state.” “The people run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people.”
'Fascists understood that “the fundamental principle of democracy—faith in the common sense of the common people—was the direct opposite of the fascist principle of rule by the elite few,” it explained, “[s]o they fought democracy…. They played political, religious, social, and economic groups against each other and seized power while these groups struggled.”
'The War Department thought it was important for Americans to understand the tactics fascists would use to take power in the United States.' (Letter)
__'First, they would pit religious, racial, and economic groups against one another to break down national unity.'
___'Second, they would deny any need for international cooperation, because that would fly in the face of their insistence that their supporters were better than everyone else.'
"If we permit discrimination, prejudice, or hate to rob anyone of his democratic rights, our own freedom and all democracy is threatened.” (Letter)
What could be clearer than this pamphlet to alert us to what has been happening to America -- and role of WE the PEOPLE -- as citizens have to protect our country's experiment with Democracy?
Thank you HCR for this mighty warning from the US government's War Department. We are at war with Fascism in America today.
You have been broadcasting this truth of Fascism in America, today, yesterday -- always, here and on your Substack: 'Thats Another Fine Mess'! Thank you, TC.
Sad personal reflection: I was 11 days old when this pamphlet came out. 78 yrs later am living in the fascist State of Florida. Fascism bookends my life!!!!
Yes, Carol. I think many of us have known that hate, inequality and aspects of authoritarianism have existed within the USA from the beginning, with periods of heat and or light fluctuating. I followed HCR's lead. Highlighting the War Department's pamphlets about 'FASCISM!' now was her point. Various forms of communication about the presence and threats of Fascism must be presented to the American people TODAY, TOMORROW and CONTINUOUSLY!
“No party, no nation, no people can defend and perpetuate a constitutional republic if they accept leaders who have gone to war with the rule of law, with the democratic process, with the peaceful transfer of power, with the Constitution itself.” - Liz Cheney, giving the commencement address this weekend at her alma mater, Colorado College.
Alec Ferguson, the same kind of people (rich who consider themselves entitled to the nation's resources) have been at work to gather up all the country's resources since its founding. That's why the Senate has 2 members per state and don't get me started on the filibuster. These people go by the label Republicans (or even "No Labels"), but they were called by other names in the past. They want to steal everybody else blind. Consider this: what nation withholds from its poor to subsidize its economy? Question was asked by Sojourners magazine on Sojo.net.
People LIKE those that authored the pamphlet were attacked by the Wealthy White Male Christian Nationalist Republican Rightwing. The entire State Department was under attack just as it was under Trump. The anti-democratic rightwing was responsible for getting “under god” appended to the pledge of allegiance so as to distinguish “patriotic” Americans from godless communists.
Not quite the same as under Trump. There was plenty of antisemitism in FDR's State Department. Look up Breckinridge Long, for instance. He played a major role in blocking efforts to rescue European Jews from Hitler.
P.S. "Under God" was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954. McCarthyism was still in full cry, and Eisenhower was president.
Eisenhower did not publicly oppose McCarthy. His opposition was carried out through "back channels". I don't say that to defend him, that's just historical fact.
Having met many of them when I first came to Hollywood, I know the stories. That is a good exhibit.
The movie "Trumbo" - a biopic of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, on of the Hollywood Ten who later broke the blacklist when Kirk Douglas hired him to write "Spartacus" under his own name in 1960 - is a very good dramatization of that whole time.
Exactly. that was carried out many times in many ways, Nixon being only the most prominent.
For instance, in Texas in 1946, a dumbassed "patriot" ran for congress in East Texas and promised to get "the commies" out of educational institutions in Texas; he held up as an example of who he was going after with the police report of a man who was at the time the newly-appointed head of what would become the University of Houston's School of Electrical Engineering, who in 1938 had landed an airplane outside Harlingen TX in a storm, that was found to be carrying a load of military rifles to Mexico, for transport on to the Spanish Republicans (denounced as communists). With the sudden light of bad politics on the school, the contract for that man was canceled. He took his wife and 2 year old son back to Colorado, where he went back to work for the Federal agency he had worked for before the war, in a low-level position where he was unlikely to be noticed by any of the super-patriots.
And just about everyone wants to be rich and thinks that this is a shared goal.
However, Fascists are very particular about who is acceptable: maybe you can't be a rich Jew or a rich Ukrainian or a rich Pole or a rich lesbian or a rich Muslim or…. Fascists focus on the individual.
People need to be aware of what is going on with Fascism. History should prepare, even warn them -- if they were taught history and remember it. It's essential that voices are clear and in unison about what's happening now -- hate is personal. Violence is personal. Fascism is personal. Minorities might be useful fodder as soldiers on the front line, but they don't make the cut when the fighting is over. Pseudo allies that can't be counted on for a united stance just eat away at energy spent on trying to keep them on board. Fascism is an existential threat. Focus on the goal -- a country where you are free to be part of the government where laws are made by you and for you.
Relativism about past actions and actors that is played up by both the Republicans and the media is a distraction from today's current issues. Nothing is gained by expending energy trying to dissect the past -- and much is lost when that energy could be invested in our current dilemma of the destruction of our democratic republic by Fascism. We need to concentrate our resources on highlighting what we have to lose, what we want to keep, what we want to continue improving.
Yes, this reads like the R playbook that the party of death is still practicing today. To take things a little further back in history, I just finished the book A Fever in the Heartland which I have mentioned here before. The KKK mantra the in the 1920s was the same and useful to the Nazis. It focuses on Indiana, but mentions other states. The monstrous man behind the KKK in Indiana was brought down by a young woman who lived down the street from him in Indy and ended up being dying as the result of ending up with him on a trip to Chicago which only got as far as Hammond. He was found guilty of second degree murder and that began the end of the Klan's hold in Indiana and elsewhere. However, it's clear to me that these ideas remained and only needed another monster like death star to allow them to fester on the body politic once more and we have the politics we see today. And I agree that McCarthyism was just another form of this as well.
I agree Mary, I think this pamphlet is worthy of being republished. I’d like to carry one with me, like those pocket constitutions, to refer to & to help guide conversations with friends and family who are ensnared in the cultish web of Trumpism.
Furthermore, make no mistake about it, show the direct connection to the current Republican party and name the culprits pushing this fascist agenda, such as Trump, DeSantis, and members of the freedom caucus.
But Americans won’t read it now and probably didn’t read it then. Upwards of 74 million voters have bought into facism lock, stock, and barrel, and those 74 million probably own at least 150 million stocks with barrels, unlocked.
New College of Florida (and the K-12 Sarasota Public Schools) are really a ground zero laboratory for seeing how fascism can play out within our country today - including how people rally to fight it! When I was a student at New College ('89-'94), I got bit by several bugs - the critical inquiry bug, the Aikido bug, and briefly the theater bug. Then, much more recently, on January 31, 2023, I got bit by the "it's time to fight the fascists" bug. Apparently it's going around - many alumns, students, faculty, parents of students/alums, and community members also caught it at the same time. I am so appreciative of this particular letter because it promises to help others get bit by the "it's time to fight the fascists" bug.
Not sure it's the right time for you? Consider watching this incredible, ~10 minute, address by Ukranian Vladimir Zelinskyy to the graduating class at Hopkins where I am a professor in the School of Education. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCjhy0tmyzI
I was very moved by the speech and the deep reminder of how important it is that we use our time well today to protect tomorrow.
If you are in the market for a shorter clip - this one was provided to the New College graduates during the alternative graduation that they raised funds for and hosted so that they could have a celebration On their Own Terms. The alternative graduation was a fabulous mix of serious and fun. This particular clip captures part of the very serious issues at play - and it is a great pairing with Heather's post on fascism:
Still want more information? This preliminary report by a special committee of the AAUP is worth a close read for those who want to understand more deeply what specifically has happened at New College and how it is connected with legislative actions that are taking away freedoms and fundamentally rewriting the relationship between public goods and private pockets.
It's not enough to "like" this post, just as it is not enough to vote... and go back to sleep.
Here is another message that needs spreading. Like HCR's timely reminder of why Americans fought and died on the beaches of Normandy... and what they saw with their eyes when they opened concentration camps like Bergen Belsen or Dachau.
Messages for all who still have eyes to see, ears to hear, hearts and minds to understand. And the courage to act on that understanding.
Thank you for those terrific sources. I was cheering at the alternative graduation. My husband lives in a Conservative bubble that denies the dangers being created in FL. He has bought into DeSantis message of getting rid of liberalism. He’s boycotting Target. I’d love to share New School’s and the AAUP report with him but he’d deny it’s legitimacy. He’s an educated and intelligent man. I’m going to check out your sources. Thank you!!
I hope that even today, this pamphlet is a required lesson for all the US Armed Forces, at least in digital format. What’s more, it should be taught in schools. It is one of the best and most succinct definitions of fascism I have read!
I think you haven’t been watching what is happening in schools. It’s almost a complete take over by christian nationalists. Controlling books, curriculum, teachers. The public won’t vote. The chritso fascists are taking over now. On board are potential voucher systems that will gut the finances of public schools. Charter schools receive a huge chunk of public education dollars but instead form special interest groups. In Texas chaplains can replace counselors without a background check or certification. Seven mountain prophecy is already in play and teachers are struggling! Have this information studied in public schools? That is not going to be allowed. But still people won’t vote.
During the Soviet Union era, in places such as East Germany and Eastern Europe, there was a system known as "samizdat", whereby copies of banned books were passed hand to hand by clandestine means. In some cases, books were deemed so important that they were copied by hand and passed around among trusted friends.
Your comment on Florida schools' book banning and the comment on "samizdat" books reminded me - The Brooklyn Public Library offers a free library e-card to out of state students. If you know of students ANYWHERE who want to read without restrictions refer them to this:
A few years ago while writing an essay I found the definition of fascism to be "the control of the government by corporations through a dictator." Nationalism, racism, and control of the media were methods or strategies for control. I looked for that definition online lately and I can't find it. How far down the rabbit hole are we already?
I heartedly applaud the president's viewpoint. Having the knowledge and experiences learned/gained in 80 some years can not be overlooked. I say this as an 86-year-old man. So, bring it on... I for one will do what I can, which I fear isn't much, to keep the fires lit by Biden burning.
Now about the War Department pamphlet, the true meaning of such words as fascism, communism and even religion is not fully known by the majority. This booklet brought to us by HCR is valuable and should be shared in every school, newspaper or any other media outlet. Thank you, Heather.
Living in a school for emotionally disturbed children on campus of The University of Chicago in 1955, I was given The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank by a survivor of Dachau and Buchenwald.. The School was The Orthogenic School. Its director was Bruno Bettelheim. He was the co-author of Dynamics of Prejudice with Morris Janowitz, required reading of senior staff American forces by General Dwight David Eisenhower... five star general and head of SHAPE that came before NATO.
I slept in The School from Monday, January 9th, 1950 to June 26, 1956. I later worked there and was asked to run The School more than once.
My parents took the family to a dude ranch the summer of 1955... and I joined for a few weeks. I was an excellent rider. The Bar JD was in Cody, Wyoming. I met Gigi Pearson at that ranch... she was my age... attending Miss Porter’s School in Connecticut. Her father was advertising director at Mademoiselle Magazine. They lived on the North Shore of Long Island. She asked me to escort her to the Cotillion Dances in New York City - that Fall. I asked my mother if I could learn to dance and get the clothing needed. She wrote me that I would learn to dance at Arthur Murray’s and that DePinna’s would dress me. Her letter had a PS: Sandy, you will be able to attend these dances, but your father would not be welcome... I asked Dr. B, as he was called: what is she talking about? He educated me. He said, your mother is telling you that your father is Jewish and you are not. I was a baptized Episcopalian, her religion, not my father’s religion. I was confused. What is Jewish, I asked. He was astonished. He knew our family story. In rebellion against her prejudiced German Lutheran mother, my mother had married three Jews, my father was number three. She married the first in seven days in Florida, and that marriage lasted 4 years. Monroe Hess was a family friend, a left handed golfer with a wealthy mother. I asked about the dances. Dr. B explained Restricted. Jews were not welcome. I called Gigi Person at a pay phone at Miss Porters to explain, saying that I would not attend dances where my dad might not be welcome. I offered alternatives, live music at the top of the RCA building and elsewhere... She said she would respond to my invitation - I never heard from her again.
In Wall Street, my second firm was White Weld & Company. In my first week I learned that the firm had held a partners’ meeting to decide if they would offer a permanent job to Mildred Bergman, a part-time secretary that was Jewish. She is 95 today.
Morgan Stanley might have had one Jewish partner at that point, but I doubt it.
We lived in Short Hills, New Jersey. Peter Hager, general partner of Goldman, Sachs asked if I would like to join the Short Hills Club as an Episcopalian. I passed. Never heard from him again.
William E. Simon, then a Salomon Brothers & Hutzler general partner, later Treasury Secretary, asked if we might join Beacon Hill in Summit, saying he was board member, and we would be admitted. When we were blackballed, Bill and Carol Simon resigned with their 7 children, and he asked if we would like to take crack at Morris County. I passed...
Fascism is sweeping the planet - and the United States. The Republicans are now fascist, plain as day.
When I am around antisemites, I am Jewish. When I am surrounded by UJA Zionists that reject me, I am Christain. My wife’s mother was born Jewish. Her father was Nobel James Franck. He fingered Hitler as a menace in 1933 and fled to form the Manhattan Project for Roosevelt with Enrico Ferme.
In truth, we do not bother with established institutions. We find them exclusion based like the country clubs and many neighborhoods.
Fred Trump’s rental units were marked RESTRICTED.
The ultra Jews of Israel are fascist in their approach to civil liberties.
Good Arab citizens of Israel are worried about their country - and they love living there as citizens.
Sandy, thanks for the fascinating recap. In a small sense, spiritually at least, perhaps I am in your club.
Your last sentences are spot on. Doesn't it really come down to one basic premise? We can look at our fellow humans as fellow travelers to enjoy, live with, compete with and fight for and protect. Or, we can break down humanity into Us and Them.
