Chip Berlet

Chip Berlet          (journalist, academic)
Born	November 22, 1949
Nationality	US
Interests	• conspiracy theories • Lyndon LaRouche
Interest of	"Philip Cross"
"Spends 99 percent of his time attacking the people who have actually exposed U.S. Government crimes and cover-ups, and one percent of his time exposing them".

John Foster "Chip" Berlet is the senior analyst at Political Research Associates (PRA) based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has worked with PRA since 1982, specializing in framing most "conspiracism" and "anti-elite scapegoating" as by default extreme right wing.

According to his biographical note "he has earned a living as a reporter, researcher, paralegal investigator, photographer, graphic artist, printer, and truck driver. He helped form and was for many years a shop steward in the UAW affiliated staff union within the National Lawyers Guild." He has been on CBS News with Dan Rather, on Dateline NBC; he has been in the New York Times, the Progressive, and turns up as an expert in among others Covert Action Quarterly to The New Yorker.

Progressive conspiracism is an oxymoron. Rejecting the conspiracist analytical model is a vital step in challenging both right-wing populism and fascism. It is important to see anti-elite conspiracism and scapegoating as not merely destructive of a progressive analysis but also as specific techniques used by fascist political movements to provide a radical-sounding left cover for a rightist attack on the status quo.

Berlet has particularly focused on Lyndon LaRouche (who is also a bête noire of among others ProporNot and Henry Kissinger). In 1982, Berlet won a prize for his story "War on Drugs: The Strange Story of Lyndon LaRouche," which was published in High Times. He served on the advisory board of the Campaign to Defend the Constitution. Berlet has provided research assistance to a campaign run by the mother of Jeremiah Duggan to reopen the investigation into his death, judged a suicide, at a conference held by the Larouche movement in Germany in 2003.

Quotes about Berlet

Libertarian anti-war activist Justin Raimondo described him as:

Berlet is professional political hit man whose specialty is smearing anyone outside the traditional left-right categories as an extremist, at best, and a nascent Nazi at worst.

Ace R. Hayes described him as:

Berlet spends 99 percent of his time attacking the people who have actually exposed U.S. Government crimes and cover-ups, and one percent of his time exposing them.

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