Years ago, I read Gary Allen's controversial 1971 book, None Dare Call It Conspiracy. Its premise is that international bankers and power elites are working to create a one world government. I don't remember if Allen actually substantiated that claim, but he did highlight some pretty fishy facts, such as prominent financiers' support for the Bolshevik Revolution and Adolf Hitler.
Three things last night reminded me of this book:
1. Glenn Beck was saying that we should redefine the political spectrum, and he proposed a model that was identical with that of Gary Allen in None Dare Call It Conspiracy.
Many experts place Communism on the Left and Fascism on the Right, but Allen views that as complete nonsense. Where would one put a libertarian or an anarchist on such a spectrum?, he asks. The model that Gary Allen and Glenn Beck propose is this: put totalitarianism and State authoritarianism on the Left, and anarchy (no government at all) on the Right. In the center-right is a limited constitutional government, the best system that humans can devise (according to Allen and Beck).
I agree with Allen and Beck that our current political spectrum is problematic in that it excludes anarchists and libertarians from simple categorization. But I don't know if their model is any better. Right now, both liberals and conservatives support a mixture of liberty and authoritarianism. Many liberals love government authority in the economic sphere, but they tend to oppose it in the social and (to some extent) criminal realms. Many conservatives are more libertarian economically, but they also want to ban pornography, and they prioritize catching and punishing criminals over "due process." So I don't know what the ideal political spectrum would look like.
2. I watched The Mary Kate Latourneau Story: All-American Girl. Mary Kate Latourneau was a teacher who had sex with one of her students. Her father was ultra-conservative Congressman John Schmitz, who ran for President in 1972 with the American Independent Party and wrote the introduction to Allen's None Dare Call It Conspiracy.
I watched the movie specifically to see how it would portray Schmitz. Overall, it presented him as a nice guy whose principles were too high. He opposed sex education because he thought it encouraged promiscuity, but he himself had children by a mistress. And, while he may have been "Mr. Law and Order" in his political beliefs, he preferred that his daughter receive therapy and rehabilitation rather than punishment.
Near the end of the movie, he tried to reconcile his daughter's legal situation with his own conservative beliefs. He said that, in the old days, statutory rape laws only applied to men, and Mary Kate's judge was probably a liberal feminist who was retaliating against Schmitz for his prominent opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment. Now, I'm somewhat of a Phyllis Schlafly fan myself, but I think statutory rape laws should apply to both men and women. Why should women be exempt from them? That wouldn't be fair!
In a flashback at the beginning, Schmitz is having his children recite the "right" political beliefs at the dinner table. His son remarks that Nixon is a hypocrite for aiding Red China, which supports the very Communists who are killing American boys in Vietnam. That's a valid point, but I think a big goal of Nixon's detente was to use the Communist countries against each other.
3. I was reading Donald Warren's Radio Priest: Charles Coughlin the Father of Hate Radio. Charles Coughlin was a prominent radio priest in the 1930's, and he spoke against Communism, international bankers, and Franklin Roosevelt. He is usually placed on the far right of the political spectrum, but he had ideas that could be construed as leftist (e.g., living wage, nationalization, abolishing the gold standard, etc.). Again, our political spectrum doesn't always allow for easy categorization!
Coughlin is considered by historians to be anti-Semitic, and many of his public and private statements may indeed deserve that label. But he did not view himself as such, for he went to great pains to stress that he wasn't attacking all Jews, but only the ones who were atheists, Communists, or international bankers. And he acknowledged that Gentiles could fall into these categories as well.
That reminds me of something Gary Allen says in None Dare Call It Conspiracy. According to Allen, many people shy away from criticizing international bankers because such a practice has historically coincided with anti-Semitism. But, as Allen notes, there are many international bankers who are not Jewish.
A possible problem with Coughlin, Allen, etc. is that they seem to assume that the international bankers and rich financiers are on the same side. But we can see from their own accounts that such is not the case. Coughlin lambasted the rich bankers for funding the Bolsheviks, but he himself had support from rich financiers (e.g., Henry Ford, Joseph Kennedy). Plus, as Allen contends, rich financiers were also supporting the Hitler regime, for which Coughlin had some sympathy (although he also criticized it). I'm not sure what their agenda was. Maybe they just wanted to make money.