The McManus Cover-Up Continues

Res Ipsa Loquitur

Of all the varieties of dishonesty, disingenuousness -- feigned puzzlement or pretended confusion -- is the worst and usually the most transparent. This is because it necessarily involves an insult to the subject of the deception: He is expected to become an accomplice in deceiving himself.


Obviously, this species of dishonesty has no place in the behavior of those presuming to lead an organization that describes "Truth" as its only weapon. Yet it's clear that disingenuousness is the only weapon left in the arsenal of the current management of the JBS.


In a recent posting in this space I put JBS management in a box from which it cannot escape.


I noted that Robert Welch's reaction to the controversy over his pre-JBS manuscript now called The Politician was to make it available, in book form, to all interested parties.


I then proposed the following: Given the persistent controversy over Jack McManus's non-JBS speeches before Catholic audiences -- speeches plausibly characterized by those who have examined them as anti-Semitic -- the JBS should, and ethically must, make those speeches available for public inspection, as well. That would be the behavior of people committed to the propagation of pure, unalloyed Truth.


The behavior of JBS Upper Management, not surprisingly, is to attempt to change the subject. I was recently given a copy of a letter being quietly disseminated by Appleton in an attempt to reply to the challenge described above. It is a Whitman's Sampler of various kinds of dishonesty, ranging from disingenuousness to outright, brazen mendacity.

Referring to a letter I wrote on October 19, 2005, referring to the blackmail attempt against Jack McManus, the letter observes:


"In 2005, Mr. Grigg claimed that the McManus speech was `barren of any material that can fairly be described as anti-Jewish.' In 2009 ... he is now claiming the completely opposite assessment....

In a June 15, 2009 posting on his blog, Mr. Grigg refers to `Jack McManus, a person who spent years propagating anti-Semitic theological and political theories, which were captured on audio and videotape….' In this same posting, he referred to having been subjected to the aforementioned video clips but he now labeled them (a total of less than three minutes taken completely out of context) as something `I call ‘Jack McManus Sings the Nuremberg Variations’ – that is, conspicuously ugly excerpts from those same anti-Semitic speeches.'

In this same blog posting, Mr. Grigg further referred to the supposedly [sic] anti-Semitism of Mr. McManus as `repulsive' and to Mr. McManus having “a full-time sideline as an anti-Semitic demagogue.'"


All of this, the letter insists, constitutes a "glaring reversal [on my part] about the supposed anti-Semitism of JBS President John McManus...."


Note well that this is not a denial that the speech in question contained anti-Semitic material; instead, the effort here is to focus on the fact that I had changed my opinion about the material.


What the reader of that letter will not be told by the supposed paladins of Truth running the JBS is this: I changed my opinion, in large measure, because of the criticisms of Jack's anti-Semitic presentations offered by Art Thompson, Gary Benoit, and others who now defend him. Those criticisms were not made available to me by Art and the others; instead, they were published on the Web as samizdat by the faction loyal to Vance Smith.


I did have a chance to read the text of one of Jack's speeches in addition to seeing the video excerpts mentioned above; I read that text in Art Thompson's hotel room, in Jack's presence, on the Saturday following the 2005 "coup." Both Art and Jack earnestly insisted that the speech was meant as a "theological" statement.


Neither one of them saw fit to inform me that, years earlier, Art had become sufficiently alarmed over what he described as Jack's anti-Semitic lectures that he, Art, had outlined an entire campaign to get rid of Jack.


This wasn't just a "glaring reversal"; it was a deliberate cover-up laquered with pure hypocrisy.


I've mentioned previously about being shocked when Jack referred to commentator Ben Wattenberg (not my favorite public figure) as "a slimy New York Jew." This was said in the presence of Gary Benoit, who was likewise astonished.


When I saw the film clips mentioned above my reaction was one of weary disgust -- both over Jack's foolishness, and the potentially criminal actions of those who appeared ready to blackmail Jack. Since I consider blackmail more serious than bigotry, I focused most of my criticism on the Smith faction; since I was repeatedly assured by Art and Jack that Jack would never propagate anti-Jewish prejudice, I was willing to extend him the benefit of every doubt.


One ugly remark I could stomach; one ill-considered speech, I could abide; but my views did change when I learned, thanks to Art (by way of his critics) that Jack had been reveling in anti-Semitic nonsense for "years."


The doubt I extended to Jack disintegrated when I heard Art's criticism of Jack's anti-Semitic "religion," and read his detailed plan to oust Jack as a liability. And, to be perfectly blunt, my outrage did come into sharper focus when Jack joined in the decision to kick me and my family to the curb for supposed offenses against tolerance and decorum.


If I had been more faithful to the principles I profess I would have made an issue out of Jack's bigotry sooner. But to be fair, I did have other things to worry about.


So here's where we find ourselves:

*We have a non-denial from Appleton that Jack's material is anti-Semitic.

*We apparently have not one but two "glaring reversal[s]" of opinion regarding Jack's anti-Semitic lectures -- mine, and that of Art Thompson, Gary Benoit, et. al. Mine was a result of being exposed to facts that had been withheld from me by Art and Jack. What explains Art's reversal, assuming that he has reversed his opinion.

*Appleton still won't make Jack's speeches public.


The third point is easily the most important, because it is the one Appleton is trying to avoid. The letter they are circulating offers several greasy insinuations that I lied about the tenor and character of Jack's speeches; they even intimate that what I have written is libelous.


Well, if that's the case -- publish the speeches. Put everything before a candid public, or whatever portion thereof would be interested in the issue. Let there be no ambiguity about the matter.


Or, what would be more or less the same thing, let Jack sue me for libel. The discovery process would churn to the surface all of the material Appleton is desperately trying to hide.


My first defense witness would be Art Thompson, who -- under penalty of perjury -- would have to explain his own "glaring reversal" regarding Jack. My first question: "Why did you say, in 2000, on the basis of the speeches in question, that `This is [Jack's] religion, to be anti-Semitic and anti-Mason'? My second question: If what you describe as Jack's anti-Semitism was patently obvious to you, am I not entitled to draw the same conclusion from the same evidence?"


If they were promoting the truth rather than covering their posterior, Art and Jack would make that evidence available for public inspection. Rather than doing so, they continue to emit piffle and persiflage. Res ipsa loquitur.

