Regular readers of this blog have likely picked up on my growing
interest in the re-emerge of international fascism throughout the second
half of the twentieth century. This arcane topic, riddled with
disinformation and the fever dreams of the conspiratorial right, is a
subject that has consumed a good chunk of my spare time over the past
year. In the process I have acquired a treasure trove of fascinating and
sometimes obscure events that have unfolded across the twentieth
century and beyond.
I've been chomping at the bit for months to begin presenting some of
this information but one of the most daunting aspects of this project is
finding a place to start. After all, the re-emerge of
fascism
in the later half of the twentieth century did not happen in a vacuum
and was in fact directly linked to events and personalities stretching
back to the dawn of fascism in the wake of the
First World War, the emerge of
fascism as a political power in the 1920s, and of course the
Second World War.
 |
| Mussolini circa WWI |
After much debate I resolved to focus in on the
American Security Council
(ASC) as the first of what will be several series examining the
re-emerge of fascism and its links to the modern conspiratorial right
during the second half of the twentieth century and beyond. The ASC is a
compelling starting point for several reasons: it had direct links to
the pre-WWII fascist right; to international fascist organizations such
as the
World Anti-Communist League; to the
US intelligence community;
and to the conspiratorial right itself. The rise of the ASC was also
closely linked to a power shift within the American Establishment in the
wake of World War II, a topic that I shall briefly discuss now.
From roughly the end of the
American Civil War
until the early 1960s the American power structure was dominated (but
not totally controlled) by what is commonly referred to as the Eastern
Establishment, the long time bugaboo of the conspiratorial right.
Initially this group was largely centered around the Northeast,
especially in
New England and the
Tri-state area,
but now has a strong presence along the West Coast as well. Thus,
Eastern Establishment is a bit outdated as this faction is no longer
confined to the old
Blue Blood stomping grounds but for our purposes here it is a covenant designation.
While some families from this network made their fortunes in heavy
industry banking and international commerce has long been their chief
financial concern. But despite their interests often being global in
nature this group is also deeply Euro-centric (except for possibly the
French) and at times fanatically
Anglophilic. Indeed, this group (largely comprised of old-moneyed American families such as the
Morgans,
Whitneys,
Astors,
Mellons,
etc) has maintained close ties with their European counterparts, both
through business as well as marriages, for well over a century.
 |
| J.P. Morgan
(top), Andrew Mellon (middle), and the Lord and Lady Astor (bottom), who
closely linked to the American Establishment |
Beginning in the very late nineteenth century this group became deeply involved with a chain of
NPOs and
think tanks
that were used as propaganda organs to influence intellectuals,
policymakers and the general public at large towards the ends of this
faction. Easily the most notorious of these think tanks was the
so-called
Round Table Group.
Georgetown professor and
Rhodes Scholar Carroll Quigley was the first individual to give the public an insider's look at the mechanisms of the Round Table Group with his 1966 classic
Tragedy and Hope,
a book long held up by the conspiratorial right as the smoking gun for
the communist conspiracy. This notion is of course absurd and only
gained currency through selective quoting of Quigley's long out-of-print
tome, but it did reveal some very interesting things about the nation's
(as well as the international) power structure, especially concerning
the role think tanks and other NPOs play in maintaining it.
"Quigley studied the operations of the Round Table first hand for twenty
years and for two years during the early 1960s was permitted access to
its papers and secret records. He objects to a few of its policies...
but says his chief complain about the Round Table is its secrecy, a
secrecy which he comes forward to break. 'The American branch of this
organization, sometimes called the "Eastern establishment," has played a
very significant role in the history of the United States in the last
generation,' he writes, 'and I believe it's role in history is
significant enough to be known.'
"The Round Table Groups, by Quigley's detailed report, are semicovert
policy and action groups formed at the turn of the first decade of this
century on the initiatives of the Rhodes Trust and its dominant trustee
of the 1905-1925 period, Lord Milner. Their original political aim was
federation of the English-speaking world along the lines laid down by
Cecil Rhodes.
"By 1915, Round Table Groups were functioning in England and in six
outposts of the Empire --South Africa, Canada, Australia, New Zealand,
India, and the United States...
