Eustace Mullins
Born
Eustace Clarence Mullins Jr.

(1923-03-09)March 9, 1923
Roanoke, Virginia, U.S.
DiedFebruary 2, 2010(2010-02-02) (aged 86)
Hockley, Texas, U.S.
OccupationWriter
Known forAntisemitism, Holocaust denial, conspiracy theory
Notable workThe Secrets of the Federal Reserve (1952)
The Biological Jew (1967)
MovementNeo-fascism, constitutional militia movement
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Eustace Clarence Mullins Jr. (March 9, 1923 – February 2, 2010)[1] was an American white supremacist, antisemitic conspiracy theorist, propagandist,[2] Holocaust denier, and writer. A disciple of the poet Ezra Pound,[3] his best-known work is The Secrets of The Federal Reserve, in which he alleged that several high-profile bankers had conspired to write the Federal Reserve Act for their own nefarious purposes, and then induced Congress to enact it into law. The Southern Poverty Law Center described him as "a one-man organization of hate".[4]

Life

Letter from Eustace Mullins to J. Edgar Hoover, June 5, 1966

Eustace Clarence Mullins, Jr. was born in Roanoke, Virginia, the third child of Eustace Clarence Mullins (1899–1961) and his wife Jane Katherine Muse (1897–1971). His father was a salesman in a retail clothing store. He said he was educated at Ohio State University, New York University, and the University of North Dakota, although the FBI was unable to verify his attendance at any of them, with the exception of one summer session at NYU in 1947.[5]

In December 1942 he enlisted in the military as a Warrant Officer at Charlottesville, Virginia. He was a veteran of the United States Army Air Forces, serving thirty-eight months during World War II.

In 1949 Mullins worked at the Institute for Contemporary Arts in Washington, D.C. where he met Ezra Pound's wife Dorothy, who introduced him to her husband. Pound was at the time incarcerated in St. Elizabeth's Hospital for the Mentally Ill. Mullins visited the poet frequently, and for a time acted as his secretary. Later, he wrote a biography, This Difficult Individual Ezra Pound (1961), which literary critic Ira Nadel describes as "prejudiced and often melodramatic".[6] According to Mullins it was Pound who set him on the course of research that led to his writing The Secrets of The Federal Reserve.[7]

Mullins became a researcher at the Library of Congress in 1950 and helped Senator Joseph McCarthy in making claims about Communist Party funding sources.[8] He later stated that he believed McCarthy had "started to turn the tide against world communism".[9] Shortly after his first book, The Secrets of The Federal Reserve, came out in 1952, he was discharged by the Library of Congress.[10]

From April 1953 until April 1954, Mullins was employed by the American Petroleum Industries Committee (APIC). He was cited in 1954 as a "neo-Fascist" by the House Un-American Activities Committee, which noted in particular his article "Adolph Hitler: An Appreciation", written in 1952, in which he compared Hitler to Jesus and described both as victims of Jews.[2] In 1956 he sued the APIC for breach of contract, charging that the group had hired him as a sub rosa propagandist to undermine Zionism, but failed to live up to a verbal agreement to pay him $25,000 for his covert services.[11] The APIC responded that Mullins had been hired “as one of several economist-writers in a subordinate capacity", and denied that he had been employed “in any capacity at any time for the purpose he [alleged].″[2] The lawsuit, like many others filed by Mullins over the years, was eventually dismissed.[4]

Eustace Mullins's home at 126 Madison Place in Staunton, Virginia

In the 1950s, Mullins began his career as an author writing for Conde McGinley’s antisemitic newspaper Common Sense,[12] which promoted the second edition of his book on the Federal Reserve, entitled The Federal Reserve Conspiracy (1954). Around this time, he also wrote for Lyrl Clark Van Hyning's Chicago-based newsletter, Women's Voice. He was a member of the National Renaissance Party[13] and wrote for its journal, The National Renaissance.[14] In the 1990s and 2000s, he wrote for Criminal Politics.[15][16] Mullins was on the editorial staff of the American Free Press and became a contributing editor to the Barnes Review, both published by Willis Carto's Liberty Lobby.[17]

