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Intro­duc­tion: Eclipsed by the dis­as­trous finan­cial news of recent months, as well as rel­a­tively super­fi­cial considerations-lipstick, hockey mom, moose huntress-Sarah Palin’s polit­i­cal resume and her­itage is gen­uinely fright­en­ing. Although down­played or ignored by main­stream media, Sarah Palin’s pro­found rela­tion­ship with the Alaskan Inde­pen­dence Party (AIP) augurs very poorly for Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. Anti-American, polit­i­cally ret­ro­grade, deeply racist and ded­i­cated to frac­tur­ing the repub­lic, the AIP is the Alaskan ele­ment of the Con­sti­tu­tion Party. This fas­cist polit­i­cal party has run can­di­dates endorsed by the Aryan Nations and ded­i­cated to the suc­cess­ful re-establishment of the Con­fed­er­acy. In addi­tion to echo­ing the neo-Confederate endorse­ment of South­ern Seces­sion, the AIP has actively sought the sup­port of the Repub­lic of Iran in attempts to sep­a­rate Alaska from the United States. Ear­lier in 2008, Palin sent a greet­ing to the AIP’s con­ven­tion, endors­ing their efforts. Those knowl­edge­able about Palin’s polit­i­cal her­itage assert that this greet­ing was pre­dictable. In fact, the AIP had much to do with shap­ing Palin’s polit­i­cal agenda when she was mayor of Wasilla and she con­tin­ued to per­mit access to her AIP men­tors when she became gov­er­nor. (Her hus­band Todd Palin was a mem­ber of the AIP until recently and is described by acquain­tances as a “shadow gov­er­nor.”) For­mer Nixon cab­i­net offi­cial Wal­ter Hickel became gov­er­nor of Alaska run­ning as the AIP can­di­date! Although he later switched back to the GOP, Hickel takes credit for Palin’s elec­tion. Of great sig­nif­i­cance is the AIP’s ide­o­log­i­cal affil­i­a­tion with other seces­sion­ist ele­ments around the world, includ­ing ele­ments asso­ci­ated with the UNPO, an orga­ni­za­tion that cham­pi­ons the inde­pen­dence of “unrep­re­sented peo­ples.” Although it rep­re­sents itself as egal­i­tar­ian and pro­gres­sive, the UNPO’s agenda actu­ally works to under­mine the polit­i­cal and geo­graph­i­cal integrity of larger coun­tries that might present a rival to the Under­ground Reich. Of more than pass­ing sig­nif­i­cance is the fact that Palin quoted fas­cist colum­nist West­brook Pegler in her speech before the Repub­li­can Con­ven­tion. It is also worth con­tem­plat­ing what the Nazi ele­ments in the Bush admin­is­tra­tion will do with a seated African-American President.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The AIP’s sup­port for Tibetan seces­sion, the AIP’s sup­port for the Lakota seces­sion­ist move­ment; the AIP’s sup­port for Hawai­ian seces­sion; the AIP’s sup­port for Chechen seces­sion; the endorse­ment of Con­sti­tu­tion Party Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Michael Per­outka; by Aryan Nations head Richard But­ler; Sarah Palin’s ori­gins in Sand­point Idaho–an epi­cen­ter of the White Suprema­cist movement.

1. The seces­sion­ist party with which Sarah Palin is closely affil­i­ated has a vio­lently anti-American agenda.

“‘My gov­ern­ment is my worst enemy. I’m going to fight them with any means at hand.’

This was for­mer rev­o­lu­tion­ary ter­ror­ist Bill Ayers back in his old Weather Under­ground days, right? Imag­ine what Sarah Palin is going to do with this incen­di­ary quote as she tears into Barack Obama this week.

Only one prob­lem. The quote is from Joe Vogler, the rag­ing anti-American who founded the Alaska Inde­pen­dence Party. Incon­ve­niently for Palin, that’s the very same seces­sion­ist party that her hus­band, Todd, belonged to for seven years and that she sent a shout-out to as Alaska gov­er­nor ear­lier this year. (‘Keep up the good work,’ Palin told AIP mem­bers. ‘And God bless you.’)

AIP chair­woman Lynette Clark told me recently that Sarah Palin is her kind of gal. ‘She’s Alaskan to the bone ... she sounds just like Joe Vogler.’

So who are these America-haters that the Palins are pallin’ around with? . . .”

“The Palins’ Un-American Activ­i­ties” by David Tal­bot; Salon.com; 10/07/2008.

2. Vogler has allied him­self with Iran in order to gen­er­ate inter­na­tional sup­port for Alaskan seces­sion. In that con­text, one should not lose sight of the net­work­ing between the Iran­ian regime and Nazi and fas­cist ele­ments from the U.S. and Europe. By the same token, the net­work­ing between Islamists and fas­cists is a well doc­u­mented phe­nom­e­non, man­i­fest­ing itself in the 9/11 attacks, among other events.

