WEBVTT - Nut Country Revisited feat. Steven Monacelli & Dr. Michael Phillips 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:04.920 Col Zone Media. 0:00:05.200 --> 0:00:08.440 I'm Michael Phillips, an historian, the author of a book 0:00:08.440 --> 0:00:11.879 about racism in Dallas called White Metropolis, and the co 0:00:11.960 --> 0:00:14.440 author of an upcoming book about the eugenics movement in 0:00:14.440 --> 0:00:16.919 Texas called The Purifying Knife. 0:00:17.200 --> 0:00:20.880 And I'm Stephen Monchelli, an investigative reporter and columnist in 0:00:20.920 --> 0:00:24.280 Texas who covers political extremism and beyond. 0:00:24.840 --> 0:00:28.480 Since the late nineteen nineties, Alex Jones built an extensive 0:00:28.560 --> 0:00:32.720 media empire, spreading out landish conspiracy theories from his home 0:00:32.760 --> 0:00:36.440 base in Austin, Texas. A native of the Dallas suburb 0:00:36.479 --> 0:00:39.600 of Rockwall, over the years, Jones has claimed that the 0:00:39.600 --> 0:00:43.600 Apollo eleven moon landing was fake, so too, he said, 0:00:44.000 --> 0:00:47.000 was the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting. He claimed 0:00:47.040 --> 0:00:52.600 with stage to justify new gun control laws. According to Jones, 0:00:52.640 --> 0:00:56.000 the US government can control the weather has intentionally caused 0:00:56.000 --> 0:00:59.600 floods and other weather disasters to punish Texas and other 0:00:59.640 --> 0:01:04.000 concerns of the States. He has insisted that chemicals intentionally 0:01:04.040 --> 0:01:08.360 placed in American drinking water are turning frogs gay, part 0:01:08.400 --> 0:01:11.080 of an experiment by the American government seeking a way 0:01:11.080 --> 0:01:15.920 to undermine the nuclear family. While peddling dubious supplements with 0:01:16.120 --> 0:01:20.399 unproven health benefits. Jones began his broadcasting career with a 0:01:20.440 --> 0:01:23.959 call in public access cable TV show, before moving on 0:01:24.000 --> 0:01:28.399 to radio and then online. In spite of his outlandish claims, 0:01:28.640 --> 0:01:31.280 in twenty fifteen, Jones was able to set off a 0:01:31.360 --> 0:01:35.520 panic in Texas that inspired action from Governor Greg Abbott. 0:01:35.480 --> 0:01:40.240 Now to a Texas sized conspiracy theory, sparking headlines across 0:01:40.280 --> 0:01:43.440 the country, including this week in The New York Times, 0:01:43.920 --> 0:01:48.520 the theory that an upcoming Pentagon training exercise is actually 0:01:48.600 --> 0:01:52.360 part of a plan to impose martial law. To many, 0:01:52.360 --> 0:01:55.160 it's far fetched, but not to some of the top 0:01:55.280 --> 0:01:57.320 politicians in the lone star state. 0:01:57.840 --> 0:02:00.840 The conspiracy theory Jones described on his Info War show 0:02:00.880 --> 0:02:04.920 spun in even wilder directions. The Army troops participating in 0:02:04.960 --> 0:02:09.040 the Jade Helm military exercise, panicked, right wingers said, would 0:02:09.040 --> 0:02:12.880 turn on the local population. Guns would be seized from 0:02:12.919 --> 0:02:16.280 private citizens, and local walmarts would be converted into vast 0:02:16.320 --> 0:02:20.800 holding cells where those opposing Obama's plan to seize dictatorial 0:02:20.919 --> 0:02:24.799 power would be imprisoned. According to these sorts of theories, 0:02:25.240 --> 0:02:29.040 these accusations went viral and a military spokesman got waylaid 0:02:29.040 --> 0:02:32.080 by angry questions at a Bastrup County Commissioner's Court meeting 0:02:32.400 --> 0:02:35.200 held near the Central Texas staging area for jade Helm. 0:02:36.120 --> 0:02:36.680 Armed men in. 0:02:36.720 --> 0:02:40.160 Trucks patrolled in Bastrup County and surrounding communities, and a 0:02:40.200 --> 0:02:43.760 private group called Counter jade Helm spied on the movement 0:02:43.800 --> 0:02:47.160 of troops and military vehicles while they quizzed residents for 0:02:47.200 --> 0:02:50.880 any intelligence they may have gathered on the impending alleged 0:02:51.120 --> 0:02:51.720 coup d'eta. 0:02:52.440 --> 0:02:57.079 The crazier the conspiracy theory got, the more Texas's far 0:02:57.280 --> 0:03:00.399 right political leaders were willing to pander toge Jones and Elk. 0:03:00.960 --> 0:03:04.480 Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered the Texas National Guard to 0:03:04.600 --> 0:03:06.920 monitor US Army troops near Austin. 