Willis Carto
Encyclopedia
Willis Allison Carto is a longtime figure on the American far right
. He describes himself as Jeffersonian
and populist
, but is primarily known for his promotion of antisemitic conspiracy theories
and Holocaust denial
.
. Yockey's best known book, Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics, was adopted by Carto as his own guiding ideology. Later, Carto would define his ideology as Jeffersonian
and populist
rather than National Socialist, particularly in Carto's 1982 book, Profiles in Populism. That book presented sympathetic profiles of several United States political figures including Thomas Jefferson
and Andrew Jackson
, as well as the controversial Catholic
priest Father Charles Coughlin
and Henry Ford
.
, which remained in operation under his control until 2001, when the organization was forced into bankruptcy
as a result of a lawsuit
. Liberty Lobby was perhaps best known for publishing the newspaper The Spotlight
between 1975 and 2001.
Carto and several Spotlight staff members and writers have since founded a new newspaper called the American Free Press
. The paper includes articles from syndicated columnists who have no direct ties to Carto or his organizations. Like its predecessor, it takes a populist tone and focuses on conspiracy theory, nationalist economics, and Israel. One of its writers, Michael Collins Piper
, hosts a weekday talk program on shortwave radio that is pointedly anti-Zionist.
via the Legion for the Survival of Freedom organization. The magazine
was once a highly respected periodical associated with H.L. Mencken, but was failing by the time Carto acquired it. It was published until 1980.
Carto ran a group called Youth for George Wallace to aid the third party presidential campaign of George Wallace
in 1968
. When the campaign failed, he converted what remained of the Youth for George Wallace organization into the National Youth Alliance
. As National Chairman for this group, Carto was successful in recruiting William Luther Pierce
, who later became famous for his authorship of The Turner Diaries
. Eventually Carto lost control of the National Youth Alliance
to Pierce, who transformed it into the National Alliance, which is today a white nationalist and white separatist political organization.
, which published a number of books on white racialism, including Yockey's Imperium and David Hoggan
's The Myth of the Six Million, one of the first books to deny the Holocaust
. Noontide Press later became closely associated with the Institute for Historical Review
(IHR), and fell out of Carto's hands at the same time as the IHR did. The IHR was founded by Willis Carto in 1979, with the intent of promoting the proposition that the Nazi Holocaust never happened—a view known as Holocaust denial
. After losing control of Noontide Press and the IHR in a hostile takeover by former associates, Carto started another publication, The Barnes Review
, which also focuses on Holocaust denial.
and Christian Identity
members. Olympic athlete Bob Richards
(1984), David Duke
(a founder of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and a future Louisiana state representative, 1988) and former Green Beret
Bo Gritz
(1992) were the Populist Party's only three presidential candidates. It folded before it could nominate a candidate for the 1996 elections.
as a vehicle for espousing his views. It was eventually a financial failure. Liberty Lobby and American Free Press
also sponsored the Radio Free America talk show.
In 2004, Carto joined in signing the New Orleans Protocol on behalf of American Free Press
. The New Orleans Protocol seeks to "mainstream our cause" by reducing internecine warfare. It was written by David Duke
.
Carto has also been featured as a guest on The Political Cesspool
.
Far right
Far-right, extreme right, hard right, radical right, and ultra-right are terms used to discuss the qualitative or quantitative position a group or person occupies within right-wing politics. Far-right politics may involve anti-immigration and anti-integration stances towards groups that are...
. He describes himself as Jeffersonian
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...
and populist
Populism
Populism can be defined as an ideology, political philosophy, or type of discourse. Generally, a common theme compares "the people" against "the elite", and urges social and political system changes. It can also be defined as a rhetorical style employed by members of various political or social...
