Hi Steve,

Scott over at Mormonthink found this GEM of a publication, which features a foreword written by your granddad ETB. I had never seen this before and was curious if you know about it or have any background on this.

Thanks!

R.


http://sainesburyproject.com/mormonstuff/The%20Black%20Hammer


It isn't outwardly an LDS treatise, though I noticed that in the Acknowledgements the author thanks "all the Elders in the California North Mission".

ETB's Foreword only discusses communism and not Black people.

(And a note to ADMIN: No Ma'am, This Ain't Politics; it's History... On-topic, even)

Back in the year this was written, I was a precocious junior highschooler who used to listen to a pre-recorded message from the American Opinion Bookstore (a John Birch Society operation).

This sort of shinola was commonplace (and rejected by mainstream Republicans I followed and championed, men like William F. Buckley, Jr.). It found a lot of following among the "Dixiecrats" in the South who bolted to the Republican Party following the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Gird up the old bullchip filters reading this stuff, folks. It's petrified poop these days, but it still has an odor. Like this one from the author...

>Of the 23 million Americans who are Negro, only a very
scant handfull subscribe to the degenerate theatrics of the
so-called Civil Rights leadership.

The bookstore recordings regularly vilified Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ralph Abernathy as members of the great "Global Communist Conspiracy."

And a few howlers from Apostle Benson... He was heck bent on selling the belief the Commies were more dangerous enemies than the Nazis...

>Would you have suspected something if, during World War II, a man who had made substantial contributions to the Nazi Party and had been declared a security risk was honored at a White House ceremony?

>Yet President Johnson presented a $50,000 tax-free award
and a gold medal at the White House to Dr. Julius Robert Oppenheimer, who made contributions to the Communist Party and up to the time of his death, was listed as a security risk.

A note to the history dilettantes just escaping the fallout from LDS revisionist history operations: Dr. Robert Oppenheimer is widely regarded as one of "the fathers of the atomic bomb," created as part of the Manhattan Project. You can argue about the attendant genocide (it would be unconscionable not to have some misgivings), but it did hasten the end of the war with Japan. And check out the use of Oppie's first name "Julius." Do you think there might have been an intended connection with, say, "Julius Rosenberg"?

Note how both political parties are smeared (often dishonestly):

>Would you have disagreed with our defense policies during World War 11 if the Secretary of Defense had said our
objectives against the Nazis were limited and did not include
the destruction of the Nazi regime in Berlin?

>Yet Secretary McNamara asserted in October, 1965, that
our objectives in Vietnam are limited, and do not include
the destruction of the Communist regime in North Vietnam.

Robert F. McNamara was Secretary of Defense during the Administrations John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, both Democrats.

And the "Impeach Earl Warren" meme that was being circulated by the Birch Society:

>Johnson did exactly that and Earl Warren later selected as Assistant Counsel for the Commission a man who hod belonged to one of the most notorious Communist fronts in the country . (The Warren Court and its decisions have been honored with victory rallies by the Communist Party).

Off the top if my head, the Warren Court Decision I remember most readily is "Brown v.The Topeka Board of Education."

Yet look at this from the Preface:

>We stood in the July sunshine in San Francisco the Sunday
afternoon on which that Convention opened, and listened to Jacob Javits, Henry Cabot Lodge, and a bevy of their Leftwing
cohorts literally preach revolution to a gathering ofsome 20,000 "civil rights" demonstraters who had gathered at the City Hall Plaza following a massive parade.

That's not a Democratic National Convention being described, folks; Henry Cabot Lodge and Jacob Javits were mainstream Republicans.

And a moment of silence for a folk singer Ezra T. villified as a notorious Commie...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxiMrvDbq3s&feature=kp

Take it away, Steve...



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 07/15/2014 04:42PM by SL Cabbie.

. . . the question was directed to me. :)
_____


Here's the back story:

I have a copy of "The Black Hammer," with ETB's foreword that is referred to in the original post at the top of this thread.

