Willis Allison Carto (July 17, 1926 – October 26, 2015) was an American far-right political activist and publisher. He described himself as a Jeffersonian and a populist, but was primarily known for his promotion of antisemitic conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial. Throughout his life, Carto established and controlled a variety of right-wing periodicals and organizations, most significantly the Liberty Lobby.
Carto ran a group supporting segregationist George Wallace's 1968 presidential campaign and reorganized the group into the National Youth Alliance, later taken over by Carto's associate William Luther Pierce and turned into the National Alliance. Carto founded the Holocaust denial organization the Institute for Historical Review, though later lost control of the organization in a dispute. Carto helped found the Populist Party, which served as an electoral vehicle for white supremacists. He also ran a number of far-right periodicals throughout his career, including Right, Liberty Letter, The American Mercury, The Spotlight, and the American Free Press, among others.
An intensely private person despite his influence, Carto remains little known and had a reputation as a "shadowy" figure even among other far-right activists. He was also known for his frequent, bitter disputes with other right-wing figures and former associates. Extremism scholar George Michael, the author of a biography of Carto, argued that despite his public obscurity, Carto was "undoubtedly the central figure in the post-World War II American far right".
Willis Allison Carto was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana on July 17, 1926, to Willis Frank Carto, a paper salesman, and Dorothy Louise Carto (née Allison). He was of French and German descent through his father, descended from Huguenot settlers; his family originally spelled their surname Carteaux, which was anglicized to Carto by his grandfather. Carto had one brother, David, four years his junior. The family was Methodist and attended the Wayne Street Methodist Church. As a child, Carto served as the church's head usher.
In his youth, Carto and his family listened to the broadcasts of antisemitic preacher Charles Coughlin. His family varied politically and often had heated political debates; his father was a Republican, but was not politically active, which Carto later derided him for. He attended Harrison Hill Grade School, before attending South Side High School. Fort Wayne was highly segregated while he was growing up, though Carto had a childhood friend who was black. As an adolescent, Carto was generally not exposed to racial tensions and did not think much about race.
He had an early interest in newspapers and other printing, describing his childhood hero as Robert R. McCormick of the Chicago Tribune. He worked a variety of odd jobs, and eventually at a print shop and was a door-to-door magazine salesman. His father bought him a printing press and Carto learned to manually set type. As a teenager he published his own free paper targeted at a young audience, the Canteen Chronicle. Carto graduated from high school in June 1944.
With World War II ongoing, Carto attempted to join the United States Navy but was rejected due to having an illness. After the illness was cured, the United States Army drafted him. He attended basic training at Camp Fannin in Texas, and was thereafter sent to Fort Ord in California. He went on to serve in the Philippines with the Americal Division.
While serving in the Philippines, one of his closest friends was killed in combat, which affected Carto. Additionally, Carto was shot in the arm by a Japanese sniper; this earned him the Purple Heart, and he was also awarded the Combat Infantry Badge for his service. He would ultimately rise to the rank of corporal. Following the United States's victory over Japan, Carto was transferred there and served as part of the occupying force in Sendai. He was transferred back to the United States in 1946 and stationed at Illinois's Fort Sheridan. He received an honorable discharge that year.
After leaving the military, he lived with his parents in Mansfield, Ohio. At the behest of his parents, he studied law for two years at Denison University, but did not graduate, instead moving onto University of Cincinnati Law School where he studied for a semester before dropping out in 1949. His grades were apparently average; Carto attributed his decision to drop out to wanderlust.
He came to work as a distributor for Procter & Gamble. This job allowed Carto to travel frequently distributing the company's products. These travels exposed Carto to racial and other political issues in a way that he had not been previously, such as Southern black slums. Initially, he was relatively sympathetic to the plight of poor black Americans, but soon came to view them as fundamentally inferior to white Americans, "content to live in slums". He was promoted to crew manager with the company, at the same time becoming politically discontent with the establishment as out of touch. With the outbreak of the Korean War, his department was terminated by the company and Carto was out of a job.
Liberty Lobby, Yockey, and publications (1950s–1960s)
In the early 1950s, Carto moved west to San Francisco, California where he worked for the Household Finance Company, a loan company. While at this job he began working as a political organizer, first entering the right-wing political scene in 1952. Carto met Willis Stone, a right-wing activist and the founder of the Liberty Amendment Group. Stone introduced Carto to Aldrich Blake, the founder of Liberty and Property, a right-wing political organization; shortly after, Blake had Carto work on a publication against racial integration, The Job Can Be Done!, and followed it with similar publications.
Throughout the mid to late 1950s, Carto worked selling coffee and printing machines. In 1955, Blake, being substantially older than Carto, decided to give over control of Liberty and Property to him. Carto proceeded to incorporate the organization. The same year, Carto launched the magazine Right. It focused on far-right politics and ceased in 1960. One writer for Right was George Lincoln Rockwell, another far-right activist and a close friend of Carto's; he later became far more notorious as the founder of the American Nazi Party. After his shift to open Nazism, Rockwell ceased writing for the periodical, but continued to work with Carto and maintain their friendship many years afterwards; Carto wrote positively about Rockwell and his American Nazi Party.
Seeing Liberty and Property as unsuccessful, Carto shuttered the organization. It was eventually replaced by the Liberty Lobby, though it is unclear when, exactly, this occurred. The organization was formally incorporated in Washington, D.C. on February 1, 1962, though its own materials variously claim June 5, 1955 or July 17, 1957 as its founding date. The first public declaration of an intent to create the Liberty Lobby came in an August 1957 article in Right magazine. In the 1960s, the Liberty Lobby launched several periodicals, the most important of which was the Liberty Letter. In 1966, Carto acquired control of the preexisting magazine The American Mercury.
Carto met Elisabeth Waltraud Oldemeier at a National Review gathering in the 1950s. Oldemeier was 11 years Carto's junior and had been born in Germany. They married on November 15, 1958. They remained married until Carto's death; the couple never had any children. She was deeply loyal to Carto and his politics and frequently collaborated with him on his political efforts.
In the 1950s, Carto acquired a copy of the book Imperium, authored by fascist activist Francis Parker Yockey; then rare, obscure, and out of print, it had been published in the late 1940s to little fanfare. After reading the book, Carto became a devotee of Yockey and the ideology he espoused in Imperium. In 1960, Carto obtained a 15-minute interview with Yockey on June 10, 1960, while the latter was held in jail for passport fraud. Yockey committed suicide in jail six days later on June 16. Carto was the last person to see Yockey alive (excepting Yockey's attorney). Following his death, Carto became the lead promoter of Yockey's writings and republished it with his Noontide Press, bringing the book to a much wider audience. For some decades after the suicide there was a persistent, but likely false, rumor among far-righters that Carto had assisted in Yockey's suicide. Noontide also published books on Holocaust denial, including David L. Hoggan's The Myth of the Six Million, one of the first books to deny the Holocaust. Rockwell and Carto's friendship ceased in 1964 when they had a split after Rockwell accused Yockey of being a Soviet agent.