-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]
--[9]--
NINE
Victory over communism first. World peace second.
-Juanita Castro,
1970 WACL conference
AT THE 1979 World Anti-Communist League conference in Asuncion, the
international ultra-right finally completed its global journey. Through the
League, all the disparate elements from every corner of the earth were
united, joined for the stated purpose of opposing Marxism in all its forms.
While they differed on the form of the threat facing them, they all profited
from the association.
For many members of the League, its conferences were nothing more than
junkets, a way to escape the heat of Manila or the rainy season in Ghana, to
stay in a luxurious hotel and to get their names mentioned in the local paper
upon returning. But for others, participation in the League had tangible
benefits. Above all else, by 1979 the League had become a means by which
governments or private groups could maintain links or coordinate actions with
others that, for political or ideological reasons, could not be maintained or
coordinated in an official, public capacity.
By 1979, at least eight major power groups could be identified within the
World Anti-Communist League. Some were the traditional leaders who had formed
the League to begin with, but new power blocs had also emerged.
TAIWAN
By the late 1970s, as one nation after another dropped recognition of the
Republic of China on Taiwan in favor of the People's Republic of China on the
mainland, the members of the Kuomintang found themselves with a vastly
diminished circle of friends. They could no longer pick and choose their
allies- they had to accept whoever would accept them. And they accepted them
in the apartheid regimes of South Africa and Rhodesia, in the right-wing
dictatorships of Latin America, and in the Nazi collaborator bands of Western
Europe and the United States.
The World Anti-Communist League had become one of the last major instruments
of foreign policy for the Kuomintang, and they could not afford to let it
languish. For them, the stated aim of the League—international
anti-communism—had quite suddenly become secondary to the greater cause of
simply retaining relations with whatever nations or groups they could.
KOREA
Although it was a military dictatorship at least as repressive as that of
Taiwan, South Korea did not share Taiwan's international loss of diplomatic
recognition. What it did have by 1979 was a faltering economy in a world that
no longer saw it as an indispensable bastion against communism. Although the
League served as an excellent podium for the regime to continue its
denunciation of North Korean intrigues, another benefit, a commercial one,
had emerged.
Through relationships struck at League conferences, South Korea became one of
the principal arms suppliers to South and Central America. The man who led
this campaign was retired South Korean Air Force Colonel Shin Chan. Shin
Chan, who attended several League conferences, was also the executive
director of the South Korean Association for Promotion of War Industry.
THE UNIFICATION CHURCH
Theoretically, the Unification Church left the League in 1975 when the
Reverend Sun Myung Moon denounced it as a "fascist" organization.
Nevertheless, the Japanese Unification Church, the Church's largest and most
powerful branch, continued to be the Japanese World Anti-Communist League
chapter, and the Church and the League cooperated in many joint operations
throughout the world.
Just as Reverend Moon's operations were myriad, so, too, were the payoffs he
received from his involvement in the League. His organization apparently has
three major functions: as a church, as a money laundry, and as an agent for
the South Korean government. It was able to facilitate each of these
activities through its League affiliation.
Relationships nurtured with right-wing Latin Americans in the League led to
acceptance of the Church's political and propaganda operations throughout
Latin America. From the theological-political standpoint, Latin America is
the Moonies' "Promised Land" the more the Latin right denounces Catholicism
as being riddled with Marxism, the more attractive the nationalistic
anti-communist dogma of the Unification Church appears to be. No doubt Moon
dreams about the influence—and money—that would come from millions of Latin
Americans turning their backs on Catholicism in favor of Unificationism.
As an international money laundry, through the World AntiCommunist League and
its own operations, the Church tapped into the capital flight havens of Latin
America. Escaping the scrutiny of American and European investigators, the
Church could now funnel money into banks in Honduras, Uruguay, and Brazil,
where official oversight was lax or nonexistent.
