individual bulletins themselves, sent monthly to each member, and American Opinion, the monthly magazine published by Welch himself, but owned by the society.

These bewildering ideas seem ridiculous, and indeed they are. Yet, with them the Birch Society has grown into a powerful organization, as we shall see. And paradoxically their growth has been due, in part, to their program. First, the startling quality of the ideas proved to be tailormade for publicity. As one newspaperman said, "Anyone who calls Eisenhower a Communist is certain to get publicity." Second, with few exceptions, each major point in the Welch program appealed to a sector of the right-of-center community. By indiscriminately plastering the label of "Communist" on prominent citizens, Welch evoked the memory of McCarthy, a memory still cherished by millions in this country. Indeed, Welch never fails to laud the late Senator in his public speeches. And more basically, by this tactic he tugs on the same nerve core as did McCarthy: that our setbacks on the world scene can only be explained by treason in high circles.

By his radical exaggeration of the extent of Communist growth abroad, Welch catches two fish on one hook: he appeals to the antiforeign aid, balance-thebudget isolationist strain, and helps to deepen the mood of desperation and hysteria upon which the Birch Society feeds.

His analysis of civil right as a "Communist slogan" obviously is a powerful play for the support of southern racism, and it has worked. So important are the Dixiecrats in his grand design that he has placed extraordinary emphasis on their favorite bugaboo, the Supreme Court, with his "Impeach Earl Warren" slogan.

Finally, the society's demand for abolition of the income tax has a wide audience all of its own. For the rich the appeal is self-evident. But in terms of numbers there's a much larger group that detests the income tax: those hundreds of thousands, if not millions of up-and-coming small businessmen and professionals who are earning sufficient to have to fill out the long forms, but not quite enough to hire an accountant.

In sum, the society successfully appeals to a wide grouping that is funneled into its ranks and that in turn goes out to spread the special Birch Society brand of character assassination, nationalistic xenophobia, and out-and-out hatred of democracy.

2. Fred Schwarz' crusade

Competing with the John Birch Society for the honor of being the mainstream of the ultraright is the Christian Anticommunism Crusade. The crusade is led by Dr. Fred Schwarz, an Australian who, in 1953, landed here with $10 in his pocket, some experience as a lay Baptist preacher, and a grandiose scheme for a crusade against communism. Eight years later, Schwarz has a booming business, grossing $1 million a year; a staff of lecturers who took to the lecture circuit with the zeal of a Billy Sunday; and a reputation, among rightwingers, as the most knowledgeable man on communism in the United States.

Schwarz differs from Welch in many ways. He is a much more fiery and aggressive speaker, he is more of a showman, his entire operation has more of an evangelistic air about it. Yet, oddly enough, where Welch seems at times to be straining his wits to think of startling and radical things to say, Schwarz' tactic is to play it close to the vest. His every word seems calculated to fit a carefully designed formula: Say enough to whip the audience up into a frenzy, but never so much that you leave yourself open to attack. And although Schwarz has been here only 8 years, he knows his America. He realizes that so long as he sticks with the theme of “anticommunism," no matter how much he distorts and lies, he's safe from attack. For example, one of his favorite themes is that in Communist countries they practice a form of "animal husbandry" on human beings in order to breed a race of supermen. In one of the crusade's best selling items, a comic book on communism for the kiddies, he shows brutish looking Communist guards shoving the aged and the crippled into a concentration camp. The text says that these pitiful looking people are to be slaughtered as part of the Communist scheme to breed supermen by getting rid of the weak and the maim. Actually this charge is rubbish. There simply is no such theory or practice in Russia. But what is more important, what kind of a man would create such a sadistic fable out of whole cloth and then decide to turn it into a comic book for children? Yet this is typical of Schwarz technique. For who is there, especially in the world of the mass media, who will charge him with exaggerating the evils of communism?

Some

Much, but not all, of the crusade's program conforms to this pattern. of it is true; after all communism is an inhuman system that deserves to be criticized and attacked. But still other parts of Schwarz' program have nothing whatever to do with anticommunism and indeed reveal the extreme rightist basis of his thinking. Occasionally the doctor allows a card to be seen, both in what his crusade says and what it does.

A favorite theme of the ultraright is that American educational institutions are centers of subversion. As we have seen, "Collectivism on the Campus" and "Brainwashing in the High Schools" are the names of two rightwing best sellers by E. Merrill Root. Schwarz, it seems, fully shares this thesis. "University of Murder" is the title of a crusade pamphlet which states, "Many people today are confusing freedom with license *** under the guise of academic freedom, anti-American ideologies are being propagated such as pacificism, surrender, and even free love." Schwarz' close associate and regular lecturer for the crusade, Herbert Philbrick, selects one particular university, Princeton, as his fantastic target. Princeton, says Philbrick, refuses to allow any anti-Communists to lecture on its campus. Actually there is method in this madness. After bombarding the public with this kind of propaganda, local rightwing groups then make demands upon boards of education for a review of texbooks and course outlines to make certain that they are 100 percent "Americanist." And in a number of States they have succeeded, including States like Texas in which Schwarz has been especially active.

