Chip Berlet

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Chip Berlet is a radical, polemical writer and activist who is a frequent contributor to extremist[1][2][3] publications. Berlet was a founding member of the Stalinist Chicago Area Friends of Albania Society. He is considered a "knowledgeable editor" by the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee and WikiMedia Board of Trustees.

Contents

The Revolutionary Left

On 13 January 1984 an open letter to Judge Charles Sifton entitled "Political Grand Juries Must Be Stopped!" appeared in the New York-based Marxist-Leninist, weekly, Guardian. The letter expressed outrage that federal grand juries were investigating the activities of leftist revolutionaries who have "supported mass struggle against the military...development of an armed clandestine movement [and] broad struggle against repression." Among its signers were Chip Berlet and Jean Hardisty. Other signers included convicted spy Morton Sobel, William Kunstler and Arthur Kinoy, attorneys active in the National Lawyers Guild and closely associated with Communist and revolutionary causes. Among the organizations represented were the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee (PFOC), John Brown Anti-Klan Committee (JBAKC), International Workers Party (IWC), League for Revolutionary Workers (LRW), May 19th Communist Organization (M19CO), National Lawyers Guild (NLG), Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika (PGRNA), Revolution in Africa Action Committee (RAAC), Sojourner Truth Organization (STO); Women Against Imperialism (WAI) and the Youth International Party (YIP).[4] The PFOC, formed in 1974, was the publishing arm of the Weather Underground Organization (WUO), the terrorist spin-off from Students For a Democratic Society (SDS). Its first pamphlet was Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-imperialism, written by Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers and Jeff Jones. According to Harvey Klehr:

”It announced that "we are communist men and women" and urged its supporters to form an above-ground arm of the WUO. Chapters soon formed in several cities with perhaps a thousand members. Members of PFOC helped facilitate communication and logistics for WUO members living underground.”[5]

The PFOC also published Breakthrough, a quarterly journal which routinely called for widespread violent resistance to U. S. imperialism, and ran article after article- praising third-world single party Marxist-Leninist dictatorships. Another Weather Underground front, the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee, was formed in 1978 and soon had chapters in over a dozen cities with about 300 members.[6] It quickly took its place alongside other Marxist-Leninist based anti-Klan organizations and proceeded to stage violent confrontations with small Klan groups when they held marches or demonstrations.

The JBAKC counter-demonstrators were almost always more violent than the Klansmen they protested. In 1983, for example, the JBAKC attempted to halt a parade of seventy Klansmen in Austin, TX. Counter-demonstrators threw rocks injuring twelve people, including several police officers. Two members of the JBAKC – Elizabeth Ann Duke and Linda Evans - were among those involved in the openly terrorist May 19th Communist Organization.[7] In 1984 the JBAKC publication, Death To The Klan, published the following communiqué:
November 7,1983

Tonight we bombed the U. S. Capitol building. We attacked the U. S. Government to retaliate against imperialist aggression that has sent the marines, the CIA and the army to invade sovereign nations...

We are acting in solidarity with all those leading the fight against U. S. imperialism the peoples of Grenada, Lebanon, Palestine, EI Salvador, and Nicaragua - who are confronting direct U. S. aggression...

Our action carries a message to the U. S. imperialist ruling class: we purposely aimed out attack at the institutions of imperialist rule rather than at individual members of the ruling class and government. We did not choose to kill any of them at this time...[8]

The May 19th Communist Organization acquired its notoriety from the role of several members in the attempted holdup of a Brinks armored truck in Nyack, NY, in November 1981 that left two policemen and one security guard dead. A press release claimed M19CO was being persecuted because it supported armed struggle of oppressed nations like American blacks and Puerto Ricans as well as the militant struggle against white supremacy.[9] Approximately six months later on 11 July 1984 another letter, this time addressed "To All Progressive People," appeared in the Marxist-Leninist Guardian weekly that included the following:

We, the undersigned, are grand jury resisters, former grand jury resisters, people who have been targets of grand jury investigations, and people who have consistently fought for non-collaboration with the grand jury. We are united now to protest the current escalation of grand jury attacks.... Criminal contempt is a "legal" mechanism to establish political internment in the United States...an attempt to instill a "snitch mentality" in which fear of jail overrides justice and principle. We urge you to join us in refusing to collaborate with the grand jury or the FBI. Now more than ever before we need a powerful resistance movement that would never give the U. S. government or its agencies any information about the national liberation struggles and progressive movements, that refuses to collaborate with the military draft, that is willing to barber Central American refugees, that staunchly resists the U. S. War mobilization. We won't cooperate! Stop the grand jury!