I was born and raised a WASP. But in my community, the Jewish kids were smart. The girls were especially attractive to me. Their parents were generous and welcoming. Perhaps that's why I married three Jewish women (consecutively, of course :) It's a long story for another time.
But at age 50, I found the "girl of my dreams". Her Dad was a WWII vet of Ashkenazi heritage. Her Mom is a 96 year old wonder - a Sephardic Jew. The food from both worlds is wonderful. The family welcomes everyone to their table - regardless of faith or heritage. It's possible that they hug too much.
My wife thinks there is some Jewish blood in me somewhere - perhaps a distant Dutch ancestor who converted to survive? Who knows? I hope so. I am proud to have a mezuzha at the front door. It's not about religion - I am agnostic. It's about honoring a culture. It's about love and unity.
It's not about religion - I am agnostic. It's about honoring a culture. It's about love and unity. You stated my feelings better than I ever could. Thank you.
Something to consider, Michael. I agree that increasing awareness of this pamphlet is a good idea. What bothers me, though, is the passive wording of your plea. "This should...." and ".....should send it..." It strikes me that it is easy to come up with "shoulds" for somebody else to carry out. I would posit that job is ours. In whatever ways come up in our lives, we need to speak up, reach out, make the pamphlet available, or paraphrase it in the context of local politics. Whatever works in our own lives. But WE are the ones who need to do the work of helping our fellow-citizens grasp what fascism and authoritarianism is, and the signs of it in our lives and communities as well as nationally. There is a man on my town's selectboard who thinks of himself as a progressive, but whose behavior and attitude is that of an authoriatarian. He is being called out- not by calling him names, but by pointing out the nature of his behavior. That's where we begin.
I have a feeling it would be dismissed as lies & indoctrination, much like the Radical Right’s reaction to the reading of the Declaration of Independence on NPR on Independence Day.
If any Republicans read this sobering letter, the experience will feel like gazing into a mirror and seeing who they really are. Of course many already know they're fascists but would never admit it publicly. Trump's bizarre ramblings today checked all the boxes. DeSantis? I'm surprised he didn't give the Nazi salute when during a Fox News interview he pledged to destroy "leftism" in two terms as president.
No, they won’t admit it publicly, they will blame others for it. Classic trick from the fascists’ playbook: cry “murderer!” whilst you yourself are holding a knife covered in blood.
I have read a trick of a pickpocket whose slight of hand is noticed is the yell loudly "Thief! Thief! and then vanish in the confusion. Perhaps they lifted a copy of the "GOP Playbook".
Wow! Right on time! Exactly the definition we all need to read and learn so that we can share our thoughts and especially the history of WWII educational pamphlets informing our armed forces of what this word ‘fascism” actually means... how fascism is ‘created’ ...
always thank you for enlightening all of your readers... I will make copies of this particular Letter from an American ti give to folks along my path.
The word fascist harks back to Roman Empire imagery of a bundle of sticks, that are weak individually, yet strong together. The notion of stronger together is innocuous enough, but its connection to the Roman Empire, especially in Mussolini's Italy, is one of those make-wherever-great-again supremacist appeals to a violent yet idealized past that promotes the "glory" that is despotism.
Great that people are capable of larger products together, but the devil is in whether the cohesion is forced or largely voluntary, and whose interests are being served. And, of course, whether it's aims are productive or predatory.
Sinclair Lewis in 1935 wrote “It Can’t Happen Here” envisioning the successful rise of a Hitler analog in the US and the descent into authoritarian rule and military coups. With little effort it could be updated as a bitter parody of our contemporary predicament.
TL ceo Henry Luce was exactly, precisely, what you think he was, in spades. In plain view. He was one of them.
Time Life the same.
Adolf Hitler was not hated in London, he was truly admired, and he was the idol and darling of the pilot of The Spirit of St. Louis, no?
Aviator Charles Lindeberg was no friend of the Jews. He was an antisemitic American hero and pure fascist. Adored. Admired. An idol.
FDR turned around boats loaded with Jews fleeing Europe... with Eleanor Roosevelt, his wife and cousin, pleading with him - and those Jews were returned to certain extermination...
FDR feared American fascism... Michigan Senator Vandenberg - an isolationist - did not want us to support Churchill or fight for Europe v. Hitler.
The United States was, and is, a deeply prejudiced nation, with tolerance scarce and racial hatreds and insecurity raging.
We’ve been compromised since the Mayflower.
First class History professor HCR studiously avoids racial hatred and the incredible pain felt by those with Negro features - like the plague.
Her Boston College campus is an example of what can go wrong - in history.
Tokenism rules today at Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson’s home. He was a fascist.
Fascism is public enemy number one; intolerance provides the energy.
Nothing like UJA and Zionism. Never Again is justified. 2,000 years of antisemitism is fact. Screwed up feelings about color and hair are a bad joke.
The Tower of Babel is God’s punishment. Am I a believer?
Don’t Look Up is the metaphor. It’s real.
Love and tolerance are taught at home, might be taught on campus - but not as a required course.
Love Is Not Enough was about The School. That was Bruno Bettelheim’s best and most successful.
S B, your story is compelling to say the least! I fear, however, that when you remark "The United States was, and is, a deeply prejudiced nation, with tolerance scarce and racial hatreds and insecurity raging.
We’ve been compromised since the Mayflower" you are remarking on the cost of a truly open society which must accept and tolerate those who bear such prejudices while doing our best to "convert" those prejudices with lived experiences, living the freedoms we preach.
S B what is it you'd like to know about me which might alter your perception of my comment? You evidently perceive my concern for tolerance in an open society as mere sophistry. As a teaching psychiatrist for more than 40 years I have spent my life working to understand and work with those who have aberrant or self-destructive ideas and behaviors and have worked to teach new psychiatrists the same. I am so sorry it comes across as sophistry. But then, the sophists WERE originally teachers in ancient Greece. Perhaps I have somehow fallen into false or misleading arguments in my teaching. What is it about tolerance for those with different aspirations and opinions you find false or misleading? I certainly don't want them elected to office or dictating what I do or think.
Thank you. I was unaware of the Times cover of 1939. I was thinking of another cover with his image on the full page. At least by 1939 he was being recognized for being evil.
Everything we know is a memory or a record. At the present moment, we are learning, but we understand by applying what we know, how things worked up till now. This even can inform better-than-random guesses about the future.
I totally agree with you Denee. I subscribe to OUR TIME a dating service for the over 50 crowd. I had a lunch date with a nice guy and was amazed learning he is a HCR subscriber....great conversation followed!
To overcome evil, humor can be powerful. Here's the 1942 Looney Tunes cartoon that ridicules facism: "The Ducktators" - Spoiler - "Hitler" duckling emerges from the egg with a "Sieg Heil!" https://forgottenfiles.substack.com/p/the-ducktators-1942
Peter As a kid I remember seeing Charlie Chaplin’s THE GREAT DICTATOR which mocked Hitler, Mussolini, and fascism. I thought that it was very funny, though I was too young to know much about Hitler and Mussolini.
I wonder if Disney might make a sequel to this Chaplin movie, perhaps with Mickey Mouse in Charlie’s role. I would buy tickets for its premiere in Orlando (and/or proximate to Mar a Lago.)
General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, likened Donald Trump’s effort to hold on to power after the 2020 election to Adolf Hitler, saying the president was preaching “the gospel of the Führer” with his lies about the election being stolen, according to a new book by two Washington Post reporters.
(...)
Still, Milley was disturbed by the sight of Trump supporters rallying to his cause in November, calling them “Brownshirts in the streets.” Leonnig and Rucker wrote that Milley “believed Trump was stoking unrest, possibly in hopes of an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act and call out the military.” The general likened the U.S. to Germany’s fragile Weimar Republic in the early 1930s. “This is a Reichstag moment,” he said, referring to the arson attack on Germany’s Parliament that Hitler used as a pretext to assume absolute power and destroy democracy.
On January 6, Milley watched with disgust as Trump addressed his supporters. Soon after Trump finished speaking, a violent mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to disrupt the certification of the presidential election by a joint session of Congress — and many promised to return for Biden’s inauguration. “These guys are Nazis, they’re boogaloo boys, they’re Proud Boys. These are the same people we fought in World War II,” Milley said a week after the attack on the Capitol.
I hadn't heard of them either! I also hadn't seen this public service announcement video about fighting fascim. It isn't brief! But it is an interesting window into another way these points were driven home: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8K6-cEAJZlE
How delightful, I seem to have a fan or fans among the trolls and gremlins. Both a message, a first edited version and a remake thereof... down Orwell's "memory hole"...?
I wrote of failed fascistic politicians who found tax-free success and a captive flock. Ultra-Elmer-Gantrys all, won't be satisfied by any wealth, any power.
Like the Fisherman's Wife of the folk tale, they want to become God. Like her and her wretched spouse, they'll end up in the ditch they crawled out of... dragging untold millions down with them.
Thanks, Juliaana. No matter how many ways I have seen this warning portrayed (being a post-war child of a veteran), this video was chilling. Because we're here again. We just don't seem to learn.
The point is… the Republican Party led by Trump, McConnell and McCarthy is a Fascist party. We have our very own fascism here. Fascist are authoritarians; Trump thinks he is a god. We fought and defeated them in World War II; we must defeat them at home. Our democracy depends upon it.
A god? Can anyone reading an all-caps tweet starting HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY consider the author a candidate for POTUS? Maybe he uses all caps so often because he thinks his admirers may have trouble reading lower case.
I rather think that under all the childish drama, Trump deeply knows he is a fraud, and that's why he is so thin skinned. The golden spoon he was born with has allowed him to be a perfect asshole and be admired for it. He is always desperately (even on Memorial Day) distracting from the fact that he is naked, and that it's not a pleasing sight.
Within a matter of a few years of the publication of "FASCISM!" the authors were under investigation by the resurgent Republican right as "communist agents". It happened right in front of everyone and he only ones who recognized it were silenced by the threat of being called "communists" and having their lives destroyed. We call it "McCarthyism" and think it died with him, but it didn't, and now it's so strong we live in fear of it taking formal power next year.
Remember that McCarthy's right hand man was Roy Cohn. And Cohn taught Trump how to manipulate our legal system.
And remember - I write this at the risk of being most unpopular here - that Robert F. Kennedy was counsel to the McCarthy Committee, and as Attorney General he went on to approve the FBI’s relentless campaign of surveillance and blackmail of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as detailed in the new biography.
Not everyone will be happy with what you wrote, but truth is a defense and what you said is true.
No so.
Harvey Kravetz
Writes Harvey’s Newsletter
"No so."
? I don't know what that means.
I believe Harvey simply forgot the "t" in "Not."
Neither does Harvey....
Anyone who wants to remedy their ignorance about Robert Kennedy's trajectory might benefit from reading Patricia Sullivan's JUSTICE RISING: Robert Kennedy's America in Black and White. He was an important mover in the Johnson administration's push for the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act of the mid-1960s.
But of course not everyone cares to change their views. RFK's early work with the Senate Permanent Committee on Investigations, a job he quit under pressure from Roy Cohn allows them to defend Cohn and Trump by using the old ploy of argument by changing the subject.
People can change. RF Kennedy did. To see the film of him speaking the night after the MLK assassination to calm a group in a large city (?Detroit) makes that abundantly clear. It is likely the change got him assassinated.
Indianapolis. It was the night OF the assassination: he was the one who gave the news to the crowd of mostly African Americans. The speech is on YouTube. It was mostly extemporaneous, and it's less than 5 minutes long. https://youtu.be/TtLHsYJ8pmc
What motivated his assassin was RFK's support for Israel. He was shot during the first anniversary of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. And as a top candidate for the Democratic nomination for president, he and his positions were very much in the public eye.
Thank you, Susanna. It was only recently that I saw the speech and was much moved by the words and the tone. Had never been aware of RFK’s stance on Israel and am a bit surprised that it was such an issue at the time. These days another matter.
The Kennedys presented a united front, but what a difference there was in their real life.
Which is one reason RFK began to come into his own after JFK was killed. And EMK (better known as Teddy ;-) ) was a damn good senator despite his many personal failings. A lot of the JFK idolatry misses the context he was embedded in -- and the civil rights activism of the early-to-mid '60s, esp. '63 to '65, changed that context in a big way.
Exactly but I extend this sentiment to all politicians. We tend to accept the public veneer too readily.
The Kennedy Bros along with Nixon were in the thick of “the Red Scare” and used it for their own purposes. Jack was the reluctant president, pushed by his bully father. Bobby was the enforcer for his big brother. Camelot was a myth. They spread the fear of the Domino Theory creating the foundation for the Endless War in Viet Nam as half the country draped themselves in the Flag and railed against educated protestors trying to stop the military industrial complex war macht
We don’t learn the lessons of history because politicians bury it
And that's why a historian like Heather is so vital.
This is comic book superficiality.
Ok sure
The part about JFK’s reluctance as a Presidential candidate?
The part about JFK, RFK, and Nixon being actively involved in fighting The Red Scare?
The part about RFK being the law enforcer? ( lets talk Jimmy Hoffa)
The part about JFK secretly escalating the Viet Nam involvement?
The part about the military industrial complex and Washington’s support of the Western State’s aero defense political campaign base?
Or the part about how History is massaged by politicians in our school books?
You have a few facts and a few semi-facts. No context. This is laughable high school emotional ranting.
No, Robert F. Kennedy was not a counsel to the McCarthy Committee. The McCarthy Committee, officially known as the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, was led by Senator Joseph McCarthy and conducted investigations into alleged communist infiltration in the United States during the early 1950s.
Robert F. Kennedy, the younger brother of President John F. Kennedy, had a notable career in politics and law. However, he did not serve as a counsel or have any direct involvement with the McCarthy Committee. Robert F. Kennedy initially gained prominence as a counsel to the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, which focused on labor and management corruption in the late 1950s.
Later, Robert F. Kennedy served as Attorney General of the United States from 1961 to 1964 during his brother's presidency. He played a significant role in various policy initiatives, including civil rights, organized crime, and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
I’d prefer to believe this, not questioning your info here. These contrasting statements are why I spend now so much time in research and Heather’s Letters so enlightening. My age affords me a lot more time to read .
