The McManus Credo: Dulce et Decorum est Mendacium Decir

He never stops lying, and until the breath permanently departs his lungs he never will. 

For an inveterate liar like John McManus, a speaking tour presents a number of potential pitfalls. One is the possibility of being asked, in public, about the lies you have told and the people you have betrayed. This happened to Jack during an interview on KID-AM in Idaho Falls, and he handled the matter with the unctuous dishonesty that is his most recognizable trait. 


"I'm curious as to why you fired William Norman Grigg," inquired a caller during Jack's appearance, "and also if you would address the accusations of anti-Semitic statements, [such as] saying that Jews and masons are the cause of the conspiracy --"


"Now, wait a minute," interjected an audibly flustered McManus as the host very thoughtfully cut off the caller. "Hold on a second, you're spreading a lot of rumors."


"Mr. Grigg refused to, uh, adopt the positions of the Society regarding decorum in his blog and so forth," Jack lied, inventing yet another version of what happened in October 2006. "We asked him to do so, he said he wouldn't, so we said, okay, well then we can't continue."


This is an extravagant falsehood, as I have discussed elsewhere. "Decorum" had nothing to do with my firing. I was fired for publishing a blog on my own time -- one Appleton used as a fund-raising tool for nearly two weeks after I was terminated. The only specific charge Art Thompson could muster was that I had used my blog to publish material that had been "rejected" by Appleton because I had disagreed with JBS management on matters of "nuance."

I was offered the opportunity, after the fact, to grovel for my job by agreeing that everything I wrote or spoke for public consumption would be subject to prior approval by Appleton. 

One of those who would be given the veto over my writings and utterances was John F. McManus, who had spent decades promiscuously violating the JBS's standards and principles regarding anti-Jewish bigotry.

Jack's second answer is a combo platter of mendacity, one that is even larger, more audacious -- and, quite unintentionally, very revealing.


"He [Grigg] has accused me of being an anti-Semite," Jack continued. "An anti-Semite is somebody who hates. I don't hate anybody, I never have hated anybody, I'm not an anti-Semite -- and I don't want to discuss the matter any further."


Notice that the caller did not connect the two questions: He didn't ask Jack why I had characterized him as an anti-Semite, or even mention that I had made the accusation. Jack's answer was intended to leave the uninformed listener with the impression that I was the source -- apparently, the original and only one -- of the idea that Jack has ever expressed anti-Semitic views.


Jack knows this isn't true, of course -- because, among other things, Jack eagerly used me in October 2005 to defend him against those accusations. 

The source of those accusations is a large and enviably well-documented dossier compiled by Art Thompson, who had become alarmed over Jack's anti-Jewish agitation no later than 2000. Jack's side career as a Jew-baiter made him (and the JBS) vulnerable to blackmail during the 2005 management struggle. 

When an effort was made to blackmail Jack, I resigned my job in disgust and, to an extent, his defense -- not because I sympathized with his bigoted views, but because I couldn't countenance the use of criminal means to settle a leadership dispute. 

At the time I knew nothing about Jack's views beyond the clips I had been shown by his critics in the previous JBS administration, and the fact that he had used the repellent expression "slimy New York Jew" in a conversation. After Art Thompson was appointed CEO, Jack asked me to re-join the staff.

It wasn't until Don Fotheringham used his website to publicize the Art Thompson-created dossier on Jack that I learned that he had spent years propagating anti-Semitic nonsense, while pulling down a pretty decent salary to be the figurehead president of the JBS. He did so in prolonged, conscious defiance of the Birch Society's principles. This is why he was -- at Art Thompson's initiative -- removed from his position as JBS president. As the effort to blackmail him in 2005 demonstrates, Jack's actions directly threatened the very existence of the organization.


So, naturally, Jack was reinstated by Art Thompson as JBS president, and a year after I had risked my job on their behalf, Jack and Art stabbed me in the back. 


Jack's self-serving definition of "anti-Semitism" as "one who hates" is worthy of remark. I can't address Jack's inner life, or his unspoken motives, so I grant that it's entirely possible that he doesn't hate Jews. That isn't the issue, nor is Jack's definition of "anti-Semitism" the proper one for our purposes. 

Jack is committed, as a matter of covenant, to a minuscule and deeply authoritarian schismatic para-Catholic cult founded by unabashed anti-Semite Leonard Feeney. In 1959, Feeney -- a defrocked priest still referred to as "Father" by his followers -- insisted that  "the Jews, as an organized force, are the implacable, declared enemies of Christianity — of its tenets, its traditions, its moral code, its very culture. We think it is vital, too, for American Catholics to realize that the Church has always known this fact about the Jews, and, to the extent of her influence, has counseled and decreed regulations for curbing their malice." (Emphasis added.) 

 Feeney and his followers insist that "the state must declare itself officially Catholic" -- that is, "Catholic" as defined by Feeney, since everybody else in the Roman Catholic Church is controlled by the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy. Under a Feeneyite regime, the "curbs" inflicted on Jews by the state would include the denial of citizenship. Historically this has led to some pretty ugly consequences, up to and including the Shoah.

Presumably, Jack would see this as a form of rigorous "Christian" love -- the same kind of tough but necessary correction that Torquemada and other torturers applied in order to purify Jews and other heretics through pain. The day after I was fired, while I was still bleeding from the dorsal knife wounds he helped to inflict, Jack sent me an e-mail professing to be my friend. So there's reason to believe that his views of affection would be suited to the practice of "Christian" kindness of the sort described above.

Despite the fact that the Feeneyite ideology is utterly incompatible with constitutionalism, let alone the professed principles of the JBS, Jack has been peddling this stuff while taking home a Birch paycheck -- and he's been doing so for decades.

Several weeks ago, I received a letter from a veteran in the liberty movement who describes his first meeting with McManus: 

I first met Jack in 1973. I was a high school senior in Boston. My history teacher, [name omitted] ... had given me "The Law" by Bastiat and I discovered I was a libertarian. [The teacher] told me about the JBS bookstore in Belmont and I rode my bicycle over to check it out.

That's when I met Jack. I was at the bookstore perhaps once a month or so buying books. When you entered the front door, the book store was to the right, and Jack's office was to the left. If Jack was there he'd always invite me into his office for a chat. Jack would give me his spiel on the Masonic Pope, the Masonic  UN, and the Masonic Masons. In the summer of 1974, I told Jack I was planning to go to [an Evangelical Christian college] that fall. Jack was horrified! "They hate the Catholic Church!" he said. I was still indifferent to religion. I decided on [that school] because I didn't want to go to a leftist college like Boston University or any of the other schools in Massachusetts.

I'd found out about [the school Jack hated] through their ads on the back cover of American Opinion magazine, and I made the mistake of assuming that since the JBS bookstore sold lots of libertarian books, (Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, Bastiat, etc) that anything and anyone connected to the JBS also had to be good. Duh!

Anyway, I only lasted one semester ... and soon after I returned in December, Jack told me about St. Benedict Center, which at that time was in Harvard, MA. He also loaned me a number of books about catholic history, extolling the virtues of the Inquisition, Queen Isabella, Philip II and the like...

It didn't occur to me at the time, but looking back, and reading what you say about Jack on your blog, it is interesting that at no time did Jack seem interested in what I might do in relation to the JBS, but he was extremely interested in getting me involved with SBC. [the Feeneyite cult's religious community].And all of this while sitting in his office in the Birch Society headquarters, collecting his salary from the JBS.

So his religious crusading goes back at least to mid-1974.

Jack is obviously deeply committed to the Feeneyite religion. On the basis of his example it's apparent that honesty is not among its tenets. 

Nemo me impune lacessit!