Bob Schaffer likes to say that
Pete Coors isn't conservative enough for the Colorado GOP. But Schaffer, a principled conservative Republican in his own right (and also relatively easy for Salazar to beat in November), doesn't know Coors so well as he thinks.
Specifically, he hasn't read The Coors Connection: How Coors Family Philanthropy Undermines Democratic Pluralism, a book written in 1990 by award-winning investigative reporter Russ Bellant as an exposé of the Coors family's extreme right-wing causes. According to Bellant, the Coors family, including Pete himself, has personally bankrolled a number of America's most hateful reactionary groups. These include the Heritage and Free Congress Foundations (both founded by Pete Coors' father Joe); various KKK members; Laszlo Pasztor, a convicted Hungarian Nazi; and Roger Pearson, who was at one time the world's leading advocate of militant eugenics.
Here on DailyKos, I will examine in series each and every one of these allegations. The goal: to spead the truth and keep faux-moderate Pete Coors from becoming America's most reactionary Senator.
Part Two: Pete Coors and the Nazis
We're not talking Neo-Nazis here. Oh, no. These are real, honest-to-God
World War II Nazis.
Specifically, the Free Congress Foundation, founded and supported by Joe Coors (Pete's dad), supported convicted Hungarian Nazi collaborator Laszlo Pasztor, a man who, according to Bellant, "served a prison term for his role in World War II as a functionary in a Hungarian pro-Nazi party, the Arrow Cross, and his service in a wartime Hungarian diplomatic delegation to Berlin after the Nazis installed the avidly pro-Nazi Arrow Cross as the government of Hungary" (p.31). Essentially, Pasztor was the the Ambassador to Berlin of the Hungarian Nazi puppet government.
According to Michael J. Ravnitzky, "Laszlo Pasztor was a Berlin diplomat during WW2 who represented the Arrow Cross, the government of Nazi Hungary, which participated in the genocide, and later became a political figure in the United States." No kidding.
So why does this guy turn up involved with the Coors Family? Well, to be fair, that's not the first place in Republican Party politics that Pasztor was seen. He was chucked out of the Bush campaign in 1988 after his Nazi record was revealed in the press. But it seems Pasztor had a much more direct connection with the Coors family. According to Bellant, he actually had office space in the Free Congress Foundation building, to do work for a group called Coalitions for America, of which Coors associate Paul Weyrich was national chair -- a group which, in 1985, "issued a statement to Congress calling for measures that would have greatly hindered the Justice Department investigations of suspected Nazi war criminals" (pp.31-2). In effect, the Coors family was sponsoring a convicted Nazi war criminal, and aiding efforts to keep other such criminals from facing justice.
Nor was Laszlo Pasztor the only Nazi figure active in Coors projects. Charles Moser, a member of the Free Congress Foundation Board of Directors, was also a member of "the editorial advisory board of the Ukrainian Quarterly, ... dominated by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), a secret cadre organization sponsored by Nazi Germany until the end of World War II. It still makes pronouncements that reflect national socialist ideology" (p. 31).
Apparently, the Coors family is more in bed with authentic Nazis than one might think.
The Pete Coors Connection
According to Bellant, "During the 1977-78 election cycle, the Coors family contined to fund Weyrich, giving at least $22,600 to CSFC [the Free Congress Foundation's predecessor], acording to federal records. Jeffrey, Peter, Joe, and Holly Coors personally donated" (p.17). Likewise, "In 1988, the Coors Foundation, controlled by Jeffrey, Peter, Joe, and William Coors, gave Free Congress $150,000 to support its operations" (p.35) -- this in the same year that Pete Coors first "hinted...that he may want to run for the United States Senate" (p.55). This organization is the one that is supporting the Nazi groups.
Of course, no direct contributions from Pete Coors to Pasztor or Moser. He's too crafty for that.
