Swank v01n06 January 1942 / Chester Himes' "The Sport's On Me"

Here's a recent find of a Chester Himes story which may not have been republished since (?) in an issue of Swank from January of 1942.

Cover by Michael Berry.

 Download the full scan in .cbr format here, or you can read and download it in different formats from the Internet Archive here.

I was reminded of Swank when I was working a Grin magazine from 1940 that has a neat Kooba Cola ad on the back covers.

 

You can see a few issues of Grin, an over-sized cheesecake photomag, a trend in magazines at the time, here at the Internet Archive.  Kooba Cola is infamous among lovers of golden age comics as a machination of Victor S. Fox, a soda that never was:

 

Given the story of Kooba and the general picture of Victor Fox, self-proclaimed "King of Comics," as a career shyster, it's not much of a surprise that many of the Fox comics are pretty shoddy in production and execution.  There are exceptions (some true zaniness), and some of the Fox comics are so bad they're good, but it's a surprise to me how well done Grin is.  Checking the shell publisher of Grin (Elite Publications), I found the magazine Swank, an Esquire imitator.  Sure enough, it's Victor Fox and there's a great Kooba pin-up ad on the back cover of the first issue.

 

Lo and Behold I was able to find an actual physical issue on the internet (they seem very scarce despite Fox's claim in the sixth issue of a readership of 1,300,000), and there on the cover - HIMES.  As Chester Himes appeared in Esquire, I immediately suspected that he's in at least this Swank, too, so I ponied up the price of admission to find out.  When the magazine arrived, I flipped to the contents and woohoo!

 

The Sport's On Me, The bawdy story of a surrogate narrator and Hoppin' John's awkward journey through night, can easily be read via Flickr.  Here's page 1 and page 2 of Chester Himes' The Sport's on Me, illustrator unknown.

And while Swank is no Esquire, it is an ambitious undertaking, perhaps running contrary to narrative of Victor Fox as total hack.  Sure, Swank is downmarket, but downmarket magazines have their charms, too, when well-executed.  Just the size of this type of magazine is luxurious, the tablet or iphone reader of today just don't know.

From a pin-up artist that never made it (or at least that I'm unfamiliar with), The Fugitt Girl and the inner back cover:

 

 

 

 

I'm reminded of a conversation from earlier in the week with a fellow scanner on Eve and the Forbidden Fruit.  Was it necessarily an apple? asks Sluggo of The Straight Dope.

 

The inner cover, Bradshaw Crandall for The Red Cross

Al Cramer

Hollywood, here I come.

 

 

Lois Karoly photographed by Murray Korman.

Have a drink on me.  The Swank Magazine Chart of Holiday Drinks, the centerfold with illustration by Louis Ferstadt.  Because who could make it through the season without strong spirits...
 

All Shook Up - Peyson Antholz (1958)

 

The scan is here: All Shook Up - Peyson Antholz (1958.Ace D-306) (Darwin).cbr

Or you can read it online or download in .pdf from the Internet Archive here.

 

A paperback for y'all today.  I've been delving into the world of vintage paperbacks lately and having a great time of it.  In many ways, the paperback boom that roughly coincides with the end of the pulp era is a continuation of the fiction from the pulps.  The paperbacks feature many of the same authors and genres as the pulps and, indeed, were published and distributed by many of the same players to the same newsstands that the pulps had flourished on.  There's science fiction and western and romance novels, just like there are in the pulps. But many of the paperbacks of the 50s do have their own feel.  The cover art gets a little darker, and maybe "sleazier" elements creep in.  One of the most popular genres for today's collectors are the JD books.  You know - Juvenile Delinquents, gangs, ne'er do well bad boys and girls out for kicks and nothing more.  It's a generation and style that influenced degenerates and punk rockers and rockabilly types for decades to come.  All Shook Up takes it's name from the Elvis tune of 1957 (and who knows what the author originally had hoped to call it, these publishers might name a book whatever they thought would sell) and boasts a wicked cougar cover with two boys, one with a tattoo and the other with slicked-back jet black hair.  

The wild thing about the 50s paperbacks is that they are often just as little-explored as the pulps in terms of actual readership.  What are the juvenile delinquent books really about?  Some we recognize today because more well-known authors like Harlan Ellison wrote in the genre, but many of the JD novels by unrecognized or authors under alias go unread.  I couldn't find any reference or information about Peyson Antholz (which *could* point to a pen name) and the only reference I could find to All Shook Up is its inclusion in university collection of LGBQT literature.

