A professional Nazi apologist and propagandist, Carto was born in
Indiana in 1926 and is best known as the founder of the
Liberty Lobby (who publish
The Spotlight and (used to?) sponsor radio talkshow
Radio Free America)
and as co-founder of the
Institute for Historical Review (an organisation devoted to 'proving' the
Holocaust never happened.) Also the founder of racist rightwing publishing house '
Noontide Press'.
Carto has been in and out of many extreme right political factions over the years. For example, he was editor of "Right" magazine - a racist newsletter in 1950's San Francisco; he was a director of the extremist Congress for Freedom; and for a short time he served as a co-ordinator
for the John Birch Society. He has consistently maintained his adherence to the ultra-rightist ideology spawned by Francis Parker Yockey, whom he admired greatly, writing the introduction to Imperium, Yockey's putrid and racist quasi-Hegelian tome on the philosophy of culture and
history, for the first hardback edition, published by Carto in 1962.
Although Carto himself prefers to shun the limelight, and is not so well known as agitators such as his sometime colleague Lyndon LaRouche, it is probably fair to say that no one man has done more to foster the cause of racism and race-hate in contemporary America, and to create the 'militia' mindset that has resulted in such tragedies as the Oklahoma Bombing, the Randy Weaver shootings.
Whether his ideological position is sincerely maintained, or is merely a means to financial gain (Carto has grown very rich from his trade) is hard to say.
Here's Carto expressing a few opinions:
"Those who are not special-interest pleaders can hardly
be found amongst the ranks of historians [...] the
pathetic establishmentarians whose idea of revising history
is to write out the role of white males and write in
Jews, lesbians, Blacks and American
Indians"
"Only a few Americans are concerned about the inevitable niggerification of America"
"Hitler's defeat was the defeat of Europe. And of America. How could we have been so blind? The blame, it seems, must be laid at the door of the international Jews. It was their propaganda, lies and demands which blinded the West to what Germany was doing. If Satan himself with all his superhuman genius and diabolical ingenuity at his command, had tried to create a permanent disintegration and a force for the destruction of the nations, he could have done no better than to invent the Jews."
In the political climate which has developed since the
civil rights revolution of the 1960's, such views have become difficult to hold in public, without immediate loss of credibility, and Carto's organisations have taken a
softer approach, eschewing such extreme racism in public
places, portraying themselves as simple lobbyists for
the rights of the white majority against the demands of
the 'special interest groups' - indeed such terms as
'special interest' have become
code words for the
targets of the
ideology, and begun to seep into the
mainstream political discourse. Make no mistake: their origin is in the rhetoric of the hatemongers and racist demagogues, of whom there are none more significant and influential than Willis Carto.