Barry Goldwater, Alcatraz prisoner turned best selling author and political commentator, dies at age 91
The Daily Mail, July 7th, 2001
Barry Goldwater, a one-time supporter of American democracy who served several years in the notorious Alcatraz prison, where he wrote famed, eloquent defenses of capitalism, before his release and a long career in Cuba and the Franco-British Union as a memoirist and political advisor, died of a stroke in his home in Havana, according to a statement released by his family on Wednesday.
Goldwater, who used his family’s store to help support MacArthurist forces, was sentenced to the infamous Alcatraz Citadel in San Francisco in 1934 as its first prisoner, where he would remain for the next 25 years. However, while incarcerated, he would write a series of essays detailing his firm belief in American constitutionalism and the restoration of capitalism, which were smuggled out, and would go on to become bestsellers in the United Kingdom and Canada.
He was eventually given parole in 1958, and was given a ticket to Nassau, whereupon he fled to Cuba. Hailed as a war hero and conservative icon, he was received warmly by the exile government as a survivor of the Special Prison Administration and would write the acclaimed *Last Days of the Republic* in 1961, exploring his own views of the collapse of the old United States, and gives a brutal, honest view of both the subversive socialist movement and the poor response of the nation’s leaders, who had an obligation to protect their own constitution.
He would follow it up with “The Alcatraz Diaries” in 1965 and “The Prison Archipelago” in 1970, memoirs of his time in the Citadel, showing a culture of corruption, violence, and repression within the Special Prison Administration, which would earn him a Booker–McConnell Prize. A frequent commentator on EBC for both Cuban and American politics, he was eventually given his own program Breakpoint on the burgeoning Hughes-Welch network, where he would discuss issues of the day, giving a unique perspective to the issues he explored. He would host until his retirement in 1987.
Barry Morris Goldwater was born on January 2nd, 1909 in Phoenix, Arizona. The son of a Jewish grocer who ran a successful department store called Goldwater’s, Goldwater himself would go to work for his father’s company in 1930, and was prepared to make it even more of a success.
Sadly, this dream would go unfulfilled with the outbreak of war. Goldwater instead used the department store to raise money for White forces and to supply them with clothes and food. He was eventually captured and put on trial. Given the severity of his crimes, he was formally given a life sentence to be served in the Alcatraz Citadel on the titular island in the San Francisco Bay.
He was forced by the prison administrators to do hard, back-breaking labor as punishment for his crimes, live in strict, regimented conditions or face severe consequences, and was forced to contend with sadistic prisoners like Bugsy Siegel and “Birdman” Robert Stroud and indifferent prison guards.
In this climate, he would reaffirm his own belief in the American constitution through a series of essays written on spare note paper. He would have these papers smuggled through a network of corrupt officials and Sons of Liberty members into Canada, where they were collected and published as the Conscience of a Freedom Fighter, which would inspire free market idealists in the Anglosphere.
He would eventually become a senior prison leader of sorts, advocating on behalf of the prisoners and lead sports activities. Eventually, by 1958, he would be given parole as part of a larger gradual release of political prisoners from the 30’s, with a choice to be repatriated to Cuba through the Bahamas.
Given a reserve position as an officer in the United States Army Air Force, Goldwater’s books would become bestseller throughout the capitalist sphere for their brutal, unflinching portrayal of life within the prisons of communist America. He was eventually given regular appearances as a commentator on Cuban and Franco-British television. A memorable experience saw him and journalist David Frost sparing over the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Indochina. Another saw him attack ESCI General Secretary Georges Marchais as a “DeLeon-Debs puppet” on Friday Night, Saturday Morning
His strong conviction and values impressed Robert Welch, the host of several RKO-TV news programs, who profiled and interviewed him on several of these programs. Eventually, with the establishment of the Hughes Welch Broadcasting Corporation, he was given his own show Breakpoint in 1978.
Goldwater would engage viewers with interesting perspectives on issues like the Rhodesian war and the 1985 Strike. He would host a documentary in 1988 about the assassination of Cuban President Jay Rockefeller by Neo-Integralists. He would retire as host that same year.