Among the over one hundred signers - a virtual who's who of the extreme radical left - were Chip Berlet and Jean Hardisty. Other signers included David Gilbert, Kathy Boudin and Judith Clark, all members of the radical Weather Underground organization and all serving prison sentences for the murder of a Brinks armored truck guard in 1981. Among the numerous organizations included was the Sojourner Truth Organization.[10] One commentator observed, “The letter is an example of the classic Marxist-Leninist approach to the crimes committed by Communists in the service of their ideology. Here is an attempt to shift attention from what Marxist-Leninists have done to what has been done to Marxist-Leninists. By focusing on the civil liberties implications of the government's case against the Weather Underground, they seek to dodge the question of the horrible crimes committed by them, and the historic crimes of Marxist-Leninists generally. Not what they have done, but what has been done to them."

The Guardian contained a long article by Chip Berlet and Jean Hardisty in a 1981 Guardian Special Report. Entitled "An Anatomy of the New Right," they say:

The paramilitary, neo-fascist and ultra-right branch [of the right-wing] has ties to both the old right and the new right, but is publicly shunned by both. This branch includes groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Nazis, Posse Comitatus and other armed militants. The new right, by inflaming public opinion and promoting fear, is attempting to galvanize its followers into a militant anti-Communist crusade reminiscent of the cold war...[11]

With a relationship lasting a full decade and more, in September 1991 shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Chip Berlet penned what was to be among his last articles for the Guardian before it went out of business. Right-wing Conspiracists Make Inroads Into Left was devoted to a major theme in Berlet's worldview, that "fascists" were conspiring to establish common ground with leftists on certain issues in order to compromise and infiltrate the radical left.[12] In 1983 an issue of The Public Eye contained a statement by Cathy Wilkerson, a captured fugitive from the ill-fated Weather Underground terrorist bomb factory that blew up in March 1970 killing three people,[13] "prior to her imprisonment for Weather Underground Activities, January 15, 1981":

Today I am going to prison to serve a three-year term. I have been identified as one who sought to attack the foundations of American justice...I want to take this opportunity to extend my solidarity to the people and communist parties of Vietnam and Cuba...and I want to send special love and solidarity to the sisters and brothers of the Puerto Rican Movement who are P.O.W.'s in our prisons....[14]

Much of this issue of The Public Eye was devoted to the "New McCarthyism" surrounding the 1981 Brinks Armored Car Robbery. In a preface to an article critical of press coverage of the event, The Public Eye had the following lead: The Brinks Robbery ushered in a new phase for the current witch hunt. As before, the press becomes a willing, almost eager, partner in circulating the most ludicrous charges regarding progressive political groups and individuals, as long as someone could be quoted alleging a connection to the Brinks robbery.[15] Laird Wilcox observed, “One cannot but reflect on the many articles by Chip Berlet "linking and tying" individuals to various right-wing causes based on "someone being quoted alleging a connection..."[16]

Eco-racism

In 1983 Berlet wrote Eco-racism [17] in an effort to meld the interests of African-Americans and Environmentalists into a united front to serve the Democratic party. In Eco-racism, Berlet discovers the real reason white suburbanites drive gas guzzlers through inner-city neighborhoods is not so they can get to work; rather it is a racially motivated plot to exterminate minority populations with carbon monoxide emissions from the white suburbanite bigot's tailpipes.

Larouchism

In the summer of 1980 three candidates vied for the Democratic Presidential nomination, Jimmy Carter, Ted Kennedy, and Lyndon LaRouche. LaRouche aired a thirty minute paid political commercial on TV. Single networks on broadcast television still routinely commanded audiences in the 30 to 40 million viewer range. Broadcast deregulation which made infomercials the mainstay of cable TV had not happened yet. LaRouche’s message in distilled form was basically “one-world conspiricism”.

