Posted on 11/23/2013 3:19:50 AM PST by defeat_the_dem_igods
Conner contends that today's tea party is the modern-day rebirth of the John Birch Society. They share a worldview, she says. The same paranoid distrust of government. The same desire to protect the rich. The same cruel streak that blames the poor for their poverty and seeks to deny government help on that basis. The same willingness to believe all manner of bizarre claims against political leaders they don't like.
(Excerpt) Read more at tampabay.com ...
Knowingly making a false statement (i.e. intentionally stating something which is not true) is not a “mistake”
What you seem incapable of understanding is that I did not intentionally make a false statement. I just assumed that I voted when I was 18 years old. You correctly pointed out that, in the 1960’s, the eligible age to vote was 21.
What you seem to have a brain freeze about is the fact that my honest mistake has no bearing upon anything I have written here. If, by using an incorrect date, there was some advantage to be gained by me — then, maybe, you could make some point. But, the fact I voted for the first time in 1966 (not 1964) does not add or detract from anything substantive being discussed in this thread.
As previously noted, I responded to people here who had expressed favorable comments about the Birch Society. They were critical of Claire Conner’s position as expressed in her book which was published last year. Claire cited me in her book as a source she got information from. I have debated Claire in several websites. We disagree about her position regarding the Tea Party Movement. However, her personal recollections about growing up in a family controlled by JBS dogma are useful for understanding authoritarian belief systems.
Significantly, you have not written a single word about the actual subject matter of this thread. Instead, like every irrational person, you decided to focus all your attention upon an irrelevant date in my personal background even though that date tells you absolutely NOTHING about my political values or beliefs -— which was the ONLY context we were supposedly discussing.
Incidentally, just to illustrate how incredibly vacuous your intellect is.....and to illustrate the extent of your irrationality and your FALSE assumptions about me:
(1) My research into the Communist Party USA has been recognized by many of our nation’s most prominent historians and scholars as exceptionally valuable. I was the first person to discover the actual number of FBI security informants inside the Communist Party — and I posted that info on my CPUSA webpage here:
https://sites.google.com/site/ernie124102/cpusa
That information was also posted online in the History of American Communism (HOAC) Discussion Network. On at least 3 occasions, Dr. John Earl Haynes has referred to my research in HOAC.
The academic journal, American Communist History (ACH), publishes articles by many of our nation’s most well-known and respected scholars who specialize in the history of the communist movement in the U.S. In 2009, ACH published an article regarding my research.
(2) During my online debates/discussions, I have often been asked what book I recommend for an accurate understanding of communism. Usually, I refer readers to the 1999 book, “The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression”.
I mention all this because of your absurdity that “hearing others denounce leftist ideas must grate on you.”
IF you were intellectually honest (which, again, you clearly are not), you would ask pertinent questions before forming derogatory judgments about somebody who is a total stranger to you. But like all political extremists, you prefer to ATTACK rather than engage in principled discussion.
(3) It is significant that during this entire discussion you have not revealed anything about your own background.
Last time I checked, there are more than 8000 references online to my research or to my most common screen name (ernie1241) and another 2000+ to my full name.
There are also many additional references to me online — including, for example, (1) universities which have created webpages to summarize the material which I have donated to them such as: http://crws.berkeley.edu/fbi-foia-archive
and (2) the Internet Archive which has posted hundreds of FBI files in my collection online (link below) and I will be donating hundreds more FBI files to them later this year:
https://archive.org/details/lazarfoia
There are also many references online to authors who have used material which I gave to them in their books, academic journal articles, conference papers, doctoral dissertations, newsletters, etc. Last time I checked, there were about 150 references online to me in those sources.
BY CONTRAST: What do we know ABOUT YOU? Absolutely nothing!
(4) Ankle-biters (like yourself) are quick to make adverse judgments — but they rarely perform rudimentary research to obtain factual information before arriving at those adverse judgments. Your behavior here indisputably proves that you prefer to attack and slime somebody — which certainly explains why you rely upon bigoted websites like Metapedia.
I just assumed that I voted when I was 18 years old.
"In the 1960's I voted for Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson..."
Since I mistakenly said I had voted for Presidents JFK and LBJ (which refers to the 1960 and 1964 elections), you concluded (mistakenly) that I could not have been a teenager in the 1960’s. But your assumption is wrong simply because I mistakenly thought I voted by the time I was 18 years old (in 1963).
Its not just a mistake, its an ever changing story when you got caught fabricating your history. Now you just thought you voted when you were 18, but you wrote earlier that you voted for President JFK, even though you say you didn't turn 18 until 1963. So I guess you also thought you voted for him in 1960 when you were 15. Is that the new story?
