J. Edgar Hoover Quotes
King has shown not only a willingness but even an eagerness to accept communist aid, to support communist causes, to associate and confer with known communist leaders, and to work closely with and rely on the advice and guidance of dedicated communists with concealed affiliations, despite the fact that they have been identified reliably to him.
Hoover gave this report to President Lyndon Johnson. It was 11 pages long and provided no data or proof of the many accusations. Hoover viewed the entire Civil Rights Movement as part of the Communist initiative to weaken and undermine the United States. There were no Black FBI agents and Hoover himself was an inveterate racist. The FBI worked hand in hand with local police in the South and most agents supported legal racial segregation. Hoover’s definition of a Communist varied from time to time. Johnson worked closely with King after he had read this report and discussed it with some of his staff, so it may have been that Johnson didn’t believe the conclusions. Later historical analysis showed that there were two key people that were close to King who had early communist connections earlier. Both were active socialists at the time but neither was then involved with the Russian controlled American Communist party. The Official Position of the Communist Party was a strong anti-segregation program, and Hoover and most Southern Segregationists believed that all opponents of legal segregation—including demonstrators and marchers--were Communists or were organized and Controlled by the Communists.
J. Edgar Hoover, 1895-1972, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI Top Secret Report on Martin Luther King
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The logic of the Southern leaders and some Northern racists like FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was to fight the Civil Rights Movement using the Red Scare. The Communist Party called for an end to legal segregation and discrimination against Negroes. Therefore, those who advocated an end to segregation were either Communists or dupes of the Communists was their “logic”.
Bunch was the undersecretary-general of the United Nations who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his mediation efforts in the Middle East. Archie Roosevelt and his extreme right wing associates thought that anyone who worked in the UN was a communist and had no respect for the Norwegian Nobel Prize Committee. In the spirit of Archie Roosevelt’s father, the Theodore Roosevelt made the award to Buche and ignored Archie’s slanderous attack. Surprising to most people who know of President Theodore Roosevelt’s general liberal views, his 4th son was an ultraconservative who founded and joined racist, anti-Semitic, right wing organizations, and to the distress of many in the family and without lent his name to many of the most extreme right wing causes and organizations.
The reason that this is a noteworthy quotation is that it illustrates how the immoral political tactics of the junior senator from Wisconsin, Joseph P. McCarthy, was turned into a noun and used to describe a type of unethical political behavior the world over. Even in South Africa, labeling political tactics as McCarthyism is an effective accusation. Senator McCarthy himself was censured by the Senate for his tactics of claiming people were communists when he had no evidence of same and claiming that he had long lists of communists in the government when he did not have them.
Writing about President George Washington:. Bache, a grandson of Benjamin Franklin, was jailed under the Sedition Act for his writings against the government.
McCarthy was one of the most interesting political phenomena of politics in the 1950s. He was an alcoholic megalomaniac who made wild accusations about communists everywhere and that the Secretary of State and other politicians were communists. He claimed to have a list of thousands of communists in high positions of government. His accusations were so dramatic that most people assumed that there were facts behind them otherwise no rational man would say such things. But it turned out that not a single accusation was ever proven. When McCarthy was esposed, he was censured by the Senate and he lost most of his political credibility and shortly thereafter died as a result of his severe alcoholism.
Even the President was not spared during the McCarthy era. The red scare was so pervasive, that a lunatic fringe ultra right wing organization could call the President a “communist dupe” and be taken seriously be much of the media who were themselves intimidated and might be accused of being communists at any moment. It was a very low point in America’s history.
At the time, the Red Scare was prevalent and many Americans were terrified of communists. It was a very effective political tactic to imply that an opponent was a communist or communist sympathizer. For another harsh smear of Stevenson, see {619523}.
In the beginning of the Cold War, the Communists of the world frequently attacked the United States for its Racial Segregation and Discrimination before the Civil Rights Bill was passed. It was one of the great shames and weaknesses of America as slavery had been earlier. Southern racists then conflated the civil rights issue and Communism. Since all communists seemed opposed to segregation, then it followed, they erroneously reasoned, that all opponents of segregation were communists. See {622175} for another of Helms vicious smears using this twisted logic.
