|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
||| |||
||| A N T I F A |||
||| |||
||| I N F O - B U L L E T I N |||
||| _____ |||
||| |||
||| * News * Analysis * Research * Action * |||
||| |||
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
*****
||/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\||/\||
|| * - RESEARCH - * - February 02, 1999 - * - RESEARCH - * ||
||\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/||\/||
* RESEARCH SUPPLEMENT *
______
* THE BETHUNE INSTITUTE FOR ANTI-FASCIST STUDIES *
Web: http://bethune.w-3productions.com/
Research Directors:
David Lethbridge, sacar@shuswap.net
Helmut-Harry Lowen, hloewen1@uwinnipeg.ca
- January 1999 -
-----
_________________________________________________________________
JEW-HATERS AND RED-BAITERS:
THE CANADIAN LEAGUE OF RIGHTS
_________________________________________________________________
By David Lethbridge
http://bethune.w-3productions.com/documents/clr.html
* * *
The Canadian League of Rights, after a decade of activity in
Alberta, has moved back to Ontario, from whence it came. While
this is unfortunate for working people in Ontario, Albertans
should not become too overjoyed: Eric Boswell, the CLR's apparent
second-in-command, continues to operate the provincial section
out of Brooks.
The CLR has been characterized by the Canadian Jewish
Congress as "perhaps Canada's leading antisemitic organization
operating today," and David Bercusson and Douglas Wertheimer in
their book "A Trust Betrayed," have called the CLR "one of the
largest and best organized Canadian antisemitic groups." The CLR
is the most recent mutation of the organizations controlled by
Ron Gostick and Patrick Walsh.
In 1950 and 1951, Gostick was speaking at meetings sponsored
by Gerald L. K. Smith and Wesley Swift. Smith and Swift were the
founders of the white supremacist and anti-Jewish religion of
Christian Identity, as well as the leaders of the California
Anti-Communist League. Under their influence, Gostick founded the
Canadian Anti-Communist League, whose mandate was to expose the
alleged "Communist-Zionist-Monopolist-Finance enemy of Christian
civilization." In this same period, Gostick was speaking at the
British-Israel Association, in Vancouver, which also displayed
the vicious racism and antisemitism of Christian Identity; a
tradition which continues.
Patrick Walsh, a long-time associate of Gostick's, now
deceased, was the CLR research director. In the early 1950s,
Walsh was writing for Adrien Arcand's newspaper, "Unite
National." Arcand was the leader of the pro-Hitler National Unity
Party prior to World War II, and a life-long fascist who gave
much of his library and a list of international fascist
supporters to Ernst Zundel before he died. In a 1963 letter
discovered in the National Archives, Patrick Walsh was still
praising Arcand, maintaining that he was only interned by the
government because of "Jewish and Communist pressure," and that
the fascist Arcand was "a patriotic Canadian who gave his life
for Canada." In this same letter, Walsh claims to have been an
agent of the RCMP Special Branch of the Intelligence and Security
Directorate for thirty years, and to have infiltrated Communist
organizations and a number of labor unions on their behalf.
While it is difficult to evaluate this claim, there is no
doubt that during the international seamen and dockers strike of
1949-50, Walsh had somehow become a member of the Canadian
Seaman's Union and was trying to bust it from the inside. During
the International Mine-Mill and Smelter workers strike at Inco in
Sudbury in the late 1950s, Walsh and Gostick were agitating
against the union. Walsh had apparently now become a member of
the Mine-Mill union: there are pamphlets signed by Patrick Walsh
as "National Director of the Mine-Mill rank and file committee."
This was at the same time as company management had hired ex-Nazi
SS stormtroopers and Hungarian emigre fascists to act as union-
busting thugs. Walsh was also in Washinton, DC, in 1953, as a
voluntary witness before the notorious House UnAmerican
Activities Committee "exposing" Communist influence in labor
unions, and became a bureau chief for the anti-Jewish Liberty
Lobby, as well as a contributing editor to the openly fascist
"American Mercury" magazine.
