X. RACISM, POLITICS, AND THE ULTRAS

There is growing evidence of a linkup between the Ultras and southern racist reaction. Both groupings have strong ties to the military-industrial complex. It is significant that the two Senators who screeched loudest about Senator Fulbright's memorandum and General Walker's transfer were Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, Dixiecrat candidate for President in 1948, and Barry Goldwater. Both are also generals in the Reserve.

The strong ties between the Birchites and the military-industrial complex have already been pointed out here. Still more evidence will be presented in the next chapter. The southern racists also have such ties. A disproportionate number of America's military leaders come from the South, and always have. The South is the one section of the country to have strong military traditions and inordinate respect for the military profession. It abounds in military schools, like The Citadel. It contains an unusually high percentage of our military training sites. And as the South has industrialized its political leaders have come far more responsive to the views and interests of the industrial corporations. Where once large numbers of southern Congressmen and Senators were behind the New Deal, they are now full-fledged reactionaries. And, of course, southern industry today, like industry throughout the country is heavily dependent upon military orders. Southern politicians bid furiously for defense contracts for their areas.

With a convergence of ties to the military industrial complex, the Ultras and southern racists already have much in common. But there is more. Both share a common ultraconservative social and economic view of the world. Both share a utopian yearning for the world of yesterday and a common abhorrence of social planning, the welfare state, trade unionism, and political democracy. There are differences: where southern reaction sees itself threatened mainly by the rise to full-fledged citizenship of the Negro people, the Birchers are primarily concerned with the growing power of the State and the urban masses. But these differences are tending to diminish and disappear altogether as northern urban dwellers increasingly means Negro urban dwellers. And in any case opposition to integration is organic to the Birch view of the world. The struggle of the Negro people for freedom is, of course, seen as part of the sinister Communist conspiracy.

"The real issue," says Robert Welch, "is not integration in the schools, or in the restaurants, or anywhere else. The first issue of importance involved is States rights." This is, of course, the first commandment of racist politics in the United States. And, as Welch's good friend George Benson of Searcy, Ark., puts it, there are documents which show that in point 9 of the Communist timetable for 1961 "increased subversion through racial unrest in the United States" is to be expected.

All of this comes to a rather fantastic climax in a favorite Birchist project, shared also by the Billy James Hargis crowd: The impeachment of Chief Justice Earl Warren.

The Birch Society believes that "the impeachment of Earl Warren would dramatize and crystallize the whole basic question of whether the United States remains the United States, or become gradually transformed into a province of the worldwide Soviet system." As for integration: "It should be left up to the people," says Welch, by which he means, of course, that it should be left in the hands of the racist politicians in the Southern States.

Although the Ultras feel a strong sense of kinship with the Southern racist politicians their own attitudes toward American politics are ambivalent and contradictory. The Birchites do not believe in democracy and they say so. In the words of Robert Welch, "democracy is a weapon of demogoguery and a perennial fraud."

One wing of his organization takes this statement deadly serious and has begun to act on it. The Minutemen, a private guerilla army led by Birch Society member Robert B. DePugh of Missouri, has been conducting military maneuvers in Illinois and California. Interviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle on November 9, 1961, DePugh said he had visited Welch recently and had had a talk with him in his home in Belmont, Mass. Asked by Chronicle Reporter George Draper why he had organized his rightwing army, the Minuteman leader replied, "They would come in handy as 'neighbor against neighbor' spies in the event of a Communist uprising in the United States."

DePugh claimed a membership of 25,000, a figure that is probably inflated. But there is no doubt about the existence of the organization and of the fact

that it is heavily armed. When police in Shiloh, Ill., broke up a meeting of 19 Minutemen, they found an arsenal consisting of recoilless rifles, mortars, and machine guns. In California, the National Guard's State adjutant general told newsmen that the Guard had been observing secret military maneuvers by the Minutemen "equipped with heavy weapons."

The ideology of this guerilla gang is authentically Birchist and although they claim to be preparing for "do it yourself" civil defense, the evidence indicates that they regard the "Communist" threat to be mainly a domestic one. DePugh talks of a "Communist uprising". The New York Times quotes a Minuteman tract as follows: "We must investigate, by means of our own secret memberships, the possible infiltration of Communist sympathizers into American organizations of government, business, labor, religion or education." Asked if they didn't have faith in the FBI's ability to keep tabs on infiltration, DePugh replied, "We're in a better position to know our friends and neighbors than anyone else." "A lot of people in this country are Communists without knowing it themselves."

