Congressional Body Seeks Prosecution of Anti-semitic Organization

The Justice Department today indicated that it is giving serious attention to a report issued this week-end by the House Committee on Un-American Activities in which prosecution was requested of the New York anti-Semitic organization National Renaissance Party because it engages in anti-Jewish and pro-Nazi activities which are “clearly subversive and un-American.”

The report of the Congressional committee sharply condemned “neo-Fascist and hate-groups” and emphasized the danger of anti-Semitic and neo-Fascist groups operating under the guise of combatting Communism. “Subversion cannot be combatted by subversion,” the committee stressed. “Those who support the extreme right today do as great a violence to our national institutions as do those on the extreme left.”

The Congressional committee also attacked the anti-Semitic semi-monthly, Common Sense, published in Union, N.J. It described this paper as “a clearing house for hate propagandists throughout the country” and as “a vehicle for the exploitation of ignorance, prejudice and fear.” It said that “Common Sense” engages in activities just as subversive and just as un-American as Communism.

Conde McGinley, editor of “Common Sense,” was especially taken to task by the House Committee on Un-American Activities in its report. “It is regrettable,” the report said, “that any American may have contributed to the perpetuation of a hate factory such as that operated by the Mcginleys. If loyal Americans seek to play an active part in protecting their country from subversion, they would do well to lend their support to legitimate patriotic organizations rather than to those whose real objective is another form of subversion.”

HOUSE COMMITTEE ESTABLISHES PATTERNS OF ORGANIZED ANTI-SEMITISM

Committee investigations disclosed that organized anti-Semitism in the United States falls into two patterns: “the neo-Fascist organization which openly espouses a Fascist regime for the United States, and the organized hate group, which masquerades as a defender of our republican form of government yet conducts hate campaigns against racial and religious minorities in the infamous tradition of the Fascist dictatorships.”

The report mentioned some of the most extreme of the anti-Semitic groups and individual agitators in the country but failed to mention such organizations as those operated by Gerald L.K. Smith, Merwin K. Hart, and Joseph P. Kamp. Apparently the intent was not to present a comprehensive survey of all such groups but to single out a few, like the “National Renaissance Party,” for detailed study.

The report accused the N. R. P., a party of between 200 and 700 members, of following “the Hitler line” and said “Common Sense” is devoted mainly to attacks on Jews and Negroes. Resurgent Fascist and hate groups in this country, the committee reported, “employ the Hitlerian technique of the big lie” and appeal to “the unwary by cynical use of concepts having a deep emotional appeal to the majority of decent citizens.” It said their objective is to “propagate hoaxes and smears aimed at setting creed against creed and race against race.”

The N.R.P., the committee said, was organized in January, 1949, and is headed by a “young fanatic, James H. Madole, of Beacon, N. Y.” The report said its headquarters are at 203 E. 86th Street, New York, from where it issues a monthly bulletin. The committee reported that Madole preaches his creed at street-corner meetings in the Yorkville section of Manhattan, frequently accompanied by “a handful of young fanatics wearing dark caps and trousers and brassards on which a lightning bolt replaces the swastika.”