From cberlet@igc.apc.org Thu May 30 14:19:40 PDT 1996
Article: 20433 of misc.activism.militia
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From: Chip Berlet 
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Date: Thu, 30 May 96 3:33:04 GMT
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Subject: Gritz, Grodin, and Garbage
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Gritz, Grodin, and Garbage

by Chip Berlet
Political Research Associates


On the Charles Grodin CNBC program of Wednesday, May 29, 
Grodin announced that Bo Gritz had told him that he had never 
"even temporarily" run for office on the presidential ticket of
David Duke and the Populist Party. This is garbage.

Gritz agreed to run as the 1988 vice presidential candidate 
of the Populist Party on the ticket with presidential candidate David Duke. 
Duke's past affiliations with the Ku Klux Klan and neonazi movement 
are still reflected in Duke's political ideology. Even Readers Digest 
called the Populist Party a haven for neo-Nazis and ex-Klansmen.
The Populist Party was originally founded by notorious anti-Semite 
and Hitler apologist Willis Carto who founded the Liberty Lobby. 

A photograph of Gritz shaking hands with David Duke at the 
nominating convention was published in Liberty Lobby's 
Spotlight newspaper. (To obtain a photocopy of this photograph
for educational documentation purposes send a self-addressed
stamped envelope to Political Research Associates, 120 Beacon
Street, Suite 202, Somerville, MA 02143.)

Gritz indeed later dropped off the ticket to run for local office. But then 
Gritz accepted the 1992 nomination for president on the Populist 
Party ticket, although he also ran on other tickets as well 
in the 1992 election.

Bo Gritz is the point man in an effort to build a coalition of 
white supremacists, anti-Jewish bigots, neo-fascists, and 
gun activists, and others in the patriot movement. Gritz has 
attracted a large audience of with his anti-administration appeals. 

Gritz primarily seeks to build networks of 
support in reactionary and far-right circles. He 
made a presentation on "MIA/POW & Government Drug 
Dealers" at the Third Christian Heritage National 
Conference held in November of 1990 in Florida. 
Among other featured speakers were Bob Weems, 
Pete Peters, Col. Jack Mohr and other persons who 
promote Christian Identity, a white supremacist 
conspiracy theory that targets Jews as agents of 
Satan. Also speaking were Eustace Mullins, who 
provided the "Total Conspiracy Update," and A.J. 
Barker, national chairman of the Populist Party 
which ran former neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan leader 
David Duke for President in 1988 with Gritz as 
the original vice-presidential nominee. Gritz 
later dropped off the ticket to run for local 
office, and now makes excuses for his earlier 
affiliation with Duke. Gritz claims he opposes 
racism and is trying to clean up the Populist 
Party. 

But according to the Monitor newsletter from the
Center for Democratic Renewal, "Gritz's standard 
stump speech is an amalgam of themes popular 
among white supremacists and others on the far 
right: the Federal Reserve System is 
unconstitutional and should be abolished and a 
vast conspiracy of "internationalists" are taking 
over the world. In his book Called to Serve, 
Gritz writes that "Eight jewish (sic) families 
virtually control the FED," (the Federal Reserve 
System.) 

Pastor Pete Peters is a leading proponent of 
the Christian Identity religion. In a speech at
Peter's Colorado headquarters, Gritz acknowledged
that Peters had helped publish and distribute his
book Called to Serve, which is used to promote the
Gritz presidential campaign.

Christian Identity is a religion that 
sees Jews as agents of Satan and considers 
African-Americans to be sub-human. Identity 
claims the United States is the real 
promised land and white Christians are the 
real children of Israel. Many proponents of 
Christian Identity seek to overthrow the 
"Zionist Occupational Government" 
in Washington, D.C. and establish an 
exclusively white Christian nation, 
or at least seize the states 
of the pacific northwest. 

