An Open Letter to Glenn Beck
This is an old tale, but it bears repeating.
Dear Mr. Beck:
You and I couldn’t be further apart politically, but I’vealways respected you as a historian. I’ve always enjoyed your tales of the obscure and remarkable corners ofhistory, and what they imply for the modern age. Therefore I was delighted to pick up yourbook, “Dreamers and Deceivers”, especially when I learned that it had a chapter– “The Muckraker” – about the Sacco and Vanzetti trial, which I know some oddthings about.
First, my bona fides. Back in the 1970s, when I was an idealisticyoungster – having supported the Civil Rights movement, the Anti-Vietnam Warmovement and the Feminist movement – I grew interested in the Radical Labormovement, moved to Chicagoand joined the Industrial Workers of the World. Yes, the Wobblies: they’re still alive, and growing today. I became well acquainted with some of thegreat Old Timers: Fred Thompson, thegreat Wobbly historian; OttalieMarkholt, the investigative bookkeeper and organizer; and the ancient Joe Vlad – who was there. More about Joe later. I also hadaccess to the Wobbly headquarters’ library, which contained some surprisingbooks. I still have my old Wobblymembership number, X306686. I worked forseveral years as an editor and cartoonist of the Wobbly newspaper, The Industrial Worker, and as a musicianand songwriter for the union band, “The Dehorn Crew”. Eventually I took an offer to move to California and workfull-time as a writer and musician, but I always maintained my contacts withthe old union. That’s the main source ofmy information.
But anyway, on to your story. Upon reading it, I was disappointed to seethat you’d gotten your information from the usual sources, including theSocialist ones, with nothing from the Anarchist side of the story – andremember, Sacco and Vanzetti were Anarchists, not Socialists. The divide between the two ideologies hadalready started with the Russian revolution. It grew wider with the Kronstadt Revolt (which a lot of the Wobblieswitnessed), wider still with Trotsky’s betrayal of Nestor Makhno, andeventually became an impassable gulf when the Communists betrayed theRepublican alliance in the Spanish Civil War. I find it hard to understand why political researchers still assume thatthe Socialists and Anarchists are always allied. You really should have talked to theWobblies.
Here’s what they could have told you. In 1920 on the east coast, including Boston, the Italian wingof the labor movement was primarily Anarchist, and of an explosive temperament. The only radicals more fiercely active were(and are) the Spanish; in Spain they hadbomb-throwing Liberals, if you please! Nowthe Anarchists were divided on the subject of money; there were those who claimed that themajority of money had been stolen from the working class and – since money wasneeded to further the revolution – it was only just to steal it back. Then there were those who claimed that moneyitself should be abolished and replaced with a system of labor/barter chits, orIOUs. Sacco and Vanzetti – and theWobblies – fell into the second camp (largely because they had connections withfarming co-ops out in the countryside that could barter food). Still, there definitely were ItalianAnarchists who were willing to commit armed robberies and throw bombs – thoughnot that many of them. A couple of themdefinitely could have committed the Slater-Morrill shoe factory robbery. Then again, a couple of completelynon-political robbers could have done the deed, leaving the Italian Anarchiststo take the blame. To this day, nobodyknows who really did it.
Now, one thing the Anarchists were (understandably) short onwas competent lawyers. When the policedecided that Sacco and Vanzetti, because of their prominence in the BostonItalian Anarchist movement, simply hadto be the perpetrators, where were the defendants to get a lawyer?
Enter Frederick Moore, Socialist – and from a wealthy enoughfamily to have gotten through law school. He had also worked for the railroad companies, before making enoughmoney and contacts to establish his own office in Los Angeles. There were also those who said he left the railroad’s employ because hewas “quarrelsome” and “opinionated” and “wouldn’t get along with anybody”. Not all of this could be blamed on his tastefor cocaine. In any case, sometimeduring his years in Los Angeleshe became a Socialist – but of a peculiar sort.
He was the sort of rich Socialist/Communist whom theWobblies came to call a “Parlor Pink”. That is, someone wealthy enough that s/he’ll never have to join withothers to contest with a boss over wages – in fact, will never have to worryabout income in their whole life – and who joins a radical political movementfor purely psychological reasons. Now,there have been rich radical sympathizers who have done a lot of good –primarily because they were willing to listento the people directly involved in the problems and conflicts, and didn’tassume that their superior education automatically gave them superior minds anda superior right to steer the “peasants” in the right direction. Then there’s the other sort, best typifiedtoday by characters like Bill Ayers, who assume that a revolution is coming andthey should be the kingmakers, if not the kings, thereof. Fred Moore was that sort.
