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Know Thy Enemy! Dark Genesis and Deep Politics:
The New Republic
by Craig Lee Merrihue
“What the hell was a partner in the Morgan Bank doing starting a “pinko” journal like The New
Republic in the first place?”
Jim Martin
*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The New Republic magazine has once again been trotted out to play the Trojan-Horse role for which it
was hired.
Los Angeles Times readers were recently lambasted with yet another shrill diatribe against the
Palestinian people from New Republic editor-in-chief Martin Peretz (see
“Traveling With Bad Companions; Western supporters of the Palestinian cause are morally blind”, June 23, 2003, Commentary)
. Such hysterical obloquy would be simply tiresome were it not for the pernicious effect of such
drivel on generations of innocent lives.
Those who support the Palestinian cause against Israel, are, at best, in Peretz’s condescending
estimation, “myopic romantic{s}”, but more aptly designated as “deluded folk”, “certified kooks”,
or by the almost quaintly anachronistic “fellow travelers.”
Some of these “certified kooks”, are genuinely mystified by such irrational invective coming from
the helmsman of the most venerable flagship for thoughtful liberalism.
Deliciously tempting though it may be to pick apart Peretz’s logic or his lack thereof, it is more
enlightening to assess by what right the New Republic’ arrogated to itself the moral authority to
pontificate through its blow-hard editor-in-chief.
The truth is, there is no such moral authority. The New Republic is the cynical creation of
self-serving men whose moral mandates seldom rise above the maxim “he who has the gold makes the
rules.”
One of the most complete expositions of this little-told story is found in Professor Carroll
Quigley’s Tragedy and Hope: A History of The World In Our Time (Macmillan, 1966). The eminent Dr.
Quigley was professor of history at the Foreign Service School of Georgetown University, and had
previously taught at Princeton and Harvard---certainly no academic slouch, he.
Quigley was also the favorite professor of little Bill Clinton. In fact, in his first presidential
nomination acceptance speech, Clinton went out of his way to thank above all others two
gone-but-not-forgotten influences who shaped his self-professed belief in the duty of public service:
President John F, Kennedy and Professor Carroll Quigley. Clinton attended Georgetown when his
professor’s 1300+page tome was probably required reading. Author Jim Martin conjectures that this is
probably where the ambitious little suck-butt learned how power really works in the world.
The short of it is, the New Republic was founded in 1914 with J.P. Morgan Banking Money (specifically
by Willard Straight who had married heiress Dorothy Payne Whitney) to manipulate the political left.
In Quigley’s analysis on pages 936-956, this infiltration had a threefold purpose:
(1)To keep informed on Left-wing
thinking; (2) to provide these liberal groups with a forum which would act as a
safety-valve to “blow off steam”; and (3) to have a final veto on their
publicity, and possibly on their actions, if they ever went “radical”.
Before launching this Trojan Horse, Cornell graduate Willard Straight had served as Far East expert
for the Morgan Banking interests of which he was a partner, living in the region 1902-1910. He also
was an assistant to Sir Robert Hard , Director of the Chinese Imperial Customs Service, who was lead
man, according to Quigley in the European Imperialist penetration of China.
As her name indicates, Willard Straight’s wife, Dorothy Payne Whitney, was the product of an alliance
between two of America’s richest families, with giant interests in New York utilities, Rockefeller’s
Standard Oil (now Exxon), and much else. One of her brothers married into the equally aristocratic
Vanderbilt dynasty, the other wed the daughter of Secretary of State John Hay, who articulated the
so-called “open-door” policy in China.
Quigley sees the New Republic as the best example of the alliance between Wall Street and Left-wing
publications. The original purpose of this particular alliance was “to provide an outlet for the
progressive left and to quietly guide it in an Anglophile” direction. The author goes on to say that
this task was given to a smug young man just out of Harvard, Walter Lippman, who would be the
towering figure in American Journalism until his death in 1974. Lippman was one of the few American
members of the mysterious Round Table Group (more on this later), which had been a dominant force in
British foreign policy since its formation in 1909. Lippman’s bi-weekly columns appeared in hundred’s
of papers over six decades. As a link between Wall Street and the Round Table Group, and an editor of
New Republic, Lippman in 1918, still in his 20s, was given the opportunity to be the official
interpreter of Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points at the Paris Peace Conference following World War I.
