Talk:American Liberty League

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Because no sources are cited, the veracity of this article is suspect, particularly the $36 Billion in donations. In 2005 dollars, that would represent nearly $485 Billion, which even for these guys seems excessive. --RickAguirre 30 June 2005 23:05 (UTC)

The claims are largely accurate and can be documented in several sources, especially Seldes, but the figure of billions is just wrong. Awaiting documentation, I am chaging it to a generic "millions of dollars".--Cberlet 13:41, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

I wonder if the $36 Billion was an attempt to convert millions of 1934 dollars to 2005 dollars? Viveka

Hey what's a billion dollars among friends, or $36 billion (when the annual GNP was under $100 billion)? The historian who looked at the books (Wolfskill) says it spent a little over a half-million dollars, which was about what the United Mine Workers union spent for FDR in 1936. The source used in the first version has a fantastic theory that it plotted a coup d'etat against FDR, and chose as the hit-man Smedley Butler, who was a leading Socialist! Rjensen 09:32, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

That's a mischaracterisation of Smedley Butler. He wasn't a socialist at the time - he had run for the US Senate as a dry Republican in 1932. The League was founded by conservative Democrats; so no great distance between them on the face of it. He had been commander of Marine Expeditionary Force in China, was a highly decorated Marine who was known for being brave, outspoken and hard-headed. His nickname was "Old Gimlet Eye", and he was immensely popular with the rank and file soldiers who were to be recruited for the coup. When he came before congress in 1934 to swear under oath that the American Liberty League had asked him to lead a military coup against Roosevelt in order to establish a fascist dictatorship, his report was plausible to many. Coups have happened often throughout history, and in 1934 fascism was a major global political force with a lot of fans in the US, particularly in corporate boardrooms.

Here's a cartoonist's take on it at the time:

http://www.clubhousewreckards.com/plot/images/photos7_r.jpg

You'll notice that Butler is depicted as a military figure, and not as a Red.

After 1934 Butler did become a prominent anti-fascist; and yes, at that time to be an anti-fascist was to be a socialist. But the order of events is the other way around. First, he's a military man; then he runs as a Republican; then he claims he's asked to head a Facist coup; then he becomes a Socialist. Viveka

I notice that there's an article dealing with all of this at Business_Plot, so instead of trying to deal with this issue in this article I'll just add a link. Viveka

I've found the source of the $36 Billion error. In Jan. 1936, Scripps-Howard papers ran a story headlined “Liberty League Controlled by Owners of $37,000,000,000."; so that was the amount of total assets controlled by the backers of the league, not the league's actual assets. Trawling the web I see conistent reports of around half a million dollars per year, and boasts by the backers that they could pull together $300 million in a pinch. http://www.davidpietrusza.com/Liberty-League.html says "In terms of finances, various studies of the League’s operations have shown that in its six-year history it solicited and disbursed almost $1.2 million, most of which was spent in the short period between its founding in August 1934 and the presidential election of 1936. These totals did not include funds handled at the state or local level, and of course it should be borne in mind that these were pre-inflation dollars. In the calendar year 1935 the American Liberty League raised as much money as the Democratic and Republican parties combined. Most of it came from a handful of generous contributors—approximately 30 percent from members of the Du Pont family."Viveka

By 1934 Butler was a paid professional speaker and most of his audiences were peace groups and far left groups. He often spoke at Communist rallies. Butler never claimed the Am Liberty league was plotting against FDR. And if it had it would have been golden ammo for the Democrats in 1936 election, but the never used it--because they knew it was false. The charge re the League came from an anti-semitic hate monger named Spivak who said the Jews were taking over the world--a close echo of Nazi propaganda at the time. Wike should not spread Nazi or antisemitic hate venom. Rjensen 13:13, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Nonsense. There are a number of different sources, including contemporary newspaper accounts and the work of George Seldes. You can't delete material based on published sources because you don't like Democrats or the authors.--Cberlet 15:21, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

All the allegations re the Liberty League come from Spivak's NAzi propaganda. Rjensen 15:23, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Your POV is fascinating. The material critical of the Liberty League is hardly Nazi propoganda nor accurately dismissed as merely antisemitism. If you can find a published cite critical of Spivak, by all means add it and cite it. Otherwise the wholesale deletions are not appropriate. Seldes was a leading anti-fascist writer.--Cberlet 13:53, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

This page should be added to the A.L.L. catigory