Thank you for adding to ...
Just checking history sites, I'd say you are mistaken. He was recruited as Assistant Counsel to Roy Cohen on that committee, and credited with getting things "back on track", at least for it's other labor responsibilities. McCarthy was an old friend of their father, Joe Kennedy. John Kennedy avoid the censure vote on McCarthy by recuperating from back problems. https://www.inlander.com/comment/when-robert-kennedy-and-joe-mccarthy-crossed-paths-the-greatness-of-rfk-became-even-more-obvious-10476294
Hi Harvey. I am an admirer of Robert Kennedy, but you are wrong. Robert Kennedy was an assistant counsel to the Senate Committee chaired by Joe McCarthy. McCarthy was a close friend of the Kennedy family. He vacationed with them in Cape Cod. McCarthy dated two Kennedy sisters. As a result of his relationship with McCarthy, Robert was called "Bad Bobby" by his adversaries. Best.
I stand corrected: RFK worked as an assistant counsel to the subcommittee for several months, from January to June 1953. During this period, he was responsible for researching and investigating various matters related to the subcommittee's work, which included examining alleged communist influences in the Army Signal Corps. RFK's role was primarily focused on legal research and writing, rather than active participation in the hearings or McCarthy's controversial tactics.
However, it is worth noting that RFK became disillusioned with McCarthy's methods and tactics over time. He disagreed with McCarthy's aggressive and often reckless approach in pursuing alleged communists, and RFK ultimately left the subcommittee after six months due to his concerns about McCarthy's tactics and the damaging impact they had on individuals' lives.
But what we need to keep in perspective is that communism was this monolithic threat in the minds of everyone almost everyone. It included extremists and moderates as well. JFK and LBJ were products of that mindset. Ann Rand was its fanatic critic. There are demigods in every generation that we must be watchful of. Today, we are allowing social media run rampant and it’s breaking society into pieces and infecting children. I watched a couple of kids at a public event not long ago. Every two or three minutes, they instinctively grabbed their cell devises and God knows what they kept returning to. This behavior is destructive and parents are not even aware of this influence.
The difference to me was those politicians who could grow intellectually. Communism was a very scary thing then, with first Stalin then Khrushchev presenting as psychopaths. The Kennedys came to political power as Stalin was killing millions of his own people, and communism had half of Eurasia and a heavy presence in Africa. An enormous threat.
But both Kennedys (RFK & JFK) demonstrated a real capacity for change. This happened to be at a time when many American verities were being challenged. About the government’s unfettered right to make war, on the rights of women, on the rights of minorities, on the responsibilities of the government to protect the rights of minorities, and the role of the government in caring for its most vulnerable. JFK grew with these changes, but he died early. RFK continued his growth until his death.
Those posting comments that paint the entirety of their characters with a single aspect of their lives miss the point. You could do the same with MLK, FDR, Truman or any figure of the past. As someone once said, the past is a foreign country. You can’t navigate it with today’s thoughts and understanding.
The Kennedys wear halos because they were assassinated, but they were simply humans who handled political power in the same complex ways almost every politician does (except for Trump, who simply abused it). I remember being very angry with Obama and what I saw as his abuse of surveillance on American citizens.
Heck, I was disappointed with Obama when he only sent a few missiles against Assad for launching biological weapons against his own people. That was inadequate but probably had the excess of cowboy W Bush to restrain himself.
Yes, and don't forget the Soviet Union had the hydrogen bomb, we executed the Rosenbergs for a couple of crude drawings and we kids were being taught to "duck and cover" just as today's kids are being taught to hide, barricade and, as a last resort, confront mass shooters. I was a high schooler in Key West, Florida, during the Cuban Missile Crisis and watched troops and missiles pour onto the island for three days. My military father had the option of sending us kids away but decided against it because where were we going to go to be safe in the event of a nuclear war? There's a lot of context to apply to leaders in those very scary days when talking about communism and fascisms just as there is now.
Thank you for this clear-headed assessment of the times in which the Kennedys were ascendant.
In those days Communism was synonymous with fascism as an idea. It was understood to be tied to an authoritarian government and therefore the opposite of democracy. Still, governments don't have neat pretty actions, they are always a mixed bag, as are politicians.
Parents are modeling this same behavior.
An ongoing debate in my own head, which is based more about intent -good vs bad. Manipulation by evil forces , hmmm , do we recognize it from critical thought ability and/or from where does THAT begin. Good parenting? and is that opening yet another canned worms? I prefer ,currently, to think ‘woke’ (barely defined) is good. Not of manipulated opinion, but of good intent. Those who started this verbage being of the dark side/more ...having been manipulated through bad intents.
My understanding is that even at conception things can go ‘wrong’ , results -being born a girl or a boy in appearance isn’t one ‘gets what [you] see’. And those people are OK with me, I understand ( came from IMHO good parenting).
But the manipulation part gets tricky. The natural attraction is a tumultuous period for many/most? Can reading be a part of grooming? The word itself has now bad connotation . Is not good parenting part of good intent.
My point is in the muddling.
When good intent is muddled for control/money/perversion it then has become manipulation/bias/racism/etcs.
I’m interested in reading your book(s?) , and now Belefonte’s..he was ‘a first love’ of mine I think I was around 10-12 y.o.
Opinions are solicited
Ellen Though I was a supporter of Bobby Kennedy in the 1968 presidential primaries, I was later aghast that he had pursued, with CIA (and, presumably, JFK’s approval), about two dozen schemes to assassinate Fidel Castro.
Although Castro had good reason to try to kill JFK, I am confident that Lee Harvey Oswald did this alone. I do acknowledge that Oswald had a strange relationship with the Soviets, but, especially after the Cuban Missile Crisis, it seemed extremely unlikely that Khrushchev would authorize such an action.
[On the evening of November 21st, Oswald went to the home of a friend of mine, where Oswald’s estranged wife was living. The next morning he took his gun from the garage and, as Ruth Paine observed, seemed normal as he went off to the book depository building. My friend wrote a small book about the Oswalds and the gun.]
I really don’t know RFL’s biography, but I wonder if he had a change of heart when MLK was assassinated, or maybe before.
Well, if RFK had a change of heart after MLK was assassinated, it had to happen quickly, because MLK was killed in April of 1968 & RFK himself was assassinated on June 6, 1968.
1968: The worst year of my life both privately and watching tragedy unfold month after month. It didn’t end. I think I’ll write this chapter for my memoirs. That why these comments are important for me. I use them as ideas to further write.
Given that he tried to stop the Freedom Riders because they "embarrassed" JFK I doubt it.
For insight into RFK's thinking read Harry Belafonte's autobiography. He and King worked to move RFK to take a more aggressive stance to protect civil rights even as King knew he was under surveillance by the FBI. Hardly any doubt after the tapes sent to him by Hoover and the letter urging him to commit suicide in advance of going to Stockholm to get the Nobel. And Belafonte himself took steps to use a safe phone. There were instances demonstrating that the movement had indeed gotten through to RFK after JFK's death and Birmingham, where he secretly intervened to help get kids out of jail in a way that certainly endangered his own job. . And the possibility that Hoover threatened to expose JFK's philandering in order to get the wiretapping approved. (Meanwhile at home Hoover was a cross dresser. You can't make this stuff up.) When I decided to read Belafonte 's book I had no idea it would contain so much inside information about major players, of which Belafonte himself was certainly one. He was a source for Taylor Branch too. The book tells a fascinating tale not only of Belafonte' s own story, which is pretty complicated, but of his perspective on and partipation in the civil rights struggle. It's not just another celebrity bio by any means.
It really infuriates me that even today all over the nation the FBI buildings carry the name of that FASCIST, J. Edgar Hoover. He had a dossier on Sammy Davis Jr. because he married a white woman. He was pure racist, hypocritical scum and should be buried with the rest of them.
Thanks for the tip on Belafonte's autobio! I really want to read it!
One thing to remember about any successful politicians in office is that they didn’t get there using Gandhi love. All are calculating and they think in terms of how popular their actions will be. If you put any of these politicians in a room and listened to them privately you just might have a different perspective on them.
Find the speech (I’ve seen it online) that RFK gave to the City Club of Cleveland immediately after MLK was assassinated.
That was an amazing speech. The first time I heard it my first thought was to try to think of a single politician of today (this was in 2007) that could or would come close to that.
Or after JFK's assassination?
RFK’s quivering voice, when he spoke, for this then 12 year old, "got” me. Along with seeing the black horse with empty backward boots, really tore me up.
Ellen, you haven't lost any points with me. There's a great deal of trash in our background, and I remember well the FBI's defamation and blackmail of MLK. I'll add that the "beloved" Reagan ruined many Hollywood lives and careers when, as president of the Screen Actors Guild, accused many of being Communists, whether it was true or not. Thus, the beginning of his quest for the White House.
And Ellen, I will be equally unpopular when I suggest that our political side must or should let go of the newest and the far flung notions aka, “woke” issues for two reasons; 1. They are misguided and 2. They give ammunition to the enemy. And what I speak to is this new game fad of boys/men dressing as girls in order to play on female sports. I have no understanding why people can’t see this for what it is; exploitation of women. Even NOW seems to have swallowed this. I went to their site and someone commented in favor of this deception. I countered but don’t know if their moderator will approve my position. It was reasonable devoid of anger. The other most important point is allowing children to obtain gender reaffirming surgery. Children have been influenced by anything online and there is a terrible amount of destructive influences online.
We as a society had better begin policing this or our enemy will do it for us. Children are being manipulated pure and simple. And anyone who criticizes this is called a hater. Boy, have I heard that before. Point of fact, I have accepted gay and lesbian lifestyles all of my life. Friends are gay. It’s never been a big deal for me even when it was a big deal for society in general. I even ran away from home with hippie friends as a kid and enjoyed a week in PTown — the lesbian and gay capital of the East Coast. (I have the infamous claim to have spent overnight accommodations in the Provincetown jail for trying to sell LSD to the chief of police. The charges were quickly reduced to child delinquency, lol.)
What we are witnessing today is a terrible breaking apart of society. We had better stop it, wake up, smell the coffee, and become rational folks again. My hunch is we won’t. It’s more likely that we will continue on this self-destructive path. I never understood Plato admonishment about Tyranny following Democracy as I do today. When push comes to shove, the trend is to go to the right rather than the left. This is what is in store for us if we don’t wake up . And please do read my book, “Donald’s Vanity Tantrums.” It’s only $15 maybe less on Amazon or ask me and I’ll mail you a copy email: bkatz321@gmail.com
Bill, with all due respect, you are as wrong as you could be on trans issues. Boys are not dressing as girls in order to play “female sports,” whatever those are. Children are not typically allowed to receive gender affirming surgery related to transition until at least age 16, and only then following years of both hormonal and psychological care - but breast enhancements are just fine (that is also gender affirming surgery). What trans children are allowed to do is take puberty blockers, to postpone puberty until they are old enough to receive other therapies, and to receive counseling to help with their gender dysphoria. Social transition alone isn’t an easy thing to do, and if you think about it clearly, I think you’ll conclude that few to no high school boys would transition socially just to play sports. That sounds pretty ludicrous, doesn’t it?
Further, you are talking about a tiny proportion of the population. 1.4% of the youth population identifies as trans. Not all of them are trans girls, and not all of them play sports. Estimates are that there are fewer than 100 teen trans athletes nationwide. (Source: https://www.newsweek.com/how-many-transgender-athletes-play-womens-sports-1796006.). This is not the huge problem you make it out to be. And further, being a trans athlete is no guarantee of winning in girls’ sport.
“The idea that women and girls have an advantage because they are trans ignores the actual conditions of their lives.” (Source, ACLU)
May I point you to a few sources?
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trans-girls-belong-on-girls-sports-teams/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-the-science-on-gender-affirming-care-for-transgender-kids-really-shows/
https://www.newsweek.com/how-many-transgender-athletes-play-womens-sports-1796006
Full disclosure: I am the proud mother of a transitioning young adult. Believe me, this process is far from easy for her, and her athletic performance is the farthest thing from her mind. I fear every day for her, and ignorance makes her less safe.
Thanks for your report from the "front lines". I finished typing about 5 minutes after you posted. Gender expression is not a fad, and gender dysphoria is separate and distinct from gender expression.
Ally, thank you. Ignorance is awfully hard to combat. And for sure this is a complicated and strange thing. I can’t pretend to understand what my child is going through - how could I? But what I can do is inform myself, and love her unconditionally. Part of that includes battling ignorance.
KR, thanks for sharing these sources. I'll need to look at these and learn more. Honestly, I admit that I don't understand a lot about trans issues and it's tough for me to grasp, having been born and raised in a binary mode. I can't guarantee that I'll "get it" but I'm trying my best to understand better.
Having said that, right leaning politicians pointing to trans people as a grave threat to our nation, while waving off Putin's open hostility to our country, his interference in our election process, embracing dictators like Orban and attacking individual and civil rights is wrong. Not grasping a person's life shouldn't mean attacking it or their right to exist safely, like everyone else. This is wrong and making trans people a focal point for attacks is wrong.
Exactly, C! I don’t understand either, but I don’t have to understand in order to support my daughter. For sure I’ve taken the time to educate myself better, though, as you suggest. I want her to have the right to live her life as she sees fit. I trust her judgement; she’s a fine, intelligent person - and this is really hard. Literally nobody would choose to go through this in order to compete at synchronized swimming in high school.
I am not sure I need to “get it” in whatever degree of understanding or friend or family experience. I DO need to learn to accept it. That single issue is far more complicated and the difference in someone’s pretrans experience and my preteen/post teen experience, means I will never completely get it but I sure can learn to accept someone who is different in that regard.
Bless you, KR, for your being your daughter’s strong advocate! My great-nephew is trans and is so happy now. He despised his breasts as a teenager and felt “inadequate” as a girl. The entire family rallied behind him, which is amazing considering since his grandparents were Repubs. But, they love him for no matter what. That, is the key for a happy and successful person anyway, right?
