A Vast Right Wing Conspiracy: The Secret Origins of the Patriot Movement Part II

Welcome to the second installment in my examination of the origins of the so-called Patriot movement, a phrase often applied to tax protestors, sovereign citizens, militia types and fringe Christian sects driven by a conspiratorial (and frequently apocalyptic) world view. It is the contention of this series, and future sequels that will follow it, that this movement was hardly some type of grassroots, anti-Establishment challenge to The Power That Be, but was in fact a PSYOP and terror campaign that had its origins in a World War I-era industrial security network developed by the FBI and military intelligence.

While officially disbanded in the wake of WWI both the military and the FBI would encourage the network's architect, General Ralph Van Deman, to revive it in a private capacity by the end of the 1920s via financial support. Over time General Van Deman put together a nation-spanning intelligence network that combined reports provided by the military and FBI; corporate security departments, private detective firms, and the American Legion; and most likely superpatriot groups such as the American Coalition of Patriotic Societies and Church League of America.

Van Deman

This network became especially important in the wake of WWII when the Cold War began to heat up. The American Security Council (ASC), which brought together various individuals and groups affiliated with Van Deman's work, seemingly became the nexus for this network. Superficially the ASC was dominated by "former" FBI men, but it also featured ample amounts of "former" military and CIA personnel in addition to more arcane groups. I chronicled the rise of the ASC, superficially billed as a "think tank," here, here, here and here.

The ASC included members and groups who would become deeply involved with the modern day Patriot movement, as did the World Anti-Communist League (WACL). The WACL is another self-described "think tank," though more international in nature. It brought together various far right groups from across the globe, more than a few of them with ties to "former" Nazis and their collaborators as well as their Imperial Japan counterparts. Indeed, it would effectively become the major international front for fascism in the second half of the twentieth century.

Beyond this, the WACL would also become one of the largest drug cartels in the world by the 1960s, if not sooner. It would remain as such well into the 1980s, with various member organizations likely continuing in this capacity for years after the WACL's heyday was long past.

The WACL also established its own intelligence network that would offer military and financial assistance to various far right regimes the world over. By the 1970s, with the emergence of Operation Condor (an assassination and terror program supposedly started by the Chilean DINA, but which included participants from Italian neo-fascists, anti-Castro Cubans, and other groups associated with the WACL), it would seem that the WACL had gone even beyond this and had become actively engaged in the so-called "Dirty Wars" that would ravage Latin American for decades to come. During the 1980s the WACL network would play a major role in the Reagan regime's "private aid" network that helped destabilize Central America and lent a hand in Afghanistan and southern Africa as well. All of this was documented extensively in my examination of the WACL, which can be found here, here, here and here.

the ASC and the WACL comprised two key pieces of Ronnie's Mighty Ray Gun

The modern day Patriot movement had very close ties to both the ASC and the WACL as well as the US intelligence community, ties that will be expanded upon throughout this series. In the first installment I addressed several of the major figures who influenced the movement's ideology (especially its obsession with some type of communist conspiracy) as well as dispelling several common myths about the movement (i.e., it's common claims of poverty and legal harassment). At the end of the installment I began to trace the Patriot movement's origins in earnest, which I shall now expand upon.

While the Patriot movement has come to encompass a wide range or groups and personages, the bulk of its ideology can effectively be traced to three major sources: the John Birch Society, the Liberty Lobby, and the Posse Comitatus. These three "organizations" (this is a lose application of the word, especially concerning the Posse) would effectively mold the modern Patriot movement into what it is today. Let us briefly consider the ideological underpinnings of these three strands.

The John Birch Society was easily the most mainstream of these organizations, with the bulk of its efforts geared toward conventional lobbying techniques (i.e., letter writing campaigns) and education. The JBS is effectively responsible for much of the libertarian-oriented wing of the far right – their chief adversary was communism, which they perceived the United States as falling prey to. The JBS raged against everything from trade unions to fluoride in the water. The Federal Reserve system and the graduated income tax were specially sore points, which they saw as evidence behind a communist conspiracy amongst America's elite.

The Liberty Lobby was a little more radical, but not quite to the extent that some of its critics have long charged it as being. Like the JBS, the Liberty Lobby mainly concerned itself with "educating" the public and occasionally trying to field a political candidate even if its ideology was more extreme. While there was much ideological overlap between the John Birch Society and the Liberty Lobby, the Lobby was openly racist (unlike the JBS), with a special obsession with the Jews. They also perceived a communist conspiracy at play, but they viewed it through a prism of race, with the Jews at the center of the conspiracy. Virtually all of the modern day "historical revisionism" concerning the Holocaust derived from this wing.

Finally there is the Posse Comitatus, which was for years the most militant wing of the Patriot movement. The Posse, which was always closely associated with Christian Identity "theology," made some efforts at educating the public, but it was generally interested in action more direct (in terms of legalities as well as violence) than elections. It is from this wing that much of the modern day militia movement as well as the sovereign citizen ideology derives.

For our purposes here we shall start with the Liberty Lobby, as the forces behind the John Birch Society and the Posse Comitatus were more closely related (though all three wing shared a loose affiliation). The alleged architect behind the Liberty Lobby was mysterious Willis Carto.

"Founded in 1958 by Willis Carto, the Liberty Lobby emerged out of a long tradition of explicitly anti-Jewish conspiracy theorizing among a group of white supremacist intellectuals. Little is known about Carto's personal background, but aside from his attraction to esoteric racialist tomes like Francis Parker Yockey's Imperium, Carto was also committed to mass-based organizing. He was an early participant in the Congress of Freedom, which drew racist and grassroots anticommunist activist together for a series of high-profile national conventions. In San Francisco in 1955, Carto organized the Congress of Freedom's conference against U.S. participation in the United Nations.

"That same year, Carto also began publishing a monthly newsletter, Right, which promoted the activities of a wide range of right-wing groups. (Carto, for example, heralded the establishment of William F. Buckley's National Review in 1955; years later, Carto and Buckley would sue each other for libel.) Early issues of Right focused on the potential of small and obscure right-wing parties... Right also reported admiringly on the Citizens Councils. Carto used the newsletter to try to synthesize the thinking of grassroots anticommunist groups with theories of white supremacy. Carto's rhetorical approach was to frame the problems of Soviet 'expansionism' and anti-colonial national liberation movements as racial, not political and economic, in their origins and implications...

