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Butler, Gen biz coup

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RSC CLARK SINGER SEWING MACHINE HEIR THOM?

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uber: TheBrain

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Inside the billionaire's trick to keep people from voting

Thom Hartmann

September 23, 2024

Outside of Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan (and a hedge fund guy), just about all American billionaires are white. And while their white privilege helped most of them to become billionaires in the first place, for the politically active billionaires on the right, it’s their money that they care about the most.

Fred Koch, the founding patriarch of the Koch family, was an early supporter of the John Birch Society (JBS), which vigorously opposed any efforts to reduce the powers of the very wealthy white people or elevate the wealth or political power of poor or working-class people. Their most public positions in the 1950s and 1960s were against racial integration and communism— the ultimate method for leveling the fortunes of the rich. The JBS opposed virtually all “welfare” legislation, from Social Security to Medicare to unemployment insurance, calling it socialism and equating it with a softer version of communism. Around that same time, a Russian immigrant who’d fled the Soviet Union (her father had lost his pharmacy shop to the Bolshevik Revolution) came to America with dreams of becoming a great author or actress. Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum chose the stage and pen name of Ayn Rand, and in the 1950s she wrote a rather simplistic novel celebrating inherited wealth.

In Atlas Shrugged, a young woman and her hapless brother inherit a railroad from their father and try to grow it strong over opposition from the unions, which want a safe workplace and reasonable pay. As George Monbiot wrote:

In a notorious passage, she argues that all the passengers in a train filled with poisoned fumes deserved their fate. One, for instance, was a teacher who taught children to be team players; one was a mother married to a civil servant, who cared for her children; one was a housewife “who believed that she had the right to elect politicians, of whom she knew nothing.”35

It means nothing, in other words, if average people are ground into the dirt. But when people who inherited wealth face challenges, particularly those from average working families, they should be able to utterly destroy them.

ALSO READ: Trump has a brand new front in the Haitian conspiracy push

In a subsequent novel, The Fountainhead, one of the “producers” of her mythology rapes a woman, but it’s all good because the woman decides that she enjoys it mid-rape. Monbiot boils it down simply: “Rand’s is the philosophy of the psychopath, a misanthropic fantasy of cruelty, revenge, and greed.”

While Fred Koch was helping the JBS in its fight against taxes and regulation, his sons were apparently reading Ayn Rand and taking her philosophy of radical selfishness to heart. They were also, by the 1970s, running the Koch oil operation and having constant struggles with regulators, particularly during the Carter administration.

Looking for political juice, David Koch joined and then largely took over the Libertarian Party in the late 1970s.

That political party had been created by the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), a lobbying group formed in 1946 that represented the Big Three carmakers, the top three US oil companies, Monsanto, DuPont, GE, Merrill Lynch, Eli Lilly, and both US Steel and Republic Steel. Robert Welch, the founder of the John Birch Society, was on its board of directors, as were United Fruit president Herb Cornuelle; National Association of Manufacturers director and DuPont and GM board member Donaldson Brown; and Leonard Read, a longtime US Chamber of Commerce executive.

The mission of the new libertarian movement was straightforward: to lobby for the interests of big business and the uber-wealthy people that such business had created.

The same year that the FEE was created and they began the rollout of libertarianism, Congress busted an obscure University of Chicago economist named Milton Friedman for illegally shilling for the real estate industry.

As Mark Ames wrote:

The purpose of the FEE—and libertarianism, as it was originally created—was to supplement big business lobbying with a pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-economics rationale to back up its policy and legislative attacks on labor and government regulations.

This background is important in the Milton Friedman story because Friedman is a founder of libertarianism and neoliberalism, and because the corrupt lobbying deal he was busted playing a part in was arranged through the Foundation for Economic Education.36

Friedman was later implicated in the aftermath of the brutal and violent takedown of democracy in Chile, and his acolytes helped privatize the state-owned properties of the Soviet Union, creating the kleptocratic and oligarchic government that now runs Russia and many of the former Soviet states. Libertarianism, it turns out, has had real-world impacts, which include the deaths of hundreds of thousands.

No country has ever successfully established a libertarian form of economy or governance; it was, after all, a scam set up to front for the very rich, and the corporations that made them that way. But that hasn’t stopped libertarian and corporatist ideologues from trying.

While Chile and Russia are well-known examples, few Americans seem to remember how George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld simply stood on the sidelines watching as the treasures of Iraq were looted after the United States took down their government.

It was to be a Grand Experiment: they’d finally prove that without government interference in a nation’s economy or social systems, an utopia would emerge. L. Paul Bremer was their front man, arriving in Iraq on May 2, 2003, to begin the process of “freeing” the country’s economy so that the world’s corporations would flood in and create a paradise.

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uber1: old 2 nodes

https://webbrain.com/brainpage/brain/6950F840-FB80-FCB0-D505-8AB1FA685F08#-1909

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https://allthatsinteresting.com/the-business-plot

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guk

donald Trump’s elaborate plot to overthrow the democratically elected president was neither impulsive nor uncoordinated, but straight out of the playbook of another American coup attempt – the 1933 “Wall Street putsch” against newly elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

America had hit rock bottom, beginning with the stock market crash three years earlier. Unemployment was at 16 million and rising. Farm foreclosures exceeded half a million. More than five thousand banks had failed, and hundreds of thousands of families had lost their homes. Financial capitalists had bilked millions of customers and rigged the market. There were no government safety nets – no unemployment insurance, minimum wage, social security or Medicare.

[Many are disillusioned with American democracy. Can Joe Biden win them over? Francine Prose

Read more](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/07/biden-trump-capitol-attack-riot-democracy)

Economic despair gave rise to panic and unrest, and political firebrands and white supremacists eagerly fanned the paranoia of socialism, global conspiracies and threats from within the country. Populists Huey Long and Father Charles Coughlin attacked FDR, spewing vitriolic anti-Jewish, pro-fascist refrains and brandishing the “America first” slogan coined by media magnate William Randolph Hearst.

On 4 March 1933, more than 100,000 people had gathered on the east side of the US Capitol for Roosevelt’s inauguration. The atmosphere was slate gray and ominous, the sky suggesting a calm before the storm. That morning, rioting was expected in cities throughout the nation, prompting predictions of a violent revolution. Army machine guns and sharpshooters were placed at strategic locations along the route. Not since the civil war had Washington been so fortified, with armed police guarding federal buildings.

FDR thought government in a civilized society had an obligation to abolish poverty, reduce unemployment, and redistribute wealth. Roosevelt’s bold New Deal experiments inflamed the upper class, provoking a backlash from the nation’s most powerful bankers, industrialists and Wall Street brokers, who thought the policy was not only radical but revolutionary. Worried about losing their personal fortunes to runaway government spending, this fertile field of loathing led to the “traitor to his class” epithet for FDR. “What that fellow Roosevelt needs is a 38-caliber revolver right at the back of his head,” a respectable citizen said at a Washington dinner party.

In a climate of conspiracies and intrigues, and against the backdrop of charismatic dictators in the world such as Hitler and Mussolini, the sparks of anti-Rooseveltism ignited into full-fledged hatred. Many American intellectuals and business leaders saw nazism and fascism as viable models for the US. The rise of Hitler and the explosion of the Nazi revolution, which frightened many European nations, struck a chord with prominent American elites and antisemites such as Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford. Hitler’s elite Brownshirts – a mass body of party storm troopers separate from the 100,000-man German army – was a stark symbol to the powerless American masses. Mussolini’s Blackshirts – the military arm of his organization made up of 200,000 soldiers – were a potent image of strength to a nation that felt emasculated.