By 1983 the “LaRouche movement” was a cause for concern to Democratic insiders. The problems were threefold: (1) the message; (2) his ability to raise money to pay for expensive airtime on the world’s preeminent mass communication medium; (3) splitting the Democratic Party. A meeting was held of Democratic insiders. Representatives of a prominent watchdog organizations voiced their concerns. Chip Berlet, then about 34 years old, was also in attendance.

Reports of the conference elevated more conspiracy theories in the LaRouche camp. Berlet had found full time employment now by assuming the position as a pre-eminent LaRouche watcher. Lexis-Nexis results from this period all refer to Berlet as a “computer consultant.” Technological improvements from this period raised new concerns about mass dissemination of conspiracy and anti-Semitic materials. Collaboration between the FBI and watchdog organizations on hate crime reporting [1] also began about 1985.

Berlet writes in History of the Public Eye Electronic Forums, "In 1985 it was difficult to explain to people why they should be concerned about online hate when only a tiny fraction of the population owned a computer with a modem. My solution was to purchase a used briefcase-sized portable thermal printer/terminal with a built-in rubber cuff modem into which one stuffed a telephone handset…. I would lug the terminal to speeches and go online. While I was talking...the printer would be spewing out a continuous role of thermal paper filled with antisemitic and racist text …” Berlet cites the 1985 study Computerized Networks of Hate which states, “...there are 1,600 (of which 600 are given here) U.S.A.-based Nazi Websites demanding daily that … all the Jews, immigrants, blacks and liberals should be murdered now, and which Websites have been stating thusly since 1985, it is a fair indicator of how amazingly confined in ivory towers present intelligence service policy makers are.” [18]

Dr. Lenora Fulani

Dr. Lenora Fulani who ran for President in 1988 on the New Alliance Party platform said Berlet and PRA is funded by "Richard Dennis, a multi-millionaire Chicago commodities trader who was also one of the largest individual contributors to the Democratic Party in 1993". Dennis was born in Chicago the same year as Berlet. Jimbo Wales, according to his bio, became active in Chicago options trading a little later. Fulani claimed investigators discovered "Dennis had added to his prior contributions to PRA with a whopping check for $75,000 - Berlet wrote something called Clouds Blur the Rainbow: The Other Side of the New Alliance Party. This attack pamphlet, full of now-standard lies and distortions about me, was mailed to liberal, left, feminist and gay organizations and publications and has been used ever since as the "source book" for those trying to make a quick buck by those opposing my emergence as a major progressive African American leader."

Freedom House Report and the Chicago Area Friends of Albania

One of the most questionable extreme left links Chip Berlet possesses is his membership in the Chicago Area Friends of Albania (CAFA).[19][20] Founded in 1983, CAFA is dedicated toward individuals who "are friendly and supportive of the People's Socialist Republic of Albania."[21] In 1985 when Albanian dictator Enver Hoxa died, CAFA circulated a letter to its mailing list requesting "condolences" be sent to Hoxa's wife, and other Communist officials there."[22] Albania has been for decades one of the most repressive of Communist countries. Freedom House, which monitors human rights around the world, gave the following characterization of Albania at approximately the time of Berlet's membership in CAFA:

Albania is a traditional Marxist-Leninist dictatorship. While there are a number of elected bodies, including an assembly, the parallel government of the Communist Party (4.5 percent of the people) is decisive at all levels; elections offer only one list of candidates.

