Gerald L. K. Smith: Lust for Money, Anti-Semitism, 'Back to Africa' and 'Christian Identity'

Gerald L. K. Smith (1898-1976) was a notorious anti-Semite and racist who had remarkable speaking abilities which were used to promote fascist movements and goals in America. He was well known for throwing hate speech at Jews, African-Americans and very often associated with extremist movements.

I frst heard of him when reading Michael Barkun's Religion and the Racist Right, an analysis of the origins of 'Christian Identity.' He mentioned him as a man who caused many racists within America to get in contact with each other, thus helping the early teachers of 'Christian Identity' to have access to a receptive audience for their message of hate. Although he himself was probably not a follower of 'Christian Identity,' he played a vital role in helping like minded people to get in contact wth each other.

I have been reading this 1953 report on Gerald L. K. Smith produced by the American Jewish Committee. There are some facinating things in there that have relevance for us as former or current members of the Churches of God.

(Please note: the writing is quite bad in this file so I strongly recommend you read it in as large a font as possible. Expand the size to 130% or more, as much as you can, to make it easier to read.)

In this report Gerald L. K. Smith is portrayed as a man who often claims to be agitating for great and noble causes but in fact it is all just a scam for his personal enrichment.

The report begins in this manner, "ever since 1933...the constant pattern of Gerald Smith's activities has consisted of a deliberate exploitation of the prejudices and fears of the people for his own personal profit. Anti-semitism or any other "ism" is merely the vehicle through which he operates his highly profitable ventures in demagoguery....

"Smith's operations have always been conducted as a "one man proposition." Despite his use of over thirty impressive, high-sounding "front" names, he has never had any actual organization or movement. An actual organization presupposes a board of trustees, treasurer, an official depositary, financial reports to the membership body. Smith wants none of these. He receives and controls all donations personally. He accounts to no one." (p. 2. All page numbers are PDF page numbers.)

This sounds a lot like HWA and the dictatorial manner in which he ran WCG and gained wealth for his eternaly abused flock.

Unlike HWA and most COGs (Fred Coulter's Christian Biblical Church of God seems to be an exception, I wish I could say otherwise) Gerald L. K. Smith was a virulent anti-Semite who hated Jews. He unleashed "thinly veiled attacks on Jews under the "code" of the lunatic fringe, using the phrase "international bankers" as a synonym for Jews." (p. 12.)

Here's another example of the evil anti-Semitic hatred that his organization threw at Jews, delivered just a few years after the Holocaust, "the oratorical efforts [at 'Christian Nationalist Crusade' meetings, a Gerald L. K. Smith front] consisted of attacks on Jews, on the Government as being completely under "Jewish-Communist" domination." (p. 27.)

He also hated African-Americans, even giving some eerily familiar advice.

"In addition his Detroit activities gave him a knowlege of the anti-Negro [sic] feeling prevalent there, which lost no time in exploiting. One of the chief points in his program still being to ship all Negroes [sic] back to Africa." (p. 12.)

Doesn't that sound familiar? Doesn't that sound like Herman Hoeh's insistence that the race problem could have been solved if only African-Americans went back to Africa as mentioned previously?

On page 28 Wesley Swift is mentioned as attending a meeting of the Christian Nationalist Crusade, one of the many front organizations of Gerald L. K. Smith. Wesley Swift would later become one of the founders of "Christian Identity," a virulently racist and anti-Semitic movement which is related to Armstrongism by its common belief in British-Israelism.

Wesley Swift appears again on p. 30: "Smith's long standing affinity for Los Angeles and the West Coast may be explained by the fact that together with Wesley T. Swift, local leader of a an Anglo-Saxon religious-racialist movement, Smith is able to muster his largest audiences. Swift in effect "lends" his following to the Smith meetings, so that with the aid of these numbers, Smith "rallies" often have aggregate attendence of as many as 800-1200."

Very scary man. The stuff he says is absolutely hateful and profoundly disgusting.