by Leolaia 48 Replies latest watchtower scandals
Leolaia,
Thank you for your excellent research and posting this for us. I can even tell from your picture that you are an intellegent, thoughtful person.
I was particularly struck by this quote from the WT magazine:
Watchtower, 15 December 1933, p. 373; "It has been the commercial Jews of the British-American empire that have built up and carried on Big Business as a means of exploiting and oppressing the peoples of many nations"
The magazine that says of itself that it is dispensing information from God himself was issuing inflamatory anti-semitic statements prior to WWII in this country. No wonder the poor Jewish people were treated so poorly by so many. I am sure this same magazine was translated into German and sent to that country for the "edification" of the German people.
I have a friend (just about the only one I have since leaving the Borg) that is Jewish. She is also well educated, thoughtful, and generous. She and her husband are very intellegent and hardworking, as so many of the Jewish people are.
It is no wonder that these older issues of the WT are not on the current CDs. How many would feel diferently about the wonderful Godly WTS if they were able to get ahold of this information!
I'll try to resurrect this thread, as a recent discussion (especially with chasson) on a French forum brought me back to it.
The McFadden/Rutherford connection is very enlightening as to their common use of anti-Semitic phraseology, especially of an economical/financial nature. What it doesn't explain, afaik, is the particular combination of that kind of speech with anti-Catholicism as found in Rutherford's stuff.
As far as L.T. McFadden is concerned, I couldn't find any significant comment about Catholicism in his writings, discourses or quotations online (but I may have missed something). From what I have seen, he tends to connect "Jewish big business" with "British imperialism" (another good trigger for the American mind, but about the opposite direction). Otoh, a number of currentlooney conspirationist websites claim that McFadden was assassinated... by the Jesuits!
My assumption is that popular (and populistic) anti-Catholicism was probably more widespread than anti-Semitism in America in the first half of the 20th century, and that this feature contributed to expand Rutherford's audience far beyond the Watchtower organisation proper. It would be interesting to know whether the two elements did combine in other conspirationist circles from that time.
Thanks for your help.
significative is an excellent word - I think I'm going to borrow it
Oops. Gallicism corrected.
For me, it seems there a switch in the theology of Rutherford around 1935, concerning his conspiracy theory:
It seems that he saw, from 1931-35, the Anglo-american empire (Big Business with some jews at his head - Vindication Volume 2 Pages 52-57) as the main tool of the Devil. He criticized more the Protestant clergy than the Catholic clergy at this time (I have still not found my note but i still think that we can find a kind of declaration of Rutherford in this manner in Preparation).
Even if it is possible that he has made perhaps the change relatively slowly and with some contradictions in his own writing, in the year 1938-40, the main ennemy were the totalitarian governments ("the disguting things"), and the real conspirators were the Jesuit, and not surpinsigly for everyone, he was really anti-catholic. The favorite quote of Consolation at this time was "The Converted Catholic" from Lehmann.
My surprise in reading the book Preparation and Vindication is provoked by the generalisation of the critics against "the clergy of christendom", the catholic clergy is not proeminent.
Sorry for my english.
narkissos
Oops. Gallicism corrected.
significative is in the dictionary so I'm still going to use it.
leolaia,
Another unbelieveable post!
I like the following exchange:
MR. BROWN. But is not the booklet an explanation of Judge Rutherford's opinion?
MR. GOUX. It is not.
MR. BROWN. His opinion of the Bible?
MR. GOUX. No, sir; emphatically not.
Same deal today. Whatever they believe at the moment is "God Breathed".
Bastards don't believe a single teaching of Rutherford now, or a single Russell teaching, but God CHOSE them to be his mouthpiece.
Either God or the Watchtowr is a four-flusher.
Brant
An example of change concerning the Rutherford conspiracy theory:
In 1932, in Vindication Volume 2, commenting Ezechiel 26-28, Rutherford said that Tyre represent the Big Business, and among the men who controlled it some Jews.
In 1937, in Ennemies, in connexion with Isaie 26, Tyre has been identified first to all the Satanic Organisation, and few pages after, to the Catholic Church.
A major flip-flop in only 5 years (and even in two page of the same book).
Narkissos....Thanks for resurrecting this thread....I do wonder if the marriage of anti-Catholicism (and the attendant Jesuit world conspiracy) with anti-semitism was a mutation of Rutherford's, or if it derived from McFadden, or if it was already out there in populist discourse. The roots of Rutherford's conspiracy theory, which looks dependent to some extent on anti-Jewish theories (with the "hierarchy" taking the place of the "elders of Zion" in planning world domination), could well be searched for by examining the many articles in the Golden Age devoted to it -- as the magazine often had pieces on the subject by "guest" writers or republished material from other publications (which would give an indication of Rutherford's reading material). For instance, the 11/20/1935 issue of the Golden Age published an article "What is Fascism?" by "a university man of high standing, [who] conceals his identity under a nom de plume, David Wilkie". I wonder if the magazine ever published or reprinted anything by McFadden. We have already seen how the Society quoted a Ku Klux Klan publication in the Golden Age (giving its endorsement of Judge Rutherford's attacks on Catholicism), and surely the KKK had its rhetoric against both the Jews and the Catholics. Rutherford's Fascism or Freedom (1939) quoted from an anarchist newspaper L'Auroria which made rather dire predictions about Catholic designs on America. Unfortunately, I don't know much about (right-wing) extremist literature of the 1930s, but there may be connections there to be discovered. I certainly would like to know when Rutherford first started using terms like "Big Business", "Hierarchy", "Catholic Action", "Jesuitism", and the like, and how these terms were used in popular discourse at the time.
