Social Discredit: Anti-Semitism, Social Credit, and the Jewish Response by Janine Stingel (review)

594 The Canadian Historical Review became depleted owing to over-fishing by non-Native entrepreneurs, the province instituted conservation policies, but only because it wanted to maintain the fisheries for commercial rather than subsistence purposes. Similarly, the province introduced conservation policies with respect to fur-bearing animals, but later switched its efforts to supporting and promoting fur farms. In both instances, the Aboriginal presence in the economy was greatly reduced, ifnot eliminated altogether. The concluding chapter repeats the themes of Native/non-Native relations, provincial/federal relations, and resource and technological development, and then gives a brief history of the area from 1950 on. The book discusses many ofthe same themes as any book on the north and reveals many ofthe same circumstances and results. Consequently, although it fills in the gaps ofnorthern Alberta history, it offers little that is new in comparison with other studies on the provincial norths. JEAN MANORE Trent University Social Discredit: Anti-Semitism, Social Credit, and the Jewish Response. JANINE STINGEL. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press 2000. Pp. 304, illus. $39·95 Few topics in Canadian history have generated more study and interest than Social Credit in Alberta. Thanks to the Social Credit in Alberta series in the 1950s, the movement and the party have received a thorough analysis from a political perspective. Add to this series more recent works, such as John Barr, The Dynasty: The Rise and Fall ofSocial Credit in Alberta (1974), David R. Elliott and Iris Miller, Bible Bill: A Biography of William Aberhart (1987), and Alvin Finkel, The Social Credit Phenomenon in Alberta (1989), and one has an extensive knowledge ofSocial Credit in that province. Yet, despite this extensive historiography, there is an aspect ofSocial Credit's history that has not been told: its anti-Semitism. Some ofthese studies allude to it, and Bob Hesketh's Major Douglas and Alberta Social Credit (1997) has dealt with it from the perspective of the founder of Social Credit theory, C.H. Douglas, who was a rampant antiSemite . But since Douglas's ideas were never fully accepted by the Alberta Social Credit Party, and since neither William Aberhart nor his successor, Ernest Manning, ever overtly expressed anti-Semitic views, the facile conclusion has been that the Alberta Social Credit Party itselfwas not anti-Semitic. Janine Stingel's Social Discredit convincingly proves otherwise. Through a thorough study of the speeches by the party's leaders and members ofparliament, an analysis ofarticles in the party's propaganda Book Reviews 595 organ, Today and Tomorrow, renamed the Canadian Social Crediter in 1944, and an examination of the papers of the Social Credit Board, Stingel chronicles a long history of anti-Semitism within the party from its advent in 1935 to the purge of Douglas's followers within the party by Manning in 1947· She argues that Aberhart and Manning were sympathetic to the overt anti-Semitics within the party's ranks by their compliance with the views ofthese dissident members and their refusal to oust these people from the party, not to mention their willingness to present a view ofthe world based on world conspiracies, financial conglomerates ruling the world, and communist infiltration ofworld organizations. The only difference between Aberhart's and Manning's views and those of the outright anti-Semitics, she argues, was the conscious attempt of these two politicians to avoid mentioning Jews as being the primary group behind these movements. Even so, the implication was there, especially when the leader's views were juxtaposed with speeches and articles by others in the party who did make the direct connection. In Social Discredit, Stingel also looks at anti-Semitism from the perspective ofthose who were the recipients of racial slurs and accusations , by looking at the response of the Canadian Jewish Congress to Social Credit's malignity of Jews. In this way, she notes, she is able to present 'the perspective ofthe objectified party- that is, the group under attack,' giving them a voice and revealing them to be more than mere victims or objects of discrimination. This addition is an important corrective to most studies of Canadian racism, she notes, where those discriminated against are silenced as much in...