The Ultras

An attractive Dallas housewife sees little of her neighbors these days. "I just don't have time for anything," says Mrs. Bert Shipp. "I'm fighting Communism three nights a week." In Hollywood Hills. TV Commercial Producer Marvin Bryan spends his spare time working for the local Freedom Club, which is dedicated to opposing "compromisers" in local and national government and to smoking out liberals in the community. Says Bryan: "We don't want to coexist with these people. We don't want our children to play with their children." At a Freedom Forum meeting in Greenwich, Conn., 800 citizens recently paid $5 apiece to sit through a day of patriotic films, speeches on dialectical materialism and attacks on the U.S. State Department, federal income tax, philanthropic foundations and Harvard University. Questions to speakers were written out, explained Mrs. Charles Chapin, one of the meeting's sponsors, in order to screen those coming from Communists who might be in the audience.

These are only a few of the manifestations of a U.S. phenomenon: the resurgence of ultraconservative antiCommunism. Hundreds of groups and subgroups--with such names as Project Alert, Americans for Constitutional Action, Survival U.S.A. and Crusade for American ism--have popped up across the U.S., in some cases springing from nothing to several thousand members almost overnight. More than 100 anti-Communist study groups are being conducted in Dallas alone. Because their membership is sometimes secret and usually heavily interchangeable with other groups, no sure estimate of their strength is possible.

The far-rightists intend to figure in as many congressional campaigns as possible next year. California's Representative John Rousselot, a member of the John Birch Society, is talking of running for the Senate in the 1962 G.O.P. primary against Incumbent Thomas Kuchel. Arkansas Congressman Dale Alford has already begun to use far-right material in a buildup against Senator J. William Fulbright. Says Indiana's Clarence Manion onetime dean of Notre Dame Law School and a veteran anti-Communist lecturer and writer, who claims to have 350 Conservative Clubs in operation: "I've never seen anything like this. As one who has faced a great many empty seats in recent years. I'd say the whole atmosphere has changed in recent months."

No Room in the Middle. The U.S. has always had its far right--sometimes dormant but usually rising up in time of national doubt and uncertainty. In 1961, Americans are worried about the problems of the cold war--Cuba, Berlin, Laos, the H-bomb. But those problems often seem so distant and massive to the individual that he despairs of being able to do anything about them.

The ultras provide some readymade solutions to such frustration: they argue strongly that the real root of the nation's problem is not Communism abroad, but Communist subversion threatening the U.S. at home. Appealing to the American penchant for action, they urge citizens to fight this subversion by keeping a close eye on their fellow citizens, scrutinizing voting records, writing letters and generally raising a hue and cry across the land. If they cannot fight the Communists in Cuba or Laos, at least they can fight the ones they think they see around them. "Don't worry about the atomic bombs or H-bombs," says former FBI Counterspy Matthew Cvetic, a longtime speaker on the anti-Communist circuit. "It's right here we'll lose the fight."

The rightists rally citizens to their banner in many cases by stressing a belief in nondenominational Christianity as part of their platform. "This war we're in," says South Carolina's Senator Strom Thur mond, "is basically a fight between the believers in a Supreme Being and the atheists." Thus, the rightists' two principal poles of attraction, anti-Communism and religion, are impeccable--and subject to a good deal of emotionalism. But the ultras do not stop there.

What distinguishes them from respectable conservatives, who are enjoying a resurgence of their own? To the ultras, the fear of Communism at home is so great that they often discount the threat of Russian arms to a ridiculous extent: some still insist that the Russians have not developed an H-bomb. In everything that he finds displeasing in modern society and political life, the ultra sees evidence of Communist plots and subversion. With a dogmatic either-or attitude, he broaches no disagreement. "You're either for us or against us," says James E. Gibson, senior vice president of California's Leach Corp., which makes electronic components. "There's no room in the middle any more." And the ultra, dissatisfied with the current political order, usually works outside normal political channels and, indeed, frequently accuses both of the two major U.S. political parties of being prone to Communist influence.

Thus, even such respectable conservatives as Arizona's Republican Senator Barry Goldwater have found themselves under attack from the way-right; others, like National Review Editor William Buckley Jr. and Connecticut's Democratic Senator Thomas Dodd, seem to the ultras to be far too restrained in their attack on the enemy. In a recent Phoenix city election. Senator Goldwater was criticized for being "uninformed about Communism" by a rightist mayoralty candidate, who ran up 13,019 votes v. his opponent's 32,880.

