Episode 8: The Synagogue of Satan

Mark Oppenheimer 

Support for Antisemitism, U.S.A. comes from the Henry Luce Foundation and the David Bruce Smith Foundation.

Mark Oppenheimer 

In 1972, two men had a conversation about Jews. Their ideas weren't new or all that unusual. But the setting was. It was the White House. And President Richard Nixon was meeting with the Reverend Billy Graham. And because the President of the United States had installed a sound activated recording system in the Oval Office, we can eavesdrop on these two men.

Billy Graham 

They have, they have a strange brilliance about them.

Richard Nixon 

Oh!

Billy Graham 

They have a, they have a

Richard Nixon 

I'll tell you what it is, they're smart

Billy Graham 

They're smart, and they and they are energized, in my judgment, by a supernatural power

Richard Nixon 

But also they do something else. They're not only smart (speaking inaudibly).

Billy Graham 

And you see, and of course Hitler didn't uh. They had a stranglehold on Germany, on the banking of Germany, on everything,

Richard Nixon 

That they did

Billy Graham 

And they had the whole thing you see.

Mark Oppenheimer 

I'm Mark Oppenheimer, and this is Antisemitism, U.S.A., a podcast on the history of antisemitism in the United States, Episode Eight, The Synagogue of Satan.

Mark Oppenheimer 

In the decades after World War Two, Billy Graham was by far the most popular religious leader in the country. He grew up in North Carolina and went to Bob Jones College, the Florida Bible Institute, and then Wheaton College. Along the way, he was ordained as a Baptist minister, but he never pastored a church of his own. Instead, he became America's pastor. Billy Graham's message was very simple. He believed that human beings are sinners. The wages of sin are death and damnation. But men and women could have their sins forgiven if they accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. At the end of every one of his revivals, Graham would urge people to come forward to dedicate their lives to Jesus Christ. And without fail hundreds, sometimes thousands of people would respond.

Mark Oppenheimer 

Graham was a phenomenon. It's hard to overstate just how popular he was. He wasn't exactly Elvis, or the Beatles, or Taylor Swift. It wasn't that level of adoration. But Graham could fill tents and then stadiums night after night, for weeks and sometimes for months on end. Nobody in the world preached to more people in person in the second half of the 20th century than Billy Graham.

Mark Oppenheimer 

Here's Yaakov Ariel, author of An Unusual Relationship: Evangelical Christians and Jews.

Yaakov Ariel 

He was the Queen Elizabeth of evangelical Christianity. For the most part, he never took a wrong step. So he was kind of middle of the road. He never endorsed extremism, or rather rarely.

Mark Oppenheimer 

Graham tried hard to get along with everyone. His own roots were North Carolina fundamentalism. But Graham didn't want to lead a narrow remnant of ultra conservative Protestants. Instead, in the 1950s, Graham sided with a group of Protestants who call themselves the new evangelicals, men who wanted to update fundamentalism, sand off its rougher edges and gain bigger audiences. His crusades featured star athletes, celebrity singers, and a strong dose of American patriotism. Graham also built bridges with non Christians, especially Jews.

Mark Oppenheimer 

Interest in Jews and the State of Israel was not unusual among American evangelicals. For these Christians, decoding the end times required careful attention to the movements and actions of Jews. In terms of theology, Protestants like Billy Graham were pre millennial dispensationalists which basically means that they believed that in the final stage of human existence, true Christians would be removed from the earth prior to massive tribulations. Then Jesus would return and he would reign on earth for a thousand years before the resurrection of the dead, and the final judgment. For centuries, many prophecy minded Protestants had predicted that Jews would return to their ancient homeland as a precursor to these events. So the Zionist movement had sparked a lot of excitement. As the 20th century progressed, Christian Zionists found more and more reason to presume that Jesus was about to return. Here's historian Daniel Hummel, author of Covenant Brothers: Evangelicals, Jews and US Israeli Relations.