0:03:07.160 --> 0:03:12.040 We're playing a pivotal role of government, and that is 0:03:12.080 --> 0:03:15.240 to provide information until people have questions. 0:03:15.840 --> 0:03:19.120 Texas Senator Ted Cruz pledged that he would demand answers 0:03:19.120 --> 0:03:22.680 from the Pentagon about the military's intentions and said he 0:03:22.760 --> 0:03:25.400 completely understood the widespread paranoia. 0:03:25.520 --> 0:03:28.359 You know, I understand the concern that's been raised by 0:03:28.360 --> 0:03:29.960 a lot of citizens about jade Hell. 0:03:30.160 --> 0:03:32.119 We have seen for six years. 0:03:31.800 --> 0:03:35.600 A federal government of disrespecting the liberty of the citizens 0:03:36.520 --> 0:03:37.960 and that produces fear. 0:03:38.520 --> 0:03:41.880 Suffice it to say, the Obama administration did not overthrow 0:03:41.920 --> 0:03:45.800 the state government. The intense outrage and fear generated over 0:03:45.920 --> 0:03:50.240 army combat preparations might have seen perplexing to those outside 0:03:50.280 --> 0:03:53.760 of Texas, a state that prides itself on being patriotic 0:03:53.800 --> 0:03:58.680 and pro military. However, seething distrust of liberal elites is 0:03:58.720 --> 0:04:02.600 a lucrative business in alex Jones built a fortune of 0:04:02.640 --> 0:04:06.120 two hundred and seventy million with his internet show and 0:04:06.240 --> 0:04:10.520 sales of dubious health and survivalist products advertised on those broadcasts. 0:04:11.160 --> 0:04:14.040 This is nothing new south of the Red River. From 0:04:14.040 --> 0:04:16.080 the beginning of its history, the state has been an 0:04:16.080 --> 0:04:21.920 incubator for outlandish and occasionally not completely unreasonable conspiracy theories. 0:04:22.360 --> 0:04:26.719 After Texas violently separated from Mexico in eighteen thirty six, 0:04:27.160 --> 0:04:30.000 white Texans spent the next decade fearing their southern neighbor, 0:04:30.279 --> 0:04:34.200 a nation that saw the Texas Revolution as illegitimate and 0:04:34.360 --> 0:04:38.360 wanted to regain control of the breakaway province. Meanwhile, those 0:04:38.360 --> 0:04:41.359 same white Texans viewed the African Americans they enslaved with 0:04:41.400 --> 0:04:45.280 suspicion bordering on dread, knowing that their black captives desperately 0:04:45.320 --> 0:04:49.320 wanted freedom and might use violence to liberate themselves. This 0:04:49.400 --> 0:04:53.160 created an atmosphere of uncertainty and distrust that fed conspiracy 0:04:53.200 --> 0:04:57.720 theories of all sorts. After their rebellion against Mexico, Texans 0:04:57.720 --> 0:04:59.840 wanted to become part of the United States, but they 0:04:59.839 --> 0:05:02.120 were forced to spend almost a full decade as an 0:05:02.120 --> 0:05:05.880 independent republic because of well founded suspicions held by American 0:05:05.880 --> 0:05:09.600 abolitionists that the Texas Revolution was a part of a 0:05:09.600 --> 0:05:12.320 plot to add a slave state to the Union. 0:05:12.839 --> 0:05:16.560 A decade later, the tide shifted and Texas was hurriedly 0:05:16.600 --> 0:05:20.799 annexed in eighteen forty five after widespread rumors gripped Washington, 0:05:20.920 --> 0:05:23.719 d C Of a British plot to a next Texas 0:05:23.760 --> 0:05:27.560 and converted to a haven for African Americans escaping slavery. 0:05:28.600 --> 0:05:32.040 In the eighteen fifties, even prominent Texans like Sam Houston 0:05:32.120 --> 0:05:35.760 flocked to the American Party, also known as the know Nothings, 0:05:36.000 --> 0:05:39.120 that claimed the Pope had ordered Catholics from Ireland Germany 0:05:39.160 --> 0:05:41.839 to immigrate to the United States in order to take 0:05:41.839 --> 0:05:44.760 the country over and hand power over to the Vatican 0:05:45.640 --> 0:05:49.920 Panics O were suspected rebellions by the enslaved, gripped Anglo 0:05:49.960 --> 0:05:54.200 Texans in eighteen thirty five, eighteen thirty eight, eighteen forty one, 0:05:54.360 --> 0:05:57.400 and in eighteen fifty six went perhaps as many as 0:05:57.440 --> 0:06:01.360 four hundred African Americans held in bondage in Colorado County 0:06:01.400 --> 0:06:05.040 in south central Texas apparently plotted to rise up against 0:06:05.040 --> 0:06:08.360 their white oppressors and battle their way to freedom in Mexico, 0:06:08.720 --> 0:06:10.400 where slavery had been abolished. 