Book Description
The Social Credit movement had a broad and significant impact on the social and political history of Alberta. A number of authors have examined this phenomenon, usually focusing on the economic and social conditions that influenced Social Credit's rise to power. Major Douglas and Alberta Social Credit, however, is the first work dedicated expressly to the intellectual history of the Social Credit government of the 1930s and 1940s.
Bob Hesketh challenges us to revise previous thinking about Social Credit by placing new emphasis on the influence of Major C.H. Douglas's conspiracy-based ideology on the Aberhart and Manning governments. The author is the first to contend that Douglas's beliefs were strongly influenced by the infamous anti-Semitic book The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Douglas believed that a Jewish financial conspiracy with the single goal of enslaving mankind was orchestrating world events. Hesketh analyses the shared ground between Douglas's conspiratorial thinking and the fundamentalism of Aberhart and Manning. He suggests that both premiers understood and applied Douglas's teachings to a wide variety of government policies, from the famous monetary bills to numerous lesser-known economic-diversification initiatives.
This book develops important new interpretations of Social Credit's behaviour as a movement, party, and government, providing an unprecedented focus on ideology. It will be an essential reference for historians and political scientists concerned with the history of Social Credit in Alberta.
