While the anti-labor capitalist Wall Street Journal claims the cause of the fascist late Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina was liberty, the truth was this former Democrat, turned Republican in 1972 along with most other Dixiecrats, was a proud mouthpiece of the US capitalist class, who paid $10 million in 1984 and $16 million in 1996 to re-elect this thug from a small state of 8 million people in 53,000 square miles, easily reached with few TV ads.

The milestones of fascist America are exemplified by Jesse Helms, which is of course why the capitalist press praises him or glosses over his evil deeds. His example was set by his policeman father, who was described by Robert Williams, chairperson of the Monroe, NC chapter of the NAACP as follows:

“Walking down Main Street, Williams watched a white police officer accost an African American woman. The policeman, Jesse Alexander Helms Sr., an admirer once recalled, ‘had the sharpest shoe in town and he didn’t mind using it.’ His son, U.S. Senator Jesse Helms, remembered ‘Big Jesse’ as ‘a six-foot, two hundred pound gorilla—when he said “smile,” I smiled.’ Eleven-year-old Robert Williams looked on in terror as Big Jesse flattened the black woman with his huge fists, then ‘dragged her off to the nearby jailhouse, her dress up over her head, the same way that a cave man would club and drag his sexual prey.’ Williams recalled ‘her tortured screams as the flesh was ground away from the friction of the concrete.’ The memory of this violent spectacle and the laughter of white bystanders haunted him for decades.” (Quoted from Timothy Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power, University of North Carolina Press, 2001)” (From World Socialist Website, 7/7/08, http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/jul2008/helm-j07.shtml)

THIS RACISM IS WHY WE HAD A CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND CONTINUE TO NEED A CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT, IN A SOCIETY WHERE HALF THE PRISON POPULATION IS AFRICAN AMERICAN WHILE ONLY 12% OF THE GENERAL POPULATION IS AFRICAN AMERICAN.

This friend of the tobacco and textile companies voted against anything that might benefit the workingclass. Here are some descriptions of this infamous thug mouthpiece of the US capitalist class, all of which should be carefully studied by those of you who have no memory of the terrible past, not so different from the terrible present, often supported by Democrats:
From: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/jul2008/helm-j07.shtml)

“In the Senate, Helms could be counted on, not only to vote against any semblance of progressive reform, but also to engage in tirades and one-man delaying tactics that frequently prevailed against the increasingly timid stance of the waning group of liberals. He opposed minimum wage increases, abortion and fetal tissue research, food stamps, anti-pollution legislation, reparations for the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and the establishment of Martin Luther King Day as a national holiday. He regularly backed legislation tailored to the religious right, including bills to reestablish Christian prayer in the public schools, outlaw flag burning and bar any federal action to protect the rights of gays and lesbians.”
“In one revealing episode in 1982, when the Reagan administration grudgingly supported reauthorization of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Helms waged war against the bill, introducing amendment after amendment—to exempt North Carolina counties from its provisions, to weaken the enforcement powers of the Civil Rights Division of the US Department of Justice, to reduce the extension from 25 years to 15 years. All were defeated by overwhelming bipartisan majorities. Ultimately, Helms voted against final passage of a bill that even Strom Thurmond eventually supported.”

“His greatest impact on government policy was in foreign affairs. He obtained a seat on the Foreign Relations Committee and used it to attack Third World regimes that he regarded as “communist,” applying this label to any nationalist government that came into conflict with American foreign policy. Cuban President Fidel Castro was naturally his number one target, and when the Republican Party gained control of Congress in the 1994 elections he sponsored the Helms-Burton Act (signed by Democratic Pres Clinton), which imposed tight trade restrictions on American companies, as well as corporations based in Europe and Asia, that sought business dealings with the island nation.”

“Throughout the 1970s and 1980s Helms was a leading backer of right-wing terrorist groups opposed to the regimes that he demonized: UNITA in Angola, the RENAMO guerrillas in Mozambique, the Contras in Nicaragua, the Afghan mujahedin. He gave full support to apartheid South Africa and to military dictatorships in Central and South America.”

“When presented with evidence that Roberto D’Aubuisson, the US-backed death squad leader in El Salvador, was involved in atrocious human rights abuses, Helms responded, “All I know is that D’Aubuisson is a free enterprise man and deeply religious.” One peace activist who met with Helms staffers to describe the murders of Nicaraguan doctors, nurses and children by the Contras was told, “Well, they’re just communists—they deserve to die.””