Lying By Anachronism

The recent letter from JBS management is fetid with dishonesty; its authors (I discern, once again, the hand of Alan Scholl) lie about literally every matter discussed therein. One of their preferred tactics is to misrepresent the past by "telescoping" events together -- that is, taking one incident and dishonestly compounding it with an unrelated one that took place much earlier.

Here's a specific example of the kind of creative anachronism called "telescoping":


"Shortly after writing his 2005 letter, Mr. Grigg relocated to Idaho and eventually parted company with The John Birch Society and The New American magazine. He continued, however, to issue his commentaries on a variety of topics via his own blog. One of the frequent targets of his commentaries in recent years has been The John Birch Society – including the complete reversal of his attitude about the supposed anti-Semitism of John McManus."


The transparent intent of that paragraph is to prompt the reader to think my criticism of JBS management took place immediately after my family relocated to Idaho in 2005.


In fact, the blog you are presently reading didn't come into existence until 2007, when I created it as a way to reply to lies being disseminated by Alan Scholl and others (such as the story being told to JBS members in some western states that I had been sued for libel, or Alan's charge that "everything" I had written had been "heavily edited," apparently owing to my supposed professional incompetence.


As to the "frequency" of my "attacks" on JBS management (I have never attacked the Society itself), here are two critical facts: First, I created this website to deal exclusively with JBS-related subjects, something that wouldn't be known by the otherwise uninformed person who read the paragraph above. Secondly, since being fired in 2006 I have written and published nearly 500 essays. I've mentioned the JBS fewer than twenty times, including the JBS-centered essays published on this blog.


A second example of "telescoping" offers an interesting twist: The authors of this letter retroactively amended a decision I made:


"Of additional interest in Mr. Grigg’s June 15th blog is his characterization of the Smith-Gow campaign waged against Mr. McManus as `blackmail.' He stated that when he arrived at that conclusion, `I resigned from JBS; I simply could not be associated with an organization in which personnel disputes were settled through blackmail.' Mr. Grigg did submit a letter of resignation, a step he temporarily withdrew. He retracted that decision, as he indicated in this blog entry, partly because of being `entreated back on the staff.' He noted that the person “who persuaded me was – Jack McManus.'" (Emphasis added.)


The words in boldface above are a bold-faced lie: There was nothing "temporary" about my return to the JBS staff after Jack begged me back. He didn't say that the arrangement was "temporary," nor did I. In fact, when the new management team assembled the JBS staff the Friday afternoon of the "coup," they made a point of having me stand beside them (in jeans and a casual shirt; I was packing for the move to Idaho) to help assuage concerns on the part of home office employees. Nobody said anything to the effect of, "Will is back as Senior Editor -- on a temporary basis."


The only way the statement from the letter cited above could make any sense is if it is a tardy admission that upper management was tacitly planning, as early as October-November 2005, to be rid of me. I have no evidence that such is the case. Which necessarily means that the statement above is a damned lie.


The same is true of this paragraph:


"In 2006, Mr. Grigg decided that he would not accede to repeated requests that he temper the characterizations of persons he was writing about in his various blog postings. He was advised that, because of his association with The New American magazine (he was listed as a Senior Editor) and his years of functioning as a spokesman for The John Birch Society, liability for his possibly libelous intemperateness was shared by his employer. His refusal to cease the type [sic] writing he employed led to a complete parting of the ways. He insists he was fired. Officials of the Society and the magazine contend that he fired himself."


It's of interest here to note that this is the first time Appleton has ever publicly stated a reason for my firing -- after years of insisting that it was legally prohibited from doing so. Also of interest is the fact that the official letter of termination I received from Art Thompson said nothing about "possibly libelous intemperateness"; no variant of the word "libel" appears anywhere in that letter.



I learned of my then-impending termination from Bill Jasper on October 2, 2005. He didn't mention concerns about "libel." At Bill's suggestion, I called Art Thompson that afternoon. Art was flustered and inarticulate to the point of aphasia, but the term "libel" wasn't found anywhere in the word salad he presented to me.


The termination letter, as I've mentioned before, offered one charge and one specification:


"You do not understand that once you are a public figure everything that you say or do publicly reflects on the organization you work for, particularly when these things are in opposition to the position and principles of The John Birch Society and Robert Welch. Also, you do not understand that once we have rejected an article or nuance, you cannot go around us to post it elsewhere, identifying it as rejected material and publicly criticizing your employer for the rejection."


Art didn't specify what I had written that was "in opposition to the position and principles" of the JBS and Robert Welch, for good reason: He couldn't find a suitable example. So we're left with the apparently grave offense of publishing, on my own blog, "rejected material" in which I differed with JBS management in a matter of "nuance."


Once again: There was nothing about libel in that termination letter, the only legally relevant document in defining the reasons for that action. I was never "advised" that my association with the JBS could possibly leave them open to a counter-party suit in the event I was sued for libel -- a scenario that is equal parts fanciful, paranoid, and (owing to its consequences to me and my family) malicious.


To the best of my knowledge, Alan Scholl invented the "libel" rationale after the fact on October 3 in a communication with a JBS member, of which I have a copy. (It was in that communication, incidentally, that Alan first tried out the line that "Will Grigg fired himself.") And it was rendered entirely moot a few days later when, at the suggestion of a JBS member in the Deep South, I took steps to modify one blog posting about which concerns were raised after I had been fired to nullify any imaginable legal exposure to the JBS.


Here's where we find irrefutable evidence of incorrigible bad faith on the part of Alan and his sorority sisters in JBS management.


My friend called me up in the hope of bringing about a reconciliation. For a couple of hours he conducted telephone "shuttle diplomacy" between myself and Alan, who was acting on behalf of JBS management. It was Alan who expressed concerns about the blog entry in question. So, with my friend watching that space in real time, I made the necessary modifications: Problem solved! -- that is, if the "problem" was something other than a pretext.


My friend then called Alan again to explain that the problem had been fixed. Knowing how that call would turn out, I leaned back at my desk and awaited the inevitable. Sure enough, a few minutes later, my friend called back.


"Well, he's not going for it," he said in a voice laden with puzzled disappointment. "He says that this wasn't the real problem, that there were just too many others to deal with."


So Alan, liar that he's proven himself to be, moved the goalposts, as I knew he would. This is because the real issue was nothing I had written, as such. It was the fact that I wasn't willing to submit to the ultimatum Art gave me on October 2: I was to take down the Pro Libertate blog, apologize in writing for everything published therein, and promise, in writing, never to write or utter a word that wasn't pre-approved by Appleton.