Throughout his life, he held a strong, firm belief in the value of capitalism and a strong hope that the “Republic” will be restored. In 1997, he told the EBC that when US Constitution is restored in the mainland, he would return to Phoenix and retire.
Goldwater is survived by his wife Jennie, and his 4 children, including current Franco-British Ambassador to Spain Jane Goldwater Burger.
Barry Goldwater, author and commentator, dies at age 91.
New York Times, July 6th, 2001
Barry Goldwater, a one-time Arizona businessman convicted of providing weapons to White militias and later rose to fame as a stubbornly capitalist writer and broadcaster in Cuba and the FBU, died in his Havana mansion at age 91, the family announced on Thursday.
Through his department store in Phoenix, Arizona, he had both provided Mexican arms to White militias and gave them a secret location to plan out attacks on Red held areas, including the massacre of civilians. He was the very last of the White war criminals convicted in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, and took pride in his role. “Do I have regrets about what I did for my country? Absolutely not,” he told the Entente Broadcasting Corporation in 1994.
Goldwater would spend 20 years as a prisoner in the Alcatraz Citadel, where he would compose his collection of capitalist apologia Conscience of a Freedom Fighter, before being released on parole in 1958, in exchange for expatriation to Cuba.
There, he would go on to write works like The Last Days of the Republic and The Alcatraz Diaries, advocating a Taftian vision of America that was destroyed by socialism and held him and others bondage. He would go on to become a political commentator and advisor to a number of politicians. He was even approached by both the National and American Parties in Cuba to run for both Congressman and President after Kennedy announced the first republican elections in Americuba (which he declined due to him privately disagreeing with many of their positions), and would host the reactionary political show Breakpoint for 14 years on the reactionary Hughes Welch Broadcasting Corporation.
While a staunch anti-communist throughout his life, he also grew increasingly disenchanted with socially regressive policies in Cuba and the Franco-British Union. In fact, after he heavily criticized the policy of not allowing gays in the Cuban military and called for them to adopt the open policy taken by the Entente Army in 1983, he was almost fired by HWBC. He later campaigned for the repeal of abortion bans.
“The Candy Shop”
Barry Morris Goldwater was born in Phoenix, in what was at the time the Arizona Territory on January 2nd, 1909. His father, Baron Goldwater, was a Polish-English Jewish immigrant who founded a chain of clothing stores called Goldwater’s. His mother, Josephine (nee Williams) was an Episcopalian nurse, and he was raised in that faith.
After attending a military academy and the University of Arizona for a year, he dropped out to help his father’s business. He admitted in later years that he was not all that interested in running the shops, and considered leaving to instead go into politics. He had given significant amounts of money to the Hoover campaign in Arizona in 1932.
When the Civil War broke out, Goldwater, a “red-blooded capitalist and staunch defender of the Constitution”, immediately took up the cause of the Whites, using his family’s chain as a smokescreen.
After hearing that the White supporters in the Arizona National Guard had been short on weapons, he discreetly crossed the border, and bought weapons, snuck them back to Phoenix, and gave them to White soldiers under the names of clothing items. Gradually, he would add supplies and food for white soldiers, all under the table, hidden among the various items in Goldwater’s.
“We called it ‘The Candy Shop’”,one White soldier later recalled, “because he would just give them to us like candy. Put a gun in our hands personally, in fact. He was not a commander nor even a soldier, but he would inspect us, and ensure we were battle ready.”
Goldwater also kept the backdoor to his business open for commanders to meet and discuss battle plans. In trial, sworn testimony revealed that several massacres, including that of Mexican civilians in Mesa and Asian Indian strikers in Yuma, were planned in Goldwater’s in Phoenix, and Goldwater had personally attended meetings and discussed weapons logistics. He had bought all the weapons used in the massacre from his contacts in Baja California.
However, the Reds would eventually go on to capture Arizona, and Phoenix. Goldwater took up arms himself to try to slow the advance, but was captured and with the war’s conclusion put on trial for war crimes.
