The Icelandic Canadian - 01.08.2009, Qupperneq 37

Vol. 62 #3
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
127
subversion of Anglo-Saxon supremacy.
Furthermore, her membership in the Social
Credit Party creates urgent questions
about her relationship to the party’s well-
publicized history of anti-Semitism. Janine
Stingel cautions that historians of Social
Credit must confront the party’s profound
and inextricable relationship to anti-
Semitism, writing that Social Credit leader-
ship, publications and membership all basi-
cally accepted the fundamentally anti-
Semitic conspiracy theories of founder
C.H Douglas. Douglas, who based his
understanding of global economics on his
fantasies of a small group of male Jewish
elites conspiring to spread of Bolshevism,
war, and economic chaos across the west-
ern world, had a famously poor relation-
ship with Canadian Social Credit leader,
Bill Aberhart. This rift led to informal
divides within the party between Canadian
followers of Douglas and Aberhart, creat-
ing factions which were broadly charac-
terised by their variable expressions of anti-
Semitism. Similar to many other prominent
female figures in the party, Halldorson ini-
tially appeared as a Douglasite, even repro-
ducing Douglas’s brief letter of congratula-
tions to her in her autobiography and
maintaining connections to the party in
Britain, although the full extent of her
involvement is unclear.
Although the discriminatory sentiment
embedded within Social Credit philosophy
remained in tact in Canada, many
Canadian Social Crediters, opted for more
muted displays of anti-Semitism. While
such figures preferred somewhat ambigu-
ous references to “the money powers” and
threats to Christianity, others preferred
more overtly discriminatory and malicious
language. One notable example of this
more obvious display of anti-Semitism
involved MP Norman Jaques, who was
eventually expelled from the party for his
views in the late 1940s. Jaques’ work as an
MP, including his attempts to read passages
from the Protocols of the Learned Elders
of Zion into Hansard, represents some of
the most disturbing and unabashed dis-
plays of anti-Semitism both within the
Canadian Social Credit movement and fed-
eral politics. Like many of his British coun-
terparts, Jaques blamed global Jewish con-
spiracies for a variety of ills, from the rise
of Communism to the development of
moderate liberal movements in favour of
coalition work and governance including
Clarence Streit’s Union Now movement,
which advocated an international union of
North Atlantic democracies.
And who controls the International
Finance? A gang of German-Jewish “inter-
national” bankers . . . Not only German
military totalitarianism, but its evil twin,
German-Jewish financial totalitarianism
must be destroyed . . . they project the
International government which is depict-
ed by the American Wall St. Jew- Clarence
Streit in his “Union Now” movement.
Halldorson’s 1943 publication Tax-
and-Debt Finance Must Go!, a series of
extended quotes from numerous popular
and political figures on the subject of eco-
nomic reform, clearly indicates that she
did, to some extent, adopt of Jaques’ and
Douglas’s special blends of anti-Semitic
conspiracy theories. Calling Jaques “a
valiant fighter against the Union Now plot,
and the Gold Standard Finance it
involves”, Halldorson quoted from his
work extensively in the booklet’s chapter
“Federal Union, A Plot to Perpetuate Tax-
and-Debt Finance.” Yet Halldorson’s con-
scious exclusion of explicit anti-Semitic
language when quoting Jaques in Tax-and-
Debt Finance suggests that she felt uncom-
fortable with such language. While she may
have shied from explicit references to a
Jewish plot, however, the conspiratorial
tone of Halldorson’s own writing also sug-
gests that she still embraced Social Credit
theory similarly imbued with Douglas’s
anti-Semitic vision.
But here again, the hidden dictator-
ship of international finance has
sneaked (sic) in, like a thief in the
night, and has prevented the British
nations from the full exercise, or even
full recognition, of their powers of
sovereignty.
Gauging the extent to which
Halldorson consciously embraced anti-
Semitism, however, remains somewhat dif-
ficult. As president of the Manitoba Social
Credit League, Halldorson advocated the