Daniel Hummel 

For most dispensationalists, there's really three things that should happen, either right after the rapture or before the rapture. One of them is the establishment of a state of Israel. So that happens in 1948. It's seen widely as a fulfillment of 2000 years of prophecy. 1967 becomes just as big of a deal or more, because Israel is seen to have retaken a lot of its homeland. And then the third thing that Christian Zionists are looking for, is the rebuilding of the Temple that would ultimately allow a reintroduction of Jewish animal sacrifice and other sort of Old Testament practices that Christian Zionists, because of their reading of prophecy and stuff think needs to happen for all of prophecy to be fulfilled.

Mark Oppenheimer 

Billy Graham wasn't only interested in Jews in Israel because of the end of the world. As with many Christians, there was an attraction to the land where Jesus had lived. And in the wake of the Holocaust, Graham also recognized the need for better relations between Christians and Jews. In the 1950s, Graham held large crusades in cities like London and Frankfurt. Wherever he went, he was invited to meet heads of state, kings and queens. And in 1960, Graham went to Israel for the first time.

Daniel Hummel 

They were very curious, when Graham entered Israel, if he would try to hold rallies to convert Jews to Christianity, and he decided not to do that. He did hold rallies, and he did do his traditional message. But he did no sort of specific targeting of Jews or specific appeals to Jewish language to argue for conversion and that was seen as a really deft PR move by Graham. And Graham also use that visit as an opportunity to really emphasize his understanding of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity.

Mark Oppenheimer 

Since the early 1800s, many Protestant ministries had spent a lot of time and money trying to convert Jews, usually with very little to show for it. Graham didn't do this. He understood that many Jews were offended by Christian attempts to convert them. As the years passed, Graham built on the goodwill he established on that first trip to Israel. In 1967, Graham met with around 100 Jewish theologians, and again, he was very deft. He noted that at least nearly every book of the New Testament was written by an early Jewish follower of Jesus. He talked about wanting better relations between Christians and Jews. And he listened when Jewish leaders complained about other evangelical ministries.

Daniel Hummel 

Publicly through this period, Graham was seen as a strong friend of the Jewish people, and really a representative of a community that had a much more complicated relationship with American Jews, that is fundamentalists and evangelicals. And Graham was seen as someone who had been moderating his views and was much more palatable.

Mark Oppenheimer 

Every year beginning in 1948, the Gallup poll has asked Americans to name the man and woman they most admire, and Billy Graham placed in the top 10 61 times. In 1972, Graham was number two on Gallup's list. The only man ahead of him was his good friend, President Richard Nixon. Graham loved politics and he loved presidents he befriended and counseled Democrats and Republicans alike. But he wasn't nonpartisan and he wasn't above the fray. Graham was anti communist, anti union, and pro business. And although he built bridges with Catholics and Jews, he had a vision of Protestant America under siege from sinister forces. He liked Dwight Eisenhower, he worried about John F. Kennedy, and he was friendly with Lyndon Johnson.

Mark Oppenheimer 

But Richard Nixon was the ideal politician. There's no question that Graham loved Jesus, but he often acted like Nixon was a close second in his heart. As it turned out, his personal relationship with Richard Nixon was one of the biggest mistakes of Graham's career.

Daniel Hummel 

Graham knew Nixon for decades before Nixon became president in 1969. Graham tended to view Nixon as an overall Christian person, and positive force in American politics, which can be hard to reconcile with a lot of the public memory of someone like Nixon. But Nixon stood for conservative values, family values, anti communism, things that Graham really resonated with.

Mark Oppenheimer 

Nixon had been present at one of Graham's high points, his 1957 New York City crusade. Graham packed Madison Square Garden for 16 weeks. He held a special night at Yankee Stadium. And Nixon sat on the platform. Graham introduced the vice president as "an ambassador of goodwill, a young man with vision, integrity, and courage."

