Dr Alberto G Garcia

AMERICAN FASCISM and ANTIFA

by

PART II

Fascism has reared up in Austin, Texas, and throughout the US as a powerful force.  What occurred in January 6, 2021 was a fascist attempted autogolpe.  Lessons from the anti-fascism of Austin’s Dr. Alberto G. Garcia Antifa during the first half of the 20th Century provides insight as to how fascism grew and was successfully confronted in the US in the past. 

The Anti-fascism of Austin’s

Dr. Alberto G. Garcia

In Part I, I demonstrated how fascism and anti-fascism are part of our families and backgrounds as estadounidenses.  A disturbing family secret that I uncovered was that some of my in-laws in Illinois, as owners of The Texas Company, were powerful supporters of Hitler and fascism.  Promoting fascist governments in other countries has been a component of US foreign policy since 1919.   

While researching my biography of Austin’s first Mexican American physician, Alberto G. Garcia, I learned that he was an early and influential anti-fascist.  He fearlessly fought the proto-fascist Ku Klux Klan when it took over Austin in the early 1920s, and beginning in 1932 he strongly spoke out against international fascism and those in the US who supported it.  He was the head of the Austin branch of El Congreso, formed in 1938 to promote HIspanic civil rights and combat fascist organizing among Mexican Americans in the Southwest.  His and El Congreso’s accomplishments I recount in The Life and Times of Alberto G. Garcia.

Dr. Alberto G. Garcia with his family in 1922 (Austin History Center)

In my biography, I show Dr. Garcia creating and managing Austin’s first Spanish-language newspaper, La Vanguardia, where he documentated and denounced racist terror.  This was at a time when pro-Ku-Klux-Klan Southern Baptists had made inroads in the Mexican American community.  From their pulpits Baptist preachers issued proclamations like: “Above all else, Jesus Christ was a Klansman.”  The pastor of the Elgin, Texas, Baptist church collected tithings for the Ku Klux Klan.

By 1922, the Austin Klan members controlled key aspects of city and county government and held meetings at the East Fifth Street building where cotton export companies and the Austin Country Club had their offices.  Klan crosses were burned on Newning Avenue in South Austin, the street where Dr. Garcia and his family resided.  The rumored Grand Cyclops of the Austin Klan lived next door to Dr. Garcia.  Yet he was not intimidated by Klan violence.  He rescued Klan victims who had been tarred and feathered.

The Austin Klan was beaten back by: journalistic denunciations and exposure; prosecutions of Klan terrorists; an Austin judge who convened a grand jury investigation; pressure from the Mexican government; national advocacy by the NAACP; a bit of muscle used to clear the Klan from the streets; and public disgust.  Austin’s Shelton family produced three brave, anti-Klan lawyers.  To combat the Klan violence and intimidation, the Sheltons relied in part on the tough, poor, white community of cedar-choppers who lived on the edge of town in the rural hill country.  They were a law unto themselves and were adept at keeping government law enforcement out of their communities.  The Austin-area cedar choppers hated the Klan because they knew most of the Austin police were members.  My book recounts an incident where a Klan mob at the Travis County Courthouse was single-handedly dispersed by one cedar chopper named Buck Simpson, who happened to have been the most decorated U.S. soldier in World War I.

Ten years later fascism was rising in Europe and wherever there was fascism there were anti-fascist organizations.  In 1932, a German working-class organization formed as part of a social democrat, union and communist popular front first took on the name Antifa. That same year Dr. Garcia was very publicly outspoken in his opposition to the fascism that was rising in Europe and the United States.  Most in the US at this time were oblivious to the magnitude of the Nazi and fascist threat.

German Antifa in 1932. How many of these people survived Hitler’s violence and concentration camps?

In part 1 of this blog, I explain how a great uncle of mine and his niece and their company Texaco, supported fascism and gave vital assistance to Nazi Germany and General Franco in Spain.  They were not unique.  Within the US, men were organizing Silver Shirts, Khaki Shirts, the Black Legion, and other fascist and Nazi groups. 

Dr. Garcia wrote in the Dallas Morning News that fascism was the result of insecurity born of spiritual weakness: 

Fear of Bolshevism, Socialism and all radicalism that champions the underdog.  Fear of [non-white races.] American will be invincible and unafraid only when her spirit is purified.  Black shirts, brown shirts, night shirts and other shirts are merely the Fascist bundling of scattered terrors, and who harbors this terror, harbors it to his own destruction.

Right, justice, love—those alone can save the world.  Justice, right, and love alone inspire fearlessness and courage and insure life.

