American Free Press

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The American Free Press (AFP) is a weekly newspaper published in the United States which often focuses on the issue of the role of Zionism in the United States. It was founded in 2001 as the successor to The Spotlight, which ceased publication in 2001 when its parent company, Liberty Lobby, was forced into bankruptcy. The paper was founded by former Spotlight staffers. The Barnes Review is a companion publication to American Free Press that is more focused on Holocaust Denial.

Like The Spotlight, American Free Press proclaims a "populist and nationalist" political orientation and runs opinionated articles and editorials aimed at a mainstream audience across the political spectrum.

Some critics charge that it is a subtle recruiting tool for anti-Semitism and the political extreme right-wing. These critics cite as evidence the paper's classified section, which sometimes includes ads for the National Alliance, Christian Identity materials, and Creativity Movement books including White Man's Bible, Nature's Eternal Religion and On the Brink of a Bloody Racial War^{[citation needed]}. The newspaper rejects the labels "anti-Semitic" and "extreme right" to describe itself, maintaining that its classifieds contain advertisements for many groups which could be called extremist, both left and right, and even those amongst the right-leaning racial/nationalist groups are varied, including Nation of Islam, as well as numerous links to tax protesters. There is also to be found a special preference for advertisements promoting alternative medicine and holistic therapy.

The paper includes articles from mainstream columnists such as Ron Paul, Joe Sobran, and Paul Craig Roberts, as well as articles by its own staff. Articles by Willis Carto, the founder of Liberty Lobby, also appear occasionally.

The American Free Press is opposed to free trade treaties such as NAFTA and the World Trade Organization, has been strongly opposed to all U.S. military interventions since the fall of the Berlin Wall to the present including the Iraq War, supports a large reduction of immigration into the United States, and supports the elimination of the federal income tax and the abolition of the Federal Reserve Bank. The paper takes a special interest in reporting on the activities of the Bilderberg group and on complementary and alternative medicine. It has published several articles supportive of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

The newspaper is critical of the policies of the state of Israel, and of Zionist lobby groups in the United States such as AIPAC. One of its writers, Michael Collins Piper, hosts a weekday talk show on shortwave radio that is pointedly anti-Zionist.^[1]

[edit] Coverage of 9/11 conspiracy theories

American Free Press also publishes articles on 9/11 conspiracy theories. One of their ex-contract reporters, Christopher Bollyn, who has been a guest on David Duke radio^[2], is sometimes cited for his reporting in the 9/11 Truth Movement. However, Bollyn has also been criticized as a holocaust denier by 9/11 researchers.^[3]^[4] Yet the film Loose Change used material from American Free Press as a source and the film Oil, Smoke & Mirrors contains an interview with Bollyn. Others have cited Bollyn for errors in his reports in which he inserts claims devoid of actual references for such claims. In his alleged reports of 9/11 anomolies, he suggests that the Flight 93 crash site had no aircraft debris ^[5]^[6] contrary to numerous other reports with evidence of such debris^[7]. In his article about the seismic events of the WTC towers collapses, Bollyn suggests that the seismic spikes preceded the collapses and are thus evidence for "basement bombs." He states,

"The strongest jolts were all registered at the beginning of the collapses, well before the falling debris struck the earth. These unexplained 'spikes' in the seismic data lend credence to the theory that massive explosions at the base of the towers caused the collapses."^[8]

Yet other analyses of the WTC seismic data have found no evidence for Bollyn's claim that large spikes preceded the collapses.^[9]

Gregg Szymanski, another writer for American Free Press, uses similar techniques to Bollyn. One review describes the reporting of these writers:

"Along with inserting claims without actual evidence, techniques such as mixing together parts of what a witness says, choosing to report only what certain witnesses said, or distorting what witnesses say, are also used often by Christopher Bollyn, another writer who, like Szymanski, writes for American Free Press. Merging anonymous sources and statements of officials often lends unwarranted credence to the anonymous statements which then cannot be sourced to a particular person. However, exaggerated claims draw in readers to believe a hyped story."^[10]

James P. Tucker, Jr., who has been chronicling the activities of the Bilderberg Group for over thirty years, is also a reporter with American Free Press and was a longtime Spotlight reporter.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has criticised AFP, in particular Bollyn, for its linking of prominent figures in the Jewish community with the events of September 11, 2001, and in September 2006 accused the publication of disseminating "antisemitic propaganda".[3]