Table Of ContentBy Benjamin R. Epstein
COLD POGROM
(translated from the German)
COLLECTED ESSAYS ON MASARYK
(translated from the German)
By Arnold Forster
ANTI-SEMITISM-1947
A MEASURE OF FREEDOM
By Benjamin R. Epstein
and Arnold Forster
THE TROUBLEMAKERS
CROSSCURRENTS
SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS . . .
DANGER ON THE RIGHT
REPORT ON THE KU KLUX KLAN
REPORT ON THE JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY 1966
THE
RADICAL
RIGHT
Report on the
John Birch Society
and Its Allies
Benjamin R. Epstein
and Arnold Forster
THE
RADICAL
RIGHT
Report on the
John Birch Society
and Its Allies
RANDOM HOUSE M i
New York
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
© Copyright, 1966, 1967, by The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. Published in New York by Random House, Inc., and
simultaneously in Toronto, Canada, by Random House of Canada Ltd.
Manufactured in the United States of America
by the Colonial Press, Inc., Clinton, Massachusetts
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 67-20361
To the Memory of
Adlai E. Stevenson
Democracy itself will always defy definition just because every
citizen has a built-in right to formulate definitions of his own.
But today democracy here at home and around the world is
being strained and tested as never before. What are the dangers
it must overcome? I think on the basis of our own American ex
perience we can begin by disposing of certain imaginary dangers
. . . fears, compounded of fact and fiction. . . . From the extreme
right we still hear that the income tax is socialism, socialism is
communism, and so freedom is already done for. Or we hear that
the real threat is not in the truculent power of Moscow or Peking,
but in the freedom of unpopular opinion—or in any authority, be
it President or Supreme Court, which refuses to punish error as
if it were treason.
Or we hear that the United Nations is a big Communist plot.
Some plot—to organize all those votes against yourself.
If you follow that line to the end, you conclude with the dis
covery that the worst danger of all is democracy itselfl
What a pity it is that the nerves of even one American should
be frazzled with these mythical dangers, when there are so many
real and deeper dangers for democracy to face in our time!
—Excerpt from an address given to the Anti-Defamation League of B*nai
B'rith on January 14, 1962, in New York City by Ambassador Stevenson
on the occasion of the presentation to him of ADL’s America’s Demo
cratic Legacy Award.
Foreword
This book is a current report on the Radical Right—its
activities, spokesmen and schemes. It brings up to date our
1966 Report on the John Birch Society and sketches in the
Radical Right milieu within which it is operating.
To grasp the meaning of the Radical Right one should
understand that its leaders—and their followers—are politi
cal and social nihilists. They are “anti” to the point where
they would damage society as we know it and government
as we have it.
With piety they profess allegiance for the Constitution.
However, a close examination of their agenda indicates
they are against the major institutions and social instru
ments which have been created under the Constitution’s
benign umbrella. In their mouths the word Constitution be
comes an abracadabra to be mumbled but not understood
or utilized for the construction of a secure society and a free
government.
The road the Radical Rightists travel runs backward in
time into a world that never was and hopefully never will
be. It is a world in which nothing is ever what it seems.
Everything is weighed down by the irresponsibility which
grows out of a conspiratorial interpretation of history. Yet
the Radical Rightists, in their efforts to stem human prog
ress in our nation, run the gamut from such irresponsibility
to the merely perverse.
In such a world it is easy enough to confuse efforts to
improve the civil rights of minorities with Red revolution.
ix
FOREWORD
The statement that all of Washington and the churches
and the schools and the libraries and the Supreme Court
are 80% in the hands of Communists becomes an article of
faith. Such faith breeds fear and, consequently, a program
that calls for the impeachment of the Chief Justice, an end
to the fluoridation of water, the ousting of the United Na
tions from the United States and the condemnation of
almost anyone who does not quite agree with these con
clusions.
The Radical Rightists are a mixed bag, indeed, each
with his own formula for salvation. There are the propa
gandists, the political activists, the moneymakers. Following
them are the kooks, from the gun-toters to the midnight
phone callers who, like the Scottish ghoulies, go bump in
the night, disturbing with their harassments the sleep of
decent citizens. The latter are not the concern of this book.
For Kent Courtney and his “Conservative Society of
America,” salvation lies in the development of a new
Right-Wing third party to displace one of the two present
national parties. For the Liberty Lobby it lies in the cap
ture of one of the present parties. For The John Birch
Society it lies in the distortion of political thought and the
assumption of power by infiltration.
Billy James Hargis, mixing political extremism with re
ligion, likes to travel a gold-lined road; Robert DePugh
gets satisfaction out of playing with dynamite (the real
thing) even if it should land some of his Minutemen in
jail.
For the nation as we know it, that sensible America
which travels the democratic road, there will be jeopardy
unless it meets the Radical Right’s challenge to orderly
progress toward social justice for all men.
It is true that America has survived extremist challenges,
of Right and Left, in the past—starting with the Salem witch
trials of three centuries ago—but not without national
pain, temporary damage and deep and sometimes violent
x
FOREWORD
conflict. Out of control, the damage can be much more
than superficial or temporary.
To check the destructiveness of Radical Rightism, to
reduce the damage, to alleviate the pain, every American
needs to understand who the Radical Rightists are, what
they stand for and how they are proceeding with their
divisive tactics.
This book puts their blueprint on record.
DORE SCHARY
