The Conservative Faith: Nothing to Brag About [annotated]

PREAMBLE: PORTRAIT OF A CONSERVATIVE

William F. Buckley, Jr.
William F. Buckley, Jr.: master of snobbish affectation and a lightweight intellectual despite profuse (and incessantly self-promoted) pretensions bolstered by a hefty gallery of sycophants. True to his class, he played dilettante in the US army and even the CIA, where he stayed for 2 years in the 1950s. Typical of his temperamental impudence, in 1954, Buckley co-wrote a book McCarthy and His Enemies with his brother-in-law, L. Brent Bozell Jr., strongly defending Senator Joseph McCarthy as a patriotic crusader against communism. In McCarthy and his Enemies he asserted that “McCarthyism … is a movement around which men of good will and stern morality can close ranks.” So much for this much admired icon of American conservatism. 
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[learn_more caption=”MR. BUCKLEY AND DEMOCRACY”]

Buckley in his older age. Some have seen in his deterioration a Dorian Grey portrait of his inner faith.

Buckley in his older age. Some have seen in his deterioration a Dorian Grey portrait of his inner conservative faith.

Buckley’s opposition to Communism extended to support of the overthrow and replacement of leftist governments by non-democratic forces. Buckley supported Spanish authoritarian dictator General Francisco Franco who led the rightist military rebellion in its military defeat of the Spanish Republic. He called Franco “an authentic national hero,” applauding his overthrow of Spanish Republican “visionaries, ideologues, Marxists and nihilists.”[61] He supported the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet that led the 1973 coup that overthrew Chilean president Salvador Allende’s democratically-elected Marxist government, referring to Allende as “a president who was defiling the Chilean constitution and waving proudly the banner of his friend and idol, Fidel Castro.”[62] SOURCE: Wikipedia. [/learn_more]

 

[box type=”download”] Editor’s Note: For a long time and especially in America conservatives have enjoyed a spectacular place in society, one of widespread respect and even admiration, not to mention social envy by many social climbers, as a large number of people correctly associate the word “conservative” with propertied, well established individuals, families and institutions. Many others, either ignorant or socially insecure people mindlessly adopt the label to describe themselves as “conservatives” because they find it “safe” or even “chic” (ie., they intuitively understand that wrapping themselves in such a label will trigger no trouble or controversy, make them sound discriminating, and even project a certain caché, as the whole capitalist status quo and its ruling circles are grounded in conservatism). The problem with such posture is that such individuals are wrong. There is nothing admirable about conservatism in practice, nor in its historical record. In fact, calling someone a conservative should be rightly looked upon as a pejorative, a four-letter word, as a label identifying a social cell viciously opposed to the well-being of the majority, of the social body as a whole. The acceptance this word and the political philosophy behind it receive in American society and elsewhere is largely a product of the social and political power of the propertied class, which dominates all major opinion-forming institutions—from the presidency to parties to universities to media, school curricula, etc.—and not of its intrinsic merit, which is next to none. Fact is, conservatism is a downright ugly, mean-spirited creed. Its adherents have always retarded social progress and caused (to this day) immense unnecessary suffering. In this article Eric Zuesse dissects “conservatism” for what it really is. And just as Archbishop Dom Helder Camera said about capitalism, that to “examine it is to indict it,” so it is with conservatism. Our only critique of this essay is that it takes a lot of space discussing religion-instigated conservatism, and even theories of psychologism to explain the persistence and influence of conservatism, while paying less attention to the conservatism issuing from established wealth, in other words its class origins in accumulated and well entrenched wealth. The main existential problem in the world today is not so much that many nations, from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia, Iran, and even far too many Americans are fundamentalists, and are led (and followed) by many reactionaries; it is that the Anglo-American plutocracy and its European and Japanese vassals are leading the world to utter destruction via constant wars (and the high probability now of a nuclear war) and ecological suicide in pursuit of further wealth and economic dominance. It is therefore the sheer conservatism and non-negotiable savage capitalism of the Western elites that constitutes the main danger.—P. Greanville[/box]

 

Social Science Findings about Conservatism

By Eric Zuesse
WHAT IS CONSERVATISM?
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he great empirical social psychologist who specialized in studying bigotry, Bob Altemeyer, in his 1996 The Authoritarian Specter, and his other writings, reported his exhaustive empirical studies, of more than 50,000 individuals in many countries, demonstrating that bigotries against each and every minority group were the highest amongst the individuals who scored as being the most religious in any religion. In each religion, the more fundamentalist (believing in the inerrancy of some Scripture) one was, the more bigoted one tended to be, not just against non-believers, but against homosexuals, Blacks, and so forth. Religious belief, in other words, causes bigotry. His studies also found that his scale for “Right-Wing Authoritarianism” (RWA) or what’s commonly called conservatism, was exhibited the most strongly by fundamentalists. Moreover, as one would expect from persons of faith (even of an atheistic one; i.e., belief in an atheistic ‘inerrant Scripture’), people of high RWA tended to make incorrect inferences from evidence, accept internal contradictions within their own beliefs, oppose constitutional guarantees of individual liberty, believe more strongly in sticks than in carrots to correct a person’s behavior, and were closed-minded to criticism of themselves.
…
In 1992, Altemeyer had co-authored in the International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, “Authoritarianism, Religious Fundamentalism, Quest, and Prejudice,” which examined “the relationships among right-wing authoritarianism, various indices of religious orientation, and prejudice. Measures of religious fundamentalism … were good discriminators between prejudiced and unprejudiced persons.”
 …
Three authors — Westman, Willink and McHoskey — published, in the April 2000 Psychological Reports, their study “On Perceived Conflicts Between Religion and Science: The Role of Fundamentalism and Right-Wing Authoritarianism,” and reported that Fundamentalism and Right-Wing Authoritarianism varied together (or tended to be the same group), and that both groups were hostile toward science, and even toward technology.
 …
Furthermore, a summary, and meta-analysis, of not just Altemeyer’s, but numerous other empirical psychological studies of conservatism, was published in the May 2003 Psychological Bulletin under the title “Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition.” This dealt with confirmation bias, which is the prejudice that people have to pay attention to what confirms their prior beliefs and to ignore what disconfirms or conflicts with their prejudices. Conservatives were found to have this bias even more than liberals do. (An excellent summary of this article was “Conservatives Deconstructed,” by Joel Bleifuss, in the 19 September 2003 In These Times. Another was U. Cal. Berkeley’s press release on this study, “Researchers Help Define What Makes a Political Conservative.”) Not only did this research find strong correlations between conservatism and dogmatism, but one of the strongest correlations it discovered was between conservatism and fear of death. Because the meta-analysis was partly funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health — which are federally funded — it excluded any exploration of the correlation between conservatism and bigotry, and also excised religion as a factor. Despite this, Britain’s Guardian reported, on 13 August 2003, “Republicans are demanding to know why” this study “received $1.2m in public funds.” Even though investigation of the links between conservatism, religion, and bigotry was excluded from being researched, the findings still managed to offend conservatives to such an extent that it was unlikely any scientific study of conservatism would be able to be funded in the U.S. in the future, until Republicans decisively lost power in Washington. “Death anxiety” was found to be the factor which was the most strongly correlated with “political conservatism.” Next was “system instability” (meaning anything that endangers the existing cultural order). Nothing else was even close to those two factors in predicting an individual’s conservatism. In other words, it found: Conservatism is driven by fear. (In the case of the superrich, the classical “ruling class,” those fears are compounded by the fear of dispossession of their wealth and social privileges.—Eds).
[dropcap]A[/dropcap] study by Bouchard and four other authors, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, in 2003, and titled “Evidence for the Construct Validity and Heritability of the Wilson-Patterson Conservatism Scale: A Reared-Apart Twins Study of Social Attitudes,” reported that political conservatism correlated at a stunningly high rate with Altemeyer’s Right-Wing Authoritarianism, and that it also “demonstrated significant and sizable genetic influence,” so that the inclination to be conservative or religious is influenced not only by one’s environment but by one’s genes. In other words, such conservative traits as lack of compassion, preference to use sticks instead of carrots, etc., are partly a reflection of one’s genetic make-up or temperament, and not entirely a result of one’s training. Furthermore, a 17 November 2014 study in Current Biology, “Nonpolitical Images Evoke Neural Predictors of Political Ideology,” showed a huge difference between liberals and conservatives that can be measured by their MRI brainwave activity that results from pictures that are presented to them of mutilated bodies: conservatives consistently are more disturbed by those pictures. That too indicates a physical basis for conservatism, in fear of death.