The DuPonts, Morgan bank interests, and other oligarchs formed the American Liberty League.   Irénée DuPont declared that the American Liberty League should include “all property owners … the American Legion and even the Ku Klux Klan.”   The Liberty League would become a component of a botched effort by the DuPonts and J.P. Morgan interests to foment a fascist coup against President Roosevelt.    Morgan Bank director Grayson Mallet-Prevost Murphy not only helped found the American Legion but had been decorated with the Italian Commander of the Crown by fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.   In 1935, the National Vice-Commander of the American Legion traveled to Rome to pin a medal on Mussolini and declare him an honorary member of the American Legion.  Due to the support of DuPont, Morgan and other wealthy underwriters, the American Liberty League raised more money than the Democratic Party in 1935.  President Roosevelt called them out and was able to use public distaste for the oligarchs and their Liberty League to gain voters.

Dr. Garcia not only denounced fascism but as with the KKK called attention to the religious or spiritual underpinnings of fascism.  He called out the Catholic Church and others who were complicit in fascism’s growth.  The floor of the Cathedral of Tampico in Mexico was inlayed with Swastikas. 

Catholic clergy with fascist dictator Franco and his paramililitary blue shirts.
Swatikas in floor of Tampico Cathedral.

A fascist group in Mexico called the Sinarquistas was initiated and funded by German Nazis and Spanish and Italian fascists in 1937.  Sinarquistas attacked democracy as a “Judeomasonic plot” and defended the Catholic Inquisition.  They gained many adherents in Mexico but were outnumbered by the union members, intellectuals, and government officials who were strongly anti-fascist.  Mexico moreover enjoyed a good relationship with President Roosevelt.  The Sinarquistas began promoting fascism in the Mexican American communities in the United States, sometimes with the help of local Catholic churches.  A broad coalition of US Hispanic groups (including unions, church groups, liberals, socialists and communists) was formed beginning in 1938 to combat this fascism and to promote human rights.  The name of this group was the National Congress of Spanish-Speaking People and was referred to as El Congreso.   In Texas and California streets, dance halls, bars, and other social spaces, El Congreso members confronted the Sinarquistas and denied them venues in which to organize.  Guatemalan American union organizer Luisa Morena toured Texas to organize chapters.  She convinced Dr. Garcia to head the Austin chapter of El Congreso.  The Emmanuel Methodist Church on East Avenue where Dr. Garcia and his wife Eva were officers aided in the formation of a small local of an international union which had been a member of El Congreso. 

Members of the Austin local of the CTM, an El Congreso-affiliated union, formed with the help of Eva and Alberto Garcia’s Emmanuel Methodist Church. (Austin History Denter)
Mexican CTM union in the Mexico City Zocalo, denouncing the Sinarquistas.

US police considered El Congreso to be their enemy.  They spied on El Congreso but El Congreso was committing no crimes.   El Congreso was targeted by vigilante violence from which the police provided little protection.  In San Antonio, the Ku Klux Klan, the American Legion, the Baptist Church and others formed a mob outside the Municipal Auditorium where local El Congreso labor leader Emma Tenayuca was scheduled to speak.  The mob burned an effigy of Mayor Maury Maverick (an El Congreso supporter), threw bricks through the windows, entered the building, and forced Tenayuca to flee the building and her home in Texas. 

Mob storming the San Antonio Municipal Auditorium to shut down meeting featuring El Congreso labor leader Emma Tenayuca in 1939.  (UTSA library collection)
Luisa Moreno, the Guatemalan American leader of El Congreso.

The scourge of fascism in Europe was put down by resort to the violence of war.  Three of Dr. Garcia’s children joined the US military to wage war against fascism.  Two sons liberated a concentration camp in Germany.  A daughter piloted military transport planes and worked as an anesthesiological nurse, evacuating soldiers from various theaters of World War II. 

Dr. Garcia and his family in 1941, on the eve of World War II. Pilot and nurse Maria, back row far left, joined the Air Force where she flew transport planes and attended to injured soldiers being evacuated from Africa and India. Second from her left, John, served in General Patton’s army as did his brother Ronnie standing to his left.

The January 6, 2021 Coup Attempt: Fascism in Contemporary America

January 6, 2021 was the culmination of an attempted coup, or more precisely an autogolpe, to kidnap and possibly murder members of the United States Congress and prevent an elected president from taking office.  The leader of this operation, outgoing President Donald Trump, was a notorious non-reader of books; but one book he kept by his bedside long before he was elected was a collection of speeches by Adolph Hitler.   This botched January 6 autogolpe is analogous to the failed beer hall putsch sloppily executed by Adolph Hitler in Germany in 1922.  The German authorities and the world failed to take Hitler seriously.  Hitler was given a short sentence and released after serving less than a year in prison.  If Hitler had been imprisoned for 20 years, World War II would not have happened. 

