Sedition: “Incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority” — Merriam-Webster dictionary
The Culture War is upon us, as real as any shooting war, and part of the conflict includes a disruption from the traditional economic structure from which we’ve all benefited. As it exists today, capitalism is a tattered remnant of what it once was, and its continuing existence is not assured. Capitalism in its best state is the rising tide that lifts all ships, which is why the system has found itself in the crosshairs of communistic oppressors. It is a target-rich environment for those looking to finish us off by exploiting the very problems they created through the corruption of capitalism.
The aggressors we recognize as anti-capitalists or communists birthed globalism, but they also created, at the same time, an incipient cancer within our economic system: Wokeism (Think: cultural revolution). The overall process of how we got to where we are today is our next installment and points us to how to use history as the path back to safety and salvation. Ready?
Too often, Americans fail to strike a balance regarding political events, but there should be no issues more important than our country’s survival, governance style, and freedom from looming tyranny. Last week, American Thinker published a piece I penned entitled “Under Wokeism, Animal Farm Comes to Life” — in that article, I postulated that Wokeism is a literal, prosecutable crime committed by individuals and groups to overthrow the United States through violence and subterfuge. Germany attempted such a coup along with American Nazi sympathizers. They aimed to keep us out of the Second World War, hoping we’d become allies of Hitler’s Germany. What a fascinating and terrible story, almost lost to history.
The parallels to recent American politics are intense. In 1938, Father Charles Coughlin attracted a weekly radio audience in the tens of millions. Coughlin was a rabid antisemite and a true believer in Nazi ambitions. Coughlin created the 800,000-member strong Christian Front and widely broadcast his views. Coughlin was also closely aligned with the America First Committee effort, which had many of the same aims and objectives but was not exclusively directed by Catholics.
One other player ties these various efforts together; he was George Viereck, an agent of the German government before Pearl Harbor and an effective Nazi spy. Viereck funneled German government monies to nearly two dozen members of Congress. Those unwitting dupes used their Franking Privilegesto distribute millions and millions of Nazi messages directly into American homes. Those messages were thinly veiled German propaganda coming from an official American source. Viereck had ties to Henry Ford and other industrialists who admired Hitler and what he had done to rebuild his country. Viereck created a massive public influence campaign. If not for the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. might never have entered the Second World War. What that change in history could have meant to the world and America’s prospects are almost too horrible to contemplate.
Most Americans were strongly isolationist before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Everything I’ve written up to this point wouldn’t have amounted to a footnote in history if not for J. Edgar Hoover’s subsequent actions. He had his agents arrest 17 members of the Christian Front group in New York, and Hoover held a press conference reported by every major U.S. newspaper. Hoover was convinced his FBI had the goods on a powerful group of fifth columnists, and his agents had also identified Nazi spies and saboteurs within the country. (Hoover had an agent embedded with the Christian Front who took verbatim notes on the inside of his shirt sleeves.)
There was solid evidence that the Christian Front was doing more than just spouting propaganda; there was even proof that the group had created its own militia with stolen Army weapons. When Hoover determined that there was a coup attempt within days of being launched, the FBI acted and arrested the conspirators. Consider some of the contemplated actions as recorded in courtroom testimony, revealing what the German government and disloyal Americans fully intended to carry out against their fellow Americans:
Murder of several Congressmen
Blow up Jewish businesses
Create panic that would result in a declaration of Martial Law
Use their sympathizers in the National Guard to launch a military junta once Martial Law was declared
Build and distribute explosive devices with the intent to sow fear and panic among the population
Once Hoover acted, shock and disbelief set in all over America. The German plan was based on the belief that Americans would trade freedom for security. Fortunately, the life of the Christian Front was short-lived, and radio priest Charles Coughlin was removed from the national stage. Although the Catholic Church had openly supported Jews during and especially after WWII, many practitioners were hostile to Judaism before then. One, in particular, was the powerful Roman Catholic Bishop of Brooklyn, NY, who was asked about his support of the Christian Front. When pressed, he said, “Well, what of it? What law was violated?”
Violence against Jews in America, egged on by the German American Bund and the Christian Front, peaked in February 1939 after a Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden attended by more than 20,000 people. Americans listening and reading about Nazi swastikas and violent hate speech here at home were shocked to the core. Citizens began to galvanize against what was so obviously un-American.
These overt actions were a stain on our country. This was not the exercise of free speech; it was espionage and sedition by foreign and domestic actors who attempted to change our customs and leadership using threats of violence, intimidation, and false information. They successfully bought off several corrupt elected officials, who were eventually voted out. More than 100 individuals were arrested and convicted in NYC that year for violence, including attempted murder and terrorizing Jews and anti-Nazis.
After these arrests by the FBI, the U.S. Department of Justice decided the Christian Front was a clear and present danger to our country. On December 28, 1939, Frank Murphy, the U.S. Attorney General, convened a Grand Jury in Washington to review evidence of organized antisemitism and the actions of German provocateurs. In January of 1940, 17 arrest warrants were issued and arrests were made. On February 8, all 17 were indicted for Seditious Conspiracy and theft of federal weapons and property. A lengthy trial ensued, with the judge dying before a verdict could be rendered. The defendants asked for a new trial. But, by then, Robert Jackson was the new Attorney General who feared this prosecution would be embarrassing and difficult for a jury to understand or believe the incredible scope of the defendants’ actions and intentions. With massive pressure from other unindicted conspirators, the prosecution was quietly dropped. President Truman himself was staunchly against retrying the conspirators for the country’s sake.
Only successful coups are generally remembered, and they are challenging to pull off and usually thought to apply to so-called “banana republics.” But more patient, better-financed, and dastardly individuals or groups might try again to bring the United States to its knees. As you can see from this bit of history, it may not be impossible, even today. Especially when you consider the shift towards tyranny through the stamping boot of Woke corporations, undermining American principles and capitalism every step of the way.
As hard as it may be to believe, evil people contemplate seditious and conspiratorial actions all the time. Remember what Sherlock Holmes might have opined: “Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth.” We must always be on guard against such people.
God Bless America!