, but is primarily known for his promotion of antisemitic conspiracy theories
Antisemitic canard
An antisemitic canard is a false story inciting antisemitism. Despite being thoroughly disproved, antisemitic canards are often part of broader theories of Jewish conspiracies. According to Kenneth S. Stern,Historically, Jews have not fared well around conspiracy theories. Such ideas fuel...
and Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial is the act of denying the genocide of Jews in World War II, usually referred to as the Holocaust. The key claims of Holocaust denial are: the German Nazi government had no official policy or intention of exterminating Jews, Nazi authorities did not use extermination camps and gas...
.
Influences on Carto
Willis Carto has been described as a devotee of the writings of Francis Parker YockeyFrancis Parker Yockey
Francis Parker Yockey was an American political thinker and polemicist best known for his neo-Spenglerian book Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics, published under the pen name Ulick Varange in 1948. This 600-page book argues for a culture-based, totalitarian path for the...
. Yockey's best known book, Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics, was adopted by Carto as his own guiding ideology. Later, Carto would define his ideology as Jeffersonian
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...
and populist
Populism
Populism can be defined as an ideology, political philosophy, or type of discourse. Generally, a common theme compares "the people" against "the elite", and urges social and political system changes. It can also be defined as a rhetorical style employed by members of various political or social...
rather than National Socialist, particularly in Carto's 1982 book, Profiles in Populism. That book presented sympathetic profiles of several United States political figures including Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...
and Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson was the seventh President of the United States . Based in frontier Tennessee, Jackson was a politician and army general who defeated the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend , and the British at the Battle of New Orleans...
, as well as the controversial Catholic
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...
priest Father Charles Coughlin
Charles Coughlin
Father Charles Edward Coughlin was a controversial Roman Catholic priest at Royal Oak, Michigan's National Shrine of the Little Flower church. He was one of the first political leaders to use radio to reach a mass audience, as more than thirty million tuned to his weekly broadcasts during the...
and Henry Ford
Henry Ford
Henry Ford was an American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry...
.
Liberty Lobby and newspapers
In 1955, Carto founded an organization called Liberty LobbyLiberty Lobby
Liberty Lobby was an American political advocacy organization founded in 1958 that went bankrupt in 2001. It was founded by Willis Carto. In their own words,-Antisemitic world-view:...
, which remained in operation under his control until 2001, when the organization was forced into bankruptcy
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....
as a result of a lawsuit
Lawsuit
A lawsuit or "suit in law" is a civil action brought in a court of law in which a plaintiff, a party who claims to have incurred loss as a result of a defendant's actions, demands a legal or equitable remedy. The defendant is required to respond to the plaintiff's complaint...
. Liberty Lobby was perhaps best known for publishing the newspaper The Spotlight
The Spotlight
The Spotlight was a weekly newspaper in the United States, published in Washington, D.C. from September 1975 to July 2001 by the now-defunct Liberty Lobby...
between 1975 and 2001.
Carto and several Spotlight staff members and writers have since founded a new newspaper called the American Free Press
American Free Press
The American Free Press is a weekly newspaper published in the United States.According to one former correspondent, the newspaper's direct ancestor was the publication The Spotlight, which ceased publication in 2001 when its parent company, Liberty Lobby, was forced into bankruptcy...
. The paper includes articles from syndicated columnists who have no direct ties to Carto or his organizations. Like its predecessor, it takes a populist tone and focuses on conspiracy theory, nationalist economics, and Israel. One of its writers, Michael Collins Piper
Michael Collins Piper
Michael Collins Piper is a political writer, conspiracy theorist, and talk radio host living in Washington D.C. He is a regular contributor to the American Free Press, a newspaper backed by Willis Carto....
, hosts a weekday talk program on shortwave radio that is pointedly anti-Zionist.
Other activities in the 1950s and 1960s
In 1966, Carto acquired control of The American MercuryThe American Mercury
The American Mercury was an American magazine published from 1924 to 1981. It was founded as the brainchild of H. L. Mencken and drama critic George Jean Nathan. The magazine featured writing by some of the most important writers in the United States through the 1920s and 1930s...
via the Legion for the Survival of Freedom organization. The magazine
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
was once a highly respected periodical associated with H.L. Mencken, but was failing by the time Carto acquired it. It was published until 1980.
