-Caveat Lector-
an excerpt from:
Inside The League
Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson�1986
Dodd, Mead & Company
79 Madison Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10016
ISBN 0-396-08517-2
322pps � out-of-print/one edition
[re-print/first edition available from:
W. Clement Stone, P M A Communications, Incorporated]
--[8]--
EIGHT
Western Destiny's duty remains to carry the message of true White, Western
Culture further afield to more and yet more members of our race.... Our Race
can only survive if we can prevent them [Jews and blacks] from capturing the
minds, morals and souls of our children.
-Roger Pearson,
Editor of Western Destiny,1963
THE LETTER from President Reagan is a source of pride in Roger Pearson's
small office in downtown Washington, D.C.
You are performing a valuable service in bringing to a wide audience the work
of leading scholars who are supportive of a free enterprise economy, a firm
and consistent foreign policy and a strong national defense.
Your substantial contributions to promoting and upholding those ideals and
principles that we value at home and abroad are greatly appreciated.[1]
The letter had been a boon for Pearson, who used it in soliciting donations
and subscriptions to his magazines and to show the approval of conservatives,
up to and including the president, of his myriad activities. Indeed, Pearson
has traveled in New Right circles for many years, formerly as an editorial
associate for such mainstream organizations as the Heritage Foundation and
the American Security Council, and currently as chairman of the Council on
American Affairs and editor of The Mankind Quarterly and The Journal of
Social, Political and Economic Studies. He has also maintained an interest in
international politics, as evidenced by his three years as head of the
American chapter of the World Anti-Communist League.
In fairness to Reagan, the president was probably not aware of some of Roger
Pearson's past activities. Yet when White House officials were told of
Pearson's background, they neither disavowed nor repudiated the letter. What
the president had done was offer his support�and provide a very useful
fund-raising tool�to one of the most persistent neo-Nazis in the world.
For Roger Pearson is a man of several personalities. On the one hand, he is a
mainstream conservative, hobnobbing with officials of the New Right,
publishing articles written by senators and congresspeople in his journals.
On the other, he is a white supremacist who warns of the dangers of whites
breeding with "inferior" stock, advocates the measurement of craniums to
determine intelligence, and once bragged to an associate about his alleged
role in hiding Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, the infamous "Angel of Death" of
the Auschwitz extermination camp. He is also the man who, as world chairman
of the World Anti-Communist League in 1978, was responsible for flooding the
European League chapters with Nazi sympathizers and former officers of the
Nazi SS.
Now active in American conservative political causes and residing in
Washington, Pearson is a Briton who lived for twenty years in India. Before
Indian independence in 1947, he served as a colonial Indian army officer,
then as manager of a tea plantation in what is now Bangladesh.
Obtaining his bachelor of science degree in anthropology from the University
of London in 1951 and his master's in economics in 1954, Pearson showed an
early interest in eugenics, a pseudoscientific study first made popular by
the Nazis that holds that a human racial stock can be improved by selective
genetic breeding. Likewise, a racial stock can be diluted by the introduction
of an "inferior" breed. He wrote several books on the subject, including
Eugenics and Race and Race and Civilization (the latter of which credits
Professor Hans F. K. Gunther, a Nazi racial theoretician, for its
inspiration). Both books are still sold by the American Nazi Party.