0:06:11.040 --> 0:06:15.359 Eighteen sixty, construction workers carelessly tossed matches into a pile 0:06:15.400 --> 0:06:18.760 of wood in Dallas during a hot, drought ridden summer. 0:06:19.400 --> 0:06:22.279 The blaze that resulted destroyed much of what was then 0:06:22.320 --> 0:06:26.560 only a village. Immediately, suspecting that enslaved arsonists had set 0:06:26.560 --> 0:06:29.400 the fire as part of a planned revolution, whites and 0:06:29.480 --> 0:06:32.440 Dallas tortured and whipped almost every enslaved person in the 0:06:32.480 --> 0:06:36.360 county in search of scapegoats. Eventually, they hanged three African 0:06:36.440 --> 0:06:38.839 Americans and set off what would become known as the 0:06:38.960 --> 0:06:42.520 Texas Troubles. Fires broke out across the state, and each 0:06:42.560 --> 0:06:46.479 got blamed on black suspects and their supposed white abolitionist instigators, 0:06:47.040 --> 0:06:50.640 often men from northern States. As one historian put it, 0:06:50.880 --> 0:06:53.839 white Texan enslavers decided it was better to quote hanging 0:06:53.960 --> 0:06:57.599 ninety nine innocent men than to let one guilty pass. 0:06:58.120 --> 0:07:01.680 Acting on little evidence, mobs lynched as many as eighty 0:07:01.760 --> 0:07:06.560 enslaved African American men and thirty seven accused white abolitionists. 0:07:06.960 --> 0:07:09.640 By the time the panic burned out in September. 0:07:09.560 --> 0:07:12.960 A wave of labor unrest, including the Great Southwest Railroad 0:07:13.040 --> 0:07:15.480 Strike of eighteen eighty six and the rise of the 0:07:15.520 --> 0:07:18.960 Populace movement, which called for the government seizure railroads and 0:07:19.000 --> 0:07:23.040 telegraph lines, in addition to a global panic amongst the 0:07:23.080 --> 0:07:26.440 well to do about anarchism after a series of bombings 0:07:26.440 --> 0:07:28.600 in Europe and even the United States from the eighteen 0:07:28.640 --> 0:07:32.440 eighties to just after World War One convinced economic elites 0:07:32.480 --> 0:07:35.760 in Texas that revolution was in the air. The ku 0:07:35.800 --> 0:07:40.520 Klux Klan, which in its original incarnation during reconstruction served 0:07:40.520 --> 0:07:43.760 as a goon squad to keep newly freed African American 0:07:43.840 --> 0:07:47.600 labor under tight control, came to dominate cities like Dallas 0:07:47.600 --> 0:07:51.040 in the nineteen twenties, where one and every three eligible 0:07:51.080 --> 0:07:54.160 men were members of the KKK at its peak, the 0:07:54.240 --> 0:07:58.240 KKK charged that both Jews and Catholics were conspiring to 0:07:58.280 --> 0:08:03.440 control the world. Texas politicians like Representative John Box of Texas, 0:08:03.720 --> 0:08:06.800 in a column in Henry Ford's anti Semitic newspaper The 0:08:06.840 --> 0:08:11.040 Dearborn Independent, charged that Jews had manipulated the Congress to 0:08:11.080 --> 0:08:15.040 add loopholes to American immigration laws passed in nineteen twenty 0:08:15.080 --> 0:08:18.200 one nineteen twenty four in order to let Jewish people 0:08:18.360 --> 0:08:21.760 escaping the Russian Empire into the United States as part 0:08:21.800 --> 0:08:24.160 of a scheme to undermine American society. 0:08:24.680 --> 0:08:27.640 As oil millionaires and billionaires built their wealth over the 0:08:27.680 --> 0:08:31.880 twentieth century, they became a force in conspiratorial faw right 0:08:31.960 --> 0:08:35.920 politics in Texas. Starting in the nineteen thirties, they mobilized 0:08:35.920 --> 0:08:38.880 against Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, which they insisted was a 0:08:38.960 --> 0:08:42.319 part of an international communist plan to overthrow capitalism around 0:08:42.360 --> 0:08:47.120 the planet. Anti communism, anti Semitism, and hostility. The post 0:08:47.120 --> 0:08:50.560 World War II African American civil rights movement blended seamlessly 0:08:50.840 --> 0:08:53.800 in the conspiratorial imaginations of the faw right in the 0:08:53.800 --> 0:08:57.520 lone Star state ideas that reached a national audience in 0:08:57.640 --> 0:08:59.240 large part because of oil money. 