As with Nazi Germany, fascist efforts in the US are supported by some of the wealthiest people in America.  Oligarchic money has poured into the Republican Party which has become a party of fascism—a party that has not only been supporting the nullification of a national election that kicked President Trump out of office but a party that holds its affiliate CPAC convention on a stage in the shape of an Odal rune, a symbol worn by German Nazi SS member and venerated by US neo-Nazis.  Billionaire hedge fund owner Robert Mercer and his daughter have put an enormous amount of funds into fascist organizations and candidates, including the right-wing social network Parlor and Cambridge Analytica.  Mercer also owns Centre Firearms, a company that claims to “own the nation’s largest private cache of machine guns.”  The rally that urged Trump supporters to take the Capitol and block Biden’s ability to take office was largely funded by Julie Jenkins Fancelli, an heiress to the Publix Super Markets Inc.  In this she was working with Austin’s right-wing media personality Alex Jones. 

Alex Jones rides a military vehicle to an anti-mask rally at the Texas Capitol in 2020.

The activities of Donald Trump were financed to the tune of $90 million dollars by Sheldon Adelson, the chairman, and CEO of Las Vegas Sands Casino.  Adelson also financed the Republican Attorney Generals Association (RAGA) which sent robocalls ahead of the January 6 event encouraging Trump supporters to march on the Capitol.   Koch Industries have been huge supporters of RAGA and of politicians who have taken the position that Biden should not be allowed to take office because the election was stolen.   

Part 1 of this blog post used Austin as an example to show that police and law enforcement offer protection against fascists that is unreliable at best.  Commonly police forces support fascist groups and their goals, as do elements of the military.  Many of those participating in the assault on Congress were police officers.  The head of the Proud Boys group that helped lead the attack, Enrique Tarrio, was a longtime informant for federal and local law enforcement.  He was arrested for possessing illegal weapons in Washington DC, a couple days before the attack on Congress.  The head of the Chicago police union publicly expressed sympathy for the attackers.  De-funding and reforming police departments would appear to be essential steps in blocking the rise of fascism.  Austin, Texas, has moved in this direction as a result of a grassroots campaign after repeated abuses by the police department. 

Militaries often have supported fascist movements.  Hitler was working for German military intelligence when he was ordered to infiltrate the small German Nazi Party.   Thomas Caldwell, who was arrested and accused of being a leader of the Oath Keepers fascist group and leading them in the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol, is also a consultant for the US government who holds a top-secret security clearance.  Caldwell previously worked as a section chief for the FBI from 2009 to 2010 after retiring from the Navy, where he handled top secret security measures beginning in 1979.  After the January 6 attack, the Pentagon acknowledged the presence of fascist white supremacists among its ranks.  The Pentagon report did not give percentages, because it does not know, but it gave examples, such as the co-founder of a neo-Nazi group called Atomwaffen Division who has “bragged about sharing his white supremacist views while in the military.” 

After he lost the election, President Trump in November appointed Brigadier General Anthony Tata as the Pentagon’s Acting Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy.  Tata had been a Fox News regular who referred to former President Barack Obama a “terrorist leader.”   Trump also appointed as Acting Secretary of Defense, a military special operations soldier with CIA connections named Christopher Miller.  The US military has acknowledged that operatives like Miller engage in psy-ops and unconventional warfare “to enable a resistance movement or insurgency to coerce, disrupt, or overthrow a government … by operating through or with an underground, auxiliary, and guerrilla force….”  Former three-star general and former Director of National Security for Trump Michael Flynn openly called for Trump to impose martial law and nullify the election of Joe Biden.  Alarmed, all ten living former defense secretaries in a January 3, 2021 signed an open letter, stating their opposition to a military coup overturning the election results, and warning officials who would participate and specifically naming Miller, that they would face grave consequences if they violated the constitution.

An attempted coup did happen three days later on January 6 and Christopher Miller indeed did play an essential role in assisting it.  The main reason the coup almost succeeded was that the Capitol was left undefended from a mob that included violent fascists who were answering the call to stop Congress’s certification of the election results. Even in a peaceful demonstration by left groups, there as a matter of course would be a significant well-equipped national guard, police and military presence. There are reasons that the Capitol was left undefended on January 6. Two days beforehand, Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller issued memos prohibiting the deployment of D.C. Guard members with weapons, helmets, body armor or riot control agents without his personal approval. On January 5, Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy issued a memo placing additional limits on the District of Columbia National Guard. Maj. Gen. William J. Walker, the commanding general of the DC National Guard, later explained: “All military commanders normally have immediate response authority to protect property, life, and in my case, federal functions. But in this instance, I did not have that authority.”  Miller and McCarthy directly caused a delay of three hours after the Capitol was breached, allowing the insurrectionists to come within minutes of kidnapping and murdering members of Congress.  In the Pentagon room while Secretaries Miller and McCarthy were delaying the delivery of protection to Congress members in the Capitol building, was the brother of Michael Flynn, Lt. General Charles Flynn. 