"Besides stressing white supremacy, Carto also promoted the conspiratorial analysis of world events. He drew his reader's attention, for example, to the purported role of U.S. elites in the spread of anti-Western, 'communist' subversion."

(The Roads to Dominion, Sara Diamond, pgs. 85-86)

young Willis

Of the Carto/Liberty Lobby world view, Diamond would go on to note that:

"In the 1980s, Liberty Lobbyists would earn reputations as promoters of holocaust revisionism and for the electoral career of Klansman David Duke. During the late 1960s and 1970s, however, the Lobby focused, among other issues, on opposing United States-Soviet consular treaties, school busing to achieve racial integration, and income taxes. As with the Birch Society, the Lobby's agenda was consistent with right-wing support for militarism and traditionally unjust race relations, and opposition to the state's redistribution of wealth and expansion of civil rights."

(ibid, pg. 149)

Due to the Lobby's long-time support of Holocaust revisionism (Carto co-founded the Institute for Historical Review) it still receives praise from leading Jewish conspiracy theorists. Self-described revisionist historian Michael A. Hoffman II recently cited the path Carto helped set him on, noting:

"As a heretic these many years (I was a voracious and reasonably precocious reader as a kid, and 44 years ago, in 1969, I stumbled upon a booklet published by Willis Carto, The Myth of the Six Million -- my career as a thought criminal was launched)..."

Hoffman

This would seem to insinuate that Carto was somehow a subversive figure.While this may have been true to certain elements of the "Establishment," Carto had long-standing ties to individuals affiliated with powerful members of the US intelligence community. One such individual was Roger Pearson.

Pearson, despite his longstanding ties to blatantly racist organizations, would gain a certain degree of respectability by the mid-1970s, years after he had already begun his association with Carto. It was at this point that his ties to powerful establishment figures became evident, most notably via his links to powerful conservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, the American Security Council, and the World Anti-Communist League. In point of fact, the British-born Pearson would briefly become the head of the American branch of the WACL in the 1970s when he also served as the organization's chairman.

"Pearson moved to the U.S. in 1965, merging his magazine Northern World with a Willis Carto publication to form Western Destiny, which Pearson edited for a short time. The magazine had over two dozen racialists and anti-Semites on its masthead, including Austin App and C.M. Goethe, honorary president of the American Coalition of Patriotic Societies. Pearson published four monographs in 1966 that represent the core of his ideas. One monograph, titled Race and Civilization, was 'based on Professor Hans F. K. Gunther's Racial Elements of European Civilization. Gunther was a top Third Reich racial theoretician and Pearson associate from the Northern League...

"Pearson's monograms are still offered by neo-Nazi booksellers today. The Wall Street Journal quoted Pearson as saying 'I'm not ashamed of anything I've said or written.'

"Pearson moved to Washington in 1975. Within a year his Council on American Affairs was sponsoring seminars and publishing monograms with persons such as Edwin Fuelner, president of the Heritage Foundation; Ray Cline, former C.I.A. deputy director; and others who would later become high officials of the Reagan Administration. His Council also became the U.S. chapter of the World Anti-Communist League (WACL), an international network including fascist, followers of the authoritarian Korean cult-leader Rev. Sun Myung Moon, and neo-Nazis.

"Pearson became the editor of the American Security Council's Journal of International Relations and served on the board of the ASC's American Foreign Policy Institute. His journal co-editors were James Jesus Angleton, former C.I.A. deputy director for counterintelligence, and Robert C. Richardson III, the retired Air Force general who worked in the Air Force's Politico-Military covert operations branch. At the time he was working with the ASC and Pearson, Richardson was also aiding the Wilson-Terpil operations to Libya, involving secret gunrunning and explosive transfers. He was also active in various ASC-spawned groups, such as the Security and Intelligence Fund and Coalition for Peace Through Strength. The Council of American affairs is also a member of the Coalition for Peace Through Strength.

"Pearson was a member of the editorial board of Policy Review, the monthly Heritage Foundation magazine, during this period. In 1977, Heritage officials reciprocated, joining Pearson's Journal of Social and Economic Studies. When Pearson decided to host the 1978 World Anti-Communist League (WACL) conference in Washington, D.C., he was well established with American and European Nazi networks, as well as the far right of the Republican Party and the New Right. The WACL meeting was not a total success for Pearson, however. The Washington Post warned of 'The Fascist Specter' behind the WACL and highlighted the conference participation of an Italian fascist party, American neo-Nazis, and Pearson's own racialist background. Pearson's name soon disappeared from the Policy Review masthead. However, ASC president John Fisher, who addressed the WACL meeting, did not drop Pearson from the American Foreign Policy Institute board."

(Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party, Russ Bellant, pgs. 60-61) 

Pearson is on the left

There's a lot of significant information above. It's interesting to note that Pearson's association with the League seems to have coincided with the organization taking on more militant activities. The notorious Operation Condor, a terror and assassination program usually credited to the Chilean DINA and other intelligence agencies of the Southern Cone region, was likely coordinated in part by the WACL. During Pearson's tenure openly fascist and even violent European groups such as the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI) and Ordine Nuovo were gleefully welcomed into the League and possibly conscripted into Condor along with long time allies such as anti-Castro Cubans.

MSI (top) and Ordine Nuovo (bottom) banners 

 Pearson was eventually forced out of the WACL by the end of the 1970s when his open racism became to much of a public relations liability. He was eventually replaced by General John Singlaub. Publically Singlaub brought a kinder, less openly fascistic face to the League but he also took the League's militancy under Pearson to its logical conclusion. Eventually Singlaub would be tapped to head the Reagan Administration's "private aid" network that was so crucial for funding the various "unconventional wars" the regime supported in Central America, Afghanistan and southern Africa. More information on the WACL's involvement with Condor and the "private aid" network can be found here.

General Singlaub

Pearson's ties with the two above-mentioned CIA men, Ray Cline and James Jesus Angleton, are also most significant. Cline was a part of the old OSS "China Cowboy" clique that forged close ties with Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang (KMT) regime in Taiwan. Chiang was one of the chief architects of the WACL. He was also one of the largest drug lords in the world for decades. Cline was a very close friend of Chiang Ching-Kuo, Chiang Kai-shek's son. Cline would assist Chiang in the founding of the Political Warfare Cadres Academy in Taiwan, an institution that trained more than a few Central American death squads in its day.

