Roger Pearson

Roger Pearson is a British-born anthropologist and publisher who settled in the United States in 1965. He took a degree in anthropology at the University of London in 1951 and a master's in economics in 1954, and wrote Eugenics and Race and Race and Civilization, the second of which names the Nazi racial theorist Hans F.K. Günther as its inspiration. From Washington after 1975 he ran the Council on American Affairs, the Institute for the Study of Man, and the journals Mankind Quarterly, the Journal of Indo-European Studies, and the Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies, in which members of Congress and staff of the Heritage Foundation appeared. He received more than half a million dollars from the Pioneer Fund.¹²

The Northern League

In 1957 Pearson helped found the Northern League for Pan-Nordic Friendship, which made contacts in Sweden, Denmark, and West Germany and opened a branch in Sausalito, California. Its first conference, at Detmold, was attended by the British Nazi Colin Jordan and by Wilhelm Landig, a former SS officer. German authorities described the program as "national socialism revived." In 1965 Willis Carto of the Liberty Lobby brought Pearson to the United States to edit Western Destiny. After what both called an amicable parting he taught anthropology at Queens College in North Carolina and at the University of Southern Mississippi and was dean of academic affairs at the Montana College of Mineral Science and Technology.¹

Washington

Pearson founded the Council on American Affairs in Washington in 1975. Senators Jake Garn of Utah and Carl Curtis of Nebraska wrote for its monographs, and Senator Jesse Helms and Representatives Jack Kemp and Philip Crane contributed to its journal. He shared a house with John Carbaugh, Helms's legislative aide and a liaison between the American right and Roberto D'Aubuisson of El Salvador. His lawyer, Sam Crutchfield, also represented the International Association for the Advancement of Ethnology and Eugenics and several of Helms's organizations, and later incorporated the Institute for Democracy, Education and Assistance for Oliver North and his courier Robert Owen. The Pioneer Fund's tax return for 1976 lists 4,000 dollars to the Institute for the Study of Man for a "study of American Anglo-Saxon school children." A ledger compiled from the fund's returns records 568,000 dollars to Pearson between 1981 and 1991. He took over Mankind Quarterly from Robert Gayre in 1978. Anthony Bouscaren of Le Moyne College, a director of the American league chapter who wrote for Pearson's journals, sat on the committee that distributed Wickliffe Draper's grants.¹²³

The World Anti-Communist League

When the American Council for World Freedom withdrew as the United States chapter of the World Anti-Communist League in 1976, the league turned to Pearson's council. Over three years he brought in the remnants of the Northern League and the followers of the Swedish fascist Per Engdahl. The ousted head of the Dutch chapter wrote in March 1979 that Pearson had sponsored "an organization of 300 to 400 former Dutch SS-traitors." At a meeting in Vienna in November 1978 he introduced seventeen new European groups, seconded by Donald Martin of the Liberty Lobby. He was chairman of the league and host of its conference in Washington that year, which The Washington Post reported under the headline "The Fascist Specter." The 1979 conference in Asuncion drew Blas Piñar of the Spanish Fuerza Nueva, Giorgio Almirante of the Italian Social Movement, and Elio Massagrande of Ordine Nuovo, wanted for the 1974 bombing of the Italicus express and living in Paraguay under the protection of General Alfredo Stroessner.¹²

Pearson was asked to resign at an executive board meeting in 1980. He told interviewers he had left because the league was becoming anti-Semitic. Asked about reports that he had helped Josef Mengele escape, he said he had never heard the name, and added that during his visit to Paraguay "a couple of people had been nosing around for him and their bodies had been fished out of the river." General John Singlaub, who took over the American chapter's successor, said Pearson was "not at all welcome in any activity." His immediate successor as head of the American chapter was Elmore Greaves, an organizer of the Citizens' Council of Mississippi.¹⁴

The Reagan Letter

Pearson sat on the editorial board of the Heritage Foundation's Policy Review when he organized the 1978 conference, and his name left the masthead after the Post article. Stuart Butler, Heritage's director of domestic issues, and Ernest van den Haag of National Review later joined the board of Pearson's own journal. On April 14, 1982, President Ronald Reagan wrote to him on White House stationery: "You are performing a valuable service in bringing to a wide audience the work of leading scholars who are supportive of a free enterprise economy, a firm and consistent foreign policy and a strong national defense. Your substantial contributions to promoting and upholding those ideals and principles that we value at home and abroad are greatly appreciated." Pearson used the letter in his fundraising. When The Wall Street Journal asked about it in 1984, the assistant press secretary, Anson Franklin, said the president opposed racial discrimination and added: "But that's a general statement; I'm not addressing Dr. Pearson specifically." The Anti-Defamation League's Justin Finger said the White House "ought to repudiate this bird."²⁴