See you Ernie, you can't keep your story straight. Don't bother writing more fiction, your research can stand on its own.
“And the Birch Society believed that Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks were, at a minimum, Communist dupes and tools. By contrast, former Cong. Ron Paul declared that Parks and King are among his heroes. In fact, Cong. Paul voted in 1979 to make MLK’s birthday a national holiday — while JBS speakers and writers attempt to make American believe that MLK Jr was a subversive enemy of our country.”
Proving once again that Ron Paul can be a dope. And he’s old enough to know better. Evidently you are one of the young and foolish sort who thinks that MLK was some sort of conservative icon. The JBS made plenty of wild claims but this wasn’t one of them.
The fact that MLK had Communist Party ties was well known to both Jack and Bobby Kennedy, hardly JBS members. I take it that you’ve never heard of Hunter Pitts O’Dell or Stanley Levison. They were both close advisors of MLK and they both were members of the CPUSA. Their intimate association with MLK is what prompted the Kennedy brothers to wiretap MLK.
http://www.humanevents.com/2006/02/24/jfk-and-rfk-were-right-to-wiretap-mlk/
You are conflating two entirely different matters. Let me put this in Q&A form for clarity.
1. Did MLK Jr. associate with known or suspected Communist Party members?
YES. Examples include Stanley David Levison—a friend and confidant of King, and Hunter Pitts O’Dell.
2. What impact, exactly, did such “Communists” have on King?
Not very much. FBI files on Levison and on King do not reflect that King ever considered adopting violent revolution or creating a separate “Negro Soviet Republic” inside the U.S. (the Communist Party position for many decades).
3. Why did King accept advice and counsel from people like Levison and O’Dell?
Because, in politics, as Newt Gingrich has pointed out recently, groups which face systematic discrimination, repression (especially when implemented by governmental entities) accept support from anybody who wants to address their legitimate grievances.
4. What did the Birch Society propose we do about the grave social and economic problems faced by the African-American community?
Absolutely nothing! Instead, it associated itself with the very actors who were responsible for creating, implementing, and defending the entire Jim Crow system in our southern states. In fact, several JBS National Council members were life-long segregationists (aka racists). EVEN WORSE, the JBS circulated FALSE and INFLAMMATORY statements about the origins of our civil rights movement and about ALL of our national civil rights leaders and organizations.
5. What was a correct analysis of the status of our African American countrymen-—particularly in the 1950’s and 1960’s?
George Schuyler. a JBS member, and conservative African American columnist and author accurately summarized the situation in a 1961 column when he wrote the following:
“The White Citizens Council which has branches or cells everywhere, controls by terror such states as Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and to a lesser extent, Virginia…It has defied and disrupted the operation of the laws of the land. It has used threats and vicious economic reprisals…It has become a legal arm of Mississippi’s Government.” [4/22/61 Schuyler column in Pittsburgh PA Courier]
6. What was the JBS attitude toward White Citizens Councils?
The JBS warmly welcomed Citizens Councils officials and members (and supporters) into the JBS as members, as JBS chapter leaders, as JBS Cooordinators, and as National Council members. EVEN WORSE, the JBS circulated arguments which originated with white supremacists.
7. What was the position of the JBS regarding our civil rights movement leaders and organizations?
The JBS believed and disseminated the false and bigoted predicate of the white supremacist movement in our country. In August 1965, the JBS placed an advertisement in many newspapers around our country entitled “What’s Wrong With Civil Rights?” which contained this statement:
“For the civil rights movement in the United States with all of its growing agitation and riots and bitterness, and insidious steps toward the appearance of civil war, has not been infiltrated by the Communists, as you now frequently hear. It has been deliberately and almost wholly created by the Communists patiently building up to this present stage for more than thirty years.”
As Robert Welch told his membership in the June 1965 JBS Bulletin:
“Our task must be simply to make clear that the movement known as ‘civil rights’ is Communist-plotted, Communist-controlled, and in fact...serves only Communist purposes.”
8. What was the FBI position regarding our civil rights movement?
J. Edgar Hoover made the following observation in 1964:
“Let me emphasize that the American civil rights movement is not, and has never been dominated by the communists—because the overwhelming majority of civil rights leaders in this country, both Negro and white, have recognized and rejected communism as a menace to the freedoms of all.”