President Trump’s Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller. The photo was taken while Miller was serving in the Special Forces in Afghanistan.

Protection of the American public against the further growth of fascism through coups or other military actions require full investigations of Christopher Miller, Ryan McCarthy, Lt. General Charles Flynn, Anthony Tata and other high-ranking military officials.  Those involved in planning or aiding and abetting the attempted coup need to be criminally prosecuted.  This includes elected officials within the Republican Party.  White supremacists and other fascists need to be removed from the military.  And the military needs to be downsized and restricted. 

Solutions

Fascism is a form of class war.  Fascism is funded by the wealthy and finds support within the middle class.  Forty percent of the Capitol insurrectionists arrested since January 6 are business owners or hold professional jobs.  The power of the oligarchs, professionals, and business owners must be counterbalanced by democratic anti-racist working-class organizations that are wholly independent of wealthy oligarchic interests and funding.  This would include unions.   Dr. Garcia was involved in these kinds of efforts.  Unions and Antifa groups like El Congreso helped prevent the spread of fascism within the United States. 

Coalition work with a broad group of organizations (conservative, liberal, and Left) against fascism is necessary.  Dr. Garcia promoted labor unions and was not afraid to work with communists and the Austin Chamber of Commerce to secure his democratic and civil rights goals.  Reporter Molly Ball has documented how in 2019 a high-level political strategist for the large AFL-CIO union foresaw that Trump would refuse to concede an election if he was the loser.  The union strategist assembled a large coalition of liberal left groups and reached out to conservative anti-fascists to create an ambitious behind-the-scenes effort ensure that the election would run in a way that could not effectively be undermined by Trump.   In 2020, the US Chamber of Commerce joined and financed these efforts in the belief that Trump-inspired disruption of the election would be bad for business.  This broad coalition did essential work to ensure the integrity of the 2020 election so that the results of the election could not be questioned by the right or the left.  But, as history has shown, the US Chamber of Commerce cannot be counted on to be an enemy of fascism.  It is not so clear that the Chamber of Commerce would have actively opposed Trump’s autogolpe if Bernie Sanders had been the Democratic Party nominee and election victor.

History has demonstrated that grassroots mobilization against fascism is vital where fascists are active.  Fascists need to be denied venues with which to organize, to intimidate people, and to display and perpetuate their violent, oppressive, and racist relationships.   This was also a primary strategy used by anarchist groups in the 1980s to stop neo-Nazi influence over the youth subcultures in Texas and elsewhere.  It was also used by El Congreso. 

Some of the origins of fascism arise out of fundamental values and components of US society.  Trump’s Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller had openly stated that the role of the US military is to maintain an “American dominance in the world that allows Americans to enjoy what it is we love in our society….  Americans will not happily accept a decline in our standard of living so that others elsewhere can have more.”  This is the perpetuation of wealth disparity laid out as the central goal of the US State Department and military in the secret but influential State Department 1948 memo PPS/23.   

As far back as 1921, Dr. Alberto G. Garcia, writing in Austin, Texas, warned of the corroding effect on the United States of this imperialism.  He prophesied on the pages of his newspaper:

[W]e see American magnates interested in monopolizing oil, the trade of countries that have undeveloped industries, etc.  And, when they do not achieve this by peaceful means, they seek the political and military intervention of the United States to accomplish their ends.  This is the origin of imperialism.  Imperialism offers vision of the military expansion of the country that covers all the Americas and the entire world.  It offers powers, riches, glories, submissions from other nations and races.  And in the soul of some, the illusion overwhelms the love of freedom, paralyzing the current that has always given force and virility to this country. 

When the majority of the American citizens let themselves be dominated by this idea of military expansion, the decadence will begin, because the reason to be for the American nation will be dead.    