0:09:00.000 --> 0:09:03.160 Owen Beatty, the longtime chairman of the English Department's Southern 0:09:03.160 --> 0:09:07.480 Methodist University in Dallas, in nineteen fifty one, authored one 0:09:07.480 --> 0:09:11.160 of the first and perhaps the best selling of all time, 0:09:11.600 --> 0:09:17.120 book promoting Holocaust denial, Iron Curtain over America. Beatty claimed 0:09:17.160 --> 0:09:19.559 that the Jews of today were not the Hebrew heroes 0:09:19.600 --> 0:09:23.280 of what Christians called the Old Testament. Instead, they were 0:09:23.280 --> 0:09:27.080 descended from a sinister Asian trot called the Kazars. They 0:09:27.120 --> 0:09:30.920 converted to Judaism around the year eight hundred. Too arrogant 0:09:30.960 --> 0:09:35.559 to assimilate with Christian Europe, Baty wrote, Kazar's undermined society 0:09:35.640 --> 0:09:39.840 under their stolen identities and caused the Communist Revolution in 0:09:39.960 --> 0:09:43.880 Russian nineteen eighteen. After immigrating to the United States in 0:09:43.960 --> 0:09:47.400 large numbers, they took over the Democratic Party, Batty said, 0:09:47.679 --> 0:09:51.240 and moved it to the radical left. Beatty also claimed 0:09:51.240 --> 0:09:55.120 that Jews controlled Franklin Roosevelt's administration and pushed it into 0:09:55.160 --> 0:09:58.600 war against Hitler's Germany, which Beatty described in his book 0:09:58.600 --> 0:10:02.400 as quote the historic bulwark of Christian Europe. A mere 0:10:02.520 --> 0:10:06.280 six years after Soviet and American troops that liberated Nazi 0:10:06.280 --> 0:10:09.800 concentration camps. Betty claimed that most of the victims there 0:10:09.880 --> 0:10:13.720 died from disease and the Holocaust was a fraud used 0:10:13.720 --> 0:10:16.760 after nineteen forty eight to blackmail the West into political 0:10:16.760 --> 0:10:20.520 and financial support of Israel. The SMU professor urged the 0:10:20.600 --> 0:10:23.240 United States to expel Jews from the United States. 0:10:23.760 --> 0:10:27.920 Rather than earning him scorn, Bad's virulently hateful anti Jewish 0:10:28.000 --> 0:10:31.320 rants won him a large following. His book, Iron Curtain 0:10:31.320 --> 0:10:34.640 Over America, went through nine printings. By nineteen fifty three, 0:10:35.200 --> 0:10:39.400 The Public Affairs Luncheon Club, a women's organization, adopted a 0:10:39.480 --> 0:10:43.760 unanimous resolution backing Bad and requesting that SMU investigate alleged 0:10:43.760 --> 0:10:49.080 Communist influence on the university's faculty politics and values. Beady 0:10:49.240 --> 0:10:52.400 taught at SMU until his retirement in nineteen fifty seven, 0:10:52.720 --> 0:10:56.080 two years after a panic over allegedly read art during 0:10:56.120 --> 0:10:59.920 which the conservative Dallas Patriotic Council accused the Dallas Musi 0:11:00.240 --> 0:11:04.360 of Art of intentionally promoting quote subversive artists who were 0:11:04.400 --> 0:11:07.840 ostensibly part of communist front groups connected to the Soviet 0:11:07.960 --> 0:11:09.120 Union after. 0:11:08.960 --> 0:11:11.600 World War Two in the establishment of communist regimes in 0:11:11.640 --> 0:11:15.000 Eastern Europe and in China. The uber wealthy giants of 0:11:15.040 --> 0:11:18.400 the Texas oil industry, to a large degree, funded what 0:11:18.480 --> 0:11:22.720 came to be known as McCarthyism. Clinton Murchison, whose son 0:11:22.760 --> 0:11:26.360 in nineteen sixty became owner of the Dallas Cowboys National 0:11:26.360 --> 0:11:30.239 Football League team, became one of the largest financial contributors 0:11:30.280 --> 0:11:34.559 the red baiting Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin. In Houston, 0:11:34.640 --> 0:11:38.199 hard right organizations like the Minute Women Fought against school 0:11:38.200 --> 0:11:42.400 integration took over the school board, firing the assistant superintendent, 0:11:42.480 --> 0:11:46.280 George eBay because he previously lived in California and Oregon, 0:11:46.520 --> 0:11:49.199 where he had nice things to say about Roosevelt's new 0:11:49.200 --> 0:11:53.160 deal in the African American freedom struggle. A math instructor 0:11:53.200 --> 0:11:56.600 got fired after he carelessly common in a teacher's lounge. 