In pursuit of its function as an agent of influence for the South Korean
government, the Church has done well in Latin America. Between 1977 and 1979
the Church quietly channeled over a hundred million dollars into the
Uruguayan economy; in 1980, the Uruguayan government signed a huge arms deal
with South Korea, part of which went to Tong-il Armaments Company, owned and
operated by the Unification Church.
SOUTH AFRICA AND RHODESIA
As did Taiwan, South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) saw the number of
their international allies shrink in the 1970s as a result of their racist
apartheid policies. One means of maintaining those ties that did remain, and
hopefully of establishing new ones, was the League. This scheme operated on
several different levels, from continuing links to racist groups in the
United States and Western Europe to making arms deals with Latin American
governments represented within the League. The League also gave the South
Africans and Rhodesians an introduction to potential supporters in the
American New Right and in the Unification Church.* [* It has been reported
that the Church's newspaper in Washington, D.C., The Washington Times, has
been subsidized by the South African government to the amount of $900,000
annually.]
LATIN AMERICA
Probably the most tangible—and deadly—advantages of League involvement were
gained by its South and Central American chapters. Through the League,
ultra-rightists from "Southern Cone" nations like Paraguay and Argentina were
able to link up with their brethren in the Central American countries of
Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Since the membership of these chapters
was often drawn from government officials, resolutions agreed upon at League
conferences—mutual cooperation and the sharing of information on "subversive"
labor leaders, academics, and liberal priests-could be put into practice.
League participation also meant that Latin governments were given the
opportunity to train their counterinsurgency forces and military intelligence
officers in one of the world's most efficient schools, the Political Warfare
Cadres Academy in Taiwan.
MEXICO
To the Tecos, the League gave not only access to other anti-Semite and
anti-Vatican circles throughout the world but also the prestige to pursue
their ambition of taking over the continent's autonomous universities. With
their status in the League and with their control of the World Youth
Anti-Communist League, the Tecos were able to embark on this program in a
concerted way. Their scheme seems to have partially succeeded- in 1985, Dr.
Luis Garibay Gutierrez, the head of the Tecos' Autonomous University of
Guadalajara, was named president of the International Association of
University Presidents.
NAZIS
For both the Nazi collaborators of World War II and their modernday
torchbearers throughout Europe and the United States, the League was an
avenue of contact with kindred spirits in Latin America, southern Africa, and
Australia. Through acquaintances made at League conferences, a British Nazi
might be invited to attend a fraternal Swedish conclave; an article by an
Australian neo-Nazi might be reprinted in a similar publication in Germany;
or a former Belgian SS officer might come to the United States as a speaker
at a Nazi rally. It could also mean that an impoverished fascist cell in
Norway could come to the attention of philanthropic Arab sheiks.
For the "historical" Nazis-the Iron Guard and the Ustasha—League conferences
were a cover under which various branches of the same organization could
reunite in relative safety to talk about old times and plan joint actions for
the future. On his own, it might have been difficult for a wanted war
criminal like Stejpan Hefer to have entered the United States to meet with
his Ustasha comrades there- under the auspices of the World Anti-Communist
League, it was far less likely that he would come to the attention of an
observant immigration official.
ARABS
By 1979, one of the most intriguing aspects of the League was its ability to
embrace opposing factions simultaneously, proving the adage of politics
making strange bedfellows.
As two nations isolated from most others and confronted with implacable
enemies close to their borders, Taiwan and Israel have long had close
diplomatic relations. Yet this did not prevent Taiwan either from inducting
former Nazis into the World Anti-Communist League, or from accepting en masse
a group of militantly anti-Israel Arabs at a special League executive session
in 1978.
Starting with the 1979 League conference, militant Arabs, under the banner of
the Middle East Security Council, became a major force and financial backer
of the League. Their chief "anti" was not communism but Israel. This explains
why government officials from Arab nations that are closely allied with the
Soviet Union, such as Syria, have found a platform in the World
Anti-Communist League.