"Treason in high places" is virtually the anthem of the radical right. And the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade doesn't shirk from joining the chorus. "The Supreme Court," says one of the crusade's booklets, is guilty of ruling in 1957 "that subversion is now protected under the first amendment of the Constitution." Then in the pamphlet "Hangman's Noose" Schwarz finds the Nation being choked by treason. "Haven't our international policies since World War II helped build an exhausted and impoverished Communist bloc of nations into the greatest menace in world history?" asks the doctor rhetorically. "Are the people who made these policies-and continue to do so-traitors or just ignorant of the Communist aspirations? An answer to these questions must be found almost imme. diately." [Emphasis added.]

3. Billy Hargis

Billy James Hargis, as his name implies, is an evangelical preacher. But, unlike the other Billy's he specialized in smiting not the Devil but, in his own words, "modernists," "leftists," "Socialists," and "Communists." Hargis is a young man of 36 who looks very much like a fat rock and roll musician. From his appearance it would seem that he weighs about 300 pounds. Yet, he's an energetic man. He's constantly on the go, crisscrossing the country addressing rallies that are often bedecked with huge banners proclaiming, "For Christ! Against Communism!"

Hargis is a graduate of the Ozark Bible School and his oratory shows it. Although he started out practicing the oldtime religion, he soon discovered that his talents and the market were more suited to political rather than religious primitivism. But he didn't drop religion altogether; instead he decided to make a blend of the two. He also plays politics within the field of religious organizations, being the leader of a fundamentalist faction whose main aim is the destruction of the National Council of Churches, the main coordinating body of the Protestant churches in America. One of his booklets is entitled "The National Council of Churches Indicts Itself on 50 Counts of Treason to God and Country." Hargis claims that 7,000 Protestant ministers are Communists, although when challenged to prove it he offers only a moldy mixture of innuendo and half-truths.

Billy James heads two organizations, the Christian Crusade and We the People. He himself was the founder of the Crusade and it is still his main arena of operation. Headquartered in Tulsa, Okla., with its own building and a staff of 35, the Crusade claims tax exemption as a religious organization, although its religious bona fides have been questioned. Each year the Crusade holds a "summit meeting" of about a thousand stalwarts. At the 1961 summit the main speaker was Robert Welch who announced his essay contest for high school students on "Why Chief Justice Warren Should Be Impeached." Welch and Hargis are extremely close; the latter is a member of the Committee of Endorsers of the John Birch Society. But Hargis operates much less secretively and his religious veneer seems to give courage to prominent persons who might avoid public association with Welch. Thus the following political figures have

endorsed or praised Hargis' work publicly: Gov. Orvil Faubus of Arkansas; Congressman Noah Mason, Republican, of Illinois; Congressman James C. Davis, Democrat, of Georgia; Congressman Dale Alford, Democrat, of Arkansas. The Christian Crusade operates a full-scale program of propaganda activities, reaching millions each year. It skillfully uses every medium of communication: books, pamphlets, magazines, films, tapes, radio, TV, and revivalist meetings. A byproduct of the organization is Nutri-Bio, a food supplement which is sold at $24 for a 6 months supply. Hargis says that "glowing good health can be yours," if you take it regularly. Asked why a minister of God should be peddling drug products, Billy James replied that healthy bodies are as important as healthy minds in the fight against communism. Thousands of his agents sell Nutri-Bio, at a commission, in the United States and Canada. They can often be seen, especially in rural areas, with black and bright green Nutri-Bio bumper strips on their cars.

Hargis is the president of We the People! but he didn't found it. Organized several years ago by Harry Everingham, who is still its executive vice president, Hargis was brought in recently to give it glamour and go. This he has done. From its head office in Chicago, We the People! has taken on an importance that it never had before Hargis joined it. Originally it seemed to be a smallish ultraright propaganda league that specialized in midwestern Corn Belt politics. For a long time its members were divided between those who wanted to operate within the rightwing of the Republican Party and those sectarian elements who looked toward the formation of a new third party. When Hargis took over the organization, that question was settled: We the People! now operates in and around the Republican Party. Like the Birch Society and others of the same stripe, its hero, although not without some misgivings, is Senator Barry Goldwater.