0:11:56.760 --> 0:12:00.680 They supported Adelie Stevenson, the Liberal Democratic part Party nominee 0:12:00.679 --> 0:12:03.960 for president. In nineteen fifty two and nineteen fifty six, 0:12:04.800 --> 0:12:07.719 the Easton School Board yanked books from campus libraries that 0:12:07.800 --> 0:12:11.280 said positive things about the United Nations, while right wingers 0:12:11.280 --> 0:12:14.200 in Dallas force the City Library and the Museum of 0:12:14.200 --> 0:12:17.840 Fine Arts. The demand artists like Diego Rivera and Pablo 0:12:17.920 --> 0:12:21.000 Picasso because of their supposed communist sympathies. 0:12:21.360 --> 0:12:24.079 But before we get into that, a quick ad break 0:12:34.400 --> 0:12:35.480 one Dallas oil. 0:12:35.320 --> 0:12:38.600 Magnate who built a mansion intentionally designed to be a 0:12:38.679 --> 0:12:42.720 bigger duplicate of George Washington's Mount Vernon estate. He used 0:12:42.720 --> 0:12:46.200 his wealth to broadcast extremist fever dreams in the nineteen 0:12:46.240 --> 0:12:49.880 fifties and nineteen sixties. His name was hl Hunt, and 0:12:49.920 --> 0:12:52.560 he was profiled by the BBC in the nineteen sixties. 0:12:52.880 --> 0:12:55.000 But as well as being perhaps the most apprugal, the 0:12:55.040 --> 0:12:58.400 most stingy plutocrat of Texas, hl Hunt is probably the 0:12:58.440 --> 0:13:01.640 most controversial. He is a fervent advocate of right wing, 0:13:01.760 --> 0:13:05.240 some would say reactionary causes. He is against the UN, 0:13:05.440 --> 0:13:09.040 against the War On Party, against Medicare, against central government 0:13:09.080 --> 0:13:12.120 aid of any sort. He would rather Washington didn't rule 0:13:12.120 --> 0:13:14.880 the United States at all, and in his ideal LAMB 0:13:14.960 --> 0:13:17.439 votes would be distributed according to the amount of taxes 0:13:17.480 --> 0:13:21.199 who paid more than most Texans. Even he is inclined 0:13:21.200 --> 0:13:24.120 to see communists under every couch and behind every curtain. 0:13:24.960 --> 0:13:28.720 To Hunt, mankind is divided into communists and constructives. His 0:13:28.880 --> 0:13:32.200 private word for anti communists, you are either for him 0:13:32.280 --> 0:13:35.000 or aganim. He brooks no halfway position. 0:13:35.800 --> 0:13:39.440 A health faddist who avoided whitebread and sugar, Hunt believed 0:13:39.480 --> 0:13:42.280 his diet of largely raw vegetables might actually allow him 0:13:42.280 --> 0:13:46.520 to achieve immortality. He also thought he had psychic abilities, 0:13:46.920 --> 0:13:50.760 lived as a secret bigamist, and published pamphlets such as 0:13:51.080 --> 0:13:54.600 Hitler was a Liberal, an early prototype of Rupert Murdoch 0:13:54.640 --> 0:13:58.040 and Elon Musk. Hunt tried to create an alternative right 0:13:58.080 --> 0:14:02.720 wing media infrastructure, ding a nationwide radio program and pamphlet 0:14:02.800 --> 0:14:08.000 subscription called Lifeline that promoted conspiracy theories from coast to coast. 0:14:08.360 --> 0:14:10.200 Didn't time for a lifetime. 0:14:12.480 --> 0:14:13.320 Is around the world. 0:14:13.840 --> 0:14:17.240 Every leftist phrase and cliche of the past half century 0:14:17.640 --> 0:14:19.040 now has the hollow. 0:14:18.760 --> 0:14:20.040 Ring of mythology. 0:14:21.000 --> 0:14:23.840 This is freedom Talk number fifty three Brendan cupp is 0:14:23.880 --> 0:14:25.960 all available at the rate of three for twenty five 0:14:26.040 --> 0:14:30.240 cents from Lifeline, Dallas, Texas seven five two o six. 0:14:30.880 --> 0:14:33.080 I'll be back after this message from our sponsor. 0:14:33.840 --> 0:14:36.640 The Lifeline show was hosted by a former FBI agent 0:14:36.720 --> 0:14:40.360 named Dan Smoot and broadcasts on more than eighty television 0:14:40.360 --> 0:14:44.600 one hundred and fifty radio stations. Hunt believed that democracy 0:14:44.680 --> 0:14:47.320 was the instrument through which wealth would be seized from 0:14:47.360 --> 0:14:51.800 billionaires such himself and redistributed to the lazy and the worthless. 0:14:52.080 --> 0:14:55.920 Hunt once rage at Smoot when the Lifeline hosts claimed 0:14:55.960 --> 0:14:59.280 on air that democracy was a political outgrowth of the 0:14:59.320 --> 0:15:04.440 teachings of Jesus Christ. Hunt corrected smooth, condemning democracy is 0:15:04.480 --> 0:15:07.920 the handwork of the devil. In a phony liberal form 0:15:07.960 --> 0:15:11.640 of watered down communism. Hunt innovated in number of ways 0:15:11.680 --> 0:15:14.360 to alarm audiences about far left plots. 