America’s
dark history of organized anti-Semitism returns in today’s far-right groups
Weeks later, FBI agents arrested a
Washington D.C. man who followed Bowers on social media. He had told relatives
he wanted to pursue the same path and start “a race revolution.”
Bowers may well have lived a
solitary life, beyond his frequent presence on social media. Yet the fact that
his violent act triggered a would-be emulator highlights an essential facet of
prejudice – especially anti-Semitism.
As I show in my book, “Hitler’s
American Friends: The Third Reich’s Supporters in the United States,” anti-Semitic
violence is never solely the product of a single deluded mind, as the United
States’ dark history of organized prejudice reveals. Instead, it is the product
of a unique culture of hatred that originated in the mid-20th century and
persists to this day.
This aspect of history is rarely
found in textbooks. Yet it is critical to understand the continuing influence
that homegrown, modern American anti-Semitism has had on the country’s history
and continues to exert today.
Local discrimination
Some forms of American anti-Semitism
have been examined and confronted. Many existed at the local level and had a
major impact on Jewish communities all over the U.S.
For decades, restrictive covenants
in home deeds forbade Jews from buying homes in certain
neighborhoods. Some country clubs excluded Jews from membership or even
playing their courses as guests. Some Ivy League universities set
quotas limiting the number of Jewish students they would
admit.
These forms of personal, localized
discrimination date back to the earliest days of the American Republic and
persisted until relatively recently. Their decline can largely be traced to the
passage and enforcement of anti-discrimination laws such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
Other forms of anti-Semitism,
however, have not disappeared as rapidly or completely. This is where the dark
American history of organized anti-Semitism has particular relevance to the
present day.
Group prejudice
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Strong demonstrated that both
anti-Semitic sentiment and the number of explicitly anti-Semitic groups
increased rapidly during the Depression. Organized anti-Semitism,
Strong argued, appeared in the U.S. only after World War I. Previous forms of the prejudice, he claimed, “had expressed itself primarily in terms of social discrimination” rather than through the creation of specifically anti-Semitic groups.
Strong argued, appeared in the U.S. only after World War I. Previous forms of the prejudice, he claimed, “had expressed itself primarily in terms of social discrimination” rather than through the creation of specifically anti-Semitic groups.
In other words, organized
anti-Semitism in the United States was a purely 20th-century phenomenon. Strong
claimed that between 1933 and 1941, a dozen new anti-Semitic organizations had
been founded each year.
“The anti-semitic movement in the
United States,” he presciently concluded, “can no longer be treated as if it
were a transient phenomenon.”
The two most important groups Strong
examined were the German American Bund and the Silver Legion, also known as the Silver Shirts.
German-American Bund parade in
New York City in 1939. New
York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection (Library of
Congress)
Symbol was the swastika
The Bund, founded in 1936, was
theoretically a German-American heritage organization. In reality, its leader –
a German immigrant and naturalized American named Fritz Kuhn – chose the swastika as its
symbol and insisted members, including children in summer camps, wear
Nazi-style uniforms.
The group’s motto was “Free America,” which its
followers understood to be an America freed from supposed Jewish oppression.
The Bund had dozens of local chapters and a following that Kuhn claimed exceeded 200,000 nationwide.
Other contemporary estimates put it considerably lower.
Other contemporary estimates put it considerably lower.
Kuhn’s time as an aspiring American
Hitler ended after a raucous mass rally in Madison Square Garden in
February 1939.
Addressing the rally, Kuhn declared that if
George Washington had still been alive, he would be a Nazi.
Outraged at what he was hearing, a
Jewish hotel worker, Isadore Greenbaum, rushed the stage during Kuhn’s address
and was badly beaten by Kuhn’s bodyguards. Outside the Garden, Bund supporters clashed with anti-Nazi
demonstrators and police officers.
A post-rally investigation revealed
that Kuhn’s interests lay beyond emulating Hitler. He had been skimming money
from the Bund’s accounts for personal use. Kuhn was subsequently prosecuted, convicted and eventually deported to West Germany after
the war.
From screenwriter to anti-Semite
Kuhn was not the only leader of
organized anti-Semitism in this era. The Silver Legion was similar to the Bund
and commanded a nationwide following. Its “Chief,” William Dudley Pelley, was a former
screenwriter who shared Kuhn’s dictatorial aspirations.
Like the Bund, the Legion was
explicitly anti-Semitic and called for the segregation of Jews into ghettos. Silver
Shirts across the country armed themselves, trained for a race war and encouraged
Americans to “Buy Gentile.”
Also like Kuhn, Pelley was brought
down by his own corruption. He had defrauded investors in a previous business
venture to help fund the Legion. He was later indicted for sedition and would
spend World War II fighting a series of legal cases from behind bars.
The movements both men built did not
disappear with their incarceration, as declassified
FBI files show. Certainly, their members did not simply cease to
hold anti-Semitic views when their leaders were imprisoned.
Where did they go?
But media figures of the Depression era like Father Charles Coughlin – who had a radio audience in the tens of millions – also did much to popularize anti-Semitism.
Recordings of Coughlin’s anti-Semitic radio broadcasts, along with Pelley’s writings, remain popular on far-right social media today.
As Strong recognized, the 20th
century saw the emergence of a new and potentially violent anti-Semitism
fundamentally based in Nazi-esque ideas and, in the 1930s, Hitler worship.
The only recorded instance of
the Ku Klux Klan lynching a Jewish person – Leo Frank –
took place in 1915, as World War I raged in Europe. While the Klan had
previously focused its ire on African-Americans and Catholics, the move to
anti-Semitism updated its appeal to racists facing the changing world of the
20th century.
Frank’s lynching is generally
considered to have galvanized support for the previously
declining group. In other words, violent and organized anti-Semitism
became one of the ideological underpinnings of this leading American radical
right group.
It continues to underpin the
ideology of radical right groups today. Like Robert Bowers, the anti-Semites of
the 21st century prepare for racial warfare and rant about Jews “committing genocide to my people.” They are
following directly in the footsteps of America’s 20th-century leaders of
organized anti-Semitism.
Past as prologue
And the United States’s geopolitical rivals – Russia, for instance – view the inflammation of these tensions on social media as a means to undermine the American political system.
Historians and educators can ensure
that this dark aspect of U.S. history is included in textbooks and wider
cultural memory. By confronting America’s dark past of organized anti-Semitism,
it may be possible to recognize it in the present and see it as a more common
part of our culture than most Americans would like to acknowledge.
That recognition can lead, possibly,
to escaping the shadow that the 1930s still cast over the country today.
Bradley W. Hart, Assistant Professor of Media,
Communications and Journalism, California State University, Fresno