# Gerald L.K. Smith Gerald Lyman Kenneth Smith (1898–1976) was a **professional fascist organizer** and antisemitic agitator who represents the most explicit connection between Depression-era populist economics and American fascist politics. Smith began as Huey Long's chief lieutenant in the **Share Our Wealth** movement, inherited Long's organizational apparatus after Long's 1935 assassination, and spent the next four decades as one of America's most prolific producers of antisemitic and white supremacist propaganda — through the **America First Party** (1943), *The Cross and the Flag* magazine (1942–1977), and a network of Christian nationalist organizations that prefigured the modern Religious Right's organizational tactics. Smith matters for the KB as the figure who **carried the most toxic elements of the America First coalition forward** after Pearl Harbor destroyed the AFC. While the principled non-interventionists (Taft, Wheeler, Nye) returned to conventional politics and the broadcast network (Manion) kept the ideas alive in coded form, Smith kept the raw antisemitism and proto-fascism alive without code words — providing a continuous link between the Coughlin era and the postwar extreme right. ## Background - Born February 27, 1898, in Pardeeville, Wisconsin - Attended Valparaiso University (Indiana); became a Disciples of Christ minister - Pastored churches in Indiana and Louisiana; attracted attention as a charismatic speaker - Joined Huey Long's Share Our Wealth movement in 1934; became Long's chief national organizer - After Long's assassination (September 8, 1935), attempted to seize control of the Share Our Wealth organization — outmaneuvered by Long's political heirs - Ran for U.S. Senate from Michigan in 1942 (lost Republican primary) - Founded the America First Party in 1943 - Published *The Cross and the Flag* monthly magazine from 1942 until his death - Ran for president on the America First Party ticket in 1944 (received negligible votes) - Moved to Los Angeles, then to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, where he built the **Christ of the Ozarks** statue (1966) and a Passion Play tourist attraction - Died April 15, 1976, in Glendale, California, at age 78 ## The Huey Long Connection Smith's early career demonstrates the **populism-to-fascism pipeline** that recurs throughout the KB: **Share Our Wealth (1934–35):** Smith was Huey Long's most effective national organizer for the Share Our Wealth Society — Long's program to redistribute wealth by capping fortunes, guaranteeing a minimum income, and providing free education. At its peak, the movement claimed 7.5 million members in 27,000 clubs. Smith was the movement's best orator after Long himself — described by H.L. Mencken as "the greatest rabble-rouser since Peter the Hermit." **Post-assassination scramble (1935–36):** After Long's assassination, Smith tried to claim leadership of the Share Our Wealth apparatus but was outmaneuvered by Long's Louisiana political machine. He then allied with Father Charles Coughlin and Francis Townsend (old-age pension advocate) in the **Union Party** — the 1936 third-party presidential campaign that ran William Lemke against FDR. The Union Party received 2% of the vote and collapsed. **The pivot:** Smith's trajectory after the Union Party failure is the key transition. Cut off from mainstream politics, he moved steadily toward explicit antisemitism and fascist organizing — a trajectory that Coughlin was following simultaneously but that Smith pursued more openly and for far longer. ## America First Party (1943) After the AFC dissolved in December 1941, Smith founded the **America First Party** in 1943 — explicitly appropriating the "America First" name for a vehicle that was openly antisemitic, white supremacist, and fascist-adjacent. The party: - Ran Smith for president in 1944 (receiving negligible votes) - Published antisemitic and anti-Communist literature - Attracted former Silver Shirts, Coughlinites, and Klan-adjacent activists - Had no meaningful electoral impact but served as an **organizational hub** for the extreme right during the 1940s and 1950s The America First Party was the **most explicit** attempt to keep the "America First" brand alive after Pearl Harbor — and its openly fascist character is precisely why the phrase was unusable in mainstream politics for the next five decades, until [[Pat Buchanan]] calculated that enough time had passed to revive it. ## *The Cross and the Flag* (1942–1977) Smith's monthly magazine was the **longest-running antisemitic publication in American history**, publishing continuously for 35 years. Its content included: - Explicit antisemitic conspiracy theories (Jewish control of banking, media, government) - Holocaust denial (Smith was an early and persistent denier) - Anti-Communist material that framed communism as a Jewish conspiracy - White supremacist content - Christian nationalist theology linking American identity to white Protestant Christianity The magazine had a circulation estimated at 25,000–100,000 depending on the period, and served as the connective tissue linking the pre-war antisemitic right (Coughlin, Ford) to the postwar extreme right ([[Willis Carto]], Liberty Lobby, Holocaust denial movement). ## The Template Smith's career establishes a template that recurs in the KB: | Element | Smith version | Later iterations | |---------|--------------|------------------| | Populist entry point | Share Our Wealth | Tea Party, MAGA economic populism | | Charismatic attachment | Huey Long | Various (Wallace, Buchanan, Trump) | | Post-collapse radicalization | Union Party failure → antisemitism | Various movement collapses → radicalization cycles | | Media self-publishing | *The Cross and the Flag* | Manion Forum, Liberty Lobby, Breitbart, InfoWars | | Christian nationalist framing | Christianity + nationalism + antisemitism | [[Christian Coalition]], NAR, [[ReAwaken Tour]] | | Geographic retreat | Eureka Springs compound | [[Ruby Ridge]], Patriot militia compounds, [[Telegram]] channels | The specific pattern Smith demonstrates: **begin with legitimate populist grievances, attach to a charismatic leader, lose access to mainstream politics, radicalize into conspiracy and bigotry, build an independent media apparatus, and maintain a dedicated following for decades without electoral success.** This is the career arc of a professional extremist — someone who sustains a movement not through electoral victory but through media production, direct mail, and event organizing. ## Why Smith Is Usually Omitted Smith is routinely omitted from mainstream histories of American conservatism because the Buckley project of the 1950s-60s was specifically designed to **define conservatism against figures like Smith**. National Review's excommunication function — purging the Birchers, the Randians, the antisemites — was partly an effort to draw a bright line between "respectable" conservatism and the Smith-Coughlin-Silver Shirt tradition. But Smith was not eliminated; he was merely excluded from the respectable coalition. He continued publishing, organizing, and cultivating a following that overlapped with the JBS rank and file, the Liberty Lobby readership, and the [[Christian Identity]] movement. The Buckley project created a two-track system: the visible, respectable conservative movement AND the persistent, excluded extreme right — and both tracks fed into the same base. ## See Also - [[Charles Lindbergh]] — AFC public face whose Des Moines speech echoed Smith's worldview - [[Father Charles Coughlin]] — Smith's ally in the 1936 Union Party, parallel radicalization trajectory - [[Henry Ford]] — The industrialist whose antisemitic publications Smith promoted and distributed - [[America First Committee]] — The mainstream organization whose brand Smith appropriated - [[America First Movement]] — The through-line from the 1930s to 2026 - [[Robert Welch]] — JBS founder; Smith's constituency overlapped with the Birch base