Horace Jeremiah "Jerry" Voorhis (April 6, 1901 – September 11, 1984) was a Democratic politician from California. He served five terms in the United States House of Representatives from 1937 to 1947, representing the 12th Congressional district in Los Angeles County. He was the first political opponent of Richard Nixon, who defeated Voorhis for re-election in 1946 in a campaign cited as an example of Nixon's use of red-baiting during his political rise.
If Jerry Voorhis were in Congress today, there’s no doubt
that he would be leading the fight to audit—and abolish— the Federal Reserve
System. Defenders of the Fed call its critics “right wing nuts.” But there’s no
way they could tar Voorhis with that label. In fact, Voorhis—a former
registered member of the Socialist Party—was one of the most progressive
members of Congress by anyone’s standards. He served as a Democrat,
representing a portion of Los Angeles County, from 1937 to 1947. However, Voorhis
was an independent intellectual—a populist who was willing to buck the
plutocratic elite—as he often did. As a consequence, it was taking on the Fed
that turned the tide against Jerry Voorhis.
A self-described “Christian socialist”—and also a committed
anticommunist—Voorhis was wise to the usurious reality of the privately owned
and controlled banking monopoly known as the Federal Reserve. In 1943, Voorhis
went so far as to write THIS stirring indictment of the Fed, a controversial
work entitled Out of Debt, Out of Danger. In its pages Voorhis reviewed the
history of the Fed and how it impacted upon American life to the detriment of
this country’s farmers, workers and small businessmen. And it was precisely
because of Voorhis’s outspoken lambasting of the Fed that he paid the ultimate
political price.
In 1946, as Jerry Voorhis sought a sixth term in Congress, a
well-heeled clique of financiers and industrialists (the “Committee of One
Hundred”) selected and bankrolled a candidate to oppose Voorhis.
In fact, an emissary of one of the New York banking houses
(which dominate the Fed through the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the most
influential of the Fed branches) came to California to meet with the committee,
promising support for the campaign against Voorhis. Voorhis was considered “one
of the most dangerous men in D.C.”— in the eyes of the plutocrats, that is.
The popular Voorhis,
confident of reelection, was taken by surprise because of a particularly
malicious “dirty tricks” operation against him, and he was defeated in a major
upset. The mastermind of the hit-and-run campaign against Voorhis was a
notorious Los Angeles lawyer known throughout his shady career for his
seemingly endless array of organized crime connections: the enigmatic Murray
Chotiner.
In later years Chotiner worked with the Anti-Defamation
League (ADL) of B’nai B’rith in organizing a similar black-bag operation
against Liberty Lobby, the populist institution that consistently targeted the
plutocratic interests behind the Fed. Perhaps not coincidentally, the ADL’s
primary complaint against Liberty Lobby stemmed from the fact that Liberty
Lobby had repeatedly asked the Justice Department to require that the ADL, a
foreign agent for Israel, register as such with the Justice Department as
required under the Foreign Agents Registration Act—legislation authored by none
other than Jerry Voorhis.
In any case, Voorhis had clearly made some powerful enemies.
So did, in later years, the young Republican who had been drafted by the
plutocrats to run against Voorhis: none other than Richard Nixon.
Ironically—prior to being “Watergated”—Nixon said of Voorhis (whom he actually
liked personally): “I suppose there was scarcely ever a man with higher ideals
than Jerry Voorhis, or better motivated than Jerry Voorhis.”
Yet, nearly 30 years later when the plutocratic controlled
media’s wrath came crashing down on Nixon, the media energetically recalled
Nixon’s 1946 campaign against Voorhis, carefully ignoring the fact that the
international banking interests (which actually dominated the “mainstream
media”) had been prime movers behind Nixon’s assault on Voorhis. Voorhis died
in California at age 83 in 1984. His legacy will not be forgotten.