"The organization was originally financed by the associates and
followers of Cecil Rhodes, chiefly from the Rhodes rust itself, but
since 1925, according to Quigley, substantial contributions come from
wealthy individuals, foundations, and firms associated with the
international banking fraternity, especially the Carnegie United Kingdom
Trust, and other organizations associated with J. P. Morgan, the
Rockefeller and Whitney families, and the associates of Lazard Brothers
and of Morgan, Grenfell, and Company. The chief link-up in this
organization was once that of the Morgan Bank in New York to a group of
international financiers in London led by Lazard Brothers, but at the
end of the war of 1914, the organization was greatly extended. In
England and in each dominion a group was set up to function as a cover
for the existing local Round Table Group.
"In London, this front was the Royal Institute of International Affairs,
which had as its secret nucleus the existing Round Table group. The New
York group was the Council on foreign relations. The Morgan men who
dominated the CFR went to the Paris peace conference and there became
close to a similar group of English experts recruited by Milner. Thus
there grew up 'a power structure' linking London and New York banks and
deeply penetrating 'university life, the press, and the practice of
foreign policy.'
"The founding aims of this elaborate, semisecret organization were 'to
coordinate the international activities and outlooks of all the
English-speaking world into one... to work to maintain peace; to help
backward, colonial, and underdeveloped areas to advance toward
stability, law, and order and prosperity, along lines somehow similar to
those taught at Oxford and the University of London...' These aims were
pursued by 'gracious and culture gentlemen of somewhat limited social
experience... If their failures now loom larger than their successes,
this should not be allowed to conceal the high motives in which they
attempted both.'
"Quigley calls this relationship between London and New York financial
circles 'one of the most powerful influences in twentieth-century
America and world history. The two ends of this English-speaking
axis have sometimes been called, perhaps facetiously, the English and
American Establishments. There is, however, a considerable degree of
truth behind the joke, a truth which reflects a very real power
structure. It is this power structure which the Radical Right in the
United States has been attacking for years in the belief that they are
attacking the Communists.'"
(The Yankee and Cowboy War, Carl Oglesby, pgs. 23-25)
 |
| Quigley and his highly controversial work |
The Eastern Establishment did in fact provide financial backing to the
progressive movement and
even some communists in the United States since the early twentieth
century but this was hardly done out of some deep-seated
socialistic impulse.
"More than fifty years ago the Morgan firm decided to infiltrate the
Left-wing political movements in the United States. This was relatively
easy to do, since these groups were starved for funds and eager for
a voice to reach the people. Wall Street supplied both. The purpose was
not to destroy, dominate, or take over but was really threefold: (1) to
keep informed about the thinking of Left-wing or liberal groups; (2) to
provide them with a mouthpiece so they could 'blow off steam,' and (3)
to have a final veto on their publicity and possibly on their actions,
if they ever went 'radical.' There was nothing really new about this
decision, since other financiers had talked about it and even attempted
it earlier. What made it decisively important this time was the
combination of its adoption by the dominant Wall Street financier, at a
time when tax policy was driving all financiers to seek tax-exempt
refuge for their fortunes, and at a time when the ultimate in Left-wing
radicalism was about to appear under the banner of the Third
International."
(Tragedy and Hope, Carroll Quigley, pg. 938)
The conspiratorial right has long alleged that Wall Street bankers financed the
Bolshevik revolution in Russia that led to the formation of the
Soviet Union and there is indeed compelling evidence that
Lenin and
Trotsky
had such support. But this was almost surely done for the same reason
that Morgan and other Wall Street bankers backed the American
progressive movement: to hedge their bets and maintain some degree of
control over it. But whatever aspirations the Eastern Establishment had
for the Soviet Union seems to have been thoroughly dashed by the 1930s:
Lenin was dead, Trotsky was exiled, and while some intellectuals may
still have carried a torch for
Stalinism Wall Street was thoroughly disillusioned and more than a little weary. But I digress.
While the Eastern Establishment was the dominate power in America
politics until the 1960s it was not the only one. Indeed, even before
World War II another faction was beginning to emerge to challenge the
Eastern Establishment. Various factors led to the state of affairs.
