Watergate: Was Nixon Set Up?

Watergate – Chapter 1

The History Channel (2016)

Film Review

While this six-part series is rich in intriguing detail, people need to be aware it ignores extensive evidence Russ Baker compiled for his 2009 book Family of Secrets. In the later, Baker concluded Nixon was the victim, not the perpetrator, of Watergate. In other words, Watergate (like the JFK assassination) was a coup to remove a democratically elected president from power. *

Chapter 1 starts with background about Nixon’s initial escalation of the Vietnam War, via secret (and illegal) bombings of Laos and Cambodia.

It also plays excerpts of the infamous White House tapes** revealing Nixon was extremely paranoid, particularly of the CIA. With good reason. As Baker reveals in “Chapter 10 Downing Nixon” in Family of Secrets, Nixon had been at war with the CIA ever since his 1969 inauguration. This was mainly due to his demand that they provide him classified records of their role in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, the assassination of South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem in November 1963 and the CIA overthrow of the elected government of the Dominican Republic in 1954. (The History Channel documentary “Watergate” reveals none of this.)

Nixon feared (with good reason) he could become a CIA target like Kennedy and strongly suspected the CIA had infiltrated both his White House staff and re-election committee. Baker provides extensive evidence Nixon’s legal counsel John Dean,*** deputy assistant to the president Alexander Butterfield and deputy director of the Committee to Re-Elect the President Jeb Magruder all helped end the Nixon presidency by orchestrating both the Watergate scandal and the coverup that ensued.

The best part of Chapter 1 is when the History Channel pays excerpts of the Nixon tapes where he expresses his belief the CIA orchestrated the Watergate break-in*** and Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs John Ehrlichman asserts the FBI also believes the CIA is behind the burglary. However the filmmakers neglect to link these statements to orders Nixon later gives for the CIA (given their responsibility for the operation) to instruct the FBI to shut down their investigation. Without this context, this documentary makes it look like Nixon is guilty of obstruction of justice.

Although this episode notes that this was the second time (CIA) “plumbers” had broken into the Democratic headquarters, it passes over the distinct difference between the two events. With the first (a May 28, 1972 clandestine operation to bug the telephones), the “burglars” left no trace of their illegal entry. With the second (three weeks later), the intruders pried the door open with a crowbar, smashed windows and vandalized the office. It’s Baker’s belief they did so to make sure to generate a burglary report, which would bring the incident to court and ultimately to public view.

The film also conveniently overlooks the point Baker makes in his book: once left-wing peace candidate George McGovern became the Democratic front runner, Nixon faced an easy victory (he went on to win all but one state) and there was no rationale for his re-election committee to organize a break-in to Democratic headquarters.

This sanitized Watergate series also neglects to mention Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward’s**** historic links to the CIA through his work in Naval Intelligence.

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*Baker cites three books (each relying on very different facts and sources) that support this assertion:  Jim Hougan’s 1984 Secret Agenda, the 1991 Silent Coup by Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin and James Rosen’s 2008 The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate.

**Baker indicates that Cold War hawks in the CIA were angry about Nixon’s efforts to improve relations with the Soviet Union and China. Ironically towards the end of his presidency, Nixon was fighting with the same special interests (independent oil barons) as JFK over the same issue (the oil depletion allowance). In 1973, Nixon’s Justice Department was investigating close friends and associates of George Bush Senior (who Baker suspects of helping to orchestrate the Watergate scandal) for antitrust violations.

***According to Baker, Nixon recognized the name of some of the so-called “burglars” owing to their involvement in the CIA-orchestrated 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.

****The Woodward-Bernstein series on the Watergate break-ins was essential in mobilizing public pressure for both a grand jury and a congressional investigation.

The series can be viewed free on Kanopy

https://pukeariki.kanopy.com/video/watergate-0

Suppressed Film: 1972 Free the Army Tour

F.T.A.*

Directed by Francine Parker (1972)

Film Review

This is a long suppressed documentary about tours conducted by Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, Soul and R&B artist Swamp Dog and other anti-war actors and musicians during the early 1970s. The brainchild of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, tours featured songs and skits from newsletters published by serving GIs. They were performed outside military bases in Hawaii, the Philippines, Okinawa and mainland Japan, the main staging areas for troops bound for Vietnam. It was enormously popular with troops.

