The University of North Carolina Press have published an interesting volume in their ongoing 'New Cold War History' series. The full title of Kyle Burke's new book is REVOLUTIONARIES FOR THE RIGHT: ANTICOMMUNIST INTERNATIONALISM AND PARAMILITARY WARFARE IN THE COLD WAR. Here's the publisher's blurb.
Quote:Freedom fighters. Guerrilla warriors. Soldiers of fortune. The many civil wars and rebellions against communist governments drew heavily from this cast of characters. Yet from Nicaragua to Afghanistan, Vietnam to Angola, Cuba to the Congo, the connections between these anticommunist groups have remained hazy and their coordination obscure. Yet as Kyle Burke reveals, these conflicts were the product of a rising movement that sought paramilitary action against communism worldwide. Tacking between the United States and many other countries, Burke offers an international history not only of the paramilitaries who started and waged small wars in the second half of the twentieth century but of conservatism in the Cold War era.From the start of the Cold War, Burke shows, leading U.S. conservatives and their allies abroad dreamed of an international anticommunist revolution. They pinned their hopes to armed men, freedom fighters who could unravel communist states from within. And so they fashioned a global network of activists and state officials, guerrillas and mercenaries, ex-spies and ex-soldiers to sponsor paramilitary campaigns in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Blurring the line between state-sanctioned and vigilante violence, this armed crusade helped radicalize right-wing groups in the United States while also generating new forms of privatized warfare abroad.
The Introduction to the book begins with an account of John Singlaub addressing a WACL meeting, and the book as a whole looks like a sequel to Russ Bellant's OLD NAZIS, THE NEW RIGHT AND THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION. An Amazon link for Burke's book is below.
Anthony Thorne Wrote:The University of North Carolina Press have published an interesting volume in their ongoing 'New Cold War History' series. The full title of Kyle Burke's new book is REVOLUTIONARIES FOR THE RIGHT: ANTICOMMUNIST INTERNATIONALISM AND PARAMILITARY WARFARE IN THE COLD WAR. Here's the publisher's blurb.
Quote:Freedom fighters. Guerrilla warriors. Soldiers of fortune. The many civil wars and rebellions against communist governments drew heavily from this cast of characters. Yet from Nicaragua to Afghanistan, Vietnam to Angola, Cuba to the Congo, the connections between these anticommunist groups have remained hazy and their coordination obscure. Yet as Kyle Burke reveals, these conflicts were the product of a rising movement that sought paramilitary action against communism worldwide. Tacking between the United States and many other countries, Burke offers an international history not only of the paramilitaries who started and waged small wars in the second half of the twentieth century but of conservatism in the Cold War era.From the start of the Cold War, Burke shows, leading U.S. conservatives and their allies abroad dreamed of an international anticommunist revolution. They pinned their hopes to armed men, freedom fighters who could unravel communist states from within. And so they fashioned a global network of activists and state officials, guerrillas and mercenaries, ex-spies and ex-soldiers to sponsor paramilitary campaigns in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Blurring the line between state-sanctioned and vigilante violence, this armed crusade helped radicalize right-wing groups in the United States while also generating new forms of privatized warfare abroad.
The Introduction to the book begins with an account of John Singlaub addressing a WACL meeting, and the book as a whole looks like a sequel to Russ Bellant's OLD NAZIS, THE NEW RIGHT AND THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION. An Amazon link for Burke's book is below.
Looks interesting. Bellant's book is a great one and still apt even if now old.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
James Lateer Wrote:There had to be a reason why Reagan visited an SS cemetery while visiting Germany.
(I mean besides the fact that he had terminal Alzheimers and didn't know where he was).
James Lateer
I suggest you read Bellant's book.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
I have downloaded, printed and added spiral binding to the Russ Bellant book. So far it's very unique and enlightening. Especially about Nixon and GHW Bush and Nazis. It will be a valuable addition to my JFK book shelves.
Will have a complete analysis fairly soon and I intend to cross-reference Bellant's names in his book to my index of other JFK books to see how close he comes to listing JFK-implicated parties.
James, Russ Bellant later did a related volume, THE COORS CONNECTION. A PDF of that book is here. Click on the PDF' icon on the linked page to download the full file.
[URL="https://archive.org/details/pdfy-IWrquvQ2Xgu09MH-"] https://archive.org/details/pdfy-IWrquvQ2Xgu09MH-[/URL]
30-06-2019, 10:42 AM (This post was last modified: 30-06-2019, 11:24 AM by Peter Lemkin.)
James Lateer Wrote:I have downloaded, printed and added spiral binding to the Russ Bellant book. So far it's very unique and enlightening. Especially about Nixon and GHW Bush and Nazis. It will be a valuable addition to my JFK book shelves.
Will have a complete analysis fairly soon and I intend to cross-reference Bellant's names in his book to my index of other JFK books to see how close he comes to listing JFK-implicated parties.