So, today, a quick post and recommendation of All Shook Up by Peyson Antholz, a paperback original from Ace (and maybe sometime we'll get into the long and interesting history of Ace and A.A. Wyn and his wife, Rose).  Let me just say here that I found it an excellent read that skirted my expectations in frankness, subject matter, and even humanity.  All Shook Up takes place in the small town of Varoo, middle America, but in some respects anywhere America.  The coming of age tale of Alan Peerman and the Summer of his 17th year, All Shook Up is of a similar cloth to Nicolas Ray's Rebel Without a Cause in that Alan looks out at the adult world and sees a lot hypocrisy while his peers shows tendencies towards violence and bullying the meek or the odd.  Sexual anxieties of the regular teenage variety are compounded by Alan's molestation by a visiting clergyman when he was younger and the fact he just doesn't know where he fits in.  His home life offers little comfort, as his womanizing father is a queer role model while his mother takes abuse and turns to the church that abused him.  It's no wonder that Alan starts to go off the rails in desperation as the novel barrels towards tragedy.

I left a little grub on the back cover. It's a messy world out there, after all, so I don't my J.D. books a little rough :D

 

I like to include back covers whenever I share paperback art even when I don't take the time to pretty them up.  First, paperback design can be so amazing, and there's an art involved in the layout that can be separate from the art of the cover painting.  Second, you see what the publisher thinks they are selling - what the hook is for the reader.  A great back cover can pull you in just as much or more so as the cover painting.  It's usually few lines or a quick paragraph - a bit of type that you can read quickly at a bustling newsstand meant have you throwing your change with a smile as you tuck that paperback into a pocket somewhere.

The teaser page at the beginning hints at the motor which makes the novel run, young Alan's anxieties about being considered a real man - by the town of Varoo, by his father, and even by his own self.

Happy Valentine's / Love Revels v01n01 December 1933

Cheers and Happy Valentine's to all you girlie pulp lovers out there.  Here's a scan of the first issue of an intriguing love pulp from December of 1933.  Bottoms up!

Cover artist unknown.  Later cover artists in the four issue run are R.A. Burley and Zoe Mozert.

Full scan available here, and the issue can be read online or downloaded in alternate formats from the Internet Archive here.

This issue marks something of a return of Frank Armer to the girlie pulps who was a pioneer of the Artists and Models and girlie pulp genres creating titles like Pep! (Stories) and Spicy Stories.  Suffering losses in the stock market, printer/partner Harry Donenfeld took over his books out of printing debt (a tactic he used with other players in the pulp game, most notably Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson).  Donenfeld owned this title, too, which aimed to appeal to the romance crowd as well as the girlie pulp lovers.  Doug Ellis' Uncovered notes that material from this issue later appears in ashcans for the Snappy line (Snappy Detective/Adventure/Mystery).  Frank Armer is the editor of Love Revels.  I've written about Armer here at Darwination Scans before, but I'd refer those interested to a longer essay on the girlie pulps at pulpmags.org here.

Love Revels ran for only four issues, the final issue being April 1934.

As one of the lone champions of the actual content of the girlie pulps versus just their cover art (and likely one of the lone readers, heh heh), a friend recently asked me if there were any truly great stories from these pulps.   There are, but the funny thing is,  like with most pulp, I sort of read pulp stories and forget them, though I have started to take note of any "classic" stories in case I ever want to put a collection together in print in celebration of these underappreciated stories.  This issue doesn't have any stories that make the cut, but that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it.  Like a box of grocery story valentine's chocolates, these short entries come in different flavors, perhaps none too refined, and, ala Forrest Gump, when you start a girlie pulp story, you never quite know what you're going to get.  If you're a frequent reader of my blog, you'll notice I try not to spoil any stories while still pointing out the fun ones when "thumbing through" and issue in review.

The inner cover.  I've often pointed out here that the readership of the girlie pulps was split between men and women.  The modern perception with the saucy covers and inclusion of nude photography (though this title has none) is that the girlie pulps were male-oriented.  The letter pages (which often offered inter-gender pen pals where romance pulps would not), the advertising, and the nature of the fiction all point towards female readership as well.  Ribald romantic comedy and a bit of naughty humor are enjoyed by all, even if a lady in the 30s might blush if granny caught her reading a girlie pulp.