It is quite easy to see the Arabs' interest in the League. Here in one fell
swoop they tapped into bitter enemies of Israel in the United States, Latin
America, and Europe. Certainly some of their new allies had different reasons
for their anti-Israeli stance—they hated Israel because they hated Jews—but
the result was the same: dedicated and unwavering enemies of the "Zionist
state." With membership in the League, the Arabs could now play both sides of
the fence, subsidizing the far left for its pro-Palestinian sentiments and
bankrolling the far right for its anti-Israel ones.
By 1979, the World Anti-Communist League had become a powerful federation
spanning six continents and consisting of national chapters from some ninety
nations. Its very growth was problematic in light of their different reasons
for joining the League, it stood to reason that there would be some very
great political rifts among the various chapters. The supposed communist
threat facing, for example, the Southeast Asian nation of Malaysia was far
different from that facing the West African nation of Liberia. For the exiled
Vietnamese, the chief enemy was the People's Republic of China, while for the
Ukrainians it was the ethnic Russians. In Indonesia, the communist threat was
personified by the resident Chinese community at large, chief victims of a
horrible "anti-communist" pogrom in the 1960s. This racial focus could hardly
have found favor with the Kuomintang in Taiwan, who were, after all, ethnic
Chinese. In South Africa, the "communist threat" was anti-apartheid blacks-
in Sri Lanka it was the Tamilsin Guatemala, the liberal clergy. In short,
what League chapters defined as the enemy varied wildly.
But the League did have some unifying beliefs. What all League members had in
common by 1979 was their conviction that the United States, under the Carter
Administration, was part of the problems they faced. Here again their
rhetoric ranged widely, some only feeling Carter was hopelessly naive, others
claiming he was being duped by communists, others accusing him of being an
outright traitor and a tool of communism. Whatever their individual
grievances, one of the major adhesives holding the entire World
Anti-Communist League together in 1979 was a burning resentment of the
American president.
Indeed, in three years as president, Carter had managed to enrage virtually
ever chapter of the League. His human rights stand and selective trade
embargoes on offending nations had not gone over well with Latin American
rightists. His recognition of the People's Republic of China was seen by the
Kuomintang in Taiwan as the ultimate betrayal. His plans for an American
troop withdrawal from South Korea had caused a panic there. His call for the
dismantling of apartheid in South Africa and Rhodesia had made him bitter
enemies among those nation's white rulers. His support of Israel drew the
wrath of the Arabs. Domestically, his establishment of the Office of Special
Investigations in the Justice Department, empowered to investigate and
prosecute suspected Nazi war criminals living in the United States, had sent
tremors through the Eastern Nazi collaborator contingents.
League attacks on Jimmy Carter were relentless, his name became something of
an epithet. At the 1978 League conference in Washington, he was attacked for
everything from sanctioning the Sandinistas' fight against the Nicaraguan
dictator Anastasio Somoza to causing unrest in South Korea; at the 1977
Belgrade conference, he was attacked for failing to take up the cause of the
captive nations.
"I accuse the Carter Administration," Guatemalan Vice-President Mario
Sandoval Alarcon thundered at the League conference in Washington in 1978 (he
had taken the speaker's podium after Senator James McClure of Idaho), "of
meddling and intervening in the internal affairs of other nations, especially
in Latin American countries.... I accuse the Inter-American Commission on
Human Rights [used as a foreign policy instrument of Carter] of being a
Marxist instrument that has used the cause of human rights as a tool for
slander aimed at the countries that refuse to accept compromises with
Marxism.... May God save humanity and may He forgive those responsible for
such a catastrophe. We, the free men here today, accuse them of treason
against the human race."[1]
On their own turf, the Carter-haters could be even more direct. Commenting on
the 1978 conference and on the upcoming one in Asuncion, the Paraguayan
newspaper Hoy issued a warning to Carter and his ambassador in Paraguay,
Robert White:
If the peanut farmer from Georgia has the diplomatic strings to exercise
pressure, meddle in the internal affairs of other countries and send obdurate
envoys [White], then it is necessary to paraphrase the following saying: "The
white horse did not understand the offensive lion."[2]
Undeterred, Ambassador White, whom Hoy had characterized as "a Bostonian with
Marxist feelings," forced an invitation to the 1979 conference from President
Alfredo Stroessner. One speaker after another, he recalls, railed against
"Carter-Communism."
