There is no question that
author Webster Griffin Tarpley has become a divisive and destructive
force within the U.S. antiwar movement. The real question is why antiwar
activists would pay him any attention in the first place. Activists are
in an uproar over an incident at a peace encampment in Keenebunkport,
Maine where Tarpley is implicated in a stunt where well-known peace
activists such as Jamilla El-Shafei, Cindy Sheehan, Dahlia Wasfi, and
Ann Wright were tricked into signing a document they thought was merely a
call for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney. The fine print
in the document echoes Tarpley’s claim that Cheney is plotting a
pre-election coup using a domestic terrorist attack as an excuse.
Tarpley
is a former acolyte of crackpot and convicted felon Lyndon H. LaRouche,
Jr. You remember LaRouche. He is generally described as a perennial
Presidential candidate who once said the Queen of England ran the global
drug trade. Tarpley may have left the LaRouche group, but it has not
left him. Tarpley acts as a sockpuppet for LaRouche, spreading delirious
venom throughout the antiwar movement. The LaRouche group has a long
history of conning people into signing statements based on misleading
descriptions of the actual text. Déjà vu.
With so much factual
evidence of wrongdoing, incompetence, malfeasance, and just plain lying
on the part of the Bush Administration, there is no reason to spread
Tarpley’s gossip. The dramatic erosion of civil liberties in the United
States is bad enough without embracing the delusional warnings by
Tarpley that “neocons always prefer a coup d'etat to an election.”{1}
The
current tempest traces back to July 4 th, 2007 when Philadelphia peace
activists held an Emergency Antiwar Convention. It was an attempt to
merge the movement against the war in Iraq with the “9/11 Truth”
movement. The event featured 9/11 conspiracy films, as well as
presentations from Tarpley and another former LaRouchite activist, Lewis
DuPont Smith. Attendees issued a Call “In the spirit of our Declaration
of Independence” urging others to join activist organizations
throughout the country to collaborate and forge common strategies and
actions.”{2}
The statement included the phrase: “ Government by the People, not by
cliques of bankers and financiers,” which could have been copied from a
number of Nazi publications from the 1930s which identified the culprits
as Jews.
Tarpley has introduced similar statements at other meetings, including one in Chicago.{3}
A few weeks later, with his star rising in the antiwar movement,
Tarpley posted a long article on the Jeff Rense website warning: "Cheney
Determined To Strike In US With WMD This Summer, Only Impeachment,
Removal or General Strike Can Stop Him."{4}
According
to Tarpley, antiwar activists needed to quickly confront “the Cheney
doctrine, which calls for a new super 9/11 with weapons of mass
destruction in the US, to be used as the pretext for a nuclear attack on
Iran and for martial law at home.”{5}
This
is not the first time Tarpley has predicted an apocalyptic political
event. In 2004, he posted a warning: "Bush Regime working out Procedures
for postponing November Election."{6}
The election, needless to say, actually took place as scheduled,
although there were legitimate complaints about vote suppression to
benefit Republican candidates.
Tarpley is co-author (with LaRouche researcher Anton Chaitkin){7}
, of the book
George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, originally published by the LaRouche publishing house.{8}
Progressive author and blogger David Neiwert reviewed the book, noting that “Like most LaRouche texts:”
...the Bush "biography" is a mélange of fact and distortion, written in
a highly suppositional style that makes numerous leaps of logic and
asserts connections where there is no real evidence to support it, at
other times omitting exculpatory or contrary information that reveals a
more complete picture. Sifting through it requires a great deal of work,
but there are nuggets of fact woven into their text that are
substantiated and which deserve proper consideration.{9}
In
2005 Tarpley published a book that alleged the Bush Administration
staged the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon,
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA.{10}
[Note: specifically a secret rogue faction that runs the Bush
Administration - see blog post that follows] LaRouche takes a similar
position. According to LaRouche the attacks on 9/11 should be:
”recognized, sooner or later, as the product of a witting "inside job." Finally, my detailed knowledge of the onrushing strategic crisis within which those attacks were situated,
allowed no other conclusion, than that this was an attempted military
coup d'état with a global strategic purpose of the most ominous
implications imaginable.”{11}
While
continuing to follow the polluted path blazed by notorious crackpot and
homophobic antisemite Lyndon LaRouche, Tarpley is a regular contributor
and featured poster on the Jeff Rense website. If we can set aside the
UFO mania found on Rense.com, there is still the promotion of Holocaust
denial and antisemitic conspiracy theories.