Carto ran a group called Youth for George Wallace to aid the third party presidential campaign of George Wallace
George Wallace
George Corley Wallace, Jr. was the 45th Governor of Alabama, serving four terms: 1963–1967, 1971–1979 and 1983–1987. "The most influential loser" in 20th-century U.S. politics, according to biographers Dan T. Carter and Stephan Lesher, he ran for U.S...
in 1968
United States presidential election, 1968
The United States presidential election of 1968 was the 46th quadrennial United States presidential election. Coming four years after Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson won in a historic landslide, it saw Johnson forced out of the race and Republican Richard Nixon elected...
. When the campaign failed, he converted what remained of the Youth for George Wallace organization into the National Youth Alliance
National Youth Alliance
The National Youth Alliance was a right-wing political organization founded on November 15, 1968 at the Army and Navy Club by Willis Carto, head of the right-wing Liberty Lobby. The aim of the group was to recruit students to counter liberal and Marxist groups on college campuses like Students for...
. As National Chairman for this group, Carto was successful in recruiting William Luther Pierce
William Luther Pierce
William Luther Pierce III was the leader of the white separatist National Alliance organization, and one of the most important ideologists of the white nationalist movement. Pierce originally worked as an assistant professor of physics at Oregon State University, before he became involved in...
, who later became famous for his authorship of The Turner Diaries
The Turner Diaries
The Turner Diaries is a novel written in 1978 by William Luther Pierce under the pseudonym "Andrew Macdonald"...
. Eventually Carto lost control of the National Youth Alliance
National Youth Alliance
The National Youth Alliance was a right-wing political organization founded on November 15, 1968 at the Army and Navy Club by Willis Carto, head of the right-wing Liberty Lobby. The aim of the group was to recruit students to counter liberal and Marxist groups on college campuses like Students for...
to Pierce, who transformed it into the National Alliance, which is today a white nationalist and white separatist political organization.
Carto, revisionism, and Holocaust denial
Carto was also the founder of a publishing company called Noontide PressNoontide Press
Noontide Press is an American publishing entity which describes itself as a publisher of "hard-to-find books and recordings from a dissident, 'politically incorrect' perspective." It publishes numerous antisemitic titles, including The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and The International Jew...
, which published a number of books on white racialism, including Yockey's Imperium and David Hoggan
David Hoggan
David Leslie Hoggan was an American historical writer, author of The Forced War: When Peaceful Revision Failed and other works in the German and English languages.-Early life:...
's The Myth of the Six Million, one of the first books to deny the Holocaust
Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial is the act of denying the genocide of Jews in World War II, usually referred to as the Holocaust. The key claims of Holocaust denial are: the German Nazi government had no official policy or intention of exterminating Jews, Nazi authorities did not use extermination camps and gas...
. Noontide Press later became closely associated with the Institute for Historical Review
Institute for Historical Review
The Institute for Historical Review , founded in 1978, is an American organization that describes itself as a "public-interest educational, research and publishing center dedicated to promoting greater public awareness of history." Critics have accused it of being an antisemitic "pseudo-scholarly...
(IHR), and fell out of Carto's hands at the same time as the IHR did. The IHR was founded by Willis Carto in 1979, with the intent of promoting the proposition that the Nazi Holocaust never happened—a view known as Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial is the act of denying the genocide of Jews in World War II, usually referred to as the Holocaust. The key claims of Holocaust denial are: the German Nazi government had no official policy or intention of exterminating Jews, Nazi authorities did not use extermination camps and gas...
. After losing control of Noontide Press and the IHR in a hostile takeover by former associates, Carto started another publication, The Barnes Review
Barnes Review
The Barnes Review is a bi-monthly magazine founded in 1994 by Willis Carto, dedicated to historical revisionism such as Holocaust denial. Willis Carto had earlier founded the Institute for Historical Review in 1979 but lost control of that organization in an internal takeover by former...
