Much has been said and written about Silver Shirts, White Shirts, Brown Shirts, Blue Shirts, and shirts of various other colors. Today we are going to expose a new shirt movement, one which has operated in absolute secrecy for many months and which has its headquarters within the very citadel of current intellectual development–a barge in the East River.
We refer to the Dirty Shirt movement. The motto of the organization is “Keep Your Shirt On.”
During the early stages of organization, leaders of the movement recognized the impossibility of success without an element of persecution in the platform of the Dirty Shirts. After long consideration it was decided to persecute the Chinese. Various considerations made this decision feasible: (1) The fact that the Chinese nation embraces a population which is almost one-fourth of the aggregate peoples of the world would indicate quite clearly that the Dirty Shirts are not “picking on” small, defenseless minority groups; (2) Chinese control of hand laundries and chop suey joints, and their virtual exclusion of all other American citizens, including those of Armenian and Abyssinian extractions; prove conclusively that they are the nation’s economic masters; (3) the failure of Chinese to mingle with others in the opera and at Park avenue affairs and their propensity to band together in cellars show that they are really a nation within a nation and that they are unassimilable; (4) the case with which they may be persecuted (the very nature of our organization provides for a boycott of Chinese laundrymen).
With the expansion of the Dirty Shirt movement, we expect to purge America (pure Irish, pure British, pure German, pure Italian, pure Jewish, pure French, pure Polish, etc.) of the alien Chinese influence within a few months.
We need an energetic business manager to put this movement on a profitable basis–there is a great deal of money to be earned in controlling one of these movements. Parties interested in taking over the movement on a percentage commission basis please confer with our Fuehrer.
To return to more serious channels: It is interesting to speculate on the fate of many anti-Democratic factions, who have been seeking publicity for their respective shirt movements. With Dickstein now empowered to subpoena those interested in overthrowing the government, we shall shortly see many Fascists running for cover.
During our conversations with the bolder Nazis and native Fascist bands they expressed the conviction that the Dickstein resolution would never go over. In this belief they were considerably more outspoken than was safe.
The German Nazis in this country have been overly bold in declaring a boycott on the goods and services of American Jewish citizens. Their weekly organ has advocated it, and they have incited with some success large mobs of Germans to a boycott of American Jews through their mass meetings and military concerts.
The Silver Shirts too have been blatant in demanding that Jews be killed, persecuted and deported. There are evidences of a tie-up between the Silver Shirts and the American Nazis, and it is said on good authority that proof is at hand to show that Berlin has subsidized the Silver Legion.
The showdown is coming for these and a dozen other groups now operating in this country. Will they retire within their shells, or can they take it?
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