Only by tracing descent through several generations can one be sure that a
stock is healthy, and does not contain bad elements. It must be possible to
show that the donor has a "pure" and "healthy" genetic constitution.... This
means that he must be "racially" pure-capable of breeding true to the healthy
lines required. If in his family history there are inherited faults present
in his genes, due to earlier crossing with unhealthy stock, then the
individual cannot be allowed to donate either egg or sperm.... When that is
achieved we shall have a "pure race."[2]
But Pearson was not content to air his theories in obscure bookshe wanted to
form an alliance with like-minded men whereby the tenets of racial purity
could, as in Nazi Germany, be put into practice. Toward that end, in 1957 he
helped establish the Northern League for Pan-Nordic Friendship, an umbrella
group for historical revisionists, scientific racists, and old Nazis from the
"Aryan" nations of the world. Billed as an organization to instruct peoples
of Northern European descent about the vitality of their ancestral heritage,
namely pre-Christian Nordic paganism, one basic tenet of the Northern League
was that "further human progress can only be sustained if the biological
heritage is preserved, and a cultural decline must inevitably follow any
decay in the biological heritage or falling-off of genetic quality. "[3]
The Northern League established contacts with other groups in Sweden,
Denmark, and Germany and opened a branch in Sausalito, California. Attending
its first conference in Detmold, West Germany, was Colin Jordan, a British
neo-Nazi, and Wilhelm Landig, a former SS officer. According to an internal
WACL document, "The program and manifest from the Conference was described by
German authorities as 'national socialism revived. The Detmold Conference
decided that members should use the conspiratorial method of expanding the
influence of the Northern League."[4]
Under pressure from various Western European governments, the Northern League
never received the recognition Pearson sought. By the 1960s, however,
Pearson's racial writings and activities in Europe had come to the attention
of an American named Willis Carto. A historical revisionist (believing the
Holocaust to have been a hoax perpetrated by the Jewish-controlled press) and
a rabid racist, Carto headed the California-based Liberty Lobby. In 1960,
Liberty Lobby had praised the American Nazi Party and its leader, Lincoln
Rockwell, who was later murdered in Arlington, Virginia, by a rival Nazi.
Carto apparently saw in Pearson a "fellow traveller" with a gift for words
and persuaded Pearson in 1965 to relocate to the United States and become
editor of Liberty Lobby's magazine, Western Destiny.
Pearson worked briefly with Western Destiny, writing several books on race
and eugenics for Liberty Lobby's publishing arm. After an amicable parting
with Carto, Pearson immersed himself in the academic mainstream of his
adopted country, teaching anthropology at Oueens College in North Carolina
and at the University of Southern Mississippi before becoming dean of
academic affairs at the Montana College of Mineral Science and Technology. By
1975, he was ready for another career move, this time to Washington, D.C., to
become founder and president of the Council on American Affairs (CAA).
The council, which is still in existence, is typical of many backroom
councils and organizations operating in the nation's capital that solicit
funds and sell subscriptions for a wide variety of causes and publications
using different names and post office boxes, but all emanating from a single
entity. From his office just off Logan Circle, Pearson not only accepts funds
for the Council on American Affairs but also peddles The Mankind Quarterly,
the Journal on Social, Political and Economic Studies, and the Journal of
Indo-European Studies, a highly technical linguistic quarterly.
Besides being a means to keep himself financially solvent in the mid-1970s,
the CAA gave Pearson the opportunity to collaborate with leaders of the New
Right and elicit the support of conservative congressmen and senators. In
short order, he was on the editorial board of the Heritage Foundation, the
Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the American Security Council.
Senators Jake Garn (R-Utah) and Carl T. Curtis (R-Nebraska) wrote articles
for monographs published by Pearson's council. Senator Jesse Helms (R-North
Carolina) and Representatives Jack Kemp (R-New York) and Philip Crane
(R-Illinois) contributed to the Journal of Social and Political Studies
(renamed Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies in 1980).
Pearson had carved his niche into New Right political circles and had been
accepted by 1976, just in time to come to the attention of the World
Anti-Communist League when it was looking for a new American affiliate. When
the American Council for World Freedom quit, the League turned to Roger
Pearson and his council to rekindle the flame in the United States.
It was a responsibility that Pearson clearly took to heart. In the next three
years, he was the man most responsible for turning the League into a platform
for Norwegian neo-Nazis, German SS officers, and Italian terrorists wanted
for murder.
When Pearson looked at the World Anti-Communist League in 1976, he saw a
strong international federation, with one major exception.
