Anton "Tony" Chaitkin is an author, historian, conspiracy theorist

Conspiracy theory

A conspiracy theory explains an event as being the result of an alleged plot by a covert group or organization or, more broadly, the idea that important political, social or economic events are the products of secret plots that are largely unknown to the general public.-Usage:The term "conspiracy...

, and political activist with the LaRouche movement

LaRouche movement

The LaRouche movement is an international political and cultural network that promotes Lyndon LaRouche and his ideas. It has included scores of organizations and companies around the world. Their activities include campaigning, private intelligence gathering, and publishing numerous periodicals,...

. He serves as History Editor for Executive Intelligence Review.

Chaitkin's father was Jacob Chaitkin, who was the legal counsel and strategist for the boycott against Nazi Germany carried on by the American Jewish Congress

American Jewish Congress

The American Jewish Congress describes itself as an association of Jewish Americans organized to defend Jewish interests at home and abroad through public policy advocacy, using diplomacy, legislation, and the courts....

 in the 1930s. His late sister, Marianna Wertz, and his brother-in-law, William F. Wertz Jr., have also been active in the LaRouche movement.

Activism

Chaitkin became a founding member of the LaRouche movement in the mid-1960s, and describes it as follows:

In New York about two years after the JFK assassination, I saw a poster on the street for an ad hoc "Free University" conducted in a loft on 14th Street. I attended an economics class taught by Lyndon LaRouche. He said the change then being pushed through our national strategy by Anglo-American financiers– away from industry in the advanced countries, toward cheap labor, would lead to fascist policies and a systemic collapse. We agreed to form a philosophical/political association whose purpose would be to take the world out of the hands of that oligarchy.

We took the approach that the underlying axioms of twentieth century thought in science (Newtonian, Euclidian); literature, art and music (various types of existentialism and fascism); economics (all of it exclusively British imperialism), psychology and philosophy, and academia generally. were beyond bad. They represented an attack against classic humanist thought, against the most beautiful accomplishments of our civilization.http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=6834

In 1973 Chaitkin was a candidate for Mayor of New York City

Mayor of New York City

The Mayor of the City of New York is head of the executive branch of New York City's government. The mayor's office administers all city services, public property, police and fire protection, most public agencies, and enforces all city and state laws within New York City.The budget overseen by the...

, representing the National Caucus of Labor Committees

National Caucus of Labor Committees

The National Caucus of Labor Committees is a political cadre organization in the United States founded and controlled by political activist Lyndon LaRouche, who has sometimes described it as a "philosophical association"....

. He also ran for Governor of New York

Governor of New York

The Governor of the State of New York is the chief executive of the State of New York. The governor is the head of the executive branch of New York's state government and the commander-in-chief of the state's military and naval forces. The officeholder is afforded the courtesy title of His/Her...

 in 1974, and for Pennsylvania's 2nd congressional district

Pennsylvania's 2nd congressional district

Pennsylvania's second district includes predominantly African American sections of the city of Philadelphia-West Philadelphia, North Philadelphia, and Northwest Philadelphia in addition to Cheltenham Township in Montgomery County...

 in 1978.

During the early 1970s Chaitkin was repeatedly cited for disrupting meetings. Chaitkin was among ten NCLC members arrested for participating in a melee at a Newark city council meeting. The group was asserting, among other things, that two local political figures, activist and poet/playwright Imamu Imir Baraka

Amiri Baraka

Amiri Baraka , formerly known as LeRoi Jones, is an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays, and music criticism...

 (also known as LeRoi Jones) and Anthony Imperiale were tools of the CIA. Due to his heckling, Chaitkin was forcibly ejected from a press conference held by a competing candidate for U.S. Senate, Ramsey Clark

Ramsey Clark

William Ramsey Clark is an American lawyer, activist and former public official. He worked for the U.S. Department of Justice, which included service as United States Attorney General from 1967 to 1969, under President Lyndon B. Johnson...

, on October 18, 1973. Chaitkin was arrested for disorderly conduct and criminal trespass on April 21, 1975, for trying to sneak into a conference of mayors posing as an accredited journalist.

He was quoted in an organization publication as saying "we intend to disrupt the campaigns of our major opponents." He was quoted in the movement's New Solidarity speaking about "Operation Mop Up", saying "many CPers [Communist Party members] have been sent to hospital after jumping Labor Committee members in the CP's own meetings."

During the 1990s, Chaitkin helped to lead a campaign that called for the removal of the statue of Albert Pike

Albert Pike

Albert Pike was an attorney, Confederate officer, writer, and Freemason. Pike is the only Confederate military officer or figure to be honored with an outdoor statue in Washington, D.C...

 from federal property in Judiciary Square

Judiciary Square

Judiciary Square is a neighborhood in Northwest Washington, D.C., the vast majority of which is occupied by various federal and municipal courthouses and office buildings...