They knew I'd reject that ultimatum. They invented a "problem" that could only be "solved" by firing me.


Is this the best they can do? Are these the best people the JBS can find to run the organization? (Obviously not; I know several others, both on staff and in the executive ranks, who would do a much better job.)


In assessing the question of truthfulness here, Dear Reader, consider this:


*One party to this controversy has never changed his story regarding the events surrounding the firing of Will Grigg (please forgive the lapse into third person); the other has changed their story several times.


*One party to this controversy has been candid about changing his mind regarding McManus's speeches, and specified the reasons why; the other simply pretends as if they have been consistent when the record demonstrates that they have been, at best, hypocritical.


*One party in this matter is calling for full disclosure of the McManus materials; the other has been reduced to the most puerile evasions in an attempt to prolong the cover-up.

From the JBS Memory Hole: "In Sade's Shadow"

By way of preface --

It is an eloquent testimony to the perverse priorities of the, ahem, bold and intrepid "leaders" of the John Birch Society that they are devoting time, energy, and resources in the effort to scrub my name and writings from their institutional memory.



Fortunately, the decentralization of information in the cyber-age has a way of defeating efforts by tyrannical gate-keepers of all varieties, be they Chinese commissars, Iranian mullahs, or hypocritical, self-serving, authoritarian-minded, bureaucratic chair-moisteners at the JBS head office in Appleton.



While the gang running the JBS has done a decent job killing internet links to many of the feature articles I wrote for TNA, much of that work is available through other archives. From time to time, I'll re-publish selected articles here as part of an irregular series I'll call "From the JBS Memory Hole."


The first selection was originally published in April 2001.

In Sade’s Shadow
by William Norman Grigg

Western culture now lies in the pall of a vile movement to exalt evil as virtue. Yet this movement is but a shadow cast by the diabolic drive to build the total state.

In describing the prevailing worldview of our cultural elite, the terms "immoral" and "amoral" are both inadequate. A more suitable description would be "anti-moral." "Immorality" refers to the conscious violation of ethical principles that one accepts, but either cannot or will not abide; the term "amorality" describes the conceit that one enjoys an exemption from the moral laws that govern the rest of mankind. Isaiah warned: "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness...." Adherents of "anti-morality" transpose good and evil in exactly this fashion, as a prelude to the abolition of morality altogether.

Not surprisingly, it is in the realm of mass entertainment that the influence of the anti-morality movement is most visible, and the glut of "bent" stories produced for public consumption offers a useful illustration of the movement’s impact. "Bent stories portray evil as good, and good as evil," advises Oliver Van de Mille, president of George Wythe College. "Such stories are meant to enhance the evil tendencies of the reader, such as pornography and many horror stories and movies." Other narrative models described by Van de Mille are "broken" stories — which accurately depict good and evil, but allow the latter to triumph — and "whole" stories, in which good is victorious over evil. "Broken" stories, such as 1984, can be useful if they fortify the moral determination of the reader. However, "bent" stories are innately corrupting and should be shunned.

Two movies in current release — one of them a critical success and commercial failure, the other a resounding commercial success despite an ambivalent critical reception — offer museum-quality specimens of "bent" stories. Quills, an acclaimed film version of the award-winning play by Gregory Wright, exalts the Marquis de Sade as a symbol of persecuted creativity and artistic integrity. Hannibal, the sequel to the multiple Oscar-winning 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs, makes a cultural icon out of a character of whom Sade would have approved: Hannibal Lecter, an urbane, seemingly invincible cannibal who is cast as the vindicator of good taste and the eccentric defender of truth and beauty. To date, Hannibal has grossed more than $150,000,000, suggesting that the market for "bent" stories is vast and lucrative — and portending ominous developments for the side of tradition in America’s ever-escalating culture war.

Maker of the Modern World

The Marquis de Sade, observes historian Erik von Kuhneldt-Leddihn, has been hailed as the "grandfather of modern democracy." His influence is primarily attested by the word that bears his name — "sadism," the practice of extracting personal gratification from the suffering of others. Although it is quite remarkable that an 18th century degenerate who spent most of his adult life in prison would be immortalized in our language, this doesn’t begin to account for Sade’s impact. As historian Geoffrey Ashe observes in his book The Hell-Fire Clubs: A History of Anti-Morality, Sade was "the first clear prefigurer of the world we now live in." His works of fiction — particularly his detestable magnum opus, Juliette — express in remarkable detail the outlook, tactics, and objectives of the revolutionary Left. Those who read that book, or as much of it as they can absorb without retching, cannot help but be astonished by the way in which Sade, as if through diabolical revelation, anticipated the modern world.

The book is a relentless barrage of scatological pornography, profanity, and blasphemy — something like what one would expect were Larry Flynt to dictate a novel under the influence of Tourette’s syndrome. Scattered among the vignettes of perversity can be found occasional soliloquies in which Sade’s characters give voice to the author’s worldview, including the central tenet of Sade’s anti-philosophy: "Were I to discover that my only possibility of happiness lay in excessive perpetration of the most atrocious crimes, without a qualm I’d enact every last one of them this very instant, certain … that the foremost of the laws Nature decrees to me is to enjoy myself, no matter at whose expense." (Emphasis in original.)

Despite the fact that Sade insisted that "Nature" demanded such an unconditional surrender to depraved appetites, he recognized that this could only be accomplished through the suppression of the conscience. More than a century before cultural revolutionaries, adapting Freud’s dogmas to the assault upon Western moral traditions, would denounce all restraints on individual behavior as "repression," Sade evangelized on behalf of the "liberating" effects of degeneracy.

"Modesty is an illusion," insisted one of "Juliette’s" tutors in blasphemy and perversion, "the result of nought but our cultural manners and our upbringing...." Conscience, Sade insisted, is likewise nothing but a reflection of "prejudices inculcated by training and upbringing.... Veritable wisdom, my dear Juliette, consists not in repressing one’s vices.... The true and approved way is to surrender oneself to them, to practice them to the utmost.... [I]t consists simply in reiterating the deeds that have made us remorseful, in repeating them so often that the habit either of committing these deeds or of getting away scot free with them completely undermines the possibility of feeling badly about them. This habit topples the prejudice, destroys it.... [T]his habit at length makes [the vice] wholly bearable and even delicious to the soul."

