Dr. Fred Schwarz's Kosher Anti-Communism

[Karl Radl]

Dr. Fred Schwarz's Kosher Anti-Communism

Fred Schwarz is a name well-known to those who lived through the days of; what appeared to be, the anti-Communist riposte of the 1950s and 1960s with the rise of numerous patriotic anti-Communist organisations. One of the better known of these was the Christian anti-Communist Crusade run by an Australian physician; Dr. Frederick Schwarz, as can evinced by their being mentioned in one of the most important and widely read anti-Communist handbooks of that area: Anthony Bouscaren's 'Guide to Anti-Communist Action'. (1)

We should note that you should not confuse the Christian Nationalist Crusade; often done by individuals and groups historically and currently, with the Christian Nationalist Crusade: the former is the more intellectually-sound anti-jewish anti-communist outfit run by the late Reverend Gerald Smith (2) while the latter is Dr. Fred Schwarz's rather kosher outfit. Now when I say kosher I am not merely using it in the rhetorical sense, but the literal one as well as isn't widely known Fred Schwarz was actually the son of a jewish convert to Christianity.

To quote Schwarz:

'May I tell you a little of the history of the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade and myself. My father was born of Jewish parents in Austria. He left home when he was 12 years of age and migrated to Australia via England. He chose to become a Christian when he was about 20 years of age. He met and married my mother, Phoebe Smith, who was an English girl and a worker in the Methodist Church.' (3)

This is an extract from a letter that Schwarz sent to several hundred rabbis and synagogues in New York City in 1963: (4) he is not shy about admitting and boasting about his jewishness to suit him. Of particular interest is his desire in to use that jewishness in funding drives as the letter this was attached to was to serve a dual purpose: to raise funds and nullify some the hostile press that Schwarz was getting from liberal media and perhaps somewhat oddly the Anti Defamation League of B'nai Brith. (5) One can particularly wryly enjoy Schwarz's remark that for a league that opposing defamation it does an awful lot of defaming itself. (6)

The reason for this assault is ironically the fact that Schwarz was stepping on the ADL's patch and the ADL was keen to boot its new and more dynamic competitor out the way by calling their fellow member of the tribe an 'anti-Semite'. (7) The reason for this perception was three fold:

1) Schwarz had begun in a short time to rake in some $1.25 million dollars per annum by 1961. (8) Remember that compared to today books could be bought for a one or two dollars and often for a few a cents if subsidized. So we get quite some idea of just how much money Schwarz was making. If Schwarz was discredited then the ADL could tap some of this funding into its own coffers.

2) Schwarz's anti-communism lectures, seminars and courses (everyone paid at least a dollar for a ticket of course) were direct competition to the ADL's own anti-communist watchdog program, which it was marketing as an important part of the 'crusade for freedom'. (9) We must remember that the Israel Lobby was not very powerful at this point in its history and had only just begun to try to fight its way onto the special interest group playing field.

3) Schwarz marketed his anti-communist campaign very widely and gained a lot of support for being an effective speaker as well as having; unlike many students of Marxism before or since, a good basic understanding of Hegelian dialectics. The ADL had very little in the way of speakers to match Schwarz and was unable to take its message outside of its primarily jewish audience.

It is interesting to note that even in spite of the ADL bringing its not insignificant resources to bear on defaming Schwarz the latter still managed to take some $1 million dollars in 1962. (10) It just goes to show you can take on the ADL and win even if it seems far more monolithic now than it would have done in 1961/1962.

In spite of the ADL's typical aggressive defamation of anybody it perceives to be a threat or competition: Schwarz continued to have quite the soft spot for the ADL and declared that 'non-jews could join the ADL', which is a half-truth. As we know of non-jews who have served as honorary members of the ADL's board, but non-jews; as far as I am aware, cannot be members of the ADL by virtue of it being of the B'nai Brith (originally a purely jewish Masonic sect that still exists in tandem with the ADL of today), which means 'Sons of the Covenant'. (11) The covenant being the covenant Moses made with Yahweh whereby all of Israel; meaning biological jews, would be circumcised to show their allegiance to their generally genocidal God.

Thus it isn't exactly possible to not be a member of Israel; a born jew, and be a 'son of the covenant' as even if you converted and performed the briss you would still not be considered an Israelite by any form of Judaism, but rather a convert which is a rung below Israelite and subject to all sorts of additional religious rulings about who and whom you can marry or not marry etc.

