Revilo P. Oliver

Revilo Pendleton Oliver (July 7, 1908 – August 20, 1994) was an American professor of Classical philology, Spanish, and Italian at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Oliver was born in 1908 near Corpus Christi, Texas.

He attended two years of high school in Illinois.

He wrote that he received "one of the first mastoidectomies performed as more than a daring experiment".

He relocated to California, where he studied Sanskrit, finding a Hindu missionary to tutor him, he wrote.

He later wrote that as an adolescent, he found amusement in watching evangelists "pitch the woo at the simple-minded", attending performances of Aimee Semple McPherson and Katherine Tingley.

He entered Pomona College in Claremont, California, when he was sixteen.

In 1930, Oliver married Grace Needham.

He returned to Illinois, where he attended the University of Illinois and studied under William Abbott Oldfather.

His first book was an annotated translation, from the Sanskrit, of Mricchakatika (The Little Clay Cart), published by the University of Illinois in 1938.

He received his PhD in 1940.

He wrote that he was in the War Department from 1942 until autumn 1945, and that he was "responsible for the work of c. 175 persons".

Oliver left Washington, D.C. in 1945.

He joined the University of Illinois in 1945 as an Assistant Professor, became an Associate Professor in 1947, and Professor in 1953.

He published little in the academic press but later became known for politically conservative articles expressing anti-Semitism and white nationalism.

That same year, the University published his Ph.D. thesis: Niccolò Perotti's Translations of the Enchiridion, which was republished in 1954 as Niccolo Perotti's Version of the Enchiridion of Epictetus.

Oliver began teaching graduate classes.

For a number of years he also gave graduate courses in the Renaissance, teaching in the Departments of Spanish and Italian.

He said he read 11 languages.

Oliver worked in a military intelligence unit in the Signal Services during World War II, according to his writing.

He was one of the founders of National Review in 1955, and also was a co-founder of the John Birch Society in 1958, where he published in its magazine, American Opinion, before resigning in 1966.

He later advised a Holocaust denial group.

He was a polemicist for right-wing, white nationalist and antisemitic causes.

Oliver co-founded the National Review in November 1955 and worked with William F. Buckley as an associate editor.

Oliver also wrote for The American Mercury.

Buckley, who aimed to make conservatism more respectable to Americans averse to antisemitism and extremism, kept a close friendship with Oliver but acknowledged privately that Oliver was antisemitic.

In 1958, Oliver joined as a founding member of Robert W. Welch, Jr.'s John Birch Society, an anti-communist organization.

He was a member of its national commission and associate editor of its magazine, ''American Opinion.

Oliver attracted national notoriety in the 1960s when he published an article after the President John F. Kennedy assassination, alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald was part of a Soviet conspiracy against the United States.

He was called to testify before the Warren Commission investigating the murder.

'' In 1962, Buckley repudiated Welch and the "Birchers", saying they were "far removed from common sense" and urging the GOP to purge itself of Welch's influence.

The repudiation drove a wedge in Buckley's friendship with Oliver.

He employed Oliver as a National Review book reviewer for years, finally breaking with him over his 1964 article on the Kennedy assassination.

After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Oliver wrote a two-part article called "Marxmanship in Dallas" published in March 1964 in American Opinion, the Birch magazine.

It alleged that Lee Harvey Oswald had carried out the murder as part of a communist conspiracy to kill Kennedy, whom Oliver described as a puppet who had outlived his usefulness.

In March 1964, Oliver was reprimanded by the University of Illinois' Board of Trustees, but was allowed to keep his position.

Oliver testified in the fall of that year before the Warren Commission.

In 1966, Oliver embarrassed Welch by proclaiming that the world's troubles would be ended if "all Jews were vaporized at dawn tomorrow" along with "Illuminati" and "Bolsheviks".

Alleging that Welch had tricked him or sold out to Zionist interests, he decried what he called "the Birch hoax".

He retired in 1977 from the University of Illinois as a professor emeritus.