The Latin American affiliates were firmly controlled by the Tecos of Mexico,
the Australian and South African chapters were composed of historical
revisionists, anti-Semites, and Eastern European emigres drawn largely from
the Romanian Iron Guard and the Croatian Ustasha; the Eastern Europeans,
under the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations umbrella, had not swayed from the
course; the Asian delegations were primarily government ministers and high
military officers from their respective anti-communist governments who could
not be touched anyway since they were the League's founders. Where Pearson
saw the weak link was in Western Europe.
There the chapters were run by prominent mainstream conservatives, some of
whom had fought against the Nazis during World War II. They were clearly the
odd men out, and Pearson set about planning their replacement with "true"
anti-communists. Pearson saw in the League the chance to close the circle, to
unite the neo-Nazis of Europe under the banner of the World Anti-Communist
League, which he had failed to do fifteen years earlier with the Northern
League.
As head of the new American chapter of the League, Pearson immediately
reshaped the European affiliates. He turned not only to his old cohorts in
the Northern League but also to those who fell under the leadership of an
aging Swedish fascist named Per Engdahl.
According to a confidential internal League document, "Engdahl is the 'grand
old man' of Swedish and European Fascist ideology. He first belonged to
'Sweden's Fascist Struggle Organization, then he held positions in various
Fascist and pro-Nazi organizations and political mini-parties during the
1930's and 1940's."[5] He was also the co-author of a book, Germany Fighting
that has a swastika emblazoned on its cover and features a photo of Hitler on
an inside page.
More important, in 1950 Engdahl had joined forces with Giorgio Almirante, the
leader of Italy's fascist party Italian Social Movement (MSI), to form the
European Social Movement, a fascist federation with chapters throughout
Western Europe. Known by its German acronym, ESB, the European Social
Movement was probably the largest European ultra-right union operating after
the end of World War II; it reached into twelve countries. The head of the
British chapter was Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British National
Front�he had attired his followers in Nazi-style uniforms and urged peace
with Hitler during the war. The Hungarians-in-exile were represented by the
Hungarist Movement of Arpad Henney, the secondin-command of the 1944
Hungarian government that had seen to the liquidation of over a half-million
of its nation's Jews. The German chapter was led by Karl Heinz Priester, a
former SS officer and former press and propaganda chief of the Hitler Youth.
Austria was represented by Wilhelm Landig, "a former SS officer with cultural
interests," according to Per Engdahl.
It was to these men and their younger followers that Pearson turned in 1977
for help in reforming the European affiliates of the World Anti-Communist
League. With the support of the Mexicans and the new extremist British
chapter, he oversaw their induction into the League.
At the 1978 League conference in Washington, D.C., which was organized and
officiated by Roger Pearson, there were some new faces among the delegations
from Europe. Sitting in the Belgian delegation was dapper St. C. de
Berkelaar. Representing Norway was a handsome black-haired man with a
handlebar moustache named Tor Hadland. Ake Lindsten, a stoop-shouldered old
man with white hair, sat nearby, heading the Swedish delegation. From Austria
was Wilhelm Landig, from Germany, Heinrich Hartle and from Italy, Giorgio
Almirante. All these observers were there upon the personal invitation of
Roger Pearson.
St. C. de Berkelaar was a former Dutch SS officer, his organization, Sint
Martinsfonds, was a brotherhood of three to four hundred former Nazi
collaborators in the Netherlands. It published a magazine, Berkenkruis, whose
name (literally, "birch cross") refers to the SS custom of placing crossed
birch branches on the graves of fallen comrades.
Tor Hadland was head of the Norwegian Front, a right-wing shock troop that
had first gained notice by holding a commemoration on the thirtieth
anniversary of Vidkun Quisling's death. Quisling, whose name is now a synonym
for "traitor," was the Nazi puppet leader of Norway during World War II; he
was executed in 1945 for war crimes.