Press, radio, and television are completely under government or party control, and, communication with the outside world is minimal. Media are characterized by incessant propaganda, and open expression of opinion in private conversations can lead to long prison sentences. There is an explicit denial of freedom of thought for those who disagree with the government. Imprisonment for reasons of conscience is common; torture is frequently reported, and execution is invoked for many reasons.[23]

Nevertheless, on 26 June 1987 when Political Research Associates was preparing to make its move to Boston, CAFA held an open house and farewell party in Chip Berlet's honor. A CAFA flyer requested:

Help C.A.F.A. say goodbye and good luck to one of its long-time members, Chip Berlet. Chip and his family are moving to the Boston area, to continue their antifascist work there. Chip was one of our founding members, and a steadfast friend of Albania through thick and thin. Come give him a good send off.[24]

After this information was made public in 1992 Berlet was challenged concerning it. In an Internet posting under the heading of the NLG Civil Liberties Committee dated 13 August 1993 Berlet responded:

I joined the Albania group at a time when I was investigating why Yugoslav agents were harassing the émigrés from Albania and Kosovo in Chicago. One did not have to support the government of Albania to join. I have always opposed Stalinism.[25]

However, at the Millennial Studies Conference at Boston University in 1998 Berlet acknowledged that his membership in CAFA was proving embarrassing and claimed that his only reason for joining was to find a platform to practice public speaking.[26] Berlet neglected to explain CAFA appreciation as "one of our founding members, and a steadfast friend of Albania through thick and thin."

San Francisco Spy Scandal

During the San Francisco Spy Scandal Berlet accused the ADL of right-wing deviationism while insisting that there was "nothing wrong" with the ADL "maintain[ing] an information-sharing arrangement with law enforcement." In a May 28, 1993 New York Times column run as a counter-point to Abe Foxman's column co-authored with former ADL freelancer Dennis King, himself a 10-year veteran of the Progressive Labor Party, Berlet accused the ADL of down-playing the right-wing "threat" and focusing instead on left-wing groups "backed by the Soviet Union."

Berlet had said as much six years earlier when endorsing the ADL's right to "monitor bigots" in collaboration with police agencies as he wrote in a column for Overthrow, an organ of the militant, far-left Youth International Party (Abbie Hoffman's "Yippies"), entitled Secret Police Political Spying Network Revealed.[27][28]

Hate speech

In late 2003 Berlet drew heavy criticism from conservative activist David Horowitz regarding an article by Berlet on Horowitz's Center for the Study of Popular Culture (CSPC) that was published by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Berlet's article claimed to demonstrate that "right wing foundations and think tanks" including Horowitz's "support efforts to make bigoted and discredited ideas respectable" and made several allegations of racial insensitivity and bigotry against the CSPC. Horowitz responded in a letter directed to SPLC president Morris Dees, describing Berlet's article as the work of "a leftwing conspiracy theorist." Writing to Dees, he asserted that Berlet's article "is so tendentious, so filled with transparent misrepresentations and smears that if you continue to post the report you will create for your Southern Poverty Law Center a well-earned reputation as a hate group itself." The objections centered around the article's characterization of a passage from his writings on slavery reparations, which Horowitz contended "has absolutely nothing to do with whether there is lingering racism or not" as had been implied.[29]

In the time since the incident, Horowitz's Front Page Magazine publication has carried multiple articles attacking Berlet's research methods and political affiliations. Chris Arabia, writing for Front Page Magazine, asserts that Berlet employs guilt by association tactics to attack individuals and organizations that do not belong to the political left. Writes Arabia, "Berlet’s favored technique is to describe fascist and/or hate movements in detail and then brazenly link them to anyone who does not tow his party line." As an example, he points to articles by Berlet listing "SPLC-designated “hate groups” together with organizations that merely do not share Berlet’s ideology," aimed at creating a "false illusion that conservatism and racism walk hand-in-hand." According to Front Page Magazine Berlet has also employed similar tactics against "fellow left-wingers" who differ with him politically. According to Arabia, his approach has had a detrimental effect of squashing "vigorous debate and discourse" both within the political left and in general.[30]

Berlet has responded to Horowitz by reiterating his earlier position. Writes Berlet, "The Center for the Study of Popular Culture has produced a vast amount of text marked by nasty polemic and exceptional insensitivity around issues of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual identity." He further accuses the CSPC of employing "inflammatory, mean-spirited, and divisive language that dismisses the idea that there are serious unresolved issues concerning racism and white supremacy in the United States."[31] Horowitz again responded in a second letter directed to Dees. According to Horowitz, Berlet's allegation against the CSPC regarding the use of inflammatory language "applies mutatis mutandis to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which exacerbates societal tensions by exaggerating the number of hate groups in America and by proposing that they come in only one color and one political disposition. It does this by labeling legitimate political differences as racism and bigotry."[32]

Berlet and his supporters frequently assert that he has "scholarly credentials" as a "published expert" on the religious right. In reality, Berlet is a college dropout with no degree or scholarly accreditation beyond working briefly as a paralegal. The overwhelming majority of Berlet's "publications" are in-house products of his own organization plus a handful of similar far left outlets such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and High Times.

