Review 22.6
24 April - 10 May , 1997

I appear to have got up Eric Butler's nose, which is not a good place to be. In the latest On Target, the weekly bulletin of the far-right League of Rights, Butler lays into my recent Review article (1 March - 21 March) revealing the League's hijack of Graeme Campbell's Australia First Party.

First, there is the obligatory side-swipe. "Greason is of little importance himself," writes Butler, which presents a paradox. On the one hand, I must be of considerable importance to Butler, as his attack is the lead item in On Target, starting on the front and running to page three. On the other hand, this is shabby old On Target we're talking about, and the writer is Eric Butler, a man whose good opinion counts for so little that when he eventually passes over, the newspapers are probably going to ring someone like me to write his obituary.

Butler then airily dismisses my claim that the supposedly Christian League would have problems working with an avowed Atheist and Humanist like Graeme Campbell. "As an ex-soldier, I can assure David Greason that in times of defence of the nation, one does not refuse to co-operate with a fellow citizen because he does not completely agree with one's religious or political views," Butler pronounces. "Although my anti-Communist views were well-known, I had no difficulty in accepting the authority of an officer who held Communist views."

I'd like to spend a moment looking at this startling confession, because I'm having some trouble reconciling it with Butler's war-time record. Just three months into the war, in December 1939, Butler had written: "The real enemy is not Hitler and Germany, but the powers which control Britain, and which are working for the complete bolshevisation of the nation." In other words, the Jews. This, from a man who had "no difficulty" in following the orders of a Communist officer.

How very peculiar.

I'm similarly perplexed with this statement by Butler, from a 1940 pamphlet: "A stream of Australian youth is leaving to be smashed to bloody pulp in the second war to 'save democracy', which like the first war, was fomented by Jewish International Finance, will be financed and controlled by the same group and will mean their undisputed world domination." Why, I wonder, would any sane person accept the authority of someone plotting to smash them to a bloody pulp?

Nor do other records (all held in Australian Archives, Canberra) support Butler's revisionist history. In July 1940, for example, the Victorian publicity censor, Crayton Burns, wrote of Butler: "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..." But this was a man co-operating with his fellow citizens, surely?

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." All state censors were told to be on the lookout for any attempts to reprint the article. And yet this is the man who "had no difficulty" following the orders of a Communist. Hmmm...

And here's the original of a censored letter he sent to Prime Minister John Curtin, dated 19 October 1942. "Your suggestion that Service personnel set an example to civilians in austerity and sacrifice is an insult," wrote Eric.

"Asking people to sacrifice while we are wasting manpower restricting production almost borders on treason. Nothing could be more calculated to destroy morale. So far from acting on your advice I am telling all my people and friends to eat as much as they can buy, and then to write and tell me about it. And what of it? ... The fact remains that an increasing number of loyal Australian citizens are becoming annoyed at your(?) policy of sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice, sacrifice which is mainly dictated by a treasonable financial policy." That doesn't sound very co-operative to me; then again, I was never in the Army, cheerfully following the orders of Communists.

That same month, a Security Service dossier on Eric Butler noted: "In 1941, Butler was called up for Military service, and although this in no way curbed his political activities, it is felt that the entry of Japan into the war somewhat mitigated his morale-damaging writings, since the obvious affinity between his ideas and Nazism did not stretch to the point of welcoming an invasion of this country by the Japanese. The question of whether any action should be taken against Butler was recently discussed with officers of Military Intelligence, and the decision was reached that, in view of the fact that Butler is reputed to be a good soldier and has very recently been posted to a forward battle station, which should effectively hamper his political activities, no action need be taken."

Let's get this right. The military authorities of Australia posted Eric Dudley Butler to a forward battle station (Torres Strait Command, actually), perhaps to get him and his "morale-damaging writings" out of the way. Think about that. Perhaps they sent the commo up there too, for the same reason. Sounds like a fun posting.

Finally, I also find it odd that this indefatigable anti-Communist warrior has never once before mentioned his Comrade-in-arms, not even in his short autobiographical memoir published in 1965: An Exposure of 'The Secret Life of Eric Butler': The Story of Twenty Years ofCharacter Assassination. Its account of Butler's wartime service is devoted to "exposing" the innumerable communist attacks on him, with section headlines such as "Communism in Security", and "Communism in Army Education". Those communists were everywhere, and even tried to slander Butler to his Commanding Officer, yet the role of the mysterious Communist officer, whose authority Butler "had no difficulty in accepting" is never alluded to.

How very, very peculiar.

Either way, there's more to this story than meets the eye.