By 1961, Gostick's Canadian Anti-Communist League had become
the Christian Action Movement. In 1964, Robert Thompson, leader
of the Social Credit Party, was praising Gostick and CAM on
official party stationary. At the same time, John Ross Taylor,
leader of a pre-war Nazi political party and later a member of
Aryan Nations, and white supremacist David Stanley were giving
courses in infiltration, on how to break up meetings, and in
weapons and demolition techniques, at the Social Credit
headquarters building in Toronto. Interestingly, both Gostick's
organization and Taylor and Stanley's were using the same symbol
- a Celtic cross within a maple leaf.
Finally, Gostick's CAM developed into its present form - the
CLR - as a result of a series of tours in the mid-1960s by
Australian League of Rights director, Eric Butler. These tours
resulted in a private meeting held in Toronto, in 1967, to
organize the CLR. Documents obtained through Access to
Information procedures indicate that the structure of the CLR is
no more democratic than its politics. The organization is
controlled by the national director who issues directives to the
member groups. Each group is led by a group leader. Groups meet
every 14 days in a member's home. The group meetings are
semi-secret and closed to the public. New members are introduced
to the organization through existing members. New members must
attend a political seminar before becoming full members. All
groups correspond directly with the national office. There is no
direct communication between groups. The number, location, and
distribution of groups is known only to national HQ. Nobody
without access to national HQ can get any actual estimate of the
strength of the organization.
Questions remain about the size of its membership. In 1987,
Stanley Barrett, a noted academic, quoted a figure of 10,000.
While the CLR itself remains closed on this matter, a 1981 CLR
publication claimed that some of its issues had run "in the
hundreds of thousands;" and Philip Butler, the BC director, was
claiming "thousands of supporters" in the mid-1980s. If true,
these claims suggest an organization of considerable strength and
financial backing. According to a "confidential report" sent by
Gostick to 1300 supporters in 1964, $13,500 had been raised in
that year. Such a figure would be worth perhaps $150,000 in
purchasing power today.
Whatever the precise details might be, once the CLR was
consolidated, it began to step up its activities. The CLR became
a member of the Crown Commonwealth League of Rights (CCLR), an
international organization of antisemites and white racists, with
Gostick on the executive board. In 1975, the CLR, and the other
member groups of the CCLR, joined the World Anti-Communist League
(WACL), a global front for ex-Nazis, fascists, death squad
leaders, and other reactionary elements. The 1978 WACL meeting in
Washington, DC, attended by the CLR, was organized by Earl
Thomas, a former stormtrooper in the American Nazi Party, and by
Roger Pearson, a white racist academic. Patrick Walsh was elected
to membership of the executive board of the WACL.
In 1983 and again in 1984, the CLR sponsored Canadian tours
by Jack Mohr, a US Christian Identity leader, frequent speaker at
the Aryan Nations compound, and an early proponent of armed
right-wing militias. In 1983, Mohr was a guest speaker at the
CLR's International Seminar in Calgary. Sharing the platform were
Ivor Benson, a pro-apartheid organizer in South Africa and
advocate for white racist rule in what was then Rhodesia; a
speaker from Liberty Lobby; and members of the British,
Australian, New Zealand, and Canadian divisions of the League of
Rights. In 1984, the CLR had Jack Mohr speak in a 15-city tour
including Creston, Chilliwack, Kelowna, Vancouver, Victoria, and
Calgary.
Perhaps even more revelatory are the greetings to the CLR
published in their "Canadian Intelligence Service" 1981, vol. 31,
No. 9. Among those sending messages were Ron Bartell, Rafael
Rodriguez, and James Townsend. At that time, Bartell was chairman
of Liberty Lobby, an extensive and well-financed anti-Semitic US
organization; Rodriguez was head of the Latin American Division
of the WACL; and Townsend was working in a group called the
Committee of Ten Million with Robert Sheldon of the Ku Klux Klan,
and Robert dePugh formerly of the fascist and paramilitary
Minutemen.