Gritz defends author Eustace Mullins and
distributes his book on the Federal
Reserve. According to Gritz, Mullins is
not anti-Jewish.

In his pamphlet The Secret Holocaust,
Mullins asserts:

"The record shows that only Christians have been victims 
of the historic massacres. The Jews, when they did not do the killings 
themselves, as they always prefer to do, were always in the background 
as the only instigators of these crimes against humanity. We can and 
we must protect ourselves against the bloodthirsty bestiality of the 
Jew by every possible means, and we must be aware that the Christian 
creed of love and mercy can be overshadowed by the Jewish obsession 
that all non Jews are animals to be killed." (Eustace Mullins, The 
Secret Holocaust, Word of Christ Mission, no date.)

Mullins' speaking tours are promoted in 
ads placed in Liberty Lobby's Spotlight 
newspaper, a publication that has praised
the spirit of the Waffen SS and promotes the
view that the accepted history of the Nazi
Holocaust is a Jewish hoax. 

The Populist Party began promoting Gritz for 
President in the summer of 1991. The banner 
headline in the June, 1991 issue of The Populist 
Observer: Voice of the Populist Party was 
"Groundswell Building For Gritz Presidential 
Run." Gritz had addressed the Populist Party 
national convention in May 1991. The following 
month, The Populist Observer ran another banner 
headline proclaiming: "Gritz Populist Party 
Candidacy for President Official!" In a memo 
sent to Populist Party regulars by Chair Don 
Wassall, and signed by 11 Populist Party 
Executive Committee members, Wassall wrote that 
"We are reaching out to new people, and we have a 
tremendous presidential candidate in Bo Gritz." 
Campaign flyers mailed from the Populist Party 
headquarters are headlined "Bo Gritz for 
President...Vote Populist Party." In the June, 
1991 issue of The Populist Observer, Gritz wrote, 
"I call upon you as Republican, Democrat, 
Libertarian, Independent, right, left, 
conservative, liberal, et.al., to UNITE AS 
POPULISTS [emphasis in original] until we have 
our nation firmly back on her feet." Gritz told 
the audience at a July, 1991 meeting in Palo 
Alto, California that they should reach out and 
attempt to recruit persons from the left. 

While leading fascist organizer Willis Carto 
was one of the key founders of 
the Populist Party, the Party is now under the 
control of Don Wassall who is feuding with Willis 
Carto and the Liberty Lobby over control of the 
movement. According to the May 1992 issue of The 
Monitor, "Wassall's Populist Party has been 
forced to take a back seat as Gritz has cobbled 
together his own organization, the America First! 
Coalition." 

Gritz was heavily promoted by the Carto 
forces as early as the summer of 1987 when Gritz 
was holding press conferences charging that key 
U.S. government officials were the "biggest 
customers" of the world's leading "drug lord," 
Gen. Khun Sa of Burma. 

In a January 3, 1992 letter to Willis Carto, 
Gritz urged the warring factions in the Populist 
Party to cease their bickering, and told Carto he 
was "seeking cooperation between you and your 
former allies." He also wrote "During my first 
meeting with Don and Phil as a Populist 
candidate, I expressed utmost concern over 
accountability of funds," thus clearly 
acknowledging that he considers himself the 
Populist Party candidate. Gritz continuously 
misrepresents the nature of the Populist Party.

An article in the September 1992 Soldier of
Fortune magazine notes:

"Gritz also said he does not know Jerry Pope,
chairman of Kentucky's Populist Party. Pope
was once a prominent figure in the National
States Rights Party founded by racist J.B.
Stoner, who was imprisoned for the deaths of
black children in the bombing of a Sunday
school class in Birmingham, Alabama."


Gritz and the Liberty Lobby Convention

At the 35th Anniversary Liberty Lobby convention 
held in September, 1990 there was considerable 
antiwar sentiment expressed by speakers who tied 
the U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia to pressure 
>from  Israel and its intelligence agency, Mossad. 
No matter what actual political involvement, if 
any, forces that support Israel may have had in 
shaping the events that led to the Gulf War, the 
themes discussed at the Liberty Lobby conference 
tilted toward undocumented anti-Jewish propaganda 
rather than principled factual criticisms. 

