Frequently, minor parties in the U.S. decide to stop running candidates for public office, but they continue to exist as organizations and they continue to publish a periodical. Sometimes the life span of the periodical is far greater than the lifespan of that party’s electoral activity.
The National States Rights Party was formed in 1958 and placed nominees on the ballot in elections 1960 through 1964. After 1964, it ran its nominees in Democratic primaries for ten years, and then completely stopped running candidates. But its monthly newspaper continued. That newspaper was called The Thunderbolt. Later it was renamed The Truth At Last. After 50 years, however, it will no longer be published. The editor for the last 50 years, Edward R. Fields, is retiring and recommending to his subscribers that they subscribe to the David Duke Report.
Other minor parties that have stopped running candidates, but which still exist as organizations and which still have periodicals, are the Communist Party (which publishes the People’s Weekly World) and the Socialist Labor Party (which publishes The People).
Gah! David Duke is still around?
I’m pretty sure he lives somewhere in the carribean.
Duke lives in Mandeville, Louisiana. Not even an hour from me, and is a registered Republican.
This is very disappointing. The true connection between state’s rights are racism is more imagined than real.
But not the true connection between racism and the National States Rights Party (at least in the nearest thing it had to a heyday)
Isn’t “National States’ Rights” a bit of an oxymoron?
“The true connection between state’s rights are racism is more imagined than real.”
No, actually, the history of the last hundred years of the phrase “states rights” has been as a coded phrase for racist segregation. Field’s party has been the most honest expression of states rightism/segregationism.
“States rights” is never used as a term in civil rights, human rights efforts. It has been used as a political excuse for the maintenance of a whole string social prejudices.
Mr. Anon,
That’s a good observation. I suppose the “national” part of the party name just meant that it was intended to be a nationwide organization.
When I was a kid, it took me awhile to realize that the federalists actually supported a weaker federal government.
Human language is strange.
Just to clarify: I was referring to the New Federalists of the last few decades, not the Federalists who were opposed by the Anti-Federalists in the late 1700’s.
Further clarification: When I mentioned the “New Federalists,” I meant this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Federalism
…not this:
http://www.geocities.com/new_federalists/new_federalists.html
(Geez. Human language is getting stranger all the time.)
Re: #7
It may be that “state’s rights” is NOW a euphemism for racism, but it was not so until well after the Civil War. The fact is that blacks were mistreated on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line, before and after the war over the right of secession. Slavery has taken and still takes many forms–only one of which involves picking cotton with welts on your back.
Note what H.L. Mencken had to say about the Gettysburg Address, which is generally viewed as reflecting Lincoln’s underlying rationale for fighting the Civil War.
The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history…the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination – that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves.
Frankly, a fair argument can be made that the racists of the world are doing the concept of state’s rights a disservice.
The Confederate soldiers were mainly uneducated (i.e. IGNORANT – circa 4th grade) poor whites fighting to have the EVIL rich slave owner class (the monarchs / oligarchs) keep their slaves.
See the statements of the Confederate regimes in 1860-1861 on why they were attempting to secede.
Sorry – Prez Lincoln got it a bit wrong. However, he was quite happy that he got about 40 percent of the popular vote in 1860 and was elected by the Prez/VP Electoral College gerrymander math.
North/West gerrymander monarchs – NO compromise on slavery.
South gerrymander monarchs – NO compromise on slavery.
Result – about 620,000 DEAD Americans in 1861-1865 – with multi-thousands more physically and mentally maimed for life — no eyes, hands, arms, feet, legs.
The end of slavery — the very hard way — about like the end of monarchy in the U.S.A. in 1775-1783 — the very hard way.
———
Gerrymanders = Minority rule regimes of the gerrymander monarchs, by the gerrymander monarchs and for the gerrymander monarchs — and the special interest gangs putting such monarchs into power.
Half the votes in half the gerrymander areas – national, state or local = about 25 percent or less. Much worse for the U.S.A. Senate with its many very small State regimes.