The CLR publishes three periodicals: the "Canadian
Intelligence Service" (since 1947), "On Target" (since 1968), and
"Family Values" (since 1993). "Canadian Intelligence Service"
tends to publish longer ideological opinion pieces, often openly
critical of Jews, progressives, and anti-racists or,
alternatively articles supporting such racists and fascist as
Malcolm Ross, Terry Long, Ernst Zundel, or Jim Keegstra. Keegstra
himself was a member of the CLR and an avid reader of its
publications. "On Target" generally selectively reprints material
from the mainstream press, with added remarks by Gostick. Both
publications extensively advertise CLR books.
"Family Values" is edited by Mildred Nelson, a CLR activist
and intimate of Ron Gostick. While nominally a separate
initiative, it is clearly closely connected to the CLR. Its first
issue was taken up entirely by a reprint of Paul Cameron's
vicious homophobic and anti-homosexual propaganda. A later issue
claimed that noted 1940s sex researcher, Alfred Kinsey, trained
pedophiles to perform experiments on infants "a few months old."
The Kinsey reported is then spuriously tied to the rise of
pornography, which is then further linked to sex education in
schools. Given the nature of fascism as a totality, it is hardly
a surprise that the antisemitic and racist politics of the CLR
would be extended to anti-homosexualism.
The CLR book service has sold a wide variety of antisemitic,
Holocaust-denial, racist, and anti-Communist books. Many of these
are classified as prohibited hate propaganda by the Customs and
Excise Prohibited Articles Division, including, "Protocols of the
Elders of Zion," "Hoax of the Twentieth Century," "The Auschwitz
Myth," "The Talmud Unmasked," "Imperium," "The Dispossessed
Majority," and "Red Fog Over America." Literally hundreds of
extreme-right books appear regularly in their catalog.
In 1991, the CLR advertised its book list through an
Australian periodical - "Perseverance." Perseverance is printed
in Australia, but largely aimed at a Canadian and US readership.
Perseverance is a vehicle for the Arrow Cross, the Hungarian
fascist and Nazi-collaborationist party of the 1940s. It is
edited by elderly members of that group and a second generation
of followers. In the pages of 1990s issues of the periodical, can
be found an article by the CLR (entitled "Canadian News"), and in
another issue, the CLR's book catalog, sharing the pages with
articles by Ernst Zundel, Louis Beam of the Aryan Nations, Robert
Miles of the KKK and Identity, as well as articles by the
original leadership of the Arrow Cross, and by German Nazi leader
Joseph Goebbels.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Gostick and other CLR
leaders have been criss-crossing the country holding meetings in
both big cities and small towns. Until a falling out over
finances, Gostick did a number of tours in the 1990s with Murray
Gauvreau who sold Christian Identity and right-wing militia books
and tapes through a service in Grande Prairie, Alberta. Gostick
today is a frequent speaker at conferences controlled and
attended by fellow right-wing extremists, Paul Fromm, Doug
Christie, and Eileen Pressler.
The Canadian League of Rights poses a significant danger.
Their supporters probably number in the thousands. They have
multiple and overlapping connections not only with every notable
right wing extremist in Canada, but also with neo-fascists,
Identity fanatics, white racists, and antisemites
internationally. Certainly the continuing presence of the CLR,
its constant touring throughout the country, its promotion of
extremist speakers, and the hate propaganda it sells through its
literature service, constitutes an on-going dissemination of
neo-fascist ideology across the country unparalleled by any other
extreme-right organization in Canada. And yet what is most
insidious about the CLR is their ability over many decades to
avoid not only legal prosecution, but serious investigation by
mainstream media. Fifty years is enough! It's time to put the
pressure on the CLR and expose their real nature to the working
people.