Cline

Then there's James Jesus Angleton, the man upon whom Matt Damon's character in The Good Shepherd is modeled. Angleton was one of the most powerful figures in the history of the CIA and long suspected of playing a key role in establishing the Agency's ties to drug trafficking (a topic I briefly discussed here). That Pearson would be a co-editor on an ASC publication with such an intelligence super star is indicative of the type of mojo Pearson had behind the scenes. More evidence of this is supplied by the fact that he received a letter from Ronnie Raygun himself that commended Pearson for all of his hard work.

"The letter from President Reagan is a source of pride in Roger Pearson's small office in downtown Washington, D.C.

You are performing a valuable service in bringing to a wide audience the work of leading scholars who are supportive of a free enterprise economy, a firm and consistent foreign policy and a strong national defense.

Your substantial contributions to promoting and upholding those ideals and principles that we value home and abroad are greatly appreciated.

"The letter had been a boon for Pearson, who used it in soliciting donations and subscriptions to his magazine and to show the approval of conservatives, up to and including the president, of his myriad activities...

"In fairness to Reagan, the president was probably not aware of some of Roger Pearson's past activities. Yet when White House officials were told Pearson's background, they neither disavowed nor repudiated the letter. What the president had done was offer his support – and provided a very useful fund-raising tool – to one of the most persistent neo-Nazis in the world."

(Inside the League, Scott & John Lee Anderson, pgs. 92-93)

Apparently the "thought-crime" rabbit hole behind Carto includes presidential endorsements.

And make no mistake about it folks, Pearson and Carto were close associates for years. Indeed, Carto was chiefly responsible for bringing Pearson's ideas to an American audience. Throughout the 1960s Carto was the chief publisher of Pearson's writings in this country. But this is only scratching the tip of this partnership, which has quite murky origins indeed. You see, Carto and Pearson first officially began collaborating in the late 1950s when both were involved with the mysterious Northern League.

"Carto's connections in the segregationist right led him to join a mysterious organization called the Northern League for Pan-Nordic Friendship. Both Earnest Sevier Cox and William Stephenson were also Northern League (NL) members. Cox addressed a Northern League gathering called the Teutoburger Moot in July 1959 in Detmold, Germany; Stevenson left the southern-U.S. branch of the Northern League operate out of The Virginian's office and served as an assistant editor of the Northern League magazine Northern World. (Besides Northern World, the NL also published the Northlander out of its Scottish headquarters. After Carto joined, the League's West Coast headquarters became Right.)

"The Northern League was officially launched in March 1958. A Scotsman named Alastair Harper ran its European wing from League headquarters in Dunfermline, Scotland. The League's founder and Central Organizer was Roger Pearson, an Englishman who at the time of the League's creation was living in Calcutta, India. Pearson and Harper also wrote for Oswald Mosley's high-brow fascist publication The European in the mid-1950s.

"The NL quickly established branches throughout the United States and Europe, including a cell for the Western part of the United States created in 1958 through Right. In 1959, Roger Pearson went on an extensive tour of the United States that included stops in New York, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, and New Orleans. His visit to the States were part of an NL organizing drive that had already taken him to Teheran, Istanbul, Vienna, London, and Scandinavia. A highlight of the American trip was the Alphafest Moot' run by Carto, the NL's San Francisco Alpha Group Organizer. The Moot was a three-day program of talks and seminars, and included an outdoor picnic in California's Redwood country.

"Pearson's biopolitical arguments were reflected in a 1960 essay by Carto ... entitled 'Cultural Dynamics: Why Do Civilizations Decline and What Can Be Done About It?' Carto believed that, although The Decline of the West had accurately chronicled the fall of great civilizations, Spangler had failed to supply a 'why' for the decline. Cultural dynamics argued that the collapse of empires was the result of an influx of alien ideals, religions, and peoples. Its adherents advanced a policy of 'strict anti-imperialism' against the 'disastrous trend towards cosmopolitan formlessness and disintegration of all different cultures, races, and nations.'

"Yet it was the vision of a noble future that most inspired Carto: In an all-italic paragraph, he wrote: 'Is men perhaps a bridge to something finer, greater, handsomer, more noble than ourselves? Yes, the dreams that our genetic and cultural unit – our people – my dream began with Darwin and Nietzsche.' In another italicized sentence, he asserted: 'What assists the process of evolution is good; what assists the process of  devolution is bad.' Carto, who called his mix of 'ethical humanism' and genetic utopia 'Evotism,' concluded his essay: 'I am an Evotist.'

(Dreamer of the Day, Kevin Coogan, pgs. 469-470)

And what is an "Evotist?" Coogan seems to imply that it is a follower of the Italian fascist and occultist Baron Julius Evola, a prospect that should dramatically arch the eyebrows of regular readers of this blog. As was addressed during my examination of the World Anti-Communist League, there is compelling evidence that Baron Evola was one of the major figures in the post-WWII fascist underground. The Baron had been an asset of the SD, the chief intelligence arm of the SS, throughout the war and seems to have been deeply involved in setting up an underground for the Nazi regime once it was evident that the war was lost.

"... Well before the end of World War II, the intelligence and financial networks of the Third Reich were hard at work preparing underground networks to survive the coming Allied occupation. Escape lines to South America and the Middle East were organized. Bank accounts were created in Switzerland and other neutral nations to finance the underground with plunder the Nazis had looted from occupied Europe. But how was this secret empire to be managed, except by a virtually invisible 'government in exile'?