Why America is led by scumbags—(Summary)
“It’s a population unlikely to sustain democracy — fundamentally hostile toward democracy, favorable toward aristocracy; more respectful of people who take for themselves than of people who give of themselves; more trusting of people who exploit than of people who serve; more-comfortable being led by the callous than by the compassionate — a fundamentally myth-dependent deceived population…”

The “Wilson-Patterson C Scale” was introduced by G.D. Wilson and J.R. Patterson in their 1968 “A New Measure of Conservatism,” in the British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology. It is similar to Altemeyer’s scale — an alternative to it. The Wilson-Patterson scale was used to measure “conservatism” in that Current Biology article.
 …
The observation is commonly made that conservatives are driven by fears, such as of “the other,” and are therefore obsessed with military solutions, and police solutions, and with having guns themselves – all solutions which enable them to force their own way, against the will of “the other,” regardless of whether “the other” is “the Jew” or “the Black” or “the socialist” or “the homosexual,” or whatever. Religion is, for its buyer, a way to deal specifically with his fear of death. But for the seller of religion, it’s a way of enslaving buyers to the seller’s personal ends (which can likewise be a craving for salvation — ergo: proselytizing so as to win eternal life).
 …
The rather blatant ugliness of the personality traits and beliefs correlating with political conservatism (e.g., opposition to equality of opportunity, eagerness to punish people, especially high fear of death, widespread bigotry, etc.) has led some conservatives to attack this entire body of research. For example, the proud conservative John J. Ray, in The Journal of Social Psychology, in 1985, headlined “Defective Validity in the Altemeyer Authoritarianism Scale,” and in a “Post-Publication Update” on the web he said that, “Altemeyer (1988, p. 239) reports that Right-Wing Authoritarians as detected by his scale, ‘show little preference in general for any political party’! In other words, according to the RWA scale, half of Right-Wing authoritarians vote for Leftist political parties! So how can they be rightist if they vote for Leftist parties?” However, Altemeyer wrote what Ray quoted here only as a scholar (in order to appear not to be “biased” against conservatives, in order to mollify them), not at all as a scientist (social or otherwise). Though most of Altemeyer’s assertions were supported by empirical data that he cited, this particular assertion from him was not, and was purely a go-along-to-get-along statement, which here backfired against him. Altemeyer provided no data whatsoever to support that allegation which Ray quoted; and, in fact, Altemeyer promptly proceeded, right after that statement, to assert that his actual studies showed the exact opposite. For example: “In every sample of Canadian students and parents I have studied over the last 15 years” (and he was Canadian himself, so this referred to most of his data), the more conservative party’s “supporters have scored significantly higher (as a group) on the RWA scale than” the liberal party’s “backers.” And, “In the United States, … Republican supporters scored significantly higher on the RWA scale than Democrats at each of six state universities I visited.” So, there was no exception to the correlation between RWA and exhibited political conservatism. Conservatives simply don’t want to know how ugly-charactered they are, but it’s demonstrated consistently by the actual and now massive data, regardless whether conservatives want to see themselves as they actually are, which empirical studies also show that they refuse to do.

The 2016 GOP clown brigade.

The 2016 GOP clown brigade.

 …
Regarding Ray’s charge of “defective validity” of RWA, numerous independent studies have shown otherwise. For example, “Evidence for the Construct Validity and Heritability of the Wilson-Patterson Conservatism Scale” said that, “the Conservatism Scale” exhibited high “validity. It correlates .72 with RWA, a scale which has been extensively validated … and which is considered by some to be ‘the best current measure of” authoritarianism. A 1991 study was cited as the source of that evaluation.
 …
LEADERS’ CONSERVATISM v. FOLLOWERS’ CONSERVATISM
Subsequently, the first major competing scale for conservatism, the Social Dominance Orientation or SDO Scale, was developed by Felicia Pratto and Jim Sedanius, and introduced in the 1994 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, as “Social Dominance Orientation: A Personality Variable Predicting Social and Political Attitudes.” There are about 15 questions on the scale, and they all relate to “groups” and to whether (for example) “It would be good if groups could be equal,” and, “In getting what you want, it is sometimes necessary to use force against other groups.” It was the first authoritarianism-measure that failed to correlate with either of the Altemeyer-Wilson ones (“RWA” or “C” Scales). Whereas both types of conservatism (the Altemeyer-Wilson, and the SDO) correlate with sexist, racist, homophobic, and anti-dissident attitudes, SDO correlates more with prejudice against subordinates and victims, regardless of category. Young males, perhaps due to high testosterone, were found to score especially high on the SDO scale. Also, high SDO people tended to be more economic, and high RWA people tended to be more cultural, conservatives. Altemeyer’s 2006 The Authoritarians theorized that high-SDO people tend to be conservative politicians, whereas high-RWA people tend to be conservative voters. Altemeyer also hypothesized that George W. Bush was probably high on both forms of conservatism. Furthermore, Chris Sibley and Marc Wilson issued in the April 2013 Political Psychology, “Social Dominance Orientation and Right-Wing Authoritarianism: Additive and Interactive Effects on Political Conservatism,” which showed that when individuals were studied over a period of time, an increase in one score turned out to correlate with an increase in the other score, even though a high-scorer on one scale had no tendency to be a high-scorer in the other. Furthermore, “Both constructs are associated with increasing political conservatism, and the lowest levels of conservatism (or highest levels of political liberalism) are found in those lowest in both SDO and RWA.” So: those are two different types of supporters of conservative political parties. However, Altemeyer’s hypothesis that one conservative type are the leaders, and the other are the followers, has not yet been tested, even though it makes sense and would be extremely important in explaining history if it’s true.
 …
Conservatives, such as Ray, have similarly condemned the SDO Scale as indicating anything about conservatism. They don’t say they’re personally insulted by the scientific findings on conservatism; they say it’s no science at all. Basically, they reject the sampling methods, or even, sometimes, the basic mathematical methods: factor analysis, and cluster analysis, of data.
 …
[dropcap]C[/dropcap]learly, SDO focuses more on raw power, and RWA focuses more on majority-minority in terms of religion, gender, ethnicity, and all the rest. Recent studies of psychopaths have shown psychos to be power-focused. Sibley and Wilson have done a study, “Does endorsement of hierarchy make you evil? SDO and psychopathy,” which found that though there was only a moderate degree of correlation between the two, “higher SDO at time 1 is associated with an increase in psychopathy at time 2, and vice-versa.” In other words: those two traits reinforce each other. (However, that paper has not been peer-reviewed.) And a 2014 study by Dhont and Hodson, in Personality and Individual Differences, titled “Why do right-wing adherents engage in more animal exploitation and meat consumption?” found that: “Right-wing adherents do not simply consume more animals because they enjoy the taste of meat, but because doing so supports dominance ideologies and resistance to cultural change.” In other words: High SDO produces increased meat-consumption.

Reactionary Texan preacher John Hagee, who specializes in defending Israel's war and apartheid policies, enjoys a huge success as the head of a megachurch in San Antonio and a legion of followers via television.

Reactionary Texan preacher John Hagee, who specializes in defending Israel’s war and apartheid policies, enjoys huge success as the head of a megachurch in San Antonio and a legion of followers via television.

Research into SDO is in its infancy, as is research into psychopathy. However, research into “authoritarianism” or “conservatism” is in its adulthood, with an enormous scientific literature, having started in 1950 with Adorno’s The Authoritarian Personality, which was inspired by the then-recent case of Adolf Hitler.
Jimmy Swaggart was another rightwing/religious charlatan whose hubris and overreach finally brought about his downfall.

Jimmy Swaggart was another rightwing/religious charlatan whose hubris and overreach finally brought about his downfall.