The most formidable of the extremist groups is the John Birch Society (TIME, March 10. et seq.), founded three years ago by retired Massachusetts Candymaker (Welch's Fudge and Sugar Daddy) Robert Welch, 62. So suspicious that he often denounces shuffling or coughing in his audience as "a dirty Communist trick," Welch has a gift for such phrases as "Comsymp." which he uses as a label for many who disagree with him, and a talent for such slander as describing Dwight Eisenhower as "a conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy." His causes are many: they range from a campaign against the fluoridation of water to one demanding the impeachment of Chief Justice Earl Warren. Welch is a skilled or ganizer who devoutly believes that internal Communism can best be fought by Communist tactics. He advocates the establishment of "front groups" to push his pet projects; although his society's rosters are kept secret, its membership is estimated at 50,000, and many Birchers have infiltrated, and even come to dominate, other extremist groups.

But in the resurgence of the ultras, several other organizations have begun to challenge the predominance of the John Birch Society. Among them:

>THE CHRISTIAN ANTI-COMMUNISM CRUSADE, led by Dr. Fred Schwarz, 48, a genial, Australian-born physician and onetime Baptist lay preacher. Schwarz began his crusade in 1953, has become one of the principal figures of the rightist revival. Better read and less inflammatory than most of his counterparts, he avows it his purpose "fundamentally to inform, to teach, to educate" about Communism. He has drawn crowds of up to 15,000 in cities across the U.S., persuaded 41 mayors of California towns to declare an antiCommunism week, plans to invade New York City next July in "the biggest thing they've had yet." Schwarz professes abhorrence of extremism, amiably gives his speakers "academic freedom" to make such statements as "Government foments destruction" and "All foreign aid is immoral." Drawing $5,000 a year (plus expenses) from his crusade's funds ($382,000 in 1960), Schwarz gives his listeners definitions of dialectical materialism, short and pointed commercials for his book. You Can Trust the Communists (meaning that Communists can be trusted to drive inexorably toward their goal of subverting the U.S.). He considers himself "the most investigated man in the U.S."

>WE, THE PEOPLE!, an organization that claims membership in 1,700 communities in all 50 states, is run out of a plain, three-room Chicago office by Harry Ev-eryingham, 53, a former radio writer and adman who formed the organization seven years ago. Everyingham believes that the Communist takeover in the U.S. is well along, and that "there are many who are working with the Communists to accomplish this." The titular president of his organization is Tulsa Evangelist Billy Hargis, 36, whose material formed the base for an Air Force manual attacking the Protestant clergy last year. Hargis is convinced that Christianity is a fine place far Communist infiltration because "the Christian idea of brotherhood means to a lot of people turning the other cheek."

>THE CONSERVATIVE SOCIETY OF AMER ICA is run from New Orleans by a former Pan American airline pilot named Kent Courtney, 43, who, with his wife Phoebe, started publishing anti-Communist literature in 1954 with only $18 in capital. Courtney, an unsuccessful candidate for Governor of Louisiana on the States' Rights ticket in 1960, believes that "socialist and Communist influence now pervades the thinking of our Federal Government and the two major political parties." He claims members in 45 states, distributes about half a million pamphlets a year, is an active, unit-founding member of the John Birch Society.

>THE NATIONAL INDIGNATION CONVENTION, one of the fastest growing of the new groups, was started recently by Dallas Garage Owner Frank McGehee, 32, to protest the training of Yugoslav pilots in the U.S. It has since spread across the country through supporting committees. With a keen eye peeled for "modern traitors" in government, the movement holds evangelistic-like meetings at which members have heard the Eisenhower and Kennedy Administrations condemned as "treasonous." along with suggestions for lynching Earl Warren.

>THE ALL-AMERICAN SOCIETY, founded in Salt Lake City, has as its guiding light one of the busiest speakers in the rightist movement: W. Cleon Skousen, a balding, bespectacled onetime FBIman who hit the anti-Communist circuit in earnest in 1960. after being fired from his job as Salt Lake City's police chief ("He operated the police department like a Gestapo." says Salt Lake City's conservative Mayor J. Bracken Lee). Skousen freely quotes the Bible, constantly plugs his book, The Naked Communist, presses for a full congressional investigation of the State Department.

Current Hero. The rightist movement is most pronounced in the West, the Southwest and the South; it has a distinctly anti-Eastern flavor that reflects old and basic regional rivalries. Its organizations seem to gain most of their support from middle-and upper-income groups--doctors, dentists, merchants and industrialists, many of them leaders in their own fields and genuinely concerned about the position of the U.S. in the cold war. Some of the rightists have even taken up arms: the Minutemen (TIME, Nov. 3) regularly train with firearms in preparation for the day when the Communists may take over the country.

The far-right surge is salted with military men, both active and retired. Those still on active duty can often command a captive audience. Thus, until his recent transfer to Pentagon duty, U.S. Navy Captain Kenneth J. Sanger, commanding officer of the Sand Point Naval Air Station in Seattle, was wont to require attendance at his dramatic platform demonstrations. On a mast labeled "Free Enterprise," he would hoist signs representing such virtues as "Loyalty," "Patriotism." and "Self-Reliance." Then he would pick up a stick called "Communism," take a hefty swing--and watch all the virtues come tumbling down.