A divided country and FDR’s emboldened powerful enemies made the plot to overthrow him seem plausible. With restless uncertainty, volatile protests and ominous threats, America’s right wing was inspired to form its own paramilitary organizations. Militias sprung up throughout the land, their self-described “patriots” chanting: “This is despotism! This is tyranny!”

Today’s Proud Boys and Oath Keepers have nothing on their extremist forbears. In 1933, a diehard core of conservative veterans formed the Khaki Shirts in Philadelphia and recruited pro-Mussolini immigrants. The Silver Shirts was an apocalyptic Christian militia patterned on the notoriously racist Texas Rangers that operated in 46 states and stockpiled weapons.

A divided country and FDR’s emboldened powerful enemies made a plot to overthrow him seem plausible

The Gray Shirts of New York organized to remove “Communist college professors” from the nation’s education system, and the Tennessee-based White Shirts wore a Crusader cross and agitated for the takeover of Washington. JP Morgan Jr, one of the nation’s richest men, had secured a $100m loan to Mussolini’s government. He defiantly refused to pay income tax and implored his peers to join him in undermining FDR.

So, when retired US Marine Corps Maj Gen Smedley Darlington Butler claimed he was recruited by a group of Wall Street financiers to lead a fascist coup against FDR and the US government in the summer of 1933, Washington took him seriously. Butler, a Quaker, and first world war hero dubbed the Maverick Marine, was a soldier’s soldier who was idolized by veterans – which represented a huge and powerful voting bloc in America. Famous for his daring exploits in China and Central America, Butler’s reputation was impeccable. He got rousing ovations when he claimed that during his 33 years in the marines: “I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and for bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism.”

Butler later testified before Congress that a bond-broker and American Legion member named Gerald MacGuire approached him with the plan. MacGuire told him the coup was backed by a group called the American Liberty League, a group of business leaders which formed in response to FDR’s victory, and whose mission it was to teach government “the necessity of respect for the rights of persons and property”. Members included JP Morgan, Jr, Irénée du Pont, Robert Sterling Clark of the Singer sewing machine fortune, and the chief executives of General Motors, Birds Eye and General Foods.

The putsch called for him to lead a massive army of veterans – funded by $30m from Wall Street titans and with weapons supplied by Remington Arms – to march on Washington, oust Roosevelt and the entire line of succession, and establish a fascist dictatorship backed by a private army of 500,000 former soldiers.

As MacGuire laid it out to Butler, the coup was instigated after FDR eliminated the gold standard in April 1933, which threatened the country’s wealthiest men who thought if American currency wasn’t backed by gold, rising inflation would diminish their fortunes. He claimed the coup was sponsored by a group who controlled $40bn in assets – about $800bn today – and who had $300m available to support the coup and pay the veterans. The plotters had men, guns and money – the three elements that make for successful wars and revolutions. Butler referred to them as “the royal family of financiers” that had controlled the American Legion since its formation in 1919. He felt the Legion was a militaristic political force, notorious for its antisemitism and reactionary policies against labor unions and civil rights, that manipulated veterans.

The planned coup was thwarted when Butler reported it to J Edgar Hoover at the FBI, who reported it to FDR. How seriously the “Wall Street putsch” endangered the Roosevelt presidency remains unknown, with the national press at the time mocking it as a “gigantic hoax” and historians like Arthur M Schlesinger Jr surmising “the gap between contemplation and execution was considerable” and that democracy was not in real danger. Still, there is much evidence that the nation’s wealthiest men – Republicans and Democrats alike – were so threatened by FDR’s policies that they conspired with antigovernment paramilitarism to stage a coup.

The final report by the congressional committee tasked with investigating the allegations, delivered in February 1935, concluded: “[The committee] received evidence showing that certain persons had made an attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country”, adding “There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient.”

As Congressman John McCormack who headed the congressional investigation put it: “If General Butler had not been the patriot he was, and if they had been able to maintain secrecy, the plot certainly might very well have succeeded … When times are desperate and people are frustrated, anything could happen.”

There is still much that is not known about the coup attempt. Butler demanded to know why the names of the country’s richest men were removed from the final version of the committee’s report. “Like most committees, it has slaughtered the little and allowed the big to escape,” Butler said in a Philadelphia radio interview in 1935. “The big shots weren’t even called to testify. They were all mentioned in the testimony. Why was all mention of these names suppressed from this testimony?”

While details of the conspiracy are still matters of historical debate, journalists and historians, including the BBC’s Mike Thomson and John Buchanan of the US, later concluded that FDR struck a deal with the plotters, allowing them to avoid treason charges – and possible execution – if Wall Street backed off its opposition to the New Deal. The presidential biographer Sidney Blumenthal recently said that Roosevelt should have pushed it all through, then reneged on his agreement and prosecuted them.

What might all of this portend for Americans today, as President Biden follows in FDR’s New Deal footsteps while democratic socialist Bernie Sanders also rises in popularity and influence? In 1933, rather than inflame a quavering nation, FDR calmly urged Americans to unite to overcome fear, banish apathy and restore their confidence in the country’s future. Now, 90 years later, a year on from Trump’s own coup attempt, Biden’s tone was more alarming, sounding a clarion call for Americans to save democracy itself, to make sure such an attack “never, never happens again”.

If the plotters had been held accountable in the 1930s, the forces behind the 6 January coup attempt might never have flourished into the next century.

This article was amended on 12 January 2022 to rewrite a sentence in line with Guardian style guidance.

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From HNN:

The Art Collector Who Wanted to Stage a Fascist Coup Against FDR By Nicholas Fox Weber Nicholas Fox Weber is the author of The Clarks of Cooperstown, on which the foillowing article is based.

It sounds like a fabrication whenever I mention that, in researching the great art collector Robert Sterling Clark—proud owner of thirty-nine Renoirs and of the only significant altar piece by Piero Della Francesca in America, and founder of a fine and well-known public art museum in Williamstown, Massachusetts—I discovered that, in 1934, he apparently devoted considerable energy to an attempt to have President Franklin Delano Roosevelt overthrown and replaced by a Fascist dictator.

The evidence, however, is clear; the only real mystery is why more attention has never been given to the attempted putsch in the White House. Sterling—as everyone called him—had approximately thirty million dollars at the time, in addition to a valuable art collection, sumptuous houses in America and France, and vast holdings of silver, rare books, vintage Burgundies, and other collectables. He was a bon vivant who took great pleasure in acquiring things and in living well; he was also a man given to intense and consuming rages. A lot of his fury was directed toward his three brothers, with whom he had had a violent dispute concerning family trusts; Sterling was enraged that he could not secure more of the family’s fortune for his wife and her daughter.

The problem was that only direct descendents of his parents could eventually inherit the bulk of his wealth, which consisted mostly of Singer Sewing Machine stock (the Clark brothers’ grandfather had been Isaac Singer’s lawyer, and had, in the middle of the 19th century, taken leadership of the company and made his fortune with it.) Sterling’s vitriol toward his siblings had begun in the early 1920s; a decade later, a lot of his rage was directed at the president he privately referred to as “Rosenfart,” who infuriated Clark because of his attitude toward the gold standard. Sterling was heard to say more than once that he would “spend half of his fortune to save the other half.”

