The Cold War Axis:
Soviet Anti-Zionism & the American Right, Part 2

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Part 2 of 3

The Impact of Yockey’s Pro-Soviet Agenda on the American Right

The two primary media within the American extreme Right for a pro-Soviet orientation were Common Sense, a fortnightly paper which achieved a relatively high circulation, and the National Renaissance Party, a militant fascist grouping, particularly active in agitating on the streets of New York with uniformed stormtroopers. Both Common Sense and the National Renaissance Party endured for a surprisingly long time.

1. Common Sense

In 1954 the House Committee on Un-American Activities (Velde Committee) deemed both Common Sense and the National Renaissance Party to be of sufficient importance to be the focus of their investigation and “preliminary report.” The committee expressed concerned that neo-fascists were exploiting the menace of communism in pursuit of their own anti-democratic aims.[1]

Common Sense was founded in 1947 by Conde McGinley and published by the Christian Educational Association, Union, New Jersey. McGinley began publishing a paper in 1946 called Think. The following year McGinley’s paper became a tabloid and the name was changed to Common Sense.[2] Common Sense began as a comparatively mainstream anti-communist conservative newspaper for those times, and billed itself as “leader in the nation’s fight against communism.” The Velde Committee report even mentions that, “At the outset, its columns carried a certain amount of factual information on communism.”[3] The report states however that Common Sense changed direction in 1948 and became explicitly fascistic and anti-Semitic: “Beginning in 1948, however, Common Sense became increasingly outspoken in its statements of a pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic nature. It was soon almost exclusively a vehicle for the exploitation of ignorance, prejudice, and fear.”[4]

It seems that Common Sense first published articles opposing the US Cold War policy against the USSR as early as 1952 (the year of the “Prague Treason Trial”) although there seems to have been an interregnum during which this pro-Soviet outlook was put into hiatus until 1966. The Velde report notes that 1952 was also the year that the National Renaissance Party adopted the Common Sense “line” on the USSR. Precisely as Yockey was writing[5] Common Sense also stated that the German army, which had been prevented from destroying Communism during World War II, is now expected to do so at the behest of the USA. However Common Sense states: “This is to be a war against the Russian people – not against communism.” The Velde report comments: “In this statement, McGinley’s ‘anti-Communist’ and ‘patriotic’ publication apparently is not averse to serving the Communist propaganda cause.”[6]

The Yockeyan perspective is repeated by a “European” correspondent to Common Sense, whose warnings were quoted by the Velde report as follows:

If your paper is to continue its excellent work of opposing the policy of the Jew, please do not fight Russia also, for we in Europe look upon it as the only hope to prevent Jewish world domination by means of its stupid, willing, technically clever American slaves, the destroyers of Europe’s cities, the hate-mongers of the vile occupation and the hangmen of Nuremberg.[7]

However this pro-Soviet orientation does not seem to have been pursued until being resumed in 1966. At least from 1954[8] until 1966 Common Sense expressed a quite standard American Right-wing line that “communism is Jewish” and that the USSR remained under Jewish control.

In 1966 Common Sense published an article that was to be of seminal influence on the direction of the paper from then until it closed in 1972. The article is entitled “New York – Capitol of Marxism.”[9] While it echoed the theme of the anonymous “European correspondent” in 1952, the anonymous writer of this article can confidently be stated to have been Fred Farrel.[10] Common Sense prefaced the article by stating that: “We have never published anything quite like this before nor has anything similar been published to the best of our knowledge. . . . Time alone will reveal the truth.”[11] It seems likely that this was the first feature article presenting a pro-Soviet line to appear in Common Sense. However, it was not correct to say that nothing of the type had ever been carried elsewhere, as the National Renaissance Party Bulletin had been carrying pro-Soviet articles by Yockey and a German-American mentor, Fred Weiss, since 1952.

