MINISTRY OF HATE
Perlmutter, Nathan
Ministry of Hate IF ONE were to paint a portrait of the "average" professional hate-monger, his creation would reveal a modestly dressed, middle-aged male, mild and homespun in appearance. The...
...It is revealed in the following quotation, which, with slight variations, intermittently appears in all hate sheets...
...If his more youthful followers should, perchance, be familiar only with the Klan's current jimcrow philosophy, the hate practitioner draws on his hooded experience to complete their education...
...II "I teach that the colored people who truly accept Jesus Christ must have in them a white seed or strain of Israel blood...
...The idea that Anglo-Saxons rather than Jews are descended of Israelites (Christ, therefore, was not a Jew) is, in itself, a theory...
...Allen C. Shuler in Florida, ex-Communist, Rev...
...He would offer it to Cali-fornians, Dakotans, Texans, Carolinians, and wherever the beams of 150,000-watt Mexican radio stations carry the transcribed voices of America's Fundamentalist evangelist preachers...
...In writing of Protestantism, Blessing claims, "The two horns on this beast (Evil) are the Roman Catholic Church...
...In the newspaper—usually a single folded sheet called The Defender, The Cross and the Flag, or Showers of Blessing—he violently attacks Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Negroes, and "foreigners," carries excerpts from the Con-gressional Record (usually inserted by Rep...
...Having introduced the composite hate practitioner, those of us on Main Street might well ask, what of him...
...Except for minor variations of style, they constitute an index to the writings of Rev...
...He has replaced the stolid Indian trademark and has copyrighted God, puritan-nical and tyrannical, or "Americanism," the choice depending upon his range of experience and the particular group he seeks to exploit...
...Hate mongering is a business...
...A brief excursion through a typical magazine can serve as both an answer to this question, and an insight into the type of readership it attracts...
...Such is the case with Rev...
...Blessing is a clown...
...The obscure evangelist, whose sermons draw 20 persons in his Engle-wood, Colo., parish, is, by virtue of NATHAN PERLMUTTER is a Denver attorney and writer whose articles have appeared in The Nation and Frontier...
...Shrewd rather than intelligent, he is sensitive to the markets exploited by seances, by merchants of the white-sheet robe, and by the "Be the Life of the Party"—Friendship Club—"Be a Man in Seven Days" pulp advertisements...
...and such is the case with the late Huey Long's personal adviser, the Rev...
...The uninitiated observer of the picture, having perhaps heard the rhetorical spellbinder, Gerald L. K. Smith, or seen the flamboyant cowboy evangelist, Harvey Springer, might experience the disappointment of the child who, having been enthralled by a clown, subsequently sees him without makeup...
...is the Federal Council of Churches of Christ and the degenerate backslidden Protestant Denominations . . . They are nothing more nor less than the propaganda agents of the Synagogue of Satan, teaching the doctrines of Karl Marx and Charles Darwin...
...But more...
...Kenneth Goff in Colorado, ad nauseum...
...Despite the volumes of hate sheets which are sent through the mails daily, it is doubtful that any appreciable number of standard magazine readers ever see one...
...The only authentic Israelites in his dictionary are Anglo-Saxons...
...But he is a clown only in the context of our American traditions...
...Reprinting an excerpt from England's The Christian, he writes, "Encouraged by its victories, this system [Roman Catholicism] now threatens to drag the country back into medieval gloom and superstition by entrapping ever increasing numbers of unsuspecting...
...In a previous issue, Blessing, whose magazine is ostensibly published "In Loyalty to Christ" and "Established Nov...
...The foregoing quotations present a candid view of a hate-monger and...
...If my death is reported as accidental, be sure and investigate it and go into the details to learn all the facts...
...The portrait, like religious greeting cards and Bible place marks, is sent "free of charge" in return for a "tithe" or an "offering...
...In the event of my sudden death or imprisonment, I now ask my friends in advance to see to it that the 1,000 or more of my sermons and lectures containing all the new and advanced Bible doctrine that I have taught be printed and reprinted and distributed widely throughout the world...
...But Jews, according to the hate practitioner, are "the black, greasy skinned false Jews," they are "definitely marked by a big hook nose . . . they are atheists...
...it is high time that we outlaw the Roman Catholic Church in America...
...In the June 23, 1950, issue of Showers of Blessing, in which Negroes are offered pink coloration per Christ, Blessing also headlined: The Ku Klux Klan Must Rise Again...
...In this figure lies the answer to the somewhat naive Congressmen who recently queried each other in capitol cloak rooms, "Where, oh where, do these tons of 'dirty' letters denouncing the Anna Rosenberg appointment come from...
...William L. Blessing, Fundamentalist evangelist...
...Ill Scapegoating of Catholics and Negroes are but part of the hate serial...
...In this quote the hate practitioner presents his packaged product: Anti-Catholicism, anti - Semitism, anti-Protestantism, Communist bogey man, and the by now tired issue of evolution...
...such is the case with the Rev...