Daniel Hummel 

Nixon is very interested in cultivating a relationship with Graham because he sees Graham as sort of the vessel to a lot of votes in a lot of key states that if you know, Graham is pro Nixon, then those evangelical voters might be pro Nixon as well just because of Graham's endorsement. And so Graham meets with Nixon a lot, either over phone or sometimes in person. And then Graham actually appears with Nixon a number of times, he's still doing these revivals around the country. And often Graham would have politicians either onstage or in the audience. And Nixon becomes someone who appears at some of these revivals, which is seen by many as sort of a tacit, or maybe not so tacit endorsement of Nixon, that that sort of he's aligning himself publicly with him. They talk a lot, and they see each other as very valuable to each of their own projects of accruing influence and getting what they want done in the world.

Mark Oppenheimer 

Before he announced his 1968 bid for the presidency, Nixon invited Graham to his vacation home in Florida. Nixon had already decided to run, but he acted as if he wanted Graham's advice on the matter. And Graham told Nixon, "Dick, I think you should run. You are the best prepared man in the United States to be president."

Mark Oppenheimer 

Graham didn't keep his support private. He let it come out that he had cast his absentee ballot for Nixon. And Nixon knew that strong support from conservative Protestants was central to his Sunbelt strategy of building a new durable Republican majority.

Mark Oppenheimer 

Nixon wasn't part of the post World War Two evangelical boom. He'd grown up in a Quaker family, and he was a pretty regular churchgoer for most of his adult life. He was intensely private. He was enigmatic. And it was hard to pinpoint his exact religious beliefs. It seems, however, that Nixon was more comfortable with a kind of stoic liberal Protestantism, rather than the fervent emotion of evangelicalism. But Nixon knew how to flatter political allies. And Graham became convinced that the Lord was with the President. The evangelist was thrilled to be Nixon's evangelical political operative. And Graham invited the president to sit on the platform at his crusades. On the phone, and in the Oval Office, the two men chatted often. One of those White House conversations took place on February 1 1972, as that year's campaign was heating up. Nixon was cruising to reelection, but he was unhappy with the media's coverage of him. The President started rattling off newspapers and networks that he regarded as enemies. The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, ABC, NBC, CBS. And Nixon growled that 95% of journalists were Jews. And at that time, he thought that Time and Life magazine were, quote, "totally dominated by the Jews." Nixon was upset because these Jewish journalists had, as he saw it, the wrong politics. Aware that criticism of Jews might sound bad, Nixon insisted that his complaints had

Richard Nixon 

Nothing to do with antisemitism

Mark Oppenheimer 

It was politics, not bigotry. He didn't dislike all Jews. In particular, Nixon liked Israeli Jews. But the President loathed most American Jews, whom he understood as his political enemies. Nixon's political calculus wasn't wrong. In most national elections, American Jews overwhelmingly voted for Democratic candidates. Jews weren't only using the media for radical political ends, they were also spreading moral filth.

Richard Nixon 

Insofar as media is concerned, the power over media

Billy Graham 

They've got it.

Richard Nixon 

They've got it right by putting up

Billy Graham 

And they're the ones putting out pornographic stuff.

Mark Oppenheimer 

Graham did not hesitate to wade into the topic.

Billy Graham 

You see the Bible makes a distinction Mr. President, between two groups of Jews. In the latter days. It's called the remnant of God's people, which will be Jewish people. And then there's the synagogue of Satan and nearly all of your religious deceptions and the latter days, like the Bible speaks latter days to be 1000 years, what they call the synagogue of Satan, in other words, they are energized by a supernatural power called the Devil. This is what the Bible teaches whether you believe it or don't believe it. This is the biblical teacher.

Richard Nixon 

Alright

Billy Graham 

This is what I believe. And I believe that you have the they have a, they have a strange brilliance about them.

Richard Nixon 

Oh!

Billy Graham 

They have a, they have a

Richard Nixon 

I'll tell you what it is, they're smart.

Billy Graham 

They're smart, and they and they are energized in my judgment by a supernatural power.

Richard Nixon 

Also they do something else. They're not only smart (speaking inaudibly)

Billy Graham 

And you see, and of course Hitler didn't uh. They had a stranglehold on Germany, on the banking of Germany, on everything

Richard Nixon 

That they did.

Billy Graham 

And and they had the whole thing you see and he but he went around it wrong. But  this stranglehold has got to be broken or this country's gonna go down the drain.

Richard Nixon 

Do you believe that?

