Silver Legion of America
The Silver Legion of America, commonly known as the Silver Shirts, was an underground American fascist organization founded by William Dudley Pelley that was headquartered in Asheville, North Carolina.
History
A nationalist, fascist group modeled after Benito Mussolini’s blackshirts, the paramilitary Silver Legion wore a silver shirt with a blue tie, along with a campaign hat and blue corduroy trousers with leggings. The uniform shirts bore a scarlet letter L over the heart: an emblem meant to symbolize Loyalty to the United States, Liberation from materialism, and the Silver Legion itself. The blocky slab serif L-emblem was in a typeface similar to the present-day Rockwell Extra Bold. The organizational flag was a plain silver field with such a red L in the canton at the upper left.
By 1934, the Legion claimed to have about 15,000 members. [Must’ve been the outfits.]
Legion leader Pelley called for a “Christian Commonwealth” in America that would combine the principles of racism, nationalism, and theocracy, while excluding Jews and non-whites. He claimed he would save America from Jewish communists just as “Mussolini and his Black Shirts saved Italy and as Hitler and his Brown Shirts saved Germany.” Pelley ran for president of the United States in the 1936 election on a third-party ticket under the Christian Party banner.
Pelley hoped to seize power in a “silver revolution” and set himself as dictator of the United States. He would be called “the Chief” just like other fascist world leaders who had similar titles such “Der Führer” for Adolf Hitler and “II Duce” for Benito Mussolini. However, the Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt handily won the reelection, and Pelley failed to figure among the top four. By around 1938, the Silver Legion’s membership was down to about 5,000.
On January 20, 1942, Pelley was sentenced to serve two to three years in prison by Superior Court Judge F. Don Phillips, in Asheville, North Carolina, for violating terms of probation of a 1935 conviction for violating North Carolina security laws. The same sentence had been suspended pending good behavior, but the court found that during that period Pelley had published false and libelous statements, published inaccurate reports and advertising, and supported a secret military organization.
In popular culture
- Sinclair Lewis’s novel It Can’t Happen Here depicts a fascist takeover of the United States by an anti-Roosevelt demagogue who claims inspiration from the Silver Legion.
- The grand strategy game Hearts of Iron IV depicts the Silver Legion as their fascist archetype of the United States, as the Free American Empire.
Further reading
- Allen, Joe “‘It Can’t Happen Here?’: Confronting the Fascist Threat in the US in the Late 1930s,” International Socialist Review, Part One: whole no. 85 (Sept.-Oct. 2012), pp. 26–35; Part Two: whole no. 87 (Jan.-Feb. 2013), pp. 19–28.
- Atwood, Sarah (Winter 2018–2019). “‘This List Not Complete’: Minnesota’s Jewish Resistance to the Silver Legion of America, 1936–1940”. Minnesota History. 66 (4): 142–155. JSTOR 26554803.
- Ribuffo, Leo Paul The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right from the Great Depression to the Cold War. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983.
- Spivak, John L. Secret Armies: The New Technique of Nazi Warfare. New York: Modern Age Books, 1939.
- Werly, John The Millenarian Right: William Dudley Pelley and the Silver Legion of America. PhD dissertation. Syracuse University, 1972.
- Yeadon, Glen. The Nazi Hydra in America. Joshua Tree, CA: Progressive Press, 2008.
External links
- Photo of a Silver Legion of America meeting in the 1930s:
- The Holocaust Chronicle: PROLOGUE: Roots of the Holocaust, page 89
- The American Jewish Committees’ archive on the Silver Shirts:
- Atlas Obscura article on Rustic Canyon’s Murphy Ranch
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Thank you.
The Chief
I never have had much use for people who let the commonplaces of existence keep them commonplace, anyhow. I have had still less use for men and women who live their lives scared to death that perchance by giving free vent to their inner urges they may actually accomplish something that will leave them marooned on a social island of rugged individualism. I like people who are first and foremost themselves. When a man lives sincerely, without artifice or timidity, I know what he is and just where to find him when I need the particular brand of personality or intellectual or moral attainments that he has to contribute. It’s far better to be eccentric when it is artless eccentricity than to be the most erudite rascal with a flawless conformity.
William Dudley Pelley (March 12, 1890 – June 30, 1965) was an American writer, occultist, spiritualist and fascist political activist.
He came to prominence as a writer, winning two O. Henry Awards and penning screenplays for Hollywood films. His 1929 essay “Seven Minutes in Eternity” marked a turning point in Pelley’s career, earning a major response in The American Magazine where it was published as a popular example of what would later be called a near-death experience. His experiences with mysticism and occultism drifted towards the political, and in 1933 Pelley founded the Silver Legion of America, a fascist paramilitary league. He ran for president of the United States in 1936 as the candidate for the Christian Party.
He was sentenced to 15 years in prison for sedition in 1942, and released in 1950. Upon his death, The New York Times assessed him as “an agitator without a significant following”.