* * *
APPENDIX: EXAMPLES OF BOOKS SOLD BY THE CLR
Imperium, by Ulick Varange (real name: Francis Parker
Yockey). The CLR comments that "many consider this the
greatest book of the century in its field." According to the
Anti-Defamation League the book is dedicated to an anonymous
individual who can only be Hitler, and is a paraphrase of
Nazi doctrine. It has been referred to as a "second Mein
Kampf" and has been popular with neo-Nazis for thirty years.
Auschwitz: A Judge Looks at the Evidence, by Wilhelm
Staeglich. The CLR claims that it exposes "the myth of
exterminations at Auschwitz" and refers to it as "a beacon
of light." According to the ADL the author is an editorial
advisor of the "Journal of Historical Review", the official
publication of the Institute for Historical Review, the
leading exponent of Holocaust-denial in the United States.
In 1983 the University of Goettingen stripped Staeglich of
the academic degree it had awarded him in 1951.
The "Holocaust": 120 Questions and Answers, by Charles
Weber. The CLR states that Weber is a U.S. intelligence
officer connected with the Nuremberg trials, and promises to
reveal the "real fate" of the Jews of Europe during World
War Two. In reality, the book is an exercise in Holocaust-
denial. Weber has authored at least two pieces for the
pro-Hitler group Aryan Nations - in 1985 and 1989 -
supportive of Nazism. In a 1988 issue of the Christian
Defence League Report - an Identity publication - Weber
writes of an International Jewish conspiracy.
Churchill's War; Uprising!; Hess: The Missing Years, all
three by David Irving. Irving has a long history of
involvement with British neo-fascist organizations, and
American anti-Semites and Holocaust-deniers such as the
Institute for Historical Review and National Alliance. In
both Canada and Australia he has employed neo-Nazi skinheads
as bodyguards. Irving has publicly stated that since the
Holocaust never occurred, he will not even refer to it in a
footnote in his future writings. The British House of
Commons has referred to Irving as "a Nazi propagandist and
long-term Hitler apologist."
Frank Walus: A Frame-Up Victim of the Nazi Hunters, by Len
Martin. Martin is a leader of the Posse Comitatus, a violent
and anti-Semitic American grassroots organization. Martin
has written that the CIA and the FBI are not part of the US
government, but part of the worldwide "Jewish Police." The
content of the Frank Walus book is an attempt to undermine
the efforts of the Office of Special Investigations, a
branch of the U.S. Department of Justice devoted to the
prosecution of Nazi war criminals.
The Dispossessed Majority; Ventilations, both by Wilmot
Robertson. The CLR editorial comment is that the former
title is "a very significant book for our time, daring to
deal with the verboten race question." Both Robertson's
books and his monthly magazine "Instauration" are white
supremacist and anti-Semitic in nature. Since its
publication in 1972, The Dispossessed Majority has become
something of a classic in neo-Nazi circles.
Truth Out of Africa; A Time to Speak; The Middle East Riddle
Unwrapped; The Age of Conflict, all four by Ivor Benson.
Benson has been on the editorial board of "Spotlight", the
newspaper of Liberty Lobby, the largest and most well-
financed of American anti-Semitic organizations. He also ran
"National Forum", the South African chapter of the World
Anti-Communist League (WACL), an international collection of
anti-Semites, pro-fascists and vicious racialists according
to Geoffrey Stewart-Smith who, in the early 1980s, headed
the British contingent to the WACL. Subscriptions to
Benson's newsletter are carried directly by the CLR. Benson
has also served in an editorial capacity on Roger Pearson's
neo-Nazi and racist magazine "Western Destiny."
The War Called Peace, published by Western Goals, no author
cited. The chair of Western Goals was Clive Derby-Lewis of
South Africa, convicted in 1993 in the conspiracy to murder
African National Congress (ANC) leader Chris Hani. Derby-
Lewis was also a member of the WACL.