These admonitions bear more than a passing similarity to the "safe sex" and pro-homosexuality indoctrination inflicted upon inmates of contemporary public (government) schools — and Sade clearly anticipated this development as well. He urged that his disciples "create public schools where, as soon as they are weaned, the young may be reared; installed therein as ward of the State, the child can forget even his mother’s name. After he has grown up, let him in turn couple indiscriminately, democratically, with his mates and brethren, doing as his parents did before him."

From Sade’s perspective, the children raised by the State to become sexual predators would be only those considered worthy of life. "The embryo is to be considered the woman’s exclusive property … she can dispose of it as she likes," he wrote in a passage that could have been found in a Planned Parenthood press release. "She can destroy it in the depths of her womb if it proves a nuisance to her. Or after it ripens and is born, if she is for any reason displeased with it or irked at having produced it, she can destroy it then; whatever the circumstances, infanticide is her sacred right. Her Spawn is hers, entirely hers … [and] the mother may feed it or she may strangle it, depending upon her preference."

Unlike modern defenders of the "death ethic," Sade did not dissimulate the logical implications of his view that murder could be justified as a "choice": He was as unabashedly "pro-choice" regarding genocide as he was regarding abortion and infanticide. "If from immolating three million human victims you stand to gain no livelier pleasure than that to be had from eating a good dinner," he advises his disciples, "you ought to treat yourself to it without an instant’s hesitation." Anticipating radical environmentalism, Sade insisted that "Nature stands in not the slightest need of [human] propagation; and the total disappearance of mankind … would grieve her very little."

This is not to say that Sade approved of all forms of homicide. He wrote that hearing mention of God "rouses my ire.... When I hear His name pronounced I seem to see all around me the palpitating shades of all those woebegone creatures this abominable opinion has slaughtered on the face of the earth." Despite the fact that Sade played a role in precipitating the French Revolution (imprisoned in the Bastille prior to its "liberation" on July 14, 1789, Sade had propagated disinformation about the mistreatment of its inhabitants), he could not bring himself to approve of the Terror. As Geoffrey Ashe points out, the French Revolutionary Terror "did not please him at all, because the killing was being done from a bad motive, politics instead of pleasure."

But the "pleasures" pursued through sadism — which is born, wrote the Marquis, of "conquered repugnances" — are self-nullifying. "The perfected Sadist has to live on a mental level which very few could attain," observes Ashe. "He asserts freedom by the only nonconformity that is still open: trying coolly to beat horrific Nature at her own game. He has passed beyond ordinary enjoyment into a conscious, experimental stoicism of sex and violence, where every frenzy is self-induced and under control. He has no feelings as most human beings have them; no love, of course; no inclination to value anything for its own sake … except as it gives him greater pleasure.... He is entangled with nobody, has an exterminatory contempt for everyone except his co-Sadists, and is ready to betray even them."

The dramatic climax of Juliette captures the essence of Sade’s "exterminatory contempt" for all things decent and beautiful: The heroine, with the help of the Pope, performs a black mass in which a pregnant girl is murdered on an altar in the Vatican.

The Marquis de Sade as Exemplar

Although Quills has had little commercial impact, it was a "prestige project" and has garnered almost unanimous critical acclaim — as well as an Oscar nomination for Geoffrey Rush, who plays the Marquis. "I’ve never had a better time making a film," rhapsodizes director Philip Kaufman. "At every stage, we arrived each day brimming with anticipation, hugged one another and began dialogues that were heated, emotional, philosophical, and wonderfully silly.... The Marquis, we said, would have loved it. Hopefully that love we had has found its way onto the screen."

Screenwriter Doug Wright, who adapted his award-winning stage script for the film, explains that in assembling his screenplay he tried "to write with the same malicious glee de Sade himself must have felt as he catapulted his way through [his lost work] 120 Days of Sodom...." He praises Sade for creating "scenes so depraved — so preposterous — they set a new benchmark for perversity in literature" and insists that Quills is intended "to address critical issues in our time." The film’s publicity material defines those "issues" as the battle "between the brutality of censorship and the unpredictable consequences of free expression."

"I saw it as a debate about the forces of repression," observes star Geoffrey Rush. To embody "repression," the film’s creators seized upon the figure of Dr. Royer-Collard, the priest-physician who tried to treat Sade during his final days at the asylum of Charenton. Believing that not even Sade was beyond the reach of God’s grace, Dr. Royer-Collard treated his charge with solicitude and compassion. In the film, however, the doctor is depicted — in predictable Freudian fashion — as a depraved hypocrite who derives satisfaction from tormenting Sade, and who indulges in precisely the varieties of hideous perversity that the Marquis celebrated in his works.

The libelous caricature of Royer-Collard is given life by British actor Michael Caine who, boasts the film’s publicity materials, is "fresh off his Oscar-winning role as a far more benevolent doctor in ‘Cider House Rules.’" That "benevolent" doctor, of course, was a drug-addicted abortionist named Wilbur Larch who ran a combination orphanage and abortion mill. "I give [women] what they want — an orphan or an abortion," explained Larch. If a woman chose the former, her child was given a home at the St. Cloud orphanage until he was adopted; if the latter option prevailed, the child was killed and his remains were destroyed in a nearby incinerator. The "benevolent" Larch was a suitable symbol of Sade’s view that infanticide at any stage is a woman’s "sacred right."

Quills’ Dr. Royer-Collard, however, is a man without such redeeming "benevolence." "I like playing characters who are sinister, but I look for a way to give them some kind of redeeming qualities," said Caine. "But when I first read through my part [as Dr. Royer-Collard], I thought ‘this man is so evil, there is nowhere to go with it." In defining the doctor’s malevolence, Kaufman invokes a figure who has become an icon of evil for the Hollywood Left: "We spoke of his character in terms of being a Kenneth Starr-like man who pursues virtue unaware of his own lack of it.... I think the Marquis would have loved this depiction of hypocrisy perfected." And the real Dr. Royer-Collard, we suspect, would have prayed for those who have libeled his good name while extolling the evil Sade.