Furthermore, in June 2008, the Pew Forum on Religion in Public Life issued their “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey,” based on “interviews with more than 36,000 Americans.” On subject after subject, it was found that the more religious a person was, the more conservative he tended to be. “Almost twice as many people who say religion is very important in their lives are conservative (46%) compared with those for whom religion is less important (25%).” Strikingly, in America, the highest percentages of liberals (respondents who “Lean Democrat”) were found in minority religions. 77% of “Hist. black churches” were of this category. 66% of “Buddhist” were. 66% of “Jewish” were. 63% of “Muslim” were. 63% of “Hindu” were. By contrast, 48% of “Catholic” were. 43% of “Mainline churches [Protestant]” were. 34% of “Evangelical churches” were. The most-extreme rightwing Americans were “Mormon,” only 22% of whom leaned Democratic. (An article on the Web, “Sampling of Latter-Day Saint/Utah Demographics,” notes that on strikingly many demographic variables, Mormons are in the extreme #1 or else in the very last position, as compared to all states or religious groups.) Mormons tended to be concentrated in Utah, where they constituted the overwhelming majority.

Swaggart at last eating humble pie in front of millions.

Swaggart at last eating humble pie in front of millions.

As a general rule, being conservative went along with being a member of fundamentalistic majoritarian faiths, basically white Christians in the United States. Regarding “Government Assistance for the Poor,” the least supportive Americans were Mormons, and then Hindus (their caste system enshrines inequality), followed by white Protestants (equally Evangelical and Mainline). The Americans most supportive of tax-funded assistance to the poor were black Protestants, followed by Muslims and Buddhists, then Jews. One might infer from this study that the more that a given religious believer lives amongst others of her own faith, the more conservative she’s likely to be. Perhaps being a minority tends to drive a person to consider other cultures’ viewpoints, and not to take Scripture as being quite so infallible. One key question asked of respondents was “When it comes to questions of right and wrong, which of the following do you look to most for guidance?” The group highest citing “Religious teachings and beliefs” were “Jehovah’s Witness,” followed by “Mormon” and then by “Evangelical.” The lowest were “Buddhist,” then “Hindu,” then “Jewish.” This is consistent with people tending to be more skeptical of their Scripture to the extent that they lived and functioned amongst non-believers in that particular Scripture. This is more particularly consistent with Altemeyer’s having found that communists in the Soviet Union tended to be highly authoritarian, whereas communists in the U.S. were not. The Scripture in the Soviet Union was Karl Marx, Das Capital. Communism was just an atheistic religion. (This is actually a gross oversimplification that devalues and eliminates the historical and cultural continuum of the Russian people and the historical context in which the Soviet Union existed.—Eds.)
“Stagarite” posted at www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/12/175319/372, “Literature Review: Authoritarianism,” providing a good summary of scientific research (as of 2002) regarding the conservative personality. Bruce A. Robinson posted at www.religioustolerance.org/chr_prej.htm “The Relationship Between Church Membership and Prejudice,” in which a dozen early studies, from the 1940’s through the 1960’s, examining the relationship between religion and bigotry were referenced. Their general drift, even in those early times, was that people who are more religious were generally also more bigoted.

Improbably for his nonexistent credentials (but most logically in the US political culture) Marco Rubio, as fraudulent a candidate as one can find is currently leading the pack among GOP hopefuls.

Improbably due to his nonexistent credentials (but most logically in the US political culture) Marco Rubio, as fraudulent a candidate as one can find, is currently leading the pack among GOP hopefuls.

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n September 2006, the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion issued a study, “American Piety in the 21st Century,” which contained “Selected Findings from The Baylor Religion Survey.” This study claimed to be “the most extensive and sensitive study of religion ever conducted.” Under its heading “Religion and Politics” was reported that, among the five listed “Religious Indicators” examined for Christians (“Biblical Literalism,” “Religious Attendance,” “Evangelical Protestant,” “Mainline Protestant,” and “Catholic”), overwhelmingly the strongest correlation with conservative political attitudes was fundamentalism (“Biblical Literalism”). Specifically, fundamentalists were far more supportive than anyone else of “Spend more on the military,” “[Politically] Advocate Christian values,” “Punish criminals more harshly,” “Fund faith-based organizations,” and “Allow prayer in [public] schools.” They were far less supportive than anyone else of “Abolish the death penalty,” “Regulate business more closely,” and “Protect the environment more.” All five categories of Christians opposed “Distribute wealth more evenly”; and three categories of Christians were especially opposed to the proposal to distribute wealth more evenly: (1) Religious Attendance (or frequency of church-attendance), (2) Evangelical Protestant, and (3) Biblical Literalism. This study provided 100% confirmation of the political strategy of prominent American conservative aristocratic families, and of Bush advisor Karl Rove, to seek Republican votes from the most literal, Bible-believing, Christians. Another interesting finding was that, whereas 50% of Christians whose income was under $35,000 described themselves as “Bible Believing,” only 38% of Christians whose income was more than $100,000 did. This suggests that, whereas America’s rich were overwhelmingly the financiers of the Republican Party, America’s poorest (who were strongly Democratic as an entire lot) were still ripe to vote Republican if they belonged to that half of America’s poor who view themselves as “Bible Believing.”

The thick crust of historical and political ignorance that befouls US politics permits any kind of imbecility to be widely embraced by significant segments of the population. The idea that Obama—a Wall Street imperialist shill is actually a socialist is one of them, popular with the Yahoo crowd.

The thick crust of historical and political ignorance that befouls the US political mind permits any kind of imbecility to be widely embraced by significant segments of the population. The idea that Barack Obama—a Wall Street imperialist shill —is actually a dangerous socialist is one of them, popular with the Yahoo crowd, and fostered by Fox News and similar disinformation channels.

