Conservatism, the Right Wing, and the Far Right: A Guide to Archives
Much of the literature published by the right, especially the radical or extreme right, has taken the form of pamphlets, ephemera, and periodicals. Timothy G. Young defines printed ephemera as follows: "Ephemera are printed artifacts, usually less substantial than books, which, though intended for specific limited purposes or events, are kept by libraries and archives because they contain continuing research value, notably for the study of popular culture."39 Pamphlets are frequently included in definitions of printed ephemera.40 Pamphlets and ephemera, because of their temporary and often fleeting nature, can be difficult for libraries to collect as well as catalogue.41 For libraries and archives, though, the very mention of ephemera can cause shudders as it immediately conjures up difficulties: ephemera is difficult to store, catalog, and preserve.42 Ephemeral political material of whatever political stripe often does not find its way into institutional collections either because the material is discarded before it draws the attention of collectors, because it is too popular and mass-produced to merit consideration as art, or because it does not fit easily (either physically or intellectually) into the book- and manuscript-based realm of libraries.43 On occasion, politically controversial material is collected but not catalogued.44 In the late 1960s, many libraries considered pamphlets to be expendable.45 Included in this category were pamphlets of the radical right, whose controversial subject matter discouraged cataloguing. In 1970, Ned Kehde wrote, "all too often librarians categorize radical [including radical right] pamphlets with the epitaph 'ephemera'; such a pejorative provides librarians with an all too easy rationalization to disregard pamphlet material as a vital part of a library's collection, and as a result the pamphlets that are inadvertently acquired are quickly relegated to the inaccessibility of a Vertical File. This is a trend which must be reversed if the history of the present and past decade is to be properly written in the future."46 Regarding material in vertical files, "Often librarians give this part of the collection very little thought, sometimes because of lack of time, but more often because they are not interested in such material and they fail to see the values of it."47
An informal, though growing and dedicated group of individuals and organizations interested in collecting political and cultural ephemera, formed by the early 1970s.48 In the mid-1990s the University of California, Davis Library developed a streamlined method for cataloging pamphlets; as a consequence, the Library resumed collecting in the area of radical politics after a hiatus of nearly thirty years.49 In recent years there has been a growing respect for the value of printed ephemera in scholarly research.50 The attitude of disinterest no longer prevails, as is amply demonstrated by this guide. There are numerous collections of alternative, radical, and underground materials with right-wing documents. The abundance of primary source materials, however, has not been matched by scholarly attention. Social movements at odds with scholars' own political commitments are frequently neglected. Perhaps owing in part to their own antipathy toward conservatism and hostility toward the consolidation of various parts of the right in recent decades, "researchers overwhelmingly choose to study 'attractive' movements with which they sympathize."51
An example of archival research is the use of back runs of right-wing periodicals. As a way of studying marginal and alternative movements, "[s]erials are an important source of primary information about social movements, no matter what spot on the political spectrum they appear."52 Chip Berlet has noted, however, that "Insufficient scholarly attention has been devoted to alternative or 'oppositional' serials from the political right, even though a number of scholars have used these materials as primary sources for studies in several academic disciplines."53 Berlet cites the scholars who have used right wing periodicals as primary sources.54 However, the number of scholars cited by Berlet as having made use of serials from the political right is quite limited. Berlet quotes librarian James P. Danky, who writes, "Scholarly attention to America's ideological conservatives, even reactionaries, to say nothing of racists and homegrown fascists, has been scant."55 In the same vein, Christine G. Thomas writes, "A recent dissertation on 'The alternative Russian periodical press and its role in the formation of a multi-party system in Russia (1987-1996)', in reviewing the previous literature on this topic, points out how very little the publications of the alternative press have been used by Russian researchers, and states that over half the titles cited in the dissertation have never been cited in any academic work. The same neglect of these valuable sources holds true for the UK."56
Right wing periodicals are only one part of the panoply of documentary material on the right wing that is available in publicly accessible libraries and archives. Other sources of information are collections of personal and institutional papers, film and audio/video collections, etc. While no research has indicated the extent to which archives of papers and other materials (as opposed to periodicals) have been used as sources, it is likely that, as in the case of serials, the other kinds of material available in the archives have been underutilized.