I’m so happy to hear of another supportive family, Marlene. I think that’s the biggest variable in good or bad outcomes.
KR, thank you for your non-judgmental and factual response. Your family is indeed fortunate to have you, and your approach will assist in your daughter's safe transition.
Nancy, thank you. It’s a simple thing, but your support means a lot to me.
Thank you for responding to the inaccurate statements made by Mr. Katz. There are some very young children who experience a sense of being the "wrong" gender at a very young age, much to young to have been influenced by media.
Here's an article includes a lot of valuable information including an extensive list of sources on which the article is based:
"Young children do not get medical transition treatment, but they do have feelings about their gender and can benefit from support from those around them. “Children start to have a sense of their own gender identity between the ages of 2 1/2 to 3 years old,” Olezeski said." {snip} “Research substantiates that children who are prepubertal and assert an identity of [transgender and gender diverse] know their gender as clearly and as consistently as their developmentally equivalent peers who identify as cisgender and benefit from the same level of social acceptance,” the AAP guidelines say, adding that differences in how children identify and express their gender are normal." https://www.factcheck.org/2023/05/scicheck-young-children-do-not-receive-medical-gender-transition-treatment/
I think it's pretty clear Mr. Katz is here mostly to sell his book. Commercial spam.
Oh really? I’m taking time out from my business to write several responses to sell a couple of books at the most and not one most likely while I could be engaging my day business with a 10 times or more rate of return. Maybe you are remiss that you haven’t written a book perhaps? Having said that and since you brought the matter up, it does rely on humor and satire along with illustrations something you don’t often find in detailing the goings on of the worst president in US history. And if you want a copy, I’ll personally autograph it at no extra charge. How does that grab ya? And just for you, I’ll pay the shipping.
You may not have meant it this way, but there seems to be in your writing a near association of society breaking apart and transgender issues. I believe that the story is far more complicated than that. American society is in a state of extreme tension at this moment as a result of a complex interplay of complex issues and extreme changes brought on by the (historically) rapid rise of technology.
In the last forty years there has been massive change in American life. The steady rise upward in economic and thus social status of a multitude of Americans has been rudely closed off. Part of it is extreme concentration of wealth and part is due to the huge changes in economic uncertainty brought about by the infiltration of technology into our lives. To focus on the effects of gender issues in sports is akin to being angry that a picture is hanging crookedly after an earthquake ha shattered much of your house.
Nobody reacts well to massive change. The right is fixating on gender issues, book banning, “immoral” teaching of American History as stalking horses for the major problems America faces - a widespread breakdown in family life, the diminishment in the spread of jobs that pay well, a sharp and extremely troubling rise in suicide, most especially by teenagers, a resurgence in open and blatant racism after Obama’s Presidency and a drug use problem that has spiraled out of control.
There is a dangerous number of citizens now who have chosen the path of extreme individualism over the sticky but worthwhile struggles of belonging to a real community. They are lonely and afraid and and that leads to a heavy burden of anger - the dominant emotion in American public life today Add 400 million guns to that mix and you have an exponential increase in the threat of a social earthquake.
The political apparatus is trying to con Americans into believing that there is some magical path back to the simplicity of the Fifties, when POC knew their place, the economy was always strong, men were men and women were subordinate and so on. They want us to vent our fears and anger on issues of gender and sexuality because they do not have a fucking clue how to address the really big issues, some of which I listed above. They are delighted to see people twist themselves into pretzels over conspiracy theories that have become more and more ludicrous with each decade.
Unless this downward spiral into inanity is aborted, how will AI be thoughtfully addressed? How will climate change be reduced from apocalypse to disaster? How will the structural weaknesses in the American form of government - from elections to the Supreme Court - be muted? How will the dragon of financial inequality be slain?
Fundamentally America is hampered by a crippling imbalance. The ratio of thoughtful adults to mere grownups is getting smaller by the day.
Eric, that’s an excellent analysis. Well said!
I always wonder when the Republicans harken back to the magical 1950s what they think of the tax policies then that permitted such an explosion of the middle class post-war.
What an excellent point! A 91% top marginal rate brings a basic sense of fairness that people can feel.
Eric, magnificently stated. Amen.
Thank you.
That is very kind of you.
I'm curious, Bill. Who is manipulating what children, and what are they doing to manipulate them? Where are you seeing IMAB (Identified Male at Birth) children transitioning just to play on IFAB (Identified Female at Birth) sports teams? I know a fair number of people whose children have either identified as "gender fluid" with their expressions of gender or as those who are more "textbook" gender dysphoric that have supported them as loving parents. In none of these cases was participation in sports any part of the equation.
Ally, I’m not an expert here. I have always supported women in every aspect and guys slipping through the proverbial gate to play against women don’t set well with me and never will. And I’m frankly miffed why more women don’t get it. Perhaps because it’s a brand new (well not brand new) but new issue to address. Again, may we say what’s good for the goose is good for the gander? You will not likely see a trans man (biological woman) playing against men because they couldn’t compete. And if this simple point can’t be understood, I rest my case. I’m not going to stop being supportive of women on this issue. The guys that are signing on to women’s teams are gaming the system.
Bill Katz, you said that "guys that are signing on to women’s teams are gaming the system." Can you give any examples of guys signing on to women's teams? I have heard this before and would like to know the actual statistics. Thanks in advance.
I'll take your suggestions and I am, right now, actually smelling the coffee. And we are, right now, doing exactly what you said -- we are behaving as rational folks and having this discussion! As for the "woke" stuff, I do wish we had a better sense of where government should and should not be involved. For instance, even though the we get to see the results, live, on sports channels, how a private sports organization handles transgender issues should be entirely up to them. Since it's not a good issue for legislative action, there's no way to "win" a fight to pass or defeat it.
I note with interest your silence in the face of clear evidence that nearly everything you wrote is wrong. But then, you were really just posting that to hustle your book, weren't you?
I don't believe that transgender females should be competing in women's sports. However, I don't think that it is based on a "fad." These people have genuine gender issues, based on biology, that simply don't fit the norm as traditionally understood.
Richard, the Olympics has had rules on the participation of trans athletes since 2003. The Tokyo Olympics in 2021 were the first instance of trans athletes participating - it took almost 20 years. Male to female transition doesn’t magically make trans women dominate Olympic sport, never mind high school athletics.
https://www.transathlete.com/olympics
Our increasingly open society is allowing people to live openly their true experiences for the first time. Personally, I don’t think it hurts anybody, and is no one’s business but their own. Transition is so hard. Nobody would choose that, given another path.
Not to mention the nepotism, which probably wouldn't fly these days.
LBJ and Nixon both deployed J. Edgar Hoover on their political enemies.
No, Robert F. Kennedy was not a counsel to the McCarthy Committee. The McCarthy Committee, officially known as the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, was led by Senator Joseph McCarthy and conducted investigations into alleged communist infiltration in the United States during the early 1950s.
Robert F. Kennedy, the younger brother of President John F. Kennedy, had a notable career in politics and law. However, he did not serve as a counsel or have any direct involvement with the McCarthy Committee. Robert F. Kennedy initially gained prominence as a counsel to the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, which focused on labor and management corruption in the late 1950s.
Later, Robert F. Kennedy served as Attorney General of the United States from 1961 to 1964 during his brother's presidency. He played a significant role in various policy initiatives, including civil rights, organized crime, and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
He worked for McCarthy in 1953. One source of many, in addition to Wikipedia, is a piece in the “American Experience” series on PBS.org entitled “RFK’s Enemies.”
And people make mistakes especially in the initial stage of careers — maybe? I’m not defending him. I agree that the patriarch of the family made a deal with the devil and it came back in a terrible way. Almost a Shakespearean tragedy.
Joseph Kennedy was the devil incarnate and just an all around piece of garbage. It’s the women who married into the family who suffered the most, beginning with Rose. That SOB husband of hers put their “special” daughter in an mental institution, without his wife’s approval. Their children were aghast! It prompted their daughter, Eunice Shriver, to start Special Olympics which has become an international and a national event.
Ellen D, please name the Author & Book title of the Bio; I am so used to HCR's citation to sources & detailed annotations. Thanks.
Jonathan Eig’s newly released biography of King. See the Guardian’s review of May 27, and also an article in The Atlantic (July/August 2002), available online, for just two of many sources.
Thank you Ellen; I will review the cited sorces. That's an old habit of mine from trial work; I check the citations & the "pin cites".
I read 'The Guardian US' 5/27 article which contains some details of MLK's arrival at Dexter Baptist Church circa 1955 & his joining of boycott to support Rosa Parks at the start of 1956. Robert Kennedy became the Nation's AG over 5 years later afterJFK's inauguration .That leaves at least 5 yeats of the FBI's anti-MLK, unspecified sabotage of MLK ... PRIOR to Robert Kennedy's alleged "authorization".
First rule of behavioral science & form instruction to jurors "association is not causation".
A pinpoint citation, often called a pincite, is necessary to point the reader to specific the page(s) within the case. Pincites are placed after the page on which the case begins, separated by a comma and a space. A pincite may consist of a page range or multiple pages that are not consecutive.
Which biography are you referring to? The new one on J. Edgar Hover?
Tearing off the veil of myths to expose the truths and realities is important to remind folks that revisionist history is not a new thing. If that makes you unpopular then people are not thinking. They are swallowing propaganda whole. Thanks for bringing this up.
Ellen, I did not know all this, but Wikipedia gives a different version, which seems more in character with RFK to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy
In December 1952, at his father's behest, Kennedy was appointed by family friend Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy as assistant counsel of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Kennedy disapproved of McCarthy's aggressive methods of garnering intelligence on suspected communists. This was a highly visible job for him. He resigned in July 1953, but "retained a fondness for McCarthy". The period of July 1953 to January 1954 saw him at "a professional and personal nadir", feeling that he was adrift while trying to prove himself to his family. ... After a period as an assistant to his father on the Hoover Commission, Kennedy rejoined the Senate committee staff as chief counsel for the Democratic minority in February 1954. That month, McCarthy's chief counsel Roy Cohn subpoenaed Annie Lee Moss, accusing her of membership in the Communist Party. Kennedy revealed that Cohn had called the wrong Annie Lee Moss and he requested the file on Moss from the FBI. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had been forewarned by Cohn and denied him access, calling RFK "an arrogant whippersnapper". When Democrats gained a Senate majority in January 1955, Kennedy became chief counsel and was a background figure in the televised Army–McCarthy hearings of 1954 into McCarthy's conduct. The Moss incident turned Cohn into an enemy, which led to Kennedy assisting Democratic senators in ridiculing Cohn during the hearings. The animosity grew to the point where Cohn had to be restrained after asking RFK if he wanted to fight him ....
An ugly truth which aligns with Papa Kennedy’s position communism is worse than fascism!
Roy Cohn’s lessons:
#1: All publicity is good regardless of how negative it is.
#2: When attacked attacked back harder. When sued counter sue for more.
#3: NEVER apologize.
#4: Whatever happens claim victory.
#5: You do not have to believe what you say.
Trump may have a below average IQ, but he learn RC's lessons well.
If Roy Cohn did not epitomize evil no one has.
Harvey, Sounds like Faux News business model.
He is right
I'll add him to the GOP Warlock list.
Donald accused the Democrats holding a witch hunt, he being the witch - is he projecting again ?
The most commonly accepted etymology derives warlock from the Old English wǣrloga, which meant "breaker of oaths" or "deceiver"[2] and was given special application to the devil around 1000.[3] In early modern Scots, the word came to be used as the male equivalent of witch (which can be male or female, but has historically been used predominantly for females).[4][5][6] The term may have become associated in Scotland with MALE WITCHES due to the idea that they had made pacts with Auld Hornie (my note: remember pussy grabbing and that horney old devil - Epstein ?) and thus had betrayed the Christian faith and broke their baptismal vows or oaths.[7] From this use, the word passed into Romantic literature and ultimately 20th-century popular culture. A derivation from the Old Norse varð-lokkur, "caller of spirits", has also been suggested,[8][9][10] but the Oxford English Dictionary considers this implausible due to the extreme rarity of the Norse word and because forms without hard -k, which are consistent with the Old English etymology ("traitor"), are attested earlier than forms with a -k.[11] - witch hunt" - wikipedia
The British called the American revolutionaries Yankees. Subsequently the Americans owned the epithet and sang Yankee Doodle as they attacked the British.
So lets own the epithet Witch Hunt
because Donald has graduated from Flim Flam Man to Warlock by definition. We can beat the evangelicos to the punch. I'm tired of trying to be like the Quakers and be gentle and peaceful . I don't think that is appropriate behavior anymore with cowardly Republican bullies. It's time to fight fire with fire.
And by fight fire with fire, by that you mean...? What, become cowardly Democrat bullies? Or were you thinking more in terms of fire arms?
Warlock really fits for Trump.
I meant doing nothing physical .
I was thinking of referring to individual and collective Republicans as warlocks when they use name callimg and, character assassination to misinform and manipulate their followers. I don't believe in witches. I suspect that now-a-days women who are considered "sensitive" may have a well developed sense of what event or behavior to expect. I
But if Donald's behavior or words fit the definition of warlock, let's use it and just see how they wiggle out of that one. But in this case, we'd be justified.
Those things you mention that they do: name calling, character assassination and deliberately misinforming and manipulating their followers. That’s a Warlock or a bad Witch. There are good witches too. Those who with no one knowing, seek to improve your life by their actions.
Thank you, Heather for sharing the 1943 War Dept pamphlet !!! It describes exactly what is going on before our very eyes!!! We MUST work hard to get out the vote in spite of the GOP gerrymandering and voter restrictions. Our Democracy and freedoms depend on our votes. I will crawl to the polls if I have to do so!!!! We are truly on the edge of the
destruction of “by the people and for the people”. It is terrifying and, Heather, thank you for giving us such a definitive description of the horrific this fascism virus that is oozing it’s way into our lives germ after germ and drip by drip!!!!! 😳
Nina Truslow McKee
I thought about Memorial Day. I thought about the people who gave up their lives for our freedom. Then I thought what about our people in Congress fighting for our freedom, right now, their only weapons being our laws, clear thinking, and trying to hold their calm. That is a real war too. I thought of them on Memorial Day. My heart goes out to them. It must be nearly intolerable.
