World Anti-Communist League
The WLFD is descended from the Asian People's Anti-Communist League (APACL, now known as Asian Pacific League for Freedom and Democracy).
To cope with the growing tension around the world, Chiang Kai-shek of the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan, Elpidio Quirino of the Republic of the Philippines, and Syngman Rhee of the Republic of Korea founded the APACL in Jinhae, the wartime capital city of the Republic of Korea (ROK) on June 15, 1954.
In 1966 the memberships of the APACL had increased to 27, in Asia, Australia, and Africa. At its 12th Conference in Seoul on November 3, 1966, a fifteen-member committee was formed to discuss the expansion of this organization. The committee eventually decided to set up a new anti-communist organization, including the APACL, regional organizations, and an international anti-communist organization. On November 7, 1966, the delegates adopted the “Charter of the World Anti-Communist League” at the plenary session. It also resolved that the Republic of China Chapter was in charge of organizing the first General Conference.
The Charter of the World Anti-Communist League (WACL), with 8 chapters and 32 articles, came into effect on April 1, 1967. It stated that the WACL should immediately set up its regional organizations in six regions:
- Asia (now known as Asian Pacific League for Freedom and Democracy)
- Middle East (now known as Middle East Solidarity Council)
- Africa (now known as the African Organization for Freedom and Democracy)
- Europe (now known as the European Council for World Freedom)
- North America (now known as the North American Federation for Freedom and Democracy)
- Latin America (now known as the Federation of Latin American Democratic Organization).
The organization in the Asian region was the main force to push for the mission of the World League.
The first General Conference of the WACL was held in Taipei, ROC, on September 25, 1967. Chiang Kai-shek, the then President of the ROC, and Gen. Kim Chung-Yul, President of the APACL Korea Chapter, attended and gave their speeches. Ku Cheng-kang, President of the Republic of China Chapter of the APACL, was elected by acclamation Chairman of the First General Conference of the WACL and also the first Council Chairman. More than 230 delegates from 64 countries and regions as well as 12 anti-communist organizations and observers participated in this conference. During this conference, 43 countries and 4 international anti-communist organizations became Regular Members while 11 organizations became Associate Members.
The second General Conference of the WACL was held in Saigon of Vietnam on December 16, 1968. Ku was elected Honorary Chairman of the WACL. Phan Huy Quat, former Prime Minister of Vietnam, was the Conference Chairman and also the Council Chairman.
World Anti-Communist League (Right-Web)
The World Anti-Communist League was founded in 1966 in Taipei, Taiwan. WACL was conceived as an expansion of the Asian People's Anti-Communist League, a regional alliance against communism formed at the request of Chiang Kai-shek at the end of the Korean War.
The Asian People's AntiCommunist League (APACL) had roots in the China Lobby, a group dedicated to stopping official international recognition of the Chinese Communist government. The China Lobby had U.S. government connections, and allegedly Ray Cline of the CIA assisted this group in establishing the Taiwanese Political Warfare Cadres Academy in the late 1950s.
The founders of APACL were agents of the governments of Taiwan and Korea, including Park Chung Hee who later bacame president of Korea; Yoshio Kodama, a member of organized crime in Japan; Ryiochi Sasakawa, a gangster and Japanese billionaire jailed as a war criminal after World War II; and Osami Kuboki and other followers of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, head of the Unification Church.
Sasakawa provided major funding for Moon and the Unification Church. When Park became president of South Korea after the 1961 coup, he adopted the Unification Church as his political arm.
One resource states that the Anti-Bolshevic Bloc of Nations (ABN), headed by the notorious Yaroslav Stetsko since the 1950s, entered the group in the early 1960s. The ABN is the largest and most important umbrella for former Nazi collaborators in the world. The Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations was created in 1946 by the OUN-B faction of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists with support from MI6.
Yaroslav Stetsko b 19 January 1912 in Ternopil, d 5 July 1986 in Munich. Political leader and ideologue of the Ukrainian nationalist movement. s a youth he joined the underground Ukrainian Nationalist Youth organization and subsequently the Ukrainian Military Organization and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). He became one of the members of the Revolutionary Leadership of the OUN, which emerged in 1940 and was headed by Stepan Bandera. At the Cracow Great Assembly he was elected Bandera's second-in-command.
In 1945 Stetsko was elected to the Leadership of the OUN (Bandera Faction). After the Second World War he was active in the world anticommunist movement. In 1946 he was elected head of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN); he remained president of that organization until his death. In 1946 he was also chosen to head the foreign policy sector of the external units of the OUN. As head of the ABN Stetsko signed an agreement of co-operation with the Chinese Anti-Communist League in Taiwan (1955), which resulted in an ABN mission (1957–60) and later representation (until 1971) in Taipei.
He also served on the executive of the World Anti-Communist League (est 1967) and was a founder and life member of the honorary presidium of the European Freedom Council. At the Fourth Great Assembly of the OUN (Bandera faction) in 1968, he was elected head, a position he retained until his death.
