RePortersNoteBook.com: This Difficult Individual Eustace Mullins

Mar 24, 2010

This Difficult Individual Eustace Mullins — and the Remarkable Ezra Pound

This Difficult Individual Eustace Mullins — and the Remarkable Ezra Pound

Beatrice Mott

March 20, 2010

Kevin MacDonald: Philip Weiss has yet another meditation on being a Jew married to a non-Jew ("Philosemitism's threat to Zionism"). He and his wife live in a social world made up of mixed couples., and his wife prefers it that way. I'd love to hear exactly what his wife means when she says that she prefers to socialize with mixed couples because some all-Jewish couples are too "strong" for her. Are we talking about the old stereotype of psychological aggressiveness, or is that an indelicate topic?

Weiss is the sort of Jew that most Americans think about when they think of Jews. He is wonderfully liberal and open-minded, gushing at a marriage between a Jew and a Hindu. He does not have sense of historical injustice, at least when he thinks of his own experience in America. As he acknowledges, in this regard, he is quite unlike most American Jews and certainly unlike the activists who staff the organized Jewish community -- the Jews like Abe Foxman who use their sense of persecution as a badge and sword. Weiss notes that the Israel Lobby "cannot trust [non-Jews] to act wisely without being politically coerced and bribed. The lobby has returned the incredible trust that Jews have been granted in the U.S. with suspicion."

Indeed, he feels suffused by philosemitism, but then there's the guilt at abandoning the tribe:

The objects of philo-semitism, myself included, feel some guilt about it. We know, or ought to, that we're participating in an assimilatory process. We are hurting the tribe's future as a tribe. And so for those who care about tribe, Israel gains a new significance: it is the bulwark of Jewishness, the place where Jews marry Jews.

Israel is indeed the bulwark of tribalistic Judaism. Weiss claims that the motive for Zionism was anti-Semitism in Europe. But in fact, a very large motive, especially for the racial Zionists, was retaining racial purity, and in that they have succeeded. Racial Zionists were part of the trend toward racial nationalism in Europe, and their descendants -- the followers of Jabotinsky -- are now in charge of Israeli politics. Here's Arthur Ruppin, a prominent racial Zionist writing in the early 20th century:

Intermarriage marks the end of Judaism. Mixed marriage is regarded as destructive of Judaism even where the non-Jewish side adopts the Jewish religion, for it is understood, be it merely subconsciously, that Judaism is something more than a religion—a common descent and a common fate. Were it only a religious communion, assimilated Jews would actually have to welcome a mixed marriage which gains a proselyte for Judaism, but even among them this view is conspicuously absent. (Quoted in Separation and Its Discontents.)

An interesting recent example of Israeli racialism is Baruch Marzel, a former member of the Kach Party who would presumably still be a member except that Kach has been outlawed for its racist views. According to Haaretz, a Marzel has voiced his opposition to Leonardo DiCaprio marrying Bar Rafaeli, an Israeli model, because "it would dilute the Jewish race."

Marzel is doubtless on the fringe of Jewish thinking -- at least overtly. But the reality is that deep concerns about racial purity are always just below the surface in mainstream Israeli society. As reported in the Forward, a recent Knesset bill shows the continuing power of the Orthodox over conversion. The immediate concern was that foreign workers in Israel might convert to Judaism and therefore become eligible to be Israeli citizens via the Law of Return. As the bill moves forward, the trick is to write the legislation so that foreign workers would not be able to convert to Judaism while leaving intact the validity of conversions done by Reform and Conservative congregations in the Diaspora. The concern of Diaspora Jews is that ultimately the Orthodox will nullify all conversions except those performed by the Orthodox. Since the Orthodox already control marriage within Israel (so that Israelis who wish to marry people who can't establish their Jewish ancestry must marry outside Israel), this would be ensure the triumph of racialist Judaism in Israel.

Weiss understands that liberal forms of Judaism that exist in the Diaspora are dead ends. And he understands that therefore he will have "little influence over the body of Jewish life in the U.S. so long as I can't imagine a corporate future." So the tribe will endure without people like Weiss and his belief that "ethnocentric arrogance is unsustainable in a globalized environment."