Despite testimony and evidence of clothing inventory being code for weapons sales, Goldwater could not be directly tied to atrocities or military crimes, so he was instead sentenced to life as the first prisoner in the newly refurbished Alcatraz Citadel in San Francisco.
“Freedom Fighter”
The Citadel was a one time military prison which was handed over to the Secretariat of Public Safety to serve political prisons. Unlike the average prisons that were mostly meant to be rehabilitation centers with relative freedoms, Alcatraz and other prisons in the Special Prison Administration were still built on the idea of isolation and punishment. “Class enemies” were given uniforms and were closely guarded, while doing labor as punishment.
In The Alcatraz Years, Goldwater depicted a hellish totalitarian nightmare, where he had to ward off vicious prisoners and apathetic guards in a valiant attempt to survive and smuggle his vision of American restoration into a new generation.
However, many of his contemporaries have alleged that Goldwater exaggerated many of his experiences and that he had depicted Alcatraz in a different light than how other prisoners and guards had written on it.
“Based on my own interviews with former Alcatraz denizens for my own book on Alcatraz[ Citadel], Comrade Goldwater was not entirely truthful about his experiences,” prison abolition activist (and former Leavenworth political prisoner) John C. Stennis wrote, “especially in regards to how his book was written and published”
Goldwater had written a harrowing tale of him writing out his diaries on smuggled paper, and risking his life to get his papers (themselves written in the dead of night on smuggled paper) smuggled onto the boats headed to mainland.
“I would keep the papers in my uniform, and wait for the guard to go, before unlocking my cell, and reaching the docks,” he wrote in The Alcatraz Diaries. “I would place the papers underneath the deck, and watch the boat go out.”
“He bought those papers at the prison store,” George Columbus, who was Goldwater’s prison mate in the 50’s, said in regards to this. “He would use the money granted to him by labor, and buy paper and pens, and just write it all down over some days after work.”
It was true that it was smuggled out. “He’d say it was a letter to a friend back in Arizona, and he’d go page-by-page, just writing and sending it out. At least that’s what he told me 20 years later.”
Those pages were indeed to a former employee now living in Tuscon, who would send the pages to another associate in Toronto. Goldwater intended the papers to be stand-alone essays published in the exile press, but the associate found the essays compelling enough to compile and send to Doubleday of Britain. Doubleday would choose the title based on a statement from his trial testimony. “It was my own conscience, my own initiative as a freedom fighter, that drove me.”
Conscience of a Freedom Fighter largely codified Goldwater’s philosophy of free-market capitalism, American constitutionalism, and staunch anti-communism. Goldwater held that the UASR was an illegal regime that had overthrown the rightful Constitutional order that MacArthur was attempting to uphold. Goldwater held that communism (“a godless ideology”) had destroyed the “150+ years of governmental continuity” that had sustained the old United States.
Goldwater also praised MacArthur as the last “defender of constitution” and a “true patriot.” He also argued that while the toxic ideology of Hitlerism was an equal evil, he held that a “benign authoritarianism” exemplified by MacArthur, Plinio Salgado, and Benito Mussolini could’ve upheld American republicanism. Goldwater cited the Federalist Papers in support of this argument. (Goldwater would repudiate these essays, admitting that his knowledge of fascism was “unsophisticated” at the time.)
The initial reception to the book upon release in 1939 was divided along multiple political lines. The conservative press in the United Kingdom and Cuba lauded the book as a true “excoriation of the seemingly benign face of American communism”, as the Daily Mirror put it. Germany banned the book as “Jewish propaganda.” The American press lambasted it as “pure MacArthur propaganda by a convicted war criminal”, as put by the Daily Worker. As the war heated up in Europe and the alliance with America became important, Conscience of a Freedom Fighter was suppressed for the duration of the war.
Ironically, Goldwater suffered little punishment at the time for the publication. Attorney General Crystal Eastman feared backlash if Goldwater was directly punished for his book, and he was left alone. However, the return of J. Edgar Hoover to the Secretariat of Public Safety would ensure that Goldwater would lose paper privileges.