Common Sense writers were well aware of Yockey’s works. They had been carried in the book catalogue of the Christian Educational Association, the paper’s publisher. Yockey’s Imperium, Proclamation of London, and Yockey: Four Essays were featured on the front page of the catalogue with a picture of Yockey.[12] These works by Yockey were also advertised in issues of Common Sense.[13] The first essay Yockey is known to have had published, “The Tragedy of Youth,” was reprinted in a 1970 issue of Common Sense.[14] One apparent Yockeyan influence on Common Sense is the use of his phrase “culture distorter.” In the Patriotic Reading catalog for example, the introduction refers to book publishing as being “dominated by alien culture-distorters.”[15] The lead article on a 1970 issue of Common Sense is headlined “Christmas Culture Distortion.”[16]

Yockey’s primary American colleague, H. Keith Thompson stated, “The Common Sense folks I knew well.”[17]

Whatever the real identity of Fred Farrel, he was not alone in advocating the view that the USSR had divested itself of Jewish control, and other Common Sense columnists from 1966 to 1972 made that their focus. As stated, Farrel’s 1966 lead article set the tone for all the subsequent Common Sense analyses and commentaries on the USSR and American international politics. Farrel begins, “I am tired of Anti-communists who talk about ‘Moscow, Center of the World Communist conspiracy.’ Moscow is NOT and never has been the real center of Communism.”[18] Farrel explained that the real center of Marxism “is always located at the center of Jewish Power, and that center today is not Moscow but New York.”[19] Farrel explained that the Jewish element in Bolshevism was overthrown when Stalin ousted Trotsky. Farrel states that the rivalry between Trotsky and Stalin was not merely one of personal power, but was a fundamental power struggle between “Jewish Bolshevism” and Russian Nationalism. Farrel stated that once Trotsky and the “Jewish faction” had been removed from real power in the USSR Stalin proceeded to use Jews as functionaries. That has since become the theme of Jewish historians.[20] For Farrel anti-communism in the USA was a racket. That theme gained momentum in Common Sense. Farrel stated that anti-communists miss the target completely in opposing Communism as an economic system. He stated it is “racial, not economic.”

It should behoove our anti-Communists to stop yammering about Russia. The Marxist problem is HERE, not there. After the Trotskyites were thrown out of Russia, they came to the United Stated, for New York was the breeding ground for the so-called “Russian Revolution” in the first place. . . . Let us stop yammering about “Red Russia.” Russia may get herself out of Marxist slavery sooner than we will.[21]

Farrel ended with a more unequivocal tone in praise of Stalin, by stating that he was “fighting a lonely battle against the Jews.” American anti-communists on the other had “could not make a patch on Stalin’s pants.”[22]

It is Farrel who seems to have referred to Yockey most extensively. In a 1970 issue of Common Sense, while castigating the American Right and rejecting the Left-Right political dichotomy, Farrel referred to Yockey as an example of the way by which the majority of the Right will deal with somebody of real ability:

The Right Wing is firmly in the grip of a DEATH WISH. Time and again, I have seen idealistic young Americans get into these phony Right Wing movements, hoping to accomplish something solid and real. They learn quickly that the Lord High Nabobs of the Right quickly extinguish any spark of any real intelligence or effectiveness which flares in their ranks. They see that the Right, far from actually fighting Communism, secretly collaborates with Communism.

Typical is the way in which the Right Wing gasbags dealt with Francis Parker Yockey. Yockey never had an American supporter during his lifetime. The great Conservative gasbags of the American Right Wing want nothing to do with any living writer. They weren’t there when Yockey was murdered in his jail cell. Can you imagine Norman Mailer dying in jail? There would be a thousand Jews rattling the bars to bail him out. The young Gentile writer dies alone in a cell.

We think that it is a wonderful thing for Yockey’s books to be circulated and read. He had something extremely important to say and the American people ought to hear it. What they really need is an American publishing industry which will give adequate recognition to the young Yockeys who are alive today![23]

In a 1971 article Farrel quoted Yockey from the Proclamation of London when comparing democratic politicians with Russia’s Marshal Zhukov, who, Farrel relates, staged a coup against “the notorious Chief of Police, Laventri Beria,” in 1953 by bringing into Moscow two divisions of troops. Farrel considered “military power” the only remaining means of dislodging Jewish power.[24v] He quoted from Yockey’s Proclamation to illustrate his repugnance of the parliamentary politicians:

These deputies are mere things, replaceable units desirable only mathematically, in aggregates. Among them there is not, and cannot be, a strong individuality, for a man, a whole and entire man, does not sell himself like these parliamentary whores.