"For years Evola had been fascinated by knightly orders as expressions of the Kshatriya caste of warrior aristocrats. In the former structure of the SS, he saw the precursor to a new Ordenstaat, a State ruled by an Order. He also understood the great advantages provided by medieval orders of chivalry due to their transnational composition. Proceeding orders, like the Knights Templar and the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, were pan-European, the separate national sections... unified through a Council, presided over by a Grand Master. After the collapse of fascist state power, a new Order, an 'invisible college' of sorts, was needed not only to manipulate bank accounts and travel schedules, but to have policymaking functions. Nor could it simply be run under the auspices of the Vatican, since Evola believed that Rome's downfall had been caused by the acceptance of Christianity by the dominant faction of the Roman elite. The Emperor Constantine's official embrace of the 'gentle Nazarene' in 313 A.D. had accumulated, a hundred years later, in Alaric's sack of Rome. With the American chewing-gum imperials threatening in the West, and the new Hun sweeping in from the East, was the situation in 1945 really so different? The Order was a vessel for those 'Hermetic' elements of the Conservative Revolution, old ruling class, and new Nazi elite not entirely beholden to the political, cultural, and religious 'Guelf' wing of the European aristocracy, which remained ideologically loyal to the continued propagation of the ruling Christian mythology.

"This account of the origins of the Order is obviously speculative, and I advance it is hypothesis, not fact. Yet if I'm correct the SD really did have a need for Evola's unique talents. With his extensive knowledge of matters esoteric and occult; his fascination with secret societies and knightly Orders; his Waffen SS transnationalism; his ties to some of the highest figures in fascism, Nazism, and movements like the Iron Guard; and his loyal service to the SD, Baron Evola was a perfect candidate to help theorize a new underground Order. As the SD's equivalent of Albert Pike, the former Confederate Army general who designed the rituals for the Scottish Rite Masons in the late 1800s, Evola's task was to help create the inner organizational and ritual structure for the Grand Masters of a secret Shamballah whose financial nerve center was carefully hidden away in Swiss bank accounts."

"With the war rapidly coming to an end, however, the Order lacked the time to implement its plans. With support from the top RSHA leadership, a deception game was begun with both Allied intelligence and the Catholic Church. Utilizing Wall Street and Vatican fears of communism, some of Himmler's top cronies, like SS General Karl Wolff, became Damascus-road converts to a 'kinder, gentler' SS eager to establish friendly relations with both the Americans and the Holy See."

(ibid, pgs. 320-321)

Baron Evola

Coogan believed that the Northern League was a part of this "Order."

"The Northern League, then, appears to have been an activist branch of a pan-Europeanist faction inside the Fascist International...

"...  a full evaluation of the Northern League remains incomplete. What does seem clear is that in the mid-1950s a powerful axis developed inside the far right around the Northern League, the IAAEE, and publications like Right, The Virginian, True Seeker, Northern World, The Northlander and Mankind Quarterly. This network advocated a new biopolitical line in both crude (Carto's 'I am an Evotist) and sophisticated (A. James Gregor) arguments that challenged volkish race theory."

(ibid, pgs. 484-485)

Mankind Quarterly, one of the fine publications put out by Pearson's circle

IAAEE stands for the International Association for the Advancement of Ethnology and Eugenics, a lovely organization of which more will be said in the next installment. For the time being, let us consider another compelling link between Carto and the fascist underground, namely one of his chief financial sources.

At some point in the late 1980s Carto had come into control of a large sum of money inherited from the mysterious figure of Jean Farrel, a wealthy American widow who held Columbian citizenship and had lived out her final years in Switzerland. This money was supposed to go into the coffers of the Institute for Historical Review (IHR, which would later be merged with Legion of the Survival of Freedom) but instead Carto had put it into an account held by a corporation named Vibet, Inc. Eventually there was a coup within the Legion-IHR which pitted Carto against his former underlinings in court for control of the Farrel funds. During the trial, which unfolded in the mid-1990s, some very interesting things came out about who Carto had been associated with.

"The legion's difficulties had been compounded, apparently, because of the ingenuity of Henri Fischer named as a defendant, along with Vibet. Fischer's reputation for international intrigue and double-dealing far exceeded any of Carto's own. Apparently born of French parents and raised in French Indochina, Fischer lived alternatively in  Australia in California in the 1960s and 1970s. He also traveled internationally, including to destinations in the Arab Middle East and North Korea, and was rumored to be connected to one intelligence agency or the other, most probably the Central Intelligence Agency. According to Australian press reports, during the 1960s Fischer was part of an ultraright clique in the country's Liberal Party and published in internationally distributed anti-Semitic journal. The Australian Labor Party apparently deputized him in 1975 as its bagman in a deal with Iraq's Baahist Party. Laden with postelection debt, the Liberal Party arranged for a five-hundred-thousand-dollar 'contribution' from Iraq to be picked up in Japan by Fischer and brought Australia. Fischer apparently did travel to Japan with two Iraqi officials and received five hundred thousand U.S. dollars, but he never deliver the money to the Labor Party. Instead, he absconded with the funds, losing a pair of 'bodyguards' at a Singapore hotel in the process. His ex-wife contended several years later that he used the money to buy home in San Diego County, where he subsequently settled.

"Fischer's home was actually a five-acre estate in Escondido, complete with a full guesthouse and tennis court, surrounded by chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. Willis and Elizabeth Carto were rumored to have lived on this estate for more than two years, at the same time as a man named Michael Brown, who had once been a bodyguard for George Lincoln Rockwell, the American Nazi party fuhrer assassinated by one of his own men in 1967. When the Cartos needed their own home, they acquired a multi-acre estate of their own, also in Escondido. And when Carto needed assistance securing and then disposing of the Farrel funds, according to the legion's lawsuit, he turned to Fischer, who then helped set up Vibet, Inc., and made other arrangements for a tidy sum of two or three hundred thousand dollars. On the witness stand, Carto could not remember how much his friend had been paid...

"Webb's attorney questioned Carto about the expenses incurred in securing the Farrel legacy. Lawyers had to be highered, and a host of details handled in Switzerland. A huge sum, eight hundred thousand dollars, was paid to a man Carto described as an 'expeditor,' Mr. Francois Genoud. The legion's attorney began spelling the name for the record. 'I don't believe I gave the name,' Carto interrupted, but the attorney continued. Despite prodding from both attorney and judge, Carto didn't want to discuss Genoud in open court, but was forced to.

Attorney: Now Mr. Genoud was a well-connected man?

Carto: Yes

Attorney: And he's a well-respected banker, or was when he was alive?

Carto: Yes

Attorney: Why did you choose Mr. Genoud to be your expeditor, sir?

"Carto's attorney objected to the question, but the judge overruled.

Carto: Because in knowing him and discussing things with him and... and because he was available, I felt that he would be effective in performing the personal contact that he was capable of.

