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Two newsletters from America for Americans: Intelligence Bulletins Nos. 50 & 153

Cherep-Spiridovich, V. [Pseudonym of Howard Victor von Broenstrupp] Two issues of the newsletter of fascist group America for Americans in different formats and with variations in the title or headline, all very good; issues present are American Tribunal Intelligence Bulletin No. 50 and America for Americans / Ancient & Noble Order of the Blue Lamoo Intelligence Bulletin 153. Very Good, lightly edge, folded horizontally; small chip to No. 50. These were obtained at the time by Maurice Rovner, a Jewish teacher from Buffalo, NY, who joined the mailing lists of various radical political organizations to track their activities (he used the partial synonym of C.T. Rovner for the purposes of this mailing list). He has occasionally added the date of receipt in pen on the first page of No. 50. Russian exile Arthur Cherep-Spiridovich gained notoriety for his antisemitic tract The Secret World Government, or, "The Hidden Hand", as well as for his propagandizing amongst the White Russian community in America. Upon his mysterious death in 1926, his adult "adopted son" Howard Victor von Broenstrupp essentially assumed his identity, created a throne room in a mansion from whence he issued spurious titles of nobility, bankrupted and defrauded the wealthy widow who had been bankrolling him, and eventually began issuing propaganda for Nazi Germany. This sub rosa work came under increasing public scrutiny with the close of the '30s as WWII began in Europe. The author's bizarre chivalric group The Ancient & Noble Order of the Blue Lamoo (alleged to have headquarters in the Black Hills of South Dakota) would be singled out by Martin Dies, chairman of HUAC, and others as a literal espionage network, about which little was ultimately revealed, as historian Kevin Coogan writes in the 2021 book The Spy Who Would Be Czar. No copies of any of these newsletters found in a recent OCLC search. A rare survival from a secretive milieu where heraldric societies, bogus religious orders, espionage, con artistry, and far right politics intersected.
  • $350