This guerrilla development is a direct outgrowth of the burgeoning of the Ultras and a logical culmination of their ideology. As of now they are, and wil probably remain for some time to come, the small superradical wing of the fundamentalist right. But given a continuation of the objective factors that give rise to the Ultras and the failure of the liberal and labor movements to conduct an effective counterattack, then the Minutemen or their equivalent will grow. What such a development would mean is painfully obvious.

4

But most Ultras are not Minutemen and despite Welch's hostility toward democracy, they utilize the pressure techniques made available to them by democracy. Wherever possible they intervene in politics, either by electing their own people to office or cultivating politicians already in office whose own reactionary views are close to theirs. Three Birchite Congressmen from California were already mentioned: Rousselot, Hiestand, and Utt. Congressman Gordon Scherer, a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee, has publicly proclaimed his support of the Birch Society. Georgia Congressman James C. Davis is a member of the national advisory committee of Billy Hargis' Christian Crusade. Noah Mason, Republican, of Illinois, and Dale Alford, Democrat, of Arkansas, are close to Hargis, as is Governor Faubus. Senator McClellan of Arkansas has worked closely with the Harding College-N.E.P. crowd and has received an award from Freedom's Foundation. Congressman Henry Judd, of Minnesota, and Senator Thomas Dodd, of Connecticut, while not fullfledged Ultras themselves, share many of the views held by the extreme right and are prepared to work with them, as evidenced by the fact that both are regular speakers at Fred Schwarz' "anticommunism" schools and rallies. Senator Tower, of Texas, who seems to be somewhat to the right of Barry Goldwater, acknowledges that members of the Birch Society actively campaigned for him and that he did nothing to discourage them. The Senator echoes most of the Ultra line and has been the most extreme of the Senatorial supporters of General Walker, who is a member of the Birch Society. Finally, Senator James Eastland, chairman of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, has made it known that he thinks highly of the Birch Society. In reply to inquiries about the society sent to his committee, he states that it is "apparently a patriotic organization." There are probably other Ultras in Congress; there are certainly a number of them in various State governments. The legislative bodies of at least two States, Texas and Arizona, have invited Fred C. Schwarz to lecture them on the Communist menace and gave him a standing ovation when he was through.

Several of the rightist organizations maintain offices in Washington to bring pressure to bear for their favorite causes, or, as is more frequently the case, to oppose legislation. Billy James Hargis' man in Washington is Gen. C. A. Willoughby (retired), the former intelligence chief for General MacArthur. The American Security Council's Washington office is headed by Adm. Chester Ward (retired), who enjoys close relations with a number of active duty military men. The Institute for American Strategy operates a headquarters in the Nation's Capital.

The John Birch Society's operations in Washington are more circumspect. A Washington dispatch to the New York Times on President Kennedy's foreign

4 Although Welch and the Birch Society leaders are the only major group of Ultras who publicly denounce democracy, the other leading Ultras never express adherence to it. Schwarz, Hargis, and Benson, for example, speak of their belief in the Republic, the Constitution, even freedom, but the word democracy seems to be entirely absent from their Vocabularies.

aid bill reported, "The principal lobbying effort against the bill is being waged *** by an ultraconservative businessman's organization known as the Citizen's Foreign Aid Committee *** Army Brig. Gen. Bonner Fellers, retired (a member of the Birch Society Committee of Endorsers, ed.) is national director and operating head of the organization's Washington headquarters *** Seven of the organization's 40-man national committee are also national directors of the ultraconservative John Birch Society * * * While such groups as the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Farm Bureau Federation will also be heard in opposition to the aid program, much of the material they use will have originated in General Feller's office."

A second important contradiction in Birchite politics, which cannot easily be ignored, is embedded in their attitudes toward Barry Goldwater and the Republican Party. Goldwater is clearly the Ultra's favorite choice for President. Welch has said so publicly, as have most of the others. Yet, they lack confidence in the Republican Party. Taft's nomination was stolen from him, says Welch, by the Communist conspirators in the Republican Party, who when the chips are down, are able to control the nomination. Welch has said he would like to see a Goldwater-Thurmond third party ticket in 1964.

Others among the Ultras are probably hoping to see Goldwater win the Republican nomination. But most fundamentally the Ultras look forward to political upheaval in the country and the emergence of an authoritarian regime: one which would clean out the menace of "internal subversion" and stand up to the "international Communist conspiracy." Such a regime, in their minds, would probably consist of a radical right-racist party in alliance with the military industrial complex.