In his positive review of Quills, film critic Roger Ebert complains that Kaufman’s intended analogy with modern times "breaks down … if we seek a correspondence between de Sade and President Clinton, whose milder transgressions would have flown quite beneath the Marquis’ radar." Ebert is much too stingy in his assessment of the ex-president’s accomplishments as a sadist. Surely the Marquis would look with fond approval upon a politician who killed people in three countries — Sudan, Afghanistan, and Iraq — by ordering military strikes to divert public attention from the political and legal consequences of his sexual depravity. He would probably express similar approval for an electorate who would allow its president to commit such crimes and remain unpunished.

The Cultivated Cannibal

According to Premiere magazine, actors Anthony Hopkins and Julianne Moore were White House dinner guests of Bill Clinton during the production of Hannibal, the most recent cinematic treatment of novelist Robert Harris’ mordant cannibal and serial killer, Hannibal Lecter. Harris’ 1999 novel of the same name was an instant best-seller in spite of an ending that was almost universally reviled: FBI agent Clarice Starling (Moore), having zealously pursued Lecter (Hopkins), becomes the villain’s consort and joins him in cannibalism.

Lecter was a peripheral character in two previous films made from Harris’ novels, Manhunter and The Silence of the Lambs. Having escaped from prison in the second film, Lecter is pursued throughout most of the third movie by a multi-millionaire victim named Mason Verger. Before being imprisoned Lecter had been a psychiatrist. While treating Verger and his sister (whom Verger had sexually molested), Lecter drugged his patient and then induced him to cut off his own face and feed it to a dog — an event that is reportedly depicted in vivid detail in the film. (Although he has read the novel, your author will not see Hannibal, nor will he see Quills.) As a result, Verger is disfigured beyond recognition.

"Now that ceaseless exposure has calloused us to the lewd and vulgar," writes Harris in the novel, "it is instructive to see what still seems wicked to us." Harris makes it clear that "wickedness" can only be found among those who are insufficiently "progressive." Thus he makes Verger, a drug-abusing incestuous child molester, a professed born-again Christian. In keeping with the well-established conventions of the entertainment industry, it is Verger — not Hannibal Lecter — who is the primary villain of the story. The secondary villain is Agent Krendler, Clarice Starling’s supervisor. Repeatedly spurned by Starling, Krendler seeks to sabotage her career. Predictably, Krendler is a reflexive "sexist" and "homophobe" (at one point he casually comments that Lecter’s refined taste in art, music, and gourmet cuisine suggested that he was a "queer"). Thus in both the book and the movie Krendler meets with a hideous end. Lecter captures and drugs the FBI agent and — while the victim is still conscious — carves up sections of his brain and feeds it to him.

The Marquis de Sade emphasized that in order to vanquish the conscience it is necessary to deaden one’s reaction to violence and depravity. That Hannibal was both a record-shattering print best-seller and a monumental box office blockbuster as a film attests to the fact that America’s entertainment consumers have been well-tutored in sadism. "Many still alive will recall when a movie like this could not be contemplated, let alone filmed and released," comments Roger Ebert (in an indifferently positive review). "So great is our sophistication that we giggle when earlier generations would have retched." In fact, the largely negative word-of-mouth "buzz" on Hannibal doesn’t criticize the film for its lurid, gratuitous gore, but rather because it is "boring."

In a remarkable review of the film for the cyber journal Salon, Charles Taylor echoes Ebert’s point. "Hannibal … represents what happens when mainstream Hollywood studios … adopt the tactics of exploitation films they once shunned, and do so with all the money and gloss at their disposal." Lecter’s urbanity and suavity are clearly intended to seduce the audience, rather than to reflect reality. "Hasn’t anybody noticed that real-life monsters like Ed Gein, John Wayne Gacy … Ted Bundy, John List and Jeffrey Dahmer all tend to be bland and blobby and inarticulate?" asks Taylor. Lecter is charismatic, witty, and blessed with almost superhuman abilities — traits generally associated with fictional heroes.

Invited to dine with a cannibal: Trust me, you do not want to stick around for the main course....

Lecter is a man of "ferocious intelligence; cultured, literate and tasteful," commented the July 24, 1999 Manchester Guardian. "A man whose moral code is, at one level, completely at odds with society, yet a man who is consistently more attractive, intelligent and sensitive than many of the people who are out to get him." In this most recent — but not final — installment, Lecter "accomplishes nothing less than the final inversion of morality by wooing both the reader [or viewer] and the good guys over to his side.... No wonder his enemies are born-again Christians with a penchant for biblical language. And no wonder the literary editors are drooling over him.... Long live Hannibal. Just so long as one isn’t his next meal. What the hell, at least one would be consumed by a liberal cause."

Who Consumes Whom?

Los Angeles Times critic Eugen Weber correctly describes Lecter as the embodiment of Sade’s first rule of nature, which is "to seek my pleasure, no matter at whose expense." Sade’s "first rule" is broadly synonymous with what Lenin called the basic question of politics — "Kto kogo?" Typically translated as "Who does what to whom?" the Russian phrase can also be rendered, "Who consumes whom?" The essential assumption of Communism, which it shares with its sibling ideologies socialism and democracy, is that some people are entitled to consume others by using the state to plunder their wealth — and to liquidate those who resist this arrangement.

Hannibal Lecter, like the depraved characters given fictional life by Sade, glorifies the consumption of other human beings for individual gratification. It took the depraved genius of Marx, Lenin, and their disciples — and other practitioners of modern totalitarianism — to systematize such consumption as an ideology. It is incorrect to regard Communism as an economic philosophy; rather, it is a rationalization for total power and a means of mobilizing hatred toward that end.

Lenin defined the "scientific concept of dictatorship" as "power without limit, resting directly upon force, restrained by no laws, absolutely unrestrained by rules." Italian Communist theoretician Antonio Gramsci contributed a critical refinement to Lenin’s doctrine by emphasizing the need to undermine all moral impediments on the consolidation of power by a Communist elite. In order for Communism to triumph, wrote Gramsci, "The conception of law will have to be freed from every remnant of transcendence and absoluteness, practically from all moralist fanaticism."

Thus the destruction of "rules" — laws, customs, traditions, and institutions that are rooted in permanent standards of right and wrong — is a necessary prelude to the creation of the total state. This is the objective of the modern anti-morality movement — and the early Bolsheviks were occasionally quite candid about this aspect of their program.