Sources

Brad Rockwell, The Life and Times of Alberto G. Garcia: physician, Mexican revolutionary, Texas journalist, yogi (2020); Brad Rockwell, unfinished manuscript history of Texaco; James Stout, A Brief History of Anti-Fascism, Smithsonian Magazine (June 24, 2020); Nigel Copsey, Militant Antifascism: An Alternative (Historical) Reading, Society (May 2018);  Michael J. Roberto, The Coming of the American Behemoth (2018); Alexander Reid Ross, Against the Fascist Creep (2017); Stanislav Vysotsky, American Antifa: The Tactics, Culture, and Practice of Militant Antifascism (2021); Scott Crow, Black Flags and Windmills: Hope, Anarchy, and the Common Ground Collective (2011); Chauncey DeVega, CPAC veers into neo-Nazi fantasy: Was it deliberate? That hardly matters, Salon (March 2, 2021); Alanna Durkin Richer & Michael Balsamo, Navy vet, FBI section chief charged in US Capitol riot, Radio.com (Feb. 9, 2021); Ellie Kaufman & Oren Liebermann, Pentagon report reveals disturbing details about White supremacists in the ranks, CNN (February 25, 2021); Jeremy Kuzmarov, Will New Pentagon Chief Use Psyops to Save His Boss?, Covert Action Magazine (Nov. 11, 2020); Col. Ty Connett & Col. Bob Cassidy, Village Stability Operations: More than Village Defense, Special Warfare Magazine (US Army JFK Special Warfare Center and School, July-September 2011); Alex Deep, Village Stability Operations and the Application of Special Warfare Across the Contemporary Global Operating Environment, Small Wars Journal (April 7, 2014);      Ashton Carter, All 10 living former defense secretaries: Involving the military in election disputes would cross into dangerous territory, The Washington Post  (January 3, 2021);     Luke Broadwater & Michael S. Schmidt, Officials Put ‘Unusual’ Limits on D.C. National Guard Before Riot, Commander Says, New York Times (March 3, 2021); Paul Sonne, Pentagon restricted commander of D.C. Guard ahead of Capitol riot, Washington Post (Jan. 26, 2021); Dan Lamothe, Paul Sonne, Carol D. Leonnig &  Aaron C. Davis, Army falsely denied Flynn’s brother was involved in key part of military response to Capitol riot, Washington Post (Jan. 20, 2021); Igor Derysh, How one billionaire family bankrolled election lies, white nationalism — and the Capitol riot, Salon (Feb. 4, 2021); Robert Pape & Keven Ruby, The Capitol Rioters Aren’t Like Other Extremists, The Atlantic (Feb. 2, 2021); Shalini Ramachandran, Alexandra Berzon & Rebecca Ballhaus, Jan. 6 Rally Funded by Top Trump Donor, Helped by Alex Jones, Organizers Say, Wall Street Journal (Feb. 1, 2021); Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, Follow the Money Behind the Capitol Riot, Brennan Center for Justice (Jan. 25, 2021); Brendan O’Conner, The Capitol riot wasn’t a fringe ‘uprising’. It was enabled by very deep pockets, The Guardian (February 18, 2021); Molly Ball, The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election, Time (Feb. 4, 2021). 

AMERICAN FASCISM and ANTIFA Part I

by

Contemporary Fascists in Austin, Texas, and the Deadly 20th Century Fascism supported by some of my relatives through The Texas Company

On a Saturday afternoon in or around 2012 at the SxSW international music festival, I was with my nephew on a closed downtown street.  We looked up and were startled to see coming down the street towards us a grim and silent group displaying an array of long guns, as well as a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag.   Some were dressed partially in military camouflage.  In this festive urban environment full of revelers from around the world in jeans, shorts, and t-shirts, the camouflage served to highlight rather than hide the marchers’ military purpose.  

The complete lack of visible police presence was notable.  I had participated in many protest marches, some even during SxSW—and there was always a significant police presence. Occasionally the police would arrest or attack protesters.  During the annual state high school track and field competitions, which drew a large number of African-Americans from around Texas, the police presence was draconian, as if they were preparing for an invasion.  But on that Saturday afternoon, not a single member of the police force was to be seen near this armed group resembling some of those who would in 2021 march on the US Capitol to try to attack and kidnap members of Congress.   

This armed military display at SxSW seems to have been a spectral harbinger, a soundless dirge amidst the loud music. 

Right-wing Violence and Intimidation Escalates in Austin

Since then, armed right-wing groups made their presence increasingly known in Austin, targeting people on the Left, as well as the black and brown communities in East Austin.  They attacked and beat-up marchers celebrating May Day.  They occupied a park in East Austin, and intimidated others from using it to distribute free food.  

Armed fascists showed up to support the gentrification of East Austin, at a time when the gentrification process there was the most intense in the country. One morning in 2015, Sergio Lajarazu recounted, “I was driving by like any other day, taking my daughter to school. That’s when I saw it: my life’s work under the bulldozer.” His landlord, without warning and in the middle of a lease, bulldozed Sergio and his wife’s Jumpolin piñata shop.  The Mexican American tenants apparently were an obstacle to Austin developers’ displacement of Mexican Americans from their affordable homes and leases. The landlord characterized his actions as a form of beautification, comparing it to a clearing away an infestation of “roaches.”

The quick demolition of Jumplin by the landlord.

In subsequent months, I joined demonstrators organized by Defend Our Hoodz and others on the sidewalk outside to protest the Blue Cat Cafe business brought in by the landlord to replace the piñata shop. 

One of many protests and pickets outside of Blue Cat Cafe. The camera caught me in the back unwittingly holding my sign upside down.