During 13-15 March 2015, CNN polled on whether respondents preferred that “The candidate has never been wealthy,” or instead that “The candidate has had economic success in their life”; and Republicans chose the rich by 63%/27%, while Democrats chose the rich by 52%/43%. Independents chose the poor by 49%/44%. Independents there were the least conservative, the most progressive, though not very progressive; Republicans, by contrast, were extremely conservative, very authoritarian, wanting their boss as their President. The most authoritarian region of the country was the South, which chose the rich candidate by 59%/35%. The West was close behind: 54%/39%. Third was Midwest: 49%/42%. Least authoritarian was Northeast, which preferred the poor candidate by the bare margin of 47%/46%. As regards population-density, Urban and Suburban were both authoritarian by 55%/38%, and Rural were barely authoritarian, by 48%/43%. Young were the least authoritarian, old were the most. Overall, Americans were authoritarian, preferring the rich candidate by 53%/40% (as if, other things being equal, the poor candidate shouldn’t be expected to have overcome greater obstacles and shown more skill of political leadership in order to achieve a given degree of political renown and appeal than the rich candidate who has achieved that same political level). It’s a population unlikely to sustain democracy — fundamentally hostile toward democracy, favorable toward aristocracy; more respectful of people who take for themselves than of people who give of themselves; more trusting of people who exploit than of people who serve; more-comfortable being led by the callous than by the compassionate — a fundamentally myth-dependent deceived population.
Here are some of my previous reports summarizing the research on that political-cultural disease — the disease of a nation rather than of merely a person — conservatism:
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/04/29908.html
“Study Shows Republicans Favor Economic Inequality”
Posted on April 5, 2014
——
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/the-rich-and-educated-bel_b_4377474.html
“The Rich And Educated Believe Wealth Correlates With Virtue, Says Study”
Posted: 12/05/2013
——
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/04/first-ever-political-study-top-1-found-extreme-conservatism-intense-political-involvement.html
“First-Ever Political Study of Top 1% Has Found Extreme Conservatism, Intense Political Involvement”
Posted on April 2, 2014
——
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/gallup-poll-finds-democra_b_4683688.html
“Gallup Poll Finds Democrats More Compassionate; Republicans More Psychopathic”
Posted: 01/29/2014
——
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/studies-find-that-conserv_b_4558541.html
“Studies Find that Successful People Tend to Be Bad”
Posted: 01/10/2014
——
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/03/gallup-finds-among-conservatives-education-increases-false-belief.html
“Gallup Finds: Among Conservatives, Education Increases False Belief”
Posted on March 29, 2015
——
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/04/breakthrough-study-proves-good-luck-causes-people-become-conservative.html
“Breakthrough Study Proves: Good Luck Causes People to Become More Conservative”
Posted on April 2, 2014
——
Concerning that last-mentioned one, more should be said here about it:
That February 2014 study, by Andrew J. Oswald and Nattavudh Powdthavee, is one of the most important ever done. Its title was “Does Money Make People Right-Wing and Inegalitarian? A Longitudinal Study of Lottery Winners.” It was important because, as it noted at the end, “To our knowledge, these are the first fixed-effects results of their kind, either in the economics literature or the political science literature.” Freed of scholar-speak, that was saying: No previous scientific study has been done of whether the correlation that conservatism generally accompanies wealth is causal in either direction: from wealth to ideology, or from ideology to wealth. They found a definite causal relationship: wealth causes conservatism. Or: “[lottery] winners tend to support a right-wing political party, and also to be intrinsically less egalitarian.” Furthermore: “This money-to-right-leaning relationship is particularly strong for males (we are not certain why). It is also of a ‘dose-response’ kind: the larger the win, the more people tilt to the right.” There was no other difference between people who won lotteries and people who didn’t; the winners simply became more conservative after they won. Here is how the “Abstract” put that: “Money apparently makes people more right-wing.”
This helps to explain why other studies have found that “Successful People Tend to Be Bad,” and why “Gallup Poll Finds Democrats More Compassionate; Republicans More Psychopathic,” and why “Study Shows Republicans Favor Economic Inequality.”
It also helps to explain why the exit polls in the 2012 Obama-Democrat v. Romney-Republican U.S. Presidential contest showed that Romney’s voters tended to be much higher income than Obama’s voters. Unfortunately, public-opinion polls don’t often ask questions to find correlations between party-affiliation and income, but all of the evidence that does exist on this important topic indicates that conservative voters tend to be richer than progressive voters. Furthermore, the Americans on both the Forbes and on the Bloomberg lists of billionaires are about 70% Republicans and 30% Democrats, versus the usual norm amongst the U.S. population, of 55% Democrats to 45% Republicans (not including Independents). The Oswald-Powdthavee study helps to explain why that’s the case: lucky people tend to be conservatives; it’s not the case that conservatives tend to be lucky people. Conservatives are no luckier than non-conservatives. They’re also not more competent than non-conservatives. Instead: Success causes one to be a conservative. No matter how progressive or conservative one is before one becomes rich, one become even more so after one has become rich.
They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity, and of  Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics. [/box]

 

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Freedom Rider: An Angry White Man Kills Again

by Black Agenda Report editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

“The stand your ground and open carry laws are a return to the days when white supremacy was openly expressed through conquest of the native population, slavery, and lynch law terror.”

craig-hicks-unc-shooting-2-large-169

[dropcap]raig Hicks was a human time bomb [5] in his Chapel Hill, North Carolina neighborhood. He was constantly spoiling for a fight, about noise or parking or anything else that he found irritating. Hicks was always armed, a resident of an “open carry” state which allowed him to wear a holstered gun anywhere at any time. On February 10, 2015, Hicks turned himself in to the police and confessed to murdering three people that day.

The victims were identified as Deah Shaddy Barakat, his wife Yusor Abu-Salha, and her sister Razan Abu-Salha. Hicks had argued with the family about parking spaces but it seems any reason to pull the trigger would have been good enough.

Hicks motive for the killing is murky. Some of his political views could be called liberal and others conservative. But more than anything Hicks was serious about being a white man. He loved his guns and he asserted his right to be armed at all times. It is likely that he had mental health issues, but the sickness did not emerge solely from this particular individual.

Where Hicks fell on the political spectrum is really beside the point. He expressed support for the right to bear arms, marriage equality and abortion rights but more than anything he supported his right to be violent. Because of their passivity everyone around him did as well.

His neighbors are now telling the media about his constant arguments and confrontations while being armed but there are no reports of anyone ever calling the police about his behavior. The Barakats told relatives they feared Hicks but ultimately decided not to call the police either. Hicks’ neighbors discussed their concerns among themselves but took no other action. The complicity led to unintentional enabling and that made the killings inevitable.

“Open carry laws are obviously reserved for white people only.”

The inaction stands in stark contrast to the treatment meted out to black people who are at risk of being killed even when they don’t threaten anyone. North Carolina allows open carry of firearms but so does the state of Ohio. That fact didn’t keep John Crawford or Tamir Rice from being shot down in Dayton and Cleveland respectively. They had toy guns and weren’t a danger to anyone. Yet both of them are now on the long list of black people killed by the police. Open carry laws are obviously reserved for white people only.

It is important to ask if the Hicks murders were a hate crime but there are questions which must be explored and they may be harder to deal with than legal definitions. The most fundamental questions is this. Why are white people seen as benign and their behavior as normative, no matter what they do?

Try to imagine a black man picking fights with his neighbors while armed. Then try to imagine that no one ever calls the police in this hypothetical scenario. In Tampa, Florida a black man named Clarence Daniels [6] was legally carrying a gun when he walked into a Walmart. A white man took it upon himself to confront and assault Daniels. The white assailant was arrested but as a black man Daniels was lucky not to have ended up dead.

Alleged shooter and declared atheist Craig Hicks, 46, posted negative comments regarding Christianity and Islam on his Facebook page. Hicks has given atheists—normally among the most progressive of people— a bad name everywhere. — PHOTO: FACEBOOK 
hicks12e

Hicks got the kid glove treatment despite the obvious risk he posed to other people. Fealty to whiteness trumps all else including the desire for safety. In 2014 a Nevada rancher named Cliven Bundy [7] sparked a white power movement which threatened the lives of federal marshals. Bundy owed the government thousands of dollars in payment for his cattle grazing on federal land. He didn’t just refuse to pay. He gathered a group of armed followers. Two of them, Jerad and Amanda Miller, went on to kill two police officers [8].

“Fealty to whiteness trumps all else including the desire for safety.”

At least one person knew that the Millers were armed and dangerous. She saw their arsenal of weapons and heard them say they were going to start a revolution. “I should have called the cops,” was the lame admission. That much is obvious but the expression of regret doesn’t explain very much.

The stand your ground and open carry laws are a return to the days when white supremacy was openly expressed through conquest of the native population, slavery, and lynch law terror. Those acts should not be seen as events of long ago history. They became part of this country’s DNA and give angry, unstable white people a pass to do what they want. They aren’t thought of as potential killers or terrorists as they should be. Bystanders aren’t sufficiently concerned because they too give white people the benefit of the doubt even when they don’t deserve it.

Hicks strongly believed in the right to bear arms and had four handguns, two shotguns and six rifles in his home at the time of the killings. No one knows what twisted thoughts finally sparked the violence but the sickness of this country’s history helped him to carry it out. There are thousands of dangerous people like him who call themselves patriots or sovereign citizens or doomsday preppers. But mostly they just believe in being white.

http://freedomrider.blogspot.com [9]. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com. [/box]

Source URL: http://www.blackagendareport.com/node/14678

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Veterans of Battle of Stalingrad Decry Rebirth of Nazism in Europe.

Senior contributing editor Paul Carline has alerted us to the following document which we are happy to share with our readers. Our special thanks to fraternal site, Fort Russ.

Letter of the Living

to Frau Angela Dorothea Merkel from the Veterans of the Stalingrad Battle

Translated from Russian by Tom Winter


site here,)  On January 22, it hosted a Round Table discussion with actual survivors of the historic battle. These old soldiers, still resident in the Volgograd region, Maxim Matveyevich Zagorulko, Alexander Kolotushkin, Maria V. Sokolov, Mikhail Tereshchenko, Eugene F. Rogov, and Alexander Yakovlevich Sirotenko, in their late 80’s or even early 90’s, looked at the present world as well as at the past, and produced an open letter, a “letter of the living” to the Chancellor of Germany. The full text is on several Russian language sites. Their letter follows, in English. 