"We reject the old systems of morality," declared the first issue of Krasnyi Mech (The Red Sword), a newspaper published by the Cheka (the ancestor of the KGB). "Our morality has no precedent, and our humanity is absolute because it rests on a new ideal. Our aim is to destroy all forms of oppression and violence. To us, everything is permitted, for we are the first to raise the sword not to oppress races and reduce them to slavery, but to liberate humanity from its shackles.... Blood? Let blood flow like water … for only through the death of the old world can we liberate ourselves...."

Not surprisingly, the ranks of the Cheka — the chief instrument of Soviet terror — were quickly filled by the most degenerate elements of society. "This organization is rotten to the core," observed Bolshevik official Serafina Gopner in a March 22, 1919 letter to Lenin. Those who enlisted to be the "sword and shield" of the revolution were, almost without exception, "common criminals and the dregs of society, men armed to the teeth who simply execute anyone they don’t like. They steal, loot, rape … practice extortion and blackmail, and will let anyone go in exchange for huge sums of money."

"The Cheka are looting and arresting everyone indiscriminately," reported a Bolshevik regional secretary in Yaroslavl on September 26th of the same year. "Safe in the knowledge that they cannot be punished, they have transformed the Cheka headquarters into a huge brothel where they take all the bourgeois women. Drunkenness is rife. Cocaine is being used quite widely among the supervisors."

A dispatch to Moscow dated October 16th informed Feliks Dzherzhinsky, the head of the secret police, that "Orgies and drunkenness are daily occurrences. Almost all the personnel of the Cheka are heavy cocaine users. They say that this helps them deal with the sight of so much blood on a daily basis. Drunk with blood and violence, the Cheka is doing its duty, but it is made up of uncontrollable elements that will require close surveillance." Although they invoked the doctrines of Marx and followed the directives of Lenin, the depredations committed by the Chekists paid tribute to Communism’s little-acknowledged founding father, the Marquis de Sade.

According to Augustine, "A man has as many masters as he has vices." The desire of adherents of anti-morality, from Sade to his contemporary disciples in America’s entertainment cartel, is to dominate, not to liberate — to entice their victims into surrendering the moral restraints that are indispensable to individual liberty.

_____

*Part of that effort, as we've seen, involves blocking me from posting brief remarks on comment threads attached to current articles on the websites for the JBS and The New American -- and even, to the extent possible, preventing me for accessing the JBS website.

The former measure is meant to "protect" the JBS membership from my contaminating influence; since the latter ban can be easily circumvented, it's best described as a petulant gesture of pure, unalloyed spite, a product of adolescent resentment, and as such has the stink of Alan Scholl all over it.

Alan Stang: "He Never Stopped Punching"

I first met Alan in 1964, shortly after the Goldwater defeat, and my initial impression held throughout the years: he was a fighter. He even looked and moved a little like a fighter, a bantamweight, and he never stopped punching. What a spirit he had. May he rest now in peace.

-- Lew Rockwell, commenting on the passing of Alan Stang, 77.



Alan Stang, who left us bereft of his company on July 19 to be with God, was a pugilistic patriot. His was the battered but unbowed determination of an underdog who knew that the only causes worth contending for are those considered "lost" by people who prefer comfortable servility to painful independence, and transient "respectability" over the honestly earned obloquy that is the inevitable -- albeit temporary -- reward of honest men in a consummately dishonest time.



As a bumper for his radio program "The Sting of Stang," Alan chose the theme from Rocky, which he regarded to be "among the greatest movies ever made." (I share that opinion, and would add that the final installment of that much-derided saga, Rocky Balboa, deserves mention on that list as well.) It was my privilege to guest host his program for a week about a year and a half ago.



Less than two weeks ago Alan called me and asked if I could substitute for him again while he traveled to California for a family gathering. With sincere regret I had to decline, because -- I believed -- my schedule simply wouldn't allow it. I now deeply regret not taking the opportunity to help Alan amid what he must have known to be the painful, dwindling final days of a well-lived life. Assuming that those now in God's company can be made aware of our doings, I wish to apologize.



Alan, please forgive me. I should have made the time to help you.



Alan, who had been the most prolific contributor to the JBS publications American Opinion and Review of the News before being cast down the organization's Memory Hole, was among the first to call me after I was cast off by the organization in October 2006.



"This is going to be a very challenging time for you," he said with the authority of someone who knows from experience. "It's very common for people who have worked for the Society for a long time to discover that it has a very well-earned reputation for treating ex-employees very badly. And of course long-term employees who are suddenly ex-employees find it difficult, even in good times, to parlay that line on a resume into a decent job."



Alan's words rang in my memory as I read a reply to a job inquiry -- one of scores of similar replies to scores of inquiries I made immediately after being kicked to the curb by Appleton -- that said, in essence, that while I was obviously a capable writer, my JBS background had left me "radioactive."



Alan likewise pointed out, long before I had the honor of speaking with him directly, that the people running the JBS seem to take a perverse pride in abandoning their wounded. This ignoble trait was also described in William Murray's memoir The Belmont Syndrome, his unpublished by vital memoir of working as a JBS coordinator in the 1970s.



"There are probably more former JBS coordinators than current ones," Murray wrote in 1979. "These wounded soldiers certainly don't want your pity, but have you really ever stopped to contemplate the magnitude of their plight? Many gave up promising careers to serve as coordinators, and their sacrifices were made consciously and willingly. When they leave the JBS staff, they enter the civilian job market with the equivalent of a military occupation stats as a machine-gunner. They're qualified for better things, of course, but their former occupation listed on their resume allows them to be night watchmen, night managers at the Holiday Inn, toll booth collectors on the parkway, or straight commission salesmen. Talk about burning your bridges!"



After he was cut loose by the JBS, Alan explained to me, he spent a lot of time "selling a lot of things" on straight commission. He had a gift for that profession -- it kept his family fed and clothed, after all -- but it was a scandalous waste of one of the larger writing and broadcasting talents of our time.



Murray, in The Belmont Syndrome, writes sympathetically of those disillusioned JBS employees who remain on staff out of a "rational fear of the predictale consequences of leaving" and seeking other employment with the three-letter Acronym of Doom on their resumes. That fear helps explain the emasculated behavior of people in JBS upper management: Their idea of boldness consists of ganging up to stab people in the back, rather than standing alone, when necessary, on matters of principle. In this they're quite typical of the corporate culture of modern collectivist America that is so perceptively satirized in Dilbert. But the JBS is supposed to represent something much better.