During the 1970s WACL spread to all six continents and chapters were opened in Japan, Europe, Britain, Australia, the U.S. , and Latin America. The organization attracted former Nazi supporters in Europe and in Latin America. The Latin American group, Confederacion Anti-Comunista Latinoamericana (CAL), headed by Raimundo Guerrero, sprang from the roots of Los Tecos, a World War II facist group. CAL was overtly fascist and connected to a chain of rightwing military plots in Latin America.
In 1984, columnist Jack Anderson wrote a series of exposes on WACL connecting the group with death squads operating in Latin America, and once again linking them with fascists, this time in Latin America. He reported that the "godfather" of the death squads in Guatemala, Mario Sandoval Alarcon, a principal of the CAL, had been on the CIA payroll for 30 years--since the National Liberation Movement (MLN) was organized by the CIA to overthrow progressive President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman of Guatemala. Further articles by Anderson reported that CAL, which operated out of Guadalajara, Mexico, was an outgrowth of Los Tecos.
Activities: The purpose of the World Anti-Communist League is spelled out clearly in its name. WACL operates internationallyto overcome and eliminate groups or governments considered to pose a "communist" threat. To achieve this end, WACL appears to be willing to align itself with any and all governments and movements it considers to be anticommunist.
The group revised its charter in 1987 to include among its purposes the development of "political and psychological warfare methods in order to expose and counteract the evil designs and intrigues of Communist imperialism." At the 1984 convention the group established committees to support and assist eight anticommunist resistance groups: Nicaragua, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.
Much of the inspiration for WACL activities and the training in psychological and political warfare come from Taiwan. Training courses are offered, with all expenses paid by WACL, at the Political Warfare Cadres Academy in Peitou. Political warfare is described by the academy as a system "to remove obstacles to national unity within and to resist aggression from without."
Roberto D'Aubuisson said of his training there,"(It was) the best course I ever took." Taiwan is no longer recognized by only the United Nations and its government is recognized by two dozen nations, half of which are in Latin America.
WACL activities in Central America expanded greatly in 1984 when Congress shut off all funds to the contra forces. Between 1984 and 1986 WACL became the principal publicly identified source of funding for the contras.
Singlaub said that he "quite frankly used the WACL organization... to meet with some people who are capable of contributing" to the contra cause. He identified his three principal WACL sources for funding as Latin America, Taiwan, and South Korea.
WACL maintains offices in a Taipei, Taiwan government building, and runs its daily affairs out of "The Freedom Center," a cluster of buildings in Seoul, South Korea. WACL has an executive structure headed by an honorary chairman, chairman, executive board, and secretariat.
It has eight regional organizations:
- Asian Pacific Anti-Communist League (APACL)
- North American Regional WACL Organization (NARWACL)
- European Council for World Freedom (ECWF)
- African Organization for Freedom and Democracy (AOFD)
- Federacion de Entidades Democraticas de America Latina (FEDAL)
- Middle East Solidarity Council (MESC)
- Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN)
- World Youth Freedom League (WYFL).
Holly Sklar followed the continued affiliations of WACL member groups in her book, Washington's War on Nicauragua:
"When President Reagan sent "warm greetings" to the 1984 WACL conference in San Diego, Mario Sandoval was there. So was contra leader Adolfo Calero, along with assorted racists and fascists from around the world...."
'If I have to get rid of half of Guatemala, so the other half can live in peace, I'll do it,'
.. declared Mario Sandoval during his failed 1985 bid for the Guatemalan presidency. He attended the September 1985 WACL conference in Dallas, along with contra leaders Adolfo Calero and Enrique Bermudez and contra donor Ellen Garwood of Texas. Tom Posey's Civilian Military Assistance mercenaries provided security."
Author Russ Bellant notes in The Coors Connection, that the U.S. Council for World Freedom, the U.S. branch of WACL, brought unsavory "elements to the U.S. for WACL's annual meetings in 1984 and 1985."
Included was a delegate who served five years in prison for attempting to assassinate Charles DeGaulle, persons who led Nazi SS units or collaborationist puppet governments during World War II, and architects of mass murder in Latin America. Those meetings served to build support for the...Contras as well as UNITA and RENAMO, both allies of South Africa" that were acting as anti-communist rebel forces.
Both the US Council for World Freedom and World Anti-Communist League helped nurture the U.S. government relationship with militant Islamic fundamentalists fighting the Soviet Union and its allies in Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world. This played an important role in the cascading series of unintended consequences that resulted in the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the creation and rise of the al Qaeda terrorist network and its imitators around the world.
WACL has 130 chapters, and estimates of the number of countries involved ranges from 90 to 100. The group publishes a quarterly magazine, Freedom Digest.
