imported>Jevansen: Moving from Category:People from Adelaide to Category:Activists from Adelaide using Cat-a-lot

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Moving from Category:People from Adelaide to Category:Activists from Adelaide using Cat-a-lot

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{{short description|Australian activist}}
{{For|the American football player|Eric Butler (American football)}}
{{more citations needed|date=April 2012}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2015}}
{{Use Australian English|date=August 2015}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Eric Butler
| image =
| alt =
| caption =
| birth_name =
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1916|05|07|df=y}}
| birth_place = Benalla, Victoria, Australia
| death_date = {{Death date and age|2006|06|07|1916|05|07|df=y}}
| death_place = Victoria, Australia
| nationality = Australian
| other_names =
| occupation = Political activist and journalist
| years_active =
| known_for = Founder of the Australian League of Rights
| notable_works =
}}
'''Eric Dudley Butler''' (7 May 1916 – 7 June 2006) was an Australian political activist and journalist, who in 1946 founded the [[Far-right politics|far-right]] [[Australian League of Rights]], which he led until 1992. He was known as a staunch anti-communist and virulent anti-Semite. He was a member of the [[John Birch Society]], the organization co-founded by [[Fred C. Koch]], father of the billionaire [[Koch Brothers]].

==Background and early career==
Butler was born in the [[Victoria (Australia)|Victoria]]n country town of [[Benalla]], although he lived most of his life near [[Melbourne]]. In the 1930s he became a follower of the British economist [[C. H. Douglas]] and his [[Social Credit]] theories. From 1938 Butler wrote for the Australian Social Credit newspaper ''New Times''.

Butler served in the [[Australian Army]] during [[World War II]]. According to one of his obituarists: "He served as a gun sergeant for twenty months without leave in the Torres Straits, taught troops as an instructor at Canungra Jungle Training School for six months, transferred to the Officers Training School at Seymour, Victoria, and was honourably discharged at the end of the Pacific phase of the war."<ref name="Nigel Jackson, Lion for Freedom">Nigel Jackson, ''Lion for Freedom''</ref>

==Political activities and publishing career==
By the time Butler left the army, his political activities were under surveillance by Australian security authorities, as documents in the [[Australian archives]] indicate.{{citation needed|date=October 2019}} In July 1940 the Victorian publicity censor, Crayton Burns (father of [[Creighton Burns]], a later editor of ''[[The Age]]''), wrote: "I have taken steps to warn the provincial and country press that the activities of this gentleman and his assistants are being closely watched by the authorities. There is no doubt that the general trend of their propaganda is damaging to the financial side of the war effort."{{citation needed|date=October 2019}}

In December 1941, the Commonwealth's chief publicity censor, E.G. Bonney, banned a series of Butler's ''New Times'' articles, one of which described Soviet Russia as "a Jewish slave state ... controlled by international Jewish financiers in New York."<ref>All these quotations are from David Greason, ''Australia-Israel Review'', 24 April 1997 (available online [http://www.aijac.org.au/review/1997/226/tzad226.html here] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060825045808/http://www.aijac.org.au/review/1997/226/tzad226.html |date=25 August 2006 }})</ref>

In 1945, Attorney-General, Dr [[H.V. Evatt]], began an inquiry into Butler's activities. He told Parliament: "In the opinion of the Director-General of Security, Butler has written articles constituting an attempt to create adverse public reaction to war loan campaigns and to the war effort generally."<ref>K.D. Gott (1965), ''Voices of Hate. A Study of the Australian League of Rights and its Director, Eric D. Butler'', Dissent Publishing Association, Melbourne, page 18</ref> Butler was not charged.

In 1946 Butler published ''The International Jew'', in which he claimed that [[Winston Churchill]], [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] and [[John Curtin]] were covert communists, that [[Antisemitic conspiracy theories|the Russian Revolution was a Jewish plot]] and that [[Holocaust denial|the Nazi Holocaust was a myth.]] Butler's eulogist [[Nigel Jackson]] described this book as "an essay built around an analysis of the controversial [[Protocols of the Elders of Zion]]. In it Butler challenged the [[Antisemitic canard|Jewish role in international finance and its connections with communism]]. Of all Butler's publications, this was perhaps the one which roused the greatest fury." This was hardly surprising in the wake of the Nazi Holocaust, particularly since the Protocols were well known in 1947 to be a forgery.<ref name="Nigel Jackson, Lion for Freedom"/>

Butler founded the South Australian League of Rights in 1946, centred on the anti-[[bank nationalisation]] campaign, and subsequently other state branches were formed, before the national Australian League of Rights was established in 1960. The League was never registered as a political party. Butler served as the League's National Director until his retirement in 1992. Although Butler ran for the [[Australian House of Representatives]] (as an independent) in 1951, the League was not intended to be a political party. Rather it was a lobby group and "grass roots" organisation, promoting Butler's mix of anti-communist, social credit, monarchist and pro-British ideas.