At the Liberty Loby conference Fletcher Prouty 
released the new Institute for Historical 
Review's Noontide Press edition of his book on 
CIA intrigue, The Secret Team. Prouty also 
moderated a panel where Bo Gritz wove a 
conspiracy theory which explained the U.S. 
confrontation with Iraq as a product of the same 
"Secret Team" outlined by Prouty. 

Spotlight's coverage of the Gritz presentation 
featured a headline proclaiming "Gritz 
Warns...Get Ready to Fight or Lose Freedom: Links 
Drugs, CIA, Mossad; Slams U.S. Foreign Policy; 
Alerts Patriots to Martial Law Threat." 


The Liberty Lobby Populist Action Comittee 

In 1991 Liberty Lobby announced the creation of 
the advisory board of the Populist Action 
Committee. The Spotlight ran a major feature on 
the formation of the advisory board with 
photographs of the persons announced as appointed 
to launch the Committee. Both Bo Gritz and 
Fletcher Prouty were named to the advisory panel. 

According to the Spotlight, the other persons 
named to the advisory board were: 

Abe Austin, described as an Illinois 
businessman and expert on money; 

Mike Blair, Spotlight writer whose articles on 
government repression were highlighted by Project 
Censored; 

Ken Bohnsack, an Illinois resident called the 
founder of the Sovereignty movement; 

Howard Carson, a Spotlight distributor; 

William Gill, president of the protectionist 
American Coalition for Competitive Trade; 

Boyd Godlove Jr., chairman of the Populist 
Party of Maryland; 

Martin Larson, a contributor to The Journal of 
Historical Review which maintains the Holocaust 
was a Jewish hoax; 

Roger Lourie, president of Devin-Adair 
Publishing; 

Pauline Mackey, national treasurer for the 
1988 David Duke Populist Party Presidential 
campaign; 

Tom McIntyre, national chairman of the 
Populist Party from 1987-1990; 

John Nugent, who ran for Congress from 
Tennessee as a Republican in 1990; 

Lawrence Patterson, publisher of the far-right 
ultra-conspiratorial Criminal Politics 
newsletter; 

Jerry Pope, chair of the Kentucky Populist 
Party, formerly active in J.B. Stoner's
segregationist National States Rights Party; 

John Rakus, president of the National Justice 
Foundation; 

Hon. John R. Rarick, former Democratic House 
member now in Louisiana; 

Sherman Skolnick, a Chicagoan who has peddled 
bizarre conspiracy theories for over a decade; 

Major James H. Townsend, editor of the 
National Educator from California; 

Jim Tucker, Spotlight contributor who 
specializes on covering the Bilderberger banking 
group; 

Tom Valentine, Midwest bureau chief for 
Spotlight and host of Liberty Lobby's Radio Free 
America; 

Raymond Walk, an Illinois critic of free 
trade; 

Robert H. Weems, founding national chairman of 
the Populist Party, and former state leader of
the Mississippi Ku Klux Klan. 

Prouty has been appearing at conferences and on 
radio programs sponsored by the Liberty Lobby, 
but claims "there was never a handshake" 
concerning his official appointment to the 
Populist Action Committee. Prouty 
nonetheless admits that he is aware his name is 
being publicized in that capacity and refuses to 
ask his name be dropped from the list. 

Skolnick also says he was never "officially" 
asked to be on the advisory board, but although 
he is aware he was named to the panel, he refuses 
to distance himself from the board or Liberty 
Lobby. 

For more information, contact:
Political Research Associates, 
120 Beacon Street, Suite 202, 
Somerville, MA 02143

visit us on the web:
http://www.publiceye.org/pra/

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