"Wikipedia is not a battlefield"

On 29-30 April 2005 a gathering was held in New York[33] of radical leftists to discuss the "real agenda of the Christian right" and to "develop strategies to defeat them".[34][35] Berlet lamented the fact People for the American Way had stopped monitoring Christian groups and noted his organization, Political Research Associates would love to do it but complained there wasn't enough money to be made.[36] Wikipedia written policy has explicitly declared for several years,

Wikipedia is not a soapbox, a battleground, or a vehicle for propaganda and advertising. Therefore, Wikipedia content is not:
  1. Propaganda, advocacy, or recruitment of any kind, commercial, political, religious, or otherwise. Of course, an article can report objectively about such things, as long as an attempt is made to approach a neutral point of view....
  2. Opinion pieces on current affairs or politics. Although current affairs and politics may stir passions and tempt people to "climb soapboxes" (i.e. passionately advocate their pet point of view), Wikipedia is not the medium for this. Articles must be balanced so as to put entries for current affairs in a reasonable perspective....
  3. Self-promotion. It can be tempting to write about yourself or projects you have a strong personal involvement in. However, do remember that the standards for encyclopedic articles apply ...including the requirement to maintain a neutral point of view... See ...Wikipedia:Notability and Wikipedia:Conflict of interest.
  4. Advertising. Articles about companies and products are acceptable if they are written in an objective and unbiased style....[37]

The strategy to defeat the Christian Right mapped out at the conference Berlet carried into Wikipedia as the principal author of Wikipedia's controversial Dominionism series. [2] During a panel discussion at the conference[38] on appropriate pejoratives to use such as "Christer" or "Theocon," Berlet recommended terms such as "Religious Supremacist" and "Christian Supremacist."[39]

Anthony Williams of FrontPage magazine.com commented on the absurdities mapped out of the conference. While noting the “threat” of religious fundamentalism among the gathering of extreme leftists was not in beheadings, forced marriages, honor killings, or genital mutilation in the Islamic Middle East, in this ideological fever swamp the real threat to freedom and liberty, "it turns out, is Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and the seditious propaganda of Tim LaHaye, author of the best-selling apocalyptic fiction series Left Behind." [40]

Stanley Kurtz of the National Review also reported on the conference. Kurtz said the alleged desire of the Religious Right to "suppress other religions ...reestablish slavery. ...reduce women to near-slavery by making them property. ...execute anyone found guilty of pre-martial, extramarital, or homosexual sex. ...to bring back the death penalty for witchcraft" was the subject matter of discussion.[41] Christians soon reacted to the hate, [42] bigotry, and distortions coming out of the conference. [43] Kurtz has investigated the extreme rhetoric of alleged Dominionist watchdogs and discovered at a website calling itself religioustolerance.org the claim that Dominionists

advocate genocide for followers of minority groups and non-conforming members of their own religion.[44]