The rise of
organized crime, especially the billion dollar
international drug trade,
played a significant role but such a topic is beyond the scope of this
series. The role drug trafficking played in the fascist
counterrevolution that unfolded in the second half the twentieth century
will be examined when I address the World Anti-Communist League in a
future series. For now let us briefly consider two other factors:
One was the emergence of oil as a cornerstone in modern life. This
process had been well on the way before the onset of World War II but
by the end of the 1940s oil had surpassed coal as the dominant energy
source in the United States, and soon the rest of the world. Old
moneyed families such as the
Rockefellers
and Mellons had long been involved in the oil industry but the colossal
domestic oil boom that began with the discovery of the enormous
East Texas oil fields in the 1930s and the
offshore Gulf of Mexico finds
in the 1960s and 70s created a junior wing of the oil cartel, based
out of Texas, that is generally been more rightward leaning then its
Eastern Establishment predecessors.
An even more important development, however, was the rise of what is generally referred to as the
military-industrial complex.
This had a profound change both in the economic as well as political
dynamics of the United States. From an economic standpoint it was
instrumental in modernizing large portions of the American South and
West.
"...the economic impact... nowhere greater than in the Southern Rim.
This is a region that was transformed, and brought into modernity, by
World War II, when the defense establishment moved in to take advantage
of its benign climate, vast open spaces, extensive and for the most part
protected coastline, abundant and cheap labor, and nascent shipping and
aircraft industries, altogether pumping in an estimated 60 percent of
its $74 billion wartime expenditures into these fifteen states. And as
the defense installations and contractors continued to grow with growing
defense budgets even after the war --$13 billion in 1950, $50 billion
in 1960 --they continued to build up the substructure of the whole
economy, in practically every state from North Carolina to California.
Indeed, if anyone industry can be said to be the backbone of the
Southern Rim, it is defense."
(Power Shift, Kirkpatrick Sale, pgs. 24-25)
While more than a few of the old moneyed Eastern families (i.e. the Whitneys and the
Du Ponts) were
deeply involved in the defense industry the rise of it profoundly
affected the priorities of the American overworld. Whereas
previously financial interests had chiefly dominated the American
political landscape now oil and defense would become increasingly
prevalent.
"The overworld was clearly centered in Wall Street in the 1940s, and CIA
was primarily designed there. With the postwar shifts of U.S.
demographics and economic structure southward and westward, the
overworld itself has shifted, becoming less defined by geography than by
the interrelated functions of the petroleum-industrial-financial
complex. Cheney's global oilfield services firm Halliburton, today 'a
bridge between the oil industry and the military-industrial complex,'
was nowhere near the Wall Street power center in the 1940s. This shift
in the overworld led by 1968 to a polarizing debate over the Vietnam
War. The expanding military-industrial complex, dedicated to winning
that war at any cost, found itself increasingly opposed by elements on
Wall Street ... who feared the impact of the war's cost on the stability
of the dollar."
(The Road to 9/11, Peter Dale Scott, pgs. 6)
For years the Eastern Establishment had promoted its policy agendas
through elaborate propaganda campaigns directed at academia and
policymakers as well as the general public via various think tanks,
most notably the above-mentioned
Council on Foreign Relations. By
the 1950s the defense industry in conjunction with several oil barons
and various far right military and FBI men would create something
similar to the Council on Foreign Relations for their own propaganda
purposes, among other things.
"Soon what Eisenhower would label the 'military-industrial complex' was
asserting itself through new lobbying groups, notably the American
Security Council (ASC), founded in 1955. The ASC united old-wealth oil
and military corporations with new-wealth businesses in the South and
the West, some of which incorporated investments from organized crime."
(ibid, pg. 18)
The ASC was dreamed up by two veteran activists of the far right who had
been active in the movement since before the onset of WWII.
"The Joseph McCarthy virulence and the cold war were both at their peak
when the ASC began as the Mid-American Research Library. The impetus was
provided by the late General Robert E. Wood, then board chairman of
Sears, Roebuck & Co. Along with the cantankerous Colonel Robert R.
McCormick of the Chicago Tribune ('the world's greatest
newspaper,' the colonel used to trumpet, and its radio station's call
letters are still WGN), Wood had been a prime mover in the isolationist
America First Committee and a prime adversary of the trade union
movement. With the growing preoccupation of industry with 'security,'
the establishment of a private body that would provide corporations with
a blacklist service and loyalty review board was almost inevitable."