Is the inner cover aimed at a male audience?  Hardly - and body image concerns are nothing new even if the contraptions, medicines, and trends in what's attractive do change over time -  the "perfolastic girdle," money back if you do not like

 

But the next page, the first pulp page, which sex is this aimed at?  Could be either, eh?  But don't get edgy when your missus comes looking to up the life insurance benefit, gentlemen, she's not poisoning your tea or anything...

 

Contents, no author names jump out at me here, though a couple of these writers do have a good number of pulp credits.  The use of throwaway pseudonyms was very common in the genre, though we've managed to associate some of the more prolific girlie pulp scribes with their more famous mainstream monikers.

 

The first issue mission statement, always revealing in a magazine, as they tend to lay out goals and intentions and to invite the reader into the pow-wow:

 I think what you're getting here is a pitch at both girlie pulp and love pulp readers.  Romance pulps like Love Story and All-Story Love were very successful, but you also see more and more smaller titles popping out of the woodwork as well as a push to "modernize" the genre, maybe push the prim and proper boundaries as possible.  Here a nod to "life as it IS" and "romances of youth told in the modern manner...entertaining."  Young lovers are drinking, making merry, struggling with the effort to stay chaste and perhaps not always succeeding.  And, yet, the boundaries, though pushed at and teased, are mostly still respected.  These tales are "clean and wholesome" even if "red-blooded."  Changing romances for changing times.  And maybe this tension was even more in play in the mid-30s that had moved on from the jazz-age in a return to  more traditional moires, but still the heart (and body) want what they want -

The first story, A Date for Tonight, teases this tension.  Martin Cavendish, hardworking and traditional New Yorker, is ordered by his doctor to take a vacation for the good of his nerves in sunny Florida.  A stranger in a strange land, Martin marvels as the bronzed and lightly clothed Floridians, "They weren't convalescents like himself; this was their normal and accustomed manner of living.  A gay, carefree lot of pagan sun worshippers!"  Almost immediately, Martin falls under the spell of young Patty and the Florida night.  Love is in the air, Martin's ginger ale is replaced by stronger spirits, there's dancing and cavorting, and before you know it, puritanical Martin's blacked out.  Imagine his fright on waking -

Artist unknown.

Has Martin dishonored this young lass?  Does she even care? She seems none too concerned about such weighty matters. Does she make a good cup of coffee?  A fun opener that sets a whimsical tone for the rest of the issue.

Fangs regards a pair of longtime friends reunited in Mexico.  Tall and Blonde ladies' man Ed Huntley hasn't seen his friend Walter Winslow in years.  In the meantime, Walter's seen hard times but has found fortune in Mexico as a coral snake farmer as well as marital bliss with his beautiful Mexican bride, Conchita.  Huntley always wooed the ladies back in college, and Walter seems to think Conchita has taken a liking to his blonde friend.  Who is snaking who here as the fangs come out?

Between story pages, there are illustrations and jokes, Bo and Flo, adorable:

Jealousy is a one pager wherein a husband has tracked his wife to an unknown apartment and confronts the man within after she leaves.  Good for a guffaw or few.

Going Up from Robert Clairborne Pitzer is far and above the oddest entry in this issue.  It involves the young Mary Kelly who has been orphaned by  her mother and given by the county to be raised by the unkindly Kirschwalder clan and forced into a sort of servitude on the farm, spreading manure and weeding the crops.  She's been arranged to marry the son of the Kirschwalders and to take the family name yet manages to keep fine spirits and a rebellious attitude in her secret dancing in the pasture, prancing about as god made her.  But Kirschwalders and visitors from on high catch her in the act and violent passions are roused. How will Mary get out of this dire predicament?

A Grand Place for a Honeymoon is from Esther Schwartz who is perhaps the most accomplished writer of romances in the issue. Esther appeared regularly in the romance pulps in titles like Breezy Stories, All-Story Love, and Love Story Magazine, and she has a story in all four issues of Love Revels.  A Grand Place for a Honeymon begins with an unnamed lass walking alone along a road in the Adirondacks as the sun is setting and a heavy blizzard is about to fall.  She refuses a ride from a group of "rather forbidding-looking" men and seems to realize she is in a horrible situation as a second car with alone gentlemen approaches, and a man implores her to hop in.  His behavior grows rather impertinent from her on out, as he takes her to a nearby cabin with only a single bed, a grand place for a honeymoon he tells her, as the snows come down, no doubt trapping them together for days.  

