The California State Senate Judiciary Committee opened hearings today on a bill to ban paramilitary organizations after receiving a report urging such action against the American Nazi Party and other similar groups in the state.
The report was made by the State Attorney General Thomas C. Lynch, who declared that “private army” groups representing themselves as patriotic organizations were “a threat to the peace and security of our state.” In addition to the American Nazi group, he listed also the Minutemen, the Black Muslims, the National States Rights party and the California Rangers. His report was based on four years of undercover probes of the activities of such groups.
Declaring that the private army groups were “tiny” in membership and influence, and composed largely of anti-Semitic and anti-Negro extremists, the report noted that the Nazi movement in Germany had also started on a similar scale.
The report stated that members of the groups “embrace violent racial and political doctrines.” It estimated that the American Nazi Party would have difficulties in mobilizing as many as 150 “storm troopers” on a national scale.
Meanwhile, the Jewish War Veterans of California urged Gov. Edmund G. Brown to name a state committee of leading citizens to investigate the activities of extremist groups, including the John Birch Society. Sidney B. Irmas, Jr., chairman of the JWV executive committee, told the Governor that the JWV deplored the tactics of the John Birch Society, and that the organization also deplored their “undemocratic methods and procedures, and their glib rationalizations in covering up their actions and masking their identities and purposes.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