As it happens, one fine former combat officer is the current hero of almost all the rightest groups. He is Major General Edwin A. Walker, 52, who resigned from the Army last month after being transferred from his command in West Germany under charges of indoctrinating his troops with John Birch pamphlets and attempting to influence his men to cast absentee ballots for conservative U.S. political candidates. Questioned by an Army inspector general, Walker declined to answer certain questions, pleading that he was protected by Article 31 of the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice--which, like the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, offers a refuge from forced answers to questions that may be self-incriminating. Since his return to the U.S., Walker has been much in demand by right-wing groups, has scheduled his first speaking engagement for Dec. 12 in Dallas.

The Umbrella. Under the umbrella of antiCommunism, many of the ultra-rightists pursue their own special goals and grind their own axes, ranging from respectable conservative politics and economics through segregation, anti-fluoridation, isolationism, higher tariffs and income tax repeal. Federal income tax, says Dr. Carleton Campbell, a veteran ultra who organized the recent Greenwich meeting, is "one of the steps on the Communist chart to take over a country" by taxing the middle class into impotence. "Our goal is to prevent world government," says Merwin K. Hart, president of the National Economic Council. "And we don't like fluoridation." "The United Nations," says Wichita Oilman Fred Koch, "was conceived by Communists in Moscow during World War II." Others believe that urban renewal is intended to wipe out the property rights of loyal American citizens, that integration is a deliberate program for the mongrelization of the nation.

With such views of fact and history, the ultras are able to find plots just about everywhere. According to some of their literature, recent revisions of the Bible are the works of Communists who want to pervert the Gospel. The Canadian Intelligence Service, a right-wing outfit that sells a newsletter south of the border, warns that mental health programs are designed to remold men's minds and put those who resist in the booby hatch. As one of the sins of the Kennedy Administration. We, the People! claims that "All FBI agents have been ordered to cease their investigations of Communists." And Greenwich's Dr. Campbell insists that there are 2,000 Communists in the Defense establishment and that the cables going in and out of the Pentagon are being monitored by a Communist agent. When asked why the man is not arrested, the doctor says despairingly: "You tell me."

Wherever the ultras arise, they cause domestic acrimony. Some members of the Dallas Junior League recently succeeded in scuttling the showing, at a charitable exhibition, of the works of a Communist artist--Pablo Picasso. Many a P.T.A. has been broken into factions when the anti-Communists moved into local chapters; and known liberals in Phoenix are harassed by anonymous telephone calls. The wrath of the rightists is sometimes turned toward their idols at the first hint of clay feet. When Frank McGehee's National Indignation meeting in Dallas was unable to raise a pair of conservative Republicans. Senator John Tower and Congressman Bruce Alger, on the telephone--after both had agreed to address the gathering on the phone--McGehee angrily took the stage and shouted: "They have signed their death notes as politicians in the U.S." Several minutes later. Alger came to the phone and all was forgiven. A McGehee aide had simply dialed a wrong number.

"Superpatriotism." The ultras expect little sympathy from the press, which they consider Communist-dominated: to spread their views, they publish their own huge mass of literature. The organizations often exchange mailing lists, support several large and profitable publishing houses. One of the main fonts of rightist literature is Harding College in Searcy, Ark., a small liberal arts college run by members of the Church of Christ under President George Benson, a silver-haired, bespectacled gentleman who is given to such phrases as "By Caesar!" Benson's school claims that 25 million people a year come in contact with the material issued by Harding's National Education Program, which turns out tons of literature, plus the films, filmstrips, kits and flannelboard presentations so favored by the far rightists in their forums. Similarly, Manhattan's Bookmailer Inc. has built a tremendous mail-order business by putting out anti-Communist books and literature.

But even as it has burgeoned, the far right has wrought its strong counter-reactions. Its "superpatriotism" has recently come in for strong criticism from President Kennedy and former President Eisenhower, from Vice President Johnson and former Vice President Nixon, and from leaders of Roman Catholic, Protes tant and Jewish churches. American Motors Chairman George Romney, a conservative who is considering running next year as Republican candidate for Governor of Michigan, recently shook up a meeting of the All-American Society in Salt Lake City by telling the audience: "Infiltration of Communism is not the greatest problem facing our country. It is the failure to deal with the problems within our own country and the failure to exercise our responsibility to the yearning millions of the world who are not as fortunate as we."

Simply denouncing the policies of the far right is not likely to temper its fanaticism, for it thrives on martyrdom--and is only too happy to add its critics to its list of subversives. If the members of the far right are to be wooed back into normal channels of political expression, politicians must patiently face the task of convincing them that at the present time the real danger to the nation lies from without, and that the way to fight that danger is to encourage unity at home and unflinching policies abroad that reflect the best interests of the U.S.

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