(Power of the Right, William Turner, pgs. 199-200)
 |
| General Robert E. Wood (top) and Colonel Robert R. McCormick (bottom), who briefly served in military intelligence during WWI |
While the ASC's "
blacklist
service" is infinitely fascinating I shall not get around to addressing
it until the next installment. For now, I would like to focus on the
ASC's origins and to do this topic justice it warrants addressing the
America First Committee
briefly. As we shall see, General Wood and Colonel McCormick were not
the only links the ASC had to the America First Committee.
The America First Committee has been greatly romanticized in recent years, especially by the so-called
"paleoconservative" movement who see it is the crowning instance of pacifism by the
Old Right,
but the reality is far less benign. While the bulk of the members were
likely genuine anti-war activists who did not want to see another
generation of Americans torn to ribbons by modern weaponry in a European
war there were more than a few hardcore fascist sympathizers (as well
as Nazi intelligence assets) within the Committee. This state of affairs
was first exposed by the highly controversial investigator
Arthur Derounian (who frequently wrote under the pen name of John Roy Carlson) in his 1943 bestseller
Under Cover,
a book that, to this day, still draws the ire of the far right.
Derounian describes the origins and the fascist ties of the Committee as
thus:
"True, it's leadership at first was as American as Plymouth Rock. But
the rank-and-file following –first sincere and respectable –was later
polluted by the Pelleys, Coughlins, McWilliamses; the Vierecks, Kuhns
and Deatherages; by Klansman; by Japanese and Nazi agents. And it's
weak-kneed leadership, cowed and bullied by stories of Nazi might,
swayed by a Chamberlain sentimentality and Pollyanna smugness, took
craving comfort in the delusion that they were defending America. The
surrender of a mighty nation and appeasement of Hitler might easily have
been the outcome if the designs of its two most publicized spokesmen
have been carried through.
"Its national Chairman, General Robert E. Wood, told Kenneth Crawford a reporter for PM,
a New York newspaper, that in the event of an invasion of South America
by a Nazi armada, he would defend our Latin Allies 'only the part as
far south as the bulge of Brazil.' Without firing a shot in
self-defense, the general indicated his willingness to let Hitler seize
more than half of South America, plant his legions firmly on the Western
Hemisphere and place the Panama Canal at the mercy of the Luftwaffe...
"... Faith in Hitler but an unreasoning lack of faith in the
Administration – these were the cornerstones of the Committee's policy
of appeasement and defeatism which corroded our democratic fiber. It
delighted Nazi commentators, who crooned from Berlin: 'The American
First Committee is known as true Americanism and true patriotism, as
opposed to the synthetic brand.'
"'Patriotic' meetings of the Mobilizers and the Bund fell down in
attendance, while most of the other fascistic groups were suspended
altogether as members flocked to America First rallies. Whenever I
wanted information for my 'friends' I had to go either to America First
meetings or the A. F. C. Headquarters to find them.
"The Committee's backers for the most part were sincere and well-meaning
prototypes of those who had backed Hitler in Germany – a small clique
of industrialist, businessmen and army officers. Ernest T. Weir of
National Steel Corporation contributed heavily. Thomas N. McCarter, a
former chairman of the Public Service Corporation of New Jersey, was
another heavy donor. H. L. Stuart, president of a leading investment
house in the Midwest, was a financial supporter, and so was Sterling
Morton, President of the Illinois Manufacturers Association.
"The wealthy meat-packer, Jay C. Hormel, gave liberally, as did Mrs.
Janet Ayer Fairbanks; Max Wellington Babb, president of Allis- Chalmers;
General Wood and General Thomas Hammond. Colonel Robert R. McCormick of
the Chicago Tribune and Joseph M. Patterson, publisher of the New York Daily News supported the America First Committee, and there were reports that Henry Ford contributed $300,000 to initiate the work.
"The idea for the Committee was conceived in the spring of 1940 – in the
mind of a blond, while the twenty-four-year-old Yale student, R.
