Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 17:24, 26 July 2008

John Foster "Chip" Berlet (born November 22, 1949) is an American investigative journalist and photojournalist specializing in the study of right-wing movements in the United States, particularly the religious right, white supremacists, homophobic groups, and paramilitary organizations. He also studies the spread of conspiracy theories in the media and on the Internet, and political cults on both the right and left of the political spectrum.

He is the senior analyst at Political Research Associates (PRA), a non-profit group that tracks right-wing networks, and is known as one of the first researchers to have drawn attention to the efforts by white supremacist and anti-Semitic groups to recruit farmers in the Midwestern United States in the 1970s and 1980s. He is the co-author of Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort and editor of Eyes Right! Challenging the Right Wing Backlash.

Berlet, a paralegal, was a vice-president of the National Lawyers Guild, a self-identified progressive bar association. He has served on the advisory board of the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University, and currently sits on the advisory board of the National Committee Against Repressive Legislation. In 1982, he was a Mencken Awards finalist in the best news story category for "War on Drugs: The Strange Story of Lyndon LaRouche," which was published in High Times. He served on the advisory board of the Campaign to Defend the Constitution.

Background

Berlet attended the University of Denver for three years, where he majored in sociology with a journalism minor. He dropped out of the university in 1971 to work as an alternative journalist. Berlet did not complete his degree. In the mid-1970s, he went on to co-edit a series of books on student activism for the National Student Association and National Student Educational Fund. He also became an active shop steward with the National Lawyers' Guild.

During the late 1970s, he became the Washington, D.C., bureau chief of High Times magazine, and in 1979, he helped to organize citizens' hearings on FBI surveillance practices. From then until 1982, he worked as a paralegal investigator at the Better Government Association in Chicago, conducting research for an American Civil Liberties Union case, involving police surveillance by the Chicago police (which became known as the "Chicago Red Squad" case). He also worked on cases filed against the FBI or police on behalf of the Spanish Action Committee of Chicago, the National Lawyers' Guild, the American Indian Movement, Socialist Workers Party, the Christic Institute, and the American Friends Service Committee (a Quaker group).

In 1982, Berlet joined Political Research Associates, and in 1985, he founded the Public Eye BBS, the first computer bulletin board aimed at challenging the spread of white-supremacist and neo-Nazi material through electronic media, and the first to provide an online application kit for requesting information under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.

Berlet was originally on the board of advisers of Public Information Research, founded by Daniel Brandt. Between 1990 and 1992, three members of Brandt's PIR advisory board, including Berlet, resigned over issues concerning another board member, L. Fletcher Prouty and Prouty's book The Secret Team.

In 1996, he acted as an adviser on the Public Broadcasting Service documentary mini-series With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America, which was later published as a book by William Martin.

Berlet was a founding member of the "Chicago Area Friends of Albania" in 1983, though he says he was one of the few dues-paying members who was not a Stalinist. His association with the group continued until he left Chicago and is the source of FrontPage Magazine's allegation that he was a supporter of the Enver Hoxha regime.

Photojournalism

Berlet is also a photojournalist. His photographs, particularly of Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi rallies, have been carried on the Associated Press wire, have appeared on book and magazine covers, album covers and posters, and have been published in The Denver Post, The Washington Star, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Viewpoints

Political views

Berlet argues that the U.S. is currently undergoing a right-wing backlash that is the most sustained of its kind in U.S. history. He argues that although 95% of the U.S.'s hate crimes are committed by people not affiliated with any group, they have nevertheless internalized a narrative developed and promoted by the right wing that demonizes certain groups, including blacks and gays. He argues that the left must develop coalitions to find a way to counter-balance these narratives, instead of becoming isolated as another side of the "lunatic fringe".

In ZOG Ate My Brains, he warns of a "troubling resurgence on the political Left" of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that undermines the effort of progressives to cause social change.

Berlet has provided "research assistance" to a campaign run by the mother of Jeremiah Duggan to reopen the investigation into his death. The British student died in disputed circumstances near Wiesbaden, Germany. Berlet's statement suggests that the LaRouche movement bears responsibility.

Intelligence policy

In 1991, Berlet wrote a report entitled "Right Woos Left," which was critical of a number of critics of U.S. intelligence policy including Prouty, Mark Lane, Dick Gregory, Craig B. Hulet, and Victor Marchetti for being willing to work with groups on the right such as the John Birch Society or Liberty Lobby.

Ralph Nader

Berlet criticized Ralph Nader and his associates for a close working relationship with Republican textile magnate Roger Milliken, erstwhile major backer of the 1996 presidential campaign of Pat Buchanan, and anti-unionization stalwart. Although the assertion is sometimes attributed to Berlet, he denies ever suggesting that Milliken funded Nader's work, saying he has no evidence of such funding.

Center for the Study of Popular Culture

In 2003 the Southern Poverty Law Center published "Into the Mainstream," in which Berlet named conservative activist David Horowitz's Center for the Study of Popular Culture (CSPC) as one of an "array of right-wing foundations and think tanks support[ing] efforts to make bigoted and discredited ideas respectable." Berlet accused Horowitz of blaming slavery on "'black Africans ... abetted by dark-skinned Arabs'" and of "attack[ing] minority 'demands for special treatment' as 'only necessary because some blacks can't seem to locate the ladder of opportunity within reach of others,' rejecting the idea that they could be the victims of lingering racism."

