I feel like Ben Carson's special brand of dimwitted paranoia is having a moment, and so I thought it would be useful to draw attention to this article. Frankly, while his recent comments about, say, Muslims or cluelessness about gravity or gun rights are more than a bit groan-inducing, those don't actually plumb his depths. Of course, I'm sure some of us remember how the good doctor plagiarized both Skousen and the esteemed SocialismSucks.net in his 2012 book - so this isn't necessarily "new news" to the most engaged, but it will be news to some people, I'm sure.
Oh, and as a bonus: Ben Carson speaking to the National Organization for Marriage, explaining the Neo-Marxist plot to destroy our unity by destroying our Judeo-Christian values and families through the power of gay marriage. He even name-drops Skousen!
Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon and political novice near the top of the GOP presidential polls, does not spend much time and energy promoting specific policy stances. He has soared to a statistical tie with Donald Trump by emphasizing his outsider status and calling to revive America, deploying general right-wing rhetoric that resonates with social conservatives. At the recent Republican debate, he said, "The thing that is probably most important is having a brain." But he has provided one important clue as to his fundamental political worldview, by repeatedly endorsing a far-right conspiracy theorist named W. Cleon Skousen, who was characterized in 2007 by the conservative National Review as an "all-around nutjob." Skousen came to prominence in the 1950s as a virulent anti-Communist crusader; he later claimed that a global cabal of bankers controlled the world from behind the scenes, and he once wrote a book that referred to the "blessings of slavery."
Carson swears by Skousen, who died in 2006. In a July 2014 interview, Carson contended that Marxist forces had been using liberals and the mainstream media to undermine the United States. His source: Skousen. "There is a book called The Naked Communist," he said. "It was written in 1958. Cleon Skousen lays out the whole agenda, including the importance of getting people into important positions in the mainstream media so they can help drive the agenda. Well, that's what's going on now." Four months later, while being interviewed by Megyn Kelly on Fox News, Carson denounced unnamed Marxists who were presently seeking to destroy American society: "There was a guy who was a former CIA agent by the name of Cleon Skousen who wrote a book in 1958 called The Naked Communist, and it laid out the whole agenda. You would think by reading it that it was written last year—showing what they're trying to do to American families, what they're trying to do to our Judeo-Christian faith, what they're doing to morality." (Skousen had been an FBI employee—not a CIA officer—and mainly engaged in administrative and clerical duties; later he was a professor at Brigham Young University and police chief of Salt Lake City.) And the most recent edition of this Skousen book boasts Carson's endorsement on the front cover: "The Naked Communist lays out the whole progressive plan. It is unbelievable how fast it has been achieved."
Carson's repeated and full-throated endorsements of Skousen—which tend to be coupled with dire warnings about the covert scheming of Marxists and Saul Alinsky—suggest that Carson shares Skousen's belief that the civil rights movement, acceptance of homosexuality, the rise of abstract art and modernism, and the advent of Medicare, Social Security, and other safety-net programs have all been part of a clandestine plot waged by Communists or other dark forces to destroy the United States. As Carson points out, this nefarious plotting is still in the works today.
Carson's faith in Skousen is even more unsettling because Skousen was far more than a rabid anti-commie crusader and Red-baiter. He was a complete crank. He maintained that the Founding Fathers were direct descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel and contended that a global cabal of bankers controlled the world.
In a 1962 book, Skousen decried homosexuality and insisted, "Every boy should know that masturbation may be the first step to homosexuality." In his 1970 book, The Naked Capitalist, Skousen disclosed another worldwide conspiracy and maintained that a sinister "secret society of the London-Wall Street axis"—which included the Council on Foreign Relations—controlled the planet and orchestrated global events, financing revolutions and collaborating with "dictatorial forces" to preserve its power. As Salon noted in 2009, in this work, "Skousen claimed the Anglo-American banking establishment had a long history of such activity going back to the Bolshevik Revolution. He substantiated this claim by citing the work of a former Czarist army officer named Arsene de Goulevitch. Among Goulevitch's own sources is Boris Brasol, a pro-Nazi Russian émigré who provided Henry Ford with the first English translation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion."
Oh, and as a bonus: Ben Carson speaking to the National Organization for Marriage, explaining the Neo-Marxist plot to destroy our unity by destroying our Judeo-Christian values and families through the power of gay marriage. He even name-drops Skousen!