Jesse Helms

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Jesse Helms

Jesse Alexander Helms, Jr. (* 18th October 1921 in Monroe , North Carolina ; † 4. July 2008 in Raleigh , North Carolina) was an American politician of the Republican Party , and over a period of 30 years a member of the Senate of the United States .

Life

Helms was a graduate of Wake Forest University .

From January 3, 1973 to January 3, 2003, Helms represented North Carolina as a Senator in Congress and was very influential in both US agricultural and foreign policy.

Political career

He was a member of the Agriculture, Forestry and Food Committee for the 97th to 99th Congressional terms. He was able to fund his election campaigns with the help of generous donations from tobacco companies that came from his home state of North Carolina.

Positions

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Helms was known for his extremely conservative political orientation. He took a position openly and vehemently and often defended his positions in a very polemical way, which earned him numerous critics. In the pamphlet "When Free Men Shall Stand" he expresses: "Utopian slogans such as minimum wage, equality of races, emancipation of women, general health insurance are just tricks with which humanity is to be removed from God".

Foreign policy stance

In 1987, Helms and Bob Dole mobilized US support for the paramilitary RENAMO in Mozambique . It is traced back to his correspondence with Boris Yeltsin that in January 1992 the magnetic tape recordings of the flight data memory and the cockpit voice recorder of the Boeing 747 of Korean Airlines, which was shot down by Soviet fighter planes over Kamchatka in 1983 , were made available to the ICAO for analysis. After taking over the Republican majority in the Senate in 1994, he also delayed the United States’s payment obligations to the UN , greatly reduced the field service in the consulates financially and personally, and tended to pursue an isolationist policy. From 1995 to 2001 and again in 2001 he was chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee . Together with Congressman Dan Burton , he was the main author of the Helms-Burton Act , which tightened the embargo on Cuba.

Attitude to homosexuality

Helms had an openly anti-gay policy. He opposed the right to same-sex partnerships, saw HIV infection as a result of "unnatural practices" and described homosexuals as "weak, morally ill villains" . He acted against the National Endowment for the Arts , an association for the promotion of art, as they supported the homosexual artist Robert Mapplethorpe and the film Poison by Todd Haynes , among others .

Several times he hindered the political career of homosexuals. In 1993 when Roberta Achtenberg of Bill Clinton as Assistant Secretary of the United States Ministry of Construction should be called to put Helms decided against it on the grounds, "because she's a damn lesbian" . He threatened Clinton that he'd better bring a bodyguard with him the next time he visited North Carolina. In his capacity as chairman of the foreign affairs committee, he was also able to delay the appointment of the openly gay James Hormel as US ambassador to Luxembourg .

In response, many customers boycotted the tobacco company Philip Morris , which was supporting him, in the early 1990s (and its subsidiary Kraft - outside the USA, the Milka chocolate brand was also the target of this campaign), until the company donated large amounts to AIDS aid in response to the criticism performed.

Attitude towards other minorities

Helms opposed equal rights for African Americans on numerous counts . He opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 , spoke out against the introduction of Martin Luther King Day , boycotted the Voting Rights Act - which guaranteed the voting rights of blacks and other minorities , and opposed visits by black students " white “schools (see Brown v. Board of Education ) and against the establishment of a museum for African American culture in Washington.

He tried several times to prevent the appointment and appointment of black judges and politicians on racial grounds. He voted against the nomination of Carol Moseley Braun , the first African-American senator, as ambassador to New Zealand . He tried to keep the African-American lawyer Roger Gregory away from the judge's office in the United States Court of Appeals .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The right hand of God: Jesse Helms's political theology ( Memento from July 8, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  2. ^ Letter from Senator Helms to President Boris Yeltsin dated December 10, 1991 at rescue007.org , accessed May 9, 2008
  3. ↑ Excerpt from a CIA report on rescue007.org (PDF; 106 kB) (English), accessed May 9, 2008
  4. ↑ Die Presse : "Senator No": Conservative US icon Jesse Helms dies, " July 4, 2008
  5. ↑ Ex-Senator Served North Carolina for Three Decades - The Wall Street Journal
  6. ↑ Good Old Boys Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms helped create an unsettling brand of politics. - The Washington Post
  7. ^ Helms Takes New Swipe at Clinton, Then Calls It Mistake - The New York Times
  8. ^ N Offen, EA Smith, RE Malone (2003): From adversary to target market: the ACT-UP boycott of Philip Morris . In: Tob Control ; 12: 203-207
  9. ↑ Kenneth J. Heineman: God is a Conservative: Religion, Politics, and Morality in Contemporary America . NYU Press, ISBN 0814735541 . 1998. Retrieved July 13, 2008.
  10. ↑ John Nichols: Jesse Helms, John McCain and the Mark of the White Hands . The Nation. July 4, 2008. Retrieved July 12, 2008.
  11. ^ A b Architects Chosen for Black History Museum - The New York Times

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Helms, Jesse
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Helms, Jesse Alexander Jr.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American politician
DATE OF BIRTH October 18, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Monroe , North Carolina
DATE OF DEATH 4th July 2008
Place of death Raleigh , North Carolina