1890
Birth of an American Fascist
William Dudley Pelley (1890-1965) was a fascinating mixture of spiritualist loon, aspiring dictator, talented writer, and fantasist. His short-lived Silver Legion was one of a number of fascist organizations that sprang up across the world in the 1930s in imitation of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler.
Pelley rose to fame in the 1920s with his short stories, two of which won the coveted O. Henry Prize, and his journalistic skills. He spent time working with the Red Cross in Siberia during the Russian Civil War, where he developed a hatred of Communism and of Jews, who, he said, lay behind global Bolshevism. His way with words took him to Hollywood and a screenwriting career but he left in disillusion and anger with Jewish studio bosses.
In the 1930s he developed a new religion based on visions in which he claimed to have seen God the Father and Jesus and been given the power to levitate and see through walls. Many of his religious followers also became devotees of his new political movement, the Silver Legion, who wore silver shirts with a blue tie, in imitation of Mussolini’s Blackshirts, and Hitler’s Brownshirts. His group, he declared, would take part in the “the ultimate contest for existence between Aryan mankind and Jewry.” The party opposed Communism, Jews, involvement in foreign wars, and the Roosevelt administration. He claimed his Legion numbered 25,000 but when he ran for president in 1936 he received only 1,600 votes.
The government began to harass Pelley; he was placed under investigation by the House Committee on Un-American Activities and his property seized. When World War II broke out Pelley disbanded the Silver Shirts but continued to rail against Roosevelt. He was arrested and convicted of sedition, obstructing military recruiting and fomenting insurrection within the military. He was released from prison in 1950 whereupon his interests turned to UFOs and a new religion called Soulcraft. His writings live on in neo-Nazi websites.