Silhouette

"Gee, you look like too nice a guy to be hanging around with these crums." At a Gerald L.K. Smith rally a theatre usherette was speaking to Gordon Hall, investigator of Fascist groups, lecturer, and publisher of the monthly "Countertide." Hall, posing as a fascist, was then holding a top post in the Smith organization.

A friend of Gordon Allport '19, in recent months Hall has given lectures in Allport's courses, spoken to the Liberal Union, Boston University, Brandeis, and many other colleges and organizations. His small Gainsborough St, Boston office-apartment is so filled with files on nation-wide racist activity that he is running out of space. He has complete data, including pictures and tape recordings, on the activities of such men as Merwyn K. Hart (whose National Economic Council pays $40,000 a year rent in the Empire State Building); Father Feeney of the St. Benedict's Center; Bill Buckley of Yale "who is even more a fascist than he's cracked up to be"; and Gerald L.K. Smith.

"My aim is to build pipelines into newspapers and universities. I see no point in collecting material unless something be done with it." He also wants to act as a source of information for students, and is currently helping a Harvard man with material for his thesis.

Hall wasn't always an anti-Fascist, Born on Hollis, L.I., he was the last of nine children, and his mother was a "Coughlinite." He wanted to be a professional basketball player, but because of his family's poverty he had to leave high school to work in an airplane factory. Drafted in '42 Hall went into the Air Force.

"I changed my mind about everything. From what I had learned at home, I couldn't adjust to this new life where I was thrown in with all kinds of people." He saw how some minority groups were getting the worst of everything, and resolved to do something about it.

When he was discharged in '45, Hall went back to his former job. One day another worker at the plant presented him with a copy of "Think Weekly," now "Commonsense," one of the widest-circulating hate-sheets in the country. Incensed at its contents, Hall went in a rage to see the publisher, Conde McGinley. As soon as he entered the office, McGinley tried to recruit Hall for his staff. He told him of "Think Weekly's" plans, and outlined the underground Fascist network in America.

Hall got an idea. He would work for McGinley, but in reality get evidence on these Fascist organizations for an eventual expose. He allied himself with an anti-totalitarian, civil rights group "The Friends of Democracy" headed by Rev. Leon M. Birkhead and Rex Stout, and from '47 to '50 travelled all over the country making contacts with former Bund members, racists, and rabble-rousers, and infiltrating the Klan and Gerald L. K. Smith's inner circle, where he had his own private office. "Smith thought I was a bright young Fascist brain-truster," he explains.

"Gerald doesn't believe this stuff himself. He's not insane, but just power-mad. He told me that he'd run the country by 1956 or give up."

"Until we find a more democratic method for gaining information on the extremist," Hall continues, "I feel it is necessary to resort to this kind of investigation.

"But when various espionage agents and spies become national heroes, I shudder. This is a very filthy business with no romance about it. Espionage can be and often is a violation of people's civil rights--even of those who are abusing them."

Hall has acquired a Nation-wide reputation. Recently Fulton Lewis, Jr. spent an entire program castigating him. Many racist organizations have been exposed by him, and he is forced to use several dozen aliases and mailing address to receive material from these groups.

When he left the Smith group in '50, Hall came to work in the Boston office of Birkhead's organization. But he disagreed with the other members about policy and decided to go out on his own; "I wanted to be free to write and publish as I pleased."

Now he works full time in research, lecturing, investigating and publishing. He has no funds and relies on subscriptions to "Countertide" and speaking dates to further his work. "But if an organization can't afford to pay me, I'll go just the same."

Hall has no quarrel with legitimate anti-Communists, but he feels that much of the extreme Right's activity goes by unnoticed today. "Martin Dies is back writing for an A.F. of L. publication. And now that Gerald has turned anti-Communist, people are welcoming him with open arms."

He also feels that some of the great liberals who are under attack are themselves much to blame for their plight. They ignore the Right and in some cases make alliances with it. "They spend so much time trying to prove that they are not communists, when they could be taking a militant stand against all the extremes."

Hall's immediate plans are to increase the national circulation of "Countertide," and by publishing the facts about racist and anti-communist front organizations to give more people a chance to combat them.

"There are no sacred cows in our barn. Democracy is predicated upon the belief in the many, rather than control by the few. However modest our pages, they are dedicated to informing the many about these few. For the way to make America great is to let the people know."