Dear Frau Merkel,
 

Merkel at the WEF (flickr)

Merkel at the WEF (flickr)

[dropcap]H[/dropcap]ere in the 70th year after the victory over Nazism, we, veterans of that terrible war and participants in that most horrible combat, are aware that a spectre again is haunting Europe, a spectre of the Brown Plague. This time it is Ukraine that has become the nursery of Nazism, where from the fountainhead of an ideology in ultranationalism, antisemitism, and inhumaneness, there have come into practice rejections of other cultures, physical violence, elimination of dissenters, and murders motivated by ethnic hatred.

Activists of the Svoboda (Freedom) and Right Sector Ukrainian nationalist parties hold torches as they take part in a rally to mark the 106th birth anniversary of Stepan Bandera, one of the founders of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), in Kiev January 1, 2015. (Reuters/Valentyn Ogirenko)

Activists of the Svoboda (Freedom) and Right Sector Ukrainian nationalist parties hold torches as they take part in a rally to mark the 106th birth anniversary of Stepan Bandera, one of the founders of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), in Kiev January 1, 2015. (Reuters/Valentyn Ogirenko)

 

Before us there stand familiar pictures: torchlight parades, thugs in nazi-emblemmed uniforms, upraised right hands in the Nazi salute, fascist processions with police protection through the center of Kiev, and the imposition, on certain people, of second-class status.
 
We have seen all this before, and we know where it leads.
 

In Ukraine the Brown Plague has been smoldering over the last decade, and has broken out into a civil war. Nazi-like formations such as Right Wing (Praviy Sektor), such as the so-called National Guard, numerous informal but well-armed battalions like “Azov,” with regular Ukrainian army support, with air strikes and with heavy artillery, have been systematically destroying the population of Eastern Ukraine.

 

They are murdering innocent people simply because the people wish to speak their own language, because they have a different idea about the future of their country, and because they do not wish to live in a government led by Banderists.

Ukrainians welcoming Nazi troops in 1941. Then as today, many people in Western Ukraine had fascist preferences. (ww2gallery.flickr)

Ukrainians welcoming Nazi troops in 1941. Then as today, many people in Western Ukraine had fascist sentiments. (ww2gallery.flickr)

 
Banderists are followers of the so-called Ukraine Liberation Army, which, we remind you, Frau Merkel, fought in the time of the Second World War on the side of the Wehrmacht, and with the SS Galizia Division, who distinguished themselves in the murder of Soviet Jewry. They exalt their idealogical forebears, renaming the streets of Ukrainian cities after Nazi war criminals! The history of the 20th Century is being rewritten before our eyes. No wonder that the Banderists of our time — with a fanaticist’s gleam that is familiar to us veterans from the front of the World War, at Stalingrad — are calling for wiping Donbass off the face of the earth, and incinerating citizens of their own country in the east with napalm! There is documentary evidence that they have killed people simply for wearing the Ribbon of St. George, our symbol of the victory over fascism.
 
The truth is, Frau Merkel, that in Ukraine an all-out orgy of fascism is going on. It’s not just some anti-semitic remarks in Parliament or by dropouts about the superiority of one “race” over another. It is a matter of full-scale bloody crimes, whose victims now number in the hundreds and in the thousands.
 
But the West has taken a very strange position, and we do not understand it. The position can be understood as accommodating Ukrainian Nazis. It is understood in Ukraine as the position of Europe, and it is beginning to be perceived as such in Russia. And we would like to know what the German people would say about it from the vantage point of their historic national experience.

Kids from Kiev's Azov Battalion pose with Hitler's portrait. (FortRuss.com)

Kids from Kiev’s Azov Battalion pose with Hitler’s portrait. They think being a Nazi punk is cool. (FortRuss.com)

 
It is important for us to know your view, the view of the leader of the great people that once suffered the Brown Plague, but at the cost of terrible sacrifice, recovered from it. We are aware of how they struggle in your country with any manifestations of Nazism, and believe us, we appreciate it. All the more, it makes us wonder why, cleaning out any possible germs of Nazism in you country, you are unconcerned about a full-scale outbreak of it in another part of Europe?
 
Why do European leaders march in support of French caricaturists murdered by Islamic terrorists, but do not march against fascism in Ukraine? Why did the head of state, who ordered annihilation of part of his own population, participate in this march? Why do 12 French victims deserve attention, but thousands of Ukrainian and Russian victims do not?
 
Do you know how many children got killed in East Ukraine by thugs with Nazi emblems on their uniform? Do you want to know? We will offer you this information — if you do not already have it. Why do the people of Europe look calmly upon the massive violence in Ukraine? Is it simply because there is no mention of it in your mainstream media? Then where is their well-known independence? Independence from facts? Independence from truth? What is the actual goal of your economic sanctions? Weaken Russia as a power? Support Fascism in Ukraine? Or just to eliminate our pensions which we get as veterans of the World War?
 
Dear Frau Merkel, the grim history of the 20th century has taught us a few lessons.
 
1. The rewriting of history is the first path to Nazism.
 
Every European fascist regime in the ‘20s and ‘30s started with this. And this is the path they have traveled in Ukraine: from rewriting schoolbook histories to the widespread demolition of Soviet memorials. The acme of falsehood was uttered by Ukrainian Prime Minister Yatsenyuk in the German media about “the Soviet Union invading Germany and Ukraine”! It would be interesting to know your sentiments about that, the sentiments of a leader where holocaust-denial is a crime entailing actual time in prison.
 
2. The search for scapegoats is a manifestation of Nazism.
 
Fascist regimes blame every failure of their country on various groups, ethnic, social, religious. In years past, this was the Jews and the Communists. In today’s Ukraine, the assigned scapegoats are Russians, Russia, and the entire east of the country.
 
3. If Nazism appears in one country, the disease can spread throughout the world
 
You cannot promote Nazism in one country and suppose that it will stay within that country’s borders. The wave of Nazism spreads to all, overstepping boundaries. That’s the reason they called Nazism “The Brown Plague.” Nazism must be stopped at the distant approaches, lest it arrive in your house.
 
4. Nazism cannot be ignored; it must be resisted.
 
Should anyone suppose that one can simply ignore Ukrainian fascism, and pay no attention to it, he is utterly in error. The nature of Nazism is such that it takes being ignored as encouragement, even as an acknowledgement of its strength. Nazism is never local; it can only root, and grow. Therefore the only way with Nazism is an active bitter struggle against it.
 
5. The most important weapon in the struggle against Nazism in its early stages is the truth.
 
In short, truth defeats Nazism. By exhibiting the inhumane essence of Nazism, the inhumane essence revealed in it own ideology, in the exhortations of its adherents, in its actual executions of persons, we fight against Nazism as it is. Historical truth is the best shield against Nazism. If their own government wouldn’t hide the history of their country and their people from the youth, there would be fewer Nazi followers in Ukraine. Current mass media play a huge role: they can either form Nazism, or they can fight it.
 
Dear Frau Merkel! In Russia, as successor to the USSR, we have a special and historic mission. 70 years ago, at the cost of the worst casualties of the war, we put an end to Nazism in Europe. We personally, Stalingraders all, with superhuman effort, changed the course of history, not just our history, but European history, yes, world history. And we cannot allow the recrudescence of Nazism. Certainly not next door! We have fought it; we will fight it; we invite you to fight it together with us!
 
A character, archetype of a fascist boss, in a well-known and favorite film here is made to say: “As soon as anywhere, instead of saying ‘Hello’ they say ‘Heil!’ you’ll know: that is where they are waiting for us, and that is where we will start our great revival.”
 
Frau Merkel, “Heil” is heard everywhere in Ukraine, openly, with official support. It is time for the whole European world to stop this bane.
 

We very much hope that the German people, and all Europe, together with the people of Russia, will stamp out the reptile, root and branch.

 

APPENDIX 

(1) The Battle of Stalingrad


(2) Torchlight parade

 

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Why You Shouldn’t Trust Right-Wingers’ Sudden Concern About the Police  

Salon [1] / By Heather Digby Parton [2]
larry=prattzaitchik1

[O]ne of the most misunderstood elements of American politics has to be the fact that legislative coalitions are very different from voting coalitions. The most obvious case in point is the erroneous assumption that the coalition that often forms around civil liberties, featuring elements of the most ideologically committed members of the left and the right, means that these groups are in agreement as to the goals they wish to obtain.

