Silver shirts

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The Silver Legion of America was also under the name Silver Shirts -known anti-Semitic group in the United States from 1933 to 1941.

history

The Silver Shirts were founded by William Dudley Pelley in early 1933 . Pelley, a journalist and screenwriter, reported in an article in American Magazine in 1928 of an out-of-body experience allegedly in 1925 in which he ascended to heaven and met God and Jesus Christ, which led him to save America from communism would have commissioned. As a result, Pelley set up a Bible school , the Foundation of Christian Economics ("Foundation for Christian Economics") and the publishing house Galahad Press, which should spread his views. The subscribers to Pelley's publications have been brought together in an association called the Galahad Extension Fellowship. At the same time Pelley founded an openly political organization for the first time, the League for the Liberation ("League for Liberation") or League of the Liberators ("League of Liberators"), which was reorganized in 1933 to the Silver Legion of America.

The models for the Silver Shirts were the Black Shirts in Italy and the Sturmabteilung in Germany. The headquarters of the hierarchical organization was in Asheville ( North Carolina ). It saw itself as a "Christian militia "; its members had to belong to a Protestant denomination and, upon acceptance into the organization, swear an oath to behave like “true Christian soldiers”. The uniform of the Silver Shirts consisted of a silver shirt with a red letter L on the breast, for the English words love (love), loyalty (faithfulness) and liberation (liberation) stood.

Pelley communicated with local Silver Legion groups scattered across the United States through a variety of scriptures and pamphlets read at group meetings. In addition, he published the journal Liberation (previously published under the title The New Liberator ) as the movement's official press organ , in which Pelley invited people to read Henry Ford's anti-Semitic pamphlet The International Jew and reported on spiritual messages that had come to him through psychic channels . With the publication of another magazine in Oklahoma City , called The Silver Ranger , Pelley wanted to win the support of the farmers of the Midwest hit by the Great Depression . The hoped-for support largely failed, and Pelley moved the editorial office of the Silver Ranger to Los Angeles . There he made contacts with Nazi sympathizers, which aroused the displeasure of a nativist movement within the Silver Legion, which subsequently tried to remove Pelley's editorial influence on the Silver Ranger . The American Jewish Committee suspects that the Nazi sympathizers were partly responsible for financing the Silver Shirts.

In the years of its existence the Silver Shirts became increasingly radicalized. Pelley urged his followers to hoard food and ammunition and acquire military skills. The influence of Jews on public life should be eliminated by all means. A local leader of the organization in Cleveland called for an armed uprising to prevent an impending “red revolution”. The San Diego Silver Shirts group conducted military exercises, stole weapons from a nearby naval base, and planned a siege on the city. In the late 1930s, Pelley had to testify before the House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities . While Pelley claimed his demands should not be construed as a call to violence, witnesses before the committee testified that Pelley was planning the forcible elimination of the US government and that his organization was "revolutionary and militant."

In 1934 the Silver Shirts had around 15,000 members, mostly from the middle class. Thereafter the number of members decreased until in 1938 it still comprised around 5000 people. During the Second World War , the movement disbanded.

ideology

Pelley claimed that a world Jewish conspiracy was planning to overthrow "Christian" governments and replace them with communist regimes. The conspirators controlled the US Federal Reserve and were behind the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt , who had suspended the United States Constitution. Pelley interpreted the rise of Hitler as a sign of the imminent return of Christ , which he predicted for September 17, 2001. According to Pelley, the Nazis were doing the "preparatory work" for an event that would come to an end in the United States: an apocalyptic battle between the "Christian militia" and "international Judaism", in which the latter was to suffer a "terrible fate" .

For the Silver Legion, Pelley worked out a program according to which a state system was to be established in the USA, which Pelley referred to as "Christ Democracy": After the elimination of Jews , socialists and communists, the state was to be run like a business enterprise, whose shareholders the citizens be. All legislative initiatives are to be submitted to the entire population for a vote. Political offices are reserved exclusively for members of the “Christian militia”.

effect

Pelley and the Silver Legion anticipated numerous ideas that were later advocated by the Christian Identity and Survival Movements. Philosophy and personal overlap existed with the representatives of Anglo-Israelism . The Anglo-Israeli author David Davidson , himself a member of the Silver Shirts, influenced Pelley's worldview with his ideas. The later founder of the Posse Comitatus , Henry Lamont Beach, also belonged to the Silver Shirts.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d The Silver Shirts: Their History, Founder and Activity (PDF; 281 kB). American Jewish Committee archive page . Retrieved August 3, 2012.
  2. ↑ a b c David Lobb: Fascist Apocalypse: William Pelley and Millennial Extremism (PDF; 29 kB). Website of the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University . Retrieved August 3, 2012.
  3. ^ Pro-Nazi Groups in US website The Holocaust Chronicle . Retrieved August 3, 2012.