Alcatraz
Goldwater recounted life in Alcatraz in his later memoirs The Alcatraz Diaries and somewhat in The Prison Archipelago (an exploration of the Special Prison Administration in general). He describe the nightmare of constant vigilance in the face of violent prisoners and the seeming apathy of the guards to the horrors inside.
Many former prisoners and guards have a differing view of many of the events depicted.
Goldwater described a staunch prison regimen that was to be followed to the letter, or abuse would follow.
“While there was a work regimen in the SPA prisons, they were still relatively free to some degree,” Stennis stated. “Outside of work, one could do a variety of activities, had many services, and was even occasionally furloughed to work outside, especially during the war.”
While Goldwater’s famed beatdown of Robert Shroud (recounted in The Alcatraz Diaries) has been corroborated with records, his interactions with Bugsy Siegel were more limited, largely consisting of being part of the same Jewish club. Mostly, Goldwater would hang around the former White clique (though was kept at arms length due to his Jewish heritage) or the True Democrat prisoners.
While Goldwater claimed he was given very little freedom, “he was the head of the rugby team, he hosted a radio show, he even held annual debates with the prison commissar,” says Joey D., another prisoner held at the same time as Goldwater. “He did well for himself in there.”
[....]
Havana
Steadily, many of the political prisoners from the 1930’s were released in the late 40’s and 50’s as part of a larger amnesty program. Many were given a chance to flee to either Canada or Cuba.
Goldwater had to wait until 1958 before finally receiving parole. He received a plane ticket for Nassau in the Bahamas and a boat ticket for Cuba.
He was given a hero's welcome in Havana. Conscience of a Freedom Fighter remained a bestseller in Cuba and even became part of the school curriculum. He would have dinner with Douglas MacArthur (where he was granted a commission as a reserve officer in the Army Air Force) and would address Congress, calling for the “continued battle for Constitutional restoration.”
He also met Jennie Whatley, the daughter of a NSF congressman. Despite a 20 year difference, they married in 1959, and would have four children together.
Using his royalties, he bought a mansion, fashioned it with a wall of kachina dolls (a hobby he adopted since visiting a Hopi reservation in 1916) and a private airfield, and would get to work on his next opus: an exploration of the final days of the old United States and why it fell to Revolution.
Last Days of the Republic, released in 1961, laid the blame for the American Revolution both on “socialist traitors” and the inability of the government to contain them. It received relatively less positive press in the capitalist sphere, with some taking issue with Goldwater’s analysis and his inability to see multiple factors including the depression and the rise of trusts. Meanwhile, William F. Buckley condemned the book as “nothing less than a declaration of war.”
[....]
Archipelago
After MacArthur’s death in 1963, Goldwater attempted to parley his literary success into a political career, running for the Cuban 5th District in the 1964 election. However, the rise of Robert Kennedy and other reformists made Goldwater’s close ties to MacArthur unfashionable, and he lost by a slight margin.
Undeterred, he returned to writing, this time taking out journals from his last decade and a half at Alcatraz after learning of its approaching shutdown, as well as research and correspondence he had with other prisoners. He had hoped to use the memoir to tie in the history of the SPA prison system. However, Freedom Press convinced him to split them into a memoir and a history with biographical elements.
[...]
The Alcatraz Diaries and The Prison Archipelago made Goldwater a new star for the Franco-British literati and conservative movement. In the words of Kingsley Amis, with Archipelago, he had “become a Great American author, in the vein of [James Feinmore] Cooper, Thoreau, and Twain.”
The Prison Archipelago would go on to win Booker-McConnell Prize in 1970 for best original work in English. Despite this, the American press, including Stennis and even fellow ex-political prisoner Strom Turmond criticized both for exaggerating and misrepresenting the SPA and its actual function.
Nevertheless, his novels would make Goldwater a visible figure in the conservative movement, soon representing it on various EBC talk shows. He would form relationships with key conservative figures, including Ayn Rand, Edward Heath, Francois Mitterand, Enoch Powell, and biggest of all, Robert Welch.