Skits songs that were especially popular concerned “fragging”* and other forms of non-cooperation with officers, the Black Convention movement that formed among African American GIs, narcotics smuggling by the CIA and South Vietnamese Army and the blatantly sexist treatment of female recruits.

The film intersperses actual footage of tours with GI interviews at each of the bases. The majority of interviewees have been deeply politicized by their Vietnam experiences. The film also backgrounds the long time US occupation of the island of Okinawa. During their stay in Okinawa, tour members participate in a picket of striking Okinawa workers employed at the US military base. At the time, their average pay was less than a dollar a day.

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*The title FTA refers to the tour’s theme song “Foxtrot, Tango, Alpha – Free the Army.” “Free the Army” was a euphemism for “Fuck the Army,” a parody on the 1970s Army slogan “Fun, Travel and Adventure.”

**Fragging refers to the deliberate killing or attempted killing of superior officers by the troops serving under them.

The film can be viewed free at Kanopy.

https://pukeariki.kanopy.com/video/fta

Why the US Lost the Vietnam War

A Skeptics View of American History

Episode 19 The Real Blunders of the Vietnam War

Mark Stoler PhD

Film Review

In one of his better lectures, Stoler debunks a number of myths about the Vietnam War.

He traces the history of the war to the reversal of Franklin Roosevelt’s policy opposing continued French colonization of Indochina. With Truman’s initiation of the Cold War, the US sought to strengthen France’s suppression of colonial independence movements as a defense against communist expansion into Eastern Europe. Truman also saw Western control of Indochina as essential to guaranteeing US-occupied Japan’s access Indonesia’s and Malaysia’s rubber, oil and mineral resources in Indonesia and Malaysia.

In 1954, a major defeat at Dien Bien Phu led the French military to withdraw from Vietnam. Under the 1954 Geneva Accord (which the US refused to sign), Laos and Cambodia were awarded independence, while Vietnam was temporarily split at 17th parallel (pending reunification elections in 1956). The southern Republic of Vietnam was ruled by a French puppet government under King Bao Dai, and the northern Democratic Republic of Vietnam by Ho Chi Minh.

According to Stoler, the US government made their first major blunder in 1918, when President Woodrow Wilson refused to meet with Ho Chi Minh (seeking US support for Vietnam’s independence struggle) during the Versailles treaty negotiations. So he met with the Soviets. However the biggest biggest blunder was misperceiving the independence struggle (supported by the majority of both North and South Vietnames) ar in Vietnam as a Cold War proxy war sponsored by the Soviet Union and China. Stoler blames this mistake on Senator Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee and their successful purge of all major Asian experts from the US State Department.

Refusing to hold elections in 1956 (because they knew Ho Chi Minh would win), the Eisenhower administration replaced the king with a Vietnamese exile living in the US named Ngo Dinh Diem. They also massively ramped up military and economic aid to South Vietnam, emboldening Diem to begin a ruthless purge of Vietnam’s freedom fighters. Most went underground to join the Viet Minh (national independence cadres) Ho Chi Minh started in 1941. Calling themselves the National Liberation Front, they were known in the West as the Viet Cong.

Under Kennedy, the US responded to continuing Vietnamese unrest by sending in special forces (Green Berets) and allowing the CIA to assassinate Diem. The number of US “advisors” (to the South Vietnamese arm) in South Vietnam increased from 900 in 1961 to 17,000 in 1963.

By 1964, North Vietnam was on the verge of defeating the US puppet government in the South. Facing conservative hawk Barry Goldwater in the November election, President Lyndon Johnson (determined not to be blamed for losing Vietnam) increased troop numbers to 500,000.

