When Captain John G. Crommelin issued a scathing report criticizing Military politics as concentrating military authority in the hands of an elite few and that the Defense Department was scuttling Naval air power in favor of the Air Force, and that a "Prussian General staff system of the type employed by Hitler" was being imposed on the armed forces under a proposed unification of the branches of service, needless to say he was quickly and severely reprimanded by the Defense Department.

Trouble was, John G. Crommelin had more than a few mummies in his own closet to contend with. As much as he was praised as something of a whistle blower, he was also vilified when it became public that he was a virulent segregationist, white supremacist and anti-semite, known for extolling his opinion that Jews were the real enemy of "white christian Alabamans", claiming they were behind the formation of the NAACP.

On October 1, 1949, Crommelin was asked to appear on Meet The Press to answer not only his critics, but to answer his criticisms of the Defense Department. Before the interview began, Crommelin issued a statement saying in effect he had received a gag order from the Defense Department prior to his appearance on the program.

Warren Francis (Los Angeles Times): “Captain, I don’t think this is covered by your orders, you are quoted in a recent news magazine as saying that people have called you on the telephone and that your wire has been tapped. Who tapped it and why??
Crommelin: “I have no idea who tapped it.”
Francis: “Did you say that it had been tapped?”
Crommelin: “I did not say that it had been . . .I said that it probably IS tapped.”
Francis: “The statement is correct then, that you did say it’s probably tapped?”
Crommelin: “That’s correct.”
Francis: “But you have no idea why?”
Crommelin: “No, no. No particular idea, except uh . . .I had made the statement. I thought that . . .very probably it was. That . . .it’s information that I’m not going to give you Mister Francis, because I don’t want to get into any petty discussions on that . . . “
Francis: “Now Captain, just a minute, I don’t think the orders cover that. Why did you think it was tapped? Could you tell us that?”
Crommelin: “I could, but I don’t propose to Mister Francis.”

Crommelin would later be reassigned to San Francisco before being furloughed at half pay in 1950 and later retired from the Navy. After that, he would get involved in the far-right National States Rights Party and have several runs for the Senate and Governor of Alabama between 1950 and 1968.

(Hamilton Fish III - once observed distributing copies of The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion out of his Senate office)

Let it never be said that the Lunatic Fringe is the sole property of the past decade. It's not. Prior to World War 2 we had the likes of Hamilton Fish III who not only was a vocal opponent of FDR's New Deal, he was also a vocal opponent of FDR in general. With the Lend-Lease bill before Congress, Fish charged the country was slipping into Totalitarianism with FDR bracing to assume the Dictatorship of the country and all was headed into irreversible disaster.

Hamilton Fish: “ It is evident that the tide of totalitarianism in government which has swept over many lands has not only reached our shores, but has gone far to destroy constitutional barriers. Which, once broken down, are not likely to be restored.”

Hamilton Fish: “ A great debate is now being waged in the Congress and throughout the nation as to whether the Congress should surrender to the President its constitutional power to declare war. And in the same bill give away blank check control of the purse. The issue is very clear, and I believe that once the American people understand that the Lend-Lease bill in its present form is not primarily to aid Great Britain, but to set up a dictatorship in America, they will demand its repudiation and defeat.”

Fish was an avowed isolationist. Aligning himself with the anti-war movement, he was closely associated with a number of Pro-German sympathies in the 1930s to just prior to the outbreak of our involvement in the War. He became friends with Joachim von Ribbentop, Foreign Minister in the Hitler regime and was accused on several occasions of having pro-Nazi leanings, even to the point of distributing copies of The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion out of his Senate office and making anti-Semitic remarks with regards to Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler's Germany.

Fish is an all-but-forgotten figure now. It's doubtful anyone in the last two generations has actually heard him. He was defeated in his re-election bid and faded into the background after World War 2 and died in 1991. But as this address from January 21, 1941 indicates, he had a following and some people took the paranoia very seriously.

Paranoia, it seems, is timeless.

Fifteen years ago today Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was gunned down by a right wing extremist while attending a peace rally in Tel-Aviv, moments after joining in singing A Song To Peace to the assembled crowd. Within minutes of his death, news flashed all over the world that the gunman, Yigal Amir, was a right-wing extremist, frustrated by the direction the Arab-Israeli peace talks were going and acted alone in his killing of the Prime Minister. However, as with all assassinations, conspiracy theories persist and some say Amir acted on orders of Rabin's successor, Shimon Peres who felt Rabin was selling Israel out.

Regardless of what the real story is, Yitzhak Rabin was dead, the world mourned and the peace process got set back several years.

Fifteen years ago tonight.

Here's the first few announcements of the death of Rabin and reports from the scene via NPR and CNN.

(To some . . .)

Note: This is a repost from March, but considering the recent developments in Texas it seems apropos today

With the recent fracas over School Textbooks in Texas, I was reminded how much of an ongoing story this is and how people, many of them either gullible or ignorant, react violently to fear being fed them. And how that fear is exploited and blown out of proportion for so many reasons, most all of them self-serving and usually under the guise of "populist causes".