Chairman of the Swedish National League, Ake Lindsten had a fascist history
dating back to World War II, when he advocated alignment with Nazi Germany.
The secretary general of his organization, Ola Albinsson, had recently been
arrested and sent to a psychiatric institute.
Heinrich Hartle was a former Nazi official and an associate of the notorious
Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg; Wilhelm Landig, the "former SS officer with
cultural interests," was president of the Austrian chapter of the European
Social Movement.
Giorgio Almirante, once a minor official in Mussolini's Blackshirts, was head
of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), whose youth groups and organizational
offshoots were blamed for much of the wave of rightist terrorism in Italy
during the preceding five years.
Almirante was the most important of the League newcomers, perhaps in the
League as a whole that year. As chief of Italy's fourthlargest political
party, Almirante had risen to prominence by capitalizing on and fueling
Italy's ongoing "civil war of terror."
Almirante's strategy follows Mussolini's early tactics: During times of
crisis, violence should be employed to arouse and polarize the pub-lic....
Neo-Fascists murdered innocent people in the streets, and left-ists
retaliated with arson attacks. All attempts to outlaw the MSI have failed,
despite an official report which states that the party "glorifies the goals
of Fascism" and employs "violence as a political weapon."[6]
Almirante had earlier joined forces with Pino Rauti. Rauti, a journalist in
horn-rimmed glasses, had authored such books as Fundamentals of Fascist
Racial Theory and formed the ultra-right Ordine Nuovo ("New Order") in 1956.
Borrowing the SS slogan "Our honor is our loyalty," Ordine Nuovo was one of
the most violent of the rightist groups operating in Italy and was
responsible for dozens of murders. Rauti was arrested in 1972 on charges of
organizing a series of 1969 bombings in which at least sixteen people were
killed. Finally, Italian authorities outlawed Ordine Nuovo in 1973, and
Rauti, back on the streets, joined Almirante; he later became a Deputy of
Parliament under the MSI banner. In 1980 the Armed Revolutionary Nuclei, an
offshoot of his Ordine Nuovo, was blamed for the Bologna railway massacre in
which over eighty innocent people died.
The Pearson coup in Europe was not accepted with resignation by the
less-radical chapters that had been usurped, they fought the infusion of
European fascists into the League. "As you will read in this letter," Dr.
Broekmeijer, president of the pre-1978 Dutch League chapter, wrote to the
Danish chapter in March 1979, "there is in the
Netherlands as well an organization of 300 to 400 former Dutch SS- traitors,
closely related to a similar organization in Germany. Already one and a half
years ago, I warned [WACL] of this Dutch SS-organi-zation and particularly
for [sic] Dr. de Berkelaar, the chairman of that organization.
"WACL has already made a big mistake by inviting Dr. de Berkelaar during the
WACL conference in New York [actually Washington]. He was at that time in New
York and Dr. Ku [Cheng-kang] liked to have a Dutchman as observer and
representing the Netherlands.... I made an investigation and found that he
was the leader of a former Nazi group. He had a recommendation letter of Dr.
Pearson."[7]
Broekmeijer's complaints were ignored by Ku Cheng-kang and heads of other
League chapters. The message was clear: the World Anti-Communist League
espoused "active" anti-communism. It didn't want old men and their theories
and monographs. It wanted men of action who were willing to fight for their
convictions and who had support among the youth. If those men were also
former SS officers who held rallies in European forests, whose followers
threatened and attacked Jews and leftists, it was a small price to pay for
global brotherhood.
Besides, Pearson had powerful friends within the League hierarchy. Donald
Martin, British correspondent for Carto's Liberty Lobby, author of racist
books, and peddler of the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion, was a close
ally. (Martin was also chairman of the British League of Rights, a racist,
anti-emigration outfit that became the new League chapter after the
resignation of the Foreign Affairs Circle.) The Tecos in Mexico, as well as
the Ustasha in the Croatian Libera-tion Movement, also liked Pearson's stand
on matters. With their support, he was able to pursue his program of remaking
the League in Europe to his own suiting.