The problem that I have with this is that the racialists in Israel are firmly in charge and they have the overwhelming support of the organized Jewish community in the Diaspora. This isn't going to change. Moreover, given the historical trends within Israel, Israeli racialism may well get even more extreme. People like Weiss and organizations like J Street function to give Judaism a softer veneer that is consistent with post-racial, multicultural America without having any effective influence on the "ethnocentric arrogance" at the heart of Judaism or even lessening the support of the Israel Lobby for Israel as an apartheid, racialist state. Intermarriage has many benefits for Diaspora Judaism as long as the racial core is not threatened, and the existence of Israel ensures that Jewish tribalism will remain long into the future.

Yet liberal Jews with many of the same beliefs as Weiss are the main bulwark of the left in America that has so successfully pathologized any sense of ethnocentrism by Whites -- and only Whites. Pardon me if I refuse to disavow White ethnocentrism as I am sure Weiss advocates. I think we are going to need a very healthy dose of White ethnocentrism if we are to survive in a world that remains governed by the ethnocentric arrogance of others.

And pardon me if I predict that as Weiss gets older he will return to his Jewish ethnic roots. This is one of my working hypotheses about Jews and probably people in general . As we get older, our ethnocentrism tugs at us. We worry about the future of our people --what the world will be like in a hundred years for people like ourselves. And right now, for people like me, it doesn't look good.

Earlier this year my friend Eustace Mullins passed away. He had been ailing for some time — at least since I first met him in 2006. Hopefully he is in a better place now.

Mr. Mullins made a huge mark on the nationalist community here in the United States, but also has a following in Europe and Japan. For those who have not read his books, Mr. Mullins attempted to expose the criminal syndicates that manipulate governments and the international financial system.

But Mr. Mullin's most sparkling claim to fame was his partnership with Ezra Pound in order to write Secrets of the Federal Reserve — probably the most well-known exposé of how our government really works.

But nobody's life is all sunshine and light. While Mr. Mullins' work is among the most famous in the nationalist community, it is also some of the worst researched. He often fails to reference where he uncovered the material in his books. While Mr. Mullins was very perceptive of historical trends, his insights were sometimes overshadowed by unbalanced statements.

Eustace Mullins

Authors wishing to quote Eustace's books in their own writing make themselves an easy target for reasonable critics or hate organizations like the ADL. In this way, Mr. Mullins has done more harm to the movement than good.

I learned this the long way. Having read Secrets, I drove down to Staunton, VA in the summer of 2006 and spent an afternoon talking with Mr. Mullins. My goal was to find the origin of several stories and statements which I could not reference from the text. Mr. Mullins was an elderly gentleman and he couldn't remember where he had found any of the material I was interested in. He simply replied: "It's all in the Library of Congress. Back then they would let me wander the stacks."

So I moved to D.C., a few blocks from the library and spent the better part of two years trying to retrace Mr. Mullins' footsteps. Prior to this I had had several years' experience as a researcher and was used to trying to find the proverbial "needle in a haystack." They wouldn't let me wander around the book storage facility (the stacks), but I scoured the catalog for anything that might contain the source for Mr. Mullins' statements. I couldn't verify any of the information in question.

Sadly, I realized that it would never be good practice to quote Mr. Mullins. But I hadn't wasted the time. I know more about the Federal Reserve now than most people who work there and I learned about the fantastic Mr. Pound.

Ezra Pound is among the most remarkable men of the last 120 years. He made his name as a poet and guided W. B. Yeats, T.S. Elliot and E. Hemingway on their way to the Nobel Prize (back when it meant something). He is the most brilliant founder of Modernism — a movement which sought to create art in a more precise and succinct form. Modernism can be seen as a natural reaction to the florid, heavy Victorian sensibility — it is not the meaningless abstractions we are assaulted with today.

Ezra Pound

Born in Idaho, Pound left the United States for Europe in 1908. In London he found an audience of educated people who appreciated his poetry. He married Dorothy Shakespear, a descendant of the playwright.¹ Pound also befriended some of the most brilliant artists of the time and watched them butchered in the First World War.

Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, a sculptor and one of Ezra's best friends, was one of these sacrifices. The Great War changed Pound's outlook on life — no longer content with his artistic endeavors alone, he wanted to find out why that war happened.

Henri Gaudier-Brzeska

The answer he got bought him 12 years as a political prisoner in St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Anacostia, just across the river from the Capitol in Washington D.C. Pound was never put on trial but was branded a traitor by the post-war American media.

