A two-part article by George Clarke on one of the 1930s most ‘successful’ fascist organizations, the Silver League of America, Silver Shirts, led by failed screenwriter William Dudley Pelley.

‘Hill-Billy Hitlerites: Pelley’s Silver Shirts’ by George Clarke from The Militant. Vol. 7 Nos. 2 & 3. January 20 & 27, 1934.

There is a Fascist movement in America. It is small. It is inconspicuous. It lacks popular protagonists. It has no spokesmen in the accredited capitalist press. It is unknown to most American workers. It does not possess state power and is not represented in any governmental office. BUT IT IS GROWING AND IT DISPOSES OF FINANCES, FREELY GIVEN FROM SOME UNDIVULGED SOURCE.

Fascism in the U.S.

To our knowledge, the outstanding Fascist organization in the United States is the Silver Shirts of America with headquarters at Ashville, North Carolina. The literature and form of organization of this outfit, the men in the leadership and the people in back of it, give us the impression that the Silver Shirts are no fly-by-night gathering like the late but unlamented Khaki Shirts of Philadelphia. If not handled in time, and handled properly, they may become a gruesome menace to the labor and revolutionary movement, to the working class fortresses yet to come.

American Fascism, in the guise of the Silver Shirts, has borrowed its stock-in-trade of propaganda, vituperation, sulphur-and-brimstone damnation from the Fascism that goose-steps on German streets in Brown Shirts. Its creed is not a new one; rabidly anti-semitic, arch-reactionary Communist baiters, violently nationalistic, they have been aptly termed “hill-billy Hitlerites.”

The Silver Shirts claim to be a national organization. In Liberation, their weekly organ they publish an organization chart which divides the country into “nine incorporated units” and claim, pretend or boast to have tens of thousands of members. Liberation is a twelve page magazine printed on expensive paper. Beneath the masthead of the magazine is the ostentatious statement, printed in large type, “Edited by William Dudley Pelley.”

“The Chief”

Hitler is known as der Fuehrer, Mussolini as Il Duce and our own William Dudley Pelley … the “Chief” The chief, who is the organizer, inspirer and leader, who is endowed, according to his own admission, with magical, psychical powers to communicate with the dead and the “beyond” by means of “clairvoyance” and “clairaudience”, came to his present pre-eminence by a peculiar yet quite logical road.

Up till May 1928, Pelley tells us, he was a “newspaperman”, which is only a more euphemistic name for the paid agents of the kept press. In that year and month in the state of California – take note of the state – he made two discoveries which he makes known to us in the December 1930-March 1931 number of his magazine the New Liberator, the forerunner of Liberation, and incidentally published by the same institution.

Truly “Miraculous”

Under the headline, “The Dead are Alive and Organized”, he recounts his “miraculous” discoveries:

“First, I have become convinced by my own investigations and experiences that there is no such thing as Death – that life once created cannot die to extinction, that there is one continuous stream of consciousness using many lives for expression, of which physical bodies in a mortal world are the lowest and clumsiest.

“Second, I have become convinced through the training of my psychical faculties, confirmed by messages received by other psychical persons and steadfastly proven by current events, that the outstanding master-brains of the ages – the leaders in religion, statecraft, science and art who have ennobled human society by living in it – have not ceased contact with this earthly sphere … More than this, they have banded themselves together in a vast sublime Lodge of Supernatural Wisdom for a concrete and benevolent earthly purpose. Under the dynamic generalship of Christ, they are contributing their massed intelligence toward the early establishment of an entirely new social order, that shall permanently abolish Ignorance, Depression, Poverty and War.” (Pelley’s emphasis).

A New Pope

As can be seen from this superstitious clap-trap, refurbished from the childish idiocy of the dark ages, Mr. Pelley was no ordinary sky-pilot. At one blow Pelley became a pope in his own rights, the direct agent of God and the intermediary between the world of the “light” and the “shade”. He lectured to nice gullible Christian ladies and gentlemen on the results of the clairvoyant and clairaudient communications, undoubtedly thrilling them to their toe nails, hoodwinking them out of all rationality and providing them with a convenient escape from the harsh realities of life. Possibly Pelley also received returns which were … not so spiritual.

We have every reason to believe that the Chief-to-be was likewise the master of ceremonies in the great sucker game known as seances. Dozens of mimeographed bulletins, called “readings”, packed with this psychical hocus-pocus, were manufactured by Pelley and his associates and retailed at twenty-five cents a throw. The New Liberator is jammed from cover to cover with this metaphysical buncombe.

