Deguello Report

Summarize Fact Check

The report begins by addressing the recipient, said to be "a person whose integrity is highly regarded among patriotic Nationalists of the United States."^[1][2] It purports to have been written by several intelligence agents from across the world who were sympathetic to the far-right cause, who identify themselves as "Deguello" and say their purpose is to inform about the nature of the conspiracy afflicting the nationalist movement. The name "Deguello" is taken from the bugle call "El Degüello", which itself takes its name from the Spanish word degollar ('to cut the throat').^[2]

It includes a conspiratorial telling of history, defining successively the histories of the "Anti-Nationalist Conspiracy", the "Socialist Conspiracy", the "Jewish Conspiracy", and the "Homosexual Conspiracy".^[3] The author attempts to discredit most notable members of the white supremacist movement by accusing them of being communists, Jews, or gay.^[2][4][5] Academic Jeffrey Kaplan described it as "accusing each of being secret communists taking part in a communist conspiracy, of being secret Jews involved in a Jewish conspiracy, secret homosexuals involved in a homosexual conspiracy, or in most cases a combination of the three".^[4] It writes that "communism has three faces. These three faces are socialism, Judaism and homosexualism."^[3] The Deguello Report focuses on Karl Marx, then goes on to discuss the John Birch Society, which it accuses of having been financed by "secret transfer of money from Jewish individuals and/or organizations".^[2][6]

Its section devoted to discussing allegedly homosexual far-right figures is 18 pages long, with the report stating that: "the Nationalist movement has been infiltrated by homosexuals to an extent that is almost incredible".^[2][7] In one instance, the writers of Deguello accuse white supremacists James K. Warner and David Duke of being gay lovers (alongside numerous other allegations directed at Warner, including that he had stolen the mailing lists of various other white supremacist groups and people).^[8] It further accuses Duke of being a leftist, writing that he "overflowed with sympathy for the negro people".^[2] White supremacist leader J. B. Stoner is accused of being an informer for the Anti-Defamation League, gay, and "an especially destructive Jew infiltrator" whose "specialty is [...] to convince most fair minded citizens that the typical leader of an American Nationalist movement must be totally insane".^[2]

The report concludes by summarizing its alleged findings, claiming there were unnamed groups that had not been infiltrated and that there were still "many good Nationalist Organizations within the United States and numerous smaller organizations that show promise. Only time will tell which, if any of then [sic], can survive the struggle and ultimately provide the leadership which will be so badly needed in the years ahead."^[9]

Summarize Timeline Fact Check

The Deguello Report was written anonymously as a statement from a member of the American white supremacist movement.^[4][10][11] It began to privately circulate among white nationalist and right-wing activists,^[4][10][12] starting in July 1976, when several typewritten copies of the report were mimeographed and mailed to a selected group making up several leaders of the far right, who then spread it.^[5][13] Its original distribution was 54 pages long.^[5]

The report sparked controversy within the far right, particularly among those who knew the people accused in it; it demoralized many members of the movement.^[5][7] Author Phillip Finch described the document's arrival as "a nightmare in a manila envelope", while Michael Newton said "echoes from the DeGuello Report reverberated through the racist right".^[2][5] It played on the fear within the far-right movement.^[5][7] Due to its anonymous authorship, no libel actions could be filed.^[14] Kaplan said that it was "impossible to know how many people actually saw the 'Deguello Report,' and of those, how many found credible the charges contained in the document."^[13] However, the document makes as many false as correct identifications; in Nazis, Communists, Klansmen, and Others on the Fringe, authors John George and Laird Wilcox said that it was at times "so far off base that it’s obvious the report was really nothing more than name calling at its worst".^[7][15] Newton found its allegations to be absurd.^[2]

This led to widespread speculation about who the author could be.^[7][13] They were, from what is discussed in the document, clearly an insider, and the document had some elements of truth, e.g. several members of the far right were actually gay, and some saw it as credible, though almost no one believed its claimed origin in intelligence agents.^[7][15] Its authorship is widely contested,^[13][16] but it is often attributed to Robert DePugh, the founder of the far-right Minutemen revival organization.^[7][12] DePugh, suspected by other far-righters, denied that he was the author.^[7] Kaplan deemed it to have "possibly" been written by DePugh,^[12] while George and Wilcox argued that despite his denial, it was almost certainly written by DePugh. They cited his past rhetoric, noting it as having his "psychological fingerprints", and called it "a virtual transcript" of his past conversations, saying the report was him getting back at his enemies, which had become at that point the entire far right.^[7] If it was written by DePugh, it was the first major instance of antisemitic ideology in his political ideology, whereas previously he had been mostly focused on communists.^[17]

Besides DePugh, there are other theories. Peter Adams said it may have instead been written by a member of the neo-Nazi National States' Rights Party.^[18] Holocaust denier Keith Stimely accused fellow Holocaust denier David McCalden of authoring the report.^[19] A year after the distribution of the document, bulletins from the also anonymous "American Defense Group" accused the LaRouche movement organization the U.S. Labor Party of authoring Deguello; this has also never been proven, and some even accused whoever was behind the American Defense Group of being the author of Deguello.^[16] The report was largely forgotten several years later in the face of more pressing problems for the far right.^[7]

The Deguello Report was included in its entirety in Jeffrey Kaplan's Encyclopedia of White Power, published by AltaMira Press in 2000. The only changes were the omission of the home addresses of those profiled, as they were outdated, and minor formatting changes; typos were left as they were.^[20] It is included as part of the book's array of primary source resources relevant to the neo-Nazi movement. It, with neo-Nazi Rick Cooper's "A Brief History of White Nationalism", is one of the book's two included internal "movement reports", which both attempt to trace the history of the neo-Nazi movement.^[10][11][21] Kaplan said its inclusion was to "provide the reader with the rather jaundiced view the American radical right have of themselves".^[21]

The report has been discussed for its conspiracy theories and paranoid ideation.^[7][12][22] Academic Jeffrey Kaplan called it an "incredible document" and described it as an example of the "level of viciousness and paranoia infecting the White Supremacist constellation" in the 1970s.^[12] Phillip Finch also viewed it as demonstrating the paranoia spread throughout some aspects of the far right, though he believed the idea of paranoia as an element of right wing thought was generally overstated by the media. He called its authorship inconsequential in comparison to the reaction to the document, "the indication it gave that the Radical Right is pricklishly sensitive to the possibility that it has been subverted", which "nobody had ever said it so flatly before".^[23]

Kaplan argued that what made the document important was not "the stereotypical charges of socialism, Judaism, and/or homosexuality that are leveled against the movement figures of the day" (which, he argued, were both impossible to prove and unlikely). He argued instead it was a valuable historical source due to its "conspiratorial view of history", rhetoric, and "all too typically fratricidal nature".^[13] A writer for PitchWeekly said the rhetorical style seen in the Deguello Report was a "standard technique on the fringe right".^[4]

As both it and Rick Cooper's "A Brief History of White Nationalism" were included in the Kaplan encyclopedia as the two movement reports, they were sometimes compared.^[10][11] Sociologist Kathleen M. Blee said both it and Cooper's work were "fascinating" and "full of gossip on racist leaders and vitriolic assessments of rival groups".^[10] Sociologist Thomas Robbins called it "wilder" in comparison to Cooper's.^[11] Cooper's account was described by scholars as considerably more researched than the Deguello Report.^[4][10][11]