Keepsake A short and saucy tale of a trusting but clever husband.

Pajamas on Venus, from Nigel (also Don?) Stuart, is one of better stories in the issue and is set at Snowden college where the young rapscallion Grant Walker is trying to make it with his sweetie, Barbara.   She insists that they wait for any hi-jinks until Grant has graduated meeting the terms for a fifty grand inheritance.  

Please, baby, baby, please...

 

Complicating matters is the fact that Dean Manwaring (a horrible prude that kicks any slightly unvirtuous women out of the school but who nonetheless keeps a nude venus in his  garden) is out to keep Grant from graduation.  Involving a wicked bootlegger, poor decisions, police pursuit and a dance marathon.

Late Laughter - A wicked married woman chases a faithfully married man at a Summer colony.  Defenses crumble as one learns from another the nature of love.

The Masque - "a flirt may tempt but does not always conquer" - After a masquerade at an inn, Mel's had it up to here with his betrothed, Janice.  He's given her a ring, yet she gives him no honey.  During a quarrel, she gives the ring back.  That night, cocktails are prepared, poured, and imbibed by a the group of young merry makers.  Intrigue and partner swapping are afoot, and the catty and sensuous Peg is out to score with Mel.  What beds will all of these young wake up in?  I liked this one.

 

The Pest - Shirley, "one of those rarities : a beautiful girl with brains," just can't get it through the thick head of Claude that she's not interested in him despite his wealth.  Claude won't take no for an answer, so Shirley sets out to let Claude know she's not the nice girl he thinks he's after:

Shirley, you bad girl, you (art by Max Plaisted)

The best laid plans of mice and men -

Lastly, maybe the funniest story in the issue, Wise and Otherwise, is from Adelaide Thomas who I have to speculate might just be Adelaide Humphries, a romance author I've been investigating but who I haven't written about here on my blog yet.  This is the only Fictionmags entry from an Adelaide Thomas, but the writing style and pulp neighborhood certainly line up with Adelaide Humphries (Rowe), so I consider it a strong possibility.  But more on Adelaide Humphries later, I promise - Wise and Otherwise involves Adele Allison who has just gotten a fancy fur coat from a man other than her husband, the cheap bastard.  She must simply have this coat and out in the open, too, so her sugar daddy, who cares not about the conventions of marriage, comes up with a simple plan involving her husband and a found pawn ticket.  Hilarity ensues.

Ah, a fun girlie pulp, love and lust, the turning of tables, transgression and forgiveness.  Happy Valentine's to all you lovers out there. Be good to your sweetie, and she'll be good to you.  On the way out - a couple more vintage advertisements.  We began this post with a girdle for her. I told you the girlie pulps are equal opportunity - a girdle for him?

Don't eat all those chocolates at once!

I admit I'm a last minute shopper, perhaps some diamonds for my honey on Valentines, cheap, too -

We do our part, yes we do.

Hmm, lucky to have a chocolate and roses type of gal...

Note: Sharper eyes may recognize that this doesn't look like one of my usual scans, and it isn't.  This issue was scanned with an overhead scanner from a university collection.  I've left the front cover a bit rougher than I usually might to match the look of the rest of the issue (and who doesn't love a newsstand or under the counter star stamp *swoon*).  I've worked with images from overhead scanners before, and the images from this machine are similar in quality to what can be achieved with the overheads at the Library of Congress.  The scans are sharp, and the process is easier on a delicate book, but there's a trade-off in color quality and uneven lighting gradients as well as some photo-realistic distortions having to do with page curvature and perspective.  All in all, though, I'm pleased with the results and even enjoy the "realness" of an overhead scan (even if a flatbed scan is much preferred for archival purposes).  I plan on pulling some more treasures from this collection when circumstances and proximity allow -

Ransom!: The Story of a Lost Child n01 1933 / The Pulp Serial, Cincinnati Style - Andries Nielen

This is a mysterious little publication that's been sitting on my scan pile forever.  The cursory investigation I've done into its origins took longer than scanning and edit work -

 

Cover artist unknown. 

