Manifesto - American Student Nationalists -

n.p.: American Student Nationalists, 1939. A scarce broadside manifesto for a pre-war, isolationist, anti-Communist student group, whose slogan, "Keep America Out of War By Keeping Communism Out of America!!" belies their subtle anti-Semitism and overt anti-Zionism. At the outset the group argues, "America entered the first world war not to make 'the world safe for democracy' but to make Palestine safe for the Jews! (Ask Mr. Brandeis; --he knows!)." Further down they couch their anti-Semitism in the vernacular of the extreme right, declaring: "We American Students always stand ready to defend our country against all enemies, external and internal, first among whom are the Socialist, Communist, Anarchist international gangsters who plot to rule the world by setting every man against his brother by precipitating civil war in every country in the world, when universal financial and moral collapse inevitably follow the second world war." The group defends Japan, Germany, Italy and Spanish Nationalists as defending their regions from Bolshevism; and alternately denounces the American Student Union as "avowedly anti-fascist" and therefore Communist controlled and encourages student to join an "American" student organization "that puts the interests of American Students and America before those of all other countries and those of the Soviet Union Last, not First." This is one of the first extreme right student organizations that we've come across, pre-dating other extreme and moderate right wing groups such as the National Youth Alliance, Young Americans for Freedom or Turning Point USA by decades. We were unfortunately unable to find out anything about the group or where they were based, as an internet search only turned up this manifesto. It was likely nothing more than a paper organization perhaps founded by Nazi agents or sympathizers who were doing their best to keep America from entering the war. An 8 ½" x 14" sheet mimeographed on recto only. A few creases from folding, else a well-preserved copy. Not in OCLC, but we note one copy at Yale in the American Immigration Conference Board collection.