We the People! issues two publications, Free Enterprise and Action News for Anti-Communists. The June 1961 issue of the former recommended as suitable reading material for real Americans several outright Fascist and race hate magazines, including Gerald L. K. Smith's The Cross and the Flag, Common Sense, published in Union, N.J., the American Mercury, and the Independent American. The racist overtones of We the People! are also evident in an article in the September 1960 issue of Free Enterprise by Revilo P. Oliver, a Birch Society leader who teaches at the University of Illinois. "The Batista government in Cuba was not, to be sure, a perfect government," said Oliver, "but it was probably as good a government as one could reasonably expect to find in an island largely populated by mongrels." Winding up his piece, Oliver warned against, "the tentacles of conspiracy (reaching) into your hometown, where the puppets are promoting fluoridation, 'mental health,' and innumerable other plans to accustom us to gradually increased slavery and intimidation."

Interestingly, Hargis travels around in a huge Greyhound bus which he acquired recently and remade into a headquarters on wheels. The bus features sleeping accommodations, a sort of combination conference-living room, and a workroom complete with office equipment. In his bus he rolls into towns throughout South and West addressing rallies with his revivalist-style sermons of hate and fear. Overhead the banners blaze forth, "For Christ! Against Communism!"

4. The Searcy complex

One of the most enterprising figures on the extreme right is Dr. George S. Benson, who has taken the little-known town of Searcy in central Arkansas and turned it into a center of ultra activities. Benson is the president of Harding College, a fundamentalist institution which he took over in 1936 and converted from a sleepy, run down campus into a snappy, businesslike educational factory. But the curriculum at Harding is somewhat different from that at most colleges, including denominational ones. In addition to turning out loyal followers of the Church of Christ, the religious sect that operates the school, he also instills in his students a militant faith in "free enterprise" and "100 percent Americanism," Benson style.

The school's physical improvement and the message it imparts are not unrelated. Whether Benson decided first to "Americanize" the curriculum and then went after big business contributions as an afterthought, or whether the two were part of his plan from the start is not known. But Harding has been the recipient of generous donations from men and businesses who would not ordinarily look to central Arkansas for colleges to endow.

In 1949 Benson got $300,000 from the late Alfred P. Sloan, president of General Motors. The late Charles R. Hook, chairman of the board of Acme Steel gave some more, as did the Falk Foundation of Pittsburgh and other wealthy business organizations. By May 1961, when Cabell Phillips of the New York Times visited Searcy, the campus boasted 10 attractive new buildings, an 11th in progress, and an endowment fund of $6 million, "virtually all of it from industrial donors."

This record of progress was not due solely to the work done on Harding students. From the beginning Dr. Benson sought larger horizons by radiating his propaganda throughout the State, region, and finally the entire country. Until several years ago his message was rather simple: what's good for big business is good for the country. He vigorously opposed the New Deal and all welfare legislation, attacked unionism as "monopolistic," championed “right to work" proposals, and attacked anything that smacked of "socialism"; i.e., liberalism. All this he did in radio broadcasts that were offered free to any station willing to take them, canned newspaper columns that could also be had for the asking, and endless speeches before American Legion posts, chambers of commerce and similar groups.

Then, in 1949, Benson took a step upward toward the big time. With the $300,000 contributed by Sloan he organized the national education program, with himself as president, and began to produce a series of films designed to pack a greater wallop than mere lectures. To the films was added still another national education program project, the organization of freedom forums throughout the country. These are a sort of 3-day patriotic encampment with fees ranging from $80 to $100 a person.

Along with these new techniques came an ominous shift in program. If in the old days Benson's message was of the common, garden, reactionary variety it is now distinctly of a radical rightist stripe. A full-fledged chapter of the John Birch Society has been organized in Searcy and the proceedings of one of its meetings was described in a recent issue of the national education program's newsletter. Welch, in turn, has lavished praise on Dr. Benson and his work in the bulletin of the Birch Society. The new "line" is graphically represented in the NEP film, "Communism on the Map." undoubtedly Benson's most sensational accomplishment to date. The film will be discussed at greater length later, but its message can be quickly summarized (1) communism has already conquered the entire world, except for West Germany, Formosa, Switzerland, and the United States; (2) the main danger we face is that of internal subversion which has already made deep inroads in labor, government, and communications; and (3) liberalism equals socialism equals communism.

If this sounds like Birchism, it's no accident. The film was produced by one of Benson's assistants, Glenn A. Green, who boasts of his membership in the Birch Society. Whole sections of the film are virtually identical, word for word, with the Blue Book of the John Birch Society.

