David Mamet, the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer, described the prototypical self-hating Jew in his book The Wicked Son, and his description, although arguable, could conceivably be applied to Bobby: “The Jew-hater begins with a proposition that glorifies and comforts him, that there exists a force of evil that he has, to his credit, discovered and bravely proclaimed. In opposing it he is self-glorified. One triumphs over evil, thus becoming a god, at no cost other than recognition of his own divinity. Ignorant of the practices of his own tribe, he (the apostate) gravitates toward those he considers Other … thinking, as does the adolescent, that they possess some special merit. But these new groups are attractive to the apostate merely because they are foreign.”
In at least one significant case, Bobby woke up to the fact that the Other was less appealing than he’d first thought. More and more he was becoming alienated from the Worldwide Church of God. Herbert W. Armstrong had made prophecies that there would be a worldwide catastrophe and that the Messiah would return in 1972. As 1973 wound down, Bobby didn’t need much convincing to have an epiphany about the evils of the Church. In an interview that he gave to the Ambassador Report (an irreverent and controversial publication that criticized the Church) he said: “The real proof for me were those [false] prophecies … that show to me that he [Armstrong] is an outright huckster.… I thought, ‘This doesn’t seem right. I gave all my money. Everybody has been telling me this [that 1972 would be the date that the Worldwide Church of God would flee to a place of safety] for years. And now he’s half-denying he ever said it, when I remember him saying it a hundred times.’ … If you talk about fulfillment of prophecy, he [Armstrong] is a fulfillment of Elmer Gantry. If Elmer Gantry was the Elijah, Armstrong’s the ‘Christ’ of religious hucksters. There is no way he could truly be God’s prophet. Either God is a masochist and likes to be made a fool of, or else Herbert Armstrong is a false prophet.”
Before he knew it, Bobby’s winnings from Reykjavik were beginning to diminish, and yet he saw that Rader and Armstrong were flying all over the world, entertaining lavishly, and proffering gifts to world leaders. “The whole thing is so sick,” said Bobby.
Wandering into a used bookstore in downtown Los Angeles, Bobby stumbled on a dusty old book called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Though he was introduced to the book by happenstance, he was ready for it. A work of fiction, it purported to be the actual master plan by Jewish leaders to take over the world. First published in 1905, the book, at the time Bobby found it, was still believed by some to be an authentic work of nonfiction. Even today those who are predisposed to believe it swear by its accuracy, and over the years its publication has done its share to stoke worldwide anti-Semitism. To fire up hatred toward Jews, the book uses reverse psychology in presenting a damning case against gentiles: “It is the bottomless rascality of the goyim people, who crawl on their bellies to force, but are merciless toward weakness, unsparing to faults, and indulgent to crimes, unwilling to bear the contradictions of a free social system but patient unto martyrdom under the violence of a bold despotism.”
As Bobby read The Protocols, he thought he saw authenticity in the book’s pages, and their implicit message resonated with him. Soon he began sending copies of the book to friends. To one he wrote: “I carefully studied the Protocols. I think anyone who casually dismisses them as a forgery, hoax, etc., is either kidding themselves, is ignorant of them or else may well be a hypocrite!” At the time, one of the most militant anti-Semites and anti-blacks in the United States, Ben Klassen, had just written his first book, Nature’s Eternal Religion, and Bobby, who wasn’t particularly anti-black, nevertheless connected with Klassen’s theories concerning Jews. “The book shows,” Bobby wrote, “that Christianity itself is just a Jewish hoax and one more Jewish tool for their conquest of the world.” As Regina had proselytized all her life for various causes—always liberal and humanistic ones—so, too, Bobby had become a proselytizer. The pawn did not stray too far from the queen.
At one point Bobby had both Protocols and Nature’s Eternal Religion mailed to Jack and Ethel Collins, without asking whether they wanted to read them. He gave their address directly to the bookseller and then wrote them a letter of apology for disclosing their address.
Bobby’s evolving credo was not only anti-Semitic, but as he fell away from the Worldwide Church of God, completely anti-Christian. He discredited both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, the very book that had been so much a part of his belief system. The idea of God in the form of a man appearing on Earth and then doing a “disappearing act,” as Bobby put it, for two thousand years was both “incredible and illogical.”
Despite holding what had become strongly antireligious views, Bobby liked to quote from a song written by Les Crane, a radio and television talkshow host. Based on the poem Desiderata, the lyrics conveyed that everyone in the universe has a right to be here. Apparently, Bobby didn’t see the discrepancy between the gentle acceptance espoused by the song and poem, and his growing philosophy of exclusivity, which rejected all people who didn’t believe as he did.
The Collinses didn’t know what to say to Bobby about his newfound convictions, which on their face seemed contradictory: If everyone has the right to be here, why was Bobby inveighing against Jews? Following the gift of the Klassen book, Fischer sent the Collinses another hate-filled screed, Secret World Government, by Major General Count Cherep-Spiridovich. The count starts off his book by saying that the Jews are Satanists, and it offers the theory that there’s a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. Bobby followed up with another letter: “Did you like the books I sent you?” Jack Collins never answered, and indeed, it’s possible that neither he nor Ethel ever read the books.
But Bobby was nothing but complex. Although much of his reading was confined to hate literature, he also embraced other works, such as Dag Hammarskjöld’s piquant book of aphorisms and poetry, Markings; and Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer, which in many ways repudiates Armstrongism and about which Bobby said: “The greatest danger to an authoritarian organization like the Worldwide Church of God is when the authority is relaxed a bit—they ease up on the people a bit. Then the true believers begin to lose their fear. Most people are sheep, and they need the support of others.”
Nevertheless, despite acknowledging the validity of certain liberal ideas, Bobby seemed to be hardening toward the world and losing sensitivity to people in need. He was also reading Friedrich Nietzsche at this time and was influenced by such books as The Anti-Christ and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Although the German philosopher possessed great animus toward Christianity (he referred to Jesus as an idiot), he was definitely not anti-Semitic, possibly creating a conflict in Bobby’s beliefs.
Through telephone conversations and correspondence, Regina began to sense Bobby’s drift toward racial and religious prejudice, and she was driven to write him when he refused to offer financial help to his titular father, Gerhardt Fischer, and Gerhardt’s wife and children who had been briefly imprisoned in South America for their political protests and had just been released. They fled to France. Regina’s words were a not-so-subtle attempt to educate her son:
I was really shocked when you refused to discuss the matter or do anything … to let somebody go under without the slightest interest in the matter. That is bad for the person who does it, too. It takes longer but that person is destroyed gradually, by his or her own conscience. The greater the person’s mind and talent, the greater the destruction. A stupid, coarse person may not suffer; he does not believe his behavior was not worthy of himself. If you are thinking I am making this up, read Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.… Don’t let millions of people down who regard you as a genius and an example to themselves. It’s no joke to be in your position. But even if you were an unknown, just being a decent person is a job these days. It’s easier to shut your eyes. But that’s what people did in Nazi Germany while people were being tortured and murdered, children gassed to death like vermin. It was more convenient not to want to hear about it or talk about it because then their conscience would have made them do something about it.