William Dudley Pelley - Political Involvement

Political Involvement

When the Great Depression struck America in 1929, Pelley became active in politics. After moving to Asheville, Pelley founded Galahad College in 1932. The college specialized in correspondence, "Social Metaphysics", and "Christian Economics" courses. He also founded Galahad Press, which he used to publish various political and metaphysical magazines, newspapers, and books.

On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. Pelley, an admirer of Hitler, was inspired to found the Silver Legion, an extremist and antisemitic organization whose followers (known as the Silver Shirts and "Christian Patriots") wore Nazi-like silver uniforms. The Silver Legion's emblem was a scarlet L, which was featured on their flags and uniforms. Pelley founded chapters of the Silver Legion in almost every state in the country, and soon gained a considerable number of followers.

Pelley traveled throughout the United States holding mass rallies, lectures, and public speeches in order to attract Americans to his organization. Pelley's political ideology consisted of anti-Communism, antisemitism, racism, extreme patriotism, isolationism, pyramidology and British Israelism, themes which were the primary focus of his numerous magazines and newspapers, which included Liberation, Pelley's Silvershirt Weekly, The Galilean, and The New Liberator.

Pelley was also a committed Protestant and an opponent of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal. He founded the Christian Party, running for president in 1936. His pro-fascist advocacy angered Roosevelt and his supporters, and charges were drawn up against the Silver Shirts in 1940. Federal marshals raided Pelley's Asheville headquarters, his followers there arrested, and his property seized. Pelley's business-manager was called to testify before the McCormack-Dickstein Committee.

Despite serious financial and material setbacks to his organization resulting from lengthy court battles, Pelley continued to oppose Roosevelt, especially as the diplomatic relationships of the United States with the Empire of Japan and Nazi Germany became more strained in the early 1940s. Pelley accused Roosevelt of being a warmonger and advocated isolationism, stances which would give political ammunition to the enemies of fellow isolationist Charles Lindbergh (according to A. Scott Berg's biography, Lindbergh had never even met Pelley). Roosevelt enlisted J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI to investigate Pelley for libel, and the FBI interviewed Pelley's subscribers. Although the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 led Pelley to disband the Silver Legion, Pelley continued to attack the government with a magazine called Roll Call, which alarmed Roosevelt, Attorney General Francis Biddle, and the House Un-American Activities Committee. After stating in one issue of Roll Call that the devastation of the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor was worse than the government claimed, Pelley was arrested at his new base of operations in Noblesville, Indiana and charged with high treason and sedition in April 1942. The sedition charge was dropped, but he was convicted on other charges and sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. He was paroled in 1952.

Read more about this topic:  William Dudley Pelley

Famous quotes containing the words political and/or involvement:

    No God and no religion can survive ridicule. No political church, no nobility, no royalty or other fraud, can face ridicule in a fair field, and live.
    Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)

    It may be tempting to focus on the fact that, even among those who support equality, men’s involvement as fathers remains a far distance from what most women want and most children need. Yet it is also important to acknowledge how far and how fast many men have moved towards a pattern that not long ago virtually all men considered anathema.
    Katherine Gerson (20th century)