"The Plot To Seize The White House" By Wall Street Bankers In the 1930s - Part II? [View All]

[TomCADem]

With Fox News and other members of the MSM fanning the flames of violence following the passage of HCR, and members of the right wing media condoning such violent attacks, you have to wonder whether this is the first time that corporate America has plotted to start a civil war. Sadly, the answer is no. However, this time around, the right wingers have truly mastered the use of corporate propaganda in the form of Fox News, and the impending effects of the Citizens United decision.

http://www.chris-floyd.com/plot/

"The media gave little or scant coverage to the committee's final report. The Luce Press, which always led the charge in attacking Roosevelt and bolstering Fascism, ran a story called "A Plot Without Plotters" which sought to discredit Col Butler. He was called a "hothead". Other evidence of Butler's unsavory character, according to Luce, was that he had once given a speech in which he criticized Mussolini. His advocacy of the penniless Bonus Veterans Army was transformed into haranguing. The committee chairmen fared no better under Luce's pen. They were accused of only seeking publicity (despite their having sought to suppress the most explosive parts of their discoveries). The New York Times showed an astonishing lack of interest. Reference to the alleged coup was relegated to two paragraphs at the bottom of page five. However, not every newspaper discounted the plot. The independent Philadelphia Record ran a cartoon showing big business pointing to a soapbox Communist as the threat, while General Butler marches in with evidence revealing armed Fascists hiding beneath a banker's coat. References to the alleged conspiracy disappeared from the press. Nevertheless, individual reporters did attempt to pursue the story. Paul Comley French of the Philadelphia Record and investigative journalist John Spivak went to the Justice Department. They asked why no one implicated was ever questioned; and since MacGuire had perjured himself, did they intend to file criminal prosecution? The Justice Department indicated it had no plans to carry matters any further at the moment. MacGuire, the only man who could have testified against the rest, died soon after of complications from pneumonia. His physician claimed his death was partly due to the stress of the charges made by Butler. Grayson M.-P. Murphy, the Morgan banker and treasurer of the American Liberty League, died soon after."

After all the cover-up by deletion and omission for the committee's report and the continuation of the efforts of the press to deny and make light of the coup, it can be no surprise that the effects of the Fascist power centers and the schemes of the Fascists still haunt the American Political landscape.

Although the coup never materialized, the unrelenting propaganda attack against Roosevelt and the New Deal reforms continued, spearheaded by the American Liberty League. The League listed as its main contributors the Du Pont family, representatives of the Morgan interests, Robert Sterling Clark, the Pew Family (Sun Oil) and Rockefeller Associates. Its treasurer was Grayson M.-P. Murphy, MacGuire's immediate boss. The League itself was ostensibly dedicated to the virtues of the Constitution, individual freedom and free market capitalism. But it claimed all New Deal reforms were inspired by Communists within the Roosevelt administration. In the election of 1936, the League spent twice as much money as the Republican Party in trying to defeat Roosevelt. Although the League disbanded after Roosevelt won his second term, it spawned a series of extreme right-wing groups and paramilitary bands which constituted a network that endured through the 1960s, and whose descendants are with us today. Their propaganda was anti-Communist and anti-Semitic; their tactic was violence. Some groups which the League financed were the Sentinels of the Republic (which labeled the New Deal "Jewish Communism"), the Minutemen and the Minutewomen. Another group, the Southern Committee to Uphold the Constitution, was associated with the Silver Shirt Squad of the American Storm Troopers. The goals of this organization, headed by a Texas oil magnate, were to create a mass movement of whites in the South to dilute Roosevelt's Dixie vote, and to stir up anti-black racism in order to attack organizing drives by the unions from the North. Significantly, these same hate sentiments were being stirred up against JFK, and for the same reasons. These groups formed the dark underside to the League, which tried to present a polite public face. But some industrialists, like Henry Ford, had no qualms about explicitness. American Fascist groups hawked his anti-Semitic tracts like "The international Jew."

The main function of these hate groups was to enforce the will of right-wing corporate America, seeking to regain the political power it lost in the 1932 election. On the grassroots level, this intention translated into supporting the efforts of management to stop workers from unionizing. The most glaring example of this was the struggle at the General Motors plants. (General Motors was owned by the DuPonts). The Du Ponts employed the Black Legion, a sort of Northern Klux Klux Klan, which would terrorize workers, bomb union halls, and torture and murder organizers. The Legion was organized into arson squads, execution squads, and anti-Communist squads. Discipline within its own ranks was maintained with the weapons of torture or death and was strictly enforced. The LaFollette Committee found that the Legion had penetrated police departments, high government offices, and the Michigan Republican Party.