The League's loathing of Carter was actually only the culmination of
resentment that had built up against the United States for many years. In
fact, one of the common threads running through most chapters of the World
Anti-Communist League was the belief that, at the very least, the United
States had consistently failed to pursue options open to it in the
anti-communist struggle. Others were convinced that since the American
government had "sold out" long ago, that government was now part of the
problem, a sentiment best illustrated by the CAL resolution introduced at the
1974 conference seeking the overthrow of the American government and its
replacement with a military junta.
This disgruntlement existed for different reasons in every region from which
League membership was drawn. In some cases, it extended back forty years: The
Romanian Iron Guard and other Eastern European fascists charged that the
United States had joined the wrong side in World War II, that it should have
joined Germany in its fight against the communist Soviet Union. The Croatian
Ustashi were still smarting over the British and American refusal to
collaborate with them in 1945 in fighting Tito's partisans. "The great
Western powers," Stejpan Hefer charged in 1970, "preferred to fight against
the idea of nationalism because of their own selfish reasons. "[3]
The Asian League chapters attacked American "timidity" in Asia, dating back
to Korea in the 1950s and continuing up to Indochina in the 1970s. The Latin
Americans and the Cuban exiles had spent nearly two decades blasting
successive administrations for coexisting with Fidel Castro and for cutting
off aid to right-wing governments just because they violated human rights.
The unjust condemnation by free world liberals, particularly those in the
U.S.A., of communist-threatened countries like Argentina and Chile under the
pretext of "human rights" should be exposed as serv-ing Communist purposes
and preventing economic and military help going to these countries.[4]
Then there were, of course, the American and Western European neo-Nazis, who
were convinced that the United States was in the pocket of the Zionists, as
close relations to Israel and the prominence of American Jews clearly
attested.
The League chapters also shared a number of other regional enemies. For the
neo-Nazis, Latin Americans, and Arabs, the Jews, through their "control" of
international finance, were subsidizing the spread of communism through
Zionism. For European and American racists, the diplomatic pressures against
the white ruling minorities in Rhodesia and South Africa were covers for
eventual communist black rule. And all the League chapters shared a concern
over the "clear signs" of Marxist infiltration into the Catholic Church in
Latin America.
The anti-Carter and anti-American sentiments of the World AntiCommunist
League are actually only symptomatic of an even greater shared belief: that
traditional Western institutions and values cannot combat the Marxist threat.
Communism can only be countered by strong, resolute leadership, without the
shortcomings or vacillations displayed by the United States or Western
Europe. "The fact that the West is, today, in a sad condition," Horia Sima
wrote to his Iron Guardists in 1977, "is due to the lack of great men of
State, and of a political elite, able to understand its great
responsibility."[5]
In order to win the international struggle, "anti-communists have to be as
cruel as the communists" (Taiwan), "red terror has to be fought with black
terror" (Italy), "against the red guerrilla, the white guerrilla" (Mexico).
Democracy, in the eyes of the League, is so morally bankrupt and/or
infiltrated that it is unable to lead this struggle. In fact, democracy has
become the ultimate tool of subversion employed by the communists and their
"fifth columnists," the Zionists. "Personally, I am convinced that
Freemasonery, Judaism and Communism act together to subjugate the world,"
Hernan Landivar Flores of the Bolivian League chapter said in 1974. "From
this indisputable truth arises my deep distrust of the so-called democracy
through which you act and which is no other than the ante-room to immorality
and Communism."[6]
This repudiation of democracy is the single most broadly accepted tenet—and
the lasting bond—of the World Anti-Communist League. Whether as willing
accomplices or not, in the eyes of the League it is Western democracies that
have steadily bartered away the world to the communists. For them, democracy
has been compromised, is decaying, and is unable to fight back. "The saddest
aspect," Giorgio Almirante, leader of Italy's fascist MSI, said about that
nation's counterterror program, "is the total impotence of the State, which
has demonstrated to lack both the capacity and will to adopt suitable
measures to combat terrorism.... It can be stated with certitude that at this
time Italy possesses neither security nor intelligence services worthy of
that name."[7]
Given the failure of democracy, what is needed, in the view of League
members, is strong nationalist regimes such as the Kuomintang in Taiwan or
that of General Pinochet in Chile. In the "correct" nations, one doesn't find
the hobbling presence of working parliaments or troublesome human rights
activists. These regimes don't show timidity in the face of the Marxist
threat, nor do they lack the resolve to engage in the same brutal tactics
their enemies employ.