...As soon as they become Christians, God begins to remove the caste of color and to restore them into the white Israel race...
...A hard-working, plodding evangelist, our subject is trying his best to make a living—selling hate...
...Wesley Swift, "Anglo-Saxon" preacher of Los Angeles whose reported 1949 income of $40,-000 is steadily increasing...
...2, 1948, he wrote, "Bernard Ba-ruch outlines 11 point program for world recovery—one point more than God gave to Israel (Ex...
...These virus publications are being received into half a million American homes, and enjoying an estimated readership of two million...
...For, contrary to well-intentioned political cartoons and movie portrayals, the average hate practitioner has the appearance of the average man in the street...
...20) on Mt...
...If Blessing is a foolish jabberwocky, he is also a bargain basement Goeb-bels...
...Through the medium of printer's ink, his message reaches across state lines, embraces areas as vast as the Southwest, stabs at sympathy in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, in the desolation of Wyoming, 'and in constantly seething Los Angeles...
...The hate-monger himself would be particularly interested in the portrait...
...Louis are annually stuffed with $150,000 by Christian Nationalist Crusaders...
...Sinai...
...The quoted refrain is from the repertoire of jabberwockyish Rev...
...Blessing's consuming hatred of Jews culminates in absurdity when on Feb...
...What strange power does this Jew hold over America and the world...
...Transplanted along the Rhine, his role might conceivably have been intertwined with the destiny of a certain paperhanger...
...The most important item in the hate-practitioner's inventory, however, is his weekly or semi-monthly publication...
...Where...
...He is much like a maggot, homeless in a healthy community, but fattening where the the body politic spawns insecurity and frustration in its people...
...He claims that ¦By Nathan Perlmutter the original thirteen colonies which launched the United States were each settled by one of the twelve lost Israelite tribes...
...Gerald Win-rod, Fundamentalist evangelist operating out of Wichita, Kan., whose yearly "take" has exceeded $100,-000...
...crackpot or not, it is passive, harmless...
...its religion is carnal ordinances . . . the other horn on this beast...
...A theologian, or perhaps one of the literary critics puzzling the newly fallen shadow of religionism which is shading some avant garde outposts, might well ponder this fact: While outright racist hate organizations have declined since 1946, "religious-hate factories have multiplied in what can only be described as a "business boom...
...Lingering, however, for even a paragraph's length in the Showers of Blessing, brings on an awakening much ruder than Alice's...
...Gerald L. K. Smith, whose coffers in St...
...it is time for a new emancipation proclamation, a proclamation that will free the people from priestcraft...
...John Rankin of Mississippi) and pleas for tithes and offerings with which to continue God's work...
...All colored Christians are becoming whiter and fairer with every generation...
...The Showers of Blessing is only one of 34 mated periodicals...
...The professional hate practitioner is a spiritual cousin to the 19th Century quack, who, with his commercial Indian, specialized in bottled panacea sales by day and hasty dePartures by night...
...Momentarily, these poker-faced assertions are reminiscent of Alice's bizarre conversations beyond the Looking Glass...
...2, 1941, in Fulfillment of Isa...
...What sort of an impact does he have...
...The overlapping is accounted for by the fact that one of the lost tribes was split in two in the course" of its journey...
...Blessing, self-styled "People's Pastor" of Denver's House of Prayer for All People, is the editor of Showers of Blessing...
...if his sermons are bizarre, they are also a manual for murder...
...his newspaper, an editorial sage in Tulsa, Okla...
...Do not be surprised if some false charge is drawn up against me...
...I have chosen as a representative case the work of an individual who is neither particularly successful nor particularly talented...
...Exactly what do these sheets contain, and just what is hate literature...
...his hate sheet...
...As a result, Protestantism is, more and more, being flayed in the hate sheets...
...Mor-decai Ham in Kentucky, Rev...
...Clown or snarling dog, or both, there remains a part of Blessing which—clinically speaking—evokes pity...
...56:5, Matt...
...on that, his words insist...
...These back-to-back items wherein the Pope is quoted as calling for an equitable distribution of resources and is assailed for being the harbinger of medieval gloom, are as un-blushingly passed off as the strained equation of the Wall Street Jew-Communist Jew...
...Repeated use of the Christ-killer, Negro, and Pope hate symbols wears them thin, exhausts their effectiveness...
...I may be trapped or framed on some false charge and thrown into jail and then at the trial even convicted by the liar's false charges...
...When on June 3, 1950, the Pope called for "equitable distribution of resources," Blessing assailed the Roman Catholic Church as socialistic and embarked on "the first step this side of Communism...
...For the very capable, it can supply highly veneered mahogany desks, respectable apologists, and affluent patrons...
...To accomplish this he continuously fans the ashes of the violently anti-Catholic Know Nothing movement, as in November of 1950 when he wrote...
...With whom...
...21:13, Micah 4:1," boasted, "I was a member of the KKK and expect to renew my membership at the earliest possible date...
Vol. 15 • December 1951 • No. 12