Ezra Taft Benson's life followed a regular pattern of rubbing elbows with racists. He comfortably associated, for instance, with a notorious segregationist and anti-Communist named Billy James Hargis. In 1967, on the campus of an anti-Communist training school run by Hargis, my grandfather delivered a talk entitled, "Trade and Treason," which Hargis later reprinted in his campus magazine, "Christian Crusade."

According to a letter from First Presidency counselor Hugh B. Brown to a Church member, the First Presidency received "numerous" complaints about my grandfather's link with Hargis. Brown offered his reassurances that my grandfathers "activities in this connection will be curtail[ed]."

(D. Michael Quinn, "The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power" [Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature Books, 1997],pp. 97, 462)


Hargis was eventually humiliated in 1974 when two of his Summit Bible College students (a male and a female) came forward to claim he had sexually deflowered them. Hargis admitted to sexual predation and resigned his pastorship, blaming it on "genes and chromosomes."

(Kevin Lambert, "Scandals in Eden: Selected Tales of Religious Misbehavior, Part 1: Billy James Hargis")


A condensed version of Ezra Taft Benson's remarks delivered at Hargis' bigotry-breeding Bible bastion were eventually reprinted--with my grandfather's permission--in the racially poisonous booklet, "The Black Hammer: A Study of Black Power, Red Influence and White Alternatives." (Those remarks, in the former of a fiery anticommunism speech, were first delivered by Ezra Taft Benson in 1967). Its reappearance in "The Black Hammer" was accompanied by a note of gratitude declaring that Ezra Taft Benson "has generously offered this address as the basis for the introductory remarks to 'The Black Hammer." In addition, his name, "THE HON. EZRA TAFT BENSON," was prominently displayed on the top of the booklet's front cover.

In addition to re-publication in "The Black Hammer," Ezra Taft Benson's "Trade and Treason" speech was entered into the Congressional Record by the notorious segregationist senator from South Carolina, Strom Thurmond.

The cover of "The Black Hammer" showed the thick-lipped, lowed-browed, decapitated, bleeding head of a Black man superimposed upon the symbol of the Communist hammer and sickle.

(For an image of the book's atrocious cover, see: http://www.mormonliberals.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/the_black_hammer.gif)


The booklet was dedicated to "all the Elders of the California North Mission for their interest and prayers" and warned of "well-defined plans for the establishment of a Negro Soviet dictatorship in the South."

(See Ezra Taft Benson, “Trade and Treason,” foreword of "THE BLACK HAMMER: A STUDY OF BLACK POWER, RED INFLUENCE AND WHITE ALTERNATIVES," by Wes Andrews and Clyde Dalton [Oakland, California: Desco Press, 1967], pp. 13-23, original emaphasis; D. Michael Quinn, "The Mormon Hierachy: Extensions of Power" [Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature Books,1997] pp. 98-99; "Benson Brown and King: Power Struggles of a Prophet," by "bigcat_10@yahoo.com," 24 April 2001, at http://www.salamandersociety.com/foyer/prophets/ezrataftbenson/; and Quinn, "Prelude to the National “Defense of Marriage” Campaign: Civil Discrimination Against Feared or Despised Minorities")

**********


For a detailed review of my grandfather Ezra Taft Benson's historically racist, bigoted, anti-Black views that one will not find officially published or otherwise made available by the historically racist, bigoted, anit-Black Mormon Church, see:

"ETB vs. MLK--Mormonism's Prophet, Seer and Race-baiter (3 Parts)." at: http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1142572



Edited 11 time(s). Last edit at 07/14/2014 11:58PM by steve benson.

Yep ... The very same Strom Thurmond who boinked a 16 year old black maid and produced a child.

Not disagreeing with you, Dave. I come from a long line of house slaves and domestic servants. :-(


ETA: I'm a Daughter of the American Revolution Sally Hemings style.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/14/2014 11:39PM by Beth.

agreed.

raped is a more appropriate word.

Fascinating thanks!

Is it your view that the thematic racism underpinning LDS doctrine predated the association of a number of LDS authorities with organizations like the John Birch Society (started by the father of the Koch Brothers, if I recall correctly), and thereby served as a springboard to lead more mormons into these groups (even today mormons are a significant part of the membership, if I'm not mistaken)?

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/14/2014 11:57PM by steve benson.