Case in point: In the early 1970's there was a rash of protests, most from small communities throughout the U.S. that the school systems of the country, part of some vast government conspiracy, were turning school age children into horrible little Communists by subjecting them to "subversive textbooks". The protests, for the most part fueled by groups claiming to be Evangelicals (and some with ties to the John Birch Society), passed around leaflets with examples of the "obscene material"supposedly being taught in the K-12 system. The truth of the matter was, all the leaflets contained material nowhere to be found in any of the books in question and that this was another attempt by the Religious Right to disrupt the educational system in America.

On December 12, 1974, NPR ran, as part of their series "Options In Education" a documentary called "Censoring Textbooks: Is West Virginia the Tip Of The Iceberg?" In a word - yes.

Unidentified parent: “Now if the Board of Education comes over and tries to close us down or tries to put pressure on us, then I’ll fight. I’ll fight . . they can’t have my daughter. I have one daughter and I’ll fight ‘em to my death. And she’s goin’ to school where I want her to go to school. She’s gonna do what I tell her to do, not what some Board of Education or some government tells her to do. That’s my right. That’s our responsibility. You raise corn, but you train children.

Further evidence ignorance isn't bliss. But that was 1974. How much has it changed? According to a recent installment of To The Point, the Texas Board of Education is under almost exactly the same level of Screaming Nameless Fear as West Virginia was 36 years ago. In short, nothing has changed - only the names and faces. The ignorance is still without bliss.

As a bonus, I am running the To The Point broadcast from February of this year as a way of showing the similarities, despite years, of the controversy. Special thanks to KCRW and Public Radio International.

(Rep. John Rarick (D-Louisiana) - our tax dollars at work)

Looking at what was Hate Radio in the 1960s, I keep coming across quasi-religious programs with such benign names as The Bible Institute Of The Air that began and ended with a certain amount of evangelical lip service but in the middle of each program came a blast of fear, hate and paranoia directed straight at the uninformed public. In the 1960s and all the way until the late 1980s it was pretty much masquerading as anti-Communist tirades. But as was evidenced by this interview between Dr. C.W. Burpo and Congressman John Rarick (D-Louisiana), it made no bones about its blatant racism, particularly in the area of schools.

Rep. John Rarick: “They come out and say if you’re against sexual education, which is really perversion, it’s the art of sex in itself, it’s the animal act, then you’re against education and against academic freedom. They at no time have made any suggestion that the way for this to handle is through the home, or that we educate the parents, you see because they do not believe in the home. They’re really opposed to any parential control because it would deny them some control over the minds and the bodies of these small American children. Now, I think the other amazing thing is, we’ve just received word that the Head Start program, which was devised under the Communist theory of environmental factors that genocide or genetics have nothing to do with children or their mentality. The Head Start Program which is for five and above is now to be abolished because their experience or the actual testing shows that all the Head Start money has been wasted; it’s accomplished nothing. And the children who are not in these Head Start Schools or in these kindergarten facilities came into school and were able to compete and they were just as mentally alert and their i.q. was the same as the other youngsters. In other words, the i.q.; the basic common sense or know-how or incentives are born in us. So now in desperation the environmentalists, and this goes clear back to basic Communism because, to believe in heredity you have to believe that people are different. And you have to believe in different racial strains and you have to believe in selective breeding of the people, like you do high bred cattle or dogs or anything else.

Rep. John Rarick: “In Washington D.C. alone one of the Negro militants, a woman, has come and she says that this sex education is a necessity because it’s the only solution to the race problem because this is the only way we can teach the young children to not discriminate in their sex activities so that of course they will in-breed with different races, going back to the same theory again that by changing the environment, changing the education and like events, we will wind up with the, what is it, the One International Brown Man. And intelligence and of course intellect, heredity are given no acknowledgment. In fact today anyone who even dares suggest the difference between two kernels of wheat I guess would be made out to be a lunatic or some kind of a radical.”

It is no surprise that, as the result of his support of George Wallace in the 1968 election, he was stripped of any seniority he had by his own party (which he whines about at length at the beginning of the broadcast). Although it should be noted, Rarick was one of that breed of politician known as the Dixiecrat all throughout the 40s, 50s and 60s. He was no isolated case. And also remember the Dixiecrats have morphed into that seemingly harmless title of Blue Dogs now.

The leopards may change their names - but the spots are just the same.

(results of the unhinged)

As talk of our fractured society enters the realm of the extreme, I'm reminded of how, after the first few hours of the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma city on April 19, 1995, no one really wanted to believe this was something homegrown. One of us, a seemingly adjusted functioning human being, bent on destroying lives, most of them children, bent on proving an abstract incomprehensible thought might be responsible.

Gov. Keating (Oklahoma): “I know of no threat and I know of no warning. The size of the explosion indicated, I think, to many of us who have been in this business is that it had to be more that a utility blast, and apparently that’s what occurred and it’s, you know, a terrible, terrible thing that these innocent people could be savaged like this.”

As this compressed recording of the first 3 hours shows, from roughly 9:30 to noon, thoughts were geared towards some terrorist group from another country, much like the ones who tried to blow up the World Trade Center only two years earlier, or the ones earlier that day in Japan who set off poison gas in the subway system, fashioning themselves after the Tokyo subway attacks only a month earlier.