The fifteen million dollars he was apparently willing to spend would go toward payments for an army of retired soldiers—half a million of them—whom he hoped to hire with a number of other rich and prominent Americans. The story behind the plot is complex, but its essence is that Sterling, through intermediaries, had hoped to persuade a retired U.S. General, Smedley Darlington Butler, to head the coup, and that he had indeed funded a lot of research into the formation of Fascist armies abroad. The example that most impressed the man whose trip to Europe he financed was the Croix de Feu, a group of French soldiers who had succeeded in ousting a president.

The story was told in the pages of the New York Times and Time Magazine. The accounts often have a mocking tone, especially about Butler, who was the man who spilled the beans at hearings held by the U.S. House of Representatives in private sessions, where Congressman John McCormack skillfully, and often in outrage, investigated the matter. Names of people associated with the Morgan bank, members of the DuPont family, and the well-known politician Al Smith were also linked to the attempted coup. It became clear that many of these people really thought that Roosevelt, his vice-president, and the secretary of state could all be coerced into stepping down, and then a hand-picked replacement would take charge.

That the putsch did not come about is not itself astonishing. But that it is such a neglected chapter of American history—in spite of books and films devoted to the subject—remains the great surprise. Roosevelt himself wanted to hear little about it; it was as if taking it to heart would make it too real. Perhaps that is still the fear behind the relative silence.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/what-the-gop-learned-when-the-wealthy-tried-to-overthrow-fdr-and-install-a-fascist-dictator/

In 1933, a group of very wealthy bankers on Wall Street were mortified with FDR. He gave government jobs to many unemployed, ended the gold standard, and was planning on enacting a slew of government programs that would constitute the “New Deal”. Workers would be given the right to unionize, infrastructure projects would be established, and he pitched a pension program for workers called Social Security. For that, he was called a “socialist.” Up to that point, however, his gravest sin was going after the wealthy to pay their fair share.  The Revenue Act, which imposed a “wealth tax” on those at the top, increased the tax rate to 75%.

Roosevelt was accused of being a “traitor to his class”.

Unlike what the GOP says today, Roosevelt wasn’t trying to do any great social experiment. He was trying to pull our nation out of the Great Depression. Unemployment was between 80-90% at several major cities, and those few who were working were being exploited with zero labor protections.  FDR took action. He was hated by the rich, and he didn’t care:

The forces of ‘organized money’ are unanimous in their hate for me – and I welcome their hatred.

The bankers felt that FDR was going after their money, but they went far beyond just trying to sway the election. Some decided that this whole democracy thing just wasn’t working, and they had to take matters into their own hands. This was a few years before the extent of the horror inflicted by the Nazis had surfaced, and fascism had several believers within the American right.

The bankers plotted a coup against FDR, which would later be called the Wall Street Putsch. The conspirators included a bond salesman named Gerald MacGuire, the commander of the Massachusetts American Legion Bill Doyle, and investment banker Prescott Bush.  Yes, that Bush—father of George H.W. and grandfather of W.

They tried to recruit a general named Smedley Butler to their cause. They arranged several meetings and were quite blunt in what they wanted:

The conspirators would provide the financial backing and recruit an army of 500,000 soldiers, which Butler was to lead.

The pretext for the coup would be that FDR’s health was failing. FDR would remain in a ceremonial position, in which, as MacGuire allegedly described, “The President will go around and christen babies and dedicate bridges and kiss children.”

The real power of the government would be held in the hands of a Secretary of General Affairs, who would be in effect a dictator: “somebody to take over the details of the office — take them off the President’s shoulders. […] A sort of a super secretary.”

Unfortunately for the conspirators, the general didn’t bite. In fact, he exposed them at a Congressional hearing as traitors.  Initially, Congress and the press treated this whole thing as a joke. However, with Butler’s testimony, along with a reporter who was at one of the meetings, Congress opened an investigation. They found out it was indeed true, but decided not to do anything about it because the plot seemed so far-fetched. No one was prosecuted.

Sadly, this wouldn’t be the last time a wealthy person got away with treason.

The wealthy plutocrats determined they had a problem.  As much as the American people were suffering, they believed in democracy. They believed in America, and had contempt for dictatorship. No coup could have worked back then even if Butler had agreed to march on Washington. People wouldn’t have stood for it.  So the strategy changed: the kind of Ayn-Randian changes that they wanted could never happen in a democracy. The majority doesn’t want welfare for the rich, denial of healthcare, repeal of the estate tax, or destruction of the social safety net.  So democracy itself had to go.

For years, the plutocrats have spent a fortune on campaigns, rightwing media, and astro-turfing groups to cultivate a bizarre authoritarian ideology. I’ve written about the phenomenon of conservative submission before, but I argue that it didn’t happen overnight. It has taken a while, but now a large segment of our population has been utterly convinced that they need to align their beliefs with whatever benefits those at the top. Simultaneously, through constant bombardment from rightwing media, they are fed a steady diet of fear and paranoia about other people. They are told repeatedly that they need a strong leader to save and protect them. These are the ingredients for authoritarianism.  For the rich, it doesn’t really  matter who the person is, as long as he takes control and gives them what they want.

Has it worked?

According to a study by the University of Massachusetts, the inclination to support authoritarianism is now the most statistically significant trait that identifies someone as a modern, Trump-supporting republican.

Now, when Trump threatens to send the Feds against people on TV who satire him, or threatens to use the military, police, or “biker gangs” against those who speak out against him, these people cheer.

His supporters openly call for dictatorship. They don’t even bother to hide it anymore:

After World War II, what people hated the most was a fascist dictator. Ironic that is exactly what the modern GOP is now demanding. This time, there won’t need to be any ridiculous military coup attempt, but rather just a couple million manipulated morons willing to surrender their rights.

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https://hightowerlowdown.org/podcast/who-was-smedley-darlington-butler-and-why-is-he-important-2/

jim h

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Ever heard of it? Few have, for the financial establishment–along with its media and political henchmen–rushed out, clucking like mother hens to bury the story and protect the gentlemen of Wall Street implicated in the plot. But what a story! It was capitalist skullduggery by a few self-entitled Lords of Wealth trying to overthrow the government and enthrone a fascist regime friendly to themselves.

Fortunately, a real patriot was able to expose them, nipping their coup d’etat in the bud. Nonetheless, their attempt reveals the threat of concentrated wealth and the ever-present danger that the imperious rich pose to majority rule. Not only should this real-life drama be highlighted in our history books, but it would also make a blockbuster movie:

THE SCENE

The Great Depression was at full force in 1933, spreading mass unemployment, waves of bankruptcies, and abject poverty. The people’s boiling political anger was scaring the aloof denizens of Wall Street silly, as more and more people joined in open rebellion against things the plutocrats considered sacrosanct: Unfettered capitalism and–scariest of all–against rich people themselves!

THE CAST

The President By promising a New Deal for millions of Americans impoverished by the Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt had scored a landslide victory in 1932 over Wall Street’s man, Herbert Hoover. Then, in 1933, to the bankers’ horror, the new president launched myriad new government policies and programs to help people get back on their feet–including new taxes on wealth to fund the recovery.

