Latest bans on Michael Hoffman and his Usury book

Advertisement banned by The American Conservative magazine

Advertisements for Michael Hoffman's book Usury in Christendom: The Mortal Sin that Was and Now is Not are banned from the pages of The American Conservative magazine, a publication affiliated with Patick J. Buchanan. Advertising director Ronald Burr informed Independent History and Research on May 15 that The American Conservative will not accept an ad for the book. No reason was given.  (1710 Rhode Island Avenue NW, Suite 1200, Washington, DC 20036. Tel.  202-955-3600. letters@theamericanconservative.com)

One wonders how the comparatively small American Conservative magazine hopes to attract the blessing of Providence and gain a wider audience when it is so timid?  Usury in Christendom is just what its title indicates, an exposé of the heretofore neglected subject of gentile usurers, not Judaic ones (since so much has already been written about the latter to the exclusion of any investigation of the former). Ergo, our “offense” cannot lie in the content of the book, but in the maligned reputation of its author, who is routinely libeled as an “antisemite holocaust denier.” Why would a national publication connected to high muckety-mucks like Pat Buchanan risk the howls of a slew of Zionist enforcers by running an advertisement for a new study of the Money Power, penned by a pariah? The debacle is doubly dismal in that the magazine’s editor, Ron Unz, is an otherwise sage wordsmith who usually has something of value to say. Of the prevalence of fraud in American society, Mr. Unz opines: “Credibility is a capital asset, which may take years to accumulate but can be squandered in an instant; and the events of the last dozen years should have bankrupted any faith we have in our government or media.” 

It's hard to square his assessment of “government or media” with what we know is his magazine’s policy of blocking advertisements for books by stigmatized revisionist researchers. Yes, Mr. Unz, credibility is a capital asset and it can indeed be squandered, with just a single ban on a book.

Yet another unfortunate spectacle is the “ISOC” Catholic Social Teaching conference entitled “Catholic Restoration Conference: Rebuilding Christendom,” to be held in Washington D.C. Sept. 13 - 15. This group has declined to have us appear to talk about usury. Giving a speech on the subject in our stead will be Hedge Fund manager Anthony Santelli. In a letter to a supporter of ours in the Netherlands who contacted them to protest the ban on our presence, an ISOC conference organizer wrote: “For whatever it may be worth to those who care to know the truth of the matter, Mr. Hoffman was not invited to speak at the 2013 conference quite frankly because the conference budget would not support the cross-country airfare.” If this were true, and they really had wanted us to speak, wouldn’t they have informed us of that fact and given us the option of trying to raise the funds for our own airfare? This claim about an invitation that couldn’t be made due to the cost of airfare was tendered without our knowledge, ex post facto, only after we publicized their ban on our presence. We first heard of it from our supporter in the Netherlands. In addition to Santelli, another speaker who will address the conference is John McManus, president of the John Birch Society. The Birchers have banned ads for Judaism’s Strange Gods from their “New American” website. Perhaps the conference should be titled, “A Gathering of Censors.”

On a happier note, we are grateful to First Amendment Books, a division of the Washington D.C. newspaper American Free Press, for offering Usury in Christendom for sale to their readers. 

Since November we have mailed approximately fifty review copies of Usury in Christendom to history magazines, literary journals, university professors, theology associations, Protestant ministers and Catholic priests, both in the U.S. and overseas. We continue to hope and pray that one or more of these will take notice of the book in their respective publications, institutions and churches. 

***