The worst of the old time gerrymanders continued until the 1964 cases in the Supremes — now the gerrymanders are totally computerized — put everybody in a pre-election rigged gerrymander political concentration camp district.
REAL Democracy via P.R. NOW – 1 method
Total Votes / Total Seats = EQUAL votes needed for each winner — using candidate rank order lists and vote transfers of winner surplus votes and loser votes between districts (to be used only as ballot access areas).
“Why a four-year-old child could understand this report. Run out and find me a four-year-old child. I can’t make head nor tail out of it.” — Groucho Marx
Fields cranked out a crude, low-circulation pub that ripped off photos from legitimate news sources. He was never more than a footnote on the political scene, however. When Duke moved to Russia, he claimed he would take over, but there was nothing left to take over.
PERSISTENT UPSTART
He never “passed the torch,” but Edward R. Fields kept his own right-wing flame burning for fifty years. The folding of “The-Truth-At-Last” newspaper, formerly entitled “The Thunderbolt”, attracted no news-coverage and only scant-attention over the Internet, but the Fields-retirement recalled some stormy highs and dismal lows in the unique career of one of the nation’s most-persistent upstarts. What Fields lacked in originality, he made up for in petulance. His first publication, issued in 1958, was virtually identical to his last in 2008, consisting of a compilation of Negro-crime-statistics, Kosher-food rip-offs and inter-racial follies, interspersed with appeals to distribute his wares and send him money.
Working from his Georgia-bedroom, Fields never let professionalism get in his way. He would rip-off copyrighted wire-service photos and, somehow, was never sued. His subscribers were never more than a few hundred, but were intensely loyal. Kenneth Painter even “thunderbolted” copies, door-to-door, before being jailed for “hate.” Fields was one of the few rightists who had made a living from his publication, although he never recovered from his breakup with long-time-associate J. B. Stoner, whose estate he pilfered when Stoner was imprisoned for a Sixties’ bombing. Fields, however, was a cultist, without a cult. He maintained avid correspondence, but never fielded troops.
Fields had been a long-time correspondent with the late John Tyndall, the British writer who aspired to re-establish the English Fascist-system. But, unlike Tyndall, Fields never got off the ground politically. He and Stoner had once
organized the National States Rights Party, which ran Orval Faubus for President. The token-effort received few votes, but Faubus later said that he had no objection to his name being used by the avowedly-segregationist undertaking. He only
wished that it had gone farther. Fields was known for, some might say harmed by, turbulent temper and impulsive behavior. He once broke with Nationalists for not yielding to his demands to sue the Negro-Mayor of Atlanta.
Fields once proclaimed himself to be the “klan,” but discarded his sheet after a single summer. He, then, claimed that he had thrown in with the late William L. Pierce, an apologist for Timothy McVeigh, but Barry Hackney described that
venture as a “dry hole.” Fields posted a single webpage, over a cloned-server, which had last been updated with an appeal to impeach Bill Clinton. Fields, who referred to himself as “Doctor,” never liked the term “Nationalist” or
“Skinhead,” favoring “States-Righter,” popularized by Strom Thurmond, instead. His publication-schedule was checkered, but not his notorious rudeness. He was rumored to have been a bigamist and had once been jailed for contempt.
Fields had been sentenced to “community-service” for threatening an integrationist during a court-case. Although he circulated among ex-cons and co-conspirators, he dodged serious charges. Fields once was aided by Frank Shirley, who
quit after being fined a million-dollars for “hate.” He never was able to attract any other youth. Fields had become embittered, when his cohorts soured, such as Kevin Strom, who pleaded guilty to child-pornography, and David Duke, who pleaded guilty to fraud and tax-evasion. Notwithstanding, Fields was notable for never having “repented.” He was ranked ninth on the Jewish Anti-Defamation League enemies-list, a true-believer to the very end.
http://www.skinheadz.com/docs/history/2008/090601.html
Copyright 2008 Skinheadz