In the meanwhile they are working furiously on behalf of General Walker and against Senator Fulbright and his memorandum. For they rightly view the Walker affair as a historically important battle. In Arkansas, Senator Fulbright's home State, the N.E.P.-Harding College complex is mobilizing all its resources in an effort to defeat the Senator in the 1962 election. And throughout the country the rank and file of the Ultras are using their favorite, and effective weapon to bring pressure on Congress and the administration: Letterwriting. So voluminous is the mail from the Ultras that Congresswoman Edith Green called it "frightening." Throughout the country the rightwing letterwriters are mobilized for action. On both coasts they have special organizations devoted exclusively to getting out the letters: the Network of Patriotic Letter Writers, which is based in Pasadena and Public Action, Inc., which operates out of New York.

But on the democratic left there is no equivalent activity to speak of, and this lack is noticed in Washington and throughout the country. The labor movement, which has the potential for mobilizing thousands, if not millions, seems lamentably unconcerned. The liberal organizations and publications, with a few honorable exceptions, show little sense of the urgency of the problem. None, for example, have yet come forward with a call for a united democratic alliance to strike back at the Ultras, to resoundingly affirm the American rule of civilian control of the military, to bring pressure on Congress and the administration to carry out the promises of the 1960 Democratic platform.

Yet such a democratic alliance is clearly and desperately needed. It can dramatically reverse the political tide. The elections of 1958 and 1960 proved that there is a liberal majority in the land that favors social advance. It is up to the democratic left to provide the leadership that will mobilize that majority for positive action for peace and democracy and thereby push the Ultras aside.

SUMMARY

How are we to evaluate the phenomenon of the Ultras?

It would be a mistake to develop a counterparanoia to that of the radical reactionaries, to imagine rightists under every bed, or to think that the basic problem of American society is dealing with its domestic rightwingers.

And it would be an equally serious mistake, as this pamphlet makes abundantly clear, to dismiss the whole business as the workings of a lunatic fringe. The Ultras, as they have been defined in this analysis, have a powerful base in one wing of the military-industrial complex; they have mass organizations and fronts; they are able to make effective mobilizations in Washington; and they are tied in with the whole traditional system of racism, native fascism, and the like.

At this point, it would be hysterical to see the Ultras as standing on the eve of national political power. Rather, it is important to understand them, to grasp why various factors are promoting their growth, to see that they will become, not less of a problem, but more of a menace.

The distinctive thing about the American ultras is that their basic dynamic derives from an international crisis. This is what makes them new and distinguishes them from the right wing formations of earlier periods.

When fascism arose in Europe in the thirties, it was the product of internal breakdowns. In Italy, Mussolini rode to power during the period of intense struggle right after World War I; Hitler rose through the collapse of the German economy; and Franco was the beneficiary of a violent and terrible civil war. The Fascists were, to be sure, "internationalist," i.e., they had programs of national expansion and foreign conquest. But these were always related to the domestic crisis.

Given its origins, the various Fascist movements tended to have "social program" (even if these were usually for demagogic purposes). In some cases, there were even anticapitalist themes. This was true in the United States where the Fascist movements used slogans of "social justice," "share the wealth," and the like.

Since they developed out of domestic crisis and unrest, the Fascist movements were, to put it mildly, highly visible. They built open, mass movements for the seizure of power; they struggled in the streets and employed the tactics of insurrection. Their appeal was to a lower middle class on the brink of destruction, and to unemployed workers who had been driven to desperation through long, intolerable periods of joblessness.

It is clear that the American ultras are not carbon copies of these classic Fascist movements. There is no domestic unrest in American society capable of serving as a base for militant mass movements of the right. Instead, the ultras derive their strength from the international crisis. They feed upon the frustrations of Americans who are puzzled and dismayed by the political complexities of a world containing a Communist claimant for global power and the great, historic transformation of the Colonial Revolution.

The

The focus of the ultra is the conspirator, the spy, the traitor, the infiltrator, rather than the economy or a particular class in it. The method of the ultra is the anticonspiracy conspiracy as well as the mass movement. The vision of the ultra is not an insurrectionary seizure of power but the counter-infiltration of the "already Communist-infiltrated" institutions of American society. aim of the ultra is not so much a positive social program as it is a demand that the United States get "tough" with the Communists (that is, risk World War III whenever there is a Russian challenge) and stop "pampering" the Nation (that is, dispense with all progressive programs of social welfare).

