Center for Democratic Renewal
(404) 221-0025
P.O. Box 50469
Atlanta, GA 30302-0469
Behind a host of former Klansmen and neo-Nazis who play leading roles in the Populist Party is the shadowy figure of Willis Carto. Carto has been a leader on the far right since the 1950's. Posing first as a conservative during the Goldwater years, today he poses as a populist. He is at the center of a web of organizations besides the Populist Party: the Liberty Lobby, the Institute for Historical Review, Noontide Press and the weekly tabloid, The Spotlight. A 1981 article published by Washington columnist Jack Anderson quoted an editor for the John Birch Society:
"In my opinion, the preservation of anti-Semitism as a movement has occurred because of the activities of Willis Carto." Carto and The Spotlight have often denied that they are anti- Semitic, claiming instead to be merely anti-Zionist."
In the past the Liberty Lobby has sued Jack Anderson and the Wall Street Journal for libel, but did not prevail in either case.
The evidence of Carto's racist and anti-Semitic views is extensive and long-standing. Carto unabashedly called for a racial view of history in his introduction to Imperium, a lengthy racist book written by an obscure Hitler admirer named Francis Parker Yockey. Carto's own Noontide Press has continually reprinted Imperium. In the same introduction, Carto wrote: "Negro equality...is easier to believe in if there are no Negroes around to destroy the concept."
At the center of Carto's empire is a 32-page weekly tabloid newspaper, The Spotlight. The newspaper has carried classified ads for everything from Identity literature and the racist propaganda of countless white supremacist periodicals to display ads for vitamins and health foods. Over the years The Spotlight has praised the White Patriot Party as nationalists and attacked Martin Luther King, Jr., as a communist. The paper has taken up the cause of Klansmen and neo-Nazis, Posse Comitatus killer Gordon Kahl, and praised the British National Front (a neo-Nazi organization in Britain) as populists. The Spotlight promotes the denial of the Nazi genocide of European Jewry, often blaming World War II on Jews, President Roosevelt and other "internationalists."
The Spotlight, however, does not contain the crude language of some Klan and neo-Nazi literature. Instead, it codes its bigotry with anti-big government rhetoric.
The number of paid subscribers to the tabloid has been approximately 100,000 since the mid-1980's. Approximately another 50,000 copies are circulated through bulk distributors who sell the weekly over the counter or in paper boxes.
The Liberty Lobby and Willis Carto have also been at the center of the Institute for Historical Review (IHR). Like the slick monthly magazine Instauration, IHR provides the theoretical glue to hold various elements of the white supremacist movement together.
The Institute for Historical Review (IHR) has gained international notoriety for its outrageous efforts to deny the deliberate destruction of European Jewry by Hitler's armies. Since first offering a $5,000 reward to anyone who could prove the Holocaust occurred, the Institute has tried to revise other parts of World War II history.
The Institute publishes a quarterly journal, eight newsletter annually and publishes and distributes dozens of book titles. Each year around 120 revisionists gather for a conference, which is often nothing more than an international gathering of neo-Nazis.
The Institute is not an organization for wild-eyed lunatics sporting jackboots and swastikas. Instead it attempts to put an academic facade on its anti-Semitic agenda. Eighteen of the 25 editorial advisory committee members listed in the IHR journal hold doctorates. Others hold advanced degrees or teach at universities.