Guiding the American Left in an Anglophile direction is a goal that absolutely mystifies most modern
Americans, who have lost touch with American democracy’s long history of opposing the philosophy and
exploitive designs of the British Empire. After decades of “disneyfication” and tabloid celebrity
mongering, few Americans see Monarchy as the bloodline worshipping cult of greed clung to by those
who believe they are born to rule over others.
Quigley cites Willard Straight’s official biography by Herbert Croly, the first editor of the New
Republic, who wrote in 1924, six years after Willard’s untimely death, that “Straight was in no sense
a liberal or progressive, but was, indeed, a typical international banker and that the New Republic
was simply a mechanism for advancing certain designs of such international bankers, notably to blunt
the isolationism and anti-British sentiments so prevalent among many American progressives, while
providing them with a vehicle for expression of their progressive views in literature, art, music,
social reform, and even domestic politics…the chief achievement of the New Republic, however in
1914-1918 and again in 1938-1948, was for interventionism in Europe and support for Great Britain.
So the great journal of liberal democracy’s crowning glory was to shed blood on behalf of the Empire
the nation had broken away from.
Dorothy Payne Whitney Straight was to support the paper until well in the 1950s. A few years after
Willard’s death, she acted upon her true feelings for America’s democratic experiment with a new
republic by marrying into British nobility and becoming Lady Elmhirst of Dartington Hall. She took
her three young children from America and brought them up English. Once again demonstrating her true
devotion to the liberal principles professed by the New Republic, Lady Elmhirst renounced her
American citizenship in 1935. Her youngest son, Mike Straight, stood for Parliament, as was his right
as a British subject. This situation proved to be no obstacle, however, when he returned to America
at age 22 and was immediately appointed to the State Department. Paving the way for her son in
America, Dorothy Payne Whitney Straight, transferred her sole ownership of the New Republic to a
dummy corporation with her son Mike as president.
From this position, Mike Straight may have, in Quigley’s view, “pulled off the most skillful
political coup in twentieth century American politics. “ Quigley is referring to the complete removal
from the American scene of the Communist Party and Socialist organizations as the serious forces to
contend with they had been for several decades.
Part Two
Only in America.
Mike Straight, J.P. Morgan Banker and blue-blood aristocrat, deploys that paragon of liberal
journalism, The New Republic, to destroy the Left as a serious political power in America. Not
surprisingly, the magazine continues today in its role of Trojan Horse with visceral polemics
against all who dare challenge the pro-Israel party line.
Straight, although a declared anti-communist, was nonetheless quite cozy with the reds when it suited
his purposes. Quigley highlights this collaboration in Straight’s role with the Progressive Party
presidential bid of former vice-president Henry A. Wallace in 1948. Ironically, Wallace is denigrated
in the opening sentences of Peretz’s diatribe as a gullible “fellow traveler”, although Peretz
conveniently neglects to mention Wallace’s sojourn as editor of the New Republic.
Straight gave Wallace a bully pulpit in his magazine, and brought in a number of communists like Lew
Frank as campaign insiders. In the meantime, Straight worked feverishly to block the candidacies of
any state, local, or congressional level aspirants of Wallace’s new Progressive Party. He also worked
behind the scenes with his anti-communist friends in labor, veteran, and liberal groups to prevent an
endorsement of Wallace’s presidential bid, citing the presence of communists on the candidate’s
staff (which Straight himself had brought in). Quigley states that these efforts resulted in nothing
less than the shattering of the left-labor coalition of the 1930s (the Popular Front), driving the
leftists out of the unions and the labor movement across the country. All of this years before the
witch hunts of Sen. Joseph McCarthy or J. Edgar Hoover. In the meantime, Straight’s family (the
Whitney’s on his mother’s side), founders of Pan-Amercian Airlines, profited handsomely when
C.V. Whitney was appointed by President Truman, (who one would think grateful for the destruction of
the left), to the most powerful Federal civil aviation post, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for
Aeronautics.
As an interesting aside, while Mike Straight was at Cambridge, he was a member of a secret fraternal
society called “The Apostles.” As John Costello writes in The Mask of Treachery, this group was in
turn very close to the Anthony Blunt-Guy Burgess-Kim Philby spy ring. The Apostles were allegedly
Marxist aristocrats (figure that out!), and included Lord Victor Rothschild of the powerful and
Zionist-financing banking family. According to Costello, “Guy Burgess, in fact was being paid 100
pounds sterling a month as an ‘investment advisor’ to Mrs. Charles Rothschild while an active Soviet
Spy.”