The conspirators Such Wall Street multimillionaires as Grayson M.P. Murphy (banker and Anaconda Copper Mining head), Thomas Lamont (J.P. Morgan partner), and Robert Sterling Clark (heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune) were enraged by FDR’s moves. Class war, they wailed, claiming that their “liberty” to grab as much profit as they could was being shackled–and for no better reason than to fund “socialism!” Calling Roosevelt a traitor to his class, these men would later be named as instigators of the putsch to replace FDR with a military-backed government of capitalists–i.e., themselves.

The hero Smedley Darlington Butler–a name made for a Hollywood thriller! A retired Marine general, he became a well-known, influential advocate for veterans. The conspirators considered Butler the perfect choice to lead their takeover of Washington, and they spent a year wooing him, gradually laying out their plan.

THE PLOT

Apparently, being super-rich doesn’t make you super-smart, for the scheme these millionaires devised was hapless and cockamamie: They planned to oust Roosevelt by enlisting and arming a private military force made up of thousands of destitute World War I vets who were protesting their failure to receive federal bonus payments they had been promised. But how to engage them in the plot?

Gerald MacGuire, Grayson Murphy’s bond salesman, was an ex-soldier and an active member of the American Legion veterans’ organization, so he was the one who first contacted the soldiers’ champion, Smedley Butler. After several meetings spent discussing veterans issues, MacGuire finally got down to business, explaining that the financial powers he represented wanted Butler to create a paramilitary corps of 500,000 vets and march on Washington to force FDR from the White House.

As Butler later related, MacGuire told him that the Wall Street cohort, plus a new group called American Liberty League (made up of the right-wing bosses of such corporate giants as DuPont, Colgate, General Foods, and GM), would fund the cause to the tune of $300 million–that’s $5.6 billion in today’s money! MacGuire also claimed that the Remington Arms Company would supply the weapons. As investigative journalist Sally Denton wrote in her 2011 book, The Plots Against the President, the conspirators were so out of touch with reality that they actually expected Roosevelt to accept the takeover without a fight. They figured that (1) he knew he was in over his head as president, so he’d welcome these stronger people taking control, and (2) as a member of the patrician class himself, FDR would happily agree to become a ceremonial figurehead, while the financiers and militarists installed a “secretary of general affairs” to run the country. Who was their choice to become this authoritarian SGA? General Smedley D. Butler.

A HERO

…to the rescue! They chose the wrong general.

Butler, a patriot and lifelong soldier for democracy, was astounded and repulsed by the hubris and treachery of these American would-be aristocrats. He felt a duty to stop them.

The general enlisted Paul Comly French, an investigative reporter he knew and trusted, to help gather proof of the bankers’ intent. French even got an interview with MacGuire, who was surprisingly unguarded: “We need a Fascist government in this country,” he blurted to French, “to save the Nation from the communists who want to tear it down. The only men who have the patriotism [!!] to do it are the soldiers, and Smedley Butler is the ideal leader.”

Evidence in hand, Butler got a US House “Special Committee on Un-American Activities” to conduct a two-month investigation, which convinced its members that, as Time magazine later reported, “General Butler’s story of a Fascist march on Washington was alarmingly true.” The committee opened public hearings on November 20, 1934, with Butler giving detailed testimony. The next morning, French’s expose ran in both the Philadelphia Record and New York Post. The story was out and Butler’s gutsy stand had halted the putsch.

THE COVER-UP

The establishment responded immediately by launching a coordinated counterattack assailing Butler and dismiss-ing the very idea of a coup as preposterous. J.P. Morgan’s spokesman, Lamont, ridiculed the claim that he was in on the plot as “perfect moonshine.” The media powers instantly piled on, led by a November 21 New York Times editorial calling Butler’s claim a “bald and unconvincing narrative … [that] sounds like a gigantic hoax … [and] does not merit serious discussion.”

And it didn’t get much, despite the damning conclusion of the House Committee’s final report in February 1935, that it “was able to verify all the pertinent statements made by General Butler,” adding that, “There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient.”

Nonetheless, officials failed to punish the perpetrators of this outrageous assault on our democracy, and with the help of media, the coup attempt was sealed off from our history books and future generations. Once again, the we-don’t-do-coups myth prevailed.

Show less

The Koch Brothers putsch, c. 2018

It’s tempting to a laugh off 1933’s bumbling fat cats–we can just picture them cloistered in their posh private club, smoking $100 cigars, grumping about Roosevelt, and whispering about hiring an army to overthrow the whole damn democratic process. A “cocktail putsch,” as New York City’s Mayor Fiorello La Guardia dubbed it.

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dug up and reburied Stonewall jackson's arm

http://wesclark.com/jw/smedley.html

One morning in 2007 I snuck off to the Wilderness/Chancellorsville battlefield; it's about a 50 minute drive south for me. As it was a beautiful day it was good convertible weather.

I went partially to either prove or debunk something I was told when I was in the Marine Corps. The story goes like this: At the Battle of Chancellorsville in May, 1863, "Stonewall" Jackson was hit by his own men while doing some nighttime scouting. His left arm was amputated and he later died of complications. (In fact he died of clumsy and ignorant medical treatment, but that's neither here nor there.) There are three places in Virginia associated with this: a stone next to the visitor's center that marks where he was hit, the house on the other side of I-95 where he died (called the Stonewall Jackson "Shrine" - which tells you something about the South), and the place where his arm was buried.

The story I was told when I was in the Marines was that legendary Marine Corps General Smedley D. Butler a.k.a. "Old Gimlet Eye" (pictured above), came across Jackson's arm sometime in the 1920's, dug it up, examined it, and reburied it with a new marker.

The old marker said simply (small font), "Here lies buried the arm of Stonewall Jackson." The new one, according to the tale I was told, said, (small font): Here lies buried the arm of Stonewall Jackson. (Large font): REBURIED BY GENERAL SMEDLEY D. BUTLER, UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS. The point being, apparently, what a colossal, self-promotional egotist Butler was. Or how commendably bold Marines were and are. I was never sure!

Stonewall Jackson's arm is buried in the Jones Family cemetery of "Ellwood," a small farm house located within the Wilderness Battlefield site. After checking with an ever-helpful National Park Service employee at the Chancellorsville Visitor's Center I drove to Ellwood, where I spoke to a volunteer docent there. She smiled and nodded as I related the tale I was told.

The facts: General Smedley D. Butler, U.S.M.C. was indeed in the area supervising maneuvers in the 1920's, and came upon Jackson's arm. He did indeed have it exhumed and examined, and was convinced of its authenticity. He had it reburied, with a new brass plaque made up for the occasion. The Park Service removed the plaque when it acquired the Ellwood property in 1977, and have it stored away someplace. They had an image of it at Ellwood which I photographed.

No promotional text, no Smedley D. Butler name in large font....east coast exped force

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1934 Smedley Butler (Quaker) 16 medals, 5 heroism, 2 MoH

enlist MSMC 17 yo for Sp -Am, 1899 PI rebels

1900 Boxer Rebellion

1903 Honduras revolt via banana boat Panther. Consul wrapped in flag under floor;

PI, 1908 nervous breakdown, coal mine

1909-12 Nicragua; Isthmus Panama.

