Broom, The.
San Diego's Progressive Weekly. An Independent San Diego Owned Paper Published in the Interest of San Diego City and County / The American National Weekly.
Good Thought, Good Word, Good Deed / Wholesome, Fearless, Independent / In hoc signo vinces / Not Afraid to Tell the Truth
1930–1965
Weekly
San Diego, CA.
1/1, October 6, 1930-1965.
4-6 pp., $2.00-$4.00 a year, 5-10 cents a copy.

Constantine Lagenepol / C. Leon De Aryan (1886-1965) was a Romanian-born anti-semite and anti-Communist, who combined those interests with Mazdaznan and, increasingly over time, Christianity, together with opposition to F.D. Roosevelt, the New Deal and the modern world and "the Establishment" (cultural, medical, financial, etc.) generally. The title of the journal came from the adage that a "new broom sweeps clean." Its masthead showed a Christian cross next to a bucolic scene of happy laborers gathering in their crops (or a happy man rushing to embrace his daughter on returning from work), under a bright sun, with a broom to the right of them sweeping away a policeman, an armed Roman soldier, various languid, scantily clad women and a whiskey bottle, and a financier, complete with top hat and money bag. De Aryan's advertisements for the journal called him "a student of the Ancient Wisdom," and claimed that the journal "sweeps away superstition, fear and slavery. Tells the truth about timely events." He later recounted his travels as a youth throughout Europe, Egypt, Mesopotamia and India (where he encountered Mazdaznan in Bombay) in search of true religion. He arrived in the United States about 1910 and promptly joined the U.S. Army under the name C. Leon De Aryan, perhaps as an indication of his adherence to Mazdaznan. He was dishonorably discharged in 1914 on unknown charges. His politics brought him to the attention of the United States government during World War II and he was one of those (like William Kullgren and Pelley) included in the catch-all Great Sedition Trial of 1944 (he was dropped from the indictment in 1944). He had worked for Linn A.E. Gale in Mexico, where Gale had fled when the United States entered World War I, and published articles on Mazdaznan in Gale's Magazine (q.v.). Curiously, considering De Aryan's later anti-Communist and anti-organized labor views, Gale was the agent for the Wobblies (IWW) at the time. and for the Communist Party in Mexico. From its beginnings, this journal was devoted to Mazdaznan (without initially mentioning that name, although carrying articles by "Dr. O.Z. Hanish"), local politics and opposition to socialism—and an idealized form of white supremacy and racism that became more anti-Semitic over time. By 1935, De Aryan, who had always regarded the Mazdaznanism he had learned of in Bombay as the bedrock of the movement, began increasingly to distance himself from Otoman Zar-Adusht Hanish who, he stated, was but one representative of the movement. By the mid-1930s, De Aryan associated his work with that of Pelley's Silver Shirts and his journal regularly reprinted material from Pelley. In the mid-1930s the journal began advocating for Henry George's Single Tax and after the War added the halting of fluoridation of water and naturopathic medicine to its aims. In 1952 it announced de Aryan's campaign to write in Jesus for president. In addition to the journal De Aryan lectured widely on political subjects and "Psychology" and ran frequently and unsuccessfully for public offices. Claims for circulation of the journal in the 1940s range from 1,750 to 7,500. Internet Archive; NYPL; Princeton University; Duke University; University of Pennsylvania, etc.

IAPSOP materials are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
IAPSOP respects people's privacy and personal data rights.