Cancel Culture’s Antecedents: Original History of Federal Reserve Ordered Burned … in 1961!

Via David Martin
March 4, 2021

From the foreword of The Secrets of the Federal Reserve, by Eustace Mullins, published in 1952:

Even though my foundation applications were sponsored by the three leading poets of America, Ezra Pound, E.E. Cummings, and Elizabeth Bishop, all of the foundations refused to sponsor this research.  I then wrote up my findings to date, and in 1950 began efforts to market this manuscript in New York.  Eighteen publishers turned it down without comment, but the nineteenth, Devin Garrity, president of the Devin Adair Publishing Company, gave me some friendly advice in his office.  “I like your book, but we can’t print it,” he told me.  “Neither can anybody else in New York.  Why don’t you bring in a prospectus for your novel, and I think we can give you an advance.  You may as well forget about getting the Federal Reserve book published.  I doubt if it could ever be printed.”

This was devastating news, coming after two years of intensive work.  I reported back to Pound, and we tried to find a publisher in other parts of the country.  After two years of fruitless submissions, the book was published in a small edition in 1952 by two of Pound’s disciples, John Kasper and David Horton, using their private funds, under the title Mullins on the Federal Reserve.  In 1954, a second edition, with unauthorized alterations, was published in New jersey [sic], as The Federal Reserve Conspiracy.  In 1955, Guido Roeder brought out a German edition in Oberammergau, Germany.  The book was seized and the entire edition of 10,000 copies burned by government agents led by Dr. Otto John.

The burning of the book was upheld April 21, 1961, by judge Israel Katz of the Bavarian Supreme Court.  The U.S. Government refused to intervene, because the High Commissioner in Germany, James B. Conant (president of Harvard University 1933 to 1953), had approved the initial book burning order.  This is the only book which has been burned in Germany since World War II.