This was Finlay's take on the matter: "But the nature of this anti-Jewish outlook must be probed, for it is doubtful whether it can be called anti-Semitism in the normal sense." --
John L. Finlay, *Social Credit: The English Origins,* 1972, pages 102-105. (notes omitted) ...What made Douglas fear organization and what made him insist upon the organic was his bold analysis of human nature and especially of human motivation. While holding that most people were good, socially minded creatures, he allowed the existence of a minority whose driving force was the pursuit of power. It was here in the identification of the power complex that Douglas showed his originality. In a pretotalitarian age it was difficult to conceive of anyone's being motivated by power for its own sake. Yet it was this point which Douglas had stressed from his earliest writings onwards, the second of his articles in the *English Review" was entitled "The Pyramid of Power." In that article he described the "will to power" and noted that it was particularly virulent in Germany. The war had encouraged the development of this will, and not only in Germany, so that a new danger faced the world. It was not merely an intensification of previous conflict, for there was a qualitative difference too. "Strong and embittered differences of opinion resulting in some sort of conflict are nothing new in the history of civilization," Douglas noted, "they recur with dreary monotony ...But there is definitely novel component in the present upheaval ...the cleavage is in the main horizontal and the issue is impersonal." In Douglas's view, then, groups were of two kinds. There were traditional natural groupings which predated the emergence of the "novel component in the present upheaval" and which were to be preserved as essential protection against the coming storm. They would tend to be small, and in fact Douglas once declared that no organization should exceed three thousand. On the other hand there were artificial organizations which had no real purpose but to provide the means by which the power seekers could arrange the people into a perfect hierarchy of obedience. It was for this reason that Douglas was so distrustful of democracy. Not that he was prepared to give up the concept itself. He declared his belief in the "Democracy of the Common Will"; what he rejected was the "Democracy either of the Intellect or of the emotions, which lead directly to dictatorships." Thus he refused to distinguish between the extreme right and the extreme left. He sensed rather than understood that mass mobilization through the ballot box would lead to "a Mussolini and a Lenin or Trotsky who are identical in their contempt for Liberty and passion for the rule of centralizing force." The same intuition led him to oppose the Work Study philosophy and its later manifestation, Technocracy, two movements which maintained that a planned approach to the routine of work at all levels could lead to tremendous increases in output. Such methods demanded a high level of organization and therefore were to be feared. A typical Douglas judgment upon these movements was that they were "Syndicalist in essence and [did] not differ very widely...from ... Fascism." It was inevitable that sooner or later Douglas should seek to identify more precisely the power-seeking conspiracy. In the beginning he was restrained in his attitude towards it. But from an early belief that it might, "Like Topsy, just have growed," he moved to attack "a very deeply laid and well considered plot of enslaving the industrial world to the German- American-Jewish financiers." It was not long before the German-American element faded into the background, leaving the Jews as the real villains of the piece ...But the nature of this anti-Jewish outlook must be probed, for it is doubtful whether it can be called anti-Semitism in the normal sense. In the early days Douglas always denied any animus against individual Jews. Even in the 1930s he wrote: "It must be emphasized that attacks upon the Jews as a body are wholly indefensible, except in cases where Jews act as a body while utilizing advantages which proceed from their incorporation as individuals in other nations. So far as this review is concerned, only their financial relationships are in question." On a latter occasion her asserted, "The very last thing which I should desire ...would be the association of the Social Credit movement with Jew- baiting," and he acknowledged that the persecution of Jews would mean "an irreparable loss to the rest of the world." He could praise individual Jews and thought highly of Sidney Hillman, the Jewish leader of the American Clothing Workers, whom he met in America and whom he described as "one of the ablest labour leaders I have ever met." But later a harder line began to emerge. Conveniently, Douglas summarized his attitude towards the Jewish question as follows: "If I have, for my own part, come to believe that there is a fundamental relationship between the troubles which afflict Europe and what is known as the Jewish problem I have formed that opinion with reluctance ...perhaps the first necessity is to explain beyond any risk of misunderstanding, the nature of the charge, and why it is a racial and not a personal indictment. In this connection, Disraeli's description of his people as "a splendidly organized race' is significant. Organization has much of the tragedy of life to its debt; and organization is a Jewish speciality." The most important point about the Jews was the extent of their exclusiveness. This meant a great amount of inbreeding and there was, too, a reliance upon a narrow tradition, especially upon an education which stressed a detailed knowledge of a restricted number of sacred books. The result of this way of life, thought Douglas, was the breeding of a race which was far more homogenous than any other , a race which tended to think in the same overall way. Because of this it was the ideal vehicle for those seeking power; it provided a ready disciplined army which could be manipulated into doing the will of the real rulers. In fact, to Douglas, the Jews were the unwilling and unknowing dupes of a conspiracy, the conspiracy itself; some, but not all, of the leaders of this conspiracy would be Jewish. This aspect of the argument was brought out clearly in the case of the Freemasons, who were likewise a tool of a conspiracy. "It must be remembered that the essence of Freemasonry is that 99% of Freemasons don't know what it is about, or what they are doing." Evidently to Douglas, Jewishness was not a racial term at all, but a philosophical description. This point was made very clearly when he once divided systems into two, the characteristics of the first being "Deductive, Totalitarian, Machiavellian, Idealistic, Jewish, Love of Power, Planned Economy," and of the second and balancing group, "inductive, Democratic, Baconian, Realistic, Christian, Love of Freedom, Organic Growth." Anti-Semitism of the Douglas kind, if it can be called anti-Semitism at all, may be fantastic, may be dangerous even, in that it may be twisted into a dreadful form, but it is not itself vicious nor evil. It is merely an extreme form of religio-philosophic propaganda, to be classed with Coulton's anti-Catholic tirades. And finally it must not be forgotten that Douglas did not seek to discriminate against Jews as people; it was never suggested that the National Dividend be withheld from them. -- ____________________________________________________________ Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... 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