Kenneth Goff

Kenneth Goff (c. 1915 – 1972) was a Christian Identity minister and anti-Communist crusader. He was the 1944 national chairman of Gerald L. K. Smith's Christian Youth for America.

Biography

According to his biographical material, he was a member of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) from May 2, 1936, to October 9, 1939, when he testified before the Dies Committee. He claimed that while in the CPUSA he infiltrated youth organizations and worked for Communist front organizations, maintaining links with Communist leaders both in the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., in order to lay the groundwork for Communist revolution in the United States. He also claimed that his testimony before the Dies Committee led to the dismissal of 169 federal employees.[1] He died at the age of 57 in Chicago in 1972 during a speaking tour.[2]

Following his appearance before the Dies Committee, Goff made numerous speaking tours and was the author of 28 books, numerous tracts and several periodicals, including from 1962-1967 The Pilgrim Torch.[1] In his 1954 book, Hitler and the Twentieth Century Hoax, which denied the Holocaust, Goff claimed that Hitler was a Communist agent and hinted he was Jewish and also that Hitler was still alive and would reappear to advance Communism.[3][4] He also claimed that both hippies and desegregation were part of a Communist plot.[5] He told the Dies Committee that the Communists were in favor of water fluoridation, because they intended to take over water treatment plants and threaten to poison the water supply with fluoride if Americans did not surrender.[6]

Goff's main influence on Christian Identity came through his leadership of the Soldiers of the Cross Training Institute, located in Evergreen, Colorado, which trained Christian Identity ministers, including Dan Gayman of the Church of Israel and Thomas Robb, pastor of the Christian Revival Center and National Director of The Knights Party (KKK). The Institute provided courses on Christianity, politics, survivalism and other subjects.[7]

In his 1970 book, The Hoaxers: Plain Liars, Fancy Liars and Damned Liars, Morris Kominsky claimed that Goff was the author of Brain-Washing, a book that purported to be a condensation of a work by Lavrentiy Beria, the Soviet secret police chief.[8]

Goff has also been attributed with creating the "strangled to death quote", which he falsely attributed to the CPUSA leader, Gus Hall. The purported quote was:

I dream of the hour when the last congressman is strangled to death on the guts of the last preacher-and since the Christians seem to love to sing about the blood, why not give them a little of it? Slit the throats of their children [and] draw them over the mourners’ bench and the pulpit and allow them to drown in their own blood, and then see whether they enjoy singing those hymns."

The quote is evocative of Denis Diderot, the eighteenth-century philosopher who allegedly wrote, "I should like to see...the last king strangled with the guts of the last priest. The evangelist Jerry Falwell used the false quote as late as 1980.[9]

In 2011, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police released a 1960 letter from Goff to the anti-Communist writer Pat Walsh, which claimed that Canadian socialist leader Tommy Douglas had been active in Communist circles in the 1930s. According to Goff, "Premier Douglas was a preacher in Chicago about the time I was a member of the Communist Party and he attended party rallies on the University campus presided over by Claude Lightfoot and Morris Childs".[10]

Books

See also

Notes

  1. 1 2 Kaplan, p. 120
  2. ↑ AP
  3. ↑ Kaplan, p. 121
  4. ↑ Durham, p. 63
  5. ↑ Kaplan, pp. 120-121
  6. ↑ Hodapp and Von Kannon, p. 49
  7. ↑ Kaplan, pp. 121-122
  8. ↑ Komisky, p. 539
  9. ↑ Boller & George, p. 44
  10. ↑ Lilley

References

  • Associated Press (AP), "Communism Foe Rev. Goff Dies". Greeley Tribune. 13 April 1972. Retrieved 16 January 2013
  • Durham, Martin. White Rage: The Extreme Right and American Politics. New York, NY: Routledge 2007
  • Boller, Paul F. and George, John. They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, and Misleading Attributions. New York, NY: Oxford University Press US, 1990 ISBN 0-19-506469-0
  • Kaplan, Jeffrey. Encyclopedia of white power: a sourcebook on the radical racist right. Walnut Creek, CA: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000 ISBN 0-7425-0340-2
  • Komisky, Morris. The hoaxers: plain liars, fancy liars, and damned liars, Volume 1. Brooklyn Village, MA: Branden Press, 1970
  • Lilley, Brian. "RCMP's secret files on Tommy Douglas". QMI agency, February 20, 2011. Retrieved 2011-08-13.
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