He gained his contacts with the Radical Labor movement whenan acquaintance of his, who happened to be a Wobbly, was arrested for making apro-union speech (which was illegal then) in San Diego. Moore,upon learning that there were hardly any lawyers willing to defend unionorganizers, saw an opportunity. Hedidn’t manage to get his friend off on the charge, but got him a sentence muchreduced from what the police wanted. Theword spread, via the Wobblies, and Moorebecame the lawyer for labororganizers to hire. He didn’t make muchmoney at it, because his clients were usually dirt-poor and their strugglingunions couldn’t raise much from their entire memberships, but oh, did he becomefamous. His clients, often recentimmigrants who understood little or nothing about American law, would alwaysfollow his advice – which gave him a considerable sense of power. He successfully defended Giovanitti andEttor, scapegoats of the Lawrencestrike, and Charles Krieger in the Tulsa Standard Oil frame-up, after which hisfame went nation-wide.
It was at this stage that Moore learned about the Sacco/Vanzetti case,and agreed to defend the men. It shouldhave been a slam-dunk defense; neitherman had a criminal record, both had good alibis, and the witnesses to theshooting and robbery only got a brief look at the robbers from a second-floorwindow in the dusk (at a time when no man with any self-respect went outdoorswithout a hat, usually a broad-brimmed fedora), and neither of them knew thedefendants on sight. Even the mainwitness, who had obviously been carefully coached by the police, admitted whenasked about Sacco: “I wouldn’t say it was him, but he’s a dead image ofhim.” Any good lawyer should have tornthose witnesses’ statements to shreds in short order – say, with a lineup ofother Italian men resembling Sacco – not to mention clearing Vanzettieasily. There were witnesses who sawVanzetti in Plymouth, selling fish, at the timeof the robbery, and others who saw Sacco getting a professional photo taken ofhimself and his wife in Bostonat the time. The only retort theprosecution had was that all the witnesses were Italians, and thereforecouldn’t be trusted.
Ah, but there wasa witness to Sacco’s whereabouts that day who wasn’t Italian. Remember Joe Vlad? Joe was quite young when he came to America from Hungary in 1901, and he joined theWobblies soon after they were founded in 1905. He was living in Bostonat the time, and often hung around at the Italian Social Club, which was aWobbly/Anarchist watering-hole, because he liked the discussions and alsopreferred wine to beer. He recalledclearly that he saw, and talked to, Nicola Sacco on that day in the ItalianSocial Club in Boston, and that Sacco had leftto go get his photo taken with his wife less than ten minutes before therobbery took place – clean across the city, in Braintree. No way in hell could Sacco have gotten to the robbery in time.
So Joe Vlad asked around, and looked up the address of thehotel where Moore was staying, and went to thecourthouse, and tried everything he could think of to tell Moore his story and offer himself as awitness. Well, Moore refused to see him,left orders not to admit him at the office, and used various schemes to keephim out of the courthouse – even unto getting Joe arrested, but then gettingthe charges dropped before Joe got to court so that there was no chance thatJoe could hang out in the courthouse and run into anyone who would listen tohim. So he never got his chance to givehis evidence to the jury. Fifty yearslater, Joe was still telling the story.
So, why didn’t Moorewant Joe Vlad’s testimony? Why didn’t heuse a simple lineup to show that the witnesses could easily have been mistaken? Why didn’t he lean on the witnesses to revealhow the police had leaned on them? Whydid he sabotage his own case?
It was because he was a Parlor Pink, and he had anAgenda.
As a Socialist, Moorehad no love for Anarchists. He saw them,as Stalin saw intellectuals, as “useful idiots”. Likewise, he had no respect for Italian“peasants” who could barely speak English. What he did want was to use them to expose class warfare, classprejudice, and the corruption of the legal system – particularly in Boston. For that purpose he sent his assistant to Italy,supposedly to collect character witnesses, but really to publish inflammatoryarticles in the Italian radical papers. For that purpose he alienated the judge, who was known to have sizableanti-Anarchist sympathies, instead of using legal methods to get the judgereplaced. For that purpose he needed“martyrs”, and a couple of Italian Anarchists fit the bill perfectly. He never intended to get Sacco and Vanzetti acquitted; he intended to use them as pawns in apolitical circus, which required keeping the trial going as long aspossible. It was a carefullyorchestrated passion-play, and had to end in the martyrdom of his haplesspawns.
How did telling Sinclair that his clients were guiltyfurther his cause? Most likely becausethat would keep Sinclair from investigating any further, possibly questioningwitnesses to Sacco’s and Vanzetti’s alibis – and possibly running into theinsistent Joe Vlad.
Joe Vlad died in 1982, at the age of 96, still sharp as atack, still telling his tale of meeting Nicola Sacco at the Italian Social Clubon that particular day in 1920.
By then, the gap between the Socialists/Communists and theAnarchists was as wide as the ocean, thanks to betrayal after betrayal, and theLibertarian movement had started up, changing the traditional definitions ofpolitical left and right beyond repair. The labor movement has risen and fallen, and is beginning to rise againwith new allies. And the Wobblies arestill here, and growing.
Still, Fred Moore does deserve to be remembered, along withhis various imitators, as a fine example of why you cannot trust a ParlorPink. The False Flag tactic is alive andwell, and needs to be watched for.
Think.
--Leslie <;)))>< Fish
IWW #X306686