” . . .Vogler wasn’t just a blowhard either. He put his seces­sion­ist ideas into action, work­ing to build AIP mem­ber­ship to 20,000 — an impres­sive fig­ure by Alaska stan­dards — and to elect party mem­ber Wal­ter Hickel as gov­er­nor in 1990.

Vogler’s great­est moment of glory was to be his 1993 appear­ance before the United Nations to denounce United States ‘tyranny’ before the entire world and to demand Alaska’s free­dom. The Alaska seces­sion­ist had per­suaded the gov­ern­ment of Iran to spon­sor his anti-American harangue.

That’s right ... Iran. The Islamic dic­ta­tor­ship. The taker of Amer­i­can hostages. The rogue nation that McCain and Palin have exco­ri­ated Obama for sug­gest­ing we diplo­mat­i­cally engage. That Iran. . . .”

Idem.

3. Although the main­stream media have ignored or down­played the con­nec­tion, the AIP is very close to Sarah Palin and has helped to shape her polit­i­cal agenda. AIP lumi­nary Mark Chryson has helped to forge the link between Palin and his party.

” . . . Though Chryson belongs to a fringe polit­i­cal party, one that advo­cates the seces­sion of Alaska from the Union, and that orga­nizes with other like-minded seces­sion­ist move­ments from Canada to the Deep South, he is not with­out pecu­liar influ­ence in state pol­i­tics, espe­cially the rise of Sarah Palin. An obscure fig­ure out­side of Alaska, Chryson has been a polit­i­cal fix­ture in the home­town of the Repub­li­can vice-presidential nom­i­nee for over a decade. Dur­ing the 1990s, when Chryson directed the AIP, he and another rad­i­cal right-winger, Steve Stoll, played a quiet but piv­otal role in elect­ing Palin as mayor of Wasilla and shap­ing her polit­i­cal agenda after­ward. Both Stoll and Chryson not only con­tributed to Palin’s cam­paign finan­cially, they played major behind-the-scenes roles in the Palin camp before, dur­ing and after her victory. . . .”

“Meet Sarah Palin’s Rad­i­cal Right-Wing Pals” by Max Blu­men­thal and David Niew­ert; Salon.com; 10/10/2008.

4. Chryson and the AIP net­work with White Suprema­cist and neo-Confederate orga­ni­za­tions. The AIP’s web site links to many of the site main­tained by groups sup­ported by the UNPO (as well as the UNPO’s web­site), such as the Tibetan, Hawai­ian, Lakota and Mon­go­lian inde­pen­dence move­ments. Note that the UNPO–represented as a pro­gres­sive, egal­i­tar­ian organization–supports the rights of minor­ity peo­ples in order to weaken and breakup larger states that might prove a rival to the Under­ground Reich. The pos­si­bil­ity that an eco­nom­i­cally and polit­i­cally dev­as­tated U.S. might dis­in­te­grate is one to seri­ously con­sider. Cer­tainly, hav­ing a major-party Vice-Presidential can­di­date affil­i­ated with an orga­ni­za­tion such as the AIP is very dis­turb­ing. Note that the AIP’s web­site has a quote from Con­fed­er­ate Pres­i­dent Jef­fer­son Davis at the top of its front page. It is also sig­nif­i­cant that the Con­sti­tu­tion Party, which counts the AIP as its Alaskan affil­i­ate, ran Michael Per­outka for Pres­i­dent. Per­outka is a mem­ber of the League of the South and his can­di­dacy was endorsed by Richard But­ler, the now-deceased head of the Aryan Nations.

” . . . Yet Chryson main­tains that his party remains com­mit­ted to full inde­pen­dence. “The Alaskan Inde­pen­dence Party has got links to almost every independence-minded move­ment in the world,” Chryson exclaimed. “And Alaska is not the only place that’s about sep­a­ra­tion. There’s at least 30 dif­fer­ent states that are talk­ing about some type of sep­a­ra­tion from the United States.”

This has meant rub­bing shoul­ders and forg­ing alliances with out­right white suprema­cists and far-right theocrats, par­tic­u­larly those who dom­i­nate the pro­ceed­ings at such gath­er­ings as the North Amer­i­can Seces­sion­ist con­ven­tions, which AIP del­e­gates have attended in recent years. The AIP’s affil­i­a­tion with neo-Confederate orga­ni­za­tions is moti­vated as much by ide­o­log­i­cal affin­ity as by orga­ni­za­tional con­ve­nience. Indeed, Chryson makes no secret of his sym­pa­thy for the Lost Cause. ‘Should the Con­fed­er­ate states have been allowed to sep­a­rate and go their peace­ful ways?’ Chryson asked rhetor­i­cally. “Yes. The War of North­ern Aggres­sion, or the Civil War, or the War Between the States — how­ever you want to refer to it — was not about slav­ery, it was about states’ rights.”