Roger Stone also gave Trump
is hideous playbook with all of the items you have mentioned. If Netflix still has it, watch Call Roger Stone which dates Stone’s influence to Trump back in the 1980’s. It is chilling to watch.😳
Nina Truslow McKee
Trump also learned that exact hideous playbook from Roger Stone back in the 1980’s. If Netflicks still has it, watch Call Roger Stone to see the horrible thread to Trump from Stone!!!!😳
Cohn must have gotten a copy of the flyer and used it as a 'How To' manual.
I've been standing in protest lines most of my life. I'll never submit to threats aimed at my democratic rights !
Stone was part of that group also.
Tom In the 1950s I experienced and fought against “McCarthyism.” Recently I have witnessed another shade of “McCarthyism” in the Republican House. They both attack the soul of America.
Keith, agree but my mantra ad nauseam, is that we on the rational side, must stop pushing weird woke positions that feed the enemy. But I’m afraid we won’t. Societies have a predestination to crumble sooner or later.
Bill, I don't think you understand either the origin of "woke" or what it means. It sounds as if you've bought into right wing attempts to demonize the term (a tactic they turn to often in their attempts to delegitimize honest concepts and short-circuit discussion), very akin to earlier attempts to make socialism the boogeyman. I'm happy to see and hear thoughtful people claiming the term "woke", using it in its appropriate context, pushing back on right wing efforts to make it the 21st century equivalent of Joe McCarthy's "red" and "pinko".
Ok, so I will end the use of “woke.” Especially if it diminishes my argument. So you are correct on that point. I spent 3 years plus writing and castigating Trump for what he stands for so I can’t or shouldn’t be suspected of being someone which I am not. But clearly, I don’t fit easily into any ideology. I’m clearly a centrist (I think for myself not what I’m read I should be) and my belief is that we are losing the center line or have already lost it and this doesn’t bid well.
Bill, some months back I was speaking to a friend who was out of the country asking me what was happening here. I tried to explain and likened what was going on to a spinning top….it keeps going (spinning) as long as it is mostly centered…..but too much leaning to the left OR right and it tumbles. Too bad we seem to be forgetting that lesson!
STAY in the CENTER ! , Bill ! & PRAY, GODS WILL ! Be DONE !!
No :) There is no God. Just Dogs.
Quite frankly, Annie, the term was introduced by black people. When the word is used by Repubs, it is to demonize the black culture. The Repubs are truly the abhorrent and revolting party.
Marlene, my point, precisely.
Thank heavens someone finally said it. Sammy Davis used to call Sinatra “my woke friend”. He was, for the day. Not so much these more enlightened days.
Annie, I just looked this up & found: “The antonym of woke is groggy, asleep, brain-dead or zombie.” For me, I choose “woke”!
LOL. Yup.
woke" feel uncomfortaev with the new use of "woke", as aekwardhrammer, so I just dontbusecut. It's just easier for me to day"aware, or sympathetic, or considetate. IWoke is the past tense of wake , as in"I woke up". I hope this new misuse of the word is just a fad and will eventually be replaced.
Susan, the term "woke" in this context has been in use for decades (probably at least back to the 19th century) in many black communities. It's a rational use of a term that originally referred (as I understand it) to self-awareness as a fully realized human being, and took on an expanded meaning over time to include awareness of others and what their experiences in a world of inequity entails. It's more than sympathy and more than considerate and it has a strong component of selfhood. There are nuances there that I am ill-equipped to explain. If you feel uncomfortable with it, by all means, use the term that you feel comfortable with. But no, it is not a fad. It will be used as long as a there is a need for a term that has that meaning.
Thank you, Annie. I didn't know that. You gave a good explanation.
I was only using it because it’s a word that is used. No, I haven’t condescendingly bought into the negative use of it. As I’ve explained, I’m a centrist. We centrists don’t have many allies on either side as you can see from a few negative reactions to my concerns. I was just reading in a NYT comment how some folks are just tired of being lectured n how we all are supposed to believe. Don’t want or need to regurgitate but there are many rally tired of being told that we are wrong if we don’t measure up. And we will lose if we don’t slap ourselves out of these issues that by their nature, are designed to sow resistance. But fundamentally, I do have a pessimistic outlook and I think we all are all so infused with a sense of righteousness (it’s my rightism) that we are destined on a downward spiral.
Stop with the woke already.
I do so love ‘The Letters’ ,Heather. AND the commentary as well. Thank you EVERYONE !
Mr. Katz, I think you've raised some sub-issues within the very important question, "What is a proper role of government?" Would you care to take a stab at defining why transgender issues are not a proper target of government, but sex discrimination is? I'm not trying to be merely argumentative. I think we would both agree (and please humor me if we don't) that there's something smelly about wading into transgender sports participation and pediatric gender reassignment, but something quite righteous about outlawing sex discrimination in employment. How would you characterize the difference?
For me, this is one of the critical current differences between the present-day Dems and Repubs, that the former has a genuine working theory of government, while the latter has no idea what government is or how to run one. But I think a lot of Dems are also very fuzzy about where government should intervene in a situation versus when to leave it alone, not matter how painful it is for those involved.
You may call me Bill no formalities here. Dick, I don’t have all the answers. I’m not a historian. Indeed, I’m more self-educated than degreed. I do frequently question the role of government. But I’ll try and respond. Maybe I should back up and recite a line from the Declaration of Independence, “… Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness.” But that’s a cop out. Everyone has a right to be happy and free. But what if my happiness doesn’t fin the definition of your happiness. So we revisit the role of government. For awhile we thought that a women had a natural right to their bodies. Or that the EPA could actually protect citizens by enacting standards to protect us from hazardous developments. But that has all changed for awhile.
What you hear on the right is less government, less regulations but this translates into those who can afford to develop whatever they want, get to do so. Let’s take the 5th amendment and the use or misuse of eminent domain. My original family lost our land and we were issued a sheriff rite to vacate our home in the dead of winter in 1970 or our belongings were to be placed on the curb and we had 2 weeks to accomplish this. My father didn’t want to move after losing in court then on appeal. So the government took the whole neighborhood to be sold to a company that decided to more out of our city anyway.
What’s the role of government you ask? One role is to protect its citizens. That creates happiness, I guess. Today, we have so much information (both good and bad) entering the marketplace of ideas. No more should a gynecologist be threatened for saving a woman’s life by performing an abortion than permitting a child who yet needs a developed mind to decide if he is a she or visa versa. Children do not have this capacity. And I dare anyone to show me evidence that they do. Their minds are yet to be developed. So the question becomes should we ban these gender-changing operations? There was a time when hermaphroditism was the sole reason for surgery. Now it’s checking out Tik tok to see how cool it can be to make a change. My God. To your question; yes, I believe we can not leave these surgeries to the medical profession (think profits) any more than we can leave developing wetlands into housing developments to developers because the waters are not contiguous and besides, our super duper Facismo Supreme Court says it restricts profits of private enterprise.
I trust I answered your question.
Bill Warm thanks for your personal values commentary. I read it as common sense about the values of a diverse country. I abhor the word ‘woke.’ It is part of Trumpublican bloviating, which demands that we ignore how our country has evolved over more than two centuries.
“Woke’ is a shibboleth for white supremacists (especially male). The fact is that ‘whites’ will be a minority in America by about 2040. The Stench Court, with its false ‘originalist’ focus, is now reflecting this absurd ‘anti wokeism.’
I have lived my life with ideals and integrity. Some of my early views have changed in concert with the enhancements within my country over nearly 90 years. As a youth, I applauded Marian Anderson performing at the Lincoln Memorial, thanks to Eleanor Roosevelt. Recently I was thrilled that our country could elect and re-elect Barack Obama.
In 1948 Harry Truman shocked the military by ordering desegregation. Two generations later General Colin Powell was chairman of the Joint Chiefs and now General Austin is Secretary of Defense.
Bill—you and I may differ on the breadth and scope of changes that have and are occurring in our country.
I respect your views and, many years ago, put my life on the line so that you, me, and countless others have the opportunity to exercise our rights as American citizens.
If you lived nearby, I’d delight in sharing views with you. After listening to you, I might even ‘refine’ some personal views that I have accrued over 89 years.
Well said, Keith. At 80 and I chorus your mention..to make a point. We continue to learn, refine, even change ...as it should be. Educating or being educated happens quite often brings such by the sudden outcrop of things like ‘woke’ . I once was reading to a group of 10 y.o. In the Phillipines, at the end a student came up and said I ‘looked like a witch’, the poor teacher started to reprimand, I waved it off...it was a marvelous opportunity to teach/make the student actually do some critical thinking. ‘Well, Thank you’ I said. ‘How many witches do you know of...?’ He looked at me , I could see the thinking going on ...I said, ‘do you know the story of The Wizard of Oz, how many witches were in that’ he answered correctly , and I continued..’ well I’m from the East , the Good Witch. So there’s lots of Witch stories and likely witch people about , you just got be careful which witch you notice or talk with’. The teacher laughed. ..perfect moment..... I’ve been called Witch several more times in my life btw...still said, ‘Thank you’. 😉
I live in Hartford, Connecticut. Bkatz321@gmail.com
You mentioned Marian Anderson singing on the Mall. Well would you believe that after writing a song about freeing Leonard Peltier, about this Native Indian falsely convicted in the shooting deaths of two FBI agents, a group from Rapid City asked me to come to Washington to perform my song at a rally in November. Of course I said yes but I was kind of demoted to performing it across from the White House at their press conference. It was an honor still.
You should really stop pontificating about transgenderism, since you clearly know nothing about and and have, so far, demonstrated no interest in learning anything.
The reality is that transgenderism appears to have been a part (albeit a very small one) of human makeup for pretty much as long as there have been humans (e.g. https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/outcasts/downloads/betancourt_transgender_lives.pdf). Because the percentages of people who were actually transgendered has always been minuscule (around 1% or less). As the size of the human population has increased, however, the absolute numbers of transgendered people have increased (that's simple arithmetic). Add in the fact that it has only been in the last 50-60 years or so that medical science has started to get a grip of what it actually is and what the indications are (at least here in the west) and the omnipresence of the Internet, at it's easy for those with a political agenda to grotesquely exaggerate the phenomenon or, more absurdly, present it as some kind of "fad" or "threat."
I have some personal knowledge of this having worked for the Psychiatry Department of the Washington U. Medical School for a while after obtaining my graduate psych degree. I was a research technician and a project was just gettin started looking at data on transgenderism and trying to separate it from superficially similar conditions such as cross-dressing, etc. That's how primitive the knowledge base was back then.
Here are some sources that might clarify things for you, should you be open to facts. You will note that I have avoided sources with a political agenda.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/adult-health/in-depth/transgender-facts/art-20266812
Here's a useful article on gender dysphoria in children: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/gender-dysphoria-in-children/
There is quite a lot of factual information out there. You might want to seek some of it out before repeating falsehoods and fantasies. E.g. (e.g. "There was a time when hermaphroditism was the sole reason for surgery. Now it’s checking out Tik tok to see how cool it can be to make a change." This is unmitigated bleat.
Facts! What a concept. ;)
At this this juncture, no one will be reading this but for the record, although I am not as you said well read on topic but actually you stated much worse and are inaccurate with that statement, one point that I have repeated these new transgender on teams and using bathrooms. Where the heck did this come from. Males who for whatever reasons, identify as female, have operations no objections here. For children, absolutely not. 100% not. It’s you that seems to be so entrenched in your one-sided studies.
...and mine too. Super Thanks...I luv the humor too
Keith, the mention of McCarthyism brings memories of what my father experienced in Washington during the late 1940s. He was an army officer stationed at the Pentagon during the late 1940s. He experienced the intense pressure and insanity in Washington during the beginning Cold War, the Iron Curtain, and McCarthy.
As an aside, I think you might be interested in the new comment I just posted about WWII propaganda as relates to HCR's mention of the pamphlet FASCISM.
TCLA, often I want to "share" HCR's letters, like this one, with my mother in Florida, who wrote to me this past week that DeSantis (and I quote) "just wants to keep us safe."
And then I stop and remember the songs my family would sing, songs like "A corner up in heaven" for the little pickaninnies. I swear - they think they're "good Christians."
Puke, I understand, my Dad would have liked that, when I was a teen. Even he grew up…
Yeah, it certainly continues.
I could just puke hearing that because I grew up in the South too, Rosalind.
Judge NOT, .... Lest YE Be JUDGED ...... ( The WORD !)
Oh please....do you not see you have vaulted yourself up to brandish your Bible over our heads.
Before you puff up I am a believer. ......"and go into thy closet to pray, not in the streets like the Pharisees "
My Florida great-grandparents were loyal Klan members, good Southern Baptists who relegated Blacks to little more than animals. Don't tell me not to judge.
Check out “A Fever in the Heartland “ by Timothy Egan. The kkk ruled Indiana in the 1920’s mirroring the tactics of maga.
Just finished it! A good read.
As I read Heather’s incredible documentation of the pamphlet “FASISM,” I realized I was reading of yet another marvelous product of the pro Government era of FDR’s “New Deal.”
I also became aware of pretty similar tactics by the Republican Party’s extremist ultra conservatives since their idol, Barry Goldwater’s defeat. He may not have subscribed to the tenets of the John Bircher’s but they were highly involved with his development and campaign.
Is it not remarkable that the current extreme Right Wing Republicans use accusations redolent of the McCarthy era: Commies, Socialists ,etc, to dismiss the truly Democratic efforts by President Joe Biden.
The January 6, coup attempt was plainly a Nazi type tactic to use legitimate government offices to seize absolute power.
Read Rick Perlstein's excellent historic trilogy on the rise of the American Right to power: "Before the Storm" (Goldwater), "Nixonland" (you know who), and "the Invisible Bridge" (Reagan).
See it happen every day.