The neighborhood continued to picket the cat café.  Paul Gray, the brother of the owner of the Blue Cat Café, was a military veteran and member of the Neo-Nazi military group called Vanguard America; he soon would join an offshoot called Patriot Front. Gray brought his friends and was joined by others recruited by local media rageaholic Alex Jones to confront the anti-gentrification protestors.  These military-trained fascists intimidated and assaulted anti-gentrification protestors.  The police tasered an anti-gentrification protestor and seemed to offer little protection from the fascists who were trying to disrupt these regular demonstrations.  

Paul Gray

The Patriotic Front apparently are book burners too.  In November of 2017, the Patriot Front showed up in front of Monkeywrench bookstore in Austin, a gathering place for leftists and known for hosting Marxist intellectuals like Gayatri Spivak, activists from El Salvador, and brave young Dalit women from India. 

An Antifa Response

While police did little to protect people from fascists, anti-fascists took action to make it clear fascists were not welcome in Austin.  Neo-Nazis and their local employers were identified.  People were encouraged to call the businesses giving employment to fascists and as a result it appears that some were fired. 

Around the time Paul Gray showed up at the Blue Cat Café, he scheduled a neo-Nazi rally at the Texas Capitol.  He described it as an effort to support “Gov. Abbott’s and Pres. Trump’s policy on enforcing border protection, helping the Border Patrol and police forces in their service, and all our Texas congressmen who want to put America first.”  Antifa groups sounded the alarm and I answered the call to surround the neo-Nazis with the counter-protestors.  We outnumbered the fascists, made a lot of noise, and made sure their rally was frustrated. 

A small gathering of Vanguard America and other fascists at the Texas Capitol on June 17, 2017. Organized by Paul Gray.
Antifa participants surrounded the fascists and drowned them out.

Within a few months, neo-Nazi demonstrations organized by Paul Gray’s group Vanguard America occurred in Charlottesville Virginia, where one of the white supremacists drove his car into a crowd of anti-racist counter-protestors, killing one of them. 

Police, Military, Fascist and Corporate Cooperation

A massive hack of regional police data sharing centers in July of 2020 demonstrated police collusion with corporate and right-wing violence.  This hack, which included the Austin Regional Intelligence Center, revealed that the police were targeting Muslims, American anti-fascists, and people lawfully protesting police violence. The police were defining these kinds of people as terroristic threats.  Right-wing domestic terrorists were largely ignored as threats.  In some respects, the fascists were considered allies.  A black anti-police-violence protestor in Dallas was arrested and placed in jail for five months before the charges were dropped; the basis for his arrest had been a video prepared by Alex Jones’ Infowars.

The hack showed that the police cultivated a secret network of citizen informants from churches, security agencies, and other sources, reminiscent of the actions of the FBI in the 1940s and 50s when they enlisted 100,800 members of the American Legion at 16,700 posts to spy on left-wing Americans in their own communities. Documents from the police regional surveillance centers show an interest in bizarre conspiracies favored by the right such as so-called efforts to install Sharia law in the US.  The hack revealed the close allegiance between the nation’s police and big oil companies and big banks like Chase Bank.  Targets of “anti-terrorist” police surveillance in Austin included anti-fossil fuel activists.  

When the Austin police killed Mike Ramos, the Mike Ramos Brigade was formed. The Brigde and many others organized large demonstrations downtown and near the police station in 2020.  At one large demonstration at the police station, police casually fired many rounds of so-called “non-lethal” projectiles into the anti-police-violence protestors, causing permanent brain damage to one protestor and permanent loss of an eye by another.  Dozens suffered less serious injuries. Right-wing extremists with guns showed up to support the police.  A few of the protestors against police violence also carried weapons to protect themselves. 

 

During one march on Congress Avenue, within a few feet of some of my friends who were there, a military sergeant arrived in a car, seemingly intent on repeating the murder and mayhem from Charlottesville.  He drove up to the march, stopped, and then accelerated his car directly into the crowd, holding his steering wheel with one hand and a pistol in the other.  When protestors approached the car to try to stop it, the driver quickly shot into the crowd, killing protestor Garrett Foster. 

The driver turned himself in to police who briefly interrogated him and accepted and repeated to the public his lies about the incident.  The police released him within hours, without questioning any other eye-witnesses.  The police even hid the identity of the shooter from the public.  Activists were able to identify the killer as Sgt. Daniel Perry.  The elected head of the Austin police union made statements indicating that Daniel Perry gave Garrett Foster what he deserved; the police union blamed Foster’s death on the activists who opposed police violence. According to the police union head: Garrett Foster “was looking for confrontation and he found it. The Feux Mike Ramos Brigade needs to be stopped. The only people out of control during this incident was the Feux Brigade.”       

