The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

Paranoia as Patriotism:
Far-Right Influences on the Militia Movement


Liberty Lobby and The Spotlight

Liberty Lobby, the largest, best-financed and most influential radical right organization in America, is a significant source of propaganda for the militia movement. Founded in 1955 by Willis Carto, currently listed as "treasurer," though universally acknowledged to be the group's leader, Liberty Lobby has established some connection to a great many leaders and groups on the extreme right in the post-WWII era. Under the guise of patriotism and conservative populism, the organization has been a propaganda mill for Carto's actual agenda: to rehabilitate Hitlerian National Socialism and agitate on behalf of a neo-Nazi movement in the United States.

Willis Carto's personal anti-Semitism and racism have manifested themselves in a number of overt ways. Correspondence by Carto published in 1966 stated that "Hitler's defeat was the defeat of Europe. And of America... The blame, it seems, must be laid at the door of the international Jews.... If Satan himself....had tried to create a permanent disintegration and force for the destruction of the nations, he could have done no better than to invent the Jews." In addition, Liberty Lobby has expressed support for the apartheid governments of South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Carto himself wrote in 1955 that "only a few Americans are concerned about the inevitable niggerfication [sic] of America."

Carto, now 68, carried on an intense relationship with Francis Parker Yockey, an eccentric far-right activist who began his career as a prosecution attorney at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, but later developed pro-Nazi sympathies. Yockey, who committed suicide in a San Francisco prison after being arrested in 1960 on passport fraud charges, wrote a 600-page manifesto titled _Imperium_, which outlined a totalitarian, pro-Hitler political philosophy conceived in the image of "the European Revolution of 1933." Carto has continued to distribute copies of the book, and under oath during an unsuccessful lawsuit against the ADL in the 1970s he acknowledged that he still adhered to Yockey's ideology.

In pursuit of his covert neo-Nazi agenda, Carto has organized a number of extremist front groups and spin-off associations from the Liberty Lobby network. Two of the most important in the past decade have been the Populist Party - founded in 1984 as Liberty Lobby's political arm, and most famous for launching the national reputation of former Klan leader David Duke during his 1988 Populist Party candidacy for President - and the Institute for Historical Review. This latter group, founded in 1979, is currently the leading outlet for Holocaust denial propaganda in the world. In recent years, the Populist Party and the Institute for Historical Review have broken with Carto and Liberty Lobby over control of funds and disputes regarding strategy. They both remain extremist organizations to their core, and continue to maintain a significant presence among the radical right today.

Liberty Lobby, meanwhile, has remained without question the leading ideological influence on the hate movement today. The main propaganda vehicles for the organization currently are the weekly tabloid The Spotlight, which serves as a central "bulletin board" for the extreme right and which claims to reach an estimated readership of over 100,000, and the radio broadcases "Radio Free America" and "Editor's Roundtable," which bring the voices of extremists and conspiracy theorists to dozens of media markets across the country. The shows are carried on the Liberty Lobby-controlled Sun Radio Network.

Illustrating The Spotlight's role as a bulletin board for extremists of the far right, ADL recently revealed that in 1993, Oklahoma City bombing suspect Timothy McVeigh - using the alias "T. Tuttle" - advertised for sale in The Spotlight a military-style anti-tank launcher.

Liberty Lobby has often sought to portray itself as respectably "conservative." However, it is nothing of the kind. Major American conservative figures, such as William Buckley and Judge Robert Bork, have condemned the group's anti-Semitism.

In the past two years, The Spotlight has devoted dozens of features to conspiracy theories involving the Federal government. Many of these stories have involved militia groups directly, or have addressed the same issues which have preoccupied militia members, such as national gun control and international arms control efforts, or the alleged "black helicopters" that supposedly signify the loss of national sovereignty and the imminent takeover of the U.S. by the United Nations. The paper ran a sensationalized 8-page special suppliment, dated September 1994, featuring these themes. (Anti-Defamation League, 22-23)


The original plaintext version of this file is available via ftp.

[ Index ]

Home ·  Site Map ·  What's New? ·  Search Nizkor

© The Nizkor Project, 1991-2012

This site is intended for educational purposes to teach about the Holocaust and to combat hatred. Any statements or excerpts found on this site are for educational purposes only.

As part of these educational purposes, Nizkor may include on this website materials, such as excerpts from the writings of racists and antisemites. Far from approving these writings, Nizkor condemns them and provides them so that its readers can learn the nature and extent of hate and antisemitic discourse. Nizkor urges the readers of these pages to condemn racist and hate speech in all of its forms and manifestations.