0:15:15.320 --> 0:15:18.040 During the last two years, hl Hunt has added another 0:15:18.040 --> 0:15:21.560 emotive missile to his armory, his league of so called 0:15:21.680 --> 0:15:25.760 youth freedom speakers, engaging young teenagers drilled to deliver three 0:15:25.800 --> 0:15:29.600 minute burst of his propaganda to rotary clubs and Bible classes. 0:15:30.440 --> 0:15:33.760 Many people in the United States really don't believe that 0:15:33.840 --> 0:15:37.960 communism is a serious threat. Well, these people are in 0:15:38.040 --> 0:15:42.320 for a big shock, because the communists have every intention 0:15:42.480 --> 0:15:46.080 of doing exactly what they've said they'll do, and they 0:15:46.120 --> 0:15:49.800 do not hesitate to use force and violence anytime they 0:15:49.840 --> 0:15:53.600 think that it will further their cause. Now, I don't 0:15:53.640 --> 0:15:57.360 pretend to know all the answers, but I do know 0:15:58.600 --> 0:16:01.720 that it is our duty to get out and warn 0:16:01.800 --> 0:16:05.480 others of the serious threat that we are facing. We 0:16:05.560 --> 0:16:07.560 have got to get out and tell others of the 0:16:07.600 --> 0:16:10.560 subversive movements that are going on right here under our 0:16:10.680 --> 0:16:15.360 very own noses. It's time to do away with this attitude. Oh, 0:16:15.400 --> 0:16:20.640 it can't happen here. Will communists bury us? Will we 0:16:20.720 --> 0:16:23.640 face fine squads as in Cuba? And will our little 0:16:23.640 --> 0:16:30.920 bitty children become slaves? Ladies and gentlemen. The answer rests 0:16:30.920 --> 0:16:34.040 in the hands of you and others like you. 0:16:35.400 --> 0:16:35.800 Thank you. 0:16:38.960 --> 0:16:41.320 For much of the twentieth century, Dallas had built up 0:16:41.320 --> 0:16:45.640 a reputation as a clean, dull, modern, and efficiently run city. 0:16:46.440 --> 0:16:48.880 By the nineteen fifties, however, it had also acquired a 0:16:48.920 --> 0:16:53.080 reputation as the capital of crackpots and conspiracy theorists, a 0:16:53.160 --> 0:16:57.800 development that historian Edward H. Miller would describe in his 0:16:57.880 --> 0:17:02.360 book Not the Country. In nineteen fifty four, Dallas elected 0:17:02.360 --> 0:17:06.560 a far right House representative, Republican Bruce Alger. Less than 0:17:06.560 --> 0:17:09.320 a week prior to the nineteen sixty presidential election between 0:17:09.400 --> 0:17:13.000 John Kennedy and Richard Nixon, a pro Alger mob assaulted 0:17:13.000 --> 0:17:16.320 in spat on the Democratic vice presidential nominee and then 0:17:16.400 --> 0:17:20.560 Texas Senator Lyndon Johnson and his wife Ladybird as they 0:17:20.640 --> 0:17:24.480 left the Adolphus Hotel in downtown Dallas, alger joined the 0:17:24.480 --> 0:17:28.800 protesters who held signs with slogans that said LBJ sold 0:17:28.800 --> 0:17:32.719 out to Yankee Socialists. Soon thereafter, Major General Edwin Walker, 0:17:32.760 --> 0:17:36.760 who inspired the deranged fictional character General Jack d Ripper, 0:17:37.359 --> 0:17:40.879 the person responsible for global nuclear holocaust, in the nineteen 0:17:40.920 --> 0:17:44.160 sixty four film at Doctor Strangelove called Dallas Home. 0:17:44.600 --> 0:17:49.280 I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, 0:17:50.359 --> 0:17:59.760 communist in doctrination, communists subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy 0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:05.680 to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids. 0:18:06.600 --> 0:18:10.600 Before filmmaker Stanley Kubrick turned Walker into an unforgettable caricature. 0:18:11.359 --> 0:18:15.000 The real life Walker achieved infamy commanding an infantry division 0:18:15.080 --> 0:18:19.080 in what was then Western Germany. President Kennedy pressured Walker 0:18:19.080 --> 0:18:22.400 to resign because he repeatedly lectured soldiers under his command 0:18:22.440 --> 0:18:25.680 to vote for far right wing political candidates. He also 0:18:25.720 --> 0:18:29.720 distributed among the troops literature from the conspiracy theory promoting 0:18:29.840 --> 0:18:32.840 far right John Birch Society, and he encouraged them to 0:18:32.920 --> 0:18:36.920 join the John Birch Society, formed in nineteen fifty eight, 0:18:37.359 --> 0:18:40.800 opposed American membership in the United Nations, which it claimed 0:18:41.119 --> 0:18:44.720 was part of a global communist conspiracy to enslave free 0:18:44.760 --> 0:18:49.320 peoples around the world. The fringe organization, established by former 0:18:49.359 --> 0:18:54.240 candy manufacturer Robert Welsh, accused all American presidents from Franklin 0:18:54.320 --> 0:18:58.080 Roosevelt to Kennedy of being secret communists under the command 0:18:58.119 --> 0:18:59.280 of the Soviet government. 