Academic research is not the only kind of research for which a guide of this sort may be helpful. The book will be of use to visitors to such archives as the Political Research Associates Library, which draws "community activists researching hate crimes; labor activists investigating anti-union campaigns; students looking into anti-democratic movements and trends; researchers and writers needing to fact-check and strengthen their work; and legal professionals preparing for civil rights and civil liberties cases."57
For the most part, the entries in this guide follow, often verbatim, the online descriptions of archival collections, which sometimes are quite detailed but which are often not as complete as printed guides to individual collections, in-house finding aids, or container lists which must be consulted in person in the archives. I have supplemented, where possible, the online information with information from printed guides, online encyclopedias, other secondary literature which describes some collections, and my own research. The pertinent highlights of each listed collection are described in sufficient detail to enable the researcher to decide if the collection warrants further investigation or a personal visit. This is not to say, however, that the descriptions of each archive account for all available material on the subject held by that archive.
For each archive, the guide includes a summary description of each archive, short descriptions of the relevant contents or highlights of the collection, the physical address of the repository or contact information, and links to the online finding aids or online descriptions where more information may be obtained. The general format of the entries is as follows:
Location: This lists the name and address of the repository. In cases where the owner and the holder of the collection are two different entities, both are listed.
Description: Many of the descriptions are based on the descriptions made available online but edited for space. Digital exhibits are usually listed under the description of the collection in the institutional repository, but if it is an online exhibit pooling the resources of various institutions, it gets an entry of its own.
Reference: Under this heading, citations are given to books, articles, or blog posts which describe or mention the collection or discuss the principal subject of the collection.
“Websites with information” means any websites other than finding aids for the particular collection which have some information bearing on the collection. Very often these are a-to-z lists of all finding aids (online and sometimes offline as well) for the library or repository. These lists are worth checking from time to time to see if additional finding aids related to a subject of interest have been uploaded or if existing ones have been updated.
Finding aids: The url's (web links) for the collection are given here. These change frequently. If a link is dead, it is always worth trying the Wayback Machine (https://archive.org/web/web.php). Some collections have a finding aid provided by the repository as well as a finding aid to the microfilm edition of the collection. In cases where these finding aids differ significantly, each finding aid is given a separate entry. A number of libraries or consortia make finding aids available in both html and pdf formats. I have noted more than one version of a finding aid where found.
References to persons, organizations, and subjects in the archival descriptions are compiled in a cumulative index at the end of the guide.
Helpful open-access web resources for locating archival collections have included the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC) (search form at http://www.loc.gov/coll/nucmc/oclcsearch.html), National Register of Archives (NRA) (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/nra/default.asp), A2A (http://www.nat
ionalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/), UK Archives Hub (http://archiveshub.ac.uk), Il Sistema Informativo Unificato per le Soprintendenze Archivistiche (SIUSA) (http://siusa.archivi.beniculturali.it/cgi-bin/pagina.pl), SAN (Sistema Archivistico Nazionale) (http://www.san.beniculturali.it/web/san/home), Il Censimento delle fonti per la storia della Repubblica Sociale Italiana (http://www.fondazioneisec.it/rsi/), Archivi del Novecento (http://catalogo.archividelnovecento.it/ISRT.htm), ArchiveGrid (http://beta.worldcat.org/archivegrid/), WorldCat (http://ww
w.worldcat.org), OAIster (http://oaister.worldcat.org), the Social Networks and Archival Context (http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/xtf/search), catalogue des archives et manuscrits Calames (http://www.calames.a
bes.fr/pub/), CCFr: Catalogue Collectif de France (http://ccfr.bnf.fr/portailccfr/jsp/public/index.jsp), and Archives Portal Europe (http://www.archivesportaleurope.net/web/guest). See also Archival Search Engines, https://web.archive.org/web/20110309092414/http://www.tulane.edu/~lmiller/ArchivesResources.html. A list by Ernie Lazar was also useful: Archives and Private Papers Pertaining to Conservative and Extreme Right Movements in the United States rev. 08/28/16 (https://sites.google.com/site/ernie124102/archives). There is a helpful list of Ku Klux Klan archives in Roland G. Fryer, Jr., and Steven D. Levitt, "Hatred and Profits: Getting under the Hood of the Ku Klux Klan," The Quarterly Journal of Economics (2012) 127 (4): 1883-1925 doi:10.10
93/qje/qjs028, http://qje.oxfordjournals.org/content/127/4/1883.abstract, full text at http://www.nber.or
g/papers/w13417.pdf. Archives and repositories of Civil Rights Movement papers are listed at "Southern Freedom Movement Document, Oral History & Interview Archives," http://www.crmvet.org/docs/papers.html. With respect to commercial databases, National Inventory of Documentary Sources in the United States (NIDS) (ProQuest UMI's microfiche series) lists a number of finding aids. Archive Finder (ProQuest) integrates NUCMC and NIDS. Printed works include Philip Hamer's A Guide to Archives and Manuscripts in the United States (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1961) and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission's (NHPRC) Directory of Archives and Manuscript Repositories (Phoenix: Oryx, 1988). Especially helpful for the index was Ernie Lazar, "Alpha List of My FOIA Requests," https://sites.google.com/site/ernie124102/foia.