What answer did Pound find? Our wars begin and end at the instigation of the international financial houses. The bankers make money on fighting andrebuilding by controlling credit. They colonize nations and have no loyalty to their host countries' youth or culture. No sacrifice is too great for their profit.

Much of Pound's work chronicles the effect of this parasitic financial class on societies: from ancient China to modern-day Europe. Pound was a polyglot and scoured numerous (well-documented) sources for historical background. The education that Mullins' work promises is delivered by the truckload in Pound's writing. Pound often lists his sources at the end of his work — and they always check out.

Eustace Mullins got to know Pound during the poet's time as a political prisoner. He was introduced to Pound by an art professor from Washington's Institute of Contemporary Arts which, in Mullins' words, "housed the sad remnants of the 'avant-garde' in America."

According to Mr. Mullins, Pound took to him and commissioned Eustace to carry on his work investigating the international financial system. Pound gave Eustace an American dollar bill and asked him to find out what "Federal Reserve" printed across its top meant. Secrets, many derivative books, and thousands of conspiracy websites have sprung from that federal reserve note.

And here is where the story goes sour. Pound was a feared political prisoner incarcerated because of what he said in Italy about America's involvement with the international bankers and warmongering. Pound was watched twenty four hours a day and was under the supervision of Dr. Winfred Overholser, the superintendent of the hospital.

Overholser was employed by the Office of Strategic Services (the CIA's forerunner) to test drugs for the personality-profiling program, what would be called MK-ULTRA. (See John Marks' The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control.) Personality profiling was St. Elizabeth's bread and butter: The asylum was a natural ally to the agency.

Overholser was also a distinguished professor in the Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Department of George Washington University. This department provided students as test patients for the Frankfurt Schools' personality profiling work, which the CIA was very interested in. Prophets of Deceit, first written by Leo Löwenthal and Norbert Guterman in 1948, reads like a clumsy smear against Pound.

It does seem odd that a nationalist student would be allowed to continue the work of the dangerously brilliant Pound right under Winny's nose. The story gets even stranger, as Mr. Mullins describes his stay in Washington during this time. He was housed at the Library of Congress — apparently he lived in one of the disused rooms in the Jefferson building and became good friends withElizabeth Bishop.

Ezra Pound

Bishop was the Library of Congress' "Consultant in Poetry" — quite a plum position. She was also identified by Frances Stonor Saunders as working with Nicolas Nabokov in Rio de Janeiro. Nabokov was paid by the CIA to handle South American-focused anti-Stalinist writers. (See The Cultural Cold War.) If what Saunders says is true, then it puts Eustace in strange company at that time of his life.

According to the CIA's in-house historians, the Library was also a central focus for intelligence gathering after the war, so it is doubly unlikely that just anybody would be allowed to poke around there after hours.

Whatever the motivation for letting Mullins in to see Pound was, the result has been that confusion, misinformation and unverifiable literature have clouded Pound's message about the financial industry's role in war. Fortunately Pound did plenty of his own writing.

According to Eustace, his relations with Pound's relatives were strained after Pound's release from prison. Pound moved back to Italy where he died in 1972. He was never the same after his stay with Overholser in St. E's. The St. Elizabeth's building is slated to become the new headquarters of theDepartment for Homeland Security.

Eustace went on to write many, many books about the abuses of government, big business and organized religion. They are very entertaining and are often insightful, but are arsenic from a researcher's point of view. A book that contains interesting information without saying where the information came from is worse than no book at all.

While lackadaisical about references in his own writing, Mr. Mullins could be extremely perceptive and critical of the writing of others. I once told him how much respect I had for George Orwell's daring to write 1984 — to which he sharply replied: "It's a great piece of pro-government propaganda — they win in the end." Mr. Mullins is of course right: Orwell's Big Brother is always one step ahead, almost omniscient — and therefore invincible.

Eustace Mullins was much more than a writer. He became a political activist and befriended many prominent people in the American nationalist movement. But Mr. Mullins didn't have much faith in American nationalism: It is a movement, he told me, that the government would never let go anywhere.

Beatrice (email her) is a writer and historian living in Burlington, VT.

[1] Dorothy Pound's ancestry does depend on some circumstantial evidence, and readers who are interested in this should see John Tytell's book, Ezra Pound: The Solitary Volcano. Return to article.

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