Billy Graham 

Yes sir

Richard Nixon 

Oh boy I can't ever say it. But I believe it.

Billy Graham 

No but if you get elected a second time we might be able to do something.

Mark Oppenheimer 

Two of the most influential and powerful men in the United States, exchanging vicious antisemitic tropes: a Jewish conspiracy, Jewish control of the media, Jews spearheading radical politics, Jews peddling sexual smut. Nixon didn't think he was an antisemite. In fact, he knew antisemitism was a problem in the US and other countries. Nixon had a simple explanation for anti Jewish hatred. It was the bad behavior of Jews. In Nixon's mind, Jews brought antisemitism on themselves, through their own shiftiness, disloyalty and mistakes. We'll have more after the break.

Mark Oppenheimer 

Billy Graham wasn't the only person with whom President Nixon had conversations that included antisemitic language. During a 1971 conversation between Nixon and his chief of staff Bob Haldeman, and press secretary Ron Ziegler, there was a discussion about a trove of government documents. These documents, known as the Pentagon Papers, were leaked to the press by military analyst Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg's parents were Jewish converts to Christian Science, and Ellsberg himself was thoroughly secular. But as far as Nixon was concerned, Ellsberg was a Jew. This conversation is a bit hard to hear because of a fan in the room.

Richard Nixon 

Just like the Rosenbergs and all that. That just has to kill him. And you feel horrible about it.

Ronald Ziegler 

Couldn't be by a guy by the name of Smith.

Richard Nixon 

There ain't none.

Bob Haldeman 

(laughing) Could have been a Rosenstein that changed his name.

Ronald Ziegler 

It is, right. It's always an Ellsberg or (speaking inaudibly)

Richard Nixon 

They're all Jews. Every one's a Jew. Gelb's a Jew. Halperin's a Jew.

Richard Nixon 

That's a very interesting thing. So a few of those who engage in espionage are Negroes. Very lucky that way. And good. As a matter of fact, very few of them become Communists. If they do, they either, like, they get into Angela Davis, they're more of an activist type, and they throw bombs and this and that. But the, but the Negroes, have you ever noticed? There are damn few Negro spies.

Bob Haldeman 

They're not intellectual enough. Not smart enough.

Richard Nixon 

It may be

Bob Haldeman 

They're not smart enough to be spies for the Germans

Bob Haldeman 

The Jews are intellectual, the Jews are, are born spies. If you didn't get it, you notice how many of them are? They're just in it up to their necks.

Bob Haldeman 

Well, got a basic devious abil- deviousness, that-

Richard Nixon 

Well, also an arrogance.

Mark Oppenheimer 

Again, old tropes with anti black racism mixed in. Jews are disloyal. They are especially dangerous because they're smart and shifty. And you never know who's Jewish because Jews sometimes change their names. In another conversation with his aides, Nixon had this to say

Richard Nixon 

The Jews are an irreligious, atheistic, amoral bunch of bastards!

Mark Oppenheimer 

Now, Richard Nixon had a lot of people and people's whom he didn't like. So it's not surprising he didn't like Jews. But what about Billy Graham? How did he come to believe that some Jews, perhaps many Jews, were the synagogue of Satan? The evangelist was quoting the New Testament's Book of Revelation which reads, "I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan." Here historian Daniel Hummel explains,

Daniel Hummel 

There's a whole historical context of what's being referenced there, which is not really what Graham's referencing, it has to do with Christians and Jews in the first century relating to the Roman state and, and sort of who's giving up whom and in a taxation issue, and it's very, very distant from anything in the 20th century. But there's a long Christian tradition of using the term synagogue of Satan to basically imply, or not even just imply, but, but claim that Jews themselves as a group, are Satanic or demonic, or are somehow entirely out of favor and at odds with God's plans in the world. Graham is invoking that version of that antisemitic trope to try to explain to Nixon the biblical dimension to what Nixon is experiencing

Mark Oppenheimer 

Graham had grown up with these ideas. As we've seen, the idea of a Jewish conspiracy to use either banking or media to subvert democracy was commonplace in the 1930s. Here's Yaakov Ariel again,

Yaakov Ariel 

He held cultural stereotypes of Jews and political stereotypes of Jews, as those people who are politically radical, who are at the forehand of anti middle class capitalist, anti elite capitalist society, people are there to undermine Christian values. Big time. He is not the only one.