In November 1978, Pearson organized a conclave of Nazis and their
sympathizers from throughout Europe in Vienna. Now, he told them, was the
time to go truly international under the banner of the World Anti-Communist
League, by April, seventeen groups had applied for admission. The names on
the petitions, most of which were submitted on the recommendation of Pearson
and seconded by Donald Martin, represented one of the greatest fascist blocs
in postwar Europe.
Some of the applications were contradictory and overlapping. St. C. de
Berkelaar, for example, applied both under Sint Martinsfonds and under
Berkenbruis, the Sint Martinsfonds newspaper. Other proposed chapters were
little more than hastily created "organizations" operating out of post-office
boxes. What most of the petitioners had in common was that they were former
collaborators with Nazi Germany. Along with the men who had attended the 1978
League conference as observers were some new names, including Erno (Gyula)
Gombos, the new head of the Hungarist Movement, and Roeland Raes, head of the
Dutch Voorpost. "They are actionists" an internal League document stated
about the Voorpost, "very often appearing as para-military units, in helmets
and jack-boots."[8]
But this time Pearson and his allies had gone too far. Groups on the European
right rallied together to combat the Nazi influx. The World Anti-Communist
League was deeply divided, with most of the Latin chapters rallying to
Pearson's side, the Asians ambivalent, and the pre-Pearson European chapters
threatening to quit. Ku Chengkang called a hasty League executive committee
meeting, and an agreement of sorts was reached: the old European chapters
would not be expelled as Pearson wanted, but the new applicants would be
invited to attend the upcoming 1979 conference in Asuncion, Paraguay, as
observers.
At least one of those new Europeans who attended came away very impressed,
seeing the League as a possible source of funding for his group back in
Europe: Tor Hadland of the fascist Norwegian Front, whose journey to Paraguay
was reportedly subsidized by the leader of the Arab contingent, Sheik Ahmed
Salah Jamjoon, gave a glowing report upon his return. "The World
Anti-Communist League (WACL)," a Norwegian Front memo of May 1979, stated,
"has previously been accused of being in the services of reactionary elements
and to be CIA-financed. The truth, however, is that WACL today stands forth
as a world-wide and powerful movement of organizations that are united in the
battle for the freedom of the peoples and the nations from both World
Communism and the international financial-imperialism."[9]
In Asuncion there were also some new personalities from Southern Europe. Blas
Pinar, chief of the Spanish fascist party Fuerza Nueva, was there in the
company of his friend Giorgio Almirante. Pinar had started a fascist
minileague in 1977 by forming Eurodestra, an umbrella for the Fuerza Nueva,
Almirante's MSI, and the French Forces Nouvelles. He was the spiritual leader
of most of Spain's rightist thugs. In 1977, two of his followers had murdered
the five lawyers on Calle Atocha, while another had shot a schoolgirl in the
head in the belief that she was a leftist.
Even more intriguing among the European delegations at Asuncion was the
presence of Elio Massagrande. As Pino Rauti's deputy chief in Ordine Nuovo,
Massagrande had ignored the 1973 ban of his organization by the Italian
government and had gone on to leave his mark on France and Italy through
robbery and murder.
On August 4, 1974, the Italicus express train from Rome to Munich was passing
through a long tunnel south of Bologna when a bomb ripped one of its cars
apart. Twelve bodies were found amid the twisted metal, along with
forty-eight injured. An Italian magistrate, Vittorio Occorsio, conducted a
two-year investigation into the atrocity, finally bringing charges against a
lieutenant within Massagrande's Ordine Nuovo.
Apparently Occorsio also uncovered the links of Ordine Nuovo to other
terrorist formations in Spain and Greece. On June 14, 1976, as he was driving
his old Fiat sedan through the congested streets of Rome, Occorsio was
murdered with thirteen bullets from an Ingram M10 machine pistol.