Welch, a Goldwater fan since the 30’s, showcased him on his various programs throughout the 60’s and 70’s, eventually bringing him on during his partnership with Howard Hughes.
His regular appearances made him a figure of derision due to his extreme anti-communism. He and David Frost sparred throughout the 60’s and 70’s over Goldwater’s insistence of using nuclear weapons in Indochina and the Congo. Graham Chapman would satirize Goldwater on Monty Python’s Flying Circus as an extremist who would make bizarre statements in his hatred of communism. He was also parodied as “Jerry Silverberg”, a blowhard American exile, in British defector John Cromwell’s novel The British Way.
After a stint advising the administration of Cuban president Luis Posada Carilles, Goldwater would accept an offer by Welch to head up his own show on HWBC. Called Breakpoint, it would involve Goldwater making “informed” commentary on the issues of the day, as well as interviews with key figures.
[...]
As the 80’s conflicts reached their crescendo, Goldwater slowly saw himself becoming more estranged from the conservative movement he had championed.
Already, by the 70’s, he had become critical of social regressives, feeling that individual liberty was a key part of the movement. He supported the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1967 and the legalization of abortion that same year in Britain. He became very critical of Enoch Powell’s hardline anti-immigration stance and the Liberty Party’s adoption of the same.
Despite his political ambitions, he declined an offer from the right wing Cuban National and American Parties to run to succeed Robert Kennedy in 1971. In a letter to his friend General Sir John Hackett, Goldwater said that he would not be affiliated with “social regressives and bigots, who spout liberty while cutting it down.”
He became heavily critical of his former protege Carilles during the latter’s last term, claiming that his suspected relationship with neo-Integralists was tantamount to “state sponspored terrorism.” This strained his image with many conservatives in Cuba.
Not helping was a 1986 episode, where he talked directly about the military case of Alfredo Domingo, a Cuban soldier and Uranian caught having a relationship. He heavily criticized the handling of the case (the soldier was off-base and decommissioned at the time), and indeed, expanded it to berate the ban of homosexuals from the Cuban military. Pointing out how the Entente military allowed open enrollment of Uranians since it’s formation, Goldwater continued: "Everyone knows that gays have served honorably in the military since at least the time of Julius Caesar", and that “You don't need to be 'straight' to fight and die for your country. You just need to shoot straight.” Later that year, he also said that, while the repeal of abortion bans under Kennedy was a good start, they were under siege by “National Party cadres with strong affiliations with televangelists and Christian organizations.” Both statements almost resulted in his firing, and his show was reassigned to a lower viewership slot.
After Cuban President Jay Rockefeller was killed by a Brazilian neo-Integralist, Goldwater produced a documentary exploring the factors. He reiterated his opposition to the Carilles’ administration’s funding of neo-Integralist terror groups and blamed it for his assassination. Goldwater, knowing these were controversial statements, announced his retirement that same year.
Last Days
Goldwater would live to see his books become key parts of the anti-communist movement, taught in universities and schools across the capitalist sphere. Goldwater himself would have mixed feeling over this. The books had been in schools thanks to the Liberty affiliated Von Mises Institute and the International Freedom Organization (founded by food tycoons Margaret Thatcher and Richard Finlay to teach “true democratic values” in schools), both organizations that Goldwater had criticized.
However, he never wavered in his faith that he would see the restoration of the United States on the mainland. In a 2000 interview, he denied allegations that he was involved in war crimes during the Revolution, claiming it was “Bolshevik propaganda”, meant to ensure his quick departure to jail.
Cacti in the Sunlight, a 1964 nonfiction book that inspired the 1972 film Red Sun Over Arizona, featured evidence and testimony from former White soldier that confirmed that Goldwater had sold weapons to White soldiers and was involved in the planning of several massacres.
In the same interview, Goldwater expressed his desire to return and die in his home state of Arizona when the “Stars and Stripes were waving over America once again”. He died in his Cuban mansion. The Star and Stripes have yet to be raised over Arizona.