I noted with sadness the Times News choose to give free advertisement to the John Birch Society on the front page of their paper yesterday. It is also notable that a recently elected Republican precinct captain is the assistant organizer for the JBS event, Liz Niccum. She was part of a dust-up in the local Republican Party and signed a complaint along with central committeeman George Nemitz over their perceived irregularities about appointing committee vacancies. It seems that many of the new precinct captains around here have some interesting friends, or in McManus’ speak, comrades.
Every member of the community that cares about civil rights, hates racism, and remembers the witch hunting, anti-communism of Joe McCarthy should be up in arms over this event. (For those under 30, the John Birch Society is the same group that brought your parents “Get out of the UN” and “Impeach Earl Warren!”) I am offended by the coverage that was given to this event. I ask you to take the time to write a letter to the paper and KMVT in protest.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that tracks racism and hate groups across the country, listed Bircher President John F. McManus on its “Meet the Patriots” list as a resurgent. Their site describes these so-called patriots as “people who generally believe that the federal government is an evil entity that is engaged in a secret conspiracy to impose martial law, herd those who resist into concentration camps, and force the United States into a socialistic “New World Order.”” Here is an excerpt of his profile at SPLC:
McManus, who joined the society’s staff in 1966, has continued to promote its founding principles. The central thesis is that a sinister cabal of politicians, bankers, globalists and other elites throughout history – including the Illuminati, every U.S. president since Woodrow Wilson and the Council on Foreign Relations – have worked to peel away the rights of individuals and put the U.S. on a path toward atotalitarian one-world government…An ultraconservative Roman Catholic, McManus has been accused of anti-Semitism, a charge he has denied. In 2005, according to The New York Times, Birch staffers who were ousted amid internal turmoil leaked recordings of McManus saying that Judaism was a dead religion and that militant Jews have influenced the Freemasons, who were “Satan’s agents” and part of the Illuminati conspiracy to cause world upheaval.
Tax evaders, militia members, right-wing bloggers, and radical radio personalities round out the rest of the Southern Poverty’s 2010 Meet the Patriots list. http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2010/summer/meet-the-patriots?page=0,1 McManus and the once shrinking JBS are riding the tide of racism and anti-amnesty fever. KMVT gave McManus a free sound bite last night. He spouted out the myth that Mexican-Americans plan to create a new country by adding Arizona, Texas, and California to Mexico. This falsehood has been floated by Bill O’Reilly and others and is very dangerous because it paints immigrants as traitors. All evidence available on immigration contradicts this. http://www.alternet.org/story/17653/ But facts never stop people and groups like this.
Supposedly over 100 planned to attend the meeting to listen to this racism veiled as concern about “treating people fairly as individuals.” http://www.magicvalley.com/news/local/article_d6bf87a3-9cc8-59b5-a107-b37168c47bb5.html I challenge readers and viewers to let the editos and station managers and the community know that Southern Idaho is too great to hate and that we have no need of McManus and his kind.