Full scan, Ransom! - Grace Allen Hardy n01 (1933.Nielen) (Darwin).cbr, available here.

Or you can read online or download in .pdf from the Internet Archive here.

I've seen this lone issue of an apparent series many times over the years. The colorful cover sparks the imagination - the tabloid background, a movie star, a romance with a sheik and a tuxedo-ed beau, a mysterious kidnapping of a babe in white (this being the year after the Lindbergh kidnapping).

The nature of the publication itself poses curiosities as well.  Slightly wider than a normal digest and a very thin 36 pages, this is an oddball format to say the least.  10 cents isn't a ridiculous price point, but it is high in the depths of the Depression when that same dime might fetch you a glamorous Hollywood magazine or a thick love pulp.  Blank inner covers?  No advertising? What's going on here? 

But before getting to the answers I dug up on the publisher and the nature of the publication, some sample images.

The first printed page (on a pulp paper, I left the scan a little "browner" than I tend to, but I wanted to stress the physical characteristics)

 

A fitting first page, "And now I want the whole story..."  Illustrator unknown, initials W.G., one of two artists on the title (from what I can tell).

The flip, a very sparse indicia/copyright page, but it tells us what we need to know for a bit later in this post. 

Followed by the cast and titillating details of the epic story to come...

Janelle looks a little saucy, willfully smoking cigarettes in front of her overbearing father...

 

From high society into a whole world of adventure and drama, and of course the issue finishes on a stunning cliffhanger...

The back cover.  So many questions to be answered!  So much adventure to come!  And a nice clue about what's going on with this serial and publisher...

 

Signed, THE PUBLISHERS.  The Nielen Publishing Company in Cincinnati points to one Andries Nielen, a Dutch immigrant who started a successful business importing tea and expanded into the realm of publishing romance pulp serials and selling household goods. After his retirement (though it seems he still had some hand in the business), Mr. Nielen traveled the world taking photos, many of which were sold as postcards printed by his company.  Here's Mr. and Mrs. Nielen at their home in Los Angeles in 1938 (from an eBay photo postcard):

 The flipside, as his postcards had short bits of wisdom from Nielen or bits of wisdom he'd gathered.

 

It was from a blog entry on postcard History by Dolores Rowe that I was able to find some information on Nielen and his company which you can find here.

And the Cincinnati Library has a nice digital collection of 190 of his photographs/postcards which you can peruse here (and which lists the sayings on the backs of many of the cards).

A search at Worthpoint (a site that catalogs past eBay sales, incredibly helpful to a magazine detective/indexer like me, even without a subscription) turned up further issues of Ransom! which indeed runs through a whopping 110 issues.  I'd note that finding other issues besides #1 (and even finding #1s is tricky enough) on the Nielen serials is very difficult, but they are out there:

 

All the issues besides the first are printed with a monotone cover, and the earlier ones seem slightly easier to find.  Why the first issue is more common exists in greater numbers is apparent when you look at the information on the bottom of the back cover:

The color #1s are a sample copy, special with the color cover and meant to entice.  A door to door salesman (my guess here) would follow these samples, hoping to find buyers for the rest of the serial.  Judging from the scant sales I've found of more lower issues than latter, I'm thinking the rest of the serial might have been sold in installments of say ten issues.  The fact that Nielen sold household goods might point to him already having a network of salesmen and that he could sell multiple wares with his door to door network.  Another clue about this likely being the case is that all of the serials I've been able to find are geared towards housewives (seduction narratives/romances) who were the likely customer base of the door to door approach.

Here's a different serial from 1932 with a similar look, The Crossroads of Love: Sylvia Crane's Search for Happiness by Cora Lane Sherman:

 

It looks like the same cover artist as Ransom! to me.  The back cover with the same "Representative will call" notation:

 Again, the later issues are with monotone covers:

 

And a couple of other serials from Nielen.  Barred from Paradise: The Dramatic Love Story of Gloria Dean by Cora Lane Sherman from 1930:

Or from 1928, The Great Revelation :The Tragedy of an Unwanted Bride, again by Cora Lane Sherman:

 

Are there other titles out there?  How long did he publish pulp serials?  Right now, I'm looking at a range of 1928-1933, but there could be more.  Are there western or crime serials?