At some point
leaders of the antiwar movement need to have a discussion about the
larger issue of conspiracism. Right now, however, it is clear that some
progressives have been snared by Tarpley’s mesmerizing presentations.
This could undermine the credibility of the antiwar movement, alienate
its existing base, and jeopardize its relationship with existing allies.
This should be obvious no matter what your individual position is on
the unanswered questions surrounding 9/11. The antiwar movement needs to
welcome individuals from a broad range of political beliefs who share
the goal of ending the war in Iraq. However this open door policy should
not include allowing charlatans and hucksters to disrupt the movement.
It is time to slam the door in the face of Webster G. Tarpley and his
ilk.
Post comments on the Daily Kos diary board here
Sources:
{1}
Webster G. Tarpley, “Cheney Determined To Strike In US With WMD This
Summer: Only Impeachment, Removal or General Strike Can Stop Him,”
7-21-7,
http://www.rense.com/general77/chens.htm.
{2}
“The ‘Act-Independent United Front Program’, submitted By Webster
Griffin Tarpley and approved by The Philadelphia Emergency Anti-War
Convention, July 4, 2007’ The Philadelphia Platform,’
http://www.waronfreedom.org/tarpley/philly.html. See the: event described at
http://actindependent.org/, and
http://actindependent.org/peac.html, and the full statement at
http://actindependent.org/philadelphiaplatform.pdf. See
http://www.waronfreedom.org/tarpley/chicago-resolution.html.
{3}
“9/11 Truth -- The Key To Stopping World War III, Resolution Submitted
To The 911 Chicago Truth Conference, June 2-4, 2006. This resolution was
presented to the final plenary meeting of the conference by Webster G.
Tarpley and acclaimed by voice vote. Tarpley is the author of the book,
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA.”
{4}
See also, Tarpley, “Helicopter Ben Unleashes Dollar Hyperinflation,” 8-12-7,
http://www.rense.com/general77/ben.htm.
{5}
See
http://www.rense.com/general77/chens.htm.
{6}
As of September 11, 2007, the Tarpley article is still on Michel
Chossudovsky's Global Research website: Webster Griffin Tarpley, “Bush
Regime working out Procedures for postponing November Election, posted
July 10, 2004,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/TAR407B.html.
{7}
A recent article by Anton Chaitkin is BAE, Baroness Symons in Black Operations Against LaRouche, July 6, 2007,
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2007/3427bae_antilar_ops.html.
{8}
Tarpley, Webster Griffin and Anton Chaitkin. (1992).
George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography. Washington, DC:
Executive Intelligence Review.
{9}
David Neiwert, "Bush, the Nazis and America," September 07, 2003,
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2003/09/bush-nazis-and-america_07.html
{10}
Tarpley’s book is published by Progressive Press,
http://www.waronfreedom.org, which also publishes a book by Eric Hufschmid,
Painful Questions
. Hufschmid is described as one of the researchers "who openly mix 9/11
skepticism with Holocaust denial or revisionism," see "Holocaust Denial
Versus 9/11 Truth,"
http://911review.com/denial/holocaust.html.
{11}
Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., "Zbigniew Brzezinski and September 11th",
Executive Intelligence Review, January 11, 2001,
http://www.larouchepub.com/lar/2002/2901zbig_sept11.html.
Post comments on the Daily Kos diary board here
posted by Chip Berlet @ 2:44 PM
About Chip Berlet
Chip Berlet is senior analyst at Political Research Associates in the Boston area. Berlet is co–author of Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort (Guilford, 2000) and editor of Eyes Right! Challenging the Right Wing Backlash
(South End Press, 1995), both of which received a Gustavus Myers Center
Award for outstanding scholarship on the subject of human rights and
bigotry in North America.