Mark Oppenheimer 

One of Graham's early influences was a Minnesota minister, revivalist, and college president named William Bell Riley. Riley's antisemitism was very public, and very pronounced.

Daniel Hummel 

He was someone who had nice things to say about Hitler, I guess that's another, you know, continuation with the way Graham frames things in 1972. He was someone who supported the silver shirts in America, which was a pro Nazi grassroots group. And Riley was in Minnesota, where there was a lot of this activity, a history of the KKK in that area as well. Riley also trafficked in promoting the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which is the widely discredited antisemitic fever dream of Jews sort of controlling global politics. And so Riley was someone who held all those views, and, and specifically talked about a conspiracy of Jews, Bolsheviks, and Darwinists. Those were his three big, bad groups in a conspiracy together to basically enact an anti Christian agenda, both in the United States and globally.

Mark Oppenheimer 

Graham was never as extreme as Riley. And he never would have said publicly what he said privately to Nixon. In fact, Graham said as much to President Nixon,

Billy Graham 

so a lot of the Jews are great friends of mine, they, they swarm around me.

Richard Nixon 

(speaking inaudibly)

Billy Graham 

They're friendly to me. Because they know that I'm friendly to Israel. But they don't know how I really feel

Richard Nixon 

Right

Billy Graham 

about what they're doing to this country, and I have no power and,

Richard Nixon 

(speaking inaudibly)

Billy Graham 

and no way to handle them.

Richard Nixon 

You must let 'em know

Billy Graham 

But I would stand up if it, if, you know, under proper circumstances.

Mark Oppenheimer 

So you might be wondering, was Graham's conversation with Nixon just a one off, a one time effusion of antisemitism? It wasn't.

Mark Oppenheimer 

About a year later, in February 1973. Graham spoke with Nixon over the phone. The conversation came shortly after the Israeli Air Force shot down an Egyptian passenger plane that had entered Israeli airspace, which happened to be a week before Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir would visit the White House. The conversation sheds more light on the way that both Nixon and Graham thought about antisemitism. They both thought it was a real problem. But it was a problem Jews had brought upon themselves, for instance, by shooting down an airplane, or, in Graham's mind, by criticizing Christian evangelists to sought to convert Jews. Graham himself had chosen not to target Jews in his evangelism work, but he bristled when American Jews criticized other Christian ministries. In particular, Jews were expressing concern about something called Key '73, an attempt by a coalition of churches and ministries to evangelize the whole American population in a single year. Here's Graham complaining about Jewish criticism of Key '73

Richard Nixon 

You're their friend.

Billy Graham 

I've been there friend, and they know that but at the same time, they are going right after the church and, and, and there's a great deal of feeling beginning to rise in areas where they've had great friendships.

Richard Nixon 

What'll happen out of this if they don't you know. What I really think is deep down in this country there is a lot of antisemitism, and all this is going to do is stir it up

Billy Graham 

It's right under the surface,

Richard Nixon 

Oh boy

Billy Graham 

and it's right to the top.

Richard Nixon 

That's right

Mark Oppenheimer 

Later in the conversation, Nixon returned to the subject of antisemitism.

Richard Nixon 

Antisemitism is more, is stronger than we think, you know. They just it's it's unfortunate, but this has happened to Jews. Happened in Spain, it's happened in Germany, it's happening. And now it's going to happen in America if these people don't start behaving.

Billy Graham 

But you know, I told you one time that the Bible talks about two kinds of Jews. One is called the synagogue of Satan. They are the ones putting out the pornographic literature. They are the ones putting out these obscene films

Richard Nixon 

like the thing in Time magazine. And then Newsweek

Billy Graham 

Ruth canceled both of 'em

Richard Nixon 

Well good for her

Billy Graham 

Time or Newsweek

Richard Nixon 

I'll tell you what this group, and I think, I think really they don't deserve to live.