Acknowledgment is gratefully made to the tireless archivists and librarians who prepared the finding aids on which this guide is principally based, and whose collective energies--of incalculable value--I have been fortunate enough to harness. Much of the language in the guide's descriptions is taken or paraphrased from those finding aids. I also wish to thank Matthew Feldman for his encouragement. For specific information, I wish to thank Jorge Dagnino, Bernard Dew, Matthew Feldman, Luca Gallesi, Svetlana Nedeljkov, the Arbetarrörelsens arkiv och bibliotek (Lars Gogman), George Mason University Libraries (Rebecca Bramlett), Handskrifts- och musikenheten / Uppsala universitetsbibliotek (Kia Hedell), Riksarkivet Landsarkivet i Göteborg (Per Forsberg), the Region- och Stadsarkivet Göteborg med Folkrörelsernas arkiv (Paul Epäilys), Sigtunastiftelsens klipparkiv (Anna-Karin Sandell), Göteborgs universitetsbibliotek (Anders Larsson), and the University of Akron Library (John Ball). All errors and omissions, of course, remain entirely my own.
The author would welcome any additions or corrections to this guide.
1 Richard M. Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences. Expanded Edition (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2013), pp. 158-159.
2 T. S. Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1921), http://www.bartleby.com/200/sw4.html.
3 James Baldwin, "The White Man's Guilt," Ebony 20.10 (Aug. 1965): 47.
4 Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (New York: Penguin Books, 1995), p. 509.
5 Jean-Baptiste Michel, Yuan Kui Shen, Aviva Presser Aiden, Adrian Veres, Matthew K. Gray, The Google Books Team, Joseph P. Pickett, Dale Hoiberg, Dan Clancy, Peter Norvig, Jon Orwant, Steven Pinker, Martin A. Nowak, and Erez Lieberman Aiden, “Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books,” Science 331 (14 Jan. 2011): 176-182 (179), http://www.uvm.edu/~cmplxsys/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/reading-group/pdfs/2011/michel2011a.pdf
6 Randall C. Jimerson, Archives Power: Memory, Accountability, and Social Justice, http://faculty.wwu.edu/jimerson/ArchivesPower-Introduction.htm
7 Filippo de Vivo, Andrea Guidi, and Alessandro Silvestri, "Archival Transformations in Early Modern European History," European History Quarterly 46.3 (2016): 421-434, http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0265691416648257.
8 de Vivo et al.; Gregory Leazer, "The Contribution of Archival Studies to the i-School Movement?" [abstract, 2015], http://aer i2015.umd.edu/paper-abstracts/.
9 Antoinette Burton, "Introduction," Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History, ed. Antoinette Burton (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), p. 2.
10 Matt Cohen, "Archives and the Spirit of American Literary History," American Literary History 29.2 (Summer 2017): 438-447.
11 Michael E. Stevens, "The Historian and Archival Finding Aids," Georgia Archive 5.1, Article 7 (1977), http://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/georgia_archive/vol5/iss1/7.
12 Jennifer Rutner and Roger C. Schonfeld, Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Historians: Final Report from ITHAKA S+R (December 10, 2012), p. 40, http://www.sr.ithaka.org/research-publications/supporting-changing-research-practices-historians.
13 Rutner and Schonfeld, p. 40.
14 Helen R. Tibbo and Lokman I. Meho, “Finding finding Aids on the World Wide Web,” American Archivist 64.1 (2001): 61-77, available as a download at http://eprints.rclis.org/8187/.
15 Eric Willey, "Doc to PDF and HTML," http://practicaltechnologyforarchives.org/issue3_willey/.
16 Cassandra A. Schmitt, "Collection Level Records for Hidden Collections: Our Responsibility to Users," The Primary Source: The Society of Mississippi Archivists 31.1 (2012), http://msarchivists.org/theprimarysource/psvol31no1/psvol31no1_schmitt.html.
17 "Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives," http://www.clir.org/fellowships/hiddencollections.
18 "Students and Archives," http://doingarchivalresearch.wordpress.com/2013/09/06/students-and-archives/.