To adjust to the worldwide political changes and to strive for recruiting more people to join, the WACL held its 22nd General Conference in Brussels of Belgium on July 23, 1990, and the delegates resolved that the organization should be renamed the “World League for Freedom and Democracy” (WLFD). This resolution came into effect on January 1, 1991.
World League for Freedom and Democracy (Wikipedia)
The World League for Freedom and Democracy (WLFD) is an international non-governmental organization and a member of the United Nations Department of Public Information NGO branch.
The WLFD has more than a hundred national chapters around the world. On the stated principle "to advocate freedom, democracy and human rights as well as to support the cause of world peace", the WLFD states that it works in a joint endeavor to pursue freedom, democracy, and human rights for all mankind without distinction as to race, sex, language, religion, nationality, political affiliation, or occupation to preserve world peace and prosperity. The WLFD is descended from the Asian People's Anti-Communist League (APACL, now known as Asian Pacific League for Freedom and Democracy).
John McCain
In the mid-1980s, Senator John McCain, was on the Advisory Board of the United States Council for World Freedom, the American affiliate of the World Anti-Communist League. McCain was at that time a member of the House of Representatives where he voted for financial aid for the Contra rebels.
According to the Associated Press:
"The U.S. Council for World Freedom aided rebels trying to overthrow the leftist government of Nicaragua. That landed the group in the middle of the Iran-Contra affair and in legal trouble with the Internal Revenue Service, which revoked the charitable organization's tax exemption."
At the time, the "leftist government of Nicaragua" was the democratically-elected government of Nicaragua. In the 1970s, the World Anti-Communist League (WACL) brought together conservatives, fascists, and representatives of right-wing death squads. WACL announced it had rid itself of unsavory elements, but in reality only a handful of overtly antisemitic and neonazi participants were ousted.
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Tommy Hansson, redaktionsmedlem på den antikommunistiska tidskriften Contra, kommer att kandidera för Sverigedemokraterna i Södertälje i valet 2010, rapporterar Länstidningen. 1972 gick Hansson med i Demokratisk Allians och var under en period ordförande i den till DA närstående organisationen Frihetsförbundet
Hansson inledde sin karriär som skribent i den proamerikanska och Palmefientliga tidskriften Operation Sverige under 1970-talet, och är sedan 1994 invald i styrelsen för tidskriften Contra, för vilken han även var ansvarig utgivaree mellan 1993 och 2008. Tommy Hansson har även skrivit i Salt och Sveriges Nationella Förbunds tidning Fria Ord. Mellan 1981 och 1996 var Hansson redaktör för Korea Centers tidskrift Aktuellt om Korea. Sommaren 2009 efterträdde Tommy Hansson Richard Jomshof som chefredaktör för Sverigedemokraternas partiorgan SD-Kuriren, dock inte som ansvarig utgivare. 2013 tog Paula Bieler över posten som chefredaktör
Hansson har varit ledamot i Södertäljes polisstyrelse och engagerad i Enighetskyrkan i Sverige (allmänt känd som "Moon-sekten", efter grundaren Sun Myung Moon).
Demokratisk Allians (DA) var en politisk organisation i Sverige, bildad 1967 i Stockholm med starkt antikommunistisk prägel.
Organisationen har av bland annat Säkerhetstjänstkommissionen beskrivits som högerextrem och är känd bland annat för sitt stöd för USA:s krigföring i Vietnam och för sitt starka motstånd mot dåvarande statsminister Olof Palme. Dess betydelse minskade sedan Vietnamkriget avslutats och Olof Palme förlorat statsministerposten. Föreningen hade enligt egna uppgifter som mest ca 5 000 medlemmar och kring 40 lokalavdelningar runt om i landet. Den upplöstes 1976, men vissa av dess medlemmar fortsatte att vara aktiva i Stiftelsen Contra.
Contra
Contra är en svensk nyliberal och konservativ stiftelse som innehar en tidskrift och ett bokförlag. De vänder sig uttryckligen emot socialism och förespråkar istället total marknadsekonomi. Stiftelsen har beskrivits som högerextrem av stiftelsen Expo.
Contra grundades av uteslutna medlemmar i organisationen Demokratisk Allians. I styrelsen sitter ordförande Géza Molnár, Christer Arkefors, Fredrik Runebert och C.G. Holm. I tidskriftens redaktion sitter ansvarige utgivaren Géza Molnár, C G Holm och Fredrik Runebert.
Stiftelsens verksamhet är uttalat antisocialistisk, och dess tidskrift publicerar artiklar i denna riktning. Den var tidigt ute på svenska med artiklar om Chicagoskolan, Milton Friedman med flera. Den har också analyserat nazismens och fascismens rötter i socialistiskt tänkande, idéer som uttryckts av bland annat Friedrich von Hayek och Georg Stadtmüller.
Tidskriftens grundsatser består bland annat i att verka för individens rätt och mot kollektivism, att värna om den västerländska demokratin och fördjupa relationer med länder som lever upp till de västerländska idealen, samt bekämpa socialism i alla dess former.