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Sunday, June 22, 2008

[A continuation of blogging from John Roy Carlson's Under Cover. (All posts in the series are collected on this page.)]

P. 260:

The America First Committee had become the voice of American Fascism and the spearhead aimed at the heart of Democracy, carrying to their doom many who were innocent and would have resigned in disgust had they known what went on behind the scenes. An official of the Committee, Judge Mildred Dugan confirmed my convictions by saying candidly:

"Eighty per cent of the membership is Coughlinite, and there isn't the least doubt in my mind that at the present rate the anti-Semites and the Coughlinites will come out on top eventually."

The Monday after Pearl Harbor I received the December 6 issue of the America First Bulletin and read the headline: "Blame for Rift with Japan Rests on Administration." It was the same old cry of denouncing our own family of Americans and, by implication, exonerating the Axis of all evil. And by an irony of fate, a typical letter from William R. Castle appeared in the New York Sunday Herald Tribune on the morning of Pearl Harbor, and it read:

Why should we go to war with Japan? To that question I have never received a reasonable answer, except the answer always made by those who feel we should interfere anywhere in the world. People like our bellicose Secretery of the Navy announce that trouble is inevitable...

3 Comments

Thanks for the tip - I picked up Under Cover from a used bookstore and reading it has been amazing. Carlson was a brave and canny investigator. The American Nazis/"Patriots" are a dangerous and seedy bunch.

And the Jew-hating? Nothing has changed in 60 years except now it's lefties, super-righties, Islamists, etc. Their organizing, buzz words, and propaganda so mirror the Japanese/Germans/(and later -- Russian) agitprop...

Really, it is uncanny. I am guessing from all the reprints in 1943 that Under Cover was a best-seller at the time, which is a heartening reminder of previous decency and common sense and, hopefully, indicates some optimism for the present.

I also ordered Cairo to Damascus and The Plotters to round things out.

Thanks for the find!
--LP

Invaluable, Sol - and as noted above, it seems that certain things haven't changed.

Indeed I'm concerned that the struggle is ongoing, perhaps coming closer to the surface once again.

"Why should we go to war with Japan? To that question I have never received a reasonable answer, except the answer always made by those who feel we should interfere anywhere in the world. People like our bellicose Secretery of the Navy announce that trouble is inevitable..."

Amazing. Much the same language as today, excepting it's now been mainstreamed and much more widely promulgated, due to technological advances, due to the mainstreaming of the left and their narratives and meta-narratives.

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