James Lateer
Bellant was not focused on the JFK Assassination, and was not as focused on individuals [although he mentions and focuses on some] as in groups that were formed - and how through those groups things were done and what was the 'plan' behind the groups and the mutual benefit those on the right in the US and those on the right from elsewhere found a meeting of the minds and means and deeds. But one doesn't have to go far, if educated on the names associated with the assassination to plug in names that were associated with his named groups [or associated/similar ones not named].... He was looking at a larger structure, parts of which were used to culture a far right-wing [often neo-Nazi] culture, disguise deeds and train/hide individuals that were used for Dallas and many other events. These types of groups sometimes change over time or change their names, come into and out of existence - but the larger structure has been in place in slightly changing forms from WWII to present.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
The wierdest thing about Biden' book (we listened to it on audiobooks on vacation) was that he had no other political issue that he claimed as his throughout the book. Again, I could be proven wrong about that generalization by detail-minded folks on this site. Suffice it to say that I don't remember him discussing any issues or causes except Croatia.
So then Russ Bellant gives a vivid impression about the Croatian Ustashi and the implication is that they were very active post WWII.
For those who haven't heard of the Ustashi, you only need to know that even Hitler and the Nazis were horrified by the activities of the Ustashi and sent troops to Croatia to break them up and jail them. THEY WERE EVEN CONSIDERED TOO EVIL BY HITLER'S STANDARDS.
So the biggest question in my mind is this: was Biden one of those Senators like Senator Thomas Dodd of Connecticut who was involved with the Russ Bellant type of ethnic fascists?
I'm not saying that Biden was so involved, but it would be a fertile field to explore.
Again, I will summarize my impressions of the Bellant book when I finish. I also plan to compare Bellant's villains to those of Dr. Jeffrey Caufield in "General Walker..."
Dr. Caufield has pretty much the same take on the Right-Wing back in the day, and as it relates to 11-22-63. But Caufield takes about 750 pages to say what Bellant manages to say (maybe even better) in 90 pages. That's a tribute to Bellant IMHO.
I'm finally done with the Old Nazis, The New Right And The Republican Party by Russ Belant.
Here are my impressions of Belant's work:
1. Russ does a unique service in painting a detailed picture of the American Security Council. The only other such description that I know of is in the book "Self-Destruct:.." by Judge Robert Morris. But Judge Morris portrays the American Security Council to be more like aging has-beens, including people like James J Angleton (as it stood in the 1970's) and similar aging historical figures.
2. I had always thought that the three groups most likely to have been involved in the JFK assassination were the American Security Council, the Tolstoy Foundation and the Anti-Bolshevik Nations (ABN). Russ paints a nasty picture of these groups among many others.
3. But Russ does not present any information, statistical or otherwise as to any specific bad deeds or criminal acts, etc. that were committed by these people after they came to America. Russ relies on the historical guilt carried over from the WWII era. The assumption is that the WWII guilt is impossible to live down. Is it? That's almost a theological question. It's like laying the guilt of Stalin's crimes on Putin. Is that fair? Maybe yes, maybe no. Not in every case or on every issue.
4. Specifically, Russ is very unfair and inaccurate in his mention of the German CDU party. He describes them as a party "that brought a variety of Nazi elements into its fold" (p 36). Taken by itself, that's not an accurate over-all description of the CDU party in Germany. It was nowhere near being, as a whole, pro-Nazi as Russ seems to imply.
5. I'm totally in sympathy with Russ that nobody should glorify or sympathize with fascism. I totally agree. I think fascists are bastards IMHO. But merely identifying a group as "sympathetic to fascism" doesn't tell us how much influence they actually had. Despite the influence over the Republican Party that these groups must have had, they may have been overshadowed by, say, the Isreali Lobby, the Saudi-Arabian Lobby, the Vatican Lobby, the Mormon Lobby, etc. etc. Russ doesn't estimate how many votes they swung, or to what extent they were, by themselves, effective in getting Nixon or Ronald Reagan elected. I honestly don't have a clue about the real answer to that question.
6. Dr. Jeffrey Caufield in his book "General Walker..." presents endless information about right-wing elements in regard to the JFK assassination. If you rule out names like Richard Nixon, Dwight Eisenhower and John F, Kennedy, then you're left with only a small number of names reported by both Russ and Dr. Caufield. They are Willis Carto of Liberty Lobby, David Duke, Bonner Fellers, Marvin K. Hart, H.L. Hunt, Charles Pichel (of the Shickshenny Knights), George Schultz, Joroslav Stetsko, George Stratemeyer, General Charles Willoughby, William Turner and General Robert E. Wood.
These are a small number of names compared to the hundreds mentioned either by Belant or by Caufield.
So I would conclude that Russ does not connect any of the groups (in a significant way), to the JFK assassination. Nor does Dr. Caufield regarding the Belant groups.
7. Having said all this, I would still agree with Russ that nobody in the US typically has any clue as to the extent of the influence, be it large (or above average) of these basically sinister groups.
8. Regarding the Latin-American death squads Russ describes, however, they are obviously part of the picture and they were (and are) murderers, plain and simple. And the members of these groups who were (and are) approving of war crimes, they are obviously losers and even delusional. But there may have been members who were merely sentimental about the "old days" and or "the old country", especially Ukrainians.
9. In my opinion, Russ vastly underplays the role of organized religion in regard to all these groups. The Russian Orthodox Church, the Vatican, the Ukrainian religious movements were much more influential than reported by Russ. He basically white-washes this entire issue. The only church group he criticizes is the Romanian Orthodox Church. There were, in fact, many others involved.
10. Finally, the Belant book proves (to me) that the involvement of the Obama administration in the Ukraine (and its collaboration with openly Nazi factions) is still questionable and likely tainted by the Nazi history and should be repudiated.