Mullins lived in Staunton, Virginia, in the house at 126 Madison Place[18] where he grew up, from the mid 1970s through the end of his life.[19]

Writings

Mullins in 1951 mugshot

The Secrets of the Federal Reserve

In the late 1940s, when the poet Ezra Pound was incarcerated in St. Elizabeths Hospital on treason charges against the US, he corresponded with Mullins. In their correspondence, Mullins exclaimed "THE JEWS ARE BETRAYING US", in a letter written on Aryan League of America stationery. The two became friends and Mullins often visited the poet while he was detained.[20] In his "Foreword" to The Secrets of the Federal Reserve, Mullins explains the circumstances by which he came to write his investigation into the origins of the Federal Reserve System: "In 1949, while I was visiting Ezra Pound… [he] asked me if I had ever heard of the Federal Reserve System. I replied that I had not, as of the age of 25. He then showed me a ten dollar bill marked "Federal Reserve Note" and asked me if I would do some research at the Library of Congress on the Federal Reserve System which had issued this bill."[20]

Mullins told Pound that he had little interest in such a research project because he was working on a novel. "My initial research" wrote Mullins, "revealed evidence of an international banking group which had secretly planned the writing of the Federal Reserve Act and Congress’ enactment of the plan into law. These findings confirmed what Pound had long suspected. He said, 'You must work on it as a detective story.'"[20]

Mullins completed the manuscript during the course of 1950 when he began to seek a publisher. Eighteen publishers turned the book down without comment before the President of the Devin-Adair Publishing Company, Devin Garrity, told him, "I like your book but we can't print it ... Neither can anybody else in New York. You may as well forget about getting [it] published."[20]

In 1952, the book was finally published by two of Pound's other disciples, John Kasper and David Horton, under the title Mullins on the Federal Reserve. In it, Mullins postulated a conspiracy among Paul Warburg, Edward Mandell House, Woodrow Wilson, J.P. Morgan, Benjamin Strong, Otto Kahn, the Rockefeller family, the Rothschild family, and other European and American bankers that led to the founding of the U.S. Federal Reserve System. He argued that the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 defies Article 1, Section 8, Paragraph 5 of the United States Constitution by creating a "central bank of issue" for the United States. Mullins went on to claim that World War I, the Agricultural Depression of 1920, and the Great Depression of 1929 were brought about by international banking interests to profit from conflict and economic instability. Mullins also cited Thomas Jefferson's staunch opposition to the establishment of a central bank in the United States.

In an updated edition published in 1983 and retitled Secrets of the Federal Reserve, Mullins argued that Kuhn, Loeb & Co. and the House of Morgan were fronts for the Rothschilds. He asserted that financial interests connected to the J. Henry Schroder Company and the Dulles brothers financed Adolf Hitler (in contrast to Pound's declaration that Hitler was a sovereign who disdained international finance.[21] ). He called the Rothschilds "world monopolists", and claimed that City of London bankers owned the Federal Reserve, since they owned much of the stock of its member banks. He attempted to trace stock ownership, as it changed hands via mergers and acquisitions, from the inception of the Federal Reserve in 1913 to the early 1980s.[22]

In the last chapter of the book, he noted various Congressional investigations, and criticized the immense degree of power possessed by these few banks who owned majority shares in the Federal Reserve. He also criticized the Bilderberg Group, attacking it as an international consortium produced by the Rockefeller-Rothschild alliance. In an appendix to the book, he delved further into the City of London, and criticized the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, which he claimed helps to conduct psychological warfare on the citizens of Britain and the United States.