[J. Edgar Hoover speech, 12/12/64, Our Heritage of Greatness, pg 7 - Hoover speech before Pennsylvania Society and the Society of Pennsylvania Women; bold emphasis in original document on “not” and “never”]
In November 1966, Hoover received an inquiry from a self-identified JBS member who saw the above quote in a letter-to-the-editor of his local newspaper and he wanted to know if the quote was an accurate reflection of Hoover’s judgment both in 1964 and 1966. Hoover replied affirmatively and concluded: “This position remains essentially unchanged today.” [HQ file 62-104401, serial #3021, 11/15/66 Hoover reply to incoming Bircher inquiry]
Also see following Hoover comments :
“It would be absurd to suggest that the aspirations of Negroes for equality are communist inspired. This is demonstrably not true…” [J. Edgar Hoover speech, Faith In Freedom, 12/4/63, page 6]
“In general, legitimate civil rights organizations have been successful in excluding Communists, although a few have received covert counseling from them and have even accepted them as members…The CP is not satisfied with this situation and is continually striving to infiltrate the civil rights movement at every level. “ [J. Edgar Hoover, U.S. News and World Report, 11/1/65, page 46]
“It is no secret that one of the bitterest disappointments to communistic efforts in this Nation has been their failure to lure our Negro citizens into the party. Despite every type of propaganda boomed at our Nation’s Negro citizens, they have never succumbed to the party’s saccharine promises of a Communist ‘Utopia’. This generation and generations to come for many years owe a tremendous debt to our Negro citizens who have consistently refused to surrender their freedoms for the tyranny of communism.” J. Edgar Hoover testimony before U.S. Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, 01/17/60, reprinted in March 1960 FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, page 7]
9. BOTTOM-LINE QUESTION:
What contribution did the Birch Society and similar groups make toward resolving our social, economic, and political problems during the 1960’s?
NONE WHATSOEVER....Instead, the JBS (and others) allied themselves with the very local, state, and national politicians and organizations which sought to perpetuate the injustices which Bircher George Schuyler accurately described in his 1961 column.
You keep harping on the same issue. I never intended to deceive anybody. I just made an innocent mistake about a date. That date has absolutely NOTHING to do with any substantive matter being discussed in this thread. NOTHING!
It was not an “ever changing story” nor did I “fabricate” anything about my “history”. I conflated the 1960 and 1964 elections in my mind because (as I previously explained), I thought of JFK-LBJ as a package. For most of 1963, Kennedy was alive and he was running for re-election.
Here is what you refuse to grasp because of your total irrational obsession:
1. Suppose I had never made a mistake about the date I first voted. Suppose my original message stated that I voted for the first time in 1966 (for Reagan as Governor of California).
2. Suppose I also said that (if I had been old enough to vote in 1960/1964), I would have voted for JFK and LBJ.
3. Statements #1 and #2 above would have given you a totally accurate and truthful insight into my background with correct dates.
4. NOW...what SUBSTANTIVELY changes if I screw up the dates? Nothing!
Because the ONLY reason this subject was introduced (repeat: the ONLY reason) was because I was addressing the FALSE statement in the Metapedia article about me (which YOU quoted in YOUR message) that my political beliefs and values were “liberal...if not radical”.
5. Have you never made a mistake about a date from 50 or more years ago? What the hell is wrong with you? Try focusing upon what matters — instead of irrelevancies which do not address the underlying substantive issue.
Evidently you believe that domestic social issues were a far graver threat to the United States than the Soviet Union of Stalin and Khrushchev, which is what Levison and O’Dell were clandestinely a part of. You must be quite young.
And contra your claim King was influenced by his Communist associates and it can be seen in his speeches concerning Vietnam.
” I was born in April 1945 - so, obviously, I WAS a teenager starting in 1958 (when I was 13 years old).”
You say that you voted for both JFK and LBJ-
JFK ran for President in 1960 when you would have been 15.
LBJ ran for President in 1964 when you would have been 19.
But 21 was the legal voting age at the time and you weren’t 21 until 1966.
You aren’t “obviously” the age you’re claiming to be because you would have known the voting age without thinking about it and you would remember who you first voted for for President.
The metapedia article on you sure sounds like what you’ve been posting here. And judging from the description I would guess that you’re spending your time here doing more “research” on conservatives and American nationalists.
