Date: Sun, 26 Feb 1995 12:44:05 -0800 Subject: More on the racist Pioneer Fund Given that
Date: Sun, 26 Feb 1995 12:44:05 -0800
From: Nathan Newman
Subject: More on the racist Pioneer Fund
Given that much of the early support for anti-immigrant research came
from the Pioneer Fund, it's important to understand the background of the
racist right and its link to the Pioneer Fund.
Here's some more detail from Chip Bertlet's Political Research Associates:
/* Written 7:10 AM Jan 12, 1995 by mlyon in igc:p.news */
/* ---------- "Pioneer Fund links with policy-make" ---------- */
================================================================
Policy-Making Influence of the Pioneer Foundation
Our recent information showing how discredited racist sources were
cited in _The Bell Curve_ might make it appear as though
organizations such as the Pioneer Fund are simply lunatic fringe
groups, with little or no influence on public policy. It should
be clear that his is not the case, given that much of the
racists' platform -- ending welfare programs, restricting
immigration, cutting funds to compensatory education programs,
scaling back affirmative action programs in employment and
education, limiting school integration -- is being enacted or
seriously considered.
The key figure in the Pioneer Fund nexus is Roger Pearson. He is
one of the main PF recipients ($787,400 as of 1993) and is editor
of two important racist journals: _The Mankind Quarterly_ (articles
from which are frequently cited in _The Bell Curve_) and The _Journal
of Social, Political and Economic Studies_ (which has published
racist articles by Jensen, Levin, Gottfredson, and other PF
recipients). Pearson is the linchpin of the whole racist
operation, and is well-connected to influential fascist forces in
the U.S. and worldwide. A book _ Old Nazis, the New Right, and the
Republican Party_, by Russ Bellant, who provides the following
information:
(1) The Northern League, for which Pearson was the London-based
organizer in 1958, was a "white supremacist European organization
that included former Nazi SS officials." In 1959, Willis Carto,
founder of the racist and anti-semitic Liberty Lobby, arranged a
speaking tour for Pearson in the U.S.. Carto's magazine, _Right_,
called Pearson "the world's foremost spokesman for the scientific
and forward-looking view of nationalism. He is held in renown by
white nationalists the world over." Pearson moved to the U.S. in
1965 in order to edit _Western Destiny_, a Carto publication whose
editorial board included well-known racists and anti-Semites,
including Austin App, the pro-Nazi leader of the German American
National Congress (DANK) who wrote _The Six Million Swindle_, which
claims the holocaust never happened. Pearson published four racist
monographs during this time, one of which was called _Race and
Civilization_, which stated that it was based on the ideas of Hans
F.K. Gunther, who was a leading racial theoretician for the Third
Reich, and who later worked with Pearson organizing the Northern
League. In his 1966 book Eugenics and Race, Pearson wrote: "If a
nation with a more advanced, more specialized, or in any way
superior sets of genes mingles with, instead of exterminating, an
inferior tribe, then it commits racial suicide...." It's no wonder
that Pearson's monographs are still sold by neo- Nazi groups
today.
(2) In spite of, or perhaps because of, his fascist past, Pearson
became an influential political player when he moved to
Washington, D.C. in 1975. He became the editor of the American
Security Council's _Journal of International Relations_ and served
on the board of the ASC's American Foreign Policy Institute. The
ASC was formed and run by retired military officers, corporate
executives, and conservative politicians to promote a program of
heavy military spending, support for cold war policies, aid to the
Nicaraguan contras and UNITA in Angola, etc. Its political arm is
the Coalition for Peace Through Strength, whose constituent
organizations have ties to the fascist right, which Bellant
details. The ASC was a highly influential organization during the
Reagan and Bush administrations, with close ties to the military,
the National Security Council, and State Dept. officials.
Pearson's co-editors on the ASC's journal was James Angleton,
former CIA deputy director for counterintelligence, and Robert
Richardson, a retired Air Force general later revealed to be
aiding gunrunning to Libya. So Pearson moved in high governmental
and political circles.
(3) During this time Pearson became associated with the Heritage
Foundation, a right-wing think tank influential in forming Reagan
administration policy. Pearson was close to Edwin Fuelner,
president of the Heritage Foundation, and joined the editorial
board of _Policy Review_, the monthly HF magazine. In turn HF
official Stuart Butler and editorial board member Ernest van den
Haag (the long time writer for the _National Review_, who has
publicly stated his opposition to school integration and support
for Shockley's sterilization proposals), joined the advisory
committee of Pearson's _Journal of Social, Political and Economic
Studies_.