, located in Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

 Chaitkin charged that Pike, a leader of the Scottish rite

Scottish Rite

The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry , commonly known as simply the Scottish Rite, is one of several Rites of the worldwide fraternity known as Freemasonry...

 of Freemasonry

Freemasonry

Freemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around six million, including approximately 150,000 under the jurisdictions of the Grand Lodge...

 and author of Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry

Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry

Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, or simply Morals and Dogma, is a book of esoteric philosophy published by the Supreme Council, Thirty Third Degree, of the Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction of the United States. It was compiled by Albert Pike, was first...

, was an important founder of the Ku Klux Klan

Ku Klux Klan

Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...

. Chaitkin, along with the Rev. James Bevel

James Bevel

James L. Bevel was an American minister and leader of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement who, as the Director of Direct Action and Director of Nonviolent Education of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference initiated, strategized, directed, and developed SCLC's three major successes of the era:...

, participated in weekly non-violent protests at the site of the statue throughout the 1990s, and was arrested in November 1992 by Federal Park Police for "statue climbing." According to the Citizens Electoral Council

Citizens Electoral Council

The Citizens Electoral Council of Australia is a minor nationalist political party in Australia affiliated with the international LaRouche Movement, led by American political activist and conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche. It reported having 549 members in 2007...

 they "beat the trumped-up charges," while according to the Washington Post both were found guilty of a misdemeanor and sentenced to one week in jail.

Chaitkin ushered in the LaRouche movement's campaign against the health care reform proposal of U.S. President Barack Obama

Barack Obama

Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...

. At an open panel session that included Ezekiel Emanuel held June 10, 2009, Chaitkin said:

President Obama has put in place a reform apparatus reviving the euthanasia of Hitler Germany in 1939, that began the genocide there. ... Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel and other avowed cost-cutters on this panel also lead a propaganda movement for euthanasia... They shape public opinion and the medical profession to accept a death culture... to let physicians help kill patients whose medical care is now rapidly being withdrawn in the universal health-care disaster.

In reporting the incident, journalist Max Blumenthal

Max Blumenthal

Max Blumenthal is an American author, journalist, and blogger. A senior writer for The Daily Beast, he is the author of the New York Times bestselling book Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party....

 described it as "the opening volley of an orchestrated propaganda campaign designed to link [Emanuel] and the White House’s health-care reform proposals to the T-4 mass euthanasia program of Adolph [sic] Hitler." See also Views of Lyndon LaRouche#Health care policy.

Books, articles, and pamphlets

Chaitkin authored Treason in America– from Aaron Burr to Averell Harriman. The basic premise of the book is that the American Revolution

American Revolution

The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...

 was not successfully concluded, because a significant Tory

Loyalist (American Revolution)

Loyalists were American colonists who remained loyal to the Kingdom of Great Britain during the American Revolutionary War. At the time they were often called Tories, Royalists, or King's Men. They were opposed by the Patriots, those who supported the revolution...

 faction has persisted in US politics which is philosophically opposed to the ideas of the Revolution, and has sought to undermine them. According to Chaitkin, this faction has included Wall Street

Wall Street

Wall Street refers to the financial district of New York City, named after and centered on the eight-block-long street running from Broadway to South Street on the East River in Lower Manhattan. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, or...

 financiers, Boston Brahmin

Boston Brahmin

Boston Brahmins are wealthy Yankee families characterized by a highly discreet and inconspicuous life style. Based in and around Boston, they form an integral part of the historic core of the East Coast establishment...

s, and Confederate

Confederate States of America

The Confederate States of America was a government set up from 1861 to 1865 by 11 Southern slave states of the United States of America that had declared their secession from the U.S...

 secessionists. Chaitkin describes the book as "a 600-page history of the struggle between the American nationalists and the tory-British-racist-imperialist faction from the Revolution to the Harriman-Dulles years."http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=6834

With Webster Tarpley, Chaitkin co-authored The Unauthorized Biography of George Bush, which claimed to expose the ties of Prescott Bush

Prescott Bush

Prescott Sheldon Bush was a Wall Street executive banker and a United States Senator, representing Connecticut from 1952 until January 1963. He was the father of George H. W. Bush and the grandfather of George W...

 and Averell Harriman with the Nazi Party of Germany.

• Treason in America– from Aaron Burr to Averell Harriman, Executive Intelligence Review (Most recent edition printed 1998. ISBN 978-0943235004.)
• The Unauthorized Biography of George Bush, with Webster Tarpley, Executive Intelligence Review. (Most recent edition published by Progressive Press (ISBN 978-0943235004.)
• Is Joseph Goebbels on your campus?, Lyndon LaRouche PAC, 2006.
• Why the British kill American presidents. The New Federalist, 1994.
• The bottom of Bush's closet : the queer case of Mary Sue Terry, LaRouche for Justice, 1990.
• American Prometheus: Who made the United States a great power?, Schiller Institute, 1986.
• Operation South Carolina and the career of Caleb Cushing ; How the eastern establishment ran southern secession, New Solidarity, 1983.

External links

• A brief autobiographical sketch by Chaitkin