Another far-right orga­ni­za­tion with whom the AIP has long been aligned is Howard Phillips’ militia-minded Con­sti­tu­tion Party. The AIP has been listed as the Con­sti­tu­tion Party’s state affil­i­ate since the late 1990s, and it has endorsed the Con­sti­tu­tion Party’s pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates (Michael Per­outka and Chuck Bald­win) in the past two elections.

The Con­sti­tu­tion Party boasts an openly theo­cratic plat­form that reads, “It is our goal to limit the fed­eral gov­ern­ment to its del­e­gated, enu­mer­ated, Con­sti­tu­tional func­tions and to restore Amer­i­can jurispru­dence to its orig­i­nal Bib­li­cal common-law foun­da­tions.” In its 1990s incar­na­tion as the U.S. Tax­pay­ers Party, it was on the front lines in pro­mot­ing the “mili­tia” move­ment, and a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of its mem­ber­ship com­prises for­mer and cur­rent mili­tia members.

At its 1992 con­ven­tion, the AIP hosted both Phillips — the USTP’s pres­i­den­tial can­di­date — and militia-movement leader Col. James ‘Bo’ Gritz, who was cam­paign­ing for pres­i­dent under the ban­ner of the far-right Pop­ulist Party. Accord­ing to Chryson, AIP reg­u­lars heav­ily sup­ported Gritz, but the party deferred to Phillips’ pres­ence and issued no offi­cial endorsements. . . .”

Idem.

5. In her speech at the Repub­li­can con­ven­tion, Palin quoted West­brook Pegler, a reac­tionary colum­nist viewed as a fas­cist by many, includ­ing George Seldes. (See below)

” . . . ‘We grow good peo­ple in our small towns,’ Palin said, quot­ing some­one iden­ti­fied only as a writer, ‘with hon­esty and sin­cer­ity and dig­nity.’ That ‘writer,’ Wall Street Jour­nal colum­nist Thomas Frank notes, is a man named West­brook Pegler. You have prob­a­bly never heard of him, but he was a very pop­u­lar and very right-wing colum­nist from the first half of the 20th cen­tury. How right-wing? He openly wished for the assas­si­na­tion of Franklin Roo­sevelt, for one. . . .”

“Palin’ Source”; Politico.com; 9/10/2008.

5. Author George Seldes devoted a chap­ter of his 1943 opus Facts and Fas­cism to Pegler.

“It is the opin­ion of many per­sons and orga­ni­za­tions that one of the most widely known and read news­pa­per colum­nists, West­brook Pegler, is aid­ing the Axis rather than the United States in this war; it is a fact that the New York News­pa­per Guild, the orga­ni­za­tion of thou­sands of Pegler’s col­leagues, so stated when it sent Pres­i­dent Roo­sevelt a doc­u­men­ta­tion of twelve instances out of Pegler’s writings.

It is a fact that news­pa­pers, colum­nists, radio ora­tors and oth­ers who form pub­lic opin­ion have served the Axis pro­pa­ganda. It is also true that too fre­quently those who know and who make these charges do not name names. They, there­fore, emas­cu­late their own words.

For exam­ple, here is the direc­tor of the U.S. Con­cil­i­a­tion Ser­vice, Dr. John S. Steel­man, who states:

‘Care­less recital of the dra­matic side of strikes in the press and on the screen and over the radio has given too many peo­ple the impres­sion that our war efforts are being held up in a seri­ous way because of will­ful strife in a major part of Amer­i­can indus­try. This is a dan­ger­ous lie that serves the pur­pose of the Axis, but serves no good end among us.’ Dr. Steel­man knows the cul­prits, but he is not in a posi­tion to name them. He is aware that Kaltenborn on the radio, Pegler in the news­pa­pers, the entire Hearst and Howard press are those guilty of care­less recitals about strikes.

On the other hand here is the state­ment issued by the con­fer­ence direc­tors of C.I.O. edi­tors (Wash­ing­ton, April 11, 1942):

‘Labor has been sub­jected to an infa­mous cam­paign of mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion, for the pur­pose of cut­ting wages, destroy­ing union orga­ni­za­tion, and in advanc­ing the prof­its of spe­cial inter­est groups. Most of the daily press has joined in this cam­paign, together with such radio com­men­ta­tors as H.V. Kaltenborn and oth­ers of his type. This anti-labor pro­pa­ganda cam­paign, if not directly inspired by Axis agents and Amer­i­can appeasers, at any rate plays their game by strik­ing at national unity and under­min­ing labor morale.’

Again, the offi­cial organ of the National Mar­itime Union, The Pilot, states that ‘Pegler’s sales talk has the made-in-Berlin label.’ . . .”

Facts and Fas­cism by George Seldes; pub­lished in 1943 by In Fact Inc. [HC].

7. Whether rel­e­vant or not, it is inter­est­ing (and pos­si­bly sig­nif­i­cant) that Palin is a native of Sand­point, Idaho, an epi­cen­ter of the white suprema­cist community.

8. It is also worth con­tem­plat­ing what the Nazi ele­ments in the Bush admin­is­tra­tion will do with an African-American President.