In an article in the Journal of Popular Culture, (1) one of the editors of the Jonestown Report considers the role that conspiracy theories have played in the unfolding narrative of ‘Jonestown’. It is a worthwhile endeavour to which few scholars could bring better credentials. Rebecca Moore is a professor of religious studies at the … Read more
See also: Part 1: British Fascism 1974-92 (Lobster 23) Part 3: British fascism 1983-6 (Lobster 25) Part 4: British Fascism 1983-6 (II) (Lobster 26) The 1986 National Front Split (Lobster 29) Introduction In the first part of this essay, in Lobster 23, after reviewing the strategies adopted by significant British fascist parties in the period, … Read more
On the jacket of his new book, reviewed in this issue, Steve Dorril writes there that he ‘is founder-editor of the widely respected journal’ Lobster. I invite you to look on the rear cover of this magazine and see who the editor is. That’s right: it’s not Steve Dorril. I have resisted going into detail … Read more
The Paris Review (PR hereafter except in quotations) has a new editor. Philip Gourevitch, a National Book Critics Circle Award winner for his book, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories From Rwanda and a writer for The New Yorker, has taken the position that was held … Read more
With the decline of the revolutionary socialist Left the Right has turned to the anarchists for a law-and-order bogeyman – and a stick to beat the Left with. One journalist involved is Jamie Dettmer. Having worked for Tribune for a while, Dettmer migrated to the Sunday Telegraph (for whom his first article was an ‘expose’ … Read more
The assassinations of the 1960s A recently discovered sound recording of the assassination of Robert Kennedy shows that there was indeed a second shooter in the room. At least 13 shots were fired according to the analysis by Philip Van Praag, an expert in the ‘forensic analysis of magnetic media recordings’. Sirhan Sirhan’s gun could … Read more
Kevin Coogan, Autonomedia, New York, 1999. $16.95 www.autonomedia.org When Francis Parker Yockey met his own personal Ernstfall with his typically vaudevillian suicide by cyanide pill, dressed only in his underpants and a pair of jack boots, it frustrated an eight year FBI manhunt for the ‘mystery man’. The impact of his gesture was no doubt … Read more
Douglas Macleod Edinburgh: Birlinn; £9.99, p/b <www.birlinn.co.uk> Twenty years ago, before the current torrent of information about ‘the secret world of intelligence’, we were scratching about looking for clues to our secret history. One was given in the John Loftus book The Belarus Secret (Penguin 1983) which contained a single reference to the Scottish … Read more
Our Secret Servants: the Shayler affair Things had been going rather well for the British security and intelligence services in the 1990s. Under pressure from the Wright-Wallace-Massiter revelations of the 80s, they had conceded a notional form of parliamentary accountability with the creation of the Intelligence and Security Committee. With members who either knew nothing … Read more
There is an unmistakable thread running through America’s move eastward since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Using their vast economic clout – in the form of loans, grants and sanctions – and backed by threatening military supremacy (to say nothing of the devious use of ‘unattributable’ mercenary groups such as the MPRI), … Read more
