Willis Carto is not your typical 83-year-old. Instead of spending his days basking in the Florida sun or playing cards, Willis is still very active in his life’s work. His activities revolve around anti-Semitism and racism. Carto runs the anti-Semitic publication, American Free Press. American Free Press evolved out of The Spotlight magazine which stopped printing in 2001 after Carto’s assets were severely diminished due to a lawsuit. This lawsuit may have crippled him and his network financially but it did not damper their spirit. Along with American Free Press, Carto publishes the historical revisionist publication, The Barnes Review which specializes in Holocaust denial.
In recent months Carto and his cronies have been very active. Not only have they courted anti-immigrant organizations such as Center for Immigration Studies, but they have also reached out to more extreme anti-Semites. One example of this is an article published in the September 21 & 28 edition of American Free Press written by B. Frederick White. The article, entitled “Protesters So No ‘Tolerance’ for Rights of White Activists”, promotes the National Socialist Movement, (NSM) a neo-Nazi organization. At the end of the article, an address and telephone number are provided for readers to get more information on the movement. The organizations website NSM88.org is also listed. The number 88 has a special meaning for neo-Nazis; each 8 represents the 8th letter in the alphabet which is ‘h’, thus 88 translates to ‘hh’ which is short for Heil Hitler.
Last month, Carto continued courting extreme anti-Semites when American Free Press sponsored a First Amendment Festival in Washington DC. Only AFP subscribers could attend the event and its two featured speakers, David Duke and Texe Marrs, have a history of extreme anti-Semitic views. Duke, a former Klan member and Louisiana state representative spoke first about Judaism. He lambasted Jews throughout his speech noting at one point that “the racial policies of Israel are more extreme than the policies of National Socialist Germany.” Texe Marrs, a radical anti-Semite living in Texas spoke after Duke. Marrs remarked that President Obama “will go down in history as the first Jewish president of America.” He also attacked televangelists like Pat Robertson for being funded by Jews.
As we can see, it is obvious that Carto is trying very hard to connect with extreme anti-Semites. But why? For me the obvious answer is that Carto, along with many others on the far-right are finally bringing their hatred and targeting of Jews (or Zionists as the far right likes to call them) into the open. It is clear that Carto is trying to align as many groups and individuals as possible in a united front against Jews. They want their followers to believe that Jews are to blame for problems like immigration, the economy and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This sort of twisted logic must be taken very seriously because it is a threat that can have major consequences. Willis Carto, David Duke and Texe Marrs are influential people who are seen as champions by many on the far-right. They are not champions, they are merely racists.