John T. Flynn

John T. Flynn
John T. Flynn
Born John Thomas Flynn
(1882-10-25)October 25, 1882
Bladensburg, Maryland
Died April 13, 1964(1964-04-13) (aged 81)

John Thomas Flynn (October 25, 1882 – April 13, 1964) was an American journalist best known for his opposition to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and to American entry into World War II. In September 1940, Flynn helped establish the America First Committee (AFC).[1] He was also the first to advance the Pearl Harbor advance-knowledge conspiracy theory.[2]

Career

After graduating from Georgetown Law School, Flynn chose a career in journalism. He started at the New Haven Register, but eventually moved to New York; there he was financial editor of the New York Globe. During the 1920s and 1930s, he wrote articles for such leading publications as The New Republic, Harper's Magazine, and Collier's Weekly. He became one of the best-known political commentators in the United States. Like Oswald Garrison Villard, another key figure in the Old Right, Flynn was a leftist with populist inclinations during this period. He supported Franklin D. Roosevelt for president but criticized the New Deal. In 1939, he predicted that Social Security would be under water by 1970, and insolvent by 1980.[3]

The 1930s

Consistently at all stages of his literary career, Flynn opposed militarism. He was a key advisor to the 1934 Nye Committee, which investigated the role of the so-called "merchants of death" (munitions manufacturers and bankers) in leading to U.S. entry into World War I.

By 1936, Flynn had publicly broken with Roosevelt. He was already drawing comparisons between the centralist features of the New Deal on the one hand, and Benito Mussolini's policies on the other: "We seem [he wrote] to be not a long way off from the kind of Fascism which Mussolini preached in Italy before he assumed power; and we are steadily approaching the conditions which made Fascism possible."

America First, 1940–41

Flynn was one of the founders of the non-interventionist America First Committee, the first nationally organized coalition of the many politically wide-ranging groups which opposed America's entry into World War II.[4] Flynn and the America Firsters accused FDR of falsely claiming that he wanted to keep America out of the war, while in reality pursuing a number of increasingly militant policies to help Britain in every way possible, in violation of the neutrality treaties which had been passed by isolationist Senators earlier in the 1930s. Flynn soon became head of the New York City chapter, and, largely through his efforts, quickly claimed a membership of 135,000. As Roosevelt rolled out a series of policies to give "all help short of war," America First mounted campaigns against them, on the grounds that each of them, in fact, did constitute war: first, the nation's first peacetime draft - Selective Service, begun in 1940, then Lend-Lease which allowed the British, near bankruptcy, to continue to buy the food and arms they needed as they reached their second year of resisting Nazi invasion single-handedly. Both these passed in Congress, but America First gained enormous momentum in a nation riven by the entirely contradictory wishes to both support the British yet stay out of the war, with 850,000 members within a year of its founding.

In September, 1941, Flynn organized a Senate subcommittee investigation led by Senator Wheeler, into the movie studios for creating pro-British and pro-interventionist "propaganda" in more than 50 Hollywood films.[5], with studio heads Jack Warner and Daryl Zanuck compelled to testify.

World War II

On December 7, 1941 – the moment he heard about Pearl Harbor – Flynn wanted the America First Committee to disband, and throw their support entirely toward the war effort – which it did, on December 11, 1941.

Flynn had by then turned entirely against New Deal progressivism, which he regarded not as liberal at all, but as a "degenerate form of socialism and debased form of capitalism". In 1944 he wrote a sharp critique of the American drift toward what he termed "statism": As We Go Marching. This essay warned of an unholy alliance influencing U.S. foreign policy, and included these words satirising the view presented by advocates of foreign wars:

The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the Deity to regenerate our victims, while incidentally capturing their markets; to civilise savage and senile and paranoid peoples, while blundering accidentally into their oil wells.[6]

In fall 1944, Flynn completed a 25-page document entitled The Truth about Pearl Harbor[2] which so impressed publisher Robert McCormick that he had it printed in its entirety, beginning on the front page of the October 22 Chicago Tribune, in hopes of influencing the upcoming election. Flynn argued that Roosevelt and his inner circle had been plotting to provoke the Japanese into an attack on the U.S. and thus provide a reason to enter the war since January 1941 and that the sanctions which the Roosevelt Administration had placed on Japan during that year were intended for that purpose – the oil embargo, specifically – whose lifting was attached to conditions it knew Japan could never agree to.[2] Flynn also alleged that Pearl Harbor's able Navy and Army commanders, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and General Walter Short, were left without proper warning that conditions had deteriorated to this extent with Japan, so they would be caught off guard.[2] Flynn had the article reprinted in pamphlet form, distributed out of his office, and this would mark the beginning of Pearl Harbor advance-knowledge conspiracy theory[2] or (less pejoratively) hypothesis.

Shortly after his brief tenure working with the GOP for the 1944 presidential elections, Flynn learned that GOP candidate Dewey had gotten hold of the highly classified information that America had broken the Japanese naval code early in 1940 – long before the attack on Pearl Harbor – but, at the administration's request, not made this information public. Besides lowering his opinion of the GOP as too weak to fight his nemesis, Roosevelt, Flynn further reasoned that meant FDR must have known in precise detail that the attack was coming and deliberately withheld this information from the now-disgraced commanders in order to create an outraged demand for war.

