This article, which thoroughly documents the history of
the transparent fraud known as the Franklin "Prophecy", appeared almost forty-five years ago in the April-May 1954
issue of Facts, a publication of the Anti-Defamation League. At the time, the authors
wrote "This 20-year-old anti-Semitic hoax is circulating again." Today, more
than sixty-five years after it was manufactured, the "Prophecy" it is still
circulating, a staple of anti-Semitic propaganda. It can be found on a number of web sites maintained by haters and
hate-groups. The article is, therefore, still timely and instructive
Another anti-Semitic hoax on history, of a piece with that incredible forgery, The
Protocols of The Learned Elders of Zion, but not as widely distributed nor as
successful in creating the pogrom atmospheres that were the achievements of the Protocols,
is a speech attributed to Benjamin Franklin during the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
The anti-Semitic movement, which founded the hoax, calls it the Franklin Prophecy
ascribing to Franklin a dire warning that unless Jews were expelled from the new nation by
Constitutional decree they would ultimately immigrate in great numbers to the detriment of
the Christian population.
Of course, no such speech was ever made. But the hoaxers sought to impart an aura of
historical credibility to the fake by claiming that the speech is quoted in a
"private diary" of Charles Pinckney, Revolutionary leader who was delegate from
South Carolina to the Constitutional Convention. They also maintain that the diary is now
in the possession of the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, a bald lie which Henry Butler
Allen, director of the Institute, has often refuted. Allen says that "historians and
librarians have not been able to find [the diary] or any record of it having
A copy of the forgery was anonymously circulated through the mails this month
[May 1954] on stationery captioned WAR DEPARTMENT, OFFICE OF THE CHIEF OF STAFF. The
envelope bore a May 3 postmark from Atlanta, Ga. This is the latest in a series of recent
incidents that suggest another revival of the Prophecy. A copy was picked up earlier this
year at a Tampa, Fla., bus stop, and there have been recent distributions of it in
Nebraska, Pennsylvania and Alabama.
Next: The "Prophecy"