In Helms bizarre view, the University of North Carolina which had desegregated and had Black students and faculty was communist. In the beginning of the Cold War, the Communists of the world frequently attacked the United States for its Racial Segregation and Discrimination before the Civil Rights Bill was passed. It was one of the great shames and weaknesses of America as slavery had been earlier. Southern racists then conflated the civil rights issue and Communism. Since all communists seemed opposed to segregation, then it followed, they erroneously reasoned, that all opponents of segregation were communists. See {622174} for another of Helms vicious smears using this twisted logic.
He like many others had signed petitions for good causes that were circulated by Communist organizations. Racists then used that fact to claim that desegregation, voting rights and anti-lynching laws were communist ideas. With the Red Scare operating in the 1950s, Terkel, like so many others were Blacklisted and denied opportunities to earn a living. Many claimed that they had been duped and don’t really believe in these causes. Some like Terkel would not. He opposed most of the Communist programs, but agreed with some. Ironically, ideas like anti-lynching and voting rights which were then labeled as Communist ideology, are today supported by the vast majority of Americans.
Ever since the end of WWII, many Republicans have called their Democratic Opponents Marxists and Communists even for a conservative Democrat like Kennedy. Even Ronald Reagan stooped to this tactic before he ran for the Presidency.
There are few national organizations who would keep a director who made statements as vicious and racist as this about anyone much less the President of the United States. The use of the Nazi slogan of “subhuman mongrels” was stunning at the time. However, the National Rifle Association is a single issue organization and of the racists and neo-Nazis in America many have affiliated with the NRA so forcing Nugent out would have caused a split in their ranks. The larger problem was for Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, running for Governor, who kept campaigning with Nugent and even refused to repudiate Nugent’s language or facts. He too wanted the votes of the racists, KKK and Nazis of Texas and did not want to anger them. However, many of the independents and conservative Democrats who otherwise might have supported Abbot will likely not. One of the biggest problem for every candidate is what to do when one of his extreme supporters makes extreme and reprehensible statements. The strongest candidates repudiate them right away and if that loses a few votes from the base, so be it. The weaker candidates try and play the middle and remain silent. A month later, after a huge press story covered the media, Nugent made a half-hearted apology.
This quotation illustrates a peculiar situation with regard to President Barack Obama. Among some subgroups of the United States, there are people who hate President Obama. And some of them, throughout his Presidency, has described Obama in these obviously false phrases. They manage to hold these false belief’s despite the fact that the refuting evidence is very easy to find. Obama was a very devout Protestant. And his political world view was not communism or Marxism, but middle of the road. He was not even in the left wing of his Democratic Party. However what De Varona and others with these seemingly absurd views discount the data because it is part of a communist conspiracy to plant false information so they can put their man in the White House.
King had called for peace negotiations with North Vietnam to include the Viet Cong, ceasing the bombing of North Vietnam, and seating Communist China to the United Nations. These were all contrary to U. S. Policy at the time. They all became U. S. Policy later.
This quotation illustrates one end of the range of union leadership regarding communism. Some union leader were communists; some were pro Marxist but against the Russian style of dictatorial communism. Others did not care for Communism at all but saw the communists as an effective tool that really frightened American corporate management and politicians so they looked reasonable by comparison and they therefore wanted the communists around. Last were those like Reuther who was aggressively anti-communist and wanted labor to expel them whenever they turn up. However, what is ironic is that Reuther himself was labeled a Communist by many right wingers who also used Reuther’s “duck” test. Reuther wanted a national health insurance system; so did the Communists. He advocated and end to segregation; so did the Communists. He fought for workers having a say in management, a classic communist demand, and many other similarities.
President Lyndon Johnson was distressed over the effectiveness of the anti-war protests and thought that the American leftists, who were among the organizers of the protests, were acting under direction of Russia. He had previously ordered Helms to investigate that, which was (and is) technically illegal. Helms complied, but what the CIA found was not what the president wanted to hear. He told Helms to keep investigating.
His older brother was running for Consul—the highest elected office of the Roman Empire. The Handbook, was his advice to his brother as to how to conduct his campaign.
John Edgar Hoover was an American law enforcement administrator who served as the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States. He was appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation – the FBI's predecessor – in 1924 and was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director for another 37 years until his death in 1972 at the age of 77. Hoover has been credited with building the FBI into a larger crime-fighting agency than it was at its inception and with instituting a number of modernizations to police technology, such as a centralized fingerprint file and forensic laboratories. Hoover is also credited with establishing and expanding a national blacklist, referred to as the FBI Index or Index List, renamed in 2001 as the Terrorist Screening Database which the FBI still compiles and manages.