This film can be viewed free on Kanopy.

https://pukeariki.kanopy.com/video/real-blunders-vietnam-war

Word War II: Distinguishing Fact from Fiction

A Skeptic’s Guide to American History

Episode 19 Misconceptions and Myths About World War II

Mark Stoler PhD

Film Review

I found this lecture, in which Stoler purports to challenge prevailing myths about World War II, extremely disappointing. It’s been well-established since 1943 (when George Seldes published Facts and Fascism) that numerous Wall Street corporations funded the rearmament of the Third Reich, enabling Hitler to launch World War II. Charles Higham also covers this in depth in his 1983 book Trading with the Enemy.

Instead Stoler makes the blanket statement that war was inevitable because Hitler refused to be “appeased” by Britain’s appeasement strategy. This also turns out to be untrue, based on evidence Peter Padfield explores in his 2013 book  Hess, Hitler and Churchill: the real turning point of the Second World War. The book spells out how Hitler offered Britain a secret peace deal, in which which Germany would withdraw from Western Europe prior to invading the Soviet Union. And how Churchill rejected the offer.

Stoler does address the common myth that the US singlehandedly won World War II for the Allies. Although the US contributed two-thirds of the Allies’ munitions and military equipment, they only contributed 25% of the troops and suffered the lowest number of casualties (killed and wounded). US casualties totaled 418,500 and British 449,800. In contrast, Russian casualties were between 25 and 29 million. Russia also inflicted 93% of the casualties experienced by the German military.

However he disputes the so-called “conspiracy theory” that President Roosevelt had advance knowledge of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Based on documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Robert Stinnett has clearly documented that US intelligence had decrypted various Japanese military and diplomatic cables delineating the the exact time and date of the Pearl attack and transmitted them not only to Roosevelt, but to key members of his cabinet and top military leaders, including US Army Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall.**

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*See also https://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Sutton_Wall_Street_and_Hitler.pdf)

**See https://original.antiwar.com/justin/2012/12/06/pearl-harbor-roosevelt-knew/

The film can be viewed free at Kanopy.

https://pukeariki.kanopy.com/video/world-war-ii-misconceptions-and-myths

 

Did Roosevelt’s New Deal End the Great Depression?

The Skeptics Guide to American History

Episode 18 What Did Roosvelt’s New Deal Really Do?

Film Review

In this lecture, Stoler argues that contrary to popular perception, Franklin Roosevelt was a wealthy, aristocratic conservative in the traditional European sense (see Who Were the First Populists ). Stoler claims he is falsely credited with ending the Great Depression (according to Stoler, World War II ended it). Stoler blames this failure on FDR’s unwillingess to incur debt (as recommended by British economist John Maynard Keynes) to stimulate the US economy. I disagree. In my view, FDR’s failure stemmed from his unwillingness to instruct the US Treasury to create money to spend into the economy (instead of borrowing it), as occurred in Canada and New Zealand.*

When Roosevelt was inaugurated on March 4, 1933, the US was experiencing the worst economic crisis in its history, with an unemployment rate of 25%. An estimated 40-60% of the US population earned below the marginal subsistence income of $2,000 a year. The day after his inauguration, Roosevelt shut all the banks, Wall Street and the Chicago Board of Trade – to prevent investors from collapsing them by withdrawing all their money.

He then called a special session of Congress to pass a banking bill (written by the banks), to cut World War I veterans benefits, to reduce federal salaries and to enact a new tax on beer and wine.

During their first six weeks in session, Congress passed seven major New Deal bills to create jobs and help pump money into the US economy and to better regulate Wall Street to better protect it against future financial crashes. These include the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the National Industrial Recovery Act (suspended US anti-trust laws to encourage price fixing and cartels and allowed for federal regulation of wages and prices), the Home Owners Loan Act, the Civilian Conservation Corps (creating 300,000 jobs for young men 17-28) and bills creating the Securities and Exchange Commission (to better regulate Wall Street), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (which protects depositors’ saving if their bank fails) and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).**

As a result of these measures, the US economy began to recover in 1934.