Attorney: Mr. Genoud was a personal friend of Adolf Hitler, correct?

"Francois Genoud was more than an aging, well-connected Swiss banker who once knew Adolf Hitler. In the immediate post-World War II period, Genoud helped finance the escape of Nazi war criminals from Europe, acquired the literary copyrights of Hitler and two of his most significant adjuncts – Martin Bormann and Joseph Goebbels – and used a Swiss banking fortune to underwrite the nexus of wartime Nazis with a sector of postwar Arab nationalists. Most famously, he also helped the hijacking of a Lufthansa airplane in 1972, engineering the ransom demand by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Genoud's continued devotion to Hitlerian causes was when all known to journalists and Nazi hunters. But his direct link to Willis Carto had never been made public before it became part of the transcript in California."

(Blood and Politics, Leonard Zeskind, pgs. 443-445) 

Henri Fischer

Genoud also seems to have had ties to SS men such as General Karl Wolff that have been linked to Evola's "Order."

"Genoud, too, was in the thick of things, having established a friendship with SS General Karl Wolff, leader of the German team in Italy that negotiated Operation Sunrise with Dulles. Shortly after the war, Genoud acquired the publishing rights to the works of Adolf Hitler, Martin Bormann, and Joseph Goebbels. He also played a major, if murky, role in aiding fugitive Nazi war criminals. Another key player in the postwar Nazi underground resident in Switzerland was SD Colonel Eugen Dollmann, General Wolff's chief lieutenant in the talks with Dulles. Besides Wolff, Dollmann and Genoud had another friend in common: Haj Amin el-Hussien, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Genoud first met the Grand Mufti in Jerusalem in 1936, and again in Berlin during the war. Dollmann also maintained links to the Grand Mufti."

(Dreamer of the Day, Kevin Coogan, pg. 585)

Genoud

As noted above, Carto was also an early advocate of Francis Parker Yockey, an American-born fascist obsessed with pan-Europeanism. Yockey died via a cyanide capsule in 1960 while in police custody. Yockey, whose magnum opus Imperium Carto was chiefly responsible for promoting in the United States, is an infinitely fascinating figure whose strange tale is far beyond the scope of this article. Suffice to say, however, researcher Coogan also believed that Saint Francis was involved with the Evola network. Between Yockey, Pearson and Genoud, it would seem that Carto was well connected to it himself.

But as incredible as it may seem, this underground Nazi network may not even have been the most vile association Carto kept. In the next installment of this series we shall consider this association before moving along to the Bircher and Posse Comitatus wings of the Patriot movement. Stay tuned.

A Vast Right Wing Conspiracy: The Secret Origins of the Patriot Movement Part I

The modern Patriot movement emerged shortly after the declaration of the Cold War though it had already been in the making for decades. Its origins lie with various super patriot groups such as the American Protective League (APL) that sprang up during World War I and the "non-interventionist" groups that began to appear in the years leading up to the Second World War. Many of these group surrounding the World Wars had direct ties to one another and many of these "Americanist" activists would lend a hand to the Cold War-era Patriot movement as well.

the APL would be used by US intelligence services first to weed out German agents during WWI, then to hunt down communists during the nation's First Red Scare

Many of the pre-Cold War era groups shared a paranoid obsession with some type of coming communist revolution; a pathological hatred of trade unions, entitlement programs and taxes in general; a firm belief that American and Christian culture was simultaneously under attack; and an obsession with conspiracy theories frequently revolving around Jews, Freemasons, and the Communist International. More than a few of them also embraced paramilitarism and attempted to train members for local militias.

Obviously, many of these characteristics were passed on to their descendants in the Cold War-era groups that spurred the modern Patriot movement. These latter organizations also acquired the same self-delusions of their forebears, namely that they were some type of grassroots, anti-establishment movement. This could not be further from the truth.

As was noted in my examination of the American Security Council (a lobby group that had extensive ties to the modern-day Patriot movement throughout its heyday; said articles can be found here, here, here and here), many of these pre-World War II groups were not only well-funded and featured support from major corporations and wealthy individuals alike, but they also had deep ties to the US intelligence community. Consider, for instance, the saga of John Trevor Sr. A military intelligence officer shortly after World War I, he was involved in organizing a vigilante group to protect New York City from "subversive" elements (an actively that was almost surely done on behalf the joint military/FBI industrial security operations).

"... a Harvard-educated lawyer and industrialist descended from a signer of the Declaration of Independence and... a member of New York's social elite, had served as an officer in military intelligence just after World War I, a role in which he 'made his own rules, gave himself his own assignments,' according to a colleague at the time. For example, Trevor Sr. developed a plan to suppress a mass uprising of Jewish subversives in New York City, going so far as to order 6,000 rifles and a machine gun battalion for deployment in Jewish neighborhoods in anticipation of a disturbance that never took place. Keeping secret ties to military intelligence even after his return to civilian life, the elder Trevor became, according to one historian, 'one of the most influential unelected individuals affiliated with U.S. Congress,' testifying in the hearings that led to the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924 and crafting its plan to designate national quotas for each country based on the number of residents in the United States in 1890, before the bulk of the immigration from southern and eastern Europe. To defend the quotas, in 1929 Trevor founded the American Coalition of Patriotic Societies, which quickly became an umbrella organization for numerous far-right groups; later named as the coalition's 'honorary president' was C. M. Goethe, a president of the ERA who strongly recommended the 'marvelous eugenics program of Hitler' as a model that the United States must adopt if it were to have any chance of becoming 'Germany's successful rival.'

(The Funding of Scientific Racism, William M. Turner, pgs. 60-61)

John Trevor Sr. was one of the first of what would become a staple of the American right: "Patriotic" immigration reformers

Trevor would go on to propagate for the Nazi regime throughout the 1930s before rebranding himself as an anti-communist patriot in the post-WWII era.

"John Trevor... were among fifteen Americans whose names appeared inside a 1933 Nazi book, recommending it for an American audience. Begun with an endorsement by Adolf Hitler, the book contains such statements as 'The total contrast to Jewish-Marxist-Bolshevikism is exclusively represented by German National Socialism.' In 1942... the American Coalition of Patriotic Societies was named by the Justice Department as a factor in the sedition charges brought against those thought to be aiding the Axis.

