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The Spotlight, Extinguished

The Spotlight, once the nation's best-known conspiracy-minded anti-Semitic publication, closes its doors.

Culminating eight years of courtroom battles, America's best-known anti-Semitic institution and its conspiracy-minded newspaper apparently are closing their doors, ending a chapter in the history of the radical right.

Officials of Washington, D.C.-based Liberty Lobby, founded by anti-Semite Willis Carto in 1955, told reporters in July that the organization was shutting down after a federal bankruptcy judge dismissed the group's request for Chapter 11 protection.

The July 2 edition of the group's newspaper, The Spotlight, was apparently its last.

The decision seems to end a long battle between Carto and former associates in the Holocaust-denying Institute for Historical Review (IHR), which Carto co-founded in 1978. IHR had won a suit alleging that Carto diverted millions of dollars that were left in a bequest for IHR.

A Liberty Lobby spokesman hinted that The Spotlight may well come back in another form.