However in 1935, the recovery stalled as unemployment crept upward towards 1929 levels. In 1935-36, Roosevelt responded with the Second New Deal, which included legislation creating the Works Progress Administration (employing 8 million Americans – 1/3 of the jobless), Social Security and unemployment insurance, the National Labor Relations Board (guaranteeing US workers the right to collective bargaining), a rural electrical electrification program, as well as higher taxes on the weathy and greater regulator control over banks and utilities.

This new swathe of laws generated major claims from business that Roosevelt was a communist and socialist.*** Disturbed by these attacks, Roosevelt began to cut federal spending following his 1936 reelection. Around the same time, the Federal Reserve reduced the amount of money in circulation. These cutbacks totally wiped out the economic gains the US had made between 1933 and 1936, leading to a 33% drop in industrial production, a 35% drop in wages, a 13% drop in national income and an increase in unemployment to 18%.

The New Deal essentially ended in 1938 after 1) the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional and 2) Roosevelt lost the support of Congress. The Depression would only end in 1941, as military production ramped up following US entry into World War II.

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*Contrary to popular belief, most new money isn’t created by the US Treasury or the Federal Reserve (except in the case of Quantitative Easing, in which the Federal Reserve creates new money to buy back Treasury bonds from private banks). Most new money is created by private banks out of thin air when they make loans.

**The Tennessee Valley Authority is a federally owned corporation created by congressional charter on May 18, 1933, to provide navigation, flood control, electricity generation, fertilizer manufacturing, and economic development to the Tennessee Valley (a region disproportionately affected by the Depression).

***Stoler makes no mention of assassination attempt against Roosevelt exposed by retired general Smedley Butler. See https://constantinereport.com/smedley-butler-and-the-fascist-plot-to-overthrow-fdr/

****By increasing the reserves required for private banks to create new money.

The film can be view free at Kanopy

https://pukeariki.kanopy.com/video/what-did-roosevelts-new-deal-really-do

Hidden History: The Legacy of President Herbert Hoover

A Skeptics View of American History

Episode 17 Hoover and the Great Depression

Film Review

In this lecture, Stoler attempts to separate fact from mythology in evaluating the presidency of Herbert Hoover. The latter is commonly blamed for the deep economic depression Americans experienced during the 1930s.

I was very surprised to learn that prior to his election in 1928, Hoover was considered to be a progressive humanitarian, based on his work in international relief programs. As Secretary of Commerce in Woodrow Wilson’s Democratic administration, he embraced the progressive ideal of using business-government cooperation to abolish poverty. He first came to public attention for organizing food relief to Belgium during World War I and to Central and Western Europe following the war.

Stoler lists a number of economic causes for the Great Depression (aka The Banker-Engineered Deflationary Crisis of 1927-40), but fails to mention the most important: namely the deliberate contraction of the money supply by private banks.*.

Stoler enumerates a number of New Deal  programs started by Hoover but mistakenly credited to Roosevelt. These include the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. the Emergency Relief and Reconstruction Act (providing loans to states to help them create jobs), the Federal Farm Board (created to buy surplus crops from farmers) and the 1932 Glass-Steagall Banking Act. The latter allowed banks to offer commercial paper* and mortgage contracts as collateral on federal loans.

According to Stoler, Hoover’s biggest mistake was ordering the Army attack on the Bonus Army protest in Washington (see The US Government Assault on World War I Veterans and Their Families)

His second biggest mistake was his passage of the Smith-Hawley Act, which significantly reduced international trade through punitive tariffs.

Hoover’s policies, as would Roosevelt’s, would prove ineffective in ending the Great Depression. As Stoler points out in a later lecture on FDR, only US entry into World War I would end the Depression. Yet, owing to Roosevelt’s far greater political experience (the US presidency was Hoover’s first elected office), the former would be revered for failed New Deal policies – while the latter would be demonized.

