Hillbilly Goosestep

Pelley "gone native" draws disdain of Yankee press

There is a thread of condescension directed toward Pelley, particularly from the northern press, which mocks him for choosing the mountains as his base of operations. No such mockery seems to follow the Vanderbilts or Mr. Grove, of the many little pills, because they took up among the unwashed and uncultured hillbillies.

Of course, the shriek arises from the very sort of people he was castigating week on end within the pages of Liberation. To properly sling mud in true editorial style requires much name-calling. So, Pelley’s popular adversaries would often attack the entire region and its native people.

To be fair, Pelley was not a hillbilly. He was a better fit among the many posh inhabitants of Asheville who had come from the cities with trunks full of money and lived in quite grand fashion in the quaint mountain town. There were also a number of jewish merchants who had followed the money and established businesses and a community here in the decades immediately before 1900. Pelley was accused of chasing after wealthy widows with promises to reacquaint them with the spirits of their dead husbands. It was the widow Mrs. Terry who lured him here with her offer of land for Galahad College, the offer soon withdrawn.

Pelley did rely on the largess of wealthy benefactors. I can and will name a few in their place. On the subject of genuine mountain people who supported Pelley, Dr. John R. Brinkley is the rare example of both money and nativity. Born in Beta, North Carolina in nearby Jackson County, Brinkley made a fortune grafting goat testes into impotent men, ran maverick political campaigns and eventually operated the most powerful radio station in the world on the Texas border.

Brinkley also donated $600 to Pelley’s movement at one time, according to investigators, and probably more along and along. Donation may not be the right word, as the Pelley press certainly printed a book for Dr. John containing a number of his radio addresses titled “Roads Courageous.” I own the signed copy that belonged to my old friend Guy Harwood. It’s quite scarce and I will add some scans and photos when we revisit Dr. Brinkley.

Among other denizens of local hill and holler who would become influential in Pelley’s affairs are T. Roy Zachary, Silver Legion Field Marshal; Bertie Lilly Candler, materializing medium; Lee Harwood, Guy’s father; Carrie Thrash Dorsett, who lost a $10K court bond to Buncombe County when Pelley was arrested by the feds and could not appear. All of these had roots in the region, became fast friends of Pelley and could help sell the sensational story that he had “gone native,” though more followers were drawn from elsewhere.

What I would point out in the mainstream media coverage Pelley received is that an entire regional ethnic group was slurred time and again in demonizing him. It was a group to which he didn’t belong but would prove a friend, though the local establishment would rather not think so.

There are dozens of articles which I read in hard copy or on microfilm in the olden days which are now behind digital paywalls or scarcely available at all. I believe I have photocopies of an article from The New Republic in a folder in a big plastic tub in the closet called “Crazy Like a Fox.” It is cited in most long-winded treatments of Pelley and the Silvershirts, but I’ve had no luck finding it online.

Which goes to demonstrate how my memory has locked on to certain little things through the years. In that New Republic article the author makes mention of Pelley being “down in North Carolina teaching hillbillies to goosestep.” It’s a clever line from the perspective of a city-slicker in a New York office writing for a rag published by the very people doing the very things Pelley was accusing them of doing… and taking up racial slurs to do it. Hypocrites!

You’ll see the header from an article in Liberation with mention of “Hill-Billy Hitlerites.” Yet again, Pelley embraced the slurs and labels of his enemies. After all, the mainstream publishers were his enemies and would ever remain thus. Why not welcome every vicious and nasty attack they could throw his way, wearing rotten egg as a badge of honor? I hope I am gradually making it clear why choosing the title “American Archvillain” was done in true Pelley spirit.