See also

References

  1. John George and Laird Wilcox, Nazis, Communists, Klansmen, and Others on the Fringe: Political Extremism in America, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, New York, 1992, (ISBN 0-87975-680-2), pgs. 125-131.
  2. Propagandizing the Police, By William Norman Grigg, New American, 1999-11-08. Grigg writes, "Berlet published a column in Overthrow, an organ of the militant, far-left Youth International Party (Abbie Hoffman’s “Yippies”)."
  3. Chip Berlet and Linda Lotz, Reading List on Intelligence Agencies and Political Repression, (NY:National Lawyers Guild Civil Liberties Committee, Rev. 1/14/91); Berlet states the "Public Eye Another spawn of the first Counterspy".
  4. Guardian, January 11, 1984.
  5. Harvey Klehr, Far Left of Center: The American Left Today, New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1988, pg. 109.
  6. Montgomery Journal, 10 February 1983.
  7. John George and Laird Wilcox, Nazis, Communists, Klansmen and Others on the Fringe, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1992, pg. 158.
  8. "Armed Resistance Unit Bombs US Capitol", Death to the Klan, Winter, 1984, No.3.
  9. May 19th Communist Organization, Press Release, 2 November 1981.
  10. Guardian, July 11, 1984, reprinted in Stop The Grand Jury, John Brown Anti-Klan Committee, November 1984.
  11. Guardian Special Report (Fall, 1981), reprinted by Public Eye.
  12. Chip Berlet, Right-wing Conspiracists Make Inroads Into Left, Guardian, 11 September 1991.
  13. Court TV - Crime Library: Terrorists, The Weather Underground & Black Liberation Army
  14. The Public Eye, Volume IV, Issues 1 & 2, 1983, 20-21.
  15. Ibid, 23
  16. Laird Wilcox, The Watchdogs: A Close Look At Anti-Racist "Watchdog" Groups, 2nd edition. Olathe, Kansas: Editorial Research Service, 1999, Part 2, p. 26.
  17. Eco-Racism cberlet pra.reports, BERL0013.TXT 11/12/94.
  18. [http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=6367&view=findpost&p=21888
  19. Is "Sean McBride" in actuality John Foster "Chip" Berlet?
  20. Ex-sex slave tells of escape to Chicago: Family threatened after Albanian woman fled her oppressors, by Annie Sweeney, Chicago Sun-Times, July 30, 2006.
  21. Chicago Area Friends of Albania, form letter signed by Sally Olson (6 June 1983), quoted in Wilcox, The Watchdogs.
  22. Ibid.
  23. Raymond D. Castill, Freedom In The World: Political Rights and Civil Liberties, 1987-1988, (New York: Freedom House, 1989).
  24. Chicago Area Friends of Albania flyer, (26 June 1987), quoted in Wilcox.
  25. H2JArticle 16502...in alt.conspiracy, From: NLG Civil Liberties Committee <cberlet@igc.apc.org>. Date: 13 Aug 93 20:29 PDT. Subject: 4mRe: Who Is Chip Berlet?.
  26. Millennial Studies Conference, Boston University, 2-4 February 1997.
  27. Chip Berlet, Secret Police Political Spying Network Revealed, Overthrow, Vol. 9, No. 1, Spring 1987, np.
  28. Propagandizing the Police (1999-11-08).
  29. An Open Letter To Morris Dees, By David Horowitz, FrontPageMagazine.com 9/2/2003.
  30. Chip Berlet: Leftist Lie Factory, By Chris Arabia, FrontPageMagazine.com October 16, 2003.
  31. Response to David Horowitz's Complaint, By Chip Berlet, FrontPageMagazine.com September 14, 2003.
  32. Morris Dees' Hate Campaign, By David Horowitz, FrontPageMagazine.com September 16, 2003,
  33. Public university sponsorship of conference on "Examining the Real Agenda of the Christian Right"
  34. The New Blacklist: Corporate America Caves In to the Christers, Doug Ireland, June 09, 2005.
  35. President Bush Called “Evil,” Evangelicals Equated With Nazis at NCC-Supported Conference, John Lomperis, The Institute on Religion and Democracy.
  36. The New Blacklist: Corporate America Caves In to the Christers], Doug Ireland, June 09, 2005.
  37. Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved October 14, 2007.
  38. Religious Right Watch July 10, 2005.
  39. Techniques of the Propagandist, Chip Berlet, Political Research Associates, Cambridge Massachusetts.
  40. "Dominionist" Fantasies, Anthony Williams, FrontPage magazine.com, 4 May 2005.
  41. Dominionist Domination, The Left runs with a wild theory. Stanley Kurtz, National Review Online, May 02, 2005.
  42. Dark Christianity, Exploring and Exposing Dominionist Christianity, 12 December 2005.
  43. The "Christer" Controversy, Rhymes With Right, June 16, 2005.
  44. ReligiousTolerance.org Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, Dominionism (aka Christian Reconsturctionism, Dominion Theology and Theonomy)
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