1914 spy/ reconn Mexico w/ RR (Tampico Affair, gas)  Pres W intercept arms. Took Veracruz.[Zimmerman Telegram?]

1915 Haiti rebellion, impressed Asst Sec Navy FDR.Set up loice, hunted Cacos.

1927 "In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. "

...ran Senate?

1932 Bonus Army, spent night with young sons, gave speech, as much right to lobby as corps; (Hoover MacArthur, Patton 6 tanks; Ike OK'd)

tear gas (vomit) and bayonets

1933 Business Plot: DuPont Liberty (cellophane) League JPM, Mellon, Rockefeller, US Steel, Chase, St'd Oil, Goodyear (prescott bush Union bank); 1934 Smedley Butler HUAAC

1933 lecture tour for VFW

1934 HUAAC

1935 War is a Racket

The media ridiculed the allegations, although a final report by a special House of Representatives Committee confirmed some of Butler's accusations

1935 The McCormack-Dickstein Committee confirmed some of Butler's testimony in its final report. "In the last few weeks of the committee's official life it received evidence showing that certain persons had made an attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country...There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient."

===

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Wall Street’s Failed 1934 Coup

by MICHAEL DONNELLY

“In the last few weeks of the committee’s official life it received evidence showing that certain persons had made an attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country…There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient.”

– Report of the McCormack-Dickstein Committee

A Patriot, not the Traitor they wanted

You know the coup plot they teach all young Americans about in 10th Grade History class? Oh yeah…

In November 1934, famed double Medal of Honor winner Marine Gen. Smedley Butler gave secret testimony before the McCormack-Dickstein committee – a precursor to the House Committee on Un-American Activities. In it, Butler told of a plot headed by a group of wealthy businessmen (The American Liberty League) to establish a fascist dictatorship in the United States, complete with concentration camps for “Jews and other undesirables.”

Show Me the Money

Butler had been approached by Gerald P. MacGuire of Wall Street’s Grayson M-P Murphy & Co. MacGuire claimed they would assemble an army of 500,000 mostly unemployed WWI veterans and march on DC.  The plutocrats wanted Butler to lead the coup, thinking that, like the Bolsheviks, taking one major city (DC as Petrograd) would lead to the fall of the government.  They promised to put up $3 million as starters and dangled a future $300 million as bait. Butler went along with the plot until he could learn the identities of all the schemers. Not a one of them was ever called to testify or was charged with Treason. Virtually all of them were founding members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

The League was headed by the DuPont and J.P Morgan cartels and had major support from Andrew Mellon Associates, Pew (Sun Oil), Rockefeller Associates, E.F. Hutton Associates, U.S. Steel, General Motors, Chase, Standard Oil and Goodyear Tires.

Money was funneled thru the Sen. Prescott Bush-led Union Banking Corporation(yes, those Bushes) and the Prescott Bush-led Brown Brothers Harriman (yes, that Harriman) to the League (and to Hitler, but that’s another story). The plotters bragged about Bush’s Hitler connections and even claimed that Germany had promised Bush that it would provide materiel for the coup.

This claim was entirely believable: a year earlier, Chevrolet president William S. Knudsen (who himself had donated $10,000 to the League) went to Germany and met with Nazi leaders and declared upon his return that Hitler’s Germany was “the miracle of the twentieth century.” At the time, GM’s wholly-owned Adam-Opal Co. had already begun producing the Nazi’s tanks, trucks and bomber engines. James D. Mooney, GM’s vice-president for foreign operations was joined by Henry Ford and IBM chief Tom Watson in receiving the Grand Cross of the German Eagle from Hitler for their considerable efforts on behalf of the Third Reich.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_German_Eagle

ford 1938, mussolini, ribbentrop,

The Whitewash

While the Committee found that Gen. Butler was telling the truth, discrediting such a stalwart was problematic for the plotters. Quickly, the corporate press weighed in and sought to raise doubts about the war hero, settling on branding him naive. The discredit Knudsen meme was: “it was all idle cocktail party chatter.” This red herring was trumpeted under the Associated Press headline “The Cocktail Putsch.” New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia dismissed the plot as “someone at the party had suggested the idea to the ex-Marine as a joke.”

From 1934 through 1936, the League got thirty-five pro-League front page stories in the New York Times. TIME ridiculed Butler in a Dec. 3, 1934 cover story, even though Butler’s story was corroborated by VFW head James E. Van Zandt, who also said he was approached to lead the coup.  Though, TIME did put a footnote on an early 1935 article stating; “Also last week the House Committee on Un-American Activities purportedto report that a two-month investigation had convinced it that General Butler’s story of a fascist march on Washington was alarmingly true.”

Solely, the Scripps-Howard papers backed FDR and presented the truth.

Whatever Happened to the “Economic Royalists?”

President Franklin D. Roosevelt labeled the plotters “economic royalists” and survived their, thankfully, ham-handed efforts. Jan. 3, 1936, FDR blasted the American Liberty League before a joint session of Congress where he announced the ban on military exports to Italy.

“Our resplendent economic aristocracy does not want to return to that individualism of which they prate, even thought the advantages under that system went to the ruthless and the strong. They realize that in thirty-four months we have built up new instruments of public power. In the hands of a people’s government this power is wholesome and proper. But, in the hands of political, puppets of an economic aristocracy, such power would provide shackles for the liberties of the people. Give them their way and they will take the course of every aristocracy of the past – power for themselves, enslavement for the public.”

FDR was never able to bring any of the plotters to justice. He wasn’t even able to rein in Prescott Bush until 1942 when the government seized the assets of Bush’s pro-Nazi enterprises – garnering Bush a $1.5 million windfall once the assets were returned in 1951! It’s obvious that the fascist mindset of the “economic royalists” has never gone away and is the driving force behind the modern-day ascent (and the ultimate demise of) of the American Empire, the attacks on worker’s rights and pensions, the attacks on our minimal safety nets, etc.

In its day, the League promoted itself as a bastion of all concerned about “burdensome taxes imposed upon industry for unemployment insurance and old age pension.” The League sought to “combat radicalism” and to “teach respect for the rights of persons and property, and generally to foster free private enterprise.”

J.P. Morgan and Chase are now one. The fortunes of the Mellon, Rockefeller, DuPont, Pitcairn (Pittsburgh Plate Glass) and Pew families have sky-rocketed. Pew and Rockefeller have morphed into a cabal of foundations that fund/neuter progressive grass roots efforts.

1936’s Occupy Movement

William S. Knudsen was the sole inside plotter who turned against the plot, renounced Hitler and is credited with pushing GM into a settlement of the Flint Sit-Down Strike . Underpaid, overworked workers took over and stayed in their plants, starting with Flint’s Fisher Body #3 and fought off attacks by GM-controlled police and hired goons. FDR and Michigan Gov. Frank Murphy called out the National Guard, not to roust the strikers, but to form a cordon between the strikers and the goons. Murphy’s father and grandfather had been hung by the British as Irish revolutionaries and many of the strikers were ethnic Irish laborers, so he as very sympathetic.

After 44 days, Knudsen, now GM vice-president, declared that “Collective Bargaining’s time has come” With his ally, two-time Flint Mayor, life-long civic booster/philanthropist, GM’s top shareholder and fellow board member C. S. Mott assisting; GM settled, leading the way to the 40-hour work week, overtime pay, union organizing rights, pensions, etc. Mott even saw to it that health clinics were set up in the factories for the workers and their families.

