Whose Side Is Ron Johnson On?

During his campaign for the Senate last year, Wisconsin right-wing extremist and multimillionaire Ron Johnson made it clear his vision of America was made in China. And, as you can see here, after China itself got one of several senators, Johnson promised the people of Wisconsin to put his finances into a blind trust after news broke that he-- with his massive holdings of BP stock in his portfolio-- had been defending the company on the campaign trail. That was a year ago this week. He still hasn't done so. Instead, he gave himself a $10 million bonus check after the campaign, an arrangement that more than covers, quite illegally, the millions of his own money he spent on his campaign.

But Johnson is far from the first U.S. Senator who has put his own financial interests ahead of his constituents-- nor is he the first right-wing fanatic to put another country's interests ahead of the U.S.'s. As I was flying from Bangkok to Hong Kong this morning, I was reading in Glen Yeadon's Nazi Hydra in America about two right-wing Members of Congress, Mississippi Democrat John Rankin, a dedicated KKK sociopath, and Michigan Republican George Dondero, who served the interests of the Nazis even after the U.S. military defeated Germany! Both were rabid anti-Semites.

First a little background from Yeadon, writing about the demise of the country's intelligence service, the OSS, at the hands of the triumphant Republican rightists in the 1946 congressional elections.

In March 1946 while McCormack struggled for funding from congress, the chairman of the House Military Affairs Committee charged that a person with strong Soviet leanings had joined the State Department. McCormack demanded a retraction. Instead, congress cut the entire appropriation for his unit. The pro-fascist faction within the State Department had convinced enough influential congressmen that ex-OSS officers were far to the left and committed to a socialization of America and the redistribution of wealth on a global basis.

By mid 1946, Donovan’s OSS had been completely dismantled. The United States would be without an intelligence service. At first, it was suggested that private enterprise could provide the government with intelligence. A former OSS Deputy Director proposed to Watson of IBM the formation of a private intelligence service. The two men raised the initial venture capital. The venture was in vain as President Truman and congress created the CIA in 1947.

In the short space of a year, the government had dissolved the OSS only to recreate it under a new name. This wasn’t a case of a vacillating government. If President Truman had not signed the executive order dissolving the OSS, congress would simply have eliminated any funding for it as it did to the remnants of it in the State Department.

The disbanding of the OSS had an express purpose. The leftists within the OSS would serve as the sacrificial lambs to atone du Pont’s new feckless goddess on the altar of free enterprise. Those that had served their country gallantly during war and who were dedicated to stomping out the last vestige of fascism would now become victims to the fascists within the United States. The American industrialists who willingly supported Hitler during the war had to be protected... In 1946, the Republicans gained control of both chambers of congress. The stage was now set for a wholesale purging of the government of leftists who were dedicated to wiping out fascism.

... While there were members like Morgenthau in the Truman administration who carried on the fight for justice, the Nazis had powerful friends in the halls of Congress to protect them. One such congressman was John Rankin. Excerpts from his speech to the House of Representatives on November 27, 1947 follows below:

"What is taking place at Nuremberg, Germany, is a disgrace to the United States. Every other country has now washed its hands and withdrawn from this Saturalia of persecution. But a racial minority, two and half years after the war closed, are in Nuremberg not only hanging German soldiers but trying German businessmen in the name of the United States."

Note Rankin used the words racial minority to refer to Jews in the above quote. Rankin’s racism and pro-fascist allegiance was already presented in previous chapters. Rankin was not alone in Congress in opposing the trials. George Dondero, Republican representative from Michigan, was another. Dondero was a former mayor of Royal Oak, Michigan, before being elected to the House. Royal Oak was the home of the pro-Nazi priest Father Coughlin and a hotbed for pro-Nazi groups. Dondero described the trials as a result of Jewish and communist treachery. He singled out ten lawyers from the I.G. Farben case including the leading prosecutor Josiah DuBois whom he called a known left-winger from the Treasury Department who had been a student of the Communist Party. Dondero became something of an art critic in the late 1940s and 1950s, dismissing modern art as communist inspired. He labored to censor the worked of abstract artists.

Also, based in Dondero’s district was Dow Chemical. Dow had several cartel arrangements with I.G. Farben and feared that the trial could lead to exposing its full collaboration with I.G and the Nazis.

Today Dondero has a high school named after him in Royal Oak, Michigan. He's even better known as a critic of modern art than as an agent of fascism; same mentality though. According to Wikipedia he asserted that "Cubism aims to destroy by designed disorder... Dadaism aims to destroy by ridicule... Abstractionism aims to destroy by the creation of brainstorms" (CR 16 August 1949; 81st Congress 1st Session, Speech in US House of Representatives). In 1952, Dondero went so far as to tell Congress that modern art was, in fact, a conspiracy by Moscow to spread communism in the United States. This speech won him the International Fine Arts Council's Gold Medal of Honor for "dedicated service to American Art." Rankin remained the most outspoken racist and anti-Semitic fanatic in Congress until he was finally defeated by Thomas Abernathy in 1952.

Ron Johnson is just a freshman, but I suspect he will do a lot more harm than either Dondero or Rankin.