In any case, an interesting model for selling pulp and a new regional publisher I'll be keeping an eye out for (and there's a minor history of regional magazine publishers in Ohio that maybe we'll expand on in later posts on other magazines).

See you next time.  A representative will be knocking...

One more oddity, an alternate cover?!  Slightly more salacious with the menacing native and babe on a platter.  This variant seems to be even more rare than the edition I've scanned here...

 

New York Life v01n01, June 1933 / Meeting Hitler in the Streets

Here's a remarkable and very scarce publication I visited in a university collection recently that I'm thrilled to be able to share:

Cover as well as the other 7 pages are up at Flickr, a very easy way to read this oversized tabloid.

Full scan available for download here, also readable online and available in other formats at the Internet Archive here.

Part of Joey Burten's mid 30s comeback, this publication is far different than I'd imagined what I'd find. Burten is listed as publisher, but New York Life was distributed by Independent News (Harry Donenfeld, Jack Liebowitz, and Paul Sampliner) who I assume were the money men and de facto actual publishers (and there were men behind these men as well).  Donenfeld had made his initial mark in the girlie pulps but when Eastern Distributing was forced into bankruptcy in 1932, Independent rose from the ashes.  Soon Spicy Detective would be a hit, and, in 1938, the real goldmine, man in tights, Superman, would come along and DC comics would ride strongly into the media conglomeration future to where it remains today -

But here we are in 1933, and Germany is *rapidly* transforming under Hitler, and who is ringing the alarm bell in the states?  This cadre of rapscallions. This first issue of New York Life is a full newspaper-sized 8 page tabloid chronicling the incredibly fast shift of Germany to Nazi state and disappearance of and barbarity towards the Jews.  Nationalism, racism, and playing to the grievances of "the injured and insulted masses" is playing into a totalitarian's hands.  Pulp and comic publishers are recognized for comics like Lev Gleason's Daredevil Battles Hitler or Martin Goodman's Captain America smacking Der Fuhrer the on cover of the first issue leading up to World War II, but here's fellow publishers a 8 full years earlier directly calling for a boycott of German goods.  Is there some sensationalistic tabloid angle at play? Sure, but this is muckraking activism attempting to make America aware of what is happening to the Jews in Germany and advocating for a boycott of German goods as the shit is hitting the fan.

 

The issue begins - Hitler's promise - a revival of German values and the liquidation of 'Marxist' enemies:

Despite having long been residents of Germany and active in civil, commercial, and community life, Jews are no longer welcome under the new regime.

But Burten not only presages the coming Holocaust, he also sees the coming war and what Hitler's first move will be.  Militarism, nationalism, and a blind fervor is leading to the inevitable here in 1933.  Germany's coming for Austria and the rest of Europe, and we already know it:

 

The construction of new camps is underway.  Dachau -

Officers in churches, desecration of holy sanctuary

 

Tony Sarr cartoon (Burten himself?  A strong possibility)

No shoppers allowed during the Nazi boycott of Woolworth's.  These gentlemen are singing songs while they discourage any would-be shoppers.

There's all sorts of other details in here.  Bits on Einstein's daughters left behind.  Erich Maria Remarque as an enemy of the state for his realistic writings on the horrors of war in All Quiet on the Western  Front.  A knowing indifference to the plight of the Jews from business competitors happy to gobble their share of the market.  Officers expelling Jews to the ghetto mainly out of interest for stealing their worldly possessions. The argument by Germany that American cries of racism be rejected out of hand as hypocrisy over Jim Crow and the Asian Exclusion Act.

The issue ends with a bold proclamation of action, no doubt over-estimating the awareness or will to act in the American public:

 

What America knew and when we knew it is troubling to the national conscience.  

The standard historical take (and no doubt true in some cases) is that Americans only knew when concentration camps were discovered towards the end of the war.  But in my years of digging in pulp and newsstand publications, you find many American publishers were exposing atrocities and American conspirators with the Nazis long before we joined the battle.  Ken Burns three part documentary on the subject, The U.S. and the Holocaust, is a very informative look at the subject.  

And, lest I be too indirect, could it happen here?  De-humanization of our fellow man?  America Uber Alles? The American Continent as Manifest Destiny? A demolishing of Democracy's guardrails? Fuck, I hope not.  History can turn on a dime, but good people have often let evil flourish under the guise of something else.