0:19:00.359 --> 0:19:03.359 The John Birch Society also saw the African American civil 0:19:03.480 --> 0:19:06.800 rights movement as part of a Bolshevik conspiracy to divide 0:19:06.840 --> 0:19:10.359 the country, and argued that efforts of towns and cities 0:19:10.400 --> 0:19:13.359 after World War II to add fluoride to public water 0:19:13.400 --> 0:19:16.840 supplies was part of a sinister scheme to weaken men 0:19:16.880 --> 0:19:19.760 physically and make them less able to resist the radical 0:19:19.800 --> 0:19:24.480 takeover the United States. That particular Bircher conspiracy theory made 0:19:24.520 --> 0:19:28.639 a long lasting impact on the American psyche. Cities across 0:19:28.680 --> 0:19:32.639 the United States banned fluoridated water today. That John Birch 0:19:32.680 --> 0:19:36.280 Society is still active in North Texas, where recent gubernatorial 0:19:36.359 --> 0:19:40.560 candidate and car dealer Don Huffines has published anti fluoridation 0:19:40.800 --> 0:19:44.560 essays on the Dallas Express, a right wing website that 0:19:44.640 --> 0:19:47.400 repurposed the name of the historic black newspaper that went 0:19:47.440 --> 0:19:49.200 defunct in the nineteen seventies. 0:19:49.720 --> 0:19:52.760 Edwin Walker's devotion to the John Birch movement cost him 0:19:52.800 --> 0:19:57.280 his military career. Under pressure from Defense Secretary Robert mcmara, 0:19:57.760 --> 0:20:01.400 Walker retired and moved to Dallas, where he found a 0:20:01.400 --> 0:20:05.159 friendly political environment. The national far right saw him as 0:20:05.160 --> 0:20:08.679 a martyr to Kennedy's supposedly out of control leftism, and 0:20:08.760 --> 0:20:12.320 he received financial support from fellow devotee of the John 0:20:12.359 --> 0:20:17.240 Birch Society hl Hunt. In nineteen sixty one, Walker made 0:20:17.280 --> 0:20:20.000 the cover of Newsweek as a leader of the New Right, 0:20:20.480 --> 0:20:23.280 and in nineteen sixty two he entered the race for 0:20:23.400 --> 0:20:24.240 Texas Governor. 0:20:24.760 --> 0:20:29.040 To all victims of communist tyranny throughout the world, I 0:20:29.119 --> 0:20:33.399 send this word the hour of your deliverance is approaching. 0:20:34.000 --> 0:20:38.879 To patriots in every land Korea, China, the Ukraine, the 0:20:38.920 --> 0:20:44.560 Baltic Nations, Poland, Hungary, East Germany, the Congo, Cuba, and 0:20:44.640 --> 0:20:48.440 every other land strickened by the monster of communism. I say, 0:20:49.080 --> 0:20:53.680 for the time lie low, preparing your hearts for liberation. 0:20:54.320 --> 0:20:57.720 Do not expose yourselves to the brutal requital of a 0:20:57.800 --> 0:20:59.960 monster temporarily in power. 0:21:00.880 --> 0:21:04.239 Walker was a painfully dull public speaker. In the end, 0:21:04.280 --> 0:21:07.080 he couldn't bring his version of deliverance to his own state, 0:21:07.240 --> 0:21:11.440 finishing a distant sixth in the nineteen sixty two gubinatorial race. 0:21:12.280 --> 0:21:14.639 That would not prevent him and his allies from creating 0:21:14.680 --> 0:21:18.399 Mayhem over the following months, he got arrested and was 0:21:18.480 --> 0:21:22.200 ordered to be psychiatrically evaluated by Attorney General Robert Kennedy 0:21:22.600 --> 0:21:25.520 after he incited racial violence during the integration of the 0:21:25.600 --> 0:21:31.000 University of Mississippi in September nineteen sixty two. Adelaide Stevenson, 0:21:31.400 --> 0:21:34.719 John Kennedy's ambassador of the United Nations, would confront Walker 0:21:35.080 --> 0:21:37.760 and a model of his followers when the diplomat visited 0:21:37.760 --> 0:21:42.199 Big d on October twenty sixth, nineteen sixty three. Stevenson 0:21:42.240 --> 0:21:44.760 was shouted down as he attempted to deliver a un 0:21:44.840 --> 0:22:00.880 day's speech to Dallas Council on World Affairs. 