, which also focuses on Holocaust denial.
Populist Party (1984–1996)
In 1984, Willis Carto was involved in starting a new political party called the Populist Party. It quickly fell out of his hands in a hostile takeover by disgruntled former associates. Critics asserted that this Populist Party (not to be confused with the Populist Party of 1889) was little more than an electoral vehicle for current and former Ku Klux KlanKu Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
and Christian Identity
Christian Identity
Christian Identity is a label applied to a wide variety of loosely affiliated believers and churches with a racialized theology. Many promote a Eurocentric interpretation of Christianity.According to Chester L...
members. Olympic athlete Bob Richards
Bob Richards
The Reverend Robert Eugene Richards, known as Bob Richards , known as the "Vaulting Vicar" or the "Pole Vaulting Parson" in his competitive days, was a versatile athlete who made three Olympic teams in two events...
(1984), David Duke
David Duke
David Ernest Duke is a former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan an American activist and writer, and former Republican Louisiana State Representative. He was also a former candidate in the Republican presidential primaries in 1992, and in the Democratic presidential primaries in...
(a founder of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and a future Louisiana state representative, 1988) and former Green Beret
United States Army Special Forces
The United States Army Special Forces, also known as the Green Berets because of their distinctive service headgear, are a special operations force tasked with six primary missions: unconventional warfare, foreign internal defense, special reconnaissance, direct action, hostage rescue, and...
Bo Gritz
Bo Gritz
James Gordon "Bo" Gritz is a former United States Army Special Forces officer who served in the Vietnam War. His post-war activities notably attempted POW rescues in conjunction with the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue have proven controversial. Gritz lives near Sandy Valley, Nevada with his wife...
(1992) were the Populist Party's only three presidential candidates. It folded before it could nominate a candidate for the 1996 elections.
Other activities
Carto's Liberty Lobby acquired the Sun Radio Network in December 1989, and attempted to use talk radioTalk radio
Talk radio is a radio format containing discussion about topical issues. Most shows are regularly hosted by a single individual, and often feature interviews with a number of different guests. Talk radio typically includes an element of listener participation, usually by broadcasting live...
as a vehicle for espousing his views. It was eventually a financial failure. Liberty Lobby and American Free Press
American Free Press
The American Free Press is a weekly newspaper published in the United States.According to one former correspondent, the newspaper's direct ancestor was the publication The Spotlight, which ceased publication in 2001 when its parent company, Liberty Lobby, was forced into bankruptcy...
also sponsored the Radio Free America talk show.
In 2004, Carto joined in signing the New Orleans Protocol on behalf of American Free Press
American Free Press
The American Free Press is a weekly newspaper published in the United States.According to one former correspondent, the newspaper's direct ancestor was the publication The Spotlight, which ceased publication in 2001 when its parent company, Liberty Lobby, was forced into bankruptcy...
. The New Orleans Protocol seeks to "mainstream our cause" by reducing internecine warfare. It was written by David Duke
David Duke
David Ernest Duke is a former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan an American activist and writer, and former Republican Louisiana State Representative. He was also a former candidate in the Republican presidential primaries in 1992, and in the Democratic presidential primaries in...
.
Carto has also been featured as a guest on The Political Cesspool
The Political Cesspool
The Political Cesspool is a weekly talk radio show founded by James Edwards, and syndicated by Liberty News Radio Network and Accent Radio Network in the United States...
.
Further reading
- Coogan, Kevin. (1999) Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International. Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia.
- Michael, George. (2008) Willis Carto and the American Far Right. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.
- Mintz, Frank P. (1985) The Liberty Lobby and the American Right: Race, Conspiracy, and Culture. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
- Piper, Michael C. (1994) Best Witness: The Mermelstein Affair Washington: Center for Historical Review. (Afterword by Carto.)