Mark Oppenheimer 

Graham and Nixon saw American Jews as integrates. These Jews, they didn't appreciate what well meaning evangelicals, like Graham had done for them. They didn't appreciate Nixon's support for Israel, and through their carping and complaining, they were fomenting antisemitism. Graham told Nixon that he intended to speak with Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum of the American Jewish Committee. And Nixon urged Graham to be firm with his Jewish friends.

Richard Nixon 

There's nothing that I want to do than, more than to be made not only a friend of Israel but a friend of the Jews in this country, but that I'm gonna have to turn back a terrible tide here if they don't get a hold of it themselves. And uh, it's up to them

Billy Graham 

And they better understand it and understand it quick

Richard Nixon 

because there are, there are elements in this country, you know, not just the Birchers, but a lot of reasonable people are now gettin' awful sick of it.

Billy Graham 

They really are

Billy Graham 

In the in the church to be- I think what has happened in the church in the last two months is almost uh, they have, they have almost uh, these denominational leaders I'm amazed that they have shaken by all this, because they've been so pro Jewish. And the people that have been the most pro Israel are the ones that are being attacked now by the Jews. And then they're gonna

Richard Nixon 

Don't you think so?

Richard Nixon 

Can't figure it out

Billy Graham 

They're gonna kick all Christians out of Israel it is unbelievable.

Richard Nixon 

Can't figure it out, can't figure it out. Well, it may be they have a death wish, you know that's been the problem with our Jewish friends for centuries.

Billy Graham 

Well, they've always been through the Bible, at least to God's timepiece. He has judged them from generation to generation

Richard Nixon 

Yeah

Billy Graham 

and yet use them and they've kept their identity.

Richard Nixon 

Right

Billy Graham 

And one of the things they're terribly afraid of is so many of these Jewish young people are turning away from Judaism

Richard Nixon 

Yeah

Billy Graham 

turning away from Jewishness, they say they're remaining Jews, but they're becoming followers of Jesus. Well, that's just scaring 'em to death. You see

Richard Nixon 

(laughing) I see

Billy Graham 

they have they've set up all over the country, these Jews for Jesus at the various universities.

Billy Graham 

They've said they're remaining Jews, but they believe that Jesus was treated wrongly. And uh they're, and this is frightening Jewish leaders and they're overreacting in this countr- I'm talking about the rabbis

Richard Nixon 

(laughing)

Billy Graham 

Oh I know, sure, sure the professionals. But they're, they're like the Episcopalians, they're losing any appeal over their own people.

Mark Oppenheimer 

At the end, you get a surprising bit of anti Episcopalian shade, more important for our discussion. In this conversation, Graham repeats his earlier Bible lesson. Many Jews, such as the media moguls who oppose Nixon, belong to the synagogue of Satan. And while there are also some good Jews, through their unwise actions, they are causing other Americans to become antisemites. And while Graham was sensitive when discussing Christian proselytizing with Jewish leaders, here, he and Nixon are mocking Jews' discomfort with evangelical groups who proselytize them.

Mark Oppenheimer 

Billy Graham had conversations with countless people, and no one else has come forward with other instances of antisemitism. Graham said things to Nixon that he apparently otherwise kept to himself. And Graham's reputation as a friend of the Jewish people only grew with time. Here's Marc Tanenbaum of the American Jewish Committee, introducing Graham at an event in the early 1980s.

Marc Tanenbaum 

I've said it before. I'll say it again today, because I think the record warrants it. Billy Graham, based on the privilege I've had of knowing him and what I have seen him do since the mid 1960s, when I first had the meeting and is, next to Pope John the 23rd of us in memory, the greatest friend of the Jewish people in the 20th century.

Mark Oppenheimer 

Tanenbaum had lots of reasons for this praise. He appreciated that Graham leaned on evangelical organizations not to target Jews as prospective converts. He also noted Graham's meetings with Jewish leaders in Soviet bloc countries. And probably with some hyperbole, Tanenbaum credited Graham for Nixon's decision to provide Israel with missiles during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in which Israel defeated a joint Egyptian Syrian invasion, a war that nevertheless demonstrated the nation's existential insecurity. Graham had a great deal of influence. And he deployed it on behalf of Jews in the US and Israel.