It’s not essential that everyone who signs on to a bill is doing so for the same reason, but it’s vitally important that people not misinterpret the joint action as a sign that we are entering a moment of bipartisan kumbaya that will heal the nation’s wounds and bring us together once and for all.

In the wake of Michael Brown’s death and all that’s followed, we are seeing this play out in what Jim Newell accurately described [3] as a potential coalition of right and left on the demilitarization of the police. In this case it’s the hardcore wingnuts at the Gun Owners of America joining in with the ACLU to demand an end to the Pentagon program that encourages police departments to buy surplus military equipment at bargain basement prices both of whom have endorsed a bill by Democratic congressman Hank Johnson of Georgia to do just that. But it’s important that we distinguish that the liberty concerns which drive this particular joint endorsement are coming from the same place or seek the same end.

Gun Owners of America president Larry Pratt is not concerned about the police harassing and shooting young African American men or using military tactics and equipment against peaceful protesters exercising their rights under the constitution.  He has never before expressed any concern for these issues in the past. What he is worried about is something else entirely.  Just a few weeks ago he appeared on Alex Jones’ conspiracy show and articulated exactly what it is he fears the most. Right Wing Watch captured the moment [4]:

Jones asked Pratt about a Washington Times report about a 2010 Pentagon directive — an update to a series of similar directives crafted under previous administrations — outlining how and when the military can use force to quell domestic unrest “in extraordinary emergency circumstances where prior authorization by the president is impossible.”

Jones, of course, read this to mean that it is “official and has been confirmed” that the military is “training with tanks, armored vehicles, drones” to “take on the American people, mainly the Tea Party.”

“Well, he’s certainly not thinking that Muslims are a threat,” responded Pratt, “so he’s turning to his political opponents, declaring that they’re the enemy and ignoring the fact that Muslims from time to time have a tendency to go ‘boom.’”

Pratt then cited the 2009 DHS report to claim that the Obama administration has “fingered veterans as potential terrorists, people who believe in the Second Amendment, who are pro-life, who want to work for limited government.”

“I guess the idea of limited government really would terrorize a socialist,” he said, adding, “The enemy is freedom and they really are doing what they can to extinguish it.”

It fair to assume that the ACLU is worried about something else entirely. In fact, we know they are [5]:

Our neighborhoods are not warzones, and police officers should not be treating us like wartime enemies. Any yet, every year, billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment flows from the federal government to state and local police departments. Departments use these wartime weapons in everyday policing, especially to fight the wasteful and failed drug war, which has unfairly targeted people of color.

As our new report makes clear, it’s time for American police to remember that they are supposed to protect and serve our communities, not wage war on the people who live in them.

In fact, Larry Pratt’s concerns about the federal government are very, very different from the ACLU’s in that regard. Responding to some comments by Attorney General Eric Holder regarding Trayvon Martin assailant George Zimmerman, Pratt explained that Holder just wanted to “intimidate the rest of the country so that we don’t think about defending ourselves against attacks by black mobs on white individuals.”

But, despite Pratt’s odious views, it is still useful to have him in a legislative coalition on the issue of police militarization. It’s impossible to cobble together enough votes for this sort of congressional initiative without a bipartisan coalition. (Even then, it’s usually impossible…) And just because his reasoning is repulsive doesn’t mean Johnson’s bill isn’t reasonable legislation on its own terms. In any case, the demilitarization of police is completely meaningless to the pursuit of his goals since they are based on fantasy. But the ACLU’s concerns will be addressed.

The fact is that defending civil liberties almost always requires strange bedfellows for the simple reason that it rests on the principle that they must protect everyone, even people who say and do things you do not like. Especially people who say and do things you do not like. It does not mean there is a meaningful alliance on goals or a meeting of the minds beyond the basic rules of the road which require us to respect each others freedom. There is no hope for an ideological alignment that “breaks the two party system ” and liberals will not be singing the same tune as Larry Pratt and his gun-toting extremists any time soon.

When it comes to civil liberties it’s often the case that civil libertarians of the left will find themselves holding hands with the far right (as well as their noses) to ensure that the Bill of Rights is kept safe for both of them. And then they’ll go back to fighting each other with everything they have. It’s not a perfect system but it’s all we’ve got.

Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/why-you-shouldnt-trust-right-wingers-sudden-concern-about-police


Like His Dad, Charles Koch Was a Bircher (New Documents)

The fruit does not fall far from the tree.

SOURCE: PR WATCH

Today, as announced on Amy Goodman’s DemocracyNow!, the Progressive Inc. and the Center for Media and Democracy are publishing new information and analysis documenting that billionaire oil industrialist Charles Koch was an active member of the controversial right-wing John Birch Society during its active campaigns against the civil rights movement.

Many commentators have noted that the father of the controversial Koch Brothers, Fred Koch, was a leader of the John Birch Society from its founding in 1958 until his death in 1967. But, in fact, Charles Koch followed his father’s footsteps into the John Birch Society for years in Wichita, Kansas, a hub city for the organization in that decade of tremendous societal unrest as civil rights activists challenged racial segregation.

Charles Koch was not simply a rank and file member of the John Birch Society in name only who paid nominal dues. He purchased and held a “lifetime membership” until he resigned in 1968. He also lent his name and his wealth to the operations of the John Birch Society in Wichita, aiding its “American Opinion” bookstore — which was stocked with attacks on the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King, and Earl Warren as elements of the communist conspiracy. He funded the John Birch Society’s promotional campaigns, bought advertising in its magazine, and supported its distribution of right-wing radio shows.

The reactionary ideas learned from his father and stoked by his ideological ally in Wichita, Bob Love of the Love Box Company, were not simply passing fancies of the young scion of an oil fortune. The tools of the trade he absorbed in his late twenties and early thirties appear to continue to animate some of his actions decades later, as with his 2014 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal claiming those who criticize him are “collectivists.” The echoes of his past role reverberate along with the millions he and his brother David Koch have spent fueling a John Birch Society-like “Tea Party” peopled with right-wingers like Birchers of decades past who contend against all reasoning that the president is a communist. David Koch himself has claimed President Obama is a scary “socialist.” These roots run deep in the Kochs.

In many ways, the playbook deployed by the Kochs today through myriad organizations resembles a more sophisticated (and expensive) playbook of the John Birch Society back then. Even the recent announcement of the Kochs to give a $25 million gift to the United Negro College Fund (with strings attached requiring the recruitment of free market African American college students) echoes that past. In 1964, in the face of criticism for its assault on the civil rights movement, the John Birch Society also funded a scholarship program to give college funds to African Americans who were not active in the civil rights movement, according to documents the Progressive.org/Center for Media and Democracy has obtained.

Below is an excerpt of a new story just published by The Progressive magazine in its newly redesigned summer issue, summarizing some of the long-term research of the Center for Media and Democracy, which is now part of the Progressive Inc. The complete version of that story, which sheds new light on the political activities and environmental record of the Kochs, is available in the digitial edition of the magazine.

Below the excerpt are some key quotes from the John Birch Society’s attacks on the civil rights movement and its outlandish claims about the circumstances faced by African Americans in the 1960s. When Charles Koch resigned from the John Birch Society in 1968, he did so along with running a full-page ad taking the opposite position of the John Birch Society on the Vietnam War.  But, he made no similar gesture expressing any opposition to its long-standing, high priority anti-civil rights agenda, which his financial support made possible.

In leaving the John Birch Society, Charles Koch had become enamored with a more anarchical expression of his attachment to unregulated capitalism that at its root opposes government action other than that which is necessary to protect property and freedom of contract, two theoretical “ideals” at odds with the very kind of anti-discrimination laws, labor laws, and social programs that the John Birch Society attacked. Since the 1960s, Charles Koch and his brother David have spent untold millions to move these related theories into the mainstream. And, like the John Birch Society spearheaded in recruiting their father, they too have done so by recruiting other industrialists, as with their billionaire “Freedom Partners” to join them in funding efforts to dramatically change this country by trying to takeover Congress and the states and rewrite the laws to suit their own interests.