Fifty Years Ago: The Famine Holocaust in Ukraine, by Walter
Dushnyck. Dushnyck was an editor of a Ukranian encyclopedia
working under former Nazi collaborator Kubijovyc. Dushnyck
himself was active in pre-World War Two Ukranian fascist
circles. The book is illustrated with fraudulent
photographs, many of which were obtained from Nazi
collaborator Stepan Skrypnyk.
Billions for the Bankers, Debts for the People, by Sheldon
Emry. Emry was a major figure in the Christian Identity
movement that argues that the White peoples are the Old
Testament Israelites and, therefore, God's chosen people,
Jews are Satanic in origin, and people of color are intended
by God to be the servants of the Whites. Emry allied himself
with the armed Identity group, the Citizens Emergency
Defense System, and was frequently published in "Spotlight",
the magazine of the anti-Semitic Liberty Lobby and, in the
book sold by the CLR accused the Jews of starting World Wars
One and Two, the Vietnam War, and the assassination of
President Lincoln. Emry has also written denying the
Holocaust.
The Big Idea; The Brief for the Prosecution; Social Credit;
Money and the Price System; The Monopolistic Idea; The
Breakdown of the Employment System; The Nature of Democracy;
The Tragedy of Human Effort; The Monopoly of Credit; The
Policy of a Philosophy; Realistic Constitutionalism; Whose
Service Is Perfect Freedom; Economic Democracy; The Alberta
Experiment, all fourteen titles by C.H. Douglas. Douglas is
well-known as a "vicious anti-Semite" who advanced
international Jewish conspiracy theories. The CLR editorial
comment on The Big Idea is that the book reveals "a deeply-
rooted conspiracy, Satanic in conception and nature, for the
destruction of what once promised to be a developing
Christian Civilization."
Copyright 1999 The Bethune Institute for Anti-Fascist
Studies
* * *
ANTIFA INFO-BULLETIN (AFIB)
750 La Playa # 730
San Francisco, California 94121
E-Mail: tburghardt@igc.org
*
On PeaceNet visit ANTIFA INFO-BULLETIN on pol.right.antifa
Via the Web --> http://burn.ucsd.edu/~aff/afib.html
Archive --> http://burn.ucsd.edu/~aff/afib-bulletins.html
*
ANTI-FASCIST FORUM (AFF)
Antifa Info-Bulletin is a member of the Anti-Fascist Forum
network. AFF is an info-group which collects and
disseminates information, research and analysis on fascist
activity and anti-fascist resistance. More info:
E-mail: aff@burn.ucsd.edu
Web: http://burn.ucsd.edu/~aff
Order our journal, ANTIFA FORUM, cutting-edge anti-fascist
research and analysis! 4 issues, $20. Write AFF, P.O. Box
6326, Station A, Toronto, Ontario, M5W 1P7 Canada
+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+
+: * A N T I F A I N F O - B U L L E T I N * +:
:+ :+
+: * RESISTING FASCISM * BY ALL MEANS NECESSARY! * +:
+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+
++++ stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal ++++
++++ if you agree copy these 3 sentences in your own sig ++++
++++ see: http://www.xs4all.nl/~tank/spg-l/sigaction.htm ++++
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Arm The Spirit is an autonomist/anti-imperialist information
collective based in Toronto, Canada. Our focus includes a wide
variety of material, including political prisoners, national
liberation struggles, armed communist resistance, anti-fascism,
the fight against patriarchy, and more. We regularly publish our
writings, research, and translation materials on our listserv
called ATS-L. For more information, contact:
Arm The Spirit
P.O. Box 6326, Stn. A
Toronto, Ontario
M5W 1P7 Canada
E-mail: ats@etext.org
WWW: http://burn.ucsd.edu/~ats/
ATS-L Archives: http://burn.ucsd.edu/archives/ats-l
-----------------------------------------------------------------
(
geocities.com/CapitolHill)