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*During the early 20th century, as now, private banks created the vast majority of the money in circulation. Carroll Quigley outlines their role in triggering the Great Depression in his masterpiece Tragedy and Hope. See The Real Vampires: An Insider’s View of Banks

**Bank commercial paper is an unsecured form of promissory note that pays a fixed rate of interest

The film can be viewed free on Kanopy.

https://pukeariki.kanopy.com/video/hoover-and-great-depression-revisited

The Roaring 20s: A Time of Massive Economic Expansion

A Skeptic’s View of American History

Episode 16 The Roaring 20s Reconsidered

Mark Stoler PhD

Film Review

In one of Stoler’s better lectures, he describes the 1920s as a time of major economic expansion. During this period, the US experienced an explosion in industrial productivity, thanks to “scientific” factory management, a consolidation of commercial enterprises (eg creation of grocery and department store chains) and a shift from heavy industry to consumer goods (thanks to an expanding electrical grid).

Henry Ford made the automobile a consumer item, using an assembly line to cut the cost of production and enabling workers to buy their own Fords by paying them an unprecedented $5 a day. The explosion of new consumer products was accompanied by a surge in advertising that played on people’s psychological desires to get them to purchase products they couldn’t afford and didn’t need. (See https://stuartbramhall.wordpress.com/2014/07/21/the-science-of-thought-control-2/ about Edward Bernays, the father of the public relations industry.

According to Stoler the car became a focal point of the US economy, leading to a surge in demand for steel, rubber, electronics, concrete and roadside restaurants.

A crisis in agriculture also led to a rise in urbanization, with city dwellers outnumbering rural residents for the first time in US history.The industrialization of farming created a food surplus and drop in income for individual farmers.

The new mass media (radio and motion pictures) helped spread the new culture of urbanization.

Stoler mainly examines the presidency of Warren G Harding, who only served two years between 1921-23,* with only a brief glance at Coolidge and Hoover, who succeeded him. All three were Republicans.

Harding, who is remembered as one of the second most corrupt presidents owing to the Teapot Dome scandal, is also remembered as the first president to present Congress with a coherent federal budget.

Significant treaties and legislation approved during this period include

• The National Origins Act, which (until the 1960s) totally excluded Asia immigration, and set severe quotas for eastern and southern European immigrants.**
• The Dawes Plan (1924), which ended the diplomatic crisis with Germany (which had defaulted on its reparations payments) by arranging for private loans to the German government and negotiating a new reparations schedule.
• The Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928) outlawed war as an instrument of US of foreign policy.
• The London Naval Arms Limitation Treaty (1930)

The 1920s also witnessed

• The rise of a new Klu Klux Klan, attracting 3-5 million members (including many Northerners) in response to the migration of Southern blacks to Northern industrial cities. The new KKK would focus their attacks on Jews, Catholics and immigrants, as well as African Americans.
• The start of Prohibition (the 18th Amendment approved in 1919 outlawed the production and sale of alcohol)
• The granting of women’s voting rights ( in 1920 via the 19th Amendment)
• The framing and execution of Italian immigrants Sacco and Vanzetti (1921-27)

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*Stoler defines cities as towns of over 2,500 people.

**Teapot Dome, which was the second biggest presidential scandal after Watergate, involved the secret leasing by the Harding administration of federal oil reserves at Elk Hills, California, and Teapot Dome, Wyoming.

The film can be viewed free on Kanopy.

https://pukeariki.kanopy.com/video/roaring-twenties-reconsidered

Hidden History: A Close Examination of Woodrow Wilson’s Legacy

The Skeptics Guide to American History

Episode 15 Woodrow Wilson and Rating Presidents

Mark Stoler PhD (2012)

Film Review

I confess Woodrow Wilson is one of my least favorite presidents. In addition to breaking his campaign promise to keep the US out of World War I, he is responsible for creating  the Federal Reserve and the US income tax and invading the Soviet Union without a congressional declaration of war. In addition to breaking a second campaign promise to break up the big US trusts (“corporate monopolies”), he also opposed women’s suffrage and enacted policies that increased racial segregation. And while he claimed to be anti-imperialist, he launched more military interventions in Latin America than any other president in history.

Finally in addition to outlawing dissent through the Espionage and Sedition Act (the law under which Julian Assange has been indicted), he was responsible for the illegal Palmer raids involving the arrest, deportation and imprisonment of both immigrants and US citizens campaigning for greater social justice.