Coup plotter/GM President and Chairman Alfred P. Sloan, who had wanted to reclaim the plants with guns blazing stepped partly aside as GM head and Knudsen replaced him as president. GM went on to become the world’s top corporation for 40 years, the country saw the rise of a middle class and wealth disparity was at the lowest levels ever in the US.

It likely was not entirely altruistic of Knudsen, as two years later FDR put Knudsen in charge of the National Defense Advisory Commission. On his watch, some $12 billion in armament contracts were awarded to GM by the U.S. War Production Board, which also was conveniently chaired by Knudsen. At the same time, GM’s Opal factories built most of Hitler’s trucks and bomber engines. This part of the “win-win” did not lead to any charges against Knudsen or GM. Instead, it led to the Danish immigrant Knudsen becoming the first civilian commissioned as a U.S. Army General.

The Lesson...

https://www.counterpunch.org/2011/12/02/wall-streets-failed-1934-coup/

==

==

http://www.damninteresting.com/the-revenge-of-the-fighting-quaker/

In the early 1930s, a secret collection of prosperous men are said to have assembled in New York City to discuss the dissolution of America's democracy. As a consequence of the Great Depression, the countryside was littered with unemployed, and the world's wealthy were watching as their fortunes deflated and their investments evaporated. As men of action, the well-financed New York group sought to eliminate what they reasoned to be the crux of the catastrophe: the United States government.

To assist them in their diabolical scheme, the resourceful plotters recruited the assistance of Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, a venerated, highly decorated, and considerably jaded former Marine. It was the conspirators' earnest hope that their army of 500,000 Great War veterans, under the leadership of General Butler, could overpower the US' feeble peacetime military and reconstitute the government as a more economical fascist dictatorship.

General Smedley Darlington Butler's long military career was packed with conspicuous gallantry, and owing to his bravery and brilliance he was highly respected throughout the ranks. During his service he was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal of both the Army and the Navy; he was one of only twenty people in history to receive the Marine Corps Brevet Medal; and he was one of only a handful of men to twice receive the Congressional Medal of Honor. Despite his intrepid leadership in multiple conflicts, Smedley "the Fighting Quaker" Butler gradually cultivated some resentment towards the frequent misuse of the military as a corporate cudgel.

In July 1930, when the Commandant of the Marine Corps Wendell C. Neville died unexpectedly, it was widely assumed that the responsibility would pass to the most senior major general on the active list, General Smedley Butler. But his candid comments regarding military misapplication had won him many political enemies, including President Hoover, and he was consequently denied the appointment. His irritation increased when he was threatened with a court-martial due to an uncomplimentary comment regarding Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. At his own request, Butler retired from active duty soon thereafter.

About six months later, he stood before a sea of exasperated World War 1 veterans which surrounded Washington DC's Capitol Hill. The mass of over twenty thousand men-- all unemployed by the Great Depression-- were assembled to urge the early payout of their Service Certificates; a pension which had been granted to them in 1924, but was not scheduled to be paid for another thirteen years. General Smedley "Old Gimlet Eye" Butler addressed the marchers amidst a storm of applause, describing the event as "the greatest demonstration of Americanism we've ever had." Three days later, two cavalry regiments descended upon the veterans' encampment. Calamity ensued. Brandishing rifles, bayonets, and tear gas, the soldiers scattered the so-called Bonus Armyand set their shanty town ablaze.[MacArthur?]

The incident, combined with the economic breakdown it represented, led many citizens to suspect that the liberal democracy of America was hopelessly broken. Revolutionary rumblings were afoot, and some of the nation's wealthiest men began to seriously contemplate taking matters into their own hands. Such sentiments were cemented following the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his promised New Deal, a series of reforms which decoupled American currency from the gold standard and erected a tall stack of corporate regulations. Convinced that the program would produce cataclysmic economic effects, the cabal of capitalist conspirators allegedly set their plan into motion.

On the 1st of July 1933, Smedley Butler was visited by a pair of gentlemen who had come to urge him to run for the office of National Commander of the American Legion, an influential organization of veterans. Though Butler declined the invitation, one of the men-- Gerald MacGuire-- made several subsequent visits during which he disclosed additional details. He claimed to represent The Committee for a Sound Dollar, whose primary purpose was to pressure the president to reinstate the gold standard. He implied that his organization had the support of several political leaders, and the financial backing of some of the country's most affluent individuals and successful corporations.

Gerald MacGuire

The credibility of MacGuire's claims was reinforced when he produced evidence of considerable cash resources and made some eerily accurate predictions regarding personnel changes in the White House. He also accurately described the still-secret but soon-to-be-announced American Liberty League, a high-profile group whose stated purpose was to "defend and uphold the Constitution." The League's principal players were comprised of wealthy Americans, including the leaders of DuPont, JP Morgan, US Steel, General Motors, Standard Oil, Colgate, Heinz Foods, Chase National Bank, and Goodyear Tire. There are some who claim that Prescott Bush-- father to the 41st US President and grandfather to the 43rd-- was also entangled in the scheme.

On 22 August 1934, upon his return from a fact-finding trip to Europe, Gerald MacGuire dropped all pretense when he met with General Butler at an empty hotel restaurant. He indicated that his financial backers aimed to assemble an army of half a million disgruntled veterans, sown from the seeds of the original Bonus Army. He also stated that the group would like Butler to be the leader of this force."We've got three million [dollars] to start with on the line," MacGuire claimed, "and we can get three hundred million if we need it."

According to MacGuire, the League's members could easily manipulate the media to provide public approval. He went on to suggest that the League planned to protect the country from communism by mimicking the methods of Benito Mussolini, a dictator who had risen to power a decade earlier with the support of a veteran militia. Mussolini's fascist government had successfully restored Italy's industrial viability, so it was deemed as an ideal model for repairing America's impoverished economy. According to the plan, Roosevelt and other existing US leadership would be allowed to remain as figureheads, while the true policy-making power would fall to a new cabinet position which Smedley Butler would occupy: The Secretary for General Affairs.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

"Old Gimlet Eye" seemed to show some enthusiasm for the arrangement, and invited an associate named Paul Comly French to join the discussions. "Roosevelt hasn't got the real solution to the unemployment situation," MacGuire allegedly told French, "but we'll put across a plan that will be really effective. All unemployed men would be put in military barracks, under forced labor, as Hitler does, and that would soon solve that problem. Another thing we would do immediately would be to register all persons in the United States, as they do in Europe. That would stop a lot of Communist agitators wandering around loose." He also hinted that weapons would be furnished by the Remington Arms company, in which the DuPont family owned a controlling interest.

The American Liberty League's strategy seemed bold, but not implausible. At that time much of the public held the president in low regard, and the League members had considerable control over the nation's news outlets. Furthermore, the US armed forces were at decreased peacetime levels. With the Fighting Quaker to galvanize the 500,000 armed revolutionaries, it was quite possible that such a coup d'état could be successful.

