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. He was a founding member of the John Birch Society in 1958, where he published in its magazine, American Opinion, before resigning in 1966. He was a polemicist for right-wing, white supremacist and antisemitic causes. He later advised the Holocaust denial group the Institute for Historical Review.
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.
Life and career
Early life
alt=refer to caption|thumb|Oliver in a 1926 yearbook photo|upright=.7
Revilo Pendleton Oliver was born July 7, 1908, in Iowa Park, Texas, to Revilo P. Oliver and Flora R. Long. "Revilo P. Oliver" is a palindrome—a phrase that reads the same backwards and forwards. Oliver wrote that his name had been, in his family, "the burden of the eldest or only son for six generations". Colleagues at the University of Illinois later joked that "his first name is his last name spelled backward because he doesn’t know if he’s coming or going".
He was raised and experienced his early education in California and Louisiana, before his family relocated to Illinois, where he attended high school for two years. With his family, he then moved to California, where aged 16 he entered Pomona College in Claremont.
Academia
In 1930, Oliver married Grace Needham.
He received Fulbright and Guggenheim fellowships. 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. as an assistant professor, became an associate professor in 1947, and professor in 1953. He retired in 1977 from the University of Illinois as a professor emeritus. Oliver also wrote for The American Mercury.
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 board and associate editor of its magazine, American Opinion. When Buckley repudiated Welch and the John Birch Society, the repudiation drove a wedge in Buckley's friendship with Oliver. He also criticized Kennedy, writing that his "memory will be cherished with distaste". Oliver testified in the fall of that year before the Warren Commission.
White supremacy
In a Boston rally on July 2, 1966, Oliver embarrassed Welch by proclaiming at a speech that: "If only by some miracle all the Bolsheviks or all the Illuminati or all the Jews were vaporized at dawn tomorrow, we should have nothing to worry about". Oliver mentored William Luther Pierce, founder of the National Alliance and author of The Turner Diaries.