Chapter Twenty-Nine: Social Credit and Anti-Semitism

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

"The JEWISH RACE must yet acknowledge that the CHRIST who was crucified to the CROSS of Calvary was the SON of GOD, their MESSIAH. Until they will acknowledge that they must expect the curses of the world and can not expect the Blessings of GOD." William Aberhart (1)

The Social Credit philosophy was based almost entirely on the notion of a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world, inspired by the fraudulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It's founder Major Clifford Douglas preached that banks and indeed the entire monetary system was controlled by Jewish financiers, who were intent on destroying Gentiles.

However, many historian believe that Aberhart himself was not antisemitic, and yet he once stated:

Personally, I have little doubt that in working through Jews, the Jewish financial group has sacrificed its own people on the altar of its greed for power and this group is preeminently responsible for the poisonous anti-Semitism which is rampant in the world today. (2)

I don't think he was virulent, but it was there none the less. He often quoted Henry Ford and invited Father Coughlin and Oswald Mosley to write for his Social Credit newspaper. He even visited Coughlin his first year in office.

And the Social Credit Board had one of the largest libraries of anti-Semitic material in the country.

In 1943 when Ernest Manning had taken over on the death of Aberhart, the Social Credit Board, now tying Communism with Judaism, prepared a report, which said in part:

If international finance and socialism are travelling in the same direction is it possible that socialism is promoted by the money power to hasten the completion of their plot for world domination? Not only is it possible, but there is a fund of evidence which leads to the inevitable conclusion that there is a plot, worldwide in scope, deliberately engineered by a small number of ruthless international financiers. (2)

Manning would later purge the party of Douglasites (those who adhered to Douglas' policies and social credit principles, including anti-Semitism), but not for humanitarian reasons. Oil had been discovered in Alberta, and with the die hards still pushing for monetary reform, Manning was moving toward capitalism.

Sources:

1. Social Discredit: Anti-Semitism, Social Credit and the Jewish Response, Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press ISBN 0-7735-2010-4, Pg. 20

2. A Trust Betrayed: The Keegstra Affair, By: David Bercuson and Douglas Wertheimer, Doubleday Canada, 1985, ISBN: 0-385-25003-7, Pg. 34-38