Liberty Lobby

Liberty Lobby was a United States political advocacy organization founded in 1958. It was created by Willis Carto and described itself as "a pressure group for patriotism; the only lobby in Washington, D.C., registered with Congress which is wholly dedicated to the advancement of government policies based on our Constitution and conservative principles." Carto is noted for his promotion of antisemitic conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial.

The organization produced a daily 5 minute radio show called "This is Liberty Lobby" which was broadcast on the Mutual Broadcasting System as well as other radio stations. At the conclusion of each show listeners were invited to get a copy of its "America First" pamphlet.

Liberty Lobby described itself as a conservative political organization. Evidence for the antisemitic stance of Liberty Lobby began to mount when numerous letters by Carto excoriating the Jews (and blaming them for world miseries) began to surface, which included statements such as "How could the West [have] been so blind. It was the Jews and their lies that blinded the West as to what Germany was doing. Hitler's defeat was the defeat of Europe and America." Carto's letters eventually became the subject of a federal civil lawsuit. There were several other defamation lawsuits arising from publications that described Liberty Lobby as anti-semitic or racist, but it appears that Liberty Lobby never won any of these cases.

Other evidence of the group's antisemitic views includes the charge that the group's file cabinets contained extensive pro-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan literature. In 1969, True magazine ran a story by Joe Trento, titled "How Nazi Nut Power Has Invaded Capitol Hill".

Starting in October 1966 two American journalists, Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson, published a series of stories in their widely-syndicated "Washington Merry-Go-Round" column which recounted the findings of a former employee, Jeremy Horne. Horne said he had discovered a box of correspondence between Carto and numerous government officials establishing the Joint Council of Repatriation (JCR), a forerunner organization to the Liberty Lobby. The JCR stated that their fundamental purpose was to "repatriate" blacks "back to Africa". Ex-Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Thomas Pickens Brady and various members of the White Citizens' Council who had worked to establish the JCR, also contributed to the founding of Liberty Lobby. Other correspondence referred to U.S. Congressional support for the emerging Liberty Lobby, such as from South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, (Dixiecrat presidential candidate in 1948) and California U.S. Representative James B. Utt.

Pearson reported that Utt, as well as Congressman John M. Ashbrook, Ellis Yarnal Berry, W. Pat Jennings, and William Jennings Bryan Dorn, received "Statesman of the Republic" award from Liberty Lobby for their "right-wing activities".

The Liberty Lobby sued for libel based on the stories in a case decided in 1986 by the U.S. Supreme Court, Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc. The case was the most quoted Supreme Court precedent in 1997 because it established the guidelines for issuing summary judgment to end frivolous lawsuits.

In 1975, Liberty Lobby began publishing a weekly newspaper called The Spotlight, which ran news and opinion articles with a very populist and anti-establishment slant on a variety of subjects, but gave little indication of being extreme-right or neo-Nazi. However, critics charged The Spotlight was intended as a subtle recruiting tool for the extreme right, using populist-sounding articles to attract people from all points on the political spectrum including liberals, moderates, and conservatives, and special-interest articles to attract people interested in such subjects as alternative medicine. Critics also charged the newspaper with subtly incorporating antisemitic and white racialist undertones in its articles, and with carrying advertisements in the classified section for openly neo-Nazi groups and books.

In 2001, Liberty Lobby and Carto lost a civil lawsuit brought by a rival far-right group which had earlier gained control of the Institute for Historical Review, and the ensuing judgment for damages bankrupted the organization. Carto and others who had been involved in publishing The Spotlight have since started a new newspaper, the American Free Press, which is very similar in overall tone to The Spotlight. As of 2014, the political organization called Liberty Lobby remains defunct.