         

It was not surprising to me that violent right-wing fascist groups grew and become emboldened enough to stage a violent attack on the US Congress on January 6, 2021.  Paul Gray’s Patriot Front was there. So were the Proud Boys, although its leader, Enrique Terrio, was revealed to be a longtime police informant.  Members of local police forces as well as the US military participated in this insurrection. I was not surprised when the head of the Chicago police union, elected by its 12,000 members publicly defended the violent insurrectionists and expressed sympathy for them.  The insurrectionists were encouraged by President Trump and funded by oligarchs.  

With this act, finally these fascist groups who have been terrorizing people in Austin and many other parts of the country began to be recognized as the terroristic threat that they are.

Skeletons in My Family Closet: Oil Companies and Fascism

I do have a unique perspective on fascism and of the support that exists for fascism among US oligarchs.  More than ten years ago, I had opened a door to a family closet and found some skeletons, hidden away in the Fox River Valley of rural small-town Illinois where I grew up.  

In the 19th Century, my great aunt Harriet Rockwell of St. Charles, Illinois, had married grocery clerk Ed Baker who by a strange quirk of fate inherited in 1918 half of the John W. Gates fortune.   His niece, 15-year-old Dellora Angell, inherited the other half.  This surprise inheritance put them among the top .0001% of Americans in terms of wealth. When Dellora reached 19, she married Lester Norris, a St. Charles classmate from public school, who was trained as an illustrator. 

Newlyweds Dellora and Lester Norris.

Despite Ed Baker and the Norrises being a regular part of my father’s family gatherings when he was a child, I had never met them and knew little about them. I grew up on the other side of the tracks in a town near to their homes in St. Charles.  In the second decade of the 21st Century, I became curious and learned that the bulk of the Gates fortune inherited by these two was in shares of The Texas Company, known by its brand-name Texaco.  Ed and Dellora inherited enough Texaco shares to make Baker and the Norrises collectively the largest shareholders in the company.  I also learned that in 1927, Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini sat to have his portrait drawn by Lester Norris, a portrait that Norris kept on the wall of his office in St. Charles. 

Portrait of Benito Mussolini by Lester Norris

Lester Norris was elevated to the Board of Directors of Texaco in 1933 and served until 1973—making him the longest serving member of the Texaco Board.  During his tenure, my research revealed to me that Texaco had provided oil for Hitler’s navy, assisted Nazi espionage, and provided all the oil necessary on credit to General Franco to make his fascist coup in Spain a success. Texaco supported various fascist coups around the world.  Fascists have been installed in governments with the blessings of some of the most powerful people in the United States.

In my attempt to understand the phenomenon of Lester Norris and Texaco, of Dr. Alberto G. Garcia and his life, and of the recent eruption of an aggressive US domestic fascist movement, I have developed some understanding of how fascism comes about and what measures against fascism have been shown to be effective in the past. 

What is fascism?  Fascism is a type of political gangsterism leading to terroristic dictatorship where non-white racial groups and left-wing groups are scapegoated and persecuted to perpetuate a capitalist society.  Fascism is ultranationalist and relies on certain religious or quasi-religious doctrines to justify itself. It also relies on a fun-house mirror of appropriated left-wing rhetoric.  Fascism is what oligarchs support when they feel their privileges and power are threatened by liberal or left-wing democratic political movements.  Fascism can be appealing to middle classes whose status and prosperity are threatened when monopoly capitalism destroys small businesses.  For example, since the demise of the Farmers Alliance and the Peoples Party in the 19th Century, monopoly capitalism has forced off the land more than 60% of farm owners, and employed Walmart and other international franchises to destroy rural small businesses.  These rural areas are where Donald Trump has proven to be most popular. Most of the people facing charges from the Capitol insurrection had prior money troubles, including bankruptcies, notices of eviction or foreclosure, bad debts, or unpaid taxes.  “Resentment and revenge are fascism’s prime emotions,” according to historian Alexander Reid Ross.    

An early and continuous financial supporter of the German Nazi Party was Henry Ford.  Other US corporations and oligarchs over time provided funds and other forms of support to the German Nazis. 

The first fascist government was imposed on Hungary in 1919. Among those who helped bring about the Hungarian fascist coup was US intelligence operative Allen Dulles.  Dulles would go on to support Nazism as an international lawyer for major corporations and as an intelligence operative with the OSS. Later, after he became a top official and then director of the US Central Intelligence Agency, Dulles organized and supported fascistic coups in a number of countries.   In 1954, to give just one example, Dulles working with the oligarch Averell Harriman organized the overthrow of a secular social democratic government in Iran in order to protect the interests of US and British oil companies.  Dulles bankrolled and directed Iranian Nazi and fascist leaders, whose members had supported Hitler and Mussolini in World War II.  The new Iranian dictator imposed by Dulles was induced to retain Lester Norris’s man—the former Texaco Chairman Torkild Rieber—as his oil minister.  Although Rieber had been staunchly supported by Texaco director Lester Norris, the majority of other Texaco directors in 1940 forced him to resign when the press began to discover and report on Texaco’s assistance to Hitler.  Secular democracy has never returned to Iran.