Again in 1971 Farrel quoted Yockey from the collection Four Essays. Farrel’s theme here was that the USSR was outmaneuvering the USA in the Middle East and that the USA was cultivating the support of China, the USSR having always opposed the communization of China, while the USA had backed the ouster of Chiang by Mao. His assessment of Stalin’s opposition to the Maoization of China is certainly correct, and was a matter that outraged Trotsky. Farrel assured his readers:

Disaster will not be long in coming. Today the Soviet Union is implacably hostile towards American Zionism. No better description of this hostility exists than that found in Francis Parker Yockey’s Four Essays. Yockey observed the decline of American Jewish power and the rise of Russian power in the world: “The basic reason for the diminution of power is spiritual-organic. Power will never stay in the hands of him who does not want power and has no plan for its use.”[25]

A few months later Farrel cited Yockey’s final essay, “The World in Flames,” which Farrel described as “brilliant.” In this a third World War is forecast in which Third World dictatorships will line up with the USSR to defeat the USA and Israel. Farrel believed that the nuclear destruction of the USA was imminent. In Yockeyesque terms Farrel concluded by stating that Russia, having recovered from Jewish Marxism, “narrowly watches the follies of the funny little men who cavort in New York and Washington, not to mention Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Russia will exploit these follies to the hilt.”[26] He predicted that the future of the Jews would be nuclear annihilation in New York and Jerusalem and disappearance through assimilation in Russia. The West was finished, and anti-communist crusades were futile, as were political and economic arguments. The future would be based on military power.[27]

To Farrel, “the best anti-Communists I have ever known were the Stalinists. They fought communism with a cold deadly, remorseless, realistic efficiency. Stalin was already in the business of fighting Communism before the revolution.” It was Trotskyism that the American establishment sought to re-impose on Russia, and that was the cause of the Cold War. Conservatives by siding with the Washington regime against the USSR under the guise of a phony anti-communism, which was actually anti-Stalinism, were siding with the “Jew-Trotskyites.”[28]

What is known of the history of that period today shows that Farrel and others at Common Sense had great insights and valuable sources. The Cold War was ushered by Stalin’s refusal to accept the “Baruch Plan” for the “internationalization” of atomic energy which, as Gromyko was much later to relate in his memoirs would have meant US control; and secondly Stalin’s refusal to allow the UNO to become a world government, by rejecting the US proposal to give supreme authority to the General Assembly as a type of world parliament where, naturally, the USA would be able to buy the required number of votes on any issue. A salient fact of history is that it was Stalin who stymied these early efforts to impose a world state.[29] Farrel was also correct in stating that the US Establishment was aligned with the Trotskyites, another matter that has only in rent years become the subject of widespread attention.[30]

This was the consistent message of Farrel throughout the rest of the life of Common Sense, as the paper’s leading columnist. Other columnists propagated the same pro-Soviet line. William O’Brien’s analysis of the world situation in regard to the USA, Russia, and Israel echoed that of Farrel. O’Brien also quoted from Yockey’s Proclamation of London. [31] Paul Pulitzer regarded the USSR to be under “a Soviet brand of Nazism,” not communism, and he alluded to the speeches of Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin before and during the Berlin-Moscow Pact in stating that the differences between Stalinism, Nazism, and Fascism were minor. Pulitzer lambasted the “world communist conspiracy myth” that was the preoccupation of both the US Administration and the Right-wing. Pulitzer commented that he “had been behind the Iron Curtain several times,” seen the troops, and “talked at great length with their officers.” Pulitzer’s assessment was that the Soviet forces could easily overrun the West, which had been rotted by liberalism.[32]

