Public Eye Magazine (8 issues, 1977-1984)

The Public Eye was an alternative magazine with about 48 dense pages in each issue; it appeared once a year for eight years out of Washington and then Chicago. The principals behind the magazine were Chip Berlet, Russ Bellant, and the National Lawyers Guild. Since 1987 Berlet and Bellant have worked with Political Research Associates in Cambridge MA.

The topics that interest Berlet and Bellant haven't changed since the mid-1970s -- they are primarily concerned with the Right and the threat of emerging fascism in U.S. society. Certain themes emerge with regularity: spying on the Left by government COINTELPRO programs and by private Right groups, the LaRouche organization, and white supremacist groups such as the KKK and Posse Comitatus. Occasionally a more international perspective would emerge (a report on the World Anti-Communist League, for example), but generally the emphasis is national or even regional.

These days, the Right/Left distinctions of past decades have been obscured by both an emerging Right populism in the U.S. and by ossification on the U.S. Left, and other worries have largely replaced our concerns about classic forms of fascism. However, the Berlet-Bellant research is still valuable for historians, as it tends to be rich in factual content.

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