Flynn added this information to his booklet, retitling it: "The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor", which again ran as a front-page story in the Chicago Tribune, and became a booklet printed and distributed by Merwin K. Hart's National Economic Council. Flynn's evidence led to a new congressional investigation of the attack, for which Flynn became chief investigator. However, two Republicans joined the Democrats on the committee in creating a report that ostensibly vindicated Roosevelt.

Cold War

During the Cold War period, Flynn continued his opposition to interventionist foreign policies and militarism. An early critic of American involvement in the affairs of Indochina, he maintained that sending US troops would "only be proving the case of the Communists against America that we are defending French imperialism."

Flynn became an early and avid supporter of Senator Joseph McCarthy. This was ironic because Flynn "had long ridiculed the idea that communism was a threat to America.",[7] dismissing American Communists as a tiny handful of fractious, isolated radicals who were too busy attacking each other to attack capitalism. In March, 1943, he wrote that fighting communism in America was "a waste of time," when the real issue was fascism, his argument in his next book, As We Go Marching (1946).

Personal life

For many years Flynn made his home in Bayside, New York in a large compound overlooking Little Neck Bay, with a house and a separate building he used as a broadcasting studio. He was a neighbor and friend of Mrs. James J. Corbett, the widow of boxing champion "Gentleman Jim" Corbett.

His son, Thomas Flynn, was an influential figure credited with helping to save New York City from bankruptcy in the 1970s.[8]

Books by Flynn

  • God's Gold; the Story of Rockefeller and His Times[9] (1932)
  • Country Squire in the White House[10] (1940)
  • Men of Wealth; the Story of Twelve Significant Fortunes from the Renaissance to the Present Day[11] (1941)
  • The Truth About Pearl Harbor and the Final Secret of Pearl Harbor (1944)
  • Meet Your Congress (1944)
  • As We Go Marching[12] (1944)
  • The Epic of Freedom (1947)
  • The Roosevelt Myth[13][14] (1948/rev 1956)
  • The Road Ahead: America's Creeping Revolution[15] (1949)
  • Communists and the New Deal: Part II (1952)
  • While You Slept: Our Tragedy in Asia and Who Made It[16] (1953)
  • America's Unknown War: The War We Have Not Begun to Fight (1953)
  • McCarthy: His War on American Reds, and the Story of Those Who Oppose Him (1954)
  • Betrayal at Yalta (1955)
  • The Decline of the American Republic and How to Rebuild It[17] (1955)
  • Militarism: The New Slavery for America (1955)
  • Fifty Million Americans in Search of a Party (1955)
  • The Lattimore Story (1953)
  • Forgotten Lessons: Selected Essays of John T. Flynn[18] (1996); posthumous essay collection
  • Investment Trusts Gone Wrong! (Wall Street and the Security Markets)
  • The Thought Police; an Episode in Radical Bigotry

See also

References

  1. ↑ "John T. Flynn".
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Pearl Harbor: Fifty Years of Controversy Institute for Historical Review
  3. ↑ Harper's Magazine, "The Social Security 'Reserve' Swindle," February 1939, p. 238.
  4. ↑ Moser, John E. (2005). Right Turn: John T. Flynn and the Transformation of American Liberalism. New York University Press. p. 145. ISBN 0814757006.
  5. ↑ Moser, p. 129
  6. ↑ Flynn, John T. (1944) As We Go Marching. p. 240
  7. ↑ Right Turn, John T. Flynn and the Transformation of American Liberalism, by John E. Moser, p. 154.
  8. ↑ Saxon, Wolfgang. "Thomas Flynn, 90, Administrator During 70's Fiscal Crisis".
  9. ↑ kanopiadmin (18 August 2014). "God's Gold: The Story of Rockefeller and His Times - John T. Flynn" (PDF).
  10. ↑ kanopiadmin (18 August 2014). "Country Squire in the White House - John T. Flynn" (PDF).
  11. ↑ kanopiadmin (18 August 2014). "Men of Wealth: The Story of Twelve Significant Fortunes from the Renaissance to the Present Day - John T. Flynn" (PDF).
  12. ↑ kanopiadmin (18 August 2014). "As We Go Marching - John T. Flynn" (PDF).
  13. ↑ kanopiadmin (18 August 2014). "The Roosevelt Myth - John T. Flynn" (PDF).
  14. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2006-10-29. Retrieved 2006-11-01.
  15. ↑ kanopiadmin (18 August 2014). "The Road Ahead: America's Creeping Revolution - John T. Flynn" (PDF).
  16. ↑ kanopiadmin (18 August 2014). "While You Slept - John T. Flynn" (PDF).
  17. ↑ kanopiadmin (18 August 2014). "The Decline of the American Republic - John T. Flynn" (PDF).
  18. ↑ kanopiadmin (18 August 2014). "Forgotten Lessons: Selected Essays of John T. Flynn - John T. Flynn, Gregory P. Pavlik, ed" (PDF).

Further reading

By Flynn

About Flynn

  • David T. Beito, "Happy Birthday, John T. Flynn," History News Network, October 25, 2005.
  • The Ideological Odyssey of John T. Flynn by John E. Moser
  • Ronald Radosh. Prophets on the right: Profiles of conservative critics of American globalism (1978)
  • Tribute to John T. Flynn by Adam Young
  • Riggenbach, Jeff (October 29, 2010). "John T. Flynn: Revisionist Journalist". Mises Daily. Ludwig von Mises Institute.
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