Since they cannot count on the democracies of Western Europe and the United
States, League members have appealed to the world's remaining far-right
governments while also urging the formation of private groups to carry out
the struggle independently. At least as early as 1965, the Asian People's
Anti-Communist League had endorsed the formation of an "international brigade
of civic-action volunteers" to help out in South Vietnam. The brigade, to be
funded by the League, would of course be protected by "appropriate security
forces."[8]
"As I suggested two years ago," Stejpan Hefer wrote in 1970, "one should try
to form and prepare in any free state, under the protection of NATO, armed
units of individual peoples from among the members of their national
liberation movements. At the outbreak of rebellions and uprisings in the
Communist-occupied countries these units would have the task at the
favourable moment to take over the initiative and help their peoples to
liquidate tyrannic Communist governments."[9]
It might seem ironic that while the ultra-right in the World AntiCommunist
League looks upon democracy with disgust, they frequently voice almost a
begrudging respect of their leftist opposition. They study and copy their
enemy's methods and train their terrorists in much the same manner as the
communists. The Political Warfare Cadres Academy in Taiwan was designed-and
still teaches—according to the Soviet model of military instruction, with its
commissars and political officers assigned to regular army units. In El
Salvador, security forces studied the terror tactics of the guerrillas and
reemployed them through "counterterror." American League members, after
analyzing leftist programs of indoctrination, assassination, and sabotage,
urged that anti-communists employ this same "unconventional warfare" strategy.
There have even been instances, especially in Western Europe, of terrorist
cells of the extreme right and left joining together in coordinated actions.
The fascist Croatian Ustashi, according to terrorism experts, have received
support in their war against socialist Yugoslavia from the Soviet Union and
communist Albania. Fabrizio Panzieri, an Italian terrorist belonging to the
ultra-left Red Brigade, escaped a prison sentence for murder by using a
passport furnished by rightist terrorists. Investigations by the West German
government have revealed extensive ties between the Palestine Liberation
Organization and a variety of German neo-fascists. The justification for
these strange alliances was probably best stated by Mehmet Ali Agca, the
would-be assassin of Pope John Paul II. "I am an international terrorist,
ready to help other terrorists everywhere. I make no distinction between
fascists and communists. My terrorism is not red or black- it is red and
black."[10]
For this reason, it is often impossible to determine responsibility for a
terrorist attack. A liberal politician in Guatemala might be killed by the
right for his "Marxist taint," or he might be killed by the left because he
remains part of the "oligarchy." A German businessman might be assassinated
by communists for his "parasitic existence," or he might incur the wrath of
the fascists for his role in the "Zionist-International Finance Conspiracy."
Such overlapping is not as anomalous as it might appear. The first enemy for
both political extremes is the center. Both ultra-leftists and
ultra-rightists have the same primary objective: to polarize the country, to
implement the breakdown of the governing system, and ultimately to create a
situation of chaos where armed conflict will be between the right and the
left, the center having been discredited by its failure to prevent it. In the
interim, a victory for one side—a governmental collapse in Italy, the murder
of an industrialist in Spain, the "disappearance" of a human rights activist
in El Salvador-works for the benefit of both.
