INTELLIGENCE BRIEFS
End of an era: Willis
Carto, who spent
some 60 years as a
leading propagandist
on the radical right,
died in October.
contempt for the cause most
of them died for, apparently
wished to be buried alongside
his fellow veterans at Arlington
National Cemetery. His request
to be interred there had not been
decided at press time.
[ CR IM IN A L O RGA N IZ AT IO N S ]
Georgia ‘Flaggers’
Face Gang Charges in
Family Confrontation
10 splc intelligence report
Duke, Gritz and White were
just a few of many important radical-right figures Carto inspired
and promoted. William Pierce,
founder of the National Alliance
(which was, until Pierce’s death in
2002, America’s most important
neo-Nazi organization), was once
such an admirer. Carto also corresponded with James von Brunn,
a neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier
who murdered a security guard
at the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum in 2009.
Like von Brunn, Carto fought
in World War II, and, like von
Brunn, he came to believe he had
fought for the wrong side. In its
obituary for Carto, the Free Press
quoted its founder sarcastically
characterizing his military service as an effort “to fight for the
glorious democracy of my country, the survival of Soviet communism, a third and fourth term
for Roosevelt, a chance to kill
Germans by the thousands as
desired by Churchill, Eisenhower
and the Zionists, part of Palestine
for them as a bonus, vast riches
for the bankers and war suppliers,
coffin makers and flag makers.”
Carto received a Purple
Heart after being wounded in
the Philippines and, despite his
YOUTUBE
Communist-dominated federal
government. He drifted further
from the political mainstream
after Wallace’s defeat. In 1984,
he founded the Populist Party,
which fielded Klansman-turnedpolitician David Duke as its
presidential candidate in 1988,
followed by Green Beret-turnedmilitia enthusiast Bo Gritz in 1992.
Gritz won 0.14% of the popular
vote, more than twice the amount
Duke had managed to accumulate.
In the early 2000s, having lost
control of Liberty Lobby and its
tabloid newspaper, The Spotlight,
in a series of acrimonious legal
battles in which former colleagues accused him of fraud and
financial mismanagement, Carto
founded The Barnes Review, a
journal devoted to Holocaust
denial, and American Free Press,
a racist and anti-Semitic reboot
of The Spotlight that also peddles
UFO conspiracy theories and bills
itself as “America’s last real newspaper.” The Free Press provided a
platform to numerous up-andcoming stars of the radical right,
including Bill White, a neo-Nazi
from Roanoke, Va., who is serving a lengthy term in prison for
repeatedly threatening perceived
enemies with violence.
For the century and a half since
the Confederacy’s defeat in the
Civil War, a certain set of southern white folks h ave proudly
flown the Confederate battle flag
on their property and displayed it
on their vehicles.
Though racists, segregationists and Klansmen adopted the
flag as their emblem during the
civil rights era, successfully fighting to raise it over state capitol buildings across the South,
many Southerners who otherwise distance themselves from the
region’s racist heritage remained
stubbornly unwilling to acknowledge that for many people, particularly African Americans, the
battle flag is a symbol of hate and
the sight of it is at once frightening, sickening and infuriating.
When the brutal murder of
nine African Americans at a
Charleston, S.C., Bible study in
June by a battle flag-waving white
supremacist prompted the pennant’s long-overdue removal from
many public spaces across the
former Confederacy, some battle flag proponents felt aggrieved,
hurt and marginalized. A subset
of them took up the flag as a sort
of cause, festooning their pickup
trucks with huge replicas that
snapped and menaced in the hot
southern breeze.
On July 25, a Georgia-based
crew of these so-called “flaggers”
apparently went too far. Now, 15
individuals — 10 men and five