Director of South Africa’s reserve bank has publicly expressed pro-Nazi rhetoric.
By RINA BASSISTSouth African Bank 370(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
PRETORIA – An article published last Friday in the South African Mail & Guardian reveals that a director of the country’s reserve bank has publicly expressed pro-Nazi rhetoric.According to the news piece, Stephen Goodson, a “non-executive’’ director at the reserve bank since 2003, supports extreme right-wing views and lauds the economic policies of the Third Reich.Goodson authored a 2004 book titled Bonaparte & Hitler Versus the International Bankers, where he writes that Germany’s economic success story as opposed to “human rights issues’’ provoked World War II.In other academic articles, Goodson criticizes the undue influence of Jewish bankers on British politics and on the prewar German regime. These texts can be found on several Holocaust denial and anti- Semitic websites, alongside Holocaust deniers such as David Irwing and Ingrid Rimland Zundel.In a 2010 radio interview, Goodson refers to “ritual murder” committed by Jews in the early centuries. He blames Jews for controlling world banking and media, saying, “they’ve [Jews] been expelled from over 70 countries, some of them several times. But unfortunately they have such a tight control of the media. Well, there is a small window of hope in that the Internet can provide alternative views, but even there they are trying to exercise supervision.”Goodson also said in that interview that the Holocaust was “a huge lie,” designed by the Jews to extort money from Germany: “Of course, the principle is to extract enormous sums of money from the Germans as compensation... they [international bankers] tarnished that whole period as being one of great evil in order to keep you blind to what is possible.”Mary Kluk, the chairwoman of the South African Jewish federation, condemned Goodson’s opinions yesterday.“The views purportedly disseminated by Stephen Goodson are hurtful and offensive, not only in the way they give credence to the pernicious theory that Jews fabricated the Holocaust in order to extort money from Germany but in how they serve to glorify the legacy of the hateful Nazi regime,” Kluk said.“Such views serve only to distort the historical record, falsely denying a time when ideologies of racial hatred caused untold suffering to millions and insulting the memory of the innocent victims of those times.”In response to the allegations, the South African Reserve Bank said that Goodson’s board member tenure ends in July. The bank does not intend to extend his candidacy for another term.