(Click to enlarge.)

Murray also referred to "tragic cases" of former JBS employees who can be found "attempting to rebuild their lives, while living with a deep sense of betrayal and grief."


He also found it tragically ironic that "the bad guys protect those who serve them well by rewarding themwith security and prestige in some CFR-dominated corporation, while the good guys unmercifully burn out their most talented soldiers, punishing them for their long years of loyal service by never attempting to salvage or rehabilitate them for an eventual returnto the fight" by helping them find suitable post-staff employment.



"At least the enemy retrieves its wounded," observed Murray.



The JBS, which boasts of being a beacon of truth and decency in a decadent world, is more inclined to shoot its own wounded and then to scrub them from its institutional memory or to demonize them outright. JBS management tried both approaches to Alan. At one time a decade ago, Appleton cultivated among membership the idea that he was, in the words of Erik Jay (nee Erik Johnson), former editor of The New American, "the devil incarnate." This was because he was publishing a website devoted to exposing precisely the institutional and managerial problems that eventually led to the "coup" of 2005.



Once the coup organizers were in place, they continued to treat Alan as a pariah, and dished out the same treatment to Kevin Bearly, Mark Horton, and others who had lost their JBS jobs trying to reform the organization.



In a scandalously terse and artfully buried obituary to Stang, JBS management correctly notes that he "never pulled his punches." More importantly, he never stopped fighting as long as God gave him breath, and according to his son Jay -- a former U.S. Marine who is a member of the Oath Keepers -- Alan surrendered that final breath with his hands lifted up to heaven, reaching out to embrace the Lord in whose firm and loving grasp, I'm confident, Alan's wonderfully pugnacious soul will eternally reside.

On the subject of the Memory Hole....

If you go to this page on the official JBS.org website, you will read a brief profile of John Birch, the "Patriotic Exemplar" from whom the organization takes its name.


As I recall, that essay was originally published in a December 1993 issue of The New American as a sidebar to this lengthier profile of Robert Welch, which was written by the estimable (and much-missed) Father James Thornton.


In the version on the JBS.org website, Fr. Thornton's authorship of that profile is acknowledged.


Oddly enough, there is no attributed author to for the brief profile of John Birch, which would leave the impression that it was an unsigned "house" or staff composition. It wasn't. It was written by Yours Truly, a fact that any honest organization would admit.


Perhaps the problem here is the prominence of this article as a brief introduction to John Birch and his remarkable life.


The folks in charge in Appleton really should either put my name on the piece, or replace it with one written by someone they're not so determined to airbrush out of the organization's history, ala The Commissar Vanishes.

Of Conscience and Cowardice

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with a pale cast of thought....

Hamlet, Act III scene one.

The McManus Cover-Up

Shortly before he created the John Birch Society, Robert Welch wrote a manuscript -- a huge document that grew out of a privately circulated letter to some select friends -- documenting the troubling political and military career of Dwight D. Eisenhower.


At the time, Ike was a Republican icon and a popular second-term president. He was regarded by most people as a conservative, albeit not a particularly rigid one, and a genial leader of no remarkable intellect or ambition. So it was shocking to many of those who received Welch's manuscript to read his description of avuncular Ike as someone likely to have been a "conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist conspiracy." Not necessarily a Communist, mind you, but rather someone who had knowingly aided the cause of Marxist collectivism both at home and abroad.


As I pointed out many times in radio interviews and other settings as a JBS representative, Ike's role in Operation Keelhaul -- the forcible repatriation of millions from the West back to Soviet Russia, where most of them were sent to the gulag, or summarily murdered -- was sufficient justification for Welch's characterization of Ike. Someone who helped the Nazis round up Jews for deportation to the east could properly be called a "conscious, dedicated agent" of the Nazi conspiracy to commit genocide; why shouldn't the equivalent be said of someone who participated in Operation Keelhaul?


The private letter about Eisenhower became a matter of some controversy after Welch created the JBS. So Welch did what his honesty -- an attribute recognized even by most of his enemies -- dictated: He published that letter, along with scores of pages of detailed source notes, under the title The Politician. Rather than trying to cover up what many called an embarassment, Welch stood boldly by his personal opinions -- which were not the institutional view of the JBS -- and made them available for public examination and criticism.


That's how an honest man deals with a "problem" of this kind.


It is emphatically not how the truth-aversive people currently running the JBS deal with a remarkably similar problem -- namely, the notorious extracurricular speeches of JBS President John F. McManus.


A June 25 press release from Appleton, prepared (most likely) in anticipation of a New York Times "hit piece" and released after the surprisingly mild article was published, bears the unwieldly title, "Jewish members of The John Birch Society clear record of anti-Semitism charge of Society's President in The New York Times."


The substance of the release is composed of quotes attributed to (and most likely not actually spoken by) two exceptionally decent and worthy men I was privileged to know as a speaker and representative of the JBS. Both are devout, practicing religious Jews and wonderful patriots. They both insist (correctly) that the JBS has no institutional tolerance for anti-Jewish bigotry. They also claim (incorrectly) that Jack's speeches were devoid of anti-Semitism, and that Jack's critics have taken his remarks "out of context."


I want to emphasize the fact that these are genuinely decent men.


One of them endeared himself to me forever when we met about fourteen years ago: He mentioned that he had assumed I was of Arab extraction, and I replied with some smart-aleck comment to the effect of, "That what you infidels always think!" Thereafter, each time I would see this gentleman at a Council Dinner or similar function I would greet him by exclaiming, "How's my favorite infidel?" -- and usually be rewarded with a warm bear hug.


The other gentleman has a large and beautiful family. After being knifed in the back by JBS management in October 2006, I received several calls from him inquiring about our family. His concern for Korrin's health and the welfare of my family were genuine and are much appreciated.


Those men are long-time JBS members who have devoted a lot of time and money to the cause, and they obviously believe that they are doing the right thing by allowing Jack to cower behind them, rather than dealing candidly with JBS members and the interested public, whoever that may be.


I don't know if they have actually read Jack's speeches; I sincerely doubt that they have, but I could be wrong. But that question is immaterial here, given the example of Robert Welch in dealing with a controversy over his non-Birch activities.