Even an early report linking the bombings to an erroneous phone call linking the Nation of Islam, seemed more credible than the real story that was unfolding. And it wasn't until almost two hours later that it occurred to someone in Oklahoma City that maybe, just maybe this bombing was some form of revenge for Waco - that this day, April 19 was an anniversary. And this, as twisted logic goes, was a good excuse even as the casualties rose on a minute by minute basis.

So I'm reminded how easily the unhinged can operate, how easily they are goaded into acts of extreme violence by manipulators to prove an abstract point even they aren't quite sure of. They are only sure of nameless hate and faceless fear.

And the propagators of hate and hate speech and hate media like that just fine.

(Blackshirt Women in England - fun loving girls . . .really!)

I normally don't run things that are currently available, but the BBC just ran this on Radio 4 and it's currently available via their BBC iplayer. I would urge you to go over there and check out their site if you haven't already and bookmark it. The BBC are always a wealth of useful information, many times information regarding our own country and politics our msm shove to the back or ignore completely in favor of "info-tainment".

This is a fascinating piece of history, during a disturbing period of time and it illustrates how seemingly normal people are duped into believing they are really doing the right thing with catastrophic and long lasting results.

I'm not making assumptions here - but I wonder if in 30 years time we won't be hearing a similar documentary "Mother Was A Teabagger", with similar results. Just wondering.

(Dr. W.S. "Stuart" McBirnie - warnings against the all-malevolent "them")

Every time I hear about "Liberal Media", another batch of tapes fall off my shelves, always from some extreme right-wing group, or quasi-religious organization with an extreme agenda. Never fails. There are thousands of them. The airwaves have been jam-packed with them since the beginnings of broadcasting.

This particular tape comes by way of The Voice Of Americanism, a daily radio (and later TV) show hosted by William Stuart McBirnie, a wildly anti-Communist preacher who was heard on over 300 stations from the early 1960's to the 1980s.

On this broadcast, from the 1980s (no exact date) he plays host to a Gordon Browning who was Executive Assistant to California State Senator H.L. "Bill" Richardson. Not much is known about Browning (although I'm sure someone out there has a whole file someplace), but Richardson, who has since "retired" from the State Senate, is around and flying slightly under the radar.

The subject of the broadcast is how the left manipulate people through issues - this issue being Clean Air. Sound familiar?

McBirnie: “Smog is not only a product of automobiles, it is also the product of many things. Now, help us understand though, how the leftists and the Stateists, the people who want to control people, are stepping into this picture to use this problem?”

Have a listen and have at it. Should be lively.

Oh . . .and hit the button below and feel a whole lot better!

(Martin Dies, 1939 - managed to take the lunatic fringe to the lunatic edge)

A few months ago I ran a piece on Martin Dies, and his infamous Dies Committee for Un-American Activities. An earlier incarnation of Joe McCarthy, Dies also managed to slide off the rails with vicious accusations and wild innuendos about people in and around power. Famously fabricating lists of "known communists", many of whom did not exist.

But just before World War 2, paranoia was rife. We were dangling on the precipice of getting involved. The war had already started by the time this address was given on October 27, 1939 and fear of being overtaken by some evil foreign entity was running rampant in the newspapers on the radio and on Capitol Hill.

So Dies took up the crusade, cloaking himself in Americanism and preaching the gospel of fear, whipping people into a state of frenzy.

Martin Dies: “These enemies within our country are not easily exposed, it is most difficult to expose fearlessly and without partisanship the termites who have ceaselessly gnawed at the pillars of this republic, because there are those who would like for us to be partisan when the question is involved. I said in the beginning of this investigation that I was determined it would be conducted without fear and without favor and that I would not hesitate to expose any man, whether he’s a Democrat or he’s a Republican. Whether he’s a New Dealer or an anti-New Dealer. Whether he works in the government or whether he’s working in industry. Only on that basis can I reconcile my attitude with my conscience. If the time has come when in the interest of political expediency and in behest to demands of party leadership I must qualify my conscience, I’ll surrender my commission and go back to private life. At least with my honor unimpaired.”

Clearly, fear and paranoia haven't gone out of fashion. And the practitioners of that fear will probably never go broke perpetuating it. The times change, the situations change, the enemies change. But the fear hate and mistrust, then as now, are all the same.

Comforting, isn't it?

(A little hate goes a long way)

Something about November 4th - it must be the moon.

Frank Stasio (NPR News): “Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin has been shot and killed. Rabin was shot to death as he was leaving a peace rally in Tel-Aviv. Police have arrested an Israeli Jew, a man in his twenties who is said to be a member of a little known right-wing extremist group. The alleged gunman is identified as Yigal Amir. According to Israeli Television he is a law student at Bar-Ilan University and had been involved in right wing causes. Government spokesman Uri Dromi said that a Jewish organization which is anti-government and which is against the peace process took responsibility. He said the group identified the gunman as acting for them.”

The gunman later claimed to be acting "on God's behalf". Little comfort in knowing insanity is universal.