The final issue of Common Sense was intensely pessimistic. The writers had done all they could to warn the USA of impending disaster, namely nuclear devastation at the hands of the USSR, and that the only option left was faith in Christ. The final word was left to Farrel, whose opening statement was that “the American civilization is beyond the point of no return.” America would be destroyed along with the Jews.[33]

Despite the heretical position relative to the American Right-wing that Common Sense took from the time of Farrel’s first article in 1966 until the demise of the paper in 1972, circulation and the fortnightly appearance were maintained, as indicated by the “statement of ownership, management and circulation” forms that were filed. The Velde committee reported that in October 1948, Common Sense began with an average of 7,072 paid circulation for the previous year. For a 6 months period from March 15 to September 15, 1954, the paid subscription stood at 15,796.[34] In 1970, despite what one might expect for such an unorthodox position within the anti-communist Right which existed throughout its life during the era of the Cold War, Common Sense filed its circulation numbers as totaling on average for that year 32,000; including 23,000 mail subscriptions.[35]

2. The National Renaissance Party

^[2]The first fascist group to appear in the USA after World War II was the National Renaissance Party. Its emergence in 1949[36] therefore coincides approximately with the appearance of Common Sense (1948). James H. Madole was to lead the New York based group from its establishment until Madole’s death. The significance of the NRP in relation to the pro-Soviet orientation of a faction of the American Right is that it served as a vehicle for the propaganda of Fred Weiss, and H. Keith Thompson, the latter Yockey’s primary American contact and a registered agent for Gen. Remer’s Socialist Reich Party[37], and for Yockey. The Velde report comments that Weiss was the “chief source of propaganda for the NRP.”[38] This is confirmed by H. Keith Thompson, who stated that “the chief financial backer of Madole was Frederick C. Weiss whom I knew very well. He was a native German who spent his later years in the U.S., a Spenglerian and a Yockey associate.” Thompson stated that Weiss’ essays were rendered from a mixture of German, Latin, and French into English by Thompson for publication, which appeared in the National Renaissance Bulletin under Madole’s name.[39]

The Velde report comments that the 1952 “Prague Treason Trial” was also of seminal influence upon the ideology of the NRP, which can be taken to mean that Yockey and Thompson via Weiss had succeeded in adjusting the anti-Communist policy of the NRP. The Velde report states: “At the time of the Prague trials in 1952 and other anti-Semitic purges behind the Iron Curtain, the NRP defended the action of the Soviet leadership and implied that the example should be followed in Europe and America.”[40]

Thompson has to be viewed as a conduit for the outlook of veteran German National Socialists, led by air ace Hans Rudel, Otto Skorzeny, Johannes von Leers (operating a newspaper from Argentina, called Der Weg, for which Thompson was the US agent), and Otto Remer[41] whose Socialist Reich Party was to be banned in Germany. The attitude of certain German veterans was that they had been prevented from defeating the USSR during the war and they saw no reason why Germany should be sacrificed for the benefit of the USA (or the Jews) during the Cold War era. That was the “neutralist” policy of Remer’s Socialist Reich Party[43], and reflected Yockey’s outlook, as has been noted.

Thompson and Weiss were in 1955 distributing a series of pro-Soviet pamphlets among the Right through Weiss’ Le Blanc publications. These were of the same nature as the views propagated by Yockey and later by Common Sense, and it would seem superfluous to quote further such material.

William Goring, who as a student infiltrated the National Renaissance Party, and wrote a paper on his research, began with a description of Yockey and the European Liberation Front, “because they play an important part in the formation of the ideology of the NRP.”[43] Goring states that when Yockey briefly returned to the USA from Europe in 1955 he joined the National Renaissance Party using the alias Frank Healy, but “stayed only long enough to publish his essay ‘The Destiny of America’ in the National Renaissance Bulletin under the name of James H. Madole, the NRP leader.”[44] Goring states that Madole had been unaware of Yockey’s identity and prior to leaving the USA Yockey told “the astonished Madole” that he was visiting East Germany. Goring states that Yockey traveled through the USSR in 1957 or 1958 then returned to the USA.[45]