"... John Trevor... and... associates all became patriotic anticommunist after World War II, however, aiding Senator Joe McCarthy, lobbying for a more intense cold war, and supporting reprieves for convicted Nazi war criminals...

 "John Trevor was a leader of a group, Ten Million Americans Mobilizing for Justice, attempting to prevent the censure of Joe McCarthy. It's leadership represented a Who's Who of American anti-Semitism. At their 1954 rally for McCarthy, a female photographer taking pictures of the special guest section of Time magazine was physically assaulted amid shouts of 'Dirty Jew' and 'Hang the communist bitch!'"

(Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party, Russ Bellant, pgs. 32-33)

the "conspiracy" against Joe McCarthy would become a fixture of the Patriot movement by the 1960s

Trevor's son, John Trevor Jr., and his American Coalition for Patriotic Societies (ACPS) would go on to form a close relationship with the American Security Council, a "think tank" with close ties to the U.S. military and intelligence community that was actively engaged in compiling files on Ameircans seeking employment for defense contractors and other industries deemed vital to national security (as examined in depth before here and here). It would seem that the Trevor family and the super-patriot ACPS never really left the US intelligence community. Such was the case of many such pre-WWII super-patriot groups.

And the same can also be said of their Cold War-era predecessors.

It is the purpose of this series and future sequels to expose the Patriot movement for what it truly is: A decades spanning PSYOP and terror campaign directed at the American public. I realize that I'm opening a can of worms here and thus I feel compelled to make a few disclaimers off the bat:

First, it is not my intention to label everyone who has ever shown interest in the movement as an extremist or worse. Recluse has spent most of his life living in the South and grew up with a father long fascinated by Patriot ideology. I realize that the bulk of people who have become involved with the movement over the years are decent people. The same can not be said, however, of the forces behind the movement as I shall endeavor to reveal.

Secondly, I'm not trying to argue that ever tenant of the movement is untrue. Indeed, the best and most effective propaganda often sticks to facts while avoiding telling the entire story.

For instance, one of the long standing allegations of the Patriot movement is that the United States has been totally controlled by a group of banking elites (aka, the "Eastern Establishment") with ties to international "think tanks" such as the Round Table groups, the Trilateral Commission, and the Bilderberg group since the end of the Civil War. This is partly correct – the Eastern Establishment did dominate the American political landscape (though never totally controlled it) from roughly the end of the Civil War to the 1960s. But the long despised Eastern Establishment was not the only game in town and by the end of the Second World War it was facing some stiff competition: the rising tides of the military-industrial complex, the oil cartels, and organized crime. What's more, this economic shifts also conferred much more power on military men themselves as well as the emerging US intelligence community (more information on this power shift can be found here).

It was this latter faction that the Patriot movement was aligned with, one that would unite far right ideologues from business, the military, and the US intelligence community in a united front against the waning Eastern Establishment, which they had long viewed as soft on communism.

With this in mind, let me take the opportunity now to dispel two long-standing myths surrounding the Patriot movement before beginning in earnest concerning its origins. The first is the movement's long-standing claims of poverty –it often depicts itself as perpetually underfunded, in stark contrast to liberal grassroots movements. In point of fact, the Patriot movement was not even a true grassroots movement during its inception as many of its early supporters came from upper-middle-class backgrounds. Consider the supporters of the John Birch Society, the first major organization of the modern day Patriot movement:

"One detailed study of members' demographics and political attitudes found the Society's membership to be disproportionately young, upper middle class, well-educated (in technical fields more than in liberal arts), Protestant fundamentalists in religious orientation, and favorable towards the Republican Party. Membership was strongest in the southern and western regions of the country, and the relatively less populated states, and in areas characterized by recent population influxes. Over 50 percent of those sampled held high-status occupations and earned upper-middle-class incomes. The study suggested a relationship between the Protestant fundamentalism of Society members, with its emphasis on personal sin and responsibility, and their attraction to conspiracy theories, which tend to elevate the casual importance of the misdeeds of individuals over that of larger social forces. In terms of political attitudes, the study found Birchers to be advocates of an increased role for states' rights versus the authority of the federal government, of reduced government spending on social programs, of a tougher military policy to win decisively against communism (e.g., in Vietnam), and of less use of non-military foreign policy initiatives, such as the efforts of the United Nations. Birchists opposed medicare, social security, farm subsidies, pro-union legislation, disarmament, and foreign aid. They wanted a return to the gold standard and a reduction of government regulation over business. In essence, the politics of Birchists were characteristically right-wing; they opposed government policies to distribute wealth and power more equitably, and they endorsed government policies to enforce traditional order at home and abroad.

"The policy preferences of Birchists were consistent with those of other right-wing organizations, both the elite in mass-based..."

(Roads to Dominion, Sara Diamond, pg. 55)

Bircher Ralph Westfall speaks in favor of the Vietnam War in Hyde Park circa 1965 amidst protests from the budding counterculture

As a whole, the Patriot movement enjoyed ample corporate support as well.

"Before and after the formation of the John Birch Society, corporations played a major role in rallying the public to the anticommunist cause. One study of corporate anticommunist education programs traced the trend to the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act which granted employers the right to distribute literature to counter labor union organizing. By 1963, corporations were spending an estimated $25 million per year on anticommunist literature distributed to consumers and to employees at the job site. Sponsoring corporations included major firms such as Goodyear Tire, Minnesota Mining, Boeing Airplane Co., Jones & Laughlin Steel, Texas Power & Light, as well as smaller companies that came to be associated with grassroots groups like the John Birch Society:  Knott's Berry Farm, Dr. Ross Dog Food, Cherokee Textile Mills, Allen-Bradley Corporation, and others. Some corporations circulated print and audio-visual materials produced by the John Birch Society; other companies produce their own in-house literature. Coast Federal Savings and Loan Association in Los Angeles conducted one of the largest customer education programs, distributing millions of leaflets and booklets at a cost of about $250,000 a year.