(4) In 1978, as the head of U.S. chapter of the World
Anti-Communist League, Pearson hosted the WACL conference in
Washington, D.C. The Washington Post ran an article about fascists
and neo-Nazis in the WACL, and named Pearson as a leading
recruiter of fascist elements. Yet four years later, Pearson
received a personal letter from President Reagan stating "Your
substantial contributions to promoting and upholding those ideals
and principles that we value at home and abroad are greatly
appreciated." Pearson used this as a fundraising letter for his
JSPES. Talk about friends in high places!
(5) Pearson and the Pioneer Fund have close connections to Jesse
Helms. Sam Crutchfield has been the lawyer for a number of Helms'
organizations, as well as Pearson's Institute for the Study of
Man, which publishes _The Mankind Quarterly_ and is heavily funded
by the Pioneer Fund. Crutchfield also sits on the advisory
committee of Pearson's JSPES.
(6) According to Bellant, Pearson, an Englishman, also has ties to
right- wing British aristocrats. Lord Malcolm Douglas was part of
an aristocratic circle known as the Cliveden Set, who was
sympathetic to the Nazis and sought to get Britain out of the war.
(This group should be familiar to anyone who has seen the film
Remains of the Day.) Malcolm was the brother of the aristocrat who
invited Rudolph Hess, a top aide to Hitler, to secretly fly to
England to meet with the Cliveden Set. Unfortunately for the upper
class Nazi admirers, Hess was arrested and spent the rest of his
life in jail. Lord Malcolm Douglas eventually came to the U.S. and
established the American branch of the International Association
for the Advancement of Ethnology and Eugenics (IAAEE), which
published _The Mankind Quarterly_. (Bellant states that the oil
billionaire Hunt brothers and Jesse Helms are members of the
IAAEE.) For years. MQ listed its publisher as the Cliveden Press.
(7) Pearson, a former anthropology professor, has plenty of
academic ties as well. In the mid- 1980's, Pearson was elected
head of the University Professors for Academic Order, a
conservative faculty group formed in reaction to anti-Vietnam War
campus protests of the 1960's and '70's. Pearson has been quite a
busy fascist, and in 1990 began to edit a third journal, _The
Conservative Review_. Pearson maintains close ties with European
racists, and is a board member of Nouvelle Ecole, which Bellant
calls "a French highbrow neo-Nazi group."
The November 1994 of GQ magazine carried an article on the Pioneer
Fund. The article is politically very weak, but it has an
interesting story about Pearson and the 1978 WACL conference which
he was in charge of:
At one point during the proceedings, Pearson noticed
two men distributing what The Post termed "anti-Jewish
tracts," as well as reprints from the _Thunderbolt_, a
newspaper of the avowedly racist National States Right
Party (NSRP). Pearson asked them to leave, though not
before telling them that he was "sympathetic with what
you're doing." He added: "But don't embarrass me and
cut my throat." As they left, he asked them to "give
[his] regards" to NSRP chief Edward Fields, The Post
reported.
Today, the _Thunderbolt_ is called _The Truth At Last_. It is
still published by Edward Fields, who leads a white supremacist
and neo-Nazi group called the America First Party. In a recent
issue of _The Truth At Last_ the lead two-page article is entitled
_Bell Curve Proves Racial IQ Differences_, with photos of Charles
Murray and William Shockley. Inside the paper, they advertised
_Pearson's Race, Intelligence and Bias in Academe_ (a book which
attacks Progressive Labor Party, Students for a Democratic Society,
and International Committee Against Racism for its campaigns against
racist scholars such as Jensen and Shockley), as well as Shockley's
_On Eugenics and Race_, edited by Pearson. Also advertised are _IQ
and Racial Differences_, a racist tract by former Pioneer Fund
director Henry Garrett, as well as the Deluxe edition of _The
Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion_ (the famous anti-semitic
forgery), with a 150-page introduction by industrialist Henry
Ford.
It's pretty clear than Pearson and the Pioneer Fund are connected
to a larger movement, international in scope, which not only
wishes to roll back the gains of the civil rights movement, but
which seeks another try at the Third Reich.
E-Mail Fredric L. Rice / The Skeptic Tank
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