Lester Norris’s man: Torkild Rieber, Chairman of the Boord of Texaco, on the cover of Time magazine.  After Hitler’s invasion of Poland had caused England and France to declare war on Germany, Rieber in 1939 traveled to Germany where he spent a weekend during the Christmas holidays with Hitler’s second-in-command Herman Goering at his hunting lodge.  Rieber had earlier agreed to provide Texaco oil to the German navy in exchange for Germans building tankers for Texaco.  In 1936, Rieber had offered to Spanish General Franco oil to fuel his fascist insurgency against the democratic government of Spain.  Texaco also provided a home in Scarsdale and an office in the Chrysler Building for a German spy who came to the US in 1940 to stoke sympathy and assistance to Hitler among the US elites.      .

Diego Rivera painting memorializing the overthrow of democratic government in Guatemala by the US.  CIA Director Allen Dulles is portrayed in dark suit with money pouch standing behind his brother Secretary of State John Foster Dulles who is shaking hands with the new dictator who is prepared to create a dictatorial banana republic favorable to United Fruit Company.  The Dulles brothers were both lawyers and United Fruit had been a long-time client.

Torkild Rieber’s wife either jumped or was pushed to her death from their home in a Manhattan penthouse during the height of Rieber’s infatuation with Hitler. By 1954, Rieber was happily ensconced in an office at the Rockefeller Center in Manhattan. That year, Rieber hosted the daughter of the fascist dictator of Spain, Francisco Franco, flying her on his private jet from Washington to New York to San Francisco and then to Los Angeles where they were guests of honor at a party thrown by Hollywood mogul Jack Warner.

Rieber died in 1968, after Ed Baker but while Lester Norris was still on the Texaco Board. They are all dead now. Texaco owners Ed Baker, Dellora Norris and Lester Norris are entombed in the same St. Charles, Illinois cemetery where my father is buried. My great grandfather Henry Rockwell shares a large and spacious tomb with Ed Baker.

Fascism has long been deeply embedded in US society and government.  In part II of this blog post, I look back at the Antifa actions of Dr. Alberto G. Garcia of Austin and others.  In the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, Labor unions, a free press, and left-wing organizations were able to offer working class Americans alternatives to anti-democratic, fascist organizations and help position the national government to be anti-fascist.  Of course, it took war and enormous amounts of violence to defeat the fascism that had arisen in Europe with the essential help of German oligarchs like Kurt von Schroeder and Fritz Thyssen and US oligarchs like Henry Ford, the Rockefellers, the Harrimans, the House of Morgan, and my relatives at Texaco. 

In part II I also identify oligarchs who have supported the insurrection and attempted coup or autogolpe on January 6, and draw conclusions from history and experience as to what can be done to stop fascism in the United States.

Sources

Brad Rockwell, unfinished manuscript history of Texaco; Alexander Reid Ross, Against the Fascist Creep (2017); Michael J. Roberto, The Coming of the American Behemoth (2018); Stanislav Vysotsky, American Antifa: The Tactics, Culture, and Practice of Militant Antifascism (2021); Dustin Ray Hamby Exposed as Nazi Leader Chef Goyardee, blog of the Screwston Anti-fascist Committee (Sept. 20, 2019); Defend Our Hoodz, Facebook page; Centex Fascists, Autonomedia website; Shelley Seale, Conflicting stories surround controversial demolition of East Austin piñata store, Culture Map (February 15, 2015); Micah Lee, Hack of 251 Law Enforcement Websites Exposes Personal Data of 700,000 Cops, The Intercept (July 15, 2020); John Anderson, APD’s Secret Informants Eyeing Neighbors for “Suspicious” Activity, Leaked Documents Reveal; APD intel center puts spies among us, Austin Chronicle (July 24, 2020); John Anderson,  Austin Regional Intelligence Center’s Secret Informants Show How Profiling Works; “Middle Eastern”? Your info might be on file at Austin’s fusion center, Austin Chronicle (August 7, 2020); John Anderson, ARIC: Black Marchers With Guns? How the Huey P. Newton Gun Club got caught up in Austin Regional Intelligence Center’s snitching program, Austin Chronicle (Sept. 11, 2020); John Anderson, Local Activists Call Out Police and Find Themselves Flagged as Threats, Austin Chronicle (Aug. 28, 2020); Todd C. Frankel, A majority of the people arrested for Capitol riot had a history of financial trouble, Washington Post (Feb. 10, 2021); Carolyn Dimitri, Anne Effland, and Neilson Conklin, The 20th Century Transformation of U.S. Agriculture and Farm Policy, United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service (2005).