"Coast Federal provided customers with a 'Patriotic Program Log,' listing radio and television schedules and corporate sponsors for leading anticommunist broadcasters: Paul Harvey, Billy James Hargis, Fulton Lewis Jr., Reverend Carl McIntire, Dan Smoot, and Dean Manion. By the early 1960s, the Nation magazine reported that there was a minimum of 6,600 corporate-financed anticommunist broadcast, carried by more than 1,300 radio and television stations at a total annual budget of about $20 million. Broadcast themes included opposition to foreign aid, the United Nations, the Supreme Court, labor unions, medicare, and 'forced integration.' Leading sponsors included Texas oil billionaire H. L. Hunt and Howard, J. Pew of Sun Oil. The corporate sector's massive anticommunist propaganda campaign created a favorable climate for the mobilization of activist groups like the John Birch Society."  

(ibid, pg. 52)

Keep in mind that this massive putsch was unfolding even throughout the 1960s, a timeframe typically associated with hippies and the counterculture. Indeed, the conspiratorial right has long depicted such things as a well-funded, elite-controlled PSYOP. And such an allegation is not without a grain of truth. For instance, it's undeniable that the spread of LSD to the general public was facilitated in no small part by the CIA. That being said, however, there is precious little to indicate that the acid culture that emerged from it was somehow preplanned. In point of fact, the US intelligence community as a whole was genuinely shocked by these developments. The conservative men of the CIA and military had by and large never viewed LSD as anything more than a weapon. The notion that millions of Americans would find the taking of it pleasurable, and some would even view it as a kind of sacrament, was by and large a revelation.

not especially useful for promoting imperialism or even consumerism

To be sure, there were certainly more than a few attempts to infiltrate and discredit the counterculture (as I noted before here and here) but it can not be wholly dismissed as a PSYOP. In reality, the counterculture was far more of an actual grassroots movement than the Patriot movement, which largely drew it supporters from "former" high ranking military men and upper middle class WASPs. Unsurprisingly, the funding of the Patriot movement vastly exceed that of the New Left even at the height of the counterculture.

"One of the reasons for the importance of the Far Right in America, despite it's clear oddities, is that it has at its disposal an incredible amount of money; had the Far Left but half as much no doubt, the revolution would already have taken place. Careful studies of a decade ago estimated that between $20- and $30-million was spent on Far Right activities, and this has surely increased since..."

(Power Shift, Kirkpatrick Sale, pgs. 99-100)

Another major myth promoted by the Patriot movement is that of legal harassment. In point of fact, outside of notorious orders such as the Ku Klux Klan, there was not a serious attempt by the FBI or any other federal agency to crackdown on the Patriot movement for decades. Consider, for instance, the timidity of COINTELPRO-type (COunter INTElligence PROgram was a 1960s-era FBI operation designed to infiltrate, discredit and/or disrupt political organizations) operations against the Posse Comitatus (which was, for years, by far the most militant and violent of Patriot groups) despite claims to the contrary.

"The basic radical-right complaint that it had been the target of COINTELPRO abuses was justified, even if the rhetoric used to denounce the government was steeped in bigotry and exaggerated claims. However, it is difficult to make the case that the Bureau's investigation of the Posse included illegal COINTELPRO-style methods. Little evidence exists to support the charge, either in the Bureau's own records, in news reports, or from other sources. Unlike its treatment of dissident groups under J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI seemed to respect the constitutional rights of Posse members. Among other things, it closed investigations early – sometimes too early – as soon as it judged that the targeted individuals were engaged in constitutionally protected activity and were not planning any crimes. This is a far cry from the 'anything goes' mentality of the Hoover era. A more serious problems stemmed from the on-again, off-again investigative approach taken by local officers where agents – out of laziness, sympathy with right-wing groups, or concerns for career advancement – did not appear to take the Posse Comitatus very seriously. The memos from Director Kelly may have clamored for more  substantial information from the field, but investigating right-wing hate groups was not a path to promotion in the Bureau – that came more readily to agents who distinguished themselves by working 'real' cases involving bank robbery, kidnapping, and murder. The consequences of this dynamic proved embarrassing two decades later when, in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, the Bureau had to scramble to get up to speed on the right-wing hate groups because it failed to devote sufficient resources to the problem much earlier."

(The Terrorist Next Door, Daniel Levitas, pgs. 137-138)

Even Hoover's assaults against the Patriot movement were rather mild. For instance Robert DePugh, the founder of the Minutemen (one of the first major, nation wide paramilitary movements since prior to WWII), was taken down in 1969 (in Truth or Consequence, New Mexico no less) but by this time evidence suggests that the most militant wing of the Minutemen had already been taken over by a former military intelligence officer who would continue to operate unfettered by law enforcement until the mid-1980s. A reoccurring theme amongst Patriot movement arrests is that the figures taken down are frequently either buffoons or aging members whose usefulness is long past while clever and vigorous operators go about their merry business.

as shall be examined in a future installment this series, Robert DePugh's Minutemen were likely being used as a front for a farm ore serious paramilitary organization

What's more, these downfalls are frequently punctuated with incidences of high strangeness and bizarre synchronicities, possibly indicating some type of Downardian "psycho-drama." Such possibilities will be considered in greater depth as we encounter them. But I digress – let us return to the origins of the Patriot movement.

While rarely acknowledged, it seems that much of the ideology of the modern-day patriot movement was derived by various former high-ranking military officers, more than a few of them with a background in intelligence, who became obsessed with the "communist conspiracy" in the wake of the Second World War. One of the earliest and most adamant proponents of such things was General Albert Wedemeyer. As was noted in one of my installments concerning the American Security Council, General Wedemeyer had spent extensive time in Germany in the 1930s where he developed close ties to both the military and the Nazi party. Wedemeyer is widely suspected as the leaker of the "Rainbow 5" documents that revealed US military plans prior to the nation's entry into the Second World War.

In the post-WWII era Wedemeyer was still expressing admiration for the Nazi regime while warning of the Judaic-communist conspiracy.

"Wedemeyer's career deserves scrutiny. He was part of a military circle that was anti-Jewish. A few years after the war, Wedemeyer wrote a letter to his close friend, retired Col. Truman Smith, that Zionists, the British and communists made America's entry into the war certain. Later, Wedemeyer stated that 'most of the people associated with communism in the early days were Jewish.'

"He further claimed that Roosevelt's Jewish advisers did everything possible to spread venom and hatred against the Nazis. He stated that during his attendance at the German War College in 1936, his eyes were opened to the number of Jews in the American government by reading the Die Frankfurter Zietung and Die Berliner. The Nazis control both papers.