The most important words in HCR's message are “Fascism thrives on indifference and ignorance,” That is why today's Republican Party manages to represent what the WW2 pamphlet pointed out as dangers to democracy: (1) sowing domestic discord, (2) phony ultra-nationalism, and (3) polarized thinking with totalitarianism at both extremes Fight indifference and ignorance and you are fighting fascism.
Perhaps the most egregious example of "indifference" is the ongoing indifference of people around here to American complicity in the most far-reaching genocide in history, with George H.W. Bush at the apex of his career during the worst of "our own peculiar Holocaust" (quoting senior I.M.F. official Davison Budhoo).
The father of George H.W. Bush was a banker for the Nazi military industry, before and DURING World War II, until his Union Banking Corporation got shut down by the federal government.
http://tarpley.net/online-books/george-bush-the-unauthorized-biography/chapter-2-the-hitler-project/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar
https://www.haaretz.com/2003-10-19/ty-article/bush-grandfather-linked-to-bank-with-ties-to-nazi-funding/0000017f-e0f2-d9aa-afff-f9fa1a660000
Prescott Bush was caught but never exposed; how deep does Nazi-loving fascist rot go in the American Deep State?
Prescott Bush worked for Averell Harriman, the "king of Wall Street." The Harriman family was a big contributor to the Nazi-loving Eugenics movement, devoted to racial purification and forced sterilization.
The Bush and Harriman families weren't the only ones with wartime Nazi business connections. Can you think of a family name that ends with "ockafeller"?
http://tarpley.net/online-books/george-bush-the-unauthorized-biography/chapter-3-race-hygiene-three-bush-family-alliances/
Back then, Eugenic "race science" was the "correct" way to think at the top. As the saying goes, "Before Hitler, there was Harvard."
https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2016/03/harvards-eugenics-era
And it wasn't just Harvard: Nazi lawyers carefully studied southern "Jim Crow" racial segregation laws, so they could more effectively stick it to the Jews:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/11/what-america-taught-the-nazis/540630/
Has Harvard really changed?
Harvard professors falsely teach that the Slavepower philosopher John Locke (a beneficiary of the African slave trade) was the preeminent influence on the U.S. Declaration of Independence:
https://twitter.com/john_schmeeckle/status/1515292211767873543?s=20
Did Harvard and Yale stop being toxic cesspools of elitist racism? Are Harvard and Yale alumni potentially unfit for high positions of government responsibility? (If so, then Florida's Governor DeSantis, rumored to be a closet neo-con, could be doubly unqualified.)
And of course, Harvard and Yale both reflect and shape the views of the elite powerful families.
"Among the so-called upper and leisure classes, noticeably among the university group, the birth rate is strikingly low. Among the Slavonic and Latin immigrants, on the other hand, it is relatively high. We seem thus to be letting the best blood thin out and disappear."
-- Claude Feuss, headmaster at George H.W. Bush's elitist prep school, 1939
"The less prolific races will have to defend themselves against the more prolific by means which are disgusting even if they are necessary."
--Lord Bertrand Russell of the British Empire, 1924
Claude Feuss, Bertrand Russell, and Adolf Hitler:
https://www.philosophyforlife.org/blog/nazi-spiritual-eugenics-ii-hitler-and-the-will-of-nature
...and George H.W. Bush?
"I think there is some feeling among some of the more militant civil rights people that any effort in family planning is going to be to try to breed them out of existence."
-George H.W. Bush, 1967
George H.W. Bush graduated from Yale University, where his father was an active alumnus. Yale was the nerve center for the Nazi-loving Eugenics movement, which had fallen into disrepute because of Hitler.
http://tarpley.net/online-books/george-bush-the-unauthorized-biography/chapter-4-the-center-of-power-is-in-washington/
In 1966, George H.W. Bush, a Connecticut carpetbagger in Texas, was elevated to the U.S. Congress. This was made possible by a redistricting lawsuit that resulted in a custom-made congressional district just for George.
http://tarpley.net/online-books/george-bush-the-unauthorized-biography/chapter-10-rubbers-goes-to-congress/
Who has that kind of power?? It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Wall Street "Eugenics" grouping, which continued to do business with Nazi Germany during World War II, continued to have far-reaching clout into the 1960s and beyond:
https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Anglo_American_Establishment.html?id=V19nAAAAMAAJ
Who was who on Wall Street during the 1930s' heyday of the Nazi-loving Eugenics movement?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America%27s_60_Families#Reception
Once in Congress, George H.W. Bush spearheaded an effort to revive the discredited Eugenics movement. But first Bush's father called the chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee so George could become a member.
"During his four years in Congress, Bush not only introduced key pieces of legislation to enforce population control both at home and abroad. He also continuously introduced into the congressional debate reams of propaganda about the threat of population growth and the inferiority of blacks..."
http://tarpley.net/online-books/george-bush-the-unauthorized-biography/chapter-10-rubbers-goes-to-congress/
Bush was beginning his career as a race warrior, in the spirit of Bertrand Russell: "The less prolific races will have to defend themselves against the more prolific by means which are disgusting even if they are necessary."
In 1971, George Bush became Ambassador to the United Nations, becoming a so-called "Kissinger clone." Henry Kissinger, former Harvard professor and "the high priest of imperialism and neocolonialism," was Nixon's National Security Advisor.
http://tarpley.net/online-books/george-bush-the-unauthorized-biography/chapter-11-united-nations-ambassador-kissinger-clone/
Kissinger was succeeded as National Security Advisor by another Harvard professor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who hawkishly advocated U.S. expansion into eastern Europe at the expense of Russia. To what extent is American foreign policy thinking still influenced by the neo-imperialism of former National Security Advisors Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski?
The Trilateral Commission was founded in 1973 by David Rockefeller and Brzezinski, who made Jimmy Carter a member and promoted Carter to become President. Kissinger allegedly said, "The Trilateral Commission is President of the United States."
https://chomsky.info/priorities01/
Carter offered to make David Rockefeller Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Rockefeller declined, and Carter appointed Paul Volcker.
https://fortune.com/2015/10/31/paul-volcker-jimmy-carter-donald-trump/
With Volcker, "Carter has put Dracula in charge of the blood bank."
https://famguardian.org/PublishedAuthors/Indiv/MullinsEustice/SecretsOfFedReserve/Ch14.htm
Paul Volker, as Chairman of the Fed, raised interest rates to over 20%. This had the effect of bankrupting developing countries who had taken out variable-rate dollar-denominated loans because of the oil price shocks of the 1970s. This set the stage for the most far-reaching genocide in history (starting in 1982), dwarfing what the Nazis did, with George H.W. Bush at the pinnacle of power as acting President and then President in his own right.
A bit earlier, in 1975, George H.W. Bush, now the CIA Director, was called on to help implement Henry Kissinger's National Security Study Memorandum 200, which called for population control programs in thirteen targeted countries. If the population in these 13 (darker-skinned) countries kept growing, they would want to control their own resources.
The 13 countries targeted for population control programs were Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Turkey, Nigeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia.
https://larouchepub.com/other/2021/4851-kissinger_s_1974_plan_for_food.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Study_Memorandum_200
This caused a public outcry in Brazil in the 1980s and 1990s. In the northeast part of the country, well over 50% of Black women had been sterilized.
https://blackbraziltoday.com/were-20-million-afro-brazilian-women-sterilized/
In January 1981 George H.W. Bush was sworn in as Vice President under President Ronald Reagan.
In March 1981 Press Secretary James Brady observed: “Bush is functioning much like a co-president... He is included in almost all the meetings.”
And then, barely two months after the inauguration, President Reagan was shot and nearly killed on March 30, 1981.
Vice President George H.W. Bush took over as acting President.
http://tarpley.net/online-books/george-bush-the-unauthorized-biography/chapter-17-the-attempted-coup-detat-of-march-30-1981/
And thus the stage was set for the most far-reaching genocide in history, "our own peculiar Holocaust," carried out by the International Monetary Fund (based in Washington D.C. with the U.S. government having dictatorial voting power over its affairs), starting with the international Debt Crisis of 1982.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-15-2023/comment/11967315
The 'indifference' that we must avoid includes not being aware that German racism culminating in the Holocaust was inspired by the Eugenist movement in the United States.
Living on Long Island for years a few miles from the Cold Spring Harbor laboratories, I always assumed they were an academic and scientific operation. Only later did I learn that prior to 1939, it was the nexus of the eugenics movement in the United States, devoted to the pseudo-scientific documentation of white supremacy.
Yes. The discord entertained by not only the media but its consumers/creators(in the form of Internet-disseminated communications) serves to distract and exhaust and frustrate the energies of those who should be fighting today's threat. Focus on today's actors and actions, on what you want to preserve or to achieve in a democratic republic. "United we stand. Divided we fall."
Exactly right.
The fascist military was defeated but the Nazis won the war. When I was in missile tech ‘A’ school Werner von Braun was head of U.S. missile program.
Interesting observation. The Nazi support system be it companies like Bayer, Daimler or people like vonBraun were ‘cleansed’ of their role in creating Hitler’s mass destruction machine. Fast forward to recent times we see the names of the generals removed from military bases across the land. Why were they there in the first place? As many of HCR’s epistles have enlightened us, the North won victory on the battlefield, however racist policies have been imbedded in our country’s DNA!
The reason for the Confederate Generals names being on forts in the South is that these were all built in preparation of World War II, and the Congress was controlled through seniority by the "Solid South" - the names were given them to get them funded.
Barf! It’s all about white men, TC.
I was surprised at how cool he was.
Maybe he was just a product of his times.
Teneo , founded to replicate Federalist Society court capture for all aspects of American society - a Hawley, Stefanik, Republican Attorneys General Association, Republican State Leadership Committee and Turning Point USA et al production, funded by Charles Koch et al through Leonard Leo.
https://www.propublica.org/article/leonard-leo-teneo-videos-documents
Thanks for this, lin•!
It led me to Consumers Research, the non-profit that Leonard Leo has pumped with money to fight "woke capitalism," including companies who inflict climate-friendly investments on our country.
https://accountable.us/icymi-leonard-leo-is-funding-consumers-research-a-front-group-shilling-for-the-oil-and-gas-industry/
Thanks, Jeff. I had run across Consumers Research, but not looked into it. Accountable.us has some interesting writeups. Much obliged.
Yes, Leo's effecting the devolution of the once worthy Consumer Research reveals Leo et al's totalitarian vision for their clerical fascist state.
lin*, thank you for the link.
Really, the most pertinent news from that front. The ProPublica investigators have done a formidable job.
Republicans are fear mongering lies about armed IRS agents breaking down the doors of ordinary citizens - they don't want IRS to hire expert auditors to go through tax returns which run to thousands of pages. Does anyone know the extent of Leonard Leo's dark money network? Or how much goes into his own pocket?
Following the money is not that easy.
Olear wrote of the 1.6 billion dollar gift to Leo recently. It means money for hate in perpetuity
lin*, again thank you. I’d missed that story. Sometimes it seems that there’s a firehose of news.
Lin is my heroine because she “stalks” Leo in the best of ways.
ThankYou.
The real heroes are people at TrueNorth, ProPublica, AccountableUS, The Progressive, and even reporters for the NYTimes like Kenneth Vogel - who do the investigate heavy lifting.
The 'google Leonard Leo = Corrupt Courts' chalk outreach project is up and running for the Bar Harbor tourist season. Other activists have organized protests on Mt Desert Island throughout the year.
We can't live next door to Leo and say nothing. It is not even about Leo (in person a creepy little man) but about spotlighting his network and its far reaching destructive impact on democracy.
Ohhh…I love that the tourist season will be offset with these protests and chalk events! But, lin, you still are my heroine even if other people are involved. 💞
Fascinating update on Leonard Leo’s and his cronies’ new efforts to undermine democracy, Lin. Leo, along with Charles Koch, et al., fly under the radar too often. For the precursors to this, people can read Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains, Jane Mayer’s Dark Money, and Anne Nelson’s Shadow Network. Problem is too many voters remain unaware of how they’re being manipulated by these people and huge amounts of increasingly unlimited amounts of dark money.
Absolutely. It is why we all need to write Letters to the Editor to our local and national papers, to put the spotlight on Koch/Leo/GOP et al's far reaching grab. Hawley and Stefanik might well run for president some day. Yikes. A Stepford ticket much sleeker than Cruz et al.
How long did it take you to know that today's Letter -- highlighting the War Department's pamphlet for U.S. Army personnel in the European theater of World War II, on the subject of “FASCISM!” -- is the one to broadcast to Americans today, tomorrow and always.
'...hatred at the root of fascism “fulfills a triple mission.” By dividing people, it weakens democracy. “By getting men to hate rather than to think,” it prevents them “from seeking the real cause and a democratic solution to the problem.” By falsely promising prosperity, it lures people to embrace its security.' (the false promise of fascism). (Letter)
“Fascism thrives on indifference and ignorance,” the a series of pamphlets for U.S. Army personnel warned, Freedom requires “being alert and on guard against the infringement not only of our own freedom but the freedom of every American. If we permit discrimination, prejudice, or hate to rob anyone of his democratic rights, our own freedom and all democracy is threatened.” (Letter)
'Fascism, the U.S. government document explained, “is government by the few and for the few. The objective is seizure and control of the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the state.” “The people run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people.”
'Fascists understood that “the fundamental principle of democracy—faith in the common sense of the common people—was the direct opposite of the fascist principle of rule by the elite few,” it explained, “[s]o they fought democracy…. They played political, religious, social, and economic groups against each other and seized power while these groups struggled.”
'The War Department thought it was important for Americans to understand the tactics fascists would use to take power in the United States.' (Letter)
__'First, they would pit religious, racial, and economic groups against one another to break down national unity.'
___'Second, they would deny any need for international cooperation, because that would fly in the face of their insistence that their supporters were better than everyone else.'
"If we permit discrimination, prejudice, or hate to rob anyone of his democratic rights, our own freedom and all democracy is threatened.” (Letter)
What could be clearer than this pamphlet to alert us to what has been happening to America -- and role of WE the PEOPLE -- as citizens have to protect our country's experiment with Democracy?
Thank you HCR for this mighty warning from the US government's War Department. We are at war with Fascism in America today.