Schwarz's little 'white lie' is thus exposed for the hypocrisy at it is: made even worse by the fact that Schwarz clearly understands this as he says:

'Although my father had become a fervent Christian he remained proud of his Jewish heritage. He often reminded us that the Jews were “God's chosen people” and taught us that Christians must love the Jews.' (12)

Here Schwarz is clearly invoking the biological nature of Israel; 'God's chosen people', and saying that jewishness is not merely a religious confession, but is in fact a distinct people regardless of their religious confession. I would further point out that Schwarz here is also telling us that Christians (he means gentiles) must 'love' the jews as 'God's chosen people', which is not only not very Christian (as it denies Saint Paul's assertion that the cup of 'choseness' had passed from Israel to the gentiles) it is also an invocation of Judaism's understanding of the place of the gentile: as eternal servants of the jewish people as Noahides.

One thus finds it to be of note that even a half-jew; who probably wasn't halakhically jewish (his mother wasn't jewish and his father probably wasn't a member of Kohanim [priestly class]), Christian preacher has the gall to tell non-jews that they are to serve as jewish lackeys for all eternity. It goes to show that even if a jew changes his spots he still remains a jew.

One prominent jewish anti-Communist who did directly side with Schwarz was Eugene Lyons; the author of two anti-communist best-sellers 'Assignment in Utopia' (13) and 'The Red Decade', (14) who publicly criticised the ADL (15) with William F. Buckley (16) in the pages of 'The National Review'. That is not very surprising that Lyons openly identified as a partisan of jewish interests in the 1930s when he was openly campaigning for Stalin's socialism until he visited the USSR and realised; to his slight credit, that the 'grand experiment' was not only a sham but a murderous regime that was far more despotic than anything that had previously ruled Russia.

Lyons attacked the ADL and his former friends in the Marxist 'anti-fascist' scene (17) for their smears against Schwarz: in particular their attacks on Schwarz's finances and his personal conduct.

A synopsis of Lyons' argument for Schwarz is easy:

A) Schwarz had been audited more than once by the IRS due to accusations of misuse of the funds he collected and he was cleared every time.

B) Schwarz was an open and honest person who was kind and charitable.

On both counts we can find Schwarz wanting: in that just because Schwarz was audited by the IRS does not mean that Schwarz did not misuse the funds he was given in terms of 'fighting anti-Communism' as a lot of the funds he collected are not accounted for by Schwartz in his own memoirs even when answering this charge. He merely chalks them down to expenses and quotes the fact that one of his opponents pointed out that he did only take home $5,000 a year in salary. (18)

Now because the IRS stated that they could find nothing with Schwarz's books means that either Schwarz really was squeaky clean, Schwarz had hidden what he was doing very well (remember this is the time before today's almost histrionic book and process auditing) or Schwarz had corrupted the IRS auditors. Now I don't think the latter is particularly likely given we have no evidence to suggest it was the case, but neither do I think Schwarz was 'squeaky clean' as he officially took in a lot of money and doesn't account for how most of it was spent.

Indeed when Schwarz talks of how he set up and supported a small anti-Communist orphanage in Kerala in India, with a school converted into a 'mobile anti-Communist library', a small local anti-communist newspaper and how it costs him over $200,000 to run (!) then one's ears should prick up. (19) As India is possibly the cheapest place to run anything with low wages, low cost, low land prices and so forth then as now. The idea that a third world orphanage would cost that much money suggests something fishy in Schwarz's books and add that to the fact that the oldest trick in the book is to send money to a designated shell company/legal entity overseas where the money is then put through the books and then used to purchase bogus products/services finding its way back into the designated pockets.

Of course proving that Schwarz was doing this is difficult as the means to do so is largely gone: however that Schwarz didn't work as a medical doctor since he began work as; what his enemies styled, a 'patriot for profit'. So thus one immediately wonders where all the money came from to support all the expenses of a household plus bringing up children, paying for their university educations etc. This would be very difficult to do on $5,000 a year as Schwarz claims he collected in salary (even adjusting for inflation over the years).

The most plausible solution is rather simply that Schwarz was in fact fiddling at least some of his account books to make sure he had plenty of cash to support his family and lifestyle as he continued to speak on anti-Communist platforms throughout his life even when his big money donors and backers of the 1950s, 60s and 70s had disappeared.

The second of Lyons' points in Schwarz's defence I have already partly addressed in pointing out Schwarz's knowing 'white lie' about the ADL's jewish composition and about what constitutes a jew. One troubling fact is that Schwarz began dating his gentile wife-to-be; Lillian Morton, when she was 14 and he 22 marrying her when she was 18 and he 26. (20) This would make Schwarz in our modern understanding a paedophile and although their relationship wasn't in all likelihood consummated till after their marriage: the fact that Schwarz could find a 14 year old sexually attractive is disturbing in itself.