Douglas Stuart, Jr., son of the first vice-president of the Quaker Oats
Co. Stuart got twenty of his classmates to join. The romantic story
released by the Committee went on to say that young Douglas attracted
the attention of Chester Bowles, of Benton and Bowles, Inc., well-known
New York advertising agents.
"From nowhere staid William R. Castle joined the blond youth. Then to
Stuart's growing circle of influential friends came Philip Lafollette,
former Progressive Party governor of Wisconsin, and was quickly followed
by Senator Burton K. Wheeler, General Wood (who was board chairman of
Sears, Roebuck and Co.), Henry Ford and Robert Bliss of J. Walter
Thompson, advertising agents. Experts in promotion, organization and
public relations gathered around young Stuart.
"With Douglas and his Yale friends serving as front, Charles Lindbergh
addressed a meeting at Woolsey Hall. This made the headlines even though
Limburg, like Neville Chamberlain, propagated Hitler's ideas by saying:
'In order to dominate the Far Eastern situation we must make our peace
with the new powers in Europe.' After the Lindbergh speech, General Wood
took charge and set to organizing the Committee on a broad, nation-wide
basis."
(Under Cover, Arthur Derounian, pgs. 242-245)
To some extent the American First Committee was the American Security
Council of its day in that it presented the respectable, overworld
elements of the far-right – i.e. people like General Wood, Colonel
McCormick, Charles Lindbergh, etc., as opposed to the uncouth factions
such the
German-American Bund and
Silver Shirts
(though it maintained relations with such groups). But there were many
genuine pacifists who were attracted to the A.F.C. while the fascist
isolationists of the 1930s were only pacifistic as far as the
Axis powers
were concerned. At this point they by and large already believed that
some type of holy war against communism was inevitable. And be assured,
their ties to Nazi Germany were more than circumstantial.
"J. Edgar Hoover discovered a range of Nazi associations in America
First. In December 1940, Manfred Zapp was known to be in touch with
America First. On January 16, 1941, the FBI reported that the car
belonging to Dr. George Gyssling, a Nazi council in Los Angeles, was
seen parked outside the local office of the Committee.
"On April 22, 1941, the Philadelphia Ledger announced that a
local American Firster, Mrs. Edith Scott, was inviting women associated
with a Nazi organization into the membership. Newspaper distribution
tycoon John B. Snow also distributed America First pamphlets. The
American Legion exposed America First as being involved in subversive
propaganda distributing leaflets via bookstores.
"The Swedish tycoon Axel Wenner-Gran... gave financial backing to
America First. He was pro-Nazi and a supporter of a negotiated peace.
"The Nazi publication Free American encouraged readers to
enroll with America First. The German-American National Alliance, of
Chicago, circulated Nazi propaganda appealing for contributions to
America First. The FBI obtained copies of checks drawn by former or
present Bund members for America First.
"On June 16, 1941, Senator Wheeler and Congressman Hamilton Fish were
reported by the FBI to be using the same mailing-list stencils used by
the Bund.
"On July 30, the FBI discovered that America First had formed a special
unit for the investigation of Communists under the direction of the
White Russian Nazi collaborator George Wrangell. Former Bund members
also worked voluntarily with Wrangell to urge the parents of draftees
and enlistees to fight the national defense program.
"In September, FBI men questioned the arrested Nazi agent Friedrich
Auhagen in his prison cell. Auhagen said that America First was an
agency of the German Government, designed to distribute its political
material. Hoover concurred with this conclusion.
(American Swastika, Charles Higham, pgs. 14-15)
Amusingly, one of the first major America First Committee rallies was a
speaking engagement before the Chicago branch of the Council on Foreign
Relations. Naturally General Wood gave the keynote address.
"The keynote speech of America First was delivered by acting chairman
General Robert E. Wood on October 4, 1940, before the Chicago Council on
Foreign Relations. General Wood contended that authoritarian states
cannot be destroyed by war and that a German-dominated Europe would not
destroy our foreign trade. Intervention in the war must be avoided at
all costs. General Wood was chairman of Sears Roebuck, whose president,
Donald Nelson, was head of the War Production Board. The next in line at
the War Production Board was William L. Batt, partner in Philadelphia
with Hugo von Rosen, cousin of Field Marshal Goring in the SKF ball
bearing company, which supplied Nazi-related companies in South America
throughout World War II."