"In 1937, Wedemeyer linked the shortage of food in Germany to the Jewish question. Using the embassy's attaché stationery, Wedemeyer wrote to friends dismissing the food shortage as caused by poor weather and crop failures. He claimed the Jews in other countries have bought up the enormous quantities of foodstuffs and intentionally diverted the shipments from Germany.

"As late as 1958, Wedemeyer was still voicing pro-Nazi opinions. He ignored the Nazis racial ideology, describing Lebensraum as merely a national movements to win living space. Wedemeyer used the same historical analogues as the Nazi propagandist, comparing the German invasions and expansions eastward with the American expansion westward..."

"Wedemeyer opposed creating the State of Israel, as did Black and other members of his circle of friends. After retiring, Wedemeyer became a writer for the John Birch Society and a member of the American Security Council."

(The Nazi Hydra in America, Glen Yeadon & John Hawkins, pg. 243-244)

General Wedemeyer

Another former military man deeply involved in spreading communist conspiracy theories in the wake of WWII General Bonner Fellers, a psychological warfare officer. In an interview with journalist Cheri Seymour, William Potter Gale (a former military intelligence officer who founded the Posse Comitatus) recounted a story told to him by Fellers concerning secret arrangements made between FDR, the Soviet Union and the British during WWII:

"Gale leaned back, eyes narrowing. 'When General Fellers was in the Middle East, he submitted a plan to the War Department and to the White House that would have ended World War II in 1942 with Germany. His plan was to provide B-24's, which had just come into mass production in the United States, to air bases in Turkey and the Middle East, which were already secured with 400,000 displaced Allied troops. The German Army had its full ground strength situated 2,000 miles into the Ukraine, with only one supply line, against the communist, the Red Army. And the Germans had no plans – all our military intelligence confirm this – the Germans had no intention of invading Britain!

"'Germany had not one troop in the northern coast of Europe as far as ground strength was concerned. And, all that we had to do was bomb out that one supply line with B-24s... The Germans were fully committed against the communists in the Ukraine with a supply line 2,000 miles long! Germany would have had to surrender, and the war would have ended in 1942.'

"His eyes became coldly brilliant. 'And, that was General Fellers' plan. And when that plan hit the War Department, the fur flew. General Fellers was relieved the next day as military advisor to the Middle East. And that's why he was sent to the Southwest Pacific.

"'Well, I said, what's wrong with winning the war like that, against Germany? Fellers said, "Oh, they had broken my code and Winston Churchill had said before the House of Commons that he would not allow General Fellers to come to the European theatre even with the OSS." He did not want him to have anything to do with it. He had broken General Fellers' code and intercepted that message and put the heat on the White House.

"'I couldn't figure all this out. And then General Feller said, "Well, what they don't know is that I broke their code, too. And I know what they did. I have the evidence that Churchill and Roosevelt made a deal with the communists, the Soviet Union, to give Germany to the communists in exchange for leaving the Middle East as a sphere of British influence after the war ends."' He fell silent, gazing sightlessly out the window."

(Committee of the States, Cheri Seymour, pgs. 44-45)

General Bonner Fellers

This is hardly the extent of Fellers' contributions to Patriot movement ideology. We shall return to him again in a future installment in this series, so keep the general in mind.

Another military intelligence officer who played an enormous role in the spread of communist conspiracy theories was Colonel John Beaty.

"The book, Iron Curtain over America, first published in 1951, scared the military community half to death. Its author, Colonel John Beaty, had written or collaborated on a dozen books, many of which were used in hundreds of colleges and universities. His education (M.A., University of Virginia; Ph.D., Columbia University; post-graduate study, University of Montpellier, France), his travels in Europe and Asia, and his five years with the Military Intelligence Service during World War II created the background for his research."

(ibid, pg. 217)

Iron Curtain over America was enormously influential amongst the Patriot movement in the years following its publication and is still considered a classic in certain branches of the conspiratorial right, most especially the Jewish conspiracy strands, to this day.

"And in 1951, a former intelligence officer published the most the viscerally anti-Semitic books since the war, a work enthusiastically endorsed and promoted by three generals and an admiral: The Iron Curtain over America, still offered by neo-Nazi groups a half century later as an indispensable primer on the Jews. The Iron Curtain described a conspiracy to dominate the world in which the 'Judaized Khazars' behind Bolshevikism had infiltrated the U.S. government and fostered the war not to end dictatorship, but to kill Aryans and 'annihilate[e]... Germany, the historical bulwark of Christian Europe."

(The Funding of Scientific Racism, William M. Turner, pg. 29)

Beaty was, to the best of this researcher's knowledge, the first author in the wake of WWII to revive the highly controversial notion that modern Jews are not descendant from ancient Israel, but are Khazars who converted to Judaism in either the eighth or ninth century A.D. Beaty would argue that the Khazar Jews were behind the spread of communism and that they were stealthy taking over the United States.

"Lamenting the inhumane treatment of Germany after World War II by a 'Communist influenced America,' Beaty drew parallels between communism and Judaism, and ultimately outlined the great conspiracy; the right-wing notion that America have been infiltrated by communist/Jewish aliens, and was now ruled by a Zionist/Communist Occupied Government (Z.O.G.).

"The ancient tribe of people known as the Khazars from Russia were the descendants of the 'infiltrators' whom Beaty claimed immigrated to the United States and ultimately became Z.O.G..."

(The Committee of the States, Cheri Seymour, pg. 221)

And there you have to likely origins of "Z.O.G.," a notion conceived by a "former" military intelligence officer and promoted by the top brass. As the years went on the anti-Semitic elements of the "communist conspiracy" were gradually downplayed by the more "mainline" elements of the Patriot movement in favor of less controversial targets, such as the Freemasons and the Illuminati. But rest assured, a Protocols of the Elders of Zion-type slant was prevalent in virtually all of the early strands of such notions.

And it is here that I shall wrap things up presently. Now that I've briefly outlined some of the origins of the modern-day Patriot movement I can begin to get down to the real nitty-gritty, namely the three distinct strands that would define the movement to this very day: The John Birch Society strand, the Liberty Lobby strand, and the Posse Comitatus variety. All three were linked not only to the US military and intelligence community, but even more sinister forces, as shall be examined in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.