It seems that somewhere in the year 1932 Mr. Pelley had a new “revelation” in one of his not uncommon trances – to change his field of operations to the social world. Whether this was caused by a falling off of receipts in the old racket, a lust for power at any price, or possibly a sincere belief, after the manner of General Goering, who spent about one year in the Stockholm insane asylum as a dope addict, is not easy to say …

It is not illogical that an American Fascist movement should be started by a religious freak, a spiritualist crank. Pelley says he heard the “word” in California, a state which is known for its Aimee McPhersons, Holy-Rollers, Yogi men and a hundred other kinds and descriptions of religious nuts who are patronized by degenerated middle class elements, retired farmers of Kansas and Iowa, etc., etc. Not only California. Billy Sunday claims to have made 65,492 converts and collected (ahem!) $120,000 in cosmopolitan New York alone in 1917. Just think of the fortune he made in the provinces, the backwoods and the hinterland.

But the Silver Shirts were started in the post-depression year, 1932, and a social platform was needed, so the Fascist jargon was taken lock, stock and barrel from the German Minister of Enlightenment. The Jews, Jewish bankers, Jewish Communists, Jewish journalists, etc., ad nauseam are responsible for all the ailments of society from the time of Adam, and especially at the present time. Unless this pest is wiped out root and branch the world will go to the dogs. We will deal with this “philosophy” in all its ramifications in the next article. For the present let us see what happened to Mr. Pelley’s spiritualism.

The Psychic Transformed

The transformation was: Mr. Pelley, the Psychic became Mr. Pelley, the Fascist … “Chief”. Psychicism became the underlying philosophy, just as Aryanism and Teuton Gods are for Hitler and his Hitlerites. It serves a very useful purpose for … the Chief. One page or more of every issue of Liberation is devoted to this psychic-seance-medium buncombe. We wish we had space to reprint some of these revelations, for they are indeed, revelations of the depths to which man’s ignorance can sink, in this late day and age, to say nothing of their unconscious humor. Above each of these “revelations” appears this gem which should give some indication of its content:

“Out of the vastness of Cosmos the Psychic Antennae tune in on a Voice. If the Word was made flesh and spoke once to men, how much stronger may be its pronouncements when the handicaps of the flesh are perished? If we cannot believe this to Whom or What shall we look for authority of commitments like the following? …”

Omnipotent, Infallible

The Fascist movement needs the myth of the impeccability of its leader, the unassailability of his ideas, the unquestioning of his instructions (leaving aside terror for the moment). Pelley has or is trying to attain this end through his psychism, which gives him the power to prophecy, through his communion with the dead, and therefore to give the right instructions at the right time. Thus, for instance, in an editorial called “A Caution to the Restless …” (Liberation, Vol. V No. 20) which is a warning to the impatient Silver Shirts who want to go into action against Jews, bankers and Communists immediately, he makes the solemn statement:

“But no matter how this declaration is interpreted, from either foe or supporter, there is a Higher Import, a Deeper Voice that has faithfully in the past instructed the Chief just when, and where, and how to move. He has learned to trust that Voice and act upon it, and when he has so acted in the past he has committed few blunders. But when he has allowed himself to be swept out of step with the Infinite, so to speak, he has had to retrace his steps at great cost and sacrifice to the whole great Silver movement.”

“The Higher Import”

“The Chief” admits, for the present, that others may learn to feel this “Higher Import” and hear this “Deeper Voice”. But he reserves to himself the right to judge whether the new prophet has heard correctly or has been adviced by a false spirit. That’s as far as the game has gone up till now – it needs a little “democracy”. If and when this movement of ignorance and superstition attains some power and influence, then heaven help any Silver Shirt that dares challenge the inspired orders of the Chief.

Who backs the Silver Shirts, where do they get finances? The inscription on the back side of Liberation says that the Silver Shirts of America are the active civic organization of the League for Liberation and that both Liberation and the Galahad Press, Incorporated, which publishes the magazine, are subsidiaries of the Foundation for Christian Economics, Incorporated. It should be quite obvious that these are only dummy corporations shielding some big financier or industrialist. In more than one issue of the modern alchemists’ Silver sheet “The Chief” talks of prominent men in the business and lay world who consort with him and tell him state secrets but who dare not reveal their names for fear of retaliation intimidation and blackmail from the “Jewish Press” and the “Jewish bankers”.

Pelley Praises Ford

The March 1931 issue of The New Liberator has high praise for Henry Ford who, according to Pelley, “is doing, without maudlin sentiment…the highest type of constructive spirituality deploying throughout society by way of mass production industry”. And further, “If every employer in America, England and Germany adopted the Ford principles this afternoon, and remained there, the world’s economic depression would be ended tomorrow morning to stay ended.”