Mullins dedicated Secrets of the Federal Reserve to George Stimpson and Ezra Pound. It became his best known book,[23] and remains broadly influential in American far-right movements.[24] A copy was reportedly found in Osama bin Laden's library at his compound in Abbottabad, along with Bloodlines of the Illuminati by Fritz Springmeier, another right-wing conspiracy theorist.[25]

Hitler and the Holocaust

Mullins' October 1952 article entitled "Adolf Hitler: An Appreciation" was mentioned in a report by the House Un-American Activities Committee.[26] In it, he espoused antisemitic views and expressed the belief that America owed a debt to Hitler.[27] The article first appeared in The National Renaissance, journal of the National Renaissance Party.[14]

In a tract from 1984 called The Secret Holocaust, Mullins stated that the accepted account of the Holocaust is implausible, calling it a cover story for Jewish-led Soviet massacres of Christians and anti-communists.[28] In particular, Mullins argues that by the mid-1960s, in order to divert the world's attention away from this putative mass slaughter, "the Jews" had cooked up the story of the Holocaust, using "photographs of the bodies of their German victims, which are exhibited today in gruesome 'museums' in Germany as exhibits of dead Jews"[29] as evidence for their claims.[28]

The Biological Jew

In 1968, Mullins authored the tract The Biological Jew, which he claimed was an objective analysis of the forces behind the "decline" of Western Culture. He claimed that the main influence that people were overlooking in their analysis of world affairs was "parasitism".[30]

The World Order

Michael Barkun describes Mullins' 1992 work The World Order: Our Secret Rulers as "a more openly anti-Semitic version of the Illuminati theory". He writes:

Like his mentor [Ezra Pound], Mullins sees the world's evil as a product of financial manipulation, in which Jews play a central role. But as an explanation of world, as opposed to modern, history, his conspiracist vision makes the Illuminati merely a link in a much longer chain that extends back to the ancient Near East and forward to the nascent communist movement of the early Marx. Weishaupt himself is portrayed as a mere figurehead… Mullins sees the Illuminati as really run by Jews…".[31]

Political activities

Mullins was involved with a number of extremist right-wing and neofascist groups from the early 1950s through the 1990s.[32] These included the National Association for the Advancement of White People and James H. Madole's[14] organization, the National Renaissance Party (NRP).[33] In the early 1950s Mullins regularly[33] spoke in public at NRP demonstrations.[14] His then-roommate was Matt Koehl, later the leader of the American Nazi Party but at that time head of the NRP's "Security Echelon Guard."[14]

In the late 1950s Mullins also collaborated with "scientific racist" Robert Kuttner, an associate editor of Charles Lee Smith's magazine, The Truth Seeker, in theorizing Kuttner's ideas on white supremacy. They cofounded the Institute for Biopolitics in 1958 in order to popularize Kuttner's theories and their precursors in the work of Morley Roberts.[33]

By the mid-1990s Mullins was "considered a national leader" in the constitutional militia movement.[34] He spoke regularly to militia groups across the United States during this time.[24] The Secrets of the Federal Reserve provided, in part, the theoretical underpinning of the movement's conspiracy theories about a secretive cabal of wealthy families controlling the international monetary system.[35]

Death

While on a speaking tour in Columbus, Ohio in January 2010, Mullins suffered a stroke. He died on February 2, 2010, aged 86, in Hockley, Texas.[36]