In the autumn of 1934, General Smedley "Old Duckboard" Butler finally sprang into action. A crowd of journalists surrounded him as he addressed the nation in a press conference. But the General did not demand the surrender of the United States government. Instead, he related to the reporters the details of the secret pro-fascist plot, and described the principal players. "The upshot of the whole thing," he explained, "was that I was supposed to lead an organization of five hundred thousand men which would be able to take over the functions of government." The Old Gimlet Eye, it turned out, had been playing along with Gerald MacGuire in order to glean information about the plot. Though Smedley Butler had indeed grown weary of being a government-sponsored "gangster for capitalism," he was still a true patriot. Butler's associate-- Paul Comly French-- was in actuality an undercover reporter for the Philadelphia Record and New York Evening Post. The two men testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), delighted to disclose all they had gathered from MacGuire. Veterans of Foreign Wars National Commander James Van Zandt also testified, stating that he had likewise been approached to lead such a march on Washington.

General Smedley Butler's press conference

MacGuire and the wealthy men he allegedly represented all denied involvement in any such plot, referring to such suggestions as "a joke, a publicity stunt." They even publicly questioned the sanity of General Butler. But MacGuire's self-contradicting testimony was crippling to his credibility. Ultimately the investigative HUAC committee concluded that there was indeed compelling evidence of a plot, as outlined in their report:

"In the last few weeks of the Committee's official life it received evidence showing that certain persons had made an attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country.... There is no question but that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient.

"This committee received evidence from Major General Smedley D. Butler (retired), twice decorated by the Congress of the United States. He testified before the Committee as to conversations with one Gerald C. MacGuire in which the latter is alleged to have suggested the formation of a fascist army under the leadership of General Butler.

"MacGuire denied these allegations under oath, but your Committee was able to verify all the pertinent statements made by General Butler, with the exception of the direct statement suggesting the creation of the organization. This, however, was corroborated in the correspondence of MacGuire with his principal, Robert Sterling Clark, of New York City, while MacGuire was abroad studying the various forms of veterans' organizations of fascist character."

The press was quick to pick up the story, referring to the conspiracy as a "plot without plotters", which "failed to emerge in any alarming proportion." A handful of papers took the story seriously, but most newsmen ridiculed the notion that their bosses' close acquaintances would participate in such rabble-rousing.

The government's inaction was also swift and decisive. Criminal charges were brought against no one, and the collection of prominent men implicated in the plot were immediately excused from testifying; in fact, all mention of their names was scrubbed from the committee's public report. The document stated that "the Committee has ordered stricken therefrom certain immaterial and incompetent evidence, or evidence which was not pertinent to the inquiry." The omitted bits of the report were later published by John L. Spivak when he was mistakenly furnished with a full transcript of the hearings, but the public accepted the additional information with indifference. Even a 1936 letter to Roosevelt from William Dodd, the US Ambassador to Germany, failed to prompt any action:

"A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government and is working closely with the fascist regime in Germany and Italy. I have had plenty of opportunity in my post in Berlin to witness how close some of our American ruling families are to the Nazi regime.... A prominent executive of one of the largest corporations, told me point blank that he would be ready to take definite action to bring fascism into America if President Roosevelt continued his progressive policies."

Theories regarding the government's apparent apathy are plentiful. Foremost is the fact that there were still relatively few laws to address such conspiracies during peacetime, so it was unclear what charges could be made with so little evidence. In addition, the plot was replete with political figures and the social elite, turning any journey towards justice into a minefield for all involved. Moreover, one month after the report was issued, Gerald MacGuire died of natural causes at the age of thirty-seven, eliminating the only witness with insight into the shadowy cabal.

Smedley Darlington Butler, still popular among veterans, continued to speak and write regarding what he referred to as the "racket of war." Though he was officially a Republican, he spoke openly to publications of any party affiliation, as evidenced by his oft-quoted remarks in a 1935 issue of the socialist magazine Common Sense:

"I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-12. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras "right" for American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.... Looking back on it, I felt I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents."

In the same year he wrote the short book War is a Racket wherein he advocated the transition of the military into a powerful defense-only force. His dream was to eliminate military gangsterism by restricting the American navy to within 200 miles of the US coast, to limit armed aircraft to within 500 miles, and to prohibit the army from even setting foot off of the US mainland.

In the decades since the Business Plot was brought to light, many historians have suggested that the treachery was exaggerated by Butler, or that Gerald MacGuire overstated the resources at the conspirators' disposal. There is much evidence, however, to suggest that not only was such a fascist-friendly conspiracy afoot, but that its underwriters had the will-- and very nearly had the resources-- to bring their un-American ideas to fruition. Were it not for the uncompromising patriotism of Retired Major General Smedley Old-Gimlet-Eye Duckboard Fighting-Quaker Butler, the outcome of that turbulent time might have been profoundly different, indeed.

Written by Alan Bellows,

===

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler

In 1931, he publicly recounted gossip about Benito Mussolini in which the dictator allegedly struck a child with his automobile in a hit-and-run accident. The Italian government protested and President Hoover, who strongly disliked Butler, forced Secretary of the Navy Charles Francis Adams III to court-martial him. Butler became the first general officer to be placed under arrest since the Civil War. He apologized to Secretary Adams and the court martial was canceled with only a reprimand.[30]^

He announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate in the Republican primary in Pennsylvania in March 1932 as a proponent of the prohibition, known as a "dry".[43] He allied with Gifford Pinchot, but they were defeated by Senator James J. Davis.[44]^

^...

Lectures

He became widely known for his outspoken lectures against war profiteering, U.S. military adventurism, and what he viewed as nascent fascism in the United States.

In December 1933, Butler toured the country with James E. Van Zandt to recruit members for the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW). He described their effort as "trying to educate the soldiers out of the sucker class." In his speeches he denounced the Economy Act of 1933, called on veterans to organize politically to win their benefits, and condemned the FDR administration for its ties to big business. The VFW reprinted one of his speeches with the title "You Got to Get Mad" in its magazine Foreign Service. He said: "I believe in...taking Wall St. by the throat and shaking it up."[49] He believed the American Legion was controlled by banking interests. On December 8, 1933, explaining why he believed veterans' interests were better served by the VFW than the American Legion, he said: "I said I have never known one leader of the American Legion who had never sold them out–and I mean it."[50]^

In addition to his speeches to pacifist groups, he served from 1935 to 1937 as a spokesman for the American League Against War and Fascism.[51][52] In 1935 he wrote the exposé War Is a Racket, a trenchant condemnation of the profit motive behind warfare. His views on the subject are summarized in the following passage from a 1935 issue of the socialist magazine *Common Sense*:

I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class thug for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.[12]^

^ ^

Allegations of the Business Plot

In November 1934, Butler alleged the existence of a political conspiracy of Wall Street interests to overthrow President Roosevelt, a series of allegations that came to be known in the media as the Business Plot.[53][54] A special committee of the House of Representatives headed by Representatives John W. McCormack of Massachusetts and Samuel Dickstein of New York, who was later alleged to have been a paid agent of the NKVD,[55] heard his testimony in secret.[56] The McCormack-Dickstein committee was a precursor to the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

In November 1934, Butler told the committee that a group of businessmen, saying they were backed by a private army of 500,000 ex-soldiers and others, intended to establish a fascist dictatorship. Butler had been asked to lead it, he said, by Gerald P. MacGuire, a bond salesman with Grayson M–P Murphy & Co. The New York Times reported that Butler had told friends that General Hugh S. Johnson, a former official with the National Recovery Administration, was to be installed as dictator. Butler said MacGuire had told him the attempted coup was backed by three million dollars, and that the 500,000 men were probably to be assembled in Washington, D.C. the following year. All the parties alleged to be involved, including Johnson, said there was no truth in the story, calling it a joke and a fantasy.[56]^

