Ally of Christian Right Heavyweight Paul Weyrich Addresses Holocaust Denial Conference

Washington — William Lind has long been a point man for cultural conservatism, a key player in the world of right-wing politicians, and, in recent years, the head of the Free Congress Foundation's Center for Cultural Conservatism.

As a close friend of arch-conservative strategist Paul Weyrich, who started the Free Congress Foundation in 1978, Lind has developed into an important voice on the Christian right.

He also seems to be cultivating friends in some remarkable places. This June 15, at a major Holocaust denial conference put on by veteran anti-Semite Willis Carto in Washington, D.C., Lind gave a well-received speech before some 120 "historical revisionists," conspiracy theorists, neo-Nazis and other anti-Semites, in which he identified a small group of people who he said had poisoned American culture. On this point, Lind made a powerful connection with his listeners.

"These guys," he explained, "were all Jewish."

Lind seemed nervous when he gave his speech, apparently sensing the potential for bad publicity.

"I do want to make it clear for the foundation and myself that we are not among those who question whether the Holocaust occurred," he said.

But he added that he was there despite that, because his foundation had a "regular policy to work with a wide variety of groups on an issue-by-issue basis."

Listening and enthusiastically applauding was a crowd that included Jürgen Graf, a Swiss Holocaust denier who fled to Iran to avoid prosecution at home; Eustace Mullins, a rabid anti-Semite who once wrote an article entitled "Adolf Hitler: An Appreciation"; former SS man Hans Schmidt, and many others.

Lind's theory was one that has been pushed since the mid-1990s by the Free Congress Foundation — the idea that a small group of German philosophers, known as the Frankfurt School, had devised a cultural form of "Marxism" that was aimed at subverting Western civilization.

The method, he said, involved manipulating the culture into supporting homosexuality, sex education, egalitarianism, and the like, to the point that traditional institutions and culture are ultimately wrecked.

"Their whole plan," he said, "is the destruction of Western culture."

The "they" to whom Lind referred were a group including Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse, all Jews who fled Germany and went to Columbia University in the 1930s.

Lind accused Marcuse, who coined the slogan "Make Love, Not War," of inventing the concepts of "tolerance" and "political correctness." He added darkly that Adorno and Horkheimer "spent the war years in Hollywood" and said they likely conspired to use films as a "social conditioning mechanism" to get gullible Americans to accept supposed perversions like homosexuality.

A number of hate groups, including the racist Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), have taken up the Free Congress Foundation's theories about the Frankfurt School. But that's not the only point some of them share with Lind.

In 1995, a "futuristic fantasy" by Lind was published in The Washington Post just 11 days after the Oklahoma City bombing. It described the breakdown of the United States, a land that had developed "the stench of a Third World country," into racial mini-states — a salutary result, in the narrator's judgment, that enabled a return to older "Victorian" values in now all-white New England.

Lind also wrote of teaching kids in this brave new world "with Mr. McGuffy's readers" — a reference to school books used in the 19th century that are chock-full of anti-Semitic stereotypes.

"[T]he majority had taken back the culture," Lind enthused in his piece, which was published by the Post to try to explain to its readers the "apocalyptic visions" of militiamen and their fellow travelers. "Civilization had recovered its nerve."

Meanwhile, the CCC has been peddling copies of a Free Congress Foundation "documentary" called "Political Correctness: The Frankfurt School," with a short CCC introduction added.

Told of this apparent ripoff, Free Congress Foundation attorney Clay Rossi said in April that the foundation had not authorized the use of its videotape and would order the hate group to stop selling its version immediately.

Three months later, the CCC was still selling the tape.