The
late William Dudley Pelley was a successful American screenwriter
in the early years of Hollywood who later turned to historical and
religious research and, in the end, was fiercely persecuted -- and
then criminally prosecuted -- for his outspoken patriotic publishings
and pronouncements. [A full-length account of Pelley's efforts appeared
in the March / April 2000 issue of THE
BARNES REVIEW.-Ed.]
One
arena in which Pelley focused his efforts was a study of the Jewish
people and his assessments of their history and lore are fully relevant
and accurate today as they were when he first addressed the subject.
Pelley
sought to answer the question: "How did the Jews come to have
such strange traditions setting them apart, racially and religiously,
from the gentiles?" Pelley summarized his findings:
When
Moses led the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt, he is
traditionally credited with having introduced a strange custom for
the perpetuation of his one-God religious ideas and the priesthood
that was intended to keep them alive in the hearts of the Israelites.
He laid it down as a law that the first-born son of every Hebrew
family should be dedicated to the priestly calling, also that one-tenth
of the resources of every family should be donated for the upkeep
of such priesthood. Now for one boy out of every family to be qualified
as a priest, or "cohen" from which so many modern Jews
get the surname Cohen -- meant that over a long period of time the
numbers of priests must become prodigious.
There
were so many of them, in fact, that they came to be recognized as
a caste, called Levites. Incidentally from Levites we get the many
variations or names such as Levi, or Levy, that designate today's
Jews. These formidable numbers of priests came eventually to make
the Hebrews the worst priest-ridden people on the face of the earth.
They had to be supported, and anything that in any way threatened
their priestly jobs, met with swift and fierce opposition.
The
only way that they could preserve these jobs, was by enforcing a
rigid solidarity and racial consciousness among the masses, and
binding them tight to the priestly counsel. The only way such solidarity
and racial consciousness could be created and maintained in turn,
was to so interpret religion -- or what passed for religion -- that
the populace could not perform the simplest acts of daily life without
having the priestly interpretation of it, and making the people
feel that such priests were indispensable. This was accomplished
by training the people to think that they were "different,"
and thus creating the barrier between them and members of other
races in consequence.
As
the priests were likewise the only learned men, and in charge of
the Israelite traditions, they could interject into those traditions
what they pleased -- if it only impressed upon their people a sense
of the priestly importance, that they -- the Israelites -- were
the truly great people and those beloved of the Creator, and that
the priests were unchallenged leaders over them. Today we would
term such monopoly a racket, because basically it was built on priestly
gain and power. In other words, whatever enhanced the racial and
spiritual solidarity of this people, enhanced the influence and
indispensability of the priestly caste.
In
teaching the Israelites to think that they were "different"
and "better;" the priests were feathering their own nests
and making their jobs sure-fire and profitable.
So
Israelite -- and later Jewish -- traditions became what they are
today. It is ingrained into Jews to think themselves "different,"
and "better," and the priest-rabbi now has such a hold
over him that he cannot be a Jew without acknowledging the priest-rabbi
influence in the most trivial of his daily acts.
So
the Jews of today are orientals who have been kept politically intact
throughout the earth by a clan consciousness derived from the peculiarities
of their common Mosaic faith. Jews have crossbred with other races
to such an extent that there is almost no such thing today as a
pure-blooded Jew.
Anthropologically
Jews are a racial hybrid, wherever we find him .... It is the more
nearly correct thing to say that the Jew is the follower of a religion
... and any claim to membership in a "race" is spurious.
at
the Battle of Cowpens, S. Carolina, 1781