Oh what a knotted web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!
Straights subterfuge against true progressive politics, perpetrated while the controlling force of
The New Republic, played to the development of a Radical Right mythology of liberal plots to
undermine the American way of life, and the helped in the branding of left-ism as “un-American.”
However, Quigley says that this radical right fairy tale, “like all fables, does in fact have a
modicum of truth.” Quigley then goes on to provide the history, based on his insider access to the
group’s papers, of an “anglophile network, which operates, to some extent, the way the radical right
believes the Communists act.” The modern form of this malignant misrule had its genesis in the Round
Table Groups founded by world pirate Cecil Rhodes (for whom Rhodesia in Africa was named) and the
subsequent trustees of his enormous ill-gotten gains. The stated purpose of the group was to federate
the English speaking peoples of the world in accord with principles laid down by Cecil Rhodes and
William T. Snead. By 1915 there were Round Table groups in seven English speaking countries, with the
inventor of “professional and objective journalism", and New Republic icon, Walter Lippman, leading
the American contingent. The “chief backbone” of the group was built around “the already
existing financial cooperation between the Morgan Bank in New York and a group of international financiers
in London led by the Lazard Brothers”, with numerous entities in between.
Known as “Lord Milner’s kindergarten” after the
venerable English aristocrat’s demise in 1925,
several front groups were established in each of the commonwealth nations, and led by a veritable
who’s who of moneyed power: Lord Lothian, Lady Astor, the Dulles brothers, the Harrimans, and Morgan
bankers too numerous to mention. Front groups were established in each of the member countries. The
British entity is the Royal Institute of International Affairs, widely known by the name of its St
.James Square location across the street from the Astors, Chatham House. The American Counterpart is
the Council on Foreign Relations, publishers of Foreign Affairs magazine, and the source for nearly
every Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense for the last 80 years, as well as most Presidents.
The CFR has a small, select, by invitation-only membership, which makes its domination of U.S.
foreign policy almost ludicrous, were it not so lethal for so many. Sister organizations include the
Trilateral Commission, which consists of major players in America, Europe, and Japan, and the
so-called Bilderberger group, largely concerned with Euro-American affairs.
Quigley claims this group has exerted inordinate influence in public debate not only through media
ownership, but through what evolved from the J.P Morgan banks handling of academic endowments. In
Quigley’s words, “access to publication and recommendations to academic positions in the handful of
great American universities…required similar sponsorship.” In this way, a small, though mighty group
determined to a large extent “the individuals who published, who had money, who found jobs, were
consulted, and who were appointed to government missions.” Furthermore, Quigley points out that “the
names of Wall Street luminaries still adorn these Ivy League campuses,” and that “the chief officials
of these universities (Harvard, Yale, Stanford, etc), were beholden to these financial powers and
usually owed their jobs to them.” In summation, the Georgetown professor states, “On this basis…there
grew up in the twentieth century a power structure between London and New York which
penetrated deeply into university life, the press, and the practice of foreign policy.” It is this same
Anglo-American axis threatening peace and justice in the world today.
The American branch of this Anglo-oriented cabal is said to have disseminated its influence primarily
through five newspapers: The New York Times, the New York Herald Tribune, Christian Science Monitor,
the Washington Post, and the Boston Evening Transcript. In fact, the Christian Science Monitor editor
did surreptitious (and anonymous) duty as American correspondent for The Round Table. Lord Lothian,
The Round Table’s first editor and secretary of the Rhodes Trust 1925-1939, contributed often to the
Monitor. Morgan banking partner Thomas Lamont financially supported or owned outright The Saturday
Review of Literature and the New York Post. In fact, Lamont attended the pivotal Paris Peace
Conference following World War I, and there befriended his English counterparts who had been
organized by Lord Milner’s group.