Early life
Born in Lynn, Massachusetts, William Dudley Pelley grew up in poverty, the son of William George Apsey Pelley and his wife, Grace (née Goodale). His father was initially a Southern Methodist Church minister, and was later a small businessman and shoemaker.
Early career
Largely self-educated, Pelley became a journalist and gained respect for his writing skills; his articles eventually appeared in national publications like The Chicago Tribune. Two of his short stories received O. Henry awards: “The Face in the Window” in 1920 and “The Continental Angle” in 1930. He was hired by the Methodist Centenary to study Methodist missions around the world. He joined the Red Cross in Siberia, where he helped the White Russians during the Russian Civil War. His opposition to Communism grew, and he began to subscribe to the conspiracy theory of Jewish Communism.
Upon returning to the United States in 1920, Pelley wrote novels and short stories in addition to his journalism, and went to Hollywood, where he became a screenwriter, writing the Lon Chaney films The Light in the Dark (1922) and The Shock (1923). Pelley became disillusioned with the film industry. What he regarded as unfair treatment by Jewish studio executives increased his anti-Semitic inclinations. He moved to New York, and then to Asheville, North Carolina in 1932, and began publishing magazines and essays detailing his new religious system, the “Liberation Doctrine”.
Spiritualism
In May 1928, Pelley gained notoriety when he claimed he had an out-of-body experience in which he travelled to other planes of existence devoid of corporeal souls. He described his experience in an article titled “My Seven Minutes in Eternity”, published in book form in 1933 as Seven Minutes in Eternity: With the Aftermath, originally probably appearing in The American Magazine in the late 1920s.
In later writings, he described the experience as “hypo-dimensional”. He wrote that during this event, he met with God and Jesus, who instructed him to undertake the spiritual transformation of America. He later claimed that the experience gave him the ability to levitate, see through walls, and have out-of-body experiences at will. His metaphysical writings greatly boosted his public visibility.
Some of the early members of the original Ascended Master Teachings religion, the “I AM” Activity, were recruited from the ranks of Pelley’s organization, the Silver Legion. Pelley’s religious system was a mixture of theosophy, spiritualism, Rosicrucianism, and pyramidism. He considered it to be a perfected form of Christianity, in which “Dark Souls” (Jews, Communists and Papists) represented the forces of evil.
Political activism
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 courses on “Social Metaphysics” and “Christian Economics.” 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, founded the Silver Legion, an anti-Semitic organization whose members, known as Silver Shirts and Christian Patriots, wore Nazi-style silver uniform shirts. Their insignia was a scarlet L, emblazoned on their flags and uniforms. Biographer Scott Beekman noted that Pelley was “one of the first Americans to create an organization celebrating the work of Adolf Hitler.”
Pelley traveled throughout the United States, holding recruitment rallies, lectures, and public speeches. He founded Silver Legion chapters in almost every state in the country. Membership peaked at 15,000 in 1935, dropping to below 5,000 by 1938.
His political ideology consisted of anti-communism, antisemitism, patriotism, white supremacy, corporatism, isolationism, 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. He became fairly well known as the 1930s went on. Sinclair Lewis mentioned him by name in his novel It Can’t Happen Here (1935) about a fascist takeover in the U.S. Pelley is praised by the leader of the fictional movement as an important precursor.
Pelley opposed Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal. He founded the Christian Party in 1935, and ran an unsuccessful campaign as candidate for president in 1936, winning only 1,600 votes. He engaged in a long dispute with the United States House of Representatives’ Dies Committee, predecessor to the House Un-American Activities Committee. In 1940, federal marshals conducted a raid on Pelley’s headquarters in Asheville, and they arrested his followers and seized his property.
Despite serious financial and material setbacks within his organization which resulted from lengthy court battles, Pelley continued to oppose Roosevelt, especially as diplomatic relations between the United States and the Empire of Japan and Nazi Germany became strained in the early 1940s. Pelley accused Roosevelt of being a warmonger and advocated isolationism. Roosevelt enlisted J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI to investigate Pelley. Subsequently, the FBI interviewed subscribers to Pelley’s newspapers and magazines.
Although the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 led Pelley to disband the Silver Legion, he continued to attack the government in his magazine, 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 in April 1942, he was charged with 12 counts of high treason and sedition.
One charge was dropped, but he was tried in Indiana and convicted of the other 11 charges, mostly for making seditious statements and for obstructing military recruiting and fomenting insurrection within the military. Pelley was sentenced to 15 years in prison. After serving eight years, he was paroled and released in 1950. While still incarcerated, he was one of 30 defendants in the “Mass Sedition Trial” of Nazi sympathizers which culminated in a mistrial after the death of the judge, Edward C. Eicher, in November 1944.
Later life
In his final years, Pelley dealt with charges of securities fraud that had been brought against him while he was living in Asheville.
The terms of Pelley’s parole stipulated that he remain in central Indiana, and desist from all political activity. He developed an elaborate religious philosophy called “Soulcraft” based on his belief in UFOs and extraterrestrials, and published Star Guests in 1950.
Pelley died at his home in Noblesville on June 30, 1965.