It is well know that Henry Ford is a vicious anti-Semite and a no less vicious hater of organized labor…

Time, events will bring the real backers of this mystical, incipient but barbarian Fascist movement to the fore. Yes, and possibly more…

Hill-Billy Hitlerites

It was a popular impression before the Nazis hoisted themselves into the saddle of power that Adolph Hitler was a clown and his supporters a bunch of “nuts”. It was said that he had no program, that the storm-troops were riff-raff, bitter at the world and eager for blood and revenge. There was more than a grain of truth in this belief. Yet there was method in Hitler’s madness – and a terrible appeal. Witness the million-headed Fascist monster that rules Germany today.

The secret of Hitler’s success with his followers, in part, rested in his ability to invoke real or imaginary foes who were blamed for the grief and worries of society, to promise their heads to crazed, embittered people. Threat and condemnation – this is the Fascist credo. The positive program is a mystery or at best vague promises.

Red Baiting and Jew Baiting

Pelley’s Silver Shirts are founded upon a striking emulation of their German prototypes. On one of the pages of their rag, Liberation, (this is a peculiar way of saying, slavery) all of the so-called panaceas “for saving America” are decried – taboo. These include the lightening of the farmers’ taxes, the abolition of the presidential electoral college, the repeal of prohibition, the elimination of usury, government ownership of public utilities and … The abolition of the system of production for profit! No! These are only delusions, says the Liberation scribbler, “And those who do not think deeply are led into the pathways of delusive Socialism, if they belong to the ‘intelligentsia’, and into the clutches of anarchistic Communism if they belong to the so-called proletariat.”

Well, then, asks the sane worker, what is wrong with the system we live in?

The answer, recounted below, is quite worthy of the lowliest intellect in Mattawan:

“A foreign virus has been instilled into the body of the nation. Within the flesh of the citizenry crawls the viper of materialism …

“It is no peculiar fact that the Jews and Jewishness are noted for materialism. Nor is it strange that this gigantic fact should resolve itself into national factors with the Jews at the root and at the bottom of every major corruption and debauchery of our Christian nation and Constitutional form of government!”

In Germany the Jews were accused of having sold the nation’s birthright to the Allies. In America the “Depression … was the result of a vast JEWISH banker’s conspiracy.” How true to type! The ostensible cause, claimed by the German Hitlerites, for the sweeping ruin of the middle strata of the population was the treaty of Versailles perpetrated by the Jews, and the “foreign yoke” maintained by the Jews. In the United States, according to the Hilly-Billy Hitlerites, 1929 was the Jewish Deluge for the “Gentile” petty bourgeoisie, which is perpetuated by the “Washington Jewish Oligarchy.” This is the ancient scape-goat trotted out and spat upon in order to detract attention from the real burning issue – capitalism.

Bluntly stated, here is what the Jew-scalping “Chief” considers the Insidious plan of the “traducers (Jews) of this Christian form of government.”

The Jewish Plot à la Pelley

“We need more Hebrews in the United States to perfect our plans and strategies for the utter despotism of Protocolism over your detested free institutions. So whether you like it or not we are going to bring them in. We will distribute them far and wide over your American nation. We shall see that they are set up as shopkeepers in cities and towns all over the country, entering into competition with your Gentile shopkeepers who are on the verge of bankruptcy through what we have done to your economic and financial system already, plus our pet NRA scheme for making it costlier for you to do business at all. We will also use them, as they demonstrate individual smartness, to worm and weasel into all your fraternal and social organizations and keep bulldog watch over their activities, to see that nothing starts within them for checkmating our international racial program.”

The battle cry for the doomed middle class: Exterminate the Jews and there will be more jobs, professions and business for You!

Great pains are taken to prove that the government is dominated by Jews, that the Federal Reserve and the Treasury is under the thumb of the “Judan swarm”. Notice all the variety of Jews on the inside track in Washington:

“It has gotten to the point that Jews and husbands of Jews, semi-Jews and wives of Jews, Gentile fronts for Jews, statistical Jews, financial Jews, analytical Jews, budget Jews, brain-trust Jews, politics Jews, diplomatic Jews, immigration Jews, Congressional Jews, patronage Jews, mortgage Jews, assessor Jews, foreign conference Jews, war debt Jews, radio Jews, motion picture Jews, sugar Jews, clothing Jews, packing-industry Jews, railroad Jews, publicity Jews, Cuban Jews, League of Nations Jews, Colonel-House-brand of Jews, Barney-Baruch Gentile Jews, Washington editor Jews, government clerk Jews, are swarming all over the place …”

Hosannas are sung for Hitler’s persecution of Jews and Communists; epithets are heaped on those who protest the savage deeds in Berlin … This story is drummed on the ears of the ignorant, bigoted Silver Shirt, – whose brain action must become paralyzed after reading several copies of Liberation – until he thinks that his salvation on heaven and earth, materialistically and spiritually, rests with Pelley’s anti-Semitism.

