Although there were isolated examples of actual physical violence, the climate had certainly turned against the Jewish immigrants in the United States. The results of a 1938 Gallup poll revealed that fifty per cent of Americans, when questioned, answered ‘yes’ to having a low opinion of Jews. That is where American society was at the onset of the Second World War.
This was an era when the New International Encyclopaedia had the following entry describing Jews as a race:
Among the distinguishing mental and moral traits of the Jews may be mentioned: distaste for hard or violent physical labor; a strong family sense and philoprogenitiveness; a marked religious instinct; the courage of the prophet and martyr rather than of the pioneer and soldier; remarkable power to survive in adverse environments, combined with great ability to retain racial solidarity; capacity for exploitation, both individual and social; shrewdness and astuteness in speculation and money matters generally; an Oriental love of display and a full appreciation of the power and pleasure of social position; a very high average of intellectual ability.
The fact that an entire race of people is ‘defined’ or stereotyped in such a manner is yet another example of the way society at the time thought of the Jewish people; as their own race that required a separate definition.
The Dearborn Independent Years
It was in the year 1918 that Henry Ford had Ernest G. Liebold, his private secretary, purchase The Dearborn Independent, a local weekly newspaper based in Dearborn, Michigan. Ford invested a whopping five million dollars in the newspaper, which allowed him to project his own voice and views into the populace. The original editor of the paper refused to print Ford’s anti-Semitic essays, so he fired him and hired a new editor who would be happy to comply. In the paper, Ford would publish articles about a vast and secret worldwide conspiracy of Jewish control and manipulation. During its peak the circulation of the newspaper was a staggering 700,000 readers. It was sold by subscription and more than 7,000 Ford dealerships nationwide were required to carry it, thus ensuring that Ford’s right-wing mouthpiece had a wide reach. It was far from the only anti-Semitic paper, but this one had a circulation across the country.
The Dearborn Independent would publish its very first anti-Semitic article titled: Anti-Semitism – Will It Appear in the United States? The article, which does not list any specific author, addresses what they call the ‘Jewish Question’ in the United States. The article proceeds to define what they consider to be the four types of Jews and complains that anyone who questions the very presence and intentions of Jews in America (the Jewish Question) is considered to be hateful and anti-Semitic:
It is not recognition of the Jewish Question. If it were, then it could be set down that the bulk of the American people arc destined to become anti-Semites, for they are beginning to recognise the existence of a Jewish Question and will steadily do so in increasing numbers as the Question is forced upon them from the various practical angles of their lives. The Question is here. We may be honestly blind to it. We may be timidly silent about it. We may even make dishonest denial of it. But it is here. In time all will have to recognise it. In time the polite ‘hush,hush’ of over-sensitive or intimidated circles will not be powerful enough to suppress it. But to recognise it will not mean that we have gone over to a campaign of hatred and enmity against the Jews. It will only mean that a stream of tendency which has been flowing through our civilisation has at last accumulated bulk and power enough to challenge attention, to call for some decision with regard to it, to call for the adoption of a policy which will not repeat the mistakes of the past and yet will forestall any possible social menace of the future.
A selection of these anti-Semitic articles and editorials would later be collected into book format in 1920 under the title The International Jew – The World’s Foremost Problem. Ford would go on to distribute half a million copies of his anti-Semitic opus through his car dealerships and nationwide subscribers to the Dearborn Independent. The International Jew was a book that Adolf Hitler himself would own and would become a bestseller in Nazi-era Germany. The book would also spawn a second volume in April of 1921, Jewish Activities in the United States: Volume II of The International Jew.
Ford’s anti-Semitic book may have been a smash-hit in Nazi Germany, but there was certainly a vocal resistance to it back home in America. The International Jew, along with other similar publications and pamphlets, inspired the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America to publish an anti-propaganda statement titled The Peril of Racial Prejudice. The document was signed by dozens of clergy, authors, journalists and even politicians. In fact, the first name at the top of the list was the then sitting President, Woodrow Wilson, himself. The document expressed a cooperative concern about the rampant spread of anti-Semitic materials and sentiment:
The undersigned citizens of Gentile birth and Christian faith, view with profound regret and disapproval the appearance in this country of what is apparently an organized campaign of anti-Semitism, conducted in close conformity to and co-operation with similar campaigns in Europe. We regret exceedingly the publication of a number of books, pamphlets and newspaper articles designed to foster distrust and suspicion of our fellow-citizens of Jewish ancestry and faith-distrust and suspicion of their loyalty and their patriotism.
These publications, to which wide circulation is being given, are thus introducing into our national political life a new and dangerous spirit, one that is wholly at variance with our traditions and ideals and subversive of our system of government.
The Dearborn Independent would make a point of running stories that attacked certain prominent members of the Jewish business community by name. The newspaper would blame the Jews for anything from the First World War to illegal bootlegging, Jazz music and even the Bolshevik Revolution. Henry Ford’s mouthpiece would make a misstep when they published the inflammatory The Story of the Sapiro Boys. The paranoid articles would accuse the agricultural cooperative movement, which was headed by Aaron Sapiro, of defrauding American farmers in the name of a mythical international Jewish conspiracy that was looking to takeover and seize the agricultural and horticultural resources of America and try to starve American citizens.
Ford