According to Stoler, Democratic President Woodrow Wilson only received 42% of the popular vote in 1912 when he was first elected. Because the popular vote was split three ways, owing to Teddy Roosevelt’s nomination by the Bull Moose Party, Wilson won the electoral college vote.

Wilson won his second term outright by promising to keep the US out of World War I. Stoler blames the 1917 US declaration of war on Wilson’s secretary of state William Jennings Bryan. Historian Alison Weir tells a much different story, blaming US involvement in the war on on secret dealings US Zionists and the British government which was suffering major casualties.*

After siding with Wilson’s critics on most of the above issues (he views the creation of the Federal Reserve and income tax** as positive achievements) Stoler goes on to enumerate Wilson’s “positive” accomplishments. These include the Federal Farm Loan Act and the Warehouse Act (to help struggling farmers), the Highway Act (to construct rural roads), the Owen-Keating Act (preventing Interstate shipment of items made with children labor), the Adamson Act (establishing the eight-hour day, but only for railroad workers) and the Kern-McGillicuddy Act (establishing a workers compensation scheme for federal workers).

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*According to Weir, the secretive but powerful Zionist lobby Parushim (run by Wilson’s close friend Supreme Court chief justice Louis Brandeis), promised US entry into the war in return for Britain’s 1917 Balfour Declaration. The latter assured British support for a Jewish state in Palestine. (At the end of the war, control of Palestine would pass from the Ottoman Empire to Britain). See https://ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/history.html and https://stuartbramhall.wordpress.com/2021/07/16/the-hidden-history-of-the-balfour-declaration-and-the-state-of-israel/

**While I would agree that wealthy Americans should contribute more to running the government, a tax on labor, like the income tax, tends to tax the middle class more than the wealthy. In my view, a land value tax is far fairer.  See https://stuartbramhall.wordpress.com/2013/12/24/progress-and-poverty-a-suppressed-economics-classic/

Hidden History: When Progressives Were More Conservative than Liberals

A Skeptics View of American History

Episode 14: Early Progressives Were Not Liberals

Mark Stoler Phd

Film Review

In this presentation, Stoler tries to clarify the historical distinction between progressivism and liberalism, as well as explaining the difference between US and European conservatism. Unfortunately he omits mentioning Henry George, the most famous progressive of the 19th century and mistakenly attributes the “invisible hand” concept to Scottish natural philosopher Adam Smith.

Stoler stresses that progressivism never represented a unified movement in the US, as both Republican president Teddy Roosevelt and Democratic president Woodrow Wilson considered themselves progressive.

According to Stoler, reforms associated with the progressive movement included

• the progressive income tax
• regulation of the railroads
• antitrust legislation
• the Pure Food and Drug Act
• the Federal Reserve
• major attacks on civil liberties during World War I
• limitations on immigration
• enforced professional standards for doctors, teachers, lawyers, etc
• the birth of social work as a profession, along with settlement houses to help immigrants and the poor
• the national birth control movement
• worsening of living and job conditions for African Americans
• social gospel movements in US churches promoting progressive reform
• a racist eugenics movement that promoted forced sterilization.

Although Stoler lists a number of prominent individuals* linked with the progressive movement, for some reason he leaves out the most famous progressive of all of the late 19th century. During the 1890s, social reformer Henry George (who published Progress and Poverty) in 1879, was the third most famous American (after Mark Twin and Thomas Edison).** Progress and Poverty sold millions of copies worldwide (more than any prior American book). A printer turned journalist, George also ran for mayor of New York City (twice). Following his death during the second campaign, his ideas on economic reform were carried forward by many organizations in the US and throughout the English-speaking world.

Unlike other progressives, Henry George opposed a progressive income tax. He believed government at all levels should be funded by a land value tax.

According to Stoler, progressives differed from traditional liberals (like Thomas Jefferson) who feared excessive government power. Progressives, discouraged by the soul-destroying poverty and inequality created by rapid industrialization believed a strong central government was necessary to break up monopolies and regulate industries that were brutally exploiting workers.