Mark Oppenheimer 

Then, in 1994, news broke of Graham's 1972 conversation with Nixon. It came out because of the publication of the diaries of Bob Haldeman, Nixon's Chief of Staff. Haldeman noted that Graham quote, "has the strong feeling that the Bible says there are Satanic Jews."

Mark Oppenheimer 

In a public statement, Graham said "Those are not my words." And he also said, "I have never talked publicly or privately about the Jewish people, including conversations with President Nixon, except in the most positive terms."

Mark Oppenheimer 

Graham's denial was dishonest, but it quashed the controversy for the time being. After all, why would a friend of the Jews make such an odious slur? If there was antisemitism in the White House, it was probably Nixon's, not Billy Graham's.

Mark Oppenheimer 

But then, almost 20 years later, the National Archives released the tape of the conversation. In keeping with their policy of protecting the privacy of living individuals recorded without their consent. The Archives redacted some portions of the tape. But even with the redactions, the tape included some of the offensive statements we heard earlier in this episode. Graham is recorded saying "this stranglehold has got to be broken or this country is going to go down the drain." The tape also contained Graham's complaint that Jews swarm around him. When the tape was released, 83 year old Graham claimed to have no memory of the occasion. But he expressed a deep regret and for good reason. The tape made it clear that Graham hadn't just been in the White House listening to Nixon's antisemitism. These were his ideas, and he was eager to share them with the President.

Mark Oppenheimer 

Did Graham really have no memory of the occasion? It is impossible to know. But Graham still had his wits about him. He must have had some sense of the antisemitic tropes with which he had grown up. He could hardly have forgotten Nixon's distrust of Jewish media figures. Abraham Foxman, then the National Director of the Anti Defamation League, was appalled by both the tapes and Graham's non apology. The New York Times quoted Foxman saying, "here we have an American icon, the closest we have to a spiritual leader of America, who has been playing a charade for all these years. What's frightening is that he has been so close to so many presidents and who knows what else he has been saying privately."

Mark Oppenheimer 

Out of a recognition that his initial statement didn't rise to the occasion, Graham issued a fuller apology. He said "my remarks did not reflect my love for the Jewish people. I humbly asked the Jewish community to reflect on my actions on behalf of Jews over the years that contradict my words in the Oval Office that day." Foxman issued another statement, accepting Graham's apology.

Mark Oppenheimer 

It was a measure of accountability. But it wasn't full accountability, because the redacted tape omitted some of the most offensive parts of the conversation. A researcher named Mike Hertenstein had noticed the redactions and he had requested the full tapes release. But the tapes wouldn't be released until after Graham's death in 2018. The full tape reveals not only Graham's synagogue of Satan comment, but also his assertion that Hitler had correctly identified Jewish domination of the media. If Jewish leaders had heard the whole tape, if they'd heard everything Graham said, they would have been pretty hard pressed to accept an apology.

Mark Oppenheimer 

So what should one think about Billy Graham in light of his Oval Office diatribes about Jews? Tough to say. Should Graham's worst moments define his life? Probably not. But part of the difficulty is that Graham never really reckoned with those worst moments. It would have been far better if he'd said that, as a younger man, he had absorbed antisemitic ideas from other conservative Protestants, and that he was still spouting them even as an older man who should have known better. Also, he should have apologized for his hypocrisy. In the story of American antisemitism, where do Billy Graham and Richard Nixon fit in? Well, their political and economic conspiracy theories flow straight out of Protocols of the Elders of Zion. And Graham wasn't the only prominent American religious leader to call Jews the synagogue of Satan.