After that, things got hot for Massagrande. One of Occorsio's murderers
turned informant and disclosed details of the inner workings of Ordine Nuovo.
Police discovered Massagrande's bank deposit box in Spain, containing
currency and gold bars from a 1976 twenty-five-million-dollar bank robbery in
Nice, France. It was time for Massagrande to run; he ran to the safety of
General Stroessner's Paraguay. At the time he attended the 1979 League
conference, he was high on Interpol's list of wanted fugitives.
* * *
The 1979 conference was the high point of Roger Pearson's involvement with
the League. He had helped introduce the European neo-Nazis to their Latin
American counterparts, forging links that would be helpful in the immediate
future. While neither Pearson nor the World Anti-Communist League can take
total "credit" for the succession of "dirty wars" that were to haunt Central
America in the following years, the Asuncion League conference certainly
played a vital role. After 1979, Latin American rightists could increasingly
turn to other conduits for money, arms and technical expertise in
unconventional warfare, and political backing for death squad operations
against their opposition.
But Roger Pearson would not be there to see it. The Asians finally became
alarmed at the overt extremism of his associates, and the less-radical
European chapters were ready to leave the League en masse; Pearson's stardom
rapidly faded after the Asuncion conference. At an executive board meeting in
1980, he was asked to resign. He was to leave one last fleeting legacy,
however, by passing the American leadership mantle on to Elmore D. Greaves.
Greaves was the sort of original thinker and man of action that Pearson could
admire- as the organizer of the segregationist Citizens Council of
Mississippi in the 1960s, Greaves had once urged that state to secede from
the Union.
Today, having twice failed to unite the European ultra-right, and with his
World Anti-Communist League adventure behind him, Roger Pearson has returned
to conservative respectability. This transformation has been substantially
aided by the mainstream academics and politicians who publish articles in his
magazines. He still operates the Council on American Affairs and is an
officer of a new outfit, University Professors for Academic Order, based in
Corvallis, Oregon.
Pearson has a decidedly different version of his involvement with the League.
In an interview with one of the authors, he claimed he left the League
because it was becoming anti-Semitic and "I want to get away from those
people."
The problem was exacerbated by the South American group. They were
anti-communists, but also believed the communists were Jews.... These Latins
tried to swing all of WACL over to their side. They put out some books and
there was some truth in what they wrote-everyone knows some communists have
been Jews-but ridiculous, really, saying all communists are Jewish.
As for the story of his helping Josef "Angel of Death" Mengele escape,
Pearson denied even having heard the name, but in the next breath he said of
his visit to Paraguay in 1979, "When I was there, I heard a couple of people
had been nosing around for him and their bodies had been fished out of the
river."[10]
I hope that your efforts continue to receive broad interest and support and
wish you every success in your future endeavors.
Sincerely, Ronald Reagan
pps.92-103
--[notes]--
EIGHT
1 . President Ronald Reagan to Roger Pearson, April 14, 1982.
2. Roger Pearson, Eugenics and Race (London: St. Clair Press, 1959), p.
38.
3. Association of Nordic War and Military Veterans, The Blue Document
(Stock-
holm, Sweden: 1979), p. 4.
4. Ibid., p. 4.
5. Ibid., p. 6.
6. "Anatomy of a Movement," World Press Review, December 1980, p. 39- ex-
cerpted in Der Spiegel (October 6, 1980).
7. Quoted in Blue Document, p. 13.
8. Ibid., p. 26.
9. Erik Blucher, memorandum to members of Norsk Front Riksrad (National
Council) (Oslo, Norway), 20 May 1979.
10. Coauthor interview with Roger Pearson in Washington, D.C., in January
1984.
--[cont]--
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic
screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters
and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright
frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects
spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL
gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