(ibid, pg. 13)
The Council was a far more natural alley for the far right in America
than the conspiratorial right would have you believe. You see, the
British counterparts of the CFR –the Round Table/Rhodes-Milner group –
had also been staunchly isolationist concerning Germany for much of
the 1930s as well. Much like General Wood, they believed a strong
Germany that dominated mainland Europe was in their best interest.
"Any analysis of the motivations of Britain in 1938-1939 is bound to be
difficult because different people had different motives, motives
changed in the course of time, the motives of the government were
clearly not the same as the motives of people, and in no country has
secrecy and anonymity been carried so far or been so well preserved as
in Britain. In general, motives become vaguer and less secret as we
move our attention from the innermost circles of the government outward.
As if we were looking at the layers of an onion, we may discern four
points of view: (1) the anti-Bolsheviks at the center, (2) the
'three-bloc-world' supporters close to the center, (3) the supporters
of 'appeasement,' and (4) the 'peace at any price' group in a peripheral
position. The 'anti-Bolsheviks,' who are also anti-French, were
extremely important from 1919 to 1926, but then decreased to little more
than a lunatic fringe, rising again in numbers and influence after 1934
to dominate the real policy of the government in 1939. In the earlier
period the chief figures in this group were Lord Curzon, Lord D'Abernon
and General Smuts. They did what they could to destroy reparations,
permanent German rearmament, and tear down what they called 'French
militarism.'
"This point of view was supported by the second group, which was known
in those days as the Round Table Group, and came later to be called,
somewhat inaccurately, the Cliveden Set, after the country estate of
Lord and Lady Astor. It included Lord Milner, Leopold Amery, and Edward
Grigg ( Lord Altrincham), as well as Lord Lothian, Smuts, Lord Astor,
Lord Brand (brother-in-law of Lady Astor and managing director of Lazard
Brothers, the international bankers), Lionel Curtis, Geoffrey Dawson...
and their associates... The Round Table Group formed the core of the
three-bloc-world supporters, and differed from the anti-Bolsheviks like
D'Abernon in that they sought to contain the Soviet Union between a
German-dominated Europe and an English-speaking bloc rather than to
destroy it as the anti-Bolsheviks wanted. Relations between the two
groups were very close and friendly, and some people, like Smuts, were
in both...
"The more moderate Round Table Group... sought to weaken the League of
Nations and destroy all possibility of collective security in order to
strengthen Germany in respect to both France and the Soviet Union, and
above all to free Britain from Europe in order to build up an 'Atlantic
bloc' of Great Britain, the British Dominions, and the United States.
They prepared the way for this 'Union' through the Rhodes Scholarship
organization..., through the Round Table groups..., through the Chatham
House organization, which set up Royal Institute of International
Affairs in all the dominions and a Council on Foreign Relations in New
York, as well as through 'Unofficial Commonwealth Relations
Conferences' held irregularly, and the Institute of Pacific Relations
set up in various countries as autonomous branches of the Royal
Institute of International Affairs. This influential group sought to
change the League of Nations from an instrument of collective security
to an international conference center for 'nonpolitical' matters like
drug control or international postal services, to rebuild Germany as a
buffer against the Soviet Union and a counterpoise to France, and to
build up an Atlantic bloc of Britain, the Dominions, the United States,
and, if possible, the Scandinavian countries."
(Tragedy and Hope, Carroll Quigley, pgs. 580-582)
 |
| Cliveden, the estate that inspired the name of the far right branch of the Rhodes-Milner group |
There's a lot to take in here. For one, I hope this illustrates just how fanatical the "Cliveden set" was about establishing
Nazi Germany
as a major power on mainland Europe (Quigley blames the break between
Britain and Germany on the Nazi regime's inability to understand
democracy and the British public for not realizing how "reasonable"
the German military and civil service could be). What's more, the
Cliveden set's desire for a mainland Europe-dominated Germany as a
barrier between Britain and Russia has largely come to pass under the
EU. The
Atlantic Union has proven to be more problematic but has never been entirely abandoned as an agenda.