We can further point to the fact that Schwarz in spite of asserting himself to be a 'pathologist' of Communism; by which he meant that he sought to research and objectively understand Marxist thought and the logic behind it, evinces little of the through understanding he professes to have. This is not immediately apparent to somebody who has not studied Marxism in detail as Schwarz does have an excellent understanding of the how the Hegelian dialectic is used in Marxist thought and has actually simplified it in the most succinct way that I have ever come across as (I quote it en toto for general elucidation on the reader's part):

'Universal progress required a universal cause, and Hegel taught that this cause was a universal state of conflict. In diverse situations two forces existed in conflict or “contradiction.” One of them was progressive, while the other was reactionary. He called one the “thesis” and the other the “antithesis.” These forces inter-penetrated and formed a unity of opposites. This opposition, or “contradiction,” provided the dynamic of progress. Progress was always resisted, and took place in a specific way.

One example of dialectical progress is what happens when a man tries to overturn a huge boulder with a lever. He inserts one end of the lever under the boulder and uses all his strength in order to raise the boulder. The lever exerts a progressive force on the boulder, but the weight of the boulder exerts an opposing reactionary force on the lever. This conflict results in a period of slow movement of the boulder until a critical or nodal point is reached, at which the progressive, or lifting, force overcomes the reactionary force and the boulder topples. In dialectical language, the thesis has negated the antithesis and a new state of conflict emerges, called the “synthesis.”

In the synthesis, a new state of conflict ensures between a new thesis and a new antithesis. This lead to a succeeding stage of slow progress in a new direction until another nodal point is reached, at which slow progress is transformed into rapid, fundamental change as the new thesis emerges. This synthesis may resemble the situation that originally existed, but it is invariably in quantity and quality. This sequence is known as the “negation of the negation.” Thus progress proceeds by a series of negations that cause advances and reversals.' (21)

In spite of this superb understanding of the dialectical reasoning that underlies Marxist thought; which enabled Schwarz to give many a Marxist a rough time as few Marxists put much thought into the internal logical of their own dialectical reasoning, one notes immediately upon reading Schwarz's two books (22), listening to Schwarz's speeches and reading his pamphlets that he quotes a very limited amount of Marx and Engels' corpus.

The main work that Schwarz quotes is the last edition of 'The Communist Manifesto' (not seeming to know there were multiple versions of this document which was known in the 1960s and 1970s) largely written by Engels and then 'corrected' by Marx. One also finds many subtle references to Engel's Anti-Duhring (where Schwarz takes his understanding of dialectical materialism) and the occasional one to Marx's 'The Civil War in France' and Engels' 'The Peasant War in Germany'. However that is only a tiny part of Marx and Engels' joint corpus with the most startling lack of references to 'Das Kapital' (Marx and Engels' fundamental statement of their case), which one would expect a 'pathologist of Communism' to not only have read but have commented in detail on.

Schwarz probably read at least one volume of 'Das Kapital' (there are four) (23) but no-where does he actually quote from it or show an understanding of say Marx's theory of surplus value, which forms the basis of Marxist critique of the capitalist economic system (and thus providing the evidential rationale for introducing the dialectic into the past and future equation) as much as dialectical materialism offers the intellectual base for asserting the inevitability of a truly socialist (i.e. communal and thus communist) society. Schwarz does not seem to appreciate or understand this very basic issue with his self-description.

Schwarz however is somewhat well read in the major later commentators on Marx's writings and routinely uses Lenin as his touchstone for understanding a specific point, but again fails to comprehend that Leninism is just one form of Marxism and although important his ideas have historically been rejected by significant sections of the Communist community. Also one finds that Schwarz has a tendency to just take one simple textbook, read it and then use that to suggest he is in fact an 'expert' on Communism when all he is done is take another's work, apply his knowledge of dialectical materialism and then use it confirm what his audience wished to hear or prod a Marxist as to when the next negation of the negation will occur and what form it will take. He does precisely this with Lin Shao-Chi's Communist textbook 'How to Be a Good Communist' (24) in his 'Beating the Unbeatable Foe' for example. (25)

No-where do we see Schwarz; for example, discuss the many periodicals and their reasoning/claims (which to be frank are superb propaganda as Marxists habitually contradict each other and cannot manage; in the main, to organise a nun shoot in a nunnery without demanding an investigation as to whether it is 'objectification of women' to do so) that he claims to have collected for research and used as such in his speeches and work. (26)

One can therefore see that this 'pathologist of Communism' was in fact nothing of the kind and was if anything extremely dishonest in his self-promotion and claims to having expert knowledge of Marxism. Some of Schwarz's partisans might claim this is because I have possibly overlooked some speech or article that Schwarz gave or wrote (it is quite possible), but my retort to that is simple.

