In early October, some vile, anti-Semitic posters were plastered onto the doors of the headquarters of the Interfaith of Iowa association, just blocks from Drake University.In March 2018, pro-Nazi graffiti defaced a unity mural near the University of Iowa.In 2017, a swastika was carved into a wall of an elevator at Drake. That same year, a swastika was scrawled on a dormitory door at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake. Also that year, an anti-Semitic slur was carved into a chair at a Drake lecture hall. Several similar incidents have occurred on Iowa college campuses since 2015.Why does anyone perpetrate this evil, what motivates them, and who is behind it? It’s little-known, but organized hatred is highly profitable for its purveyors; it’s big business.
During the years I surveilled professional anti-Semites for the FBI, tens of millions of dollars were raised and spent annually by organizations – many of which with IRS-approved, tax-exempt status – to promote hatred against Jewish people.A full-time hater I monitored, the late Willis Carto, ran a media empire based on anti-Semitism with annual revenues exceeding $10 million during the seven years he and I were professionally associated. It’s NOT only hillbilly bigots or violent, tattooed, racist skinheads who support this putridity. The great-grand niece of inventor Thomas Edison, Jean Farrell, left $17 million to a Carto-controlled entity in the 1990s, to create doubt that the Holocaust never happened. From 1971 until the early 1990s, the former son-in-law of President Franklin Roosevelt, Curtis Dall, headed the Liberty Lobby, an organization that promoted anti-Semitism and white supremacy. Blaming Jews for societal strife has occurred since before William Shakespeare was born in 1564. But it’s now being stepped up, even in Iowa.
Among my deepest regrets are the years (prior to my working for the bureau) that I wasted as a greedy, insensitive, opportunistic profiteer catering to this sordid market. From 1995-98, my advertising agency represented Carto’s publications, and he and I co-owned the world’s largest, most profitable racist music label. This haunts me, and always will.
So why are Iowans now being targeted?
From the mid-1990s to about 2003, wealthy, anti-Jewish supporters of Carto, Dr. William L. Pierce, Dr. Ed Fields, former KKK honcho David Duke and other haters, targeted college students. Polls revealed that Americans, and especially those under age 30, were either indifferent toward, or ignorant of, Nazi crimes against their innocent victims. Around 1990, Bradley Smith started CODOH: The Committee [for] Open Debate On [the] Holocaust. CODOH distributed a 24-page monthly magazine, The Revisionist, to students on U.S. campuses. By 1995, CODOH had its own website and, later, a MySpace page. In 2000-01, CODOH ads appeared in more than 350 college newspapers. CODOH members even tried, unsuccessfully, to infiltrate College Republican clubs on several campuses. While illness preceding his 2016 death curtailed Smith’s activities, his dirty work has been revived by The Daily Stormer (TDS), the organization that printed the posters that have alarmed Drake students, faculty members and their neighbors.
The Daily Stormer is primarily funded by online donations and corporate sponsors, and its reach and influence are rising. Since 2016, its website has attracted an average of 100,000 daily visitors. There’s even a Spanish language version of TDS, with a fervent following in Latin America, Spain and elsewhere.
An April 2018 poll showed that 41 percent of Americans knew nothing about Auschwitz; among millennials, that number is 66 percent. So, with college students so abysmally naive regarding the Holocaust, deniers sense opportunity. But if these despicable activities continue, such nastiness will worsen; failing to condemn it means tacitly condoning hatred and its evil. That’s because even in Iowa, no one is exempt from the nefarious activities being perpetrated by neo-Nazis in their neighborhood.
Todd Blodgett of Clear Lake served on President Reagan’s White House staff and as an adviser to the 1988 Bush-Quayle ’presidential campaign committee. He also worked for the Republican National Committee and the FBI.