Ernie xxxxx
“Ernest xxxxx also Ernie xxxxx (born 1945) is a “conspiracy buff”, researcher, and archivist of American nationalist and anti-communist organizations and individuals. Since 1980 he has flooded the FBI with thousands of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests obtaining over 600,000 pages of documents on over 2,000 individuals. Recently xxxxx has posted hundreds of his FOIA FBI files on the Internet.
xxxxx once had a dispute with the FBI over a $4800 search fee request. The way he got around the fee was to claim he was a freelance journalist.
xxxxx was also interested in former communists who were FBI informants and records pretaining to the CPUSA in general. One of xxxxx’s “discoveries” was that Jewish conservative columnist George Sokolsky was an informant for the FBI.
xxxxx has posted on the leftist OpEdNews site denouncing conspiracy theories.
Contents
1 John Birch Society obsession
2 Highlander Folk School
3 Academic interest
4 Jewish controversy
5 Personnel
6 Notes
7 See also
8 External links
John Birch Society obsession
Back in the 1960s xxxxx as a teenager was a liberal—if not a radical—and would have political discussions with a police relative over the issues of police brutality, drug use, and police corruption. One day he obtained a copy of the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin from the same relative containing J. Edgar Hoover’s comments on a particular subversive organization. xxxxx decided to write a letter to the editor of his local paper concerning Hoover’s remarks. xxxxx took offense when a member of the John Birch Society challenge his letter and replied, “Is it just coincidence that Ernie’s words so arty, sound just like the Communist Party?”
He soon began his lifelong research—some calling it an obsession—on the John Birch Society and by 1980 started requesting files from the FBI seeking to obtain personal information on members of the organization. He eventually obtained the entire file on the John Birch Society, all 12,000 pages from the FBI. From there he branched off into investigating other conservative and nationalist organizations.
Highlander Folk School
King setting next to communists at the Highlander Folk School
Ernie xxxxx has defended Martin Luther King and the so-called Civil Rights Movement implying there was no communist connection to the movement. In his paper on the Highlander Folk School he released selective memos from FBI investigations claiming there was no communist control of the school. It is a well-known fact FBI director J. Edgar Hoover suspected King was a tool of the communists.
Academic interest
Academic researchers of the radical right have used his documents and one university requested at some point in time they be donated to their special collections library. xxxxx has compiled a “Bibliography of Academic Theses and Dissertations on the American Right”.”
Then please explain what advantage there is to me claiming that I voted earlier than I did. Who cares? There is nothing in this thread that is dependent upon what date I first voted or you or anybody else. And contrary to your message, I do not keep a calendar in my head about every event of my life — except those where I have documents to establish the specific year. For example: I have a box full of pictures I have taken over the past 40 or 50 years but, generally, I have no clue what specific date the picture was taken unless it is imprinted on the back of the picture. Sometimes, I can remember a general range of likely dates because of some clue in the picture but specific month and year is impossible to remember.
You are being deliberately argumentative because you are irrational and obsessed over secondary issues that have nothing to do with the subject matter of this thread.
I have already presented a point-by-point rebuttal to what Metapedia wrote. Once again, you PREFER a bigoted website, which can only mean that YOU share their bigoted viewpoints. Shame on you.
Who cares what speeches were influenced?
And what, exactly, constitutes “influence”?
Yes, during the 1960’s we experienced profound social, economic, and political upheaveals that we rarely have confronted as a nation.
1. A President was assassinated
2. A Presidential candidate was murdered
3. Another Presidential candidate was severely wounded and disabled for life
4. A President was impeached
5. A President resigned from office
6. The leading figure of our civil rights movement was murdered.
7. We had numerous racial riots that resulted in numerous deaths and hundreds of millions of dollars of property damage
8. There were huge social changes involving women, college students, gays, sexual mores, and many other areas.
So, yes, domestic social issues were much more profound. The cold war was a constant noise in the background and it produced a war which became synonymous with American cynicism and distrust of our government — yet another profound domestic social problem which lingers to this day.
So YOU must be quite young not to recognize the extraordinary domestic social issues which we confronted.
With respect to MLK: Nobody who celebrates his birthday today (liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat) does so because of any Communist-influenced speech he made. Nobody runs into the street with violence and mayhem in their hearts. Get real.
Obviously, my reference to impeachment should have said that a President first elected in the 1960’s subsequently was impeached
And btw, I am not here “doing research” on anybody or anything. Obviously, I responded to initial messages here which presented favorable comments about the JBS.
The fact is (whether you want to admit it or not) many people have no clue what the JBS actually believes. Unlike most organizations, the JBS does not allow outside independent researchers to have access to its records or its membership for research purposes — which means very little of JBS history is known. And the JBS often presents false information about itself.
Also, if you exclude all the polemical anti-JBS books written in the 1960’s and 1970’s, there is very little new which has been written about the JBS during the past 30 years. The best single new effort was a 2009 doctoral dissertation.