Mark Oppenheimer 

Does this private conversation do any harm? Throughout the show, we've talked about instances of antisemitism that have tangible consequences. A peddler who was murdered, about a family turned away from a hotel. We've talked about hundreds of thousands of people trying to seek refuge in the United States being turned away and sent back to Europe. Now we're talking about a private conversation between two men, albeit, two very powerful men. But the conversation came at what we now think of as a golden age for American Jews. The 1964 Civil Rights Act made it clear that employers could not discriminate against Jews, that hotels and resorts could not exclude them. Antisemitism had become unfashionable in a way that we never could have predicted in the 1920s and 30s. When Charles Lindbergh published his diaries in 1970, he edited out comments about Jews that he now regarded as embarrassing. So many American Jews in the 70s felt that conspiracy theories and other anti Jewish tropes were fading away, the country was moving into a less hateful future. They thought that at worst antisemitism would linger on the margins. But in fact, anti Jewish ideas hadn't disappeared. In 1972, Nixon and Graham were the two most admired men in America. And in the span of a few minutes, they expressed many of the key building blocks of American antisemitism, religious bigotry, conspiracy theories, and insistence that Jews themselves were to blame for antisemitism. Today, most mainstream evangelicals would not say publicly the things that Graham and Nixon discussed in the Oval Office. Here's Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti Defamation League.

Jonathan Greenblatt 

And many of their leaders have taken a much different view toward their Jewish brothers and sisters, see them as their older brothers and sisters, if you will. And their church doctrine professes a kind of reverence for the Jewish people, not necessarily an animus against them. There certainly are those proponents of an Evangelical Church doctrine that do think that Jews need to assemble in the land of ancient Israel in order for, you know, Armageddon to take place and then for the rapture to occur. But while some believe that, definitely some prominent public figures believe that, the vast majority of Evangelicals today I would say, based on my conversations with them, believe that the Jewish people are they again, they read their scripture, and it leads them to conclusions that the Jewish people are their older brothers and sisters, that the Jewish people are blessed, that they have a kind of, a kind of fidelity to them.

Mark Oppenheimer 

I think Greenblatt's right, there's been progress. There's far less evangelical anti semitism today than there was 100 years ago, or even 50 years ago, at least in public. But antisemites often don't think they're antisemites. Graham and Nixon did not think they were anti Semites. They thought they only disliked some Jews, the Jews that they perceived as their political enemies. There's a similar danger today. Conservative evangelicals, mostly allied with certain strands of the Republican Party, are quick to denounce antisemitism on the left. But they sometimes make common cause with elements on the far right, where there's no shortage of antisemitism. Will evangelicals critique antisemitism on both sides of the political aisle? Or will they tolerate it when it's coming from their political allies? And how do evangelicals respond in private when they hear their friends or favorite politicians talking about disloyal Jews or spouting other antisemitic ideas? And there is, of course, a parallel problem on the political left. We might take a cautionary lesson from Billy Graham's behavior. Certainly, it can take courage to denounce hatred in public. But it also takes moral fiber to denounce or renounce hatred in private, especially when we're talking with people we like, or people we want to impress. And that's where Billy Graham, America's pastor, fell short. And it matters because the ugly ideas that Graham and Nixon expressed didn't stay behind closed doors.

Mark Oppenheimer 

Thank you for listening to Antisemitism, U.S.A. it's a production of R2 Studios, part of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. Visit R2studios.org for a complete transcript of today's episode, and for suggestions for further reading. I'm your host Mark Oppenheimer. Antisemitism, U.S.A. is written by John Turner and Lincoln Mullen. Britt Tevis is our lead scholar Jim Ambuske is our producer, Jeanette Patrick is our executive producer. We'd like to thank Zev Eleff for being our lead advisor and we'd like to thank our advisory board members, Laura Shaw Frank, Riv-Ellen Prell, and Jonathan Sarna. Our graduate assistants are Rachel Birch, Alexandra Miller, and Amber Pelham. Our thanks to Yaakov Ariel, Daniel Hummel, and Jonathan Greenblatt for sharing their expertise with this episode. Archival audio material courtesy of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library Museum and the National Archives and Records Administration. We're able to bring you this show through the generosity of the Henry Luce Foundation, the David Bruce Smith Foundation, and many individual donors like you. Thank you for listening. And we hope you'll join us for the next episode.