History - Past and Perspective
Surveillance of the Right Is Not New: The IRS Scandal in Historical Perspective

Surveillance of the Right Is Not New: The IRS Scandal in Historical Perspective

The “Reuther Memorandum” — written by Democrat Party operatives in 1961 — outlined steps the Kennedy administration could use to isolate the political Right via government. ...
Thomas R. Eddlem

The Obama administration’s ongoing coverup of the IRS scandal about targeting the Tea Party is not the first instance of the federal government persecuting the political Right with IRS audits. In fact, the current IRS scandal — where Lois Lerner’s Blackberry and her desktop computer have apparently been wiped clean to destroy evidence — are actually following a more than 50-year script for government to destroy the political Right in the form of the “Reuther Memorandum.” “The flow of big money to the radical right should be dammed to the extent possible,” the “Reuther Memorandum” informed the Kennedy administration, asking for political assistance in stemming that flow.

Sound familiar?

The “Reuther Memorandum” was a December 19, 1961 letter from socialist labor organizer Victor Reuther to Attorney General Bobby Kennedy urging the federal government to target right-of-center political education organizations. Union organizer Reuther (who was head of the education department of the United Auto Workers) had worked for Stalin’s Gorky Auto Works for more than a year in the 1930s, at the height of Stalin’s purges. Though not a Communist Party member, Victor — along with his brothers Roy and Walter (all three shown in photo) — was a dedicated socialist who was determined to get the government to prosecute the constitutionalist movement. All three Reuther brothers developed strong Democratic Party ties after abandoning the Socialist Party in the 1930s to work for the New Deal via the Democratic Party. Walter Reuther was a founder of the leftist Americans for Democratic Action and headed the United Auto Workers labor union, later rising to head the Congress of Industrial Organizations (of which the UAW was a member). Victor and Roy Reuther worked for the UAW in the Education and Citizenship Committees, respectively, and all three brothers were loyal Kennedy political lieutenants in the Democratic Party.

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