Little wonder that terrorist after terrorist, and terrorism expert after
terrorism expert, have agreed that the purpose of both Red and Black terror
is to destroy the open, democratic forms of liberal government, and to
replace them with something elitist and totalitarian. Rightist terror seeks
"the brutal intervention of repressive forces," Leftist terror seeks the
same, believing that only complete repression will bring a self-satisfied,
quiet bourgeoisie to a flash point, a revolutionary "critical mass." [11]
If this is the objective of the World Anti-Communist League, then it goes a
long way toward explaining the strange alliances it has formed. It is this
very pursuit of international polarization and its ability to embrace openly
leftist elements in an anti-communist cause that have led many to speculate
about the League's true nature. Some have even suggested a secret sponsorship
of the League by the Soviet Union or other communist governments, employing
it as the ultimate agent provocateur.
The idea may not be as absurd as it first sounds. The open antipathy—and, in
some cases, hatred—for the United States and Western democracy that can be
found in the League are outlooks that could easily be manipulated by the
Soviets, if they haven't been already.
Within the League can be found Soviet-supported Arabs who in turn support
European and South American rightists in their fight against U.S.-supported
Israel. The current British League chapter pushes for the dissolution of the
European Economic Community, certainly a proposal that would aid the Soviet
Union more than the United States. In his Madrid lair, Horia Sima rails
against Western European unification.
Only a "Europe of Fatherlands" can constitute an efficacious and durable
organism. Supranational organizations are unnatural because they violate the
laws, based on history, which are confirmed through the existence of nations
and national cultures.[12]
Then, of course, there is the intelligence advantage the Soviets would gain
in establishing ties with groups of malcontents in virtually every nation in
Western Europe, individuals who reject democracy and who in some cases have
taken up weapons to fight it. By infiltrating the League, the Soviets or
their satellites could have access to the workings of counterinsurgency,
"political warfare," "counterterror," and "unconventional warfare" programs,
both official and private, throughout the world.
Whatever the real or imagined communist presence in the League, it would
certainly appear that no one would be more sorry to see its demise than they.
Despite political differences-and on paper they appear to be
considerable-communism and fascism, as embodied in the World Anti-Communist
League, are comrades in the war against democracy.
pps. 104-116
--[notes]--
NINE
1. 11th. WACL Conference Proceedings; April 27-May 1978 (Washington:
Council on
American Affairs, 1978)), pp. 13-15.
2. "The Impossible Equation," Hoy, (Asuncion, Paraguay: June 9, 1978),
p. 11
3. Steipan Hefer, "Croats Condemned to Extermination in Yugoslavia," Our
Alternative (Munich, West Germany: Press Bureau of Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of
Nations, 1972), p. 51,
4. Joint Communique of World Anti-Communist League, 10th. Pre-Conference
Executive Board Meeting (Houston, Texas: January 10, 1977).
5. Horia Sima, quoted in Maurizio Cabona, An Interview with Horia Sima,
Commander- in-Chief Legion of the Archangel Michael (N.P. 1977), p. 22.
6. Hernan Landivar Flores to the World Anti-Communist League, February 2,
1974.
7. Vittorfranco S. Pisano, "Interview with Giorgio Almirante, Member of
Parliament and Secretary of the Italian Social Movement (MSI)," TVI Journal
(1980), p. 3.
8. Resolution of 11th. Asian People's Anti-Communist League conference
(Taipei,
Taiwan: 1965).
9. Stejpan Hefer, "Croats," p. 52.
10. Claire Sterling, "The Plot to Murder the Pope," Reader's Digest
(September 1982),
p. 75.
11. Christoper C. Harmon, "Terrorism: The Evidence of Collusion Between
the Red and the Black," Grand Strategy-Countercurrents (Claremont,
California: December 15, 1982), p. 6.
12. Horia Sima, The Rumanian Situation After 19 Years of Communist
Slavery and Policies of the Western Powers, 1944-1963 (Madrid, Spain: The
Movement, 1963), pp. 18-19.
--[cont]--
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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