Where has Schwarz shown a detailed understanding of Marxism that didn't derive from exactly the same fallacy; as recently noted by Tristram Hunt, (27) whereby alleged students of Marx in fact derive more or less their whole understanding of Marx's ideas from reading Engels' work (most notably anti-Duhring) and not from Marx himself (ergo the debate around authorial voice in Marx and Engels' joint works)? (28)

He hasn't.

Schwarz merely recycled what Lenin said and then; as Revilo Oliver might quip, fed it to the boobs in the certain and happy knowledge that they would swallow it whole, applaud him for telling them what they could easily work out themselves and then shower money on him for doing so.

If that isn't being an effective confidence trickster: I don't know what is.

Thus Fred Schwarz was not only a confidence trickster of a sort, but also the kind of jewish 'patriot for profit' that Robert Griffith bombastically argued characterized the whole anti-Communist riposte of the 1950s and 60s. (29)

References

(1) Anthony Bouscaren, 1958, 'A Guide to Anti-Communist Action', 1st Edition, Henry Regnery: Chicago, p. 234
(2) On Gerald Smith see Glen Jeansonne, 1988, 'Gerald L. K. Smith: Minister of Hate', 1st Edition, Yale University Press: New Haven.
(3) Fred Schwarz, 1996, 'Beating the Unbeatable Foe: One Man's Victory over Communism, Leviathan, and the Last Enemy', 1st Edition, Regnery: Washington D.C., p. 338
(4) Ibid, p. 337
(5) One example being in Arnold Forster, Benjamin Epstein, 1964, 'Danger on the Right', 1st Edition, Random House: New York. Forster and Epstein were both highly-placed officials at the ADL at the time of the writing and publication of this book. Also see Solomon Bernards (Ed.), 1965, 'The Radical Right and Religion', 1st Edition, Anti Defamation League of B'nai Brith: New York, which also viscerally attacks Schwarz.
(6) Schwarz, 'Beating', Op. Cit., p. 329
(7) Ibid, p. 332
(8) Ibid, p. 314
(9) Ibid, pp. 343-344
(10) Ibid, Op. Cit., p. 314
(11) On the ADL's origins see Robert Seitz Frey, Nancy Thompson, 2002, 'The Silent and the Damned: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank', 1st Edition, Cooper Square Press: New York.
(12) Schwarz, 'Beating', Op. Cit., p. 324
(13) Eugene Lyons, 1937, 'Assignment in Utopia', 1st Edition, Harcourt, Brace and Co: New York
(14) Eugene Lyons, 1941, 'The Red Decade: The Stalinist Penetration of America', 1st Edition, Bobbs-Merrill: Indianapolis
(15) Eugene Lyons, 'Does Mr. Forster Plead the Fifth?', The National Review, 3rd July 1962
(16) William F. Buckley, 'The Impending Smear of Fred Schwarz', The National Review, 5th June 1962
(17) This jewish journey from Marxist anti-fascism in the 1930s and 1940s to the conservative anti-Communism in the 1950s and 1960s was very common as Haynes has pointed out in detail. John Earl Haynes, 1996, 'Red Scare or Red Menace?: American Communism and Anticommunism in the Cold War Era', 1st Edition, Ivan R. Dee: Chicago, pp. 33-36
(18) Schwarz, 'Beating', Op. Cit., p. 314
(19) Ibid, pp. 317-318
(20) I have worked out their relative ages from Schwarz's comments given in Ibid, pp. 17-20.
(21) Ibid, pp. 46-47
(22) The other is Fred Schwarz, 1961, 'You can Trust Communists (to be Communists)', 1961, Prentice-Hall: New York.
(23) One by Marx, two by Engels and one by Karl Kautsky.
(24) Liu Shao-Chi, 1952, 'How to Be a Good Communist', 1st Edition, Foreign Languages Press: Peking
(25) Schwarz, 'Beating', Op. Cit., pp. 58-60
(26) Ibid, pp. 384-385
(27) Tristram Hunt, 2009, 'Marx's General: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels', 1st Edition, Henry Holt: New York, p. 6
(28) On this issue see Manfred Steger, Terrell Carver (Eds.), 1999, 'Engels after Marx', 1st Edition, Pennsylvania State University Press: University Park for a detailed discussion.
(29) Robert Griffith, 1970, 'The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and the Senate', 1st Edition, University of Kentucky Press: Lexington

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