0:22:01.160 --> 0:22:03.000 Shall we get on with the business. 0:22:02.600 --> 0:22:17.160 Of the meeting? Surely, surely, my dear friend, I don't 0:22:17.160 --> 0:22:19.800 have to come here from Illinois to teach Texas. 0:22:19.440 --> 0:22:20.080 Manors, do I? 0:22:22.720 --> 0:22:26.840 Outside Memorial Auditorium Theater, where Stevenson delivered his speech, Walker 0:22:26.880 --> 0:22:29.480 had gathered a furious gang of middle and upper classmen 0:22:29.560 --> 0:22:33.080 and women who rocked his limousine back and forth while 0:22:33.080 --> 0:22:36.280 it waited to whisk him away to safety, and surrounded 0:22:36.280 --> 0:22:39.719 the ambassador when he stepped outside. When he finally returned 0:22:39.720 --> 0:22:43.280 to Washington, D C. Stevenson warned the administration about the 0:22:43.320 --> 0:22:47.480 intense and extremist atmosphere in Dallas, where President Kennedy was 0:22:47.520 --> 0:22:49.960 planning a visit meant to heal a rift between the 0:22:50.040 --> 0:22:53.840 conservative and liberal wings of the Democratic Party in Texas. 0:22:54.400 --> 0:22:57.359 On the morning in November twenty second, nineteen sixty three, 0:22:58.080 --> 0:23:01.600 Kennedy and his entourage felt for voting as they prepared 0:23:01.640 --> 0:23:04.880 for a short airplane draft from Fort Worth to Dallas. 0:23:05.200 --> 0:23:07.639 The president just examined a full page ad in the 0:23:07.680 --> 0:23:10.920 far right Dallas Morning News that featured a bold face 0:23:11.000 --> 0:23:16.560 headline welcome mister Kennedy to Dallas. The advertisement, paid for 0:23:16.640 --> 0:23:19.560 in part by H. L. Hunt's son, Nelson bunker Hunt 0:23:19.880 --> 0:23:23.639 and the future owner of the Dallas Cowboys, HR bum Bright, 0:23:24.240 --> 0:23:28.399 featured accusations that Kennedy was soft on communism around the 0:23:28.440 --> 0:23:33.920 world and radicals at home, while persecuting conservatives who criticized them. 0:23:34.200 --> 0:23:37.359 The same morning, a group distributed leaflets designed like a 0:23:37.400 --> 0:23:40.760 wanted poster with front and side photos of the President 0:23:40.760 --> 0:23:45.040 with the caption wanted for treason. How can people say 0:23:45.080 --> 0:23:48.400 such things? The President said to First Lady Jackie Kennedy, 0:23:48.800 --> 0:23:52.040 We're heading into nut Country. Soon. The Kennedys would make 0:23:52.080 --> 0:23:54.520 their faithful flight to Dallas, and the President would die 0:23:54.560 --> 0:23:57.359 from an assassin's bullet shortly after noon. 0:23:58.160 --> 0:24:02.040 The President's murder spawned a cottage industry of conspiracy theorists. 0:24:02.600 --> 0:24:05.720 Some said the President had been murdered by the mafia, 0:24:05.800 --> 0:24:08.920 angered because they had been investigated by the President's brother, 0:24:09.200 --> 0:24:13.560 Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Others blamed Teamster's president Jimmy Hoffa, 0:24:13.960 --> 0:24:16.439 who also had been the subject of criminal probes by 0:24:16.440 --> 0:24:21.320 the Justice Department. Others suspected assassination plotters included Cuban leader 0:24:21.320 --> 0:24:25.840 Fidel Castro, who had himself been targeted for assassination attempts 0:24:25.840 --> 0:24:30.200 by the Kennedy administration, exiled Cubans in Florida, angered because 0:24:30.200 --> 0:24:33.320 the President had not fully supported the attempted overthrow of 0:24:33.440 --> 0:24:36.920 Castro during the nineteen sixty one Bay of Pigs invasion, 0:24:37.359 --> 0:24:41.040 and even the Soviets. One of the more elaborate theories 0:24:41.080 --> 0:24:45.239 involved an alleged plot hatched by American military leaders and 0:24:45.480 --> 0:24:50.400 CIA agents, angered that Kennedy supposedly wanted to end American 0:24:50.480 --> 0:24:54.720 involvement in Vietnam. Finally, others, said Lyndon Johnson, order to 0:24:54.800 --> 0:24:58.040 hit on the chief executive because he wanted to grab power. 0:24:58.400 --> 0:25:01.560 Or maybe others said, Kennedy die because of combination of 0:25:01.760 --> 0:25:05.399 some or all of the above, having made enemies with 0:25:05.720 --> 0:25:09.359 the intelligence agencies under his command, who he had said 0:25:09.359 --> 0:25:12.560 he would dash to the wins if they continued to 0:25:12.720 --> 0:25:15.520