“In his early years in the Senate Helms was viewed as an eccentric, a peculiar throwback to a more primitive political era. It is a measure of the sharp shift to the right in the whole official political spectrum in the United States that such a figure eventually came to be regarded as an ideological standard-bearer of the majority party in Congress, a man whose support was courted by presidential candidates and cabinet officials—as in the disgusting display of groveling by Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.”
“Even late in his career Helms occasionally outflanked his own party from the right, as in 1997, when he blocked the nomination of fellow Republican William F. Weld, then governor of Massachusetts, as ambassador to Mexico, because of his liberal views on certain cultural issues.”

“One of his most notorious moments came during President Clinton’s first term, when he told a television interviewer that neither he nor most of the military believed that Clinton was qualified to be commander-in-chief. He added that because of Clinton’s views on gays in the military, and his history of opposition to the Vietnam War, the president was extremely unpopular on North Carolina military bases. “Mr. Clinton better watch out if he comes down here,” Helms said. “He’d better have a bodyguard.”}

“When this incitement to violence was referred to the Secret Service, Helms issued a brief retraction. But the statement clearly expressed the hostility to democracy that motivated the entire right-wing campaign against the Clinton White House, culminating in impeachment.”

“Despite this record of unmitigated reaction, there was no lack of Democrats and liberals who offered tributes to Helms after the senator announced his impending retirement. For the most part, the media presented the arch reactionary as a distinguished spokesman for a legitimate point of view.”

“Richard Holbrooke, US ambassador to the United Nations under Clinton, absurdly compared Helms to Henry Cabot Lodge Sr., the Boston aristocrat who led opposition to US entry into the League of Nations in 1919. Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd said it was “the power of his personality that makes him special as a force” in the Senate. “People knew if he was the only person on your side, he’d stick with you.””

“Senator Joseph Biden, a leading Democrat who worked with Helms on the Foreign Relations Committee, gushed, “Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Jesse Helms is that, notwithstanding his conservative credentials, when confronted with new facts, he is willing to reconsider his position.””

“Perhaps the worst perversion of the truth came from Walter Russell Meade, a liberal historian and senior fellow at New York University’s World Policy Institute, who published a column in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Farewell to a Great Jacksonian.” Meade suggested that Helms “deserves to be remembered as one of a handful of men who brought white Southern conservatives into a new era of race relations.” Meade said that Helms had urged compliance with civil rights legislation, since it was the law, even though he disagreed with it.”

“The reality is that Helms fought against racial reconciliation every day of his political life, with only slight changes in terminology. As late as 1990, in his reelection contest against former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt, the first black man to run for US Senator in North Carolina as a candidate of the Democratic or Republican parties, Helms employed crude race-baiting. A television ad that gained national notoriety featured white hands holding a letter rejecting a job application, while the announcer explained that affirmative action was responsible. Helms and his campaign subsequently settled a Justice Department complaint over a pre-election mailing of postcards falsely threatening 125,000 black voters with jail if they went to the polls.”

And from Tommi Avicolli Mecca in http://www.Beyondchron.org of 7/7/08 at http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=5841#more,

“Helms attacked the National Endowment for the Arts when it was discovered that individual grants had been used by artists to create homoerotic and blasphemous art. He opposed reparations for Japanese Americans unjustly interned in camps during WWII. He backed right-wing dictators in Latin America, and came out against a national holiday for slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King.”

“The stories of his bigoted comments and campaigns are well-known. During a debate on then-President Bill Clinton’s nomination of Roberta Achtenberg as assistant secretary of HUD (Department of Housing and Urban Development), Helms quipped, “I’m not going to put a lesbian in a position like that. If you want to call me a bigot, fine.” He also described Achtenberg as “that damn lesbian,” a phrase that subsequently became popular among queers.”

“In his senatorial race against former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt in 1990, Helms’ campaign ran a TV ad with a white fist holding a crumbled job application. The caption proclaimed: “You needed that job, but they had to give it to a minority.””
“In February 1981, he wrote in the New York Times: “Crime rates and irresponsibility among Negroes are a fact of life which must be faced.” He told the Charleston Gazette in September 1995 that the University of North Carolina was the “University of Negroes and Communists.” According to Time Magazine and Gannett News Service, he once sang Dixie to black Democrat Carol Moseley-Braun in a Capitol elevator in order to make her cry.”

“After being the target of a protest during a visit to Mexico in 1986, Helms said, “All Latins are volatile people. Hence, I was not surprised at the volatile reaction.””

The utter bankruptcy of the Democratic-Republican parties, is exemplified by Senator Jesse Helms’ fascist legacy. This is nothing new in the backward USA; it is the entire history of this backward, capitalist country. If you want peace, civil rights, normal relations with Cuba, gay marriage, no religion in the schools or receiving our tax dollars for social welfare programs, you have to vote socialist (Peace & Freedom Party) or Green.
See: http://www.peaceandfreedom.org/home/