Works

Books

See also

References

  1. ^ Canon Funeral Home Waller, Texas
  2. ^ a b c Anti-semitic Propagandist Says He Was Hired by U.S. Oil Group. jta.org (March 2, 1956), retrieved August 31, 2016.
  3. ^
    • Paul F. Boller Jr. Emeritus Professor of History Texas Christian University; Oklahoma John George Jr. Professor of Political Science and Sociology Central State University (18 May 1989). They Never Said It : A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, and Misleading Attributions: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, and Misleading Attributions. Oxford University Press. p. 150. ISBN 978-0-19-802222-0. ...the disordered imagination of longtime anti-semite Eustace Mullins, a disciple of poet Ezra Pound.
    • Daniel Levitas (23 November 2002). The Terrorist Next Door: The Militia Movement and the Radical Right. St. Martin's Press. p. 261. ISBN 978-0-312-29105-1. ...the Christian Credit Society was endorsed by Eustace Mullins, a lifelong anti-semite and Holocaust denier.
    • Chip Berlet (1998). "Who is Mediating the Storm". In Linda Kintz; Julia Lesage (eds.). Media, Culture, and the Religious Right. U of Minnesota Press. p. 260. ISBN 978-0-8166-3085-1. ...Chuck Harder used notorious anti-Semite Eustace Mullins as an expert on the Federal Reserve
    • Out Spoken Ferr Speech Stories. University of California Press. 10 October 2003. p. 206. ISBN 978-0-510-11370-4. ...Eustace Mullins, an author of anti-Semitic tracts clothed as commentary on monetary policy, was invited to speak in a neighboring town.
    • Rupert, Mark (2000). Ideologies of Globalization: Contending Visions of a New World Order. Routledge. pp. 105, 122. ISBN 978-0-415-18925-5. '...and even provided a forum for the noxious antiSemitic conspiracist, Eustace Mullins.' (p.122) 'Spotlight has published the commentaries of Eustace Mullins, a notorious antiSemitic writer...' (p. 105)
    • Dennis Roddy (September 25, 2002). "Pick a Conspiracy, any Conspiracy Theory". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. p. D-1. That Eustace Mullins is both a conspiracy theorist and a raving anti-Semite is not necessarily a judgment on Smith.
    • Andrea Baillie (February 23, 2001). "Conference cancels speaker after anti-Semitic allegations". The Hamilton Spectator. p. C07. ...the Virginia-based author has also written books denying the Holocaust and praising the Nazis.
    • Matthew Kalman (April 20, 1997). "Kula Shaker star regrets flirtation with fascism". The Independent on Sunday. They shared a platform at the Wembley Conference Centre with the notorious anti-semitic propagandist Eustace Mullins...
    • Aune, James Arnt (2002). Selling the Free Market: The Rhetoric of Economic Correctness. Guilford Press. p. 134. ISBN 978-1-57230-757-5.
    • Jeffery Goldberg (October 29, 2012). "Nazi Propaganda Permeates Anti-Israel Movement". The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. p. A-7. The first time I met the anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist Eustace Mullins was at a conference I was covering of Holocaust deniers, neo-Nazis and paranoiacs...
    • Benjamin Weinthal (October 5, 2012). "Free Gaza group: Zionists operated concentration camps". Jerusalem Post. ...conspiracy theorist Eustace Mullins, who propagates the views that Jews are responsible for the Holocaust and are admirers of Hitler.
    • Thomas O'Dwyer (August 6, 1999). "Networks of hate". Jerusalem Post. p. 06A. Eustace Mullins, a grandfather of paranoid antisemites, proved that the Oklahoma City bombing was carried out by the Anti-Defamation League.
  4. ^ a b Staunton anti-Semite Mullins dies at 86 Archived 2016-09-20 at the Wayback Machine. Published originally in the Staunton News-Leader (May 2, 2010), reproduced at stiffs.com, retrieved August 31, 2016.
  5. ^ Full text, FBI Archive, "Eustace C. Mullins", retrieved August 31, 2016.
  6. ^ Nadel, Ira. (2010b). "The Lives of Pound". in Ira Nadel (ed). Ezra Pound in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-51507-8. pp. 161–162
  7. ^ Foreword to The Secrets of The Federal Reserve by Eustace Mullins, Bridger House Publications, 2009
