William Bell Riley (March 22, 1861 – December 5, 1947) was an American Baptist evangelical Christian pastor.
While the anti-evolution crusade is often thought of as a Southern phenomenon, two of its foremost leaders, Riley and John Roach Straton, were from Minneapolis and New York City respectively.
One of the creationists in their movement, T. T. Martin claimed that German soldiers who killed Belgian and French children by giving them poisoned candy were angels compared to those who spread evolution ideas in schools.
[2] Riley also claimed that "an international Jewish-Bolshevik-Darwinist conspiracy to promote evolutionism in the classroom"[3] was behind the changes in curriculum occurring in the 1920s.
Trollinger believed Riley was partly influenced by the anti-Jewish Czarist forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Riley believed that Jews had a prominent role in promoting evolution to undermine religious and social values.
"[7] Riley described the origins of World War I as the result of the maneuvering of Jewish bankers and arms dealers.
"[10] In his book, "The Nazi Hydra in America: Suppressed History of a Century", Glen Yeadon [11] compares Riley's use of anti-Jewish imagery and rhetoric in his sermons and writings to Hitler's propaganda.
Riley continued to be a supporter of more modern manifestations of antisemitism, such as belief in a worldwide Jewish-Bolshevik-Darwinist conspiracy.