19 For a brief history of archival descriptive standards since the late 1960s, see Christopher J. Prom, "Using Web Analytics to Improve Online Access to Archival Resources," The American Archivist, Vol. 74 (Spring/Summer 2011), pp. 158-184.
20 Meghan Lyon, "Case Study: Clean Data, Cool Project," 04.14.14, http://icantiemyownshoes.wordpress.com/2014/04/14/case-study-clean-data-cool-project/
21 http://beta.discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk.
22 http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/finding_aids.html.
23 The abortion issue seems to have risen to political prominence about 1972. In that year the ANES questionnaire first addressed the question of voter attitudes toward abortion. See American National Election Studies 1972 Time Series Study, http://www.electionstudies.org/studypages/1972prepost/1972prepost.htm. Right-wing challenges to the administrative state as unconstitutional and un-American began with the American Liberty League with its anti-New Deal rhetoric. Following in the wake of the ALL are such movements as the John Birch Society of the 1950s, Barry Goldwater Republicanism of the1960s, the Posse Comitatus movement of the 1970s and 1980s, the militia movement of the 1990s, the Patriot movement, and the Tea Party movement of more recent times. (Jared A. Goldstein, "The American Liberty League and the rise of constitutional nationalism," 86 Temp. L. Rev. 287-330 (2014), http://sites.temple.edu/lawreview/article/the-american-liberty-league-and-the-rise-of-constitutional-nationalism/ and http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?ab stract_id=2126811.
24 Alex Schmid, Political terrorism: A research guide to the concepts, theories, databases and literature. With a bibliography by the author and a world directory of "terrorist" organizations by A. J. Jongman (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1983). See also "Appendix 2.1: 250-plus Academic, Governmental and Intergovernmental Definitions of Terrorism," compiled by Joseph J. Easson and Alex P. Schmid, in Handbook of Terrorism Research, edited by Alex P. Schmid (London and New York, Routledge [2011]), pp. 99-157.
25 Kathleen M. Blee and Kimberly Creasap, "Conservative and Right-Wing Movements," Annual Review of Sociology, 2010.36: 269-86, https://www.academia.edu/4195693/Conservative_and_Right-Wing_Movements.
26 Michael Whine, "The Radical Right in Europe," July 26, 2012, http://jcpa.org/article/the-radical-right-in-europe/.
27 Scott Appelrouth, "The Paranoid Style Revisited: Pseudo-Conservatism in the 21st Century," Journal of Historical Sociology (2015).
28 Iván Zoltan Dénes, "The Political Role of Hungary's Nineteenth-Century Conservatives and How They Saw Themselves," The Historical Journal 26.4 (Dec. 1983): 845-865 (845), http://www.ae-info.org/attach/User/Dénes_Iván/Highlight/denes_ivan_the_political_role.pdf.
29 Walter D. Wagoner, "From the Right - The Wrong Gospel," Theology Today 19.1 (Apr. 1962): 16-26 (17-18).
30 Kirkpatrick Sale, Power Shift: The Rise of the Southern Rim and its Challenge to the Eastern Establishment (New York: Random House, 1975), as quoted in Matthew Continetti, "Crisis of the Conservative Intellectual," Washington Free Beacon (October 21, 2016), http://freebeacon.com/columns/crisis-conservative-intellectual/
31 Continetti, op. cit. The argument has also been made, however, that "modern liberalism is a largely negative project, one that pushes back against the constraining forms of traditional life to room for the individual to live more freely." (R. R. Reno, "Eliot and Liberalism," First Things, First Thoughts Blog, 4 January 2016, https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2016/01/eliot-and-liberalism).
32 Tanya Zanish-Belcher and Kären M. Mason, "Raising the Archival Consciousness: How Women's Archives Challenge Traditional Approaches to Collecting and Use, Or, What's in a Name?" Library Trends 56.2 (Fall 2007): 344-359 (348).
33 John Earl Haynes, "Catholic Church and Communism," 6 Jun 2006, H-Net Discussion Networks, http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-hoac&month=0606&week=a&msg=Nqb8CjtdcVZfuOtZrQUPrQ&user=&pw=.
34 "Tanya M. Melich Papers, (APAP-079), 1956-2009," http://library.albany.edu/speccoll/findaids/eresources/findingaids/apap079.html. See also National Organization for Women. Records, 1959-2002 (bulk 1966-1998), MC 496; M-152, http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~sch00300.