These, then, are some of the main organizations of the ultraright. There are others; hundreds of them, large and small, rich and poor, crackpot and cynically shrewd. We shall discuss some of them at a later point, but here let us consider the meaning of the organizations we have described.

Extreme rightism is not a new phenomenon in America. This country has always had its reactionary wing, and sooner or later the rightist threats have died down, to be succeeded by a new wave at a later point. In the thirties we had a burgeoning of out-and-out Fascist organizations, but the New Deal mobilized the overwhelming majority, and the rightists were never able to snatch the ball away from Roosevelt, the CIO, and the moderate left. More recently we experienced the McCarthy era: witch hunting in the schools, in Government, in the entertainment industry, almost everywhere. That, too, passed, although not because it was defeated by a popular anti-McCarthy movement. Actually, it is questionable whether McCarthyism died or went into hibernation. McCarthy himself was vanquished from above, by the Army and the administration. The Senator died a short while later. But did his followers who numbered in the millions, actually change their minds, their attitudes? Did a new wave of genuine tolerance for dissent and respect for due process vanquish witch hunting and the witch hunters? That is doubtful.

Nevertheless, what we are experiencing today is not merely the revival of McCarthyism. McCarthy had a huge following, but he did not have an organization. Those who share his fears and hates were never actually mobilized to go out and do battle. Furthermore, the mood that prevailed in this Nation was not then so desperate as now. There was not so intense a feeling that the

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Nation is battling for its life, and appears to be losing. Global war did not seem so imminent; there was no comparable frenzied rush to build fallout shelters.

Even more important, the Nation as a whole was not then so close to the "moment of truth," that decisive point in world history that would determine America's future as the leading world power.

Today we appear to be on the very brink of that moment. Yet, where there should be the calm determination that comes from sureness of purpose, there is instead a growing mood of doubt that even shows signs at the edges of turning into irrational panic. The cries increase for a showdown of force: "Better dead than Red."

It is in this atmosphere that the appearance of new ultraright seems so dangerous. They have organization and a large, active rank-and-file membership. They appeal to the growing mood of desperation and in turn feed that mood. They have established important ties with the ruling political party in America, the Republican-Dixiecrat coalition. They have made deep inroads into the military-industrial complex, the most decisive single center of power in the Nation.

This is the context in which the significance of the new right must be viewed. And it is in this context that the Fulbright-McNamara-Thurmond affair must be considered.

"*** perhaps the greatest danger of all for Americans would be a rising national mood of self-induced frustration, an attitude from which there are only two exits: belligerence or defeatism."-Harlan Cleveland, Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs. Speech quoted in New York Times, November 5, 1961.

IV. THE FULBRIGHT MEMORANDUM

The American press has made frequent references to the Fulbright memorandum, but no newspaper has carried a detailed account of that important document. Originally sent to Secretary of Defense McNamara in the summer of 1961, its publication sounded a warning to the ultras that the carte blanche which the 1958 directive had given them in propagandizing the Nation was being seriously questioned in the Kennedy Cabinet.

Speaking on the floor of the Senate, Fulbright said: "There has been a strong tradition in this country that it is not the function of the military to educate the public on political issues. Military officers are not elected by the people and they have no responsibility for the formulation of policies other than military policies. Their function is to carry out policies formulated by officials who are responsible to the electorate. This tradition is rooted in the constitutional principle that the President is the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces and that, therefore, military personnel are not to participate in activities which undermine his policies."

The reaction of the ultras to this mild rebuke indicated that within 3 years they considered their position so entrenched with the public that they felt public opinion would rally to the right. Dixiecrat Senator Strom Thurmond, a Reserve general, Senator Goldwater, an Air Force Reserve general and other legislators led the attack on Fulbright in Washington. In Arkansas, Fulbright's home State, Dr. George Benson and his staff at Harding College began a campaign aimed at defeating the Senator's bid for reelection in 1962. Conservative newspapers reported the fracas in Washington as another attempt to "muzzle patriots."

The complete text of the Fulbright memorandum is contained in the appendix of this booklet. Yet, however much the publication of the memorandum may have pained the ultras, the fact is that the document was not an attempt to catalog the misdeeds of the military. This chapter, and the mass of material in this pamphlet makes clear that the memorandum merely reported events that had attracted the attention of the national press, and did not attempt a comprehensive study of ultraright activities in the military.

Moreover, the memorandum avoided important details of many of the events that it reported. For example, point 8 of the 11 rightist "alerts" and "seminars" cited merely states that “Dr. Fred Schwarz held a seminar at Headquarters, 8th Naval District, New Orleans, which was endorsed by Rear Adm. W. G. Schindler, commandant." But for a more rounded picture of Schwarz' visit, consider the following letter which was received by New America, the Socialist Party's news