Lyndon H. LaRouche

Berlet described the a worldwide network controlled by Lyndon H. LaRouche, as having a long history of violence, physical assaults, intimidation, psychological manipulation, emotional blackmail, and harassment. He firther asserts that the LaRouche network is "a totalitarian political organization that operates through a variety of front groups, with detailed reports from the field constantly being sent back to the worldwide headquarters in the United States."

Book reviews

Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort

The The New York Review of Books describes the book as an excellent account in Right-Wing Populism in America, describing the outermost fringes of American conservatism.

Jerome Himmelstein reviewed the book in the journal Contemporary Sociology, and asserted that the books is extremely well written offering more than a scholarly treatise on the activities of the Third Reich and provides a background to help the reader understand the Holocaust. He also writes that it is a book that merits close attention from scholars of the Right in America and of social movements generally."

Robert H. Churchill of the University of Hartford criticized Berlet and other authors writing about the right wing as lacking breadth and depth in their analysis, failing to make contact with significant figures in the movement and conduct significant research on the Internet, and for providing analysis of far right movements that proscribe as racist a broad range of conservative political ideologies that are "driven more by the association of the author with various civil rights organizations and leftist political activists outlined in the acknowledgments than by the primary evidence presented in the footnotes."

See also

• Bibliography of Chip Berlet

Notes

1. "About PRA".
2. Jason Berry (1993-08-22). "Bridging chasms of race and hate". St. Petersburg Times (Florida). Times Publishing Company. p. 6D. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
3. "Bibliography: Chicago Police Department's Red Squad's Involvement In Social Protest" (PDF).
4. Berlet, Chip. "History of the Public Eye Electronic Forums".
5. Daniel Brandt, "An Incorrect Political Memoir," Lobster, No. 24 (December 1992)
6. Chip Berlet, "Right Woos Left: Populist Party, LaRouchite, and Other Neo-fascist Overtures To Progressives, And Why They Must Be Rejected," Cambridge, MA: Political Research Associates, 1991.
7. With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America at IMDb
8. Martin, William (1996). With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America. Broadway. ISBN 0-553-06749-4.
9. Arabia, Chris (2003). "Chip Berlet: Leftist Lie Factory". FrontPageMagazine.com. FrontPageMagazine.com. Retrieved 2007-01-15. - "Chip Berlet broke onto the scene as a defender of Communist repression in Albania. Berlet was a founding member of the "Chicago Area Friends of Albania," which formed in 1983 to aid the Stalinist leader of Albania, Enver Hoxha."
10. Berlet, Chip (1999). "Abstaining from Bad Sects: Understanding Sects, Cadres, and Mass Movement Organizations". Resist, Inc. Resist, Inc. Retrieved 2007-04-11.- "I had quipped that if this group somehow managed to come up with democratic guidelines that didn't require supporting the government of Albania or its political system, that even I would join. They did, so I paid my dues and have been red-baited ever since."
11. Grant Kester (Feb-March, 1995). "Net profits: Chip Berlet tracks computer networks of the religious right - interview with Political Research Associates analyst - Special Issue: Fundamentalist Media - Interview". Afterimage. Visual Studies Workshop. Retrieved 2007-04-11. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
12. "Race, Class, and Gender: Justice in the Intersections". 1999.
13. Berlet, Chip. "Zog ate my brains", New Internationalist, October 2004.
14. "PublicEye.org".
15. ^ "PublicEye.org - Statement Presented to British Coroner's Inquiry". Retrieved 2008-07-26.
16. Right-Wing Populism in America by Chip Berlet, pp. 338-344
17. Hawkins, Howie (2000). "A Green Perspective on Ralph Nader And Independent Political Action (from New Politics, vol. 8, no. 1 (new series), whole no. 29, Summer 2000)".
18. Berlet, Chip (2003). "Into the Mainstream". Intelligence Report. Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved 2006-04-23.
19. Berlet, Chip and Lyons,Matthew N., Right-Wing Populism in America Too Close for Comfort (2000), New York: Guilford Press, pp. 273-276,
20. "Search results - The New York Review of Books". Retrieved 2008-07-26.
21. Himmelstein, Jerome L., Review of book Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort, Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Jan., 2002), pp. 76-77, American Sociological Association
22. Churchill, Robert H. "Beyond the Narrative of 1995 - Recent Examinations of the American Far Right." Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Winter 2001), pp.125–136.

Further reading

• Biography of Berlet, Political Research Associates
• Biography of Berlet, Center for Millennial Studies
• Chip Berlet at IMDb
• McCain, Robert Stacy. "Researcher Says 'Watchdogs' Exaggerate Hate Group Threat", The Washington Times, May 9, 2000.
• "Race, Class and Gender: Justice in the Intersections", brief description of Chip Berlet's work, Faith in Action dept., Unitarian Universality Association, 1999

Template:Persondata

• Investigative journalists
• Photojournalists
• 1949 births
• Living people
• Critics of the LaRouche Movement