Another point that bears being made from the above citation is the group's attitude toward the
League of Nations, the predecessor organization to the
United Nations.
As Quigley makes clear, the Cliveden set was chiefly responsible for
declawing the League and ensuring it could not be an effective security
apparatus. The same has seemingly been done to the United Nations. This
strongly indicates that the Cliveden set's interest in these global
bodies is primarily centered around "nonpolitical" issues (i.e. economic
matters such as international trade, loans, settlements, etc). The UN
was merely a stepping stone to the real endgame: International
bureaucracies such as the
IMF and
World Bank
that could implement the policies of multinational corporations without
being beholden to the general public. World government was probably
never even given serious consideration.
And finally, the split between the 'anti-Bolsheviks' and the Cliveden
set was repeated in the United States between the Eastern Establishment
and the Radical Right in the wake of World War II (but was clearly
beginning to emerge even before then). The root of this split was
essentially how to deal with the Soviet Union and the spread of
communism. The Cliveden set and their American counterparts wanted to
contain it and gradually subvert it through diplomacy. The fanatical
anti-communists had no interest in containing communism --They perceived
it as the greatest personification of evil humanity had ever been
confronted with and as such, believed that nothing short of total
eradication of it was to soft an approach. This split, with the threat
of nuclear war always looming in the background, would plague the
American Establishment for decades.
While the bulk of the Eastern Establishment had supported Nazi Germany
before hostilities with Britain broke out they largely felt duty bound
to support the mother country once the war began. But there were clearly
those within the Establishment, especially
Henry Ford,
who were weary of throwing in with the British and especially their
allies, the Soviet Union. They would continue to openly support Germany
all the way up to the time of
Pearl Harbor
and never totally gave up hopes of reaching a peace with the Nazi
regime. This factor combined with the deep-seeded loathing many in the
Eastern Establishment felt toward the
New Deal would lead to a collapse of the unified consensus that dominated the American power structure prior to
FDR
and WWII. The rise of the military-industrial complex and the new rich
from the Southern Rim would further exasperate this split.
But nothing crystallized this new faction quite like the military men
who would come to dominate it. Of course, military officers have always
been looked fondly upon by the American public and several of the
nation's most revered presidents (including
Washington and
Jackson)
had been generals before becoming assuming the nation's highest office.
But as American business became increasingly international in the
post-Civil War era the importance of the military grew in proportion and
a firm relationship between the service and industry emerged.
The rise of the military-industrial complex at the end of WWII would
make military men especially valuable to corporate America because of
their contacts within the military establishment. Thus, the pipeline
between the
DoD
and corporate America would become one of the fastest tracks to success
in the modern era. And while the military-industrial complex found
these officers of great use they also were some what weary of them.
Many of the military men who served between the period before the First World War and the end of
Korea (and to some extent, even up till
Kennedy) tended to be fanatically right wing, a state of affairs the military itself contributed to. As a whole, there was a
Prussian-ization
of military officers in the United States in the first half of the
twentieth century, especially during the 1930s. But beyond the
indoctrination more than a few of these officers would became enamored
with fascist military dictatorships such as
Franco's Spain and
Chiang Kai-shek's
Taiwan (of which some would forge close ties with).
 |
| Franco |
This state of affairs proved to be especially unnerving to the American
Establishment. While the financial and defense interests had somewhat
different economics goals they were still business men. But the military
men they would become increasingly dependent upon were true believers.
Thus, this conflict may be best described as the Eastern Establishment
versus the Prussians. The military-industrial complex certainly
benefited from this conflict but many of these companies offered only
tentative financial support to the ASC and like groups. The bulk of the
funding came from other true believers in the business community such as
the Hunt family and men like Patrick J. Frawley in addition to criminal
elements (i.e. the notorious
China Lobby, which remained a major political force in this country for decades in no small part due to drug money).
Much of the second half of the twentieth century witnessed a subtle war
being played out between the Eastern Establishment and the Prussians
(with some support from oil barons and the military-industrial complex)
for control of the American political machine. The front groups for this
struggle were the Council on Foreign Relations and the American
Security Council, respectively. In the next installment we shall examine
the composition of the ASC (especially several of the noteworthy
military men) and the tactics it used in this conflict. Stay tuned.
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