  8. ^ "Sen. McCarthy Remembered". The Capitol Times (Madison, WI). 21 May 2001. p. 3A. Eustace Mullins, who was a researcher at the Library of Congress in 1950 when McCarthy asked him to look into who was financing the Communist Party, was the keynote speaker at a dinner Sunday evening sponsored by the Sen. Joseph McCarthy Educational Foundation.
  9. ^ The Capital Times, Madison, WI, May 21, 2001, p. 3A. Full Text Newspapers. Thomson Gale Archived July 1, 2007, at the Wayback Machine (requires Santa Cruz Public Library log-in).
  10. ^ Paul F. Boller, Jr. and John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, and Misleading Attributions, Oxford University Press (1989), p. 15.
  11. ^ "Anti-Zion Drive Denied By Group". Spokane Daily Chronicle. March 6, 1956.
  12. ^ Steven E Atkins (13 September 2011). Encyclopedia of Right-Wing Extremism In Modern American History. ABC-CLIO. p. 124. ISBN 978-1-59884-351-4.
  13. ^ David Livingstone (16 June 2013). Black Terror White Soldiers: Islam, Fascism and the New Age. David Livingstone. p. 606. ISBN 978-1-4812-2650-9.
  14. ^ a b c d e Martin A. Lee (23 October 2013). The Beast Reawakens: Fascism's Resurgence from Hitler's Spymasters to Today's Neo-Nazi Groups and Right-Wing Extremists. Taylor & Francis. pp. 89–91. ISBN 978-1-135-28131-1. James Madole, the nominal chief of the NRP, was a balding shipping clerk in his mid-forties who lived with his mother, a raving anti-Semite. (p. 89) Mullins occasionally joined NRP members at street-corner demonstrations, where he ranted about how the Jews had killed Eisenhower and replace him with a double whom they controlled. He peppered his speeches with snide remarks about ... the "Jew Deal" ... Mullins's roommate and intimate friend, Matt Koehl, was in charge of the NRP's Security Echelon Guard...(p. 90)
  15. ^ "A good example of these other paths is Criminal Politics, where Lawrence Patterson and his cohorts, including Eustace Mullins and Fletcher Prouty, scour the world for evidence of conspiracies within the world's power structure." Danky, Jim, and John Cherney, "An outpouring of right-wing publications cover all social issues", St. Louis Journalism Review, 25.n179 (Sept 1995): 27(1). InfoTrac OneFile. Thomson Gale.
  16. ^ "Eustace Mullins, Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theorist, Dies at Age 86". Anti-Defamation League. 2010-02-02. Retrieved 2021-09-10. From at least 1993 through 2009, Mullins was a contributing editor to Criminal Politics, an anti-Semitic conspiracy-oriented magazine.
  17. ^ Feldman, Matthew; Rinaldi, Andrea (2014). "'Penny-wise...': Ezra Pound's Posthumous Legacy to Fascism". In Jackson, Paul; Shekhovtsov, Anton (eds.). The Post-War Anglo-American Far Right: A Special Relationship of Hate. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 48. doi:10.1057/9781137396211. ISBN 9781137396211. Retrieved August 17, 2015.
  18. ^ Eustace Mullins (1967). The Biological Jew (PDF). Staunton, VA. Retrieved 2 March 2014.((cite book)): CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  19. ^ Bill McKelway (10 May 1995). "Right Rebellious – Guru Wages a War of Words on Conservatism's Fringe". Richmond Times-Dispatch.
  20. ^ a b c d Tytell, John (1987). Ezra Pound: The Solitary Volcano. New York: Anchor Press. ISBN 978-0-385-19694-9, pp. 304–14
  21. ^ Pound, Ezra, and Leonard W. Doob. "Ezra Pound Speaking": Radio Speeches of World War II. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1978.
  22. ^ Secrets of the Federal Reserve
  23. ^ Arthur Goldwag (4 September 2012). The New Hate: A History of Fear and Loathing on the Populist Right. Vintage Books. p. 140. ISBN 978-0-307-74251-3. Mullins was a frequent visitor to Ezra Pound when he was a political prisoner in St. Elizabeths Hospital, ... and his best-known book, The Secrets of the Federal Reserve, was written at the poet's behest and with his material and intellectual support.
