Stephen Goodson

Stephen Mitford Goodson (1948 – 4 August 2018) was a White South African banker, author and politician. He was a director of the South African Reserve Bank between 2003 and 2012. Goodson has less politically correct views on issues such as Jewish influence, especially in finance, the Holocaust, and WWII as well as National Socialist Germany , causing him to be attacked by the South African Israel Public Affairs Committee. Goodson was a contributing editor to the revisionist The Barnes Review.

He was the author of several books, on topics such as South African history and central banking, including A History of Central Banking and the Enslavement of Mankind, which argued for the influence on money-lenders and banks in history, including regarding major wars and revolutions.

Background

Stephen Mitford Goodson has some consanguinity to the British aristocratic Mitford family, and was reportedly well acquaintanced with Diana Mosley. He also has roots in Russia, and an aunt of his was close to Felix Yousoupov, the Russia aristocrat who orchestrated the assassination of Rasputin.

Biography

Schooling

Goodson attended Western Province Preparatory School from 1955 through 1961, and studied at the Anglican Diocesan College, better known as Bishops, from 1962. He briefly served in the Cape Garrison Artillery in 1966, and graduated from Bishops three years later. From 1967 to 1969 he studied at the Stellenbosch University, obtaining a BA in economics and Roman-Dutch law. Later, he returned to his books at the Univesity of Ghent in 1975, where received a licentiate in German philosophy in 1977.

Business career and beginning of political involvement

Over the next three decades, Goodson immersed himself in the world of finance, and was employed by a number of banks, insurers, and stockbrokers, moving from portfolio management in the 1970s and early 1980s to supervisory training management by the late 1980s. In 1993, he entered private practice as an investment consultant. Those years of private practice would also mark the beginning of his involvement in nationalist politics. Shortly after the turn of the century, Goodson began to write for Spearhead magazine, with his The Mythos of J. R. R. Tolkien appearing in August 2002 and In Praise of Medieval England in July 2005.

South African Reserve Board tenure

In 2003, Goodson took advantage of the atypical governance structure of the South African Reserve Bank to advance his career, as well as his budding aspirations as a monetary reformer. The Reserve Bank is publicly owned, and current rules provided for election of half of the board of directors by shareholders. The financial consultant, tapping into shareholder desire for greater clout and a larger dividend, orchestrated the vote at the Reserve Bank's annual meeting to unseat mining magnate Brian Gilbertson and catapault himself into the board. Initially, the financial establishment felt the insurgent was not a serious threat, but by 2010 elites had evidently taken notice, with the African National Congress abruptly proposing the Reserve Bank be nationalized. As it happened, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan drew up new regulations to ensure the government appointees a majority, limit the votes a single shareholder may cast, and make holder organizing more difficult. These measures were swiftly approved, but Goodson was able to keep his position for the time being.

Resignation and afterward

Goodson was attacked in April 2012, when Mail & Guardian journalist Lisa Steyn wrote a lengthy article, Reserve Bank's Holocaust denier, compiling various "extremist views" he had expressed over the years. Steyn claimed Goodson held unacceptable "pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic" views, such as admiration for the economic recovery in National Socialist Germany (his high esteem of the economies of Muammar al-Gaddafi's Libya and Bashar al-Assad's Syria was also deemed unacceptable), and disbelief in the Holocaust.

His term was expiring in July, and as he was not eligible to run again because of the term limits imposed by the finance ministry, he would be gone in three months. Despite this, in the coming weeks, the South African Israel Public Affairs Committee and the South Africa Jewish Board of Deputies demanded Goodson be fired for his "hurtful and offensive views," which included belief in the historicity of Jewish ritual murder. Following weeks of press-instigated furor, Goodson resigned on May 3.

Despite the setback, Goodson has continued his involvement in nationalist politics. In October 2013 he spoke at the Eighth Annual John Tyndall Memorial Meeting, held in Preston, Lancashire.

Bibliography

• An Illustrated Guide to Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich (2009, The Barnes Review)
• General Jan Christian Smuts: The Debunking of a Myth (2012, Bienedell Publishers)
• A History of Central Banking and the Enslavement of Mankind (2014, Black House Publishing)
• Inside the South African Reserve Bank Its Origins and Secrets Exposed (2014, Black House Publishing)
• Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith: The Debunking of a Myth (2015, Self-published)
• Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd South Africa's Greatest Prime Minister (2016, Self-published)
• The Genocide of the Boers (2017, The Barnes Review)

External links

• Abolition of Tax and Usury Party
• Interview With Stephen Mitford Goodson by Dr. Peter Hammond
• Stephen Mitford Goodson: In Memoriam