35 Nicole Longpré, "Shame, Memory, and the Politics of the Archive," JHIBlog, May 4, 2016, https://jhiblog.org/2016/05/04/shame-memory-and-the-politics-of-the-archive/.
36 "The Paul O. Peters Collection," http://www.wooster.edu/academics/libraries/collections/Collections/peters.
37 Andrew Flinn, "Chapter 6. Other Ways of Thinking, Other Ways of Being. Documenting the Margins and the Transitory: What to Preserve, How to Collect," in What are Archives? Cultural and Theoretical Perspectives: A Reader, edited by Louise Craven ([Aldershot, Hampshire, England, and Burlington, VT] Ashgate [2008]), p. 117.
38 Christine G. Thomas, "The alternative Russian press, 1987-2000: a British Library Collection," Newspapers in Central and Eastern Europe / Zeitungen in Mittel- und Osteuropa: Papers presented at an IFLA conference held in Berlin, August 2003, edited by Hartmut Walravens in cooperation with Marieluise Schilling (München, 2005), pp. 79-86, http://webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/ebook/aw/2003/ifla/vortraege/iv /ifla69/papers/600e-Thomas.pdf.
39 Timothy G. Young, "Evidence: Toward a Library Definition of Ephemera," RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts and Cultural Heritage 4 (2003): 21, as quoted in Roxanne Shirazi, "Processing Special Collections: Blurring Boundaries, Backlogs and Intra-Institutional Cooperation, or, What Do We Do with All This Stuff?" http://practicum2010shirazi.wordpress.com/analysis-evaluation/.
40 Shirazi, op. cit.
41 "Pamphlets and ephemera," http://www.esrc.ac.uk/research/british-library/pamphlets-ephemera.aspx.
42 Shirazi, op. cit.
43 http://oregondigital.org/sets/african-ephemera.
44 Other Radical Materials, Baylor Collections of Political Materials, Poage Legislative Library, Baylor University, One Bear Place #97153, Waco, TX 76798-7153, http://www.baylor.edu/lib/poage/extremist/index.php?id=59899, http://www.baylor.edu/lib/poage/extremist/index.php?id=66540.
45 Political and Social Activism Pamphlet (PSAP) Collection, http://www.clir.org/hiddencollections/registry/hc.0505.
46 Ned Kehde, "The American Right and Pamphleteering: Recommendations for a Radical Pamphlet Library," American Libraries, Vol. 1, No. 10 (Nov. 1970), pp. 965-967 (p. 965).
47 Tom Hodgson and Andrew Garoogian, "Special Collections in College Libraries: The Vertical File," Reference Services Review, 12/1981; 9(3):77-84. DOI:10.1108/eb048722, abstract at http://www.researchgate.net/publication/244023022_Special_Collections_in_College_Libraries_The_Vertical_File.
48 Richard Akeroyd and Russell Benedict (eds.), "A Directory of Ephemera Collections in a National Underground Network," Wilson Library Bulletin 48.3 (November 1973): 236-54; description at http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ086449.
49 http://blogs.lib.ucdavis.edu/hss/2011/02/14/walter-goldwater-radical-pamphlet-collection/.
50 Shirazi, op. cit.
51 Marc Edelman, “Social Movements: Changing Paradigms and Forms of Politics,” Annual Review of Anthropology 30 (2001): 285-317 (302), as cited in Kaja Tretjak, “Opportunity and Danger: Why Studies of the Right are Crucial for U.S. Anthropology and Beyond,” North American Dialogue 16.2 (2013): 60-68 (60), https://www.academia.edu/4997661/Opportunity_and_Danger_Why_Studies_of_the_Right_ar e_Crucial_for_U.S._Anthropology_and_Beyond.
52 Chip Berlet, "The Write Stuff: U.S. Serial Print Culture from Conservatives out to Neo-Nazis," Library Trends 56.3 (Winter 2008): 570-600 (591), http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.178.7329&rep=rep1&type=pdf and http://www.thefreelibrary.co m/The+write+stuff%3a+U.S.+serial+print+culture+from+conservatives+out+to...-a0175525496 and http://www.academia.edu/8171 02/The_Write_Stuff_US_Serial_Print_Culture_from_Conservatives_out_to_Neonazis.
53 Berlet, op. cit. at 570.
54 Berlet, op. cit. at 591-592; see also "Scholars Using Right-Wing Serials as Primary Sources," http://www.socialmovementstudy.net/rightwatch/serials/scholars.html and http://www.publiceye.org/research/directories/serials/scholars.html.