Simply put, the only honest way for Jack to deal with all of this is to publish the unexpurgated text of the two controversial speeches, and to make the recordings of the same available as well -- and let the public decide. Anything less than this amounts to an admission that Jack's critics -- who at one time included current JBS CEO Art Thompson -- are right: Jack's speeches were peddling classic, unalloyed anti-Semitism.


One of the Jewish members pressed into service as a human shield for Jack is quoted as saying that Jack's speeches deal strictly with theological questions regarding the origins of Christianity. This is emphatically not the case. I read those speeches in October 2005. They describe a millennia-old conspiracy against God and Man, as represented (in Jack's view) by the Roman Catholic Church, that is led by revanchist Jews who seek to destroy the Church and Christian civilization. To that end, as Jack tells the story, Jews created Freemasonry as a vehicle to enlist non-Jews in the effort to undermine Catholicism and promote the establishment of Judaism as the dominant world religious and political force.


There's nothing new or original here. These are Jack's views, and he is entitled to them. They are emphatically not the views of Robert Welch or the JBS. But then again -- and this is important to remember -- Robert Welch's view of Eisenhower was not the official JBS position, either; in fact, it was rejected rather brusquely by several of the men Welch appointed to the JBS Council.


Art Thompson's initial reaction, after examining Jack's speeches in detail, was to conclude that Jack's religion -- that is, his proprietary brand of Catholicism -- was "to be anti-Semitic and anti-Mason." Thompson likewise said that Jack's diligent part-time promotion of those views had "probably been a problem for us for years and we didn't know it." That's why Art took the initiative in obtaining the incriminating material on Jack.


It was Art who assembled a "greatest hits" video reel focusing precisely on those damning quotes that Appleton's press release denigrates as "cherry-picked" and "out-of-context": It was Art who picked those "cherries" in the first place.


And then, five years later, Art decided that Jack's earnest efforts to cultivate anti-Semitism were something he could live with after all. Why? Because Art -- who, at the time, had been fired by Vance Smith -- needed Jack's help to oust Vance and take his job. A guy's got to have his priorities, I suppose.


Interestingly, when the matter of Jack's speeches surfaced in 2000, the late Tom Hill offered exactly the right advice: "I think it comes down to you fellows determining if the matter [with Jack] is at that point where the what-you-call-it has to hit the fan, then it has to hit the fan."


Rather than doing so back then, JBS management "retired" Jack and promoted him to the Council, keeping him on at a reduced salary.


Rather than letting the emunctory residue hit the fan now, current JBS management is treating it the way a cat treats a particularly large deposit in an over-filled litter box -- and then dishonestly brow-beating decent men into shielding Jack from criticism, even as the stench of his bigotry continues to fester.


It's really this simple: If Appleton (meaning JBS upper management) doesn't emulate the example of Robert Welch by putting Jack's material, in unedited form, before the public, their persistence in covering up this matter is prima facie proof of the fact that they are liars. This is old news to me, but I can think of several thousand people who would benefit from the revelation.

The Birch Curtain Descends

How does the JBS maintain its "monolithic structure" in the age of internet-based "social networking"? Apparently, one method is to use "gatekeeper" software to block access to the organization's public website by "unwanted visitors."


Bear in mind that I'm talking about publicly accessible articles on the JBS.org website, not members-only discussion forums. From time to time, and as time permits, I've visited JBS.org to read and comment on various articles. Yes, my comments were occasionally barbed, but never profane or otherwise abusive. What must surely rankle the, ahem, heroes in charge of the JBS is the fact that my comments would regularly prompt favorable reactions -- and, sometimes, uncomfortable questions -- from other readers, including JBS members and TNA subscribers.


A few days ago I visited the site and left a few brief comments in reaction to some of the articles posted therein. Suddenly the server seized up. I exited the site and tried to re-enter it, only to be greeted with a screen that displayed a padlock and the announcement: "NO ACCESS -- Access has been denied by the administrator."


A hyperlink on the "NO ACCESS" page took me to the website of "JD Gatekeeper," a filtering program that can "easily block unwanted visitors."


Getting around this blockage is as simple as changing one's IP address (which can be done by unplugging a modem). I did so and found that my comments had been wiped, and that any attempt to re-post them was deflected with the notice that "Your user name has been blocked." Entering another user name and posting comments simply started the cycle again: The comments were wiped, the IP filter was re-set, and access was once again denied.


All of this was done, mind you, to prevent me from posting polite, family-appropriate comments on articles available to the public.


This ban -- so redolent of either the cliquishness of a children's club, the insular arrogance of a cult, the lust for control of a totalitarian government, or some combination thereof -- was produced by petulance of uncommon purity. Think, for just a second, of how this fills in critical details about the corporate character -- such as it is -- of the people running the JBS.


These are the folks who fired me for no reason they can define, much less defend, and then began immediately to make derogatory comments about my character and quality of my work.


They are the people determined to cover up the actions of the current JBS President, whose irresponsible commitment to propagating anti-Jewish prejudice actually left the organization vulnerable to blackmail.


This is the gang that appears determined to expunge from their websites, inventories, and available records all evidence that someone named William Norman Grigg once wrote for, and spoke on behalf of, the John Birch Society.


And now they have thrown up a barricade intended to keep me from so much as writing brief remarks in public comment threads on their websites, and -- to the extent possible -- impede access to their main website altogether.


"Well, you really can't expect them to let you insult them on their own website!" someone might object. To which I reply: Why not? Some posters have left very critical remarks about the JBS, some of which are unabashedly vulgar, as mine never were.


Furthermore, it should be noted that on my blogs I do not winnow out negative or insulting comments directed at me. I do moderate comments in order to weed out robo-posts and other spam. I will occasionally reject a post if the language is simply unconscionable (I'm much more zealous to protect the name of my Lord than my own, quite frankly). But I've eagerly published very critical comments -- including, ironically, those accusing me of censoring the blog because I moderate comments submitted to it.


I'm not afraid of my critics. The, ahem, heroes who run the JBS are afraid of theirs, and one critic in particular. In fact, fear is the salient trait they consistently display. These are the people who are supposed to lead the charge against the "Insiders"?


The efforts they undertake to keep me out of their main webpage bear eloquent testimony to the depth of the fear I inspire in them, and with good reason: If our positions were reversed, I'd be afraid of me, too.


One thing I've learned from observing the behavior of Thompson, et. al is that Hamlet's soliloquy really should be revised: Some cowards have no conscience at all.