Virgil Lee Griffin Quotes
I don’t see any difference in killing a communist in North Carolina and killing a communist in Vietnam.
On November 3, 1979, the KKK had attacked a demonstration of Communists in Greensboro, NC and murdered 5 communists. The head of the Klan in NC saw no moral difference in gunning down 5 unarmed demonstrators and killing communist soldiers in The Vietnam War. Despite news video which clearly shows the shootings, an all white jury acquitted the 6 murderers. Later, they and the Greensboro police force were found guilty in a civil trial.
Virgil Lee Griffin, 1944-2009, Imperial Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan, Interview, Biography Channel, City Confidential—Greensboro, Aired on May 9, 2012
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The CIA, like most intelligence services, attract some unusual and abnormal people who in many settings might be considered mentally unbalanced or sociopathic. Many intelligence service operatives are often recruited for some of these qualities. This is always a risk for the agency both from the potential scandal such as when the Central Intelligence Agency utilized war criminals at the end of the Second World War and the unbalanced agent going off on his own. Pope flew unopposed Central Intelligence Agency armed planes over communist controlled Northeastern Indonesia, attacking both military and civilian targets. He was captured and although sentenced to death, spent 4 years in jail before his release was negotiated while the United States government denied that we had anything to do with the death and destruction that the CIA planes produced.
Two days later, Ohio National Guardsmen following Rhodes's orders killed four unarmed, non-violent, students on the Kent State campus and wounded nine others. The claim of the governor's apologists was that he was speaking metaphorically and never wanted anyone killed or injured. After this quotation and a few others, politicians—particularly Presidents and Governors—have been more aware that their statements and words may have very significant consequences including death, so they are particularly careful of their rhetoric when there are controversial incidents. Note that Governor Rhodes saw students protesting a war as dangerous revolutionaries. None of the students who were killed had been trained in anything revolutionary.
The occasion was the visit to Washington of French Minister M. Jean Letourneau. The French were fighting the communists in Vietnam and the U. S., not yet in the fight, promised material and political aid, but no military participation. It was almost a decade later that America sent its first military personnel to Vietnam. The West was persuaded that the French could handle the situation. When they were defeated, America and Britain assumed that it was the notorious military incompetence of the French that accounted for the situation rather than the competence and commitment of the Vietnamese Communists and their support of the majority of the people.
The Kuomintang nationalists under Chiang Kai-Shek tried to stay in power in China, but their corruption and incompetency at government lost them the support of most of the Chinese. The Chinese communists took over the government. The Nationalists then invaded the offshore island of Taiwan but claimed to be the rightful government of all of China. For many years they controlled the Chinese seat in the UN and they refused to recognize the fact that they had failed to gain the loyalty of the Chinese people.
This is one of the most indelicate political statements ever made. Normally, the argument that communists should be murdered is incendiary enough, but this remark came shortly after the Arizona attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords where she was shot in the head.
Howe was specifically referring to the Gastonia strike of 1929. The Communists, never known for their skill at organizing labor action, sold out the workers in order to have a political issue to campaign on throughout the world. Meanwhile, the Southern establishment saw the strike as an Armageddon where Communism and racial integration had to be stopped cold and therefore not only refused even reasonable demands, but used the National Guard {592420} and law enforcement authorities to murder and jail innocent people. Both sides got what they wanted unfortunately, with the communists cleverly exposing to the rest of the world, the worst of Southern racism. All civil rights protests thereafter in America were claimed by the Southern segregationists to be communist organized, and even affirmative action efforts are still often so labeled.
Virgil Lee Griffin was a leader of a Ku Klux Klan chapter in North Carolina who was involved in the November 3, 1979 Greensboro massacre, a violent clash by the KKK and American Nazi Party with labor organizers and activists from the Communist Workers Party at a legal march in the county seat of Guilford County. It resulted in the deaths of five marchers, including a woman.