Besides the ''New Times'', the League's many publications included the weekly ''On Target'' and the monthly ''Intelligence Survey''. In 1949 Butler began contributing articles on national and international affairs to the Melbourne morning newspaper ''[[The Argus (Australia)|The Argus]]'', then a conservative paper, but when it was revealed that the articles were based on a League of Rights study course, the series was cancelled.<ref name="Nigel Jackson, Lion for Freedom"/>

In the 1960s, the League garnered much unfavorable publicity when it was revealed that members were also participating in the [[Liberal Party of Australia|Liberal]] and Country Parties. The [[National Party of Australia|Country Party]] was a mainstream conservative rural party (now the [[National Party of Australia]]). A close associate of Butler's, [[Arthur Chresby]], was elected to Federal Parliament in Queensland as a Liberal. This tactic achieved some success elsewhere, particularly in areas where small farmers were under economic pressure, such as [[Gippsland]], the [[Riverina]], the [[Darling Downs]], the [[Yorke Peninsula]] and the [[Wheatbelt (Western Australia)|Western Australian wheatbelt]]. The League pamphlet ''They Want Your Land'' alleged that "[[Jews|international financiers]]" were trying to force Australian farmers off their land by manipulating commodity prices. Successive Country Party and National Party leaders warned against League infiltration and League-controlled branches were occasionally disaffiliated. Queensland Nationals Senator [[Ron Boswell]] was particularly outspoken in attacking League infiltration of the Queensland Nationals.

A Liberal federal MP, [[James Killen]], was identified as a League supporter in the 1960s, and traveled to Europe with Butler in 1962, but later severed his connections with the League. In the 1960s and 1970s, Butler devoted much time to promoting the anti-communist philosophy of white minority regimes in [[Southern Africa]].<ref name="Alor">''The Rhodesian Inspiration''. Melbourne: Australian League of Rights, Volume 1 Issue 30 April 1976.</ref> He traveled on multiple occasions to [[Rhodesia]] (now [[Zimbabwe]]) and [[South Africa]], then governed under [[apartheid]]. Butler also served as a Far East correspondent for ''American Opinion'', a magazine of the [[John Birch Society]].

In July 1972 Butler achieved some public attention when he debated [[Max Teichmann]], senior lecturer in politics at [[Monash University]], on the [[Australian Broadcasting Corporation]]'s ''Monday Conference'' program. Teichmann confronted Butler with his many explicit anti-Semitic statements from the 1930s and 1940s and challenged him to disavow them, a challenge which Butler evaded. The program highlighted the issue of League infiltration of the Country Party in the period before the December 1972 federal election, at which the long-serving conservative government was defeated.

The League formed a number of front organisations, including the [[Institute of Economic Democracy]] and [[Ladies in Line Against Communism]] (LILAC). In the 1990s, the League lost its position as the leading [[far-right politics in Australia|extreme right political organisation in Australia]]. Butler complained that [[Pauline Hanson]] and her [[One Nation Party]] had stolen his policies. It also lost support to the [[Citizens Electoral Council]], which had been a League front, but which was taken over by followers of the American politician [[Lyndon LaRouche]], and developed a much higher public profile than the League itself.

==Personal life==
Butler lived most of his life in rural Victoria, in his later years on a farm at [[Panton Hill, Victoria|Panton Hill]], where his home was used as a meeting place for League and other extreme right activists. In the 1950s he was a member of the Eltham Shire Council for some years and served as Shire President. He retired as League Director in 1992, handing control of the organisation to David Thompson, but remained politically active until shortly before his death. In 1999 he chaired an address by the [[Holocaust denial|Holocaust denier]] [[David Irving]].{{citation needed|date=October 2019}}

Butler died in Victoria in 2006, aged 90.

==See also==
* [[Australian League of Rights]]
* [[Far-right politics in Australia]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20080825020050/http://www.jcu.edu.au/aff/history/articles/greason.htm Essay on League from Electronic Journal of Australian and New Zealand History, 1997].
*[https://archive.today/20060623094722/http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19446899-5001561,00.html Fascist fruitcake held surprising political sway], ''[[The Australian]]'', 13 June 2006
{{Social Credit}}

{{Historical revisionism}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Butler, Eric}}
[[Category:1916 births]]
[[Category:2006 deaths]]
[[Category:Victoria (state) politicians]]
[[Category:Australian Army soldiers]]
[[Category:Australian Army personnel of World War II]]
[[Category:Activists from Adelaide]]
[[Category:Australian social crediters]]
[[Category:Australian political journalists]]
[[Category:Australian fascists]]
[[Category:Australian white nationalists]]
[[Category:Australian Holocaust deniers]]
[[Category:Christian fascists]]
[[Category:John Birch Society members]]

Eric Butler - Revision history

imported>Jevansen: Moving from Category:People from Adelaide to Category:Activists from Adelaide using Cat-a-lot