Lest one think Quigley a wide-eyed, wild-haired radical professor, bear in mind his own stated
assessment that the goals of this group were, by and large, “commendable”: to federate the English
speaking world, establish peace (think today’s Pax Americana), “help backward, colonial, and (to
assist) underdeveloped areas advance toward stability along the lines taught at Oxford and the
University of London (especially the London School of Economics and the Schools of African and
Oriental Studies).” Quigley furthermore dismisses accusations of fascism against this group as
communist propaganda”, and that they were really “quite the contrary.” They were “gracious and
cultured gentlemen…who constantly thought in terms of Anglo-American solidarity…and who were
convinced that they could gracefully civilize the Boers of South Africa, the Irish, the Arabs, and
the Hindus, and who are largely responsible for the partitions of Ireland, Palestine, and India, as
well as the federations of South Africa, Central Africa and the West Indies.”
May the Great Spirit deliver us from such gracious and cultured gentlemen. As economist John Kenneth
Galbraith said of modern conservatives: (they are) "engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral
philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
Besides, Quigley certainly received his comeuppance and learned with whom he was dealing. Jim Martin
cites letters from the early 70s in which the eminent Georgetown Professor writes that the British
publisher of Tragedy and Hope , Macmillan, suppressed the book because “they didn’t like its gist.
Quigley further wrote that Macmillan was preventing him from assuming copyright to his own book by
keeping it technically “in print”, but withholding it from the general public. Martin states that
“Quigley photographed each page of the book and sent it to a printer; that’s the only reason it was
available at all in America.”
The lessons from The New Republic’s history and the Round Table movement which spawned it for today
are legion. Progressives will never see power with justice implemented in this world until they fully
comprehend the nature and threat of power in the world today, which seeks self-preservation and
expansion at without regard to human cost. Without this comprehension of the beasts’ inclination and
reach, global civil rights movements will only be tolerated as long as they do not succeed to a
great degree. But long before any tangible success will comes infiltration, manipulation,
repression, co-option and annihilation.
The faring of presidential aspirants Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich presents a case in point. Dean
is the darling of the New Republic type crowd, and is therefore, this year’s Trojan Horse model,
whether or not the former governor of Vermont is conscious of his designated role. The corporate
media has been crowing over Dean’s first place finish among all Democratic contenders in the much
ballyhooed “online primary” by
Moveon.org, in which an astounding 317,000 people participated. Such
was the case on the editorial page of the same L.A. Times which provided the soapbox for Martin
Peretz’s ravings, but failed in the same article to mention Dennis Kucinich’s second place showing.
This is particularly astonishing in view of the corporate media blackout of this sitting congressman
who was once the youngest man ever elected mayor of a major city (Cleveland). That is because
Kucinich is a genuine progressive with leadership skill, an egotistical dummy corporation, and a
genuine threat to the powers that be. Dean, on the other hand, backs a bloated military budget and has deep
relationships with the Israeli right wing. Needless to say, many well-intentioned progressives will
fruitlessly attempt to jockey toward justice on the back of this Trojan Horse, only to eventually end
up (once again) , with splinters in the rear.
The Money Power has absolutely no intention of handing over the reigns to justice and freedom. Nor
does it care a twit what mothers and children live and die, or in what squalor. The innocents of
Afghanistan and Iraq all had names, as do the subjugated poor everywhere, and were all beloved by
someone, somewhere. But the bottom lines to power politics in the world in which we presently have
our being are money and murder. If we hope ever to ameliorate that incontrovertible fact in at least
some small way, we need to arm ourselves with knowledge of the details of power in the world.
Know thy enemy.
References:
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Quigley, Carroll:
"Tragedy & Hope-A History of the World in Our Time" (1966)
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Martin, Jim: "Quigley, Clinton, Straight & Reich," article, Steamshovel Press, #8, Summer 1993
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Bracken, Len: "Quigley Live!," article, Steamshovel Press, #10, 1994
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Thomas, Ken, "Conspiracy in the Clinton Era," article, Steamshovel Press #10, 1994
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Amidon, Beulah: The Nation and the New Republic, article, Survey Graphic Magazine of Social
Interpretation, 1939.
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Website for Whitney-Payne-Straight family tree:
www.familytreemaker.com/users//a/y/Thomas-C-Payne/GEN6-0018.html
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Parmalee, T.A., Herbert Croly, article
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International Solidarity Movement (ISM) Media Alert and Call for Action _ LA Times
Craig Lee Merrihue is a writer, Green Party member, and activist residing in Southern California. He can
be reached at:
CMerrihue@mediamonitors.org.
He contributed above article to Media Monitors Network (MMN).
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