The domestic rabble-rousers and their “hate” organizations and publications are directing much of their activity at the 10,000,000 veterans in the country, it was revealed today, with the release of a nation-wide survey on anti-Semitism by the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation League. However, the survey points out that “it is a tribute to the clear-mindedness of the nation’s veterans that they are emphatically refusing to be drawn into the organizing webs of the hate merchants.”
It notes that anti-semitic organizations have re-emerged from war-time iraction as “bold and articulate as ever,” but that their influence on public thinking has been limited. Anti-Jewish activity in 1946 was offset “by strong positive action on the part of an informed American public,” Justice Meir Steinbrink and Richard E. Gutstadt, chairman and director, respectively, of the ADL, said in making the survey public.
The survey, which was conducted by the League’s 18 regional offices in several hundred cities and rural centers, found that the large number of anti-Semitic organization cooperate, although they appear to have no nation-wide organization or leading personality in command. It reveals that there are 47 regular propaganda publications, in addition to a large volume of anti-democratic leaflets, pamphlets and books.
The report also points out that the professional bigot relies, in large part, on the printed word because of special postal privileges extended to the general press. “Clearly if un-American propaganda must be allowed to go through the U.S. mails, it should at least be denied special postal rates,” the survey declares. “As it is, the American taxpayer is, in effect, partially underwriting the cost of this activity.”
DISCRIMINATION ON UP-SWING IN EMPLOYMENT, HOUSING AND EDUCATION
Dealing with discrimination in the social, economic and cultural fields, the report says: “Tension increased in urban centers where the housing problem upset the established neighborhood patterns; greater difficulties were experienced by minority groups in obtaining equal consideration for employment opportunity; resorts and hotels sought new devices to avoid restrictive legislation, and to conceal a growing policy of discrimination; increased college enrollments accentuated the degree of discrimination at colleges and universities.”
Listing the major “hate” groups, the survey states that the Ku Klux Klan is the organization which most nearly approached national scope and importance. It also mentions “Herwin K. Hart’s National Economic Council and Joseph P. Kamp’s Constitutional Educational League” as constituting serious threats to democracy because of their “somewhat higher level, intellectually and socially” and because of “their acceptance ‘by the best people.'”
The ADL also released a copy of a letter to Secretary of State George C. Marshall calling for the barring from this country of Norman Jaques, anti-Semitic member of the Canadian Parliament, who has been appearing on public platforms with Gerald L. K. Smith and has supported his doctrine of bigotry.
The National Institute of Arts and Letters is preparing to expel one of its members, William Hunt Diedrich, a well-known sculptor, for mailing anti-Semitic material under the Institute’s name, it was revealed yesterday at a press conference by Douglas Moors, president. Diedrich sent out copies of the forged Benjamin Franklin “Jewish Prophecy” letter, a series of speeches by Sen. Kenneth S. Wherry on UNRRA and a mimeographed statement attacking the issuance of Joseph Pulitzer three-cent stamps. On the first two items he stamped “Censored by the Jewish Press.”
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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.