We certainly are, Fern, and have been ever since 1946 - just with most people not realizing it.
You have been broadcasting this truth of Fascism in America, today, yesterday -- always, here and on your Substack: 'Thats Another Fine Mess'! Thank you, TC.
Ty, Fern, yes to promulgating this now!!
Sad personal reflection: I was 11 days old when this pamphlet came out. 78 yrs later am living in the fascist State of Florida. Fascism bookends my life!!!!
Yes, Carol. I think many of us have known that hate, inequality and aspects of authoritarianism have existed within the USA from the beginning, with periods of heat and or light fluctuating. I followed HCR's lead. Highlighting the War Department's pamphlets about 'FASCISM!' now was her point. Various forms of communication about the presence and threats of Fascism must be presented to the American people TODAY, TOMORROW and CONTINUOUSLY!
“No party, no nation, no people can defend and perpetuate a constitutional republic if they accept leaders who have gone to war with the rule of law, with the democratic process, with the peaceful transfer of power, with the Constitution itself.” - Liz Cheney, giving the commencement address this weekend at her alma mater, Colorado College.
Gosh, if only her father would’ve adhered to all of that...
I'm glad she did. We don't have to agree on everything.
The authors of the pamphlet were under investigation?
Almost anyone in the government who could be identified as having "progressive" views was investigated by HUAC, or Red-baited in the press.
Republicans have been beating a dead fish for 90 years.
Alec Ferguson, the same kind of people (rich who consider themselves entitled to the nation's resources) have been at work to gather up all the country's resources since its founding. That's why the Senate has 2 members per state and don't get me started on the filibuster. These people go by the label Republicans (or even "No Labels"), but they were called by other names in the past. They want to steal everybody else blind. Consider this: what nation withholds from its poor to subsidize its economy? Question was asked by Sojourners magazine on Sojo.net.
This is true. However, the pamphlets were published by the war department, not by specific authors.
People LIKE those that authored the pamphlet were attacked by the Wealthy White Male Christian Nationalist Republican Rightwing. The entire State Department was under attack just as it was under Trump. The anti-democratic rightwing was responsible for getting “under god” appended to the pledge of allegiance so as to distinguish “patriotic” Americans from godless communists.
Not quite the same as under Trump. There was plenty of antisemitism in FDR's State Department. Look up Breckinridge Long, for instance. He played a major role in blocking efforts to rescue European Jews from Hitler.
P.S. "Under God" was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954. McCarthyism was still in full cry, and Eisenhower was president.
Eisenhower did not publicly oppose McCarthy. His opposition was carried out through "back channels". I don't say that to defend him, that's just historical fact.
FDR had his evil to deal with. The war slowed them down a tad but the persistence of evil is more than depressing
I’m sure the ant-Semites were not the people at State that McCarthy and the John Birch Sociiety were attacking
The authors got traced down.
There's a mind-chilling exhibit at Skirball now, focused on the Hollywood Red Scare https://www.skirball.org/museum/blacklist-hollywood-red-scare
Having met many of them when I first came to Hollywood, I know the stories. That is a good exhibit.
The movie "Trumbo" - a biopic of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, on of the Hollywood Ten who later broke the blacklist when Kirk Douglas hired him to write "Spartacus" under his own name in 1960 - is a very good dramatization of that whole time.
OR targeted by bad Perps like Nixon's attack(s) on Helen Douglas when he first ran for a CA political office.
Exactly. that was carried out many times in many ways, Nixon being only the most prominent.
For instance, in Texas in 1946, a dumbassed "patriot" ran for congress in East Texas and promised to get "the commies" out of educational institutions in Texas; he held up as an example of who he was going after with the police report of a man who was at the time the newly-appointed head of what would become the University of Houston's School of Electrical Engineering, who in 1938 had landed an airplane outside Harlingen TX in a storm, that was found to be carrying a load of military rifles to Mexico, for transport on to the Spanish Republicans (denounced as communists). With the sudden light of bad politics on the school, the contract for that man was canceled. He took his wife and 2 year old son back to Colorado, where he went back to work for the Federal agency he had worked for before the war, in a low-level position where he was unlikely to be noticed by any of the super-patriots.
My father.
Ok, wow.....TC. Again, hope you are busy typing your own story now that your latest air combat history Clean Sweep is out!!!
I often wonder why the fear of communism seems greater than the fear of fascism. WasStalin more frightening than Hitler? Both were monstrous!
Fascism didn't involve taking away the property of the rich. It involved protecting the rich. Still does.
And just about everyone wants to be rich and thinks that this is a shared goal.
However, Fascists are very particular about who is acceptable: maybe you can't be a rich Jew or a rich Ukrainian or a rich Pole or a rich lesbian or a rich Muslim or…. Fascists focus on the individual.
People need to be aware of what is going on with Fascism. History should prepare, even warn them -- if they were taught history and remember it. It's essential that voices are clear and in unison about what's happening now -- hate is personal. Violence is personal. Fascism is personal. Minorities might be useful fodder as soldiers on the front line, but they don't make the cut when the fighting is over. Pseudo allies that can't be counted on for a united stance just eat away at energy spent on trying to keep them on board. Fascism is an existential threat. Focus on the goal -- a country where you are free to be part of the government where laws are made by you and for you.
Exactly right!
Relativism about past actions and actors that is played up by both the Republicans and the media is a distraction from today's current issues. Nothing is gained by expending energy trying to dissect the past -- and much is lost when that energy could be invested in our current dilemma of the destruction of our democratic republic by Fascism. We need to concentrate our resources on highlighting what we have to lose, what we want to keep, what we want to continue improving.
It’s not simply Fascism trying to take root in the USA…. it’s “CHRISTIAN FASCISM”!!!
Yes, this reads like the R playbook that the party of death is still practicing today. To take things a little further back in history, I just finished the book A Fever in the Heartland which I have mentioned here before. The KKK mantra the in the 1920s was the same and useful to the Nazis. It focuses on Indiana, but mentions other states. The monstrous man behind the KKK in Indiana was brought down by a young woman who lived down the street from him in Indy and ended up being dying as the result of ending up with him on a trip to Chicago which only got as far as Hammond. He was found guilty of second degree murder and that began the end of the Klan's hold in Indiana and elsewhere. However, it's clear to me that these ideas remained and only needed another monster like death star to allow them to fester on the body politic once more and we have the politics we see today. And I agree that McCarthyism was just another form of this as well.
Thanx TC. I knew that 1945 "Antifa" screed could not go unchallenged and yours was the first post I saw since posting my own.
Sounds about right for the CONservatives.
Wow. Thank you, Heather, for once again using our own history to write such a poignant message. I hope every American reads it. They really must.
Time for that informative guide to go into reprint.
Absolutely!
As fast as possible. Full front page.
Was thinking it is more than time to heat up those old printing presses and drop pamphlets over Main Street, USA.
I agree Mary, I think this pamphlet is worthy of being republished. I’d like to carry one with me, like those pocket constitutions, to refer to & to help guide conversations with friends and family who are ensnared in the cultish web of Trumpism.
Check out Madeleine Albright's book: Fascism: A Warning.
She warned us, and she knew of what she spoke
Or more importantly to share with those who are ambivalent and/or apolitical.
I agree, Mary. Every American needs to read this.
Furthermore, make no mistake about it, show the direct connection to the current Republican party and name the culprits pushing this fascist agenda, such as Trump, DeSantis, and members of the freedom caucus.
Share this widely. I have shared it on all my social media.
But Americans won’t read it now and probably didn’t read it then. Upwards of 74 million voters have bought into facism lock, stock, and barrel, and those 74 million probably own at least 150 million stocks with barrels, unlocked.
New College of Florida (and the K-12 Sarasota Public Schools) are really a ground zero laboratory for seeing how fascism can play out within our country today - including how people rally to fight it! When I was a student at New College ('89-'94), I got bit by several bugs - the critical inquiry bug, the Aikido bug, and briefly the theater bug. Then, much more recently, on January 31, 2023, I got bit by the "it's time to fight the fascists" bug. Apparently it's going around - many alumns, students, faculty, parents of students/alums, and community members also caught it at the same time. I am so appreciative of this particular letter because it promises to help others get bit by the "it's time to fight the fascists" bug.
Not sure it's the right time for you? Consider watching this incredible, ~10 minute, address by Ukranian Vladimir Zelinskyy to the graduating class at Hopkins where I am a professor in the School of Education. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCjhy0tmyzI
I was very moved by the speech and the deep reminder of how important it is that we use our time well today to protect tomorrow.
If you are in the market for a shorter clip - this one was provided to the New College graduates during the alternative graduation that they raised funds for and hosted so that they could have a celebration On their Own Terms. The alternative graduation was a fabulous mix of serious and fun. This particular clip captures part of the very serious issues at play - and it is a great pairing with Heather's post on fascism:
https://vimeo.com/828156958/05dd2b18d6
Still want more information? This preliminary report by a special committee of the AAUP is worth a close read for those who want to understand more deeply what specifically has happened at New College and how it is connected with legislative actions that are taking away freedoms and fundamentally rewriting the relationship between public goods and private pockets.
https://www.aaup.org/file/Preliminary_Report_Florida.pdf
Time to stay informed and engaged before we lose the opportunity to do either.
It's not enough to "like" this post, just as it is not enough to vote... and go back to sleep.
Here is another message that needs spreading. Like HCR's timely reminder of why Americans fought and died on the beaches of Normandy... and what they saw with their eyes when they opened concentration camps like Bergen Belsen or Dachau.
Messages for all who still have eyes to see, ears to hear, hearts and minds to understand. And the courage to act on that understanding.
Ty Juliana
Thank you for those terrific sources. I was cheering at the alternative graduation. My husband lives in a Conservative bubble that denies the dangers being created in FL. He has bought into DeSantis message of getting rid of liberalism. He’s boycotting Target. I’d love to share New School’s and the AAUP report with him but he’d deny it’s legitimacy. He’s an educated and intelligent man. I’m going to check out your sources. Thank you!!
Fascism is here! It exists in the GOP-controlled states and exists in the Federalist Society-bought SCOTUS decisions!
Indeed!
I hope that even today, this pamphlet is a required lesson for all the US Armed Forces, at least in digital format. What’s more, it should be taught in schools. It is one of the best and most succinct definitions of fascism I have read!
I think you haven’t been watching what is happening in schools. It’s almost a complete take over by christian nationalists. Controlling books, curriculum, teachers. The public won’t vote. The chritso fascists are taking over now. On board are potential voucher systems that will gut the finances of public schools. Charter schools receive a huge chunk of public education dollars but instead form special interest groups. In Texas chaplains can replace counselors without a background check or certification. Seven mountain prophecy is already in play and teachers are struggling! Have this information studied in public schools? That is not going to be allowed. But still people won’t vote.
Oh, I have been watching alright and I am well aware of this. I can still hope that the definition of fascism in this pamphlet can be taught.
It won’t be in Texas.
During the Soviet Union era, in places such as East Germany and Eastern Europe, there was a system known as "samizdat", whereby copies of banned books were passed hand to hand by clandestine means. In some cases, books were deemed so important that they were copied by hand and passed around among trusted friends.
Or Florida
At least it's unlikely to be allowed in schools where it is forbidden to talk seriously about slavery. Let alone racism.
Let alone, even saying "gay".
a.k.a. slave state sociopaths. they are anti-christian.
Your comment on Florida schools' book banning and the comment on "samizdat" books reminded me - The Brooklyn Public Library offers a free library e-card to out of state students. If you know of students ANYWHERE who want to read without restrictions refer them to this:
https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/books-unbanned
The MAGAts always vote, others not so much
A few years ago while writing an essay I found the definition of fascism to be "the control of the government by corporations through a dictator." Nationalism, racism, and control of the media were methods or strategies for control. I looked for that definition online lately and I can't find it. How far down the rabbit hole are we already?
I heartedly applaud the president's viewpoint. Having the knowledge and experiences learned/gained in 80 some years can not be overlooked. I say this as an 86-year-old man. So, bring it on... I for one will do what I can, which I fear isn't much, to keep the fires lit by Biden burning.
Now about the War Department pamphlet, the true meaning of such words as fascism, communism and even religion is not fully known by the majority. This booklet brought to us by HCR is valuable and should be shared in every school, newspaper or any other media outlet. Thank you, Heather.
Living in a school for emotionally disturbed children on campus of The University of Chicago in 1955, I was given The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank by a survivor of Dachau and Buchenwald.. The School was The Orthogenic School. Its director was Bruno Bettelheim. He was the co-author of Dynamics of Prejudice with Morris Janowitz, required reading of senior staff American forces by General Dwight David Eisenhower... five star general and head of SHAPE that came before NATO.
I slept in The School from Monday, January 9th, 1950 to June 26, 1956. I later worked there and was asked to run The School more than once.
My parents took the family to a dude ranch the summer of 1955... and I joined for a few weeks. I was an excellent rider. The Bar JD was in Cody, Wyoming. I met Gigi Pearson at that ranch... she was my age... attending Miss Porter’s School in Connecticut. Her father was advertising director at Mademoiselle Magazine. They lived on the North Shore of Long Island. She asked me to escort her to the Cotillion Dances in New York City - that Fall. I asked my mother if I could learn to dance and get the clothing needed. She wrote me that I would learn to dance at Arthur Murray’s and that DePinna’s would dress me. Her letter had a PS: Sandy, you will be able to attend these dances, but your father would not be welcome... I asked Dr. B, as he was called: what is she talking about? He educated me. He said, your mother is telling you that your father is Jewish and you are not. I was a baptized Episcopalian, her religion, not my father’s religion. I was confused. What is Jewish, I asked. He was astonished. He knew our family story. In rebellion against her prejudiced German Lutheran mother, my mother had married three Jews, my father was number three. She married the first in seven days in Florida, and that marriage lasted 4 years. Monroe Hess was a family friend, a left handed golfer with a wealthy mother. I asked about the dances. Dr. B explained Restricted. Jews were not welcome. I called Gigi Person at a pay phone at Miss Porters to explain, saying that I would not attend dances where my dad might not be welcome. I offered alternatives, live music at the top of the RCA building and elsewhere... She said she would respond to my invitation - I never heard from her again.