—-

From The Progressive magazine July-August 2014:

In 1961, at the age of twenty-six, Charles moved home to Wichita, Kansas, to work for Rock Island Oil and Refining Company, which was led by his father, Fred Koch, who was on the national council of the John Birch Society. Charles subsequently opened a John Birch Society bookstore in Wichita with a friend of his father, Bob Love, the owner of the Love Box Company in Wichita, according to Dan Schulman’s Sons of Wichita.

The John Birch Society’s “American Opinion Bookstores” were stocked with material opposing the civil rights movement

Birchers had put up billboards in Kansas and elsewhere calling for the impeachment of Earl Warren, the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court who had ordered the desegregation of the public schools in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.

There’s no indication that Fred or Charles objected to the Birch campaign to impeach Warren.

There is no indication they objected when it ran ads in Dallas in 1963 with President John F. Kennedy’s head depicted like two mug shot photos, with the word “Treason” below, shortly before the assassination of the President …

Or when it opposed the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, based on the Bircher claim that the movement was created as a forty-year front for the communists.

Or when it supported billboards calling Martin Luther King a communist.

None of these things was cited by Charles Koch and Bob Love in their resignation from the John Birch Society in 1968, according to correspondence with Robert Welch, who had launched the organization a decade earlier with Fred and a few other businessmen.

Oddly, it was Welch’s “Win the War” strategy of signing up people to support the Vietnam War that caused the breakup between Charles Koch and the John Birch Society.

In 1968, Charles Koch bought a full-page ad, “Let’s Get Out of Vietnam Now,” based on the isolationism of a competing flank of the far right movement….

Charles also gave public speeches espousing the view that government’s only proper role was to police the interference with the free market—an ideology that inherently rejects child labor laws, minimum wages or safety rules, the protection of union rights, and more….

—

Find out more about what happened next (like Charles Koch’s call for a Second American revolution and the Senate investigation of a pre-cursor to the Kochs’ Freedom Partners operation) in the digital edition of the magazine. Or keep reading below to learn more details about the kind of claims the John Birch Society made that did not provoke a counter-ad by Charles Koch, like the outrageous claim that photos of civil rights protestors attacked by dogs were shams. Select research documents have also been posted below, although more are available. Additional new stories about the Koch empire and activities will be gathered in a new resource for concerned citizens called KochExposed.org.

—

TIMELINE OF EXCERPTS: The Koch Family, the John Birch Society, and Civil Rights

1958

Fred Koch attended the initial meeting of right-wing businessmen called by Robert Welch, who proposes creating the John Birch Society to fight the spread of communism in the U.S., after the ignominious death of Senator Joe McCarthy, who was censured. Fred joins the Executive Committee, which met monthly to plan Birch Society strategy.

1961

Charles Koch moved home to Wichita to work for his dad and joins the John Birch Society, which his father, Fred, co-founded. (According to Sons of Wichita, Charles joined the Birch Society when he moved home.)

That year, Fred Koch published and circulated his pamphlet, “A Businessman Looks at Communism,” which claimed the U.S. Supreme Court was pro-communist, that President Dwight Eisenhower (the former allied commander in WWII) was soft on communism, that the public schools used many communist books, and that many teachers were commies.

Also that year, David Koch – a student at MIT –helps incite an anti-communist, anti-Castro protest that turns into a riot where students are arrested.

Also that year, African American and white “Freedom Riders” began traveling between the Southern states to test the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Boyton v. Virginia that the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment barred laws requiring segregated travel interstate. The buses were attacked by white mobs and the Ku Klux Klan.

The John Birch Society announced that its top priority that year was the launch of its “Movement to Impeach Earl Warren,” the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, appointed by President Eisenhower; Warren was previously a Republican governor.

One of the core documents promoted that year and for years afterward was by the founder of the John Birch Society, Robert Henry Winborne Welch (of the Junior Mints/Sugar Babies candy fortune). That document was titled “A Letter to the South on Segregation” (1956). It claimed that the “easy-going colored man” of the South will be “easily misled by agitators,” that the phrase “civil rights” is a communist slogan, and that the push for racial integration “embarrassed” good African Americans.

The John Birch Society’s Movement to Impeach Earl Warren also promoted Rosalie Gordon’s defense of segregated public schools “Nine Men Against America” and the right-wing Regnery publishing house’s book by James Kilpatrick (“The Sovereign States”) defending the Southern States’ “right” “to believe that they were proceeding constitutionally in erecting and maintaining a system of racially separate schools.” The Birch Society also promoted the extremist and segregationist “Dan Smoot Report.”

In 1961, James Meredith, who had served in the U.S. Air Force, asked Medgar Evers for help after he was denied admission to Ole Miss, the University of Mississippi. Evers askedThurgood Marshall to take Meredith’s case and the NAACP filed a federal lawsuit.

Accordingly to a Time magazine profile that year, the John Birch Society launched reading rooms and book stores “manned … by local members of our organization” promoting the 100 books approved by the Society to be sold, along with membership, posters, pamphlets, and Birch magazines. The approved material included the Bircher monthly magazine, “American Opinion,” and “Dan Smoot’s Report,” which ran numerous pieces attacking the integration of schools. The John Birch Society also pushed many right-wing radio shows.

According to Time magazine’s profile, Wichita was designated a “pilot” town for the John Birch Society and it mentioned Fred Koch’s leadership of the organization. Professors at the city college, Wichita University, reported being harassed by Birchers for their books and what they taught. At a major Birch event there, Fred Koch introduced the John Birch Society founder, Bob Welch, at a town hall meeting of 2,000 people. Friend of the Koch family and fellow Bircher, Bob Love of the Love Box Company shut down a news filming of the speech in which Welch was tape recorded claiming “The Protestant ministry is more heavily infiltrated by Communists than any other profession in America.” The Wichita Eagle-Beaconeditorialized that “Welch is selling snake oil, and that a lot of people are buying it.”

1962

In 1962, based on the reasoning in the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, a federal appeals court ordered that the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) admit African American student James Meredith. Mississippi’s segregationist governor,Ross Barnett, responded by trying to stop the integration of the state college.

When James Meredith sought to enroll in Oxford, Mississippi, Governor Barnett personally blocked his entrance and was joined by World War II veteran Major General Edwin Walker, who issued this statement: “I am in Mississippi beside Governor Ross Barnett. I call for a national protest against the conspiracy from within. Rally to the cause of freedom in righteous indignation, violent vocal protest, and bitter silence under the flag of Mississippi at the use of Federal troops….” Riots ensued and two people were killed.  Only President John F. Kennedy’s executive order for the National Guard to escort Meredith allowed him to enroll in the state university and he had to have ongoing protection from federal agents.

The John Birch Society hailed General Walker as a hero for standing up in Oxford to what it described as the communist creation of the civil rights movement. The Dan Smoot Reportpromoted by the John Birch Society claimed the desegregation order was illegal and equated the whites protesting Meredith’s admission to the students protesting in Hungary in 1956. It also defended General Walker as standing up to American “tyranny.”

The John Birch Society promoted a pamphlet by Alan Stang called “It’s Very Simple” attacking the civil rights movement.  Among other things, Stang called Martin Luther King, Jr., a communist and claimed that his goal was to pressure Congress “to install more collectivism.” Stang, in John Birch Society publications, claimed Rosa Parks was trained by communists before she refused to move to the back of the bus in Montgomery in 1955.

The John Birch Society also announced that it had erected more than 100 billboards calling for the impeachment of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren. Birch leader Bob Welch noted “We believe that the Warren Court is gradually destroying all the safeguards which made this a republic instead of a mobocracy.”

1963

Martin Luther King helped organize demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama, was arrested, and wrote on non-violence and injustice in “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” (which was published by The Progressive along with other of his writings).

The John Birch Society claimed that its “detailed study of ‘the life and lies’ of Martin Luther King … will convince any reasonable American that this man is not working for, but against, the real welfare and best interests of either the Negroes in the United States, or of the United States as a whole.” (Robert Welch, “Two Revolutions at Once” published in 1965) In its publications of Alan Stang’s writings the John Birch Society claimed Martin Luther Kingwas the “biggest” “liar in the country” and what “he really wants is to be a black plantation boss giving orders to ‘his people.”’

