Fringe Watch has posted "John Sharpe's Legion of St. Louis." This is the second Fringe Watch post about Neo-Conned series of anti-war books, published by John Sharpe (through his IHS Press/Light in the Darkness affiliate). It seems that Sharpe has ties to anti-Semitic, anti-American extremist politics. It is disconcerting therefore, to find that some members of the anarcho-capitalist contingent at LewRockwell.com ("anti-state, anti-war, pro-market") have contributed to and touted the Neo-Conned books (see here, here, and here). They have let their opposition to the present war blind them to the agenda that animates the Neo-Conned books. Here, with permission, is "John Sharpe's Legion of St. Louis":
John Sharpe's Legion of St. Louis
In my last entry I revealed the disturbing extremist connections of John Sharpe's IHS Press, publisher of two anti-war books: Neo-Conned and Neo-Conned Again!. If it is argued that we "can't shoot the messenger" it is also true that we needn't believe the messenger when he cites dubious authorities.
This is not about Mr. Sharpe's political past. It is about his political present. And while otherwise respectable individuals (deceived by Mr. Sharpe) have contributed to IHS Press volumes, the fact remains that neo-fascist propagandists, with whom Sharpe collaborates, have adopted an "entryist" Marxist-style means of infiltrating conservative circles to their own advantage – and the obvious disadvantage of their unwitting allies. For now, we'll concentrate on the hard evidence of John Sharpe as a far-right mole.
Sharpe heads up the Legion of St. Louis (LSL), though his name no longer appears on the site. But it can be verified from other sources, such as this article published in 2002. On the LSL booklist page we find the following for sale:
1) Henry Ford's International Jew, a pseudo-historical study in anti-Semitism used by Hitler and other extremists to justify their conspiratorial view of Jews and, ergo, their desire to eliminate them.
2) The New Unhappy Lords, the "Mein Kampf" of British neo-fascism by A. K. Chesterton. Chesterton founded the racialist National Front, which was the direct predecessor of groups involved in the establishment of the Legion of St. Louis and IHS Press.
3) Strange Gods of Judaism by the conspiracy-obsessed Michael A. Hoffman II. Mr. Hoffman is a veteran of American neo-nazism and a promoter of Holocaust revisionism. For a sampling of Hoffman's rhetoric, see "The White Separatist FAQ."
While John Sharpe's proclivities have yet to receive widespread coverage, they are documented by Searchlight magazine ("Faith-based fascists bridging the waters") – a UK liberal source, as well as the conservative Irish Catholic journal The Brandsma Review.
If that's not enough, consider the absurdities posted by Mr. Sharpe in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks (the LSL news page). He sounds more like Michael Moore than an advocate of traditional conservatism. There is the assertion that "America wasn't attacked. America isn't the World Trade Center, nor is it the Pentagon. At least those things don't represent our America, nor should they for our readers." Sharpe made the presumptuous claims early on that Bin Ladin had nothing to do with the attacks – a point that not even al Qaeda debates now. If you're Mr. Sharpe, it seems anything's better than the mainstream media.... Unfortunately, as with his Neo-Conned series, it's a false alternative – an ideological equivalent of "out of the frying pan and into the fire."
