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| Formation | 1958 |
|---|---|
| Dissolved | 2001 |
| Type | Political advocacy organization |
| Headquarters | Washington, D.C. |
Founder | Willis Carto |
Main organ | The Spotlight |
Liberty Lobby was afar-rightthink tank andlobby group founded in 1958 byWillis Carto. Carto was known for his promotion ofantisemitic conspiracy theories,white nationalism, andHolocaust denial.[1][2][3][4]
The organization produced a daily five-minute radio show calledThis is Liberty Lobby, which was broadcast on theMutual Broadcasting System and other radio stations. At the conclusion of each show, listeners were invited to get a copy of its "America First" pamphlet.[5]
Liberty Lobby described itself as "a pressure group for patriotism; the only lobby in Washington, D.C., registered with Congress which is wholly dedicated to the advancement of government policies based on our Constitution and conservative principles."[6] According toChip Berlet, Liberty Lobby presented itself as "a patriotic populist organization seeking to restore constitutional safeguards and national sovereignty" and said that it "consistently [denied] that it [was] the least bit antisemitic, much lessneofascist or quasinazi".[7]
Carto'sNoontide Press republishedFrancis Parker Yockey'sImperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics, and also published a number of other books and pamphlets promoting aracialist andwhite supremacist world view, and Liberty Lobby in turn sold and promoted these books.
While Liberty Lobby was intended to occupy a niche as a conservative anti-Communist group, Carto was meanwhile forming other organizations which would take a much more explicitneo-Nazi orientation. Among these was theNational Youth Alliance in 1968, which in the early 1970s became theNational Alliance. Eventually Carto lost control of this organization, which fell into the hands ofWilliam Luther Pierce. Carto founded theInstitute for Historical Review by 1978, a group known for publishingHolocaust denial books and articles.[8] As with the National Youth Alliance and Noontide Press, the Institute for Historical Review fell out of Carto's hands in a hostile internal struggle. Liberty Lobby, however, remained under the control of Carto until it was disbanded in 2001.
During the1968 United States presidential election Liberty Lobby distributed apro-Wallace pamphlet entitled "Stand up for America", despite the campaign's denial of such a connection.[9]
During the 1970s, as theanti-Communism of the 1950s and 1960s fell out of favor, Carto redefined the public image of Liberty Lobby, and began to describe it as a politicallypopulist organization, rather than conservative orright-wing. Liberty Lobby also tried to create connections to the American political left by redistributing a report critical of PresidentJimmy Carter authored by frequent third-party presidential candidateLyndon LaRouche and hisNCLC.[10] Scholar Daniel Smith writes that between the late 1960s and early 1980s, Liberty Lobby, along with theJohn Birch Society, institutionalized and became "ideological hubs" of the far-right. The organizations and their publications were influential in shaping the previous anti-internationalism intoanti-globalism.[11]
Liberty Lobby was infiltrated by journalistRobert Eringer, who wrote about the organization inMother Jones in 1981.[12][13] The organization campaigned against the ratification of theGenocide Convention.[14]
In 1975, Liberty Lobby began publishing a weekly newspaper calledThe Spotlight, which ran news and opinion articles with a verypopulist and anti-establishment slant on a variety of subjects, but gave little indication of being extreme-right or neo-Nazi. However, critics chargedThe Spotlight was intended as a subtle recruiting tool for the extreme right, using populist-sounding articles to attract people from all points on the political spectrum including liberals, moderates, and conservatives, and special-interest articles to attract people interested in such subjects asalternative medicine. Critics also charged the newspaper with subtly incorporatingantisemitic and white racialist undertones in its articles, and with carrying advertisements in the classified section for openly neo-Nazi groups and books.[citation needed]The Washington Post described The Spotlight as "a newspaper containing orthodox conservative political articles interspersed with anti-Zionist tracts and classified advertisements..."[15]
The Spotlight's circulation peaked around 200,000 in the early 1980s, and although it experienced a steady drop after that, it continued to be published until Liberty Lobby's demise in 2001.
Liberty Lobby foundedThe Barnes Review in 1994.[16]
In 2001, Liberty Lobby and Carto lost acivil lawsuit brought by a rival far-right group which had earlier gained control of the Institute for Historical Review, and the ensuing judgment for damagesbankrupted the organization. Carto and others who had been involved in publishingThe Spotlight have since started a new newspaper, theAmerican Free Press, which is very similar in overall tone toThe Spotlight.[citation needed] As of 2014[update], the political organization called Liberty Lobby remains defunct.[citation needed]
Liberty Lobby described itself as aconservative political organization.
Evidence for the antisemitic stance of Liberty Lobby began to mount when numerous letters by Carto excoriating theJews (and blaming them for world miseries) began to surface, which included statements such as "How could the West [have] been so blind. It was the Jews and their lies that blinded the West as to what Germany was doing. Hitler's defeat was the defeat of Europe and America." Carto's letters eventually became the subject of a federalcivil lawsuit.[17] There were several other defamation lawsuits arising from publications that described Liberty Lobby as anti-semitic or racist, but it appears that Liberty Lobby never won any of these cases.[citation needed]
Other evidence of the group's antisemitic views includes the charge that the group's file cabinets contained extensive pro-Nazi andKu Klux Klan literature. In 1969,True magazine ran a story by Joe Trento, titled "How Nazi Nut Power Has Invaded Capitol Hill".[18]
Beginning in October 1966 two American journalists,Drew Pearson andJack Anderson, published a series of stories in their widely-syndicated "Washington Merry-Go-Round" column which recounted the findings of a former employee, Jeremy Horne.[19] Horne said he had discovered a box of correspondence between Carto and numerous government officials establishing the Joint Council of Repatriation (JCR), a forerunner organization to Liberty Lobby. The JCR stated that their fundamental purpose was to "repatriate blacks back to Africa". Ex-Mississippi Supreme Court JusticeThomas Pickens Brady and various members of theWhite Citizens' Councils who had worked to establish the JCR contributed to the founding of Liberty Lobby. Other correspondence referred to U.S. Congressional support for the emerging Liberty Lobby, such as from South CarolinaSenatorStrom Thurmond (Dixiecrat presidential candidate in1948) and CaliforniaU.S. RepresentativeJames B. Utt.
Pearson reported that Utt, as well as congressmenJohn M. Ashbrook,Ellis Yarnal Berry,W. Pat Jennings andWilliam Jennings Bryan Dorn, received "Statesman of the Republic" awards from Liberty Lobby for their "right-wing activities".[20]
Liberty Lobby sued forlibel based on the stories in a case decided in 1986 by theU.S. Supreme Court,Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc. The case was the most quoted Supreme Court precedent in 1997 because it established the guidelines for issuingsummary judgment to endfrivolous lawsuits.[21][unreliable source?]
The Spotlight announced in August 1994 that Liberty Lobby was launching a new publication devoted to historical revisionism calledThe Barnes Review (after the 20th century revisionist historian Harry Elmer Barnes).
Liberty Lobby working furiously for right-wing cause; its secret files reveal conspiracy against Jews and Negroes; Carto's correspondents are lurid lot
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