Medgar Evers, the NAACP’s Mississippi field staffer, is assassinated at his home.

Bull Connor directed Birmingham, Alabama, police to use attack dogs and high-pressure fire hoses on civil rights marchers, including children.

The John Birch Society claimed that “The truth is that the infamous picture of a dog attacking a Negro, while the dog was held in leash by a Birmingham police officer, was so carefully rehearsed until the ‘civil rights’ agitators got exactly the picture they wanted, that the leg of the Negro victim’s trousers had even been cut with a razor in advance, so that it would fall apart more readily at the first touch by the dog. Yet this picture was shown on the front pages of newspapers all over the United States – most of which did not know it was a contrived phony – and became an extremely important part of the Communist propaganda about ‘civil rights.’” (Robert Welch, “Two Revolutions at Once” published in 1965)

In July 1963, the John Birch Society launched the “Support Your Local Police” Movement providing bumper stickers, window stickers, and flyers through its bookstore and by mail. The posters often appeared with “Impeach Earl Warren” billboards and touted the need for “law and order” in Birmingham, Alabama, and other cities.

Thousands travel to Washington, DC, for the March on Washington for Jobs where Reverend King delivers his “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

As segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond spoke out against civil rights and the “collectivist” menace on the Senate floor, the John Birch Society invites him to join its council, but he declines to retain his “independence.”

Four little girls are murdered in a bombing at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.

A John Birch Society front group runs advertisements in Dallas before President Kennedy’s arrival, depicting his head in mug shots with the word “TREASON” below, along with claims that Kennedy is guilty of treason for purportedly being soft on communism.

President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.

Fred Koch then helped spearhead a national advertisement in the New York Times blaming Kennedy’s assassination on the communists.

1964

John Birch Society ads blaming communists for the assassination of President Kennedyrun nationally. The Society also promotes material called “Marxmanship in Dallas.”

The Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organizes voter registration drives in Mississippi and plans for “Freedom Summer” demonstrations.

James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, three civil rights workers investigating the firebombing of a church where they were organizing voter registration, were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan.

Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 over the objections of South CarolinaSenator Strom Thurmond and other racists.

That year, the Supreme Court also issued its ruling in Reynolds v. Simms, which is famous for its principle of “one person, one vote.”

The John Birch Society created a “scholarship” fund for anti-communist/capitalist African American students, and its first recipient received $1000 in September 1964.

1965

The John Birch Society touts that 26 million Americans voted for a conservative, Barry Goldwater, even though Goldwater criticized the Society.

Jimmy Lee Jackson, an unarmed African American who was protesting the arrest of civil rights worker James Edward Orange, was killed by police. Hundreds of SNCC activists, including John Lewis, marched from Selma to Montgomery in protest, and were stopped on the bridge by police wielding fire hoses, clubs, and tear gas. Martin Luther King joins them.

The John Birch Society’s main publication claims that “the march from Selma to Montgomery led by Martin Luther King” was a “sham and farce.”

Congress passes the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The John Birch Society claimed that the few “handicaps to Negro voting” “could be and were being corrected” without federal legislation and that “To tear a whole great nation to pieces, and to try to plunge a large part of it into civil war, over the few such injustices as do exist, is on a par with sinking a mighty ship in order to get a rat out of the scupper.” (Robert Welch, “Two Revolutions at Once” in American Opinion and then published as a stand-alone John Birch Society pamphlet in 1966.)

Among other things in 1965, Charles Koch helped promote the John Birch Society bookstore in Wichita, which was managed by Bob Love. The bookstore peddled John Birch Society pamphlets like Earl Lively’s “The Invasion of Mississippi,” which claims the racial integration of Ole Miss was unlawful and sides with the white racist protestors.  Other titles included Robert Welch’s pamphlet, “A Letter to the South on Segregation” and a tract titled “Is the Supreme Court Pro-Communist.” It also offered “Support Your Local Police” stickers from the campaign begun in 1963.

Charles Koch’s confidante and assistant George Pearson joined the John Birch Societyand began volunteering at the American Opinion Bookstore in Wichita, too.

The John Birch Society also promoted its new “What’s Wrong with Civil Rights” campaign in its bookstores and newspapers. The campaign claimed African Americans are better off in the U.S. than in other countries and have personal security on par with whites:

“The average American Negro has a tremendously higher material standard of living than Negroes anywhere else; and far higher, in fact, than at least four-fifths of the earth’s population of all races combined.”

 

“The average American Negro not only has a far higher standard of literacy, and better educational opportunities, than Negroes anywhere else; but a higher level of literacy, in fact, than at least four-fifths of the earth’s population of all races combined.”

 

“The average American Negro has complete freedom of religion, freedom of movement, and freedom to run his own life as he pleases.”

 

“His security of person, and assurance of honorable treatment by his fellow citizens in all of the utilitarian relationships of the living, have been exactly on par with those of his white neighbors.”

 

“[T]he agitators behind the civil rights movement demand complete and absolute disregard for those differences [‘in the economic, literate, and social level of the two races” and “the natural or human-natural results of these differences”], and a pretense that they do not exist, must be forced by federal law upon the total population everywhere, and with respect to every activity of human life.”

 

“[T]he civil rights movement in the United States, with all of its growing agitation and riots and bitterness, and insidious steps towards the appearance of a civil war, has not been infiltrated by the Communists, as you frequently hear. It has been deliberately and almost wholly created by the Communists …”

 

“[T]he American Negroes as a whole did not plan this, have not wanted any part of it, and are no bigger dupes on yielding to the propaganda and coercion of the comsymps among them, than are the white people of the United States in swallowing portions of that propaganda labeled idealism.”

Also, in 1965, the riots in Watts in Los Angeles over the treatment of an African American and his family by a police officer resulted in more than 30 deaths, primarily of African Americans.

1966

James Meredith is shot during the “March against Fear” to register African American voters.

The John Birch Society continued its campaign to Impeach Earl Warren and also pushed to raise $12 million to take over Congress through launching political action in 325 districts.

Charles Koch sent out a fundraising letter with Bob Love to raise money for the John Birch Society. They said they had contributed $3500 toward the goal of $5000 (the average annual wages of an American worker that year).

The John Birch Society also promoted its “Liberty Amendment,” opposing graduated income taxes as a marxist plot to impose collectivism. It also took out “Support Police” ads and opposed “Civilian Review Boards” that would impose citizen oversight against police brutality.

That year, with his father ill, Charles Koch took on the leadership of the family corporation that would become Koch Industries.

1967

The Supreme Court struck down laws against inter-racial marriage in Loving v. Virginia.

Thurgood Marshall was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Martin Luther King begins the “Poor People’s Campaign.”

The John Birch Society calls President Johnson’s “War on Poverty” a scam to promote collectivism and promoted Dan Smoot’s claim that it would create a socialist dictatorship.

Fred Koch died on November 17, 1967. Donations in tribute were requested by the family in his name for Wichita’s John Birch Society American Opinion Bookstore.

Charles Koch became Chairman of the family business.

1968

Martin Luther King came to speak during the Memphis sanitation workers strike, and he was assassinated.

April 11, 1968, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1968 barring discrimination in housing.

The John Birch Society promoted opposition to anti-discrimination legislation, with publications like “Open Occupancy v. Forced Housing,” which extolled “freedom of choice” and property rights.

On May 19, 1968, Charles Koch and Bob Love ran a full-page ad in the Wichita Eagleheadlined “Let’s Get Out of Vietnam Now,” calling for an unconditional pullout because it was too expensive. Love also stated that pulling out necessary to prevent the U.S. from adapting to communism philosophically through wage and price controls and taxes to pay for the war: “This country will surely vote for a dictator, if the chaos and confusion of inflation continue to mount.”

Charles Koch resigned his “life membership” in the John Birch Society and also withdrew his advertising from the John Birch Society’s “American Opinion” monthly magazine and from supporting its radio programs. Robert Welch wrote to ask him to reconsider, but he did not do so.

Charles Koch announced he was renaming the family company “Koch Industries.”