“The issue is sharp – how much longer are we going to permit Baruchism (Barnard M. Baruch, the agent of Russian Communism in America according to the feverish brain of the “Chief”) to direct the foreign policy of these Christian and Gentile United States of America? Must we wait for the Red Flag to fly over the White House, and hundreds of our people to be shot down by the American-Jewish Chekka in the streets of Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago, before we will awaken and arise to a man, smash Jewish Communism in this land of Patrick Henry as Mussolini smashed it in Italy, as Hitler smashed it in Germany?”

As on the European continent, and wherever Fascism has reared its ugly head, it likewise reveals its raison d’etre – anti-working class, destroy the revolutionary and labor movement to perpetuate the existence of the cadaver, capitalism. It is highly significant that in all the fuming and raging about Jewish bankers, moneylenders, the writer has not found a single word in the dozens of Silver Shirt magazines he has labored through, aimed at the industrialists, the factory owners, the exploiters, the slave-drivers in the mine and the mill. Naturally, the banker (for whom we nave no sympathy whatsoever, and who will be eliminated not by Pelley but by the Communist movement), and especially the Jewish banker is a good mark for the chief. He is thereby committed to nothing definite. He can wriggle out any time his masters clamp down, whining “I mean the Jewish bankers, not a good Gentile firm like J.P. Morgan but his competitors Kuhn, Loeb and Co.”

The Choicest Invective

Next to the Jews the choicest invective is saved for Soviet Russia, – murderers, cut-throats, thieves, rapists, and various combinations of these and other bouquets … Russian Communism, says Pelley, finances American Communism through the Armtorg and Barney Baruch, die-hard conservative banker, was and is the liaison officer through whom Communism is infiltrated into the United States. The “Chief” gets purple in the face shouting against the Recognition agreement with Russia which he claims in his delerium has tortured and murdered over 1,670,000 persons. “The Chief” does not think that Communism in this country is or would be so much of a menace to civilization (read: capitalism) except that it is directly aided by Roosevelt’s closest advisors; and many is the impression given in the official organ than Roosevelt himself might be a good-standing member of the Politbureau of the Russian Communist Party …

Pelley is 100% anti-Soviet. So much so that he denounces his fellow jingo, William Randolph Hearst, for raising a hue and cry about the Japanese Yellow Peril. The Silver Shirt declares that Japan has been fighting the battle of civilization – against Sovietism – when she plundered Northern China and bombarded Shanghai. A plan is recounted whereby…

“A ring of steel was to be drawn about Jewish-Soviet Russia, and that ring was to be tightened until the Murder-bund under Stalin was to be strangled from existence. On the East was Japan, on the West was Poland, Germany, and Czechoslovakia – which latter nation meant, of course, France.

“Japan was to commence the fight for the preservation of constitutional civilization and the continued reign of orderly governments in Manchuria. Hitler was to be lifted into power on the West, and out of this ‘lifting’ was to grow a formidable antagonism to Communism throughout Continental Europe. Certain equally significant and vital roles, all delineated at the time were to be played by England and Italy.” (Liberation, December, 9, 1933)

Pelley has all he can do in trying to conceal his chagrin because the brigands assault on the Worker’s Fatherland has not yet commenced. And how he rages against the Recognition because it might help Soviet Russia …

Let us conclude on the same note we began this installment. The universal features of Fascism apply even to these United States. The middle class is duped, drugged and deceived but like all addicts it does not realize the damage until morning after…

The Militant was a weekly newspaper begun by supporters of the International Left Opposition recently expelled from the Communist Party in 1928 and published in New York City. Led by James P Cannon, Max Schacthman, Martin Abern, and others, the new organization called itself the Communist League of America (Opposition) and saw itself as an outside faction of both the Communist Party and the Comintern. After 1933, the group dropped ‘Opposition’ and advocated a new party and International. When the CLA fused with AJ Muste’s American Workers Party in late 1934, the paper became the New Militant as the organ of the newly formed Workers Party of the United States.

PDF of full issue 1: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/themilitant/1934/jan-20-1934.pdf

PDF of full issue 2: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/themilitant/1934/jan-27-1934.pdf