In its report, the committee stated that it was unable to confirm Butler's statements other than the proposal from MacGuire, which it considered more or less confirmed by MacGuire's European reports.[57] No prosecutions or further investigations followed, and historians have questioned whether or not a coup was actually close to execution, although most agree that some sort of "wild scheme" was contemplated and discussed.[58][59][60][61] The news media initially dismissed the plot, with a New York Times editorial characterizing it as a "gigantic hoax".[62] When the committee's final report was released, the Times said the committee "purported to report that a two-month investigation had convinced it that General Butler's story of a Fascist march on Washington was alarmingly true" and "... also alleged that definite proof had been found that the much publicized Fascist march on Washington, which was to have been led by Major. Gen. Smedley D. Butler, retired, according to testimony at a hearing, was actually contemplated".[63]^

The McCormack-Dickstein Committee confirmed some of Butler's accusations in its final report. "In the last few weeks of the committee's official life it received evidence showing that certain persons had made an attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country...There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient."[64] [n 1][n ^2]^

In June 1940, Butler checked himself into the hospital after becoming sick a few weeks earlier. His doctor described his illness as an incurable condition of the upper gastro-intestinal tract that was probably cancer.

---

Butler and the veterans

Shacks, erected by the Bonus Army on the Anacostia flats burning after being set on fire by the U.S. military (1932)

Main article: Bonus Army

On July 17, 1932, thousands of World War I veterans converged on Washington, D.C., set up tent camps, and demanded immediate payment of bonuses due them according to the World War Adjusted Compensation Act of 1924. This "Bonus Army" was led by Walter W. Waters, a former Army sergeant. The Army was encouraged by an appearance from retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, who had some influence over the veterans, being a popular military figure of the time. A few days after Butler's arrival, President Herbert Hoover ordered the marchers removed, and their camps were destroyed by US Army cavalry troops under the command of General Douglas MacArthur.

Butler, although a self-described Republican, responded by supporting Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 US presidential election.[9]^

By 1933 Butler was denouncing capitalism and bankers, confessing that as a Marine general "I was a racketeer for capitalism."[10]^

Reaction to Roosevelt

The election of Roosevelt was upsetting for many conservative businessmen of the time, his "campaign promise that the government would provide jobs for all the unemployed had the perverse effect of creating a new wave of unemployment by businessmen frightened by fears of socialism and reckless government spending."[11]^

The Hoover administration had steadfastly defended the gold standard even when Britain abandoned it in September 1931. With a devalued currency British manufactured goods became cheaper than American counterparts, resulting in more economic hardship for American industry. Roosevelt's campaign had promised to re-evaluate America's commitment to the gold standard, and through a series of actions from March 6 to April 18, 1933 abandoned it.

Conservative businessmen and other supporters of the gold standard were dismayed. Hoover who had championed the standard wrote that its abandonment was the first step toward "communism, fascism, socialism, statism, planned economy."[11] He argued that the standard was needed to stop governments from "confiscating the savings of the people by manipulation of inflation and deflation....We have gold because we cannot trust Governments."[11]^

Roosevelt also dissolved any "gold clause" within contracts public or private that guaranteed payment in gold. This clause was part of every government bond and most corporate bonds, "It was a standard feature of mortgage agreements and other contracts. For creditors, it offered protection against inflation or congressional tinkering with the currency." For debtors though it was dangerous as "The gold dollar, before Roosevelt reduced it, was $1.69. This meant that a bank, for example, could suddenly require a farmer to make mortgage payments in gold coin-transferring a $10,000 mortgage into one worth $16,900, raising the farmer's debt burden by nearly 70 percent."[12] Likewise the U.S treasury could be required to pay the bearer of a $10,000 Liberty Bond $16,900 in gold coins.[12] (The constitutionality of this Roosevelt policy was later challenged before the Supreme Court in the Gold Clause Cases.)

With the end of the gold standard "conservative financiers were horrified. They viewed a currency not solidly backed by gold as inflationary, undermining both private and business fortunes and leading to national bankruptcy. Roosevelt was damned as a socialist or Communist out to destroy private enterprise by sapping the gold backing of wealth in order to subsidize the poor."[13]^

Ending the gold standard allowed the country to escape the cycle of deflation, but the shift was not painless, "Since higher prices were not yet accompanied by higher wages, inflation meant lower [real] incomes for those fortunate enough to be employed. Until the effects of increased investment spending ramified through the economy, there was little reason for investment incomes and hence consumption to rise dramatically. Industrial production remained volatile".[14] The problem was a lack of any measures for stimulus to accompany the new policy, there was no increased provision of money and credit.

To encourage foreign investment Roosevelt had the Reconstruction Finance Corporation purchase gold with dollars thereby driving up the price of gold and reducing the value of the dollar. Still this did not immediately affect the balance of trade. Those considering buying American goods anticipated that there would be a further depreciation which would allow their own currency further purchasing power and therefore greater profits, so they held back their orders. At the same time Americans fearing additional depreciation purchased more foreign commodities in fear they would lose purchasing power in the future; "The volume of U.S. imports rose by 10 percent between 1932 and 1933. In contrast, exports stagnated. The consequence was a deteriorating balance of trade."[14]^

Another Roosevelt policy also had an unanticipated effect on the recovery, the National Industrial Recovery Act of June 16, 1933 provided established minimum wages of 40 cents an hour and revised upward the entire wage structure of many of the industries it covered, this placed upward pressure on labor costs.

----

Irénée du Pont (1876–1963) was a U.S. businessman, former president of the DuPont company and head of the Du Pont trust.

[edit] Biography

A descendant of Eleuthère Irénée du Pont, he graduated from Andover in 1894 and MIT in 1897, then worked for Fenn’s Manufacturing Contracting Company for a number of years before he joined DuPont. While at MIT, he was a member of the Phi Beta Epsilon fraternity, where he was one of the first brothers, contributing over $4,000,000 to the fraternity throughout his lifetime. He was president of DuPont from 1919 to 1925 and remained on the board until he retired in 1958. Smedley Butler speculated to a congressional committee that DuPont may have been supportive of the possible Business Plot to overthrow President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

In 1957 Fortune estimated his wealth at between $200 million and $400 million, making him one of the two richest members of the Du Pont family at that time, and one of the twenty richest Americans (see Wealthiest Americans (1957)).

He built a mansion in Varadero, Cuba, which he named Xanadu.

Maverick Marine bio

King 8th Floor VE25.B88 S36

1987 ON SEARCH

http://books.google.com/books?id=vQ7DKhq0

ZckC&dq=maverick+marine&source=gbs_navlin

ks_s

226

GMP Murphy and singer sew mach heir got

3m$

butler to head the CCC (if not,

Doug)...HUAC found MacGuire docs. MacG

was intermiduary, mayble playing sides

against each other

Gold cabal

in '35 journalist accidentally given

unexpurgated comm transcripts 229

LIberty League

racketeer for cap'lism, made Nic safe fr

Brown bros 231 china st'd oil

wrote art'ls for common sense, socialist

but not marxist mag w/ Uppie etc

photo of gen w/ durenate and jpm in car

in bkgd?

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