In Wall Street, my second firm was White Weld & Company. In my first week I learned that the firm had held a partners’ meeting to decide if they would offer a permanent job to Mildred Bergman, a part-time secretary that was Jewish. She is 95 today.
Morgan Stanley might have had one Jewish partner at that point, but I doubt it.
We lived in Short Hills, New Jersey. Peter Hager, general partner of Goldman, Sachs asked if I would like to join the Short Hills Club as an Episcopalian. I passed. Never heard from him again.
William E. Simon, then a Salomon Brothers & Hutzler general partner, later Treasury Secretary, asked if we might join Beacon Hill in Summit, saying he was board member, and we would be admitted. When we were blackballed, Bill and Carol Simon resigned with their 7 children, and he asked if we would like to take crack at Morris County. I passed...
Fascism is sweeping the planet - and the United States. The Republicans are now fascist, plain as day.
When I am around antisemites, I am Jewish. When I am surrounded by UJA Zionists that reject me, I am Christain. My wife’s mother was born Jewish. Her father was Nobel James Franck. He fingered Hitler as a menace in 1933 and fled to form the Manhattan Project for Roosevelt with Enrico Ferme.
In truth, we do not bother with established institutions. We find them exclusion based like the country clubs and many neighborhoods.
Fred Trump’s rental units were marked RESTRICTED.
The ultra Jews of Israel are fascist in their approach to civil liberties.
Good Arab citizens of Israel are worried about their country - and they love living there as citizens.
Sandy, thanks for the fascinating recap. In a small sense, spiritually at least, perhaps I am in your club.
Your last sentences are spot on. Doesn't it really come down to one basic premise? We can look at our fellow humans as fellow travelers to enjoy, live with, compete with and fight for and protect. Or, we can break down humanity into Us and Them.
I was born and raised a WASP. But in my community, the Jewish kids were smart. The girls were especially attractive to me. Their parents were generous and welcoming. Perhaps that's why I married three Jewish women (consecutively, of course :) It's a long story for another time.
But at age 50, I found the "girl of my dreams". Her Dad was a WWII vet of Ashkenazi heritage. Her Mom is a 96 year old wonder - a Sephardic Jew. The food from both worlds is wonderful. The family welcomes everyone to their table - regardless of faith or heritage. It's possible that they hug too much.
My wife thinks there is some Jewish blood in me somewhere - perhaps a distant Dutch ancestor who converted to survive? Who knows? I hope so. I am proud to have a mezuzha at the front door. It's not about religion - I am agnostic. It's about honoring a culture. It's about love and unity.
It's not about religion - I am agnostic. It's about honoring a culture. It's about love and unity. You stated my feelings better than I ever could. Thank you.
What a bio…so much bull Schitt ground into our very existence.
This should be sent to every American. At least all the Democratic Representatives and Senators should send it to all their constituents.
That is a great idea.
Something to consider, Michael. I agree that increasing awareness of this pamphlet is a good idea. What bothers me, though, is the passive wording of your plea. "This should...." and ".....should send it..." It strikes me that it is easy to come up with "shoulds" for somebody else to carry out. I would posit that job is ours. In whatever ways come up in our lives, we need to speak up, reach out, make the pamphlet available, or paraphrase it in the context of local politics. Whatever works in our own lives. But WE are the ones who need to do the work of helping our fellow-citizens grasp what fascism and authoritarianism is, and the signs of it in our lives and communities as well as nationally. There is a man on my town's selectboard who thinks of himself as a progressive, but whose behavior and attitude is that of an authoriatarian. He is being called out- not by calling him names, but by pointing out the nature of his behavior. That's where we begin.
Yes..
Indeed!
I have a feeling it would be dismissed as lies & indoctrination, much like the Radical Right’s reaction to the reading of the Declaration of Independence on NPR on Independence Day.
If any Republicans read this sobering letter, the experience will feel like gazing into a mirror and seeing who they really are. Of course many already know they're fascists but would never admit it publicly. Trump's bizarre ramblings today checked all the boxes. DeSantis? I'm surprised he didn't give the Nazi salute when during a Fox News interview he pledged to destroy "leftism" in two terms as president.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/donald-trump-marks-memorial-day-152303187.html
https://www.mediaite.com/politics/ron-desantis-declares-hes-running-for-president-to-destroy-leftism/
No, they won’t admit it publicly, they will blame others for it. Classic trick from the fascists’ playbook: cry “murderer!” whilst you yourself are holding a knife covered in blood.
I have read a trick of a pickpocket whose slight of hand is noticed is the yell loudly "Thief! Thief! and then vanish in the confusion. Perhaps they lifted a copy of the "GOP Playbook".
Clarence Thomas's patron appears to be a serious fan of dictators.
As, of course, His Trumpness is as well.
The Nazi salute would have been right on target.
Wow! Right on time! Exactly the definition we all need to read and learn so that we can share our thoughts and especially the history of WWII educational pamphlets informing our armed forces of what this word ‘fascism” actually means... how fascism is ‘created’ ...
always thank you for enlightening all of your readers... I will make copies of this particular Letter from an American ti give to folks along my path.
The word fascist harks back to Roman Empire imagery of a bundle of sticks, that are weak individually, yet strong together. The notion of stronger together is innocuous enough, but its connection to the Roman Empire, especially in Mussolini's Italy, is one of those make-wherever-great-again supremacist appeals to a violent yet idealized past that promotes the "glory" that is despotism.
Great that people are capable of larger products together, but the devil is in whether the cohesion is forced or largely voluntary, and whose interests are being served. And, of course, whether it's aims are productive or predatory.
Sinclair Lewis in 1935 wrote “It Can’t Happen Here” envisioning the successful rise of a Hitler analog in the US and the descent into authoritarian rule and military coups. With little effort it could be updated as a bitter parody of our contemporary predicament.
Wasn't Hitler on the cover of a popular US magazine in the 1930's?
Hitler appeared on the cover of TIME on multiple occasions — most famously perhaps on Jan. 2, 1939, when he was named Man of the Year. https://time.com/5573720/hitler-world-influence/
TL ceo Henry Luce was exactly, precisely, what you think he was, in spades. In plain view. He was one of them.
Time Life the same.
Adolf Hitler was not hated in London, he was truly admired, and he was the idol and darling of the pilot of The Spirit of St. Louis, no?
Aviator Charles Lindeberg was no friend of the Jews. He was an antisemitic American hero and pure fascist. Adored. Admired. An idol.
FDR turned around boats loaded with Jews fleeing Europe... with Eleanor Roosevelt, his wife and cousin, pleading with him - and those Jews were returned to certain extermination...
FDR feared American fascism... Michigan Senator Vandenberg - an isolationist - did not want us to support Churchill or fight for Europe v. Hitler.
The United States was, and is, a deeply prejudiced nation, with tolerance scarce and racial hatreds and insecurity raging.
We’ve been compromised since the Mayflower.
First class History professor HCR studiously avoids racial hatred and the incredible pain felt by those with Negro features - like the plague.
Her Boston College campus is an example of what can go wrong - in history.
Tokenism rules today at Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson’s home. He was a fascist.
Fascism is public enemy number one; intolerance provides the energy.
Nothing like UJA and Zionism. Never Again is justified. 2,000 years of antisemitism is fact. Screwed up feelings about color and hair are a bad joke.
The Tower of Babel is God’s punishment. Am I a believer?
Don’t Look Up is the metaphor. It’s real.
Love and tolerance are taught at home, might be taught on campus - but not as a required course.
Love Is Not Enough was about The School. That was Bruno Bettelheim’s best and most successful.
And honest.
S B, your story is compelling to say the least! I fear, however, that when you remark "The United States was, and is, a deeply prejudiced nation, with tolerance scarce and racial hatreds and insecurity raging.
We’ve been compromised since the Mayflower" you are remarking on the cost of a truly open society which must accept and tolerate those who bear such prejudices while doing our best to "convert" those prejudices with lived experiences, living the freedoms we preach.
Sophistry rules in those tolerant of fascism. Mark Twain saw most of it clearly.
I publish my name. My history. JohnM upstateNY hides.
S B what is it you'd like to know about me which might alter your perception of my comment? You evidently perceive my concern for tolerance in an open society as mere sophistry. As a teaching psychiatrist for more than 40 years I have spent my life working to understand and work with those who have aberrant or self-destructive ideas and behaviors and have worked to teach new psychiatrists the same. I am so sorry it comes across as sophistry. But then, the sophists WERE originally teachers in ancient Greece. Perhaps I have somehow fallen into false or misleading arguments in my teaching. What is it about tolerance for those with different aspirations and opinions you find false or misleading? I certainly don't want them elected to office or dictating what I do or think.
Thank you. I was unaware of the Times cover of 1939. I was thinking of another cover with his image on the full page. At least by 1939 he was being recognized for being evil.
Yes.
Good grief! Appalling...
THIS kind of history documentation is why I am a subscriber. I wish I could get everyone I know to subscribe. Or at least READ when I share....
THANK YOU, Heather!
Everything we know is a memory or a record. At the present moment, we are learning, but we understand by applying what we know, how things worked up till now. This even can inform better-than-random guesses about the future.
I totally agree with you Denee. I subscribe to OUR TIME a dating service for the over 50 crowd. I had a lunch date with a nice guy and was amazed learning he is a HCR subscriber....great conversation followed!
To overcome evil, humor can be powerful. Here's the 1942 Looney Tunes cartoon that ridicules facism: "The Ducktators" - Spoiler - "Hitler" duckling emerges from the egg with a "Sieg Heil!" https://forgottenfiles.substack.com/p/the-ducktators-1942
Peter As a kid I remember seeing Charlie Chaplin’s THE GREAT DICTATOR which mocked Hitler, Mussolini, and fascism. I thought that it was very funny, though I was too young to know much about Hitler and Mussolini.
I wonder if Disney might make a sequel to this Chaplin movie, perhaps with Mickey Mouse in Charlie’s role. I would buy tickets for its premiere in Orlando (and/or proximate to Mar a Lago.)
Wouldn’t that be great!
Not to love The Donald is a big disgrace.
We cofefe, cofefe, right in The Donald's face...
“The Ducktators” is a fitting companion to “The Darkest Hour.”
https://www.netflix.com/us/title/80189214?s=i&trkid=0&vlang=en&clip=81155762
A novel pairing!
I am familiar with Norman McCabe’s “Tokio Jokio” (1943), but had
never seen “The Ducktators.” Thanks for your post.
If you have any Apple devices, you might like my free iBook about US in WWII. Filled with old movies from the era. “Why We Fight: WWII and the Art of Public Persuasion” https://books.apple.com/us/book/why-we-fight/id569278505?ign-mpt=uo%3D4
Well the reverse is true for me. Thanks for the tip!
I'd never heard of these pamphlets before. Though written during world War Two , they are so relevant to stuff going on today !
General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, likened Donald Trump’s effort to hold on to power after the 2020 election to Adolf Hitler, saying the president was preaching “the gospel of the Führer” with his lies about the election being stolen, according to a new book by two Washington Post reporters.
(...)
Still, Milley was disturbed by the sight of Trump supporters rallying to his cause in November, calling them “Brownshirts in the streets.” Leonnig and Rucker wrote that Milley “believed Trump was stoking unrest, possibly in hopes of an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act and call out the military.” The general likened the U.S. to Germany’s fragile Weimar Republic in the early 1930s. “This is a Reichstag moment,” he said, referring to the arson attack on Germany’s Parliament that Hitler used as a pretext to assume absolute power and destroy democracy.
On January 6, Milley watched with disgust as Trump addressed his supporters. Soon after Trump finished speaking, a violent mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to disrupt the certification of the presidential election by a joint session of Congress — and many promised to return for Biden’s inauguration. “These guys are Nazis, they’re boogaloo boys, they’re Proud Boys. These are the same people we fought in World War II,” Milley said a week after the attack on the Capitol.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/07/i-alone-can-fix-it-mark-milley-likened-trump-to-hitler.html
I hadn't heard of them either! I also hadn't seen this public service announcement video about fighting fascim. It isn't brief! But it is an interesting window into another way these points were driven home: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8K6-cEAJZlE
How delightful, I seem to have a fan or fans among the trolls and gremlins. Both a message, a first edited version and a remake thereof... down Orwell's "memory hole"...?
I wrote of failed fascistic politicians who found tax-free success and a captive flock. Ultra-Elmer-Gantrys all, won't be satisfied by any wealth, any power.
Like the Fisherman's Wife of the folk tale, they want to become God. Like her and her wretched spouse, they'll end up in the ditch they crawled out of... dragging untold millions down with them.
Love this "isn't brief" video. Thank you, Juliana, for sharing.
Thanks, Juliaana. No matter how many ways I have seen this warning portrayed (being a post-war child of a veteran), this video was chilling. Because we're here again. We just don't seem to learn.
The point is… the Republican Party led by Trump, McConnell and McCarthy is a Fascist party. We have our very own fascism here. Fascist are authoritarians; Trump thinks he is a god. We fought and defeated them in World War II; we must defeat them at home. Our democracy depends upon it.
A god? Can anyone reading an all-caps tweet starting HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY consider the author a candidate for POTUS? Maybe he uses all caps so often because he thinks his admirers may have trouble reading lower case.
I rather think that under all the childish drama, Trump deeply knows he is a fraud, and that's why he is so thin skinned. The golden spoon he was born with has allowed him to be a perfect asshole and be admired for it. He is always desperately (even on Memorial Day) distracting from the fact that he is naked, and that it's not a pleasing sight.
Or have trouble reading, period?
I am remembering the Ides of March and Julius Ceasar being stabbed 23 times by senators who felt his dictatorship was undermining the Roman republic.
Yes Linda, stabbed only 23 times despite 66 senators pledging their fealty to the plot!
But Caesar was ambitious…
Thanks so much. Great column. Can copies of the Army’s publication be re-printed and dropped over GOP areas?
I'll chip in for the costs!