The Reece Committee, a continuation of the Cox Committee, launched an investigation into the activities of tax-exempt foundations in 1954. Functioning as an investigative committee of the House of Representatives, the Reece Committee called witnesses who testified under oath, corresponded with university professors who gave their expert opinions in writing, and collected affidavits from officers of the foundations who responded to some of the accusations made against them. One area the Reece Committee investigated was the funding of globalist propaganda by the foundations. The term globalism, as used by the Reece Committee, simply meant a scheme for international collectivism:

The weight of evidence before this Committee, which the foundations have made no serious effort to rebut, indicates that the form of globalism which the foundations have so actively promoted and from which our foreign policy has suffered seriously, relates definitely to a collectivist point of view.

There are a number of examples to choose from to support the Committee’s finding that foundations finance globalist propaganda, but here are just two examples:

1. Propaganda intended to conceal what actually happened in World War II.
2. Propaganda intended to advance the cause of the United Nations.

(Illuminating the early history of globalism provides context to contemporary American politics.)

The Historical Blackout

The Reece Committee’s Report to the House accused the Council on Foreign Relations, an organization financially supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Endowment, of interfering with the historical revisionism process after World War II. In his book,The Struggle Against the Historical Blackout, Harry Elmer Barnes explained the meaning of the term “historical revisionism”:

The readjustment of historical writing to historical facts relative to background and causes of the first World War—what is popularly known in the historical craft as ‘Revisionism’—was the most important development in historiography during the decade of the 1920’s.

Historical revisionism had taken place after World War I. For René Wormser, the general counsel to the Reece Committee, historical revisionism after World War I had been a good thing. Wormser mentioned in his book that several eminent historians had written “books critical of much of the government position in World War I”. However, the Council on Foreign Relations hated historical revisionism; it called historical revisionism “the debunking journalistic campaign following World War I.” So according to the Reece Committee Report, the Council on Foreign Relations “made up its mind that no ‘revisionism’ was to be encouraged after World War II.” Ominously, “the official propaganda of World War II was to be perpetuated and the public was to be protected against learning the truth.” To achieve this coverup, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Rockefeller Foundation supported the creation of an “official history” of World War II.

Propaganda for the United Nations

One witness who testified before the Reece Committee was Aaron M. Sargent, attorney at law, from the San Francisco and Palo Alto areas of California. Sargent spoke about an incident that had taken place in 1952 at a meeting of the Los Angeles Board of Education. At that meeting, Mr. Paul Hoffman, the president of the Ford Foundation, had spoken in favor of keeping UNESCO pamphlets in Los Angeles city schools. Sargent clearly hated these UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) pamphlets in the schools and told the Reece Committee bluntly, “This pamphlet is propaganda for the United Nations and its activities.” Sargent objected to the UNESCO pamphlet because it included the universal declaration of human rights.

Donald Trump supporters may find Sargent’s discussion of Article 14 of the universal declaration of human rights fascinating because his testimony highlighted a major threat to border security. The United Nations wanted to, according to Sargent’s interpretation, flood the United States with hordes of asylum seekers by abrogating the nation’s immigration laws:

Article 14 says that everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries the asylum from persecution. Doesn’t that mean that the immigration laws can be broken down and we can be compelled to receive hordes from any nation in the world regardless of the impact on American conditions? This article would seem to say so.

Furthermore, Sargent argued that the UNESCO pamphlet and the universal declaration of human rights threatened America’s basic traditions of inalienable rights and natural law. In earlier testimony, he told the Reece Committee how he defined America’s essential traditions and the essential rights of human beings:

One of the most fundamental concepts of all is the doctrine of inalienable rights, the fact that your rights belong to you and my rights belong to me and are not given to me by any majority in society; that we acquire those rights at birth and we get them by natural law or the laws of God.

Article 1 of the universal declaration of human rights was a direct attack on an essential principle of the Declaration of Independence, according to Sargent’s interpretation. The Declaration of Independence asserted that “men have unalienable rights granted to them by God and the laws of nature,” but the universal declaration of human rights claimed that “men are born free and equal, and should act in a spirit of brotherhood.” Sargent objected to the removal of God as the source of inalienable rights. He also objected to many other articles. For example, Article 29 seemed to create “a power by majority vote to limit the rights granted in the rest of this article.” This article also said that these “rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.” René Wormser explained in his book why the United States ultimately agreed with Sargent and rejected the universal declaration of human rights:

The United States government by rejecting this Universal Declaration has gone on record as stating this country does not consider that document—prepared in collaboration with the Communists—as a statement of our “rights as human beings.” The rights of citizens of the United States are set forth in the Declaration of Independence, in the Constitution and its Amendments.

The UNESCO pamphlet incident described above was not the first strike launched against America’s tradition of inalienable rights and natural law. The Reece Committee’s investigation traced this war back to the birth of educational radicalism, the Fabian socialist movement, and the works of John Dewey.

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