Here, once again, Stoler mistakenly attributes the concept a self-regulating market (via the “invisible hand” of competing self-interests) to Adam Smith. The concept of the invisible hand didn’t originate with Smith but with one of his contemporaries. In fact, he makes no mention of it in Wealth of Nations. In Volumes 4 and 5, he calls for government intervention in a number of instances.

In the US, people who opposed any government intervention (as 18th and 19th century liberals did) came to be known as conservatives, whereas European conservatives historically favored absolute government power (ie monarchy).

Both US conservatives and liberals tended to base their political views on John Locke’s notions of the social contract formed between rulers and their subjects.** In contrast, European conservatives tended to base their views on Thomas Hobbes’s views of a natural order (ie human nature) that causes life to be nasty, brutish and short, with the only solution being obedience to a monarch with absolute power.

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*Philosopher William James, educational reformer Charles Dewey, social reformer and peace activist Jame Addams, General Leonard Wood, Supreme Court Justices Oliver Wendall Holmes and Louis Brandeis (who ran the international Zionist movement from his Supreme Court chambers – see https://ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/history.html), investigative journalists Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell, political authors Jack London, Steven Crane, Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser and Upton Sinclair, politicians Franklin D Roosevelt (an imperialist globalist) and Robert La Follette (an anti-imperialist isolationist).

**See https://stuartbramhall.wordpress.com/2013/12/24/progress-and-poverty-a-suppressed-economics-classic/

*** By definition a social contract is an actual or hypothetical agreement between a community and its ruler that defines and limits the rights and duties of each

The film can be viewed free on Kanopy.

https://pukeariki.kanopy.com/video/early-progressives-were-not-liberals

Who were the First Populists?

A Skeptics View of American History

Episode 11 Misconceptions About the Original Populists

By Gerald Stoler PhD (2012)

Film Review

In this lecture (in my view the least accurate), Stoler traces the history of America’s original populists, ie The People’s Party (aka The Populist Party). The latter flourished in the 1890s.

Stoler incorrectly states the Populists’ primary demand during the 1892 presidential election was to increase the money supply via unlimited silver coinage. According to Lawrence Goodwyn in The Populist Moment, this was only a secondary campaign issue. According to Goodwyn, the Populists main demand was to end the creation of money by private banks by abolishing the national banks created under the National Banking Acts of 1863 and 1864.*

Had they captured the presidency and congress, they would have directed the US Treasury (as stipulated in the US Constitution) to take over from private banks in issuing legal tender treasury notes.

The Populist Party grew out of a period in which most of the US population still lived on farms, and in which most farmers borrowed in the spring to pay for fertilizer, seed and farm machinery and repaid their loans after the fall harvest. The 1880s and 1890s were a period of severe deflation (ie inadequate money in circulation), in which a drop in crop prices made it extremely difficult for farmers to repay their debts.

Stoler also fails to correctly identify the cause of this historic deflation, namely a sudden contraction of the money supply triggered by a demand from Eastern banks that the post Civil War government retire $450 million in treasury notes that Lincoln issued to pay for the Civil War.

The Populist Party received one million popular votes in the 1892 election, as well as capturing numerous senate and congressional seats, governorships and state legislative seats.

In 1896, the Populist Party endorsed the Democrat’s Free Silver candidate William Jennings Bryan for president. Bryan would lose in a landslide to William McKinley.

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*These laws allowed private banks to issue paper money backed (and printed) by the US Treasury “proportionate” to capital (usually US Treasury bonds) banks had on deposit with the Comptroller of Currency at the Treasury. As a general rule, these banks were allowed to issue nine times as much money as they held on deposit. This essentially granted them total control of the amount of money in circulation. See (The Populist Moment by Lawrence Goodwyn https://stuartbramhall.wordpress.com/2017/01/27/populism-americas-largest-mass-democratic-movement/)

https://pukeariki.kanopy.com/video/misconceptions-about-original-populists