  24. ^ a b Margaret Edds; David M. Poole (April 30, 1995). "VA Militias Defend Their Rage and Fears". The Roanoke Times. p. A-1. Another Virginian, 72-year-old Staunton author Eustace Mullins, has lectured to militia groups all over the country about a vast conspiracy in which the federal government has become a pawn of private banks and the Federal Reserve. ... Mullins – whose 1952 book, "The History of the Federal Reserve," is a seminal work in the Far-Right community...
  25. ^ Rosenberg, Matthew (2015-05-20). "In Osama bin Laden Library: Illuminati and Bob Woodward". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2015-05-21.
  26. ^ Preliminary Report on Neo-Fascist and Hate Groups Archived 2017-11-08 at the Wayback Machine, p. 27
  27. ^ Eustace Mullins. "Adolf Hitler: An Appreciation". p. 1. Archived from the original on 3 June 2012. Retrieved 8 July 2012.
  28. ^ a b Howard L. Bushart; John R. Craig (30 March 1999). Soldiers of God: White Supremacists and Their Holy War for America. Kensington Publishing Corporation. pp. 124, 233. ISBN 978-0-7860-0649-6. Mullins is the virulently anti-Jewish holocaust revisionist and author of The Secret Holocaust: A Primer for the Aryan Nations Movement, in which Jews are blamed for the European slaughter during World War II and virtually every other atrocity that has ever happened in the world.(p.124) Eustace Mullins' 1984 The Secret Holocaust (Aryan Truth Network) makes the claim that the Holocaust never happened and offers controversial evidence to support the allegations that the photos taken in the death camps—supposedly of 'dead Jews'—were actually photos of dead Germans who were victims of the Jews.(p.233)
  29. ^ Eustace Mullins (1983). The Secret Holocaust. Christian Vanguard. Retrieved 25 January 2014.
  30. ^ Sara Diamond (1996). Facing the wrath: confronting the Right in dangerous times. Common Courage Press. p. 214. ISBN 978-1-56751-078-2.
  31. ^ Michael Barkun (2006). A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America. University of California Press. p. 52.
  32. ^ Martin Durham (2000). The Christian Right, the Far Right and the Boundaries of American Conservatism. Manchester University Press. p. 124. ISBN 978-0-7190-5486-0. This is particularly the case for Nesta Webster, but also for Eustace Mullins, whose political career extends from his involvement in the minuscule pro-Nazi National Renaissance Party in the early 1950s to his influence on the modern Patriot movement in the 1990s
  33. ^ a b c John P. Jackson Jr. (1 August 2005). Science for Segregation: Race, Law, and the Case against Brown v. Board of Education. NYU Press. p. 63. ISBN 978-0-8147-4382-9. Kuttner first worked out his ideas on biopolitics in a work with Eustace Mullins (born 1923). Mullins was a frequent speaker for the National Renaissance Party. ... In a 1956 press release, Mullins listed his organizational affiliations as including the National Renaissance party, executive directorship of the Aryan League of America, and the National Association for the Advancement of White People. ... Another of Mullins's pet projects was the Institute for Biopolitics, which seemed to consist of him and Kuttner. The institute issued a booklet titled the Biopolitics of Organic Materialism, dedicated to Morley Roberts (1858–1942), a British novelist and writer...
  34. ^ Bill Morlin (April 16, 1995). "Militia Leader Urges Discreet Use of Force Says Guns, Bullets Should Be Last, Lowest Choice". The Spokesman-Review. p. B1. Beckman and Mullins are considered national leaders in the antigovernment, constitutionalist movement
  35. ^ Dennis B. Roddy (April 30, 1995). "Conspiracy Theories are Groups' Lifeblood". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. p. A-1. Similarly, it is Eustace Mullins' book, 'The Secrets of the Federal Reserve,' that provides fodder for the movement's belief that a handful of wealthy internationalists control the money supply through the Fed. ... Mullins' books contend that the Federal Reserve was concocted in the early part of the century as a means for a handful of banking families to take control of the world money supply.
  36. ^ "Eustace Mullins, Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theorist, Dies at Age 86". Anti-Defamation League. Retrieved 16 June 2019.

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