16 November 2007
The “Franklin Prophecy”
70-year-old forgery continues to circulate
The so-called “Franklin Prophecy,” which continues to appear in various countries, is an anti-Jewish forgery that first appeared in the United States in 1934. Shortly thereafter, it was revealed to be a phony document.
The “Franklin Prophecy” claims that during the 1787 Constitutional Convention, American founding father Benjamin Franklin made a speech in which he warned against Jewish influence in America and proposed that Jews be expelled from the United States. The speech allegedly was found in the diary of a convention delegate, Charles Coatesworth Pickney of South Carolina.
The eminent American historian Charles Beard investigated the “Franklin Prophecy.” He could find no copy of Pickney’s diary or even any reference to it in the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the Franklin Institute, or other historical libraries. Nor was there any reference to Franklin having made such a speech. In 1935, Beard wrote:
<BLOCKQUOTE>I cannot find a single original source that gives the slightest justification for believing that the Prophecy is anything more than a barefaced forgery. Not a word have I discovered in Franklin’s letters and papers expressing any such sentiments against the Jews as are ascribed to him …. His well-known liberality in matters of religious opinion would, in fact, have precluded the kind of utterances put in his mouth by this palpable forgery . . . In his writings on immigration, Franklin made no mention of discrimination against Jews. </BLOCKQUOTE>
Part of the “Franklin Prophecy” claimed that Franklin had said:
<BLOCKQUOTE>For more than 1700 years, [the Jews] have lamented their sorrowful fate – namely, that they have been driven out of their homeland; but, gentlemen, if the civilized world today should give them back Palestine and their property, they would immediately find pressing reason for not returning there. </BLOCKQUOTE>
Beard noted, with regard to this sentence and the “Prophecy” in general:
<BLOCKQUOTE>the phraseology of the alleged Prophecy is not that of the 18th century; nor is the language that of Franklin. It contains certain words that belong to contemporary [Nazi] Germany rather than America of Franklin’s period. For example, the word “homeland” was not employed by Jews in Franklin’s time. It was created in connection with the Palestine mandate. </BLOCKQUOTE>
In other words, the passage referring to a “homeland” for the Jews in Palestine could only have been written after this idea was first suggested in the mid-1800s – well after the 1787 Constitutional Convention.
Beard also noted that Franklin held Jews in high regard, citing the fact that Franklin contributed five pounds to the Hebrew Society of Philadelphia when it was raising money for a synagogue and signing an appeal for contributions to the synagogue from “citizens of every religious denomination.”
Other historians and experts agree the “Prophecy” was a forgery. J. Henry Smythe, Jr., author of <I>The Amazing Benjamin Franklin</I>, said it was “a counterfeit,” stating, “I have investigated this calumny and find no historical basis.” The librarian of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Julian P. Boyd, came to the same conclusion. Another Franklin biographer, Carl Van Doren, stated:
<BLOCKQUOTE>The speech against the Jews which Benjamin Franklin is alleged to have made the Constitutional Convention of 1787 is a forgery, produced within the past five years [1933-38]. The forger, whoever he was, claims that the speech was taken down by Charles Pinckney of South Carolina and preserved in his Journal. ... But this Journal, if it ever existed, has never been found. … the forger has further asserted that the original manuscript of Franklin’s speech … is in the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia. The Franklin Institute does not possess the manuscript.
… There is no evidence of the slightest value that Franklin ever made the alleged speech or ever said or thought anything of the kind about the Jews.</BLOCKQUOTE>
The “Franklin Prophecy” was published in the February 3, 1934 edition of the weekly newspaper <I>Liberation</I>, published by American Nazi leader William Dudley Pelley. Pelley, a former newspaper reporter, is suspected of being the author of the forgery.
In 1925, Pelley stated that he had an out-of-body experience, which had inspired him to radically change his life and lead a national movement to change society, centered on millennial Christianity. In 1933, Pelley interpreted Hitler’s rise to power in Germany as a sign that the Second Coming of Jesus was approaching. Pelley founded an American Nazi organization, the Silver Legion, which wore Nazi-like silver uniforms. He envisioned them as fighting the forces of evil in the Last Days before the Second Coming. In 1942, Pelley was convicted of various crimes and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Osama bin Laden referred to Pelley’s “Franklin Prophecy” forgery in his 2002 “Letter to the American People,” in which he complained about supposed Jewish power in America, stating that this is “precisely what Benjamin Franklin warned you against.”
(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