If the ultras do not pose a Fascist-like threat of imminent coup d'etat in the United States, they have an aspect which, in some ways is more insidious: A good part of their power is organized on conspiratorial lines, another part derives from the "informal" workings of military and corporate elites, most of them out of sight. As a result, the extent of ultra strength is less visible than that of classic fascism. And in so much as they succeed in imposing their doctrine upon the Nation, they create the conditions for the advance of communism and the further growth of ultra sentiment.

In short, the ultras are not a passing phenomenon. They will be with us for a long time even if, as in the case of McCarthyism, the sentiment goes underground for a few years-and it is essential that the democratic forces in the United States realize this.

The immediate problem is to contain ultra power within existing institutions, and to push it back. The main instrumentality of this task is the assertion of the American tradition of civilian control of the military and of the nonpolitical character of the military. In this regard, Senator Fulbright deserves the thanks of every civil libertarian and democrat in the Nation for bringing the issue into public debate.

But, as noted before in the discussion of the military-industrial complex, it is not enough to fight the ultra symptoms. There must be battle against the causes of radical reaction in the United States.

First and foremost, the democratic forces must develop a clear and forthright program for political struggle against communism and for freedom. If this Nation had a vital foreign policy of real democratic substance, if it greeted and

joined the revolutions of our time in order to provide them with the economic and political support for a democratic development, then much of the frustration and fear, the pessimism in the face of a complex international situation, would disappear.

The last paragraph represents an exceedingly fine and true sentiment; yet it has come to have the ring of a fatuous piety. Orator after orator has proclaimed this as the goal of America, and every postwr President, Eisenhower as well as Truman and Kennedy, has used this kind of rhetoric. In order to understand how to take the statement seriously, to raise it from phrasemongering to the level of political program, it is important to develop a concrete and rounded democratic foreign policy.

The essentials of such a policy can easily be outlined. They involve a shift from primary reliance upon military means to the utilization of political weapons in the fight against communism. They require an end to the sacrifice of political principle for the sake of military expediency. They consist of a repudiation of alliances with right-wing dictators, and a stop to the inclusion of Franco's Spain, Salazar's Portugal, and Chiang Kai-shek's Formosa within the definition "free world."

America's NATO allies were the oppressors yesterday of the newly emergent nations who have so recently been liberated from colonial bondage and they are also the oppressors of the remaining colonies to be found in Africa and Asia today. France still conducts a "dirty" imperialist war in Algeria, while Portugal brings terror and bloodshed to the peoples of Angola when the latter demonstrate for freedom. The record of the United States during the last decade and a half has been one of consistent support to the European imperialist powers against the colonial revolution in order not to offend this country's NATO partners. And while there have been a few encouraging signs of change from this rigid position since the inauguration of President Kennedy and the appointment of Adlai Stevenson as Ambassador to the U.N., there remains a long way to go before we can even begin to convince the neutralist nations of Asia and Africa that the United States is genuinely their friend.

The United States is regarded throughout the world as the country which first unleashed nuclear terror. We had a golden opportunity to earn greater goodwill from the uncommitted nations of the world by refusing to follow Russia's lead in resuming nuclear tests. A foreign policy which gave first priority to political consideration would have led the United States to vote with the overwhelming majority in the United Nations—including all of Latin America and some NATO members, such as Canada, Norway, and Denmark as well as the Afro-Asian bloc-against the Soviet bloc when it opposed the call for renewed moratorium on testing. Instead, the United States and a number of its perennial supporters on international questions, including South Africa, Portugal, and Nationalist China, joined the Soviet bloc countries in voting against the Afro-Asian resolution.

America's defense of freedom against communism sounds hollow to much of the world because we have not remonstrated that we stand for freedom everywhere, on both sides of the Iron Curtain. If a victory over communism through nuclear war is to be ruled out, the United States must develop the kind of policy which can contain and isolate Communist totalitarianism politically. Only a total and genuine democratic program offers the possibility of success along these lines.

America is what it is abroad, to a considerable extent, because of what it is at home. When one looks at the struggle against Batista in January 1959 through the eyes of sugar corporations and the Havana A.T. & T. it is sense and wisdom to stand aside, to be neutral, to disdain "joining" the revolution. And once this judgment is made, as that revolution moves against the American corporations and toward Moscow (in considerable degree because of the failure of the United States to act positively and radically), the same eyes see nothing but another Communist plot.

In short, America will not act positively and radically abroad so long as its domestic life is dominated by the force of conservatism, reaction, and the status quo. To get a democratic foreign policy, one must achieve a much more democratic domestic policy.

The American ultras have been quite successful in integrating internal reaction with internationalist reaction. They are solidly based upon corporate and military bureaucracies rooted in our domestic social structure. It is from