I also would like to note, for the record, that my critics here have never once refuted anything which I have written that addresses the actual subject matter of this thread.
Which tells you that they are intellectual cowards and bullies who think that by constantly harping upon an irrelevant date in my bio or by quoting falsehoods appearing on a bigoted website, they can somehow avoid the specific details which I have presented here about the JBS and its assertions.
Nor is my position any different, in substance, from the position of most of the conservative movement in our country most of which has rejected the JBS. Interestingly, over the years, some of the most prominent figures within the Birch Society (including National Council members and major financial contributors) have resigned in protest and, in many instances, their parting words against the JBS leadership validated the larger criticisms made by the earliest JBS critics. Even the wife of JBS founder Robert Welch terminated her membership in the JBS after her husband died. And many of the Society’s most well known writers (such as Gary Allen and Alan Stang) severely criticized the new post-Welch leadership — including its current President John McManus.
“I also would like to note, for the record, that my critics here have never once refuted anything which I have written that addresses the actual subject matter of this thread.”
You suffer from delusions of grandeur.
“Once again, you PREFER a bigoted website, which can only mean that YOU share their bigoted viewpoints. Shame on you.”
I am not familiar with that website other than it contains an article by someone obviously familiar with you.
And since it’s standard operating procedure for leftists to make accusations of bigotry I’m hardly surprised to see you doing it.
if delusional, you could refer to what specific message did what you claim, i.e. refuted something I wrote about Claire Conner’s book or about the JBS
You are not required to accept my word — just look at all the articles which NatAll has written for Metapedia. He is their most frequent contributor. Bigotry is not limited to left or right.
That “someone” is not familiar with me. All he did is rehash the accusations which originally appeared on the Stormfront website (a neo-nazi site - which you probably also consider non-bigoted). And then he added some new total falsehoods about me, about my beliefs/values, and about my religion.
How can you be “familiar” with someone whom you have never met, never corresponded with, never talked to, and never asked a single question of?
What, may I ask you, do you think Metapedia means by its mission statement when it writes:
“Metapedia has a metapolitical purpose, to influence the mainstream debate, culture and historical view.”
What “metapolitical purpose” do YOU think Metapedia has?
And what do YOU think they mean by this:
“Metapedia sets its focus on topics that usually are not covered in — i.e. that falls outside of — mainstream encyclopedias.”
What “topics” are NOT usually covered?
Why do you think Metapedia prefers to use the word “ZOG” (Zionist Occupied Government)?
Why do you think Metapedia denies the Holocaust?
Why do you think Metapedia defines a native American as:
“a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant born in the United States of America” ?
Why do you think Metapedia objects to everybody who uses terms like neo-nazi — and, in fact, they have criticized Conservapedia (the conservative encyclopedia) for doing so?
Why do you think their major contributor (NatAll75) chose National Alliance as his moniker and he inserts racial and religious prejudice into virtually everything he writes>
Why do you think Metapedia describes the “Protocols of Zion” as a document whose “true authorship is contentious...but a metapolitical truth may still be evident.” ?
What do you think they mean by “metapolitical truth” ??
And since you referred to “standard operating procedure” — I note for the record that political extremists (left and right) always blame their victims. That is THEIR “standard operating procedure” because they never are prepared to candidly acknowledge their intolerance or their falsehoods. Instead, they rely upon sources which present false information and then complain when somebody notices them doing so.
If, as you seem to believe from non-existent evidence, that I am a “leftist”, then why should we not also entertain the idea that YOU may be a Communist disinformation agent?
OR
If you think sources like Metapedia have trustworthy and truthful articles — then why don’t we assume that you share THEIR “metapolitical purpose”?
Isn’t it interesting (and significant) that you cannot QUOTE something I have written during my lifetime to substantiate your insinuations? Instead, you use every device imaginable to plant suspicion about my beliefs and values — and based upon what, exactly? The fact that I criticize the Birch Society?
If you admire and respect the Birch Society — then why not just say so? Must ALL of us be exact clones of YOU and believe everything you believe? Is there any room in your world for any sort of diversity or must we all conform to some rigid ideology that mimics what you think?
The funniest part about all this is that I have a lifetime of PUBLISHED letters-to-the-editor starting when I was a teenager which reveal my libertarian and conservative beliefs but I am getting criticized by anonymous people about whom we know absolutely NOTHING.
Do YOU have any sort of multi-decade public record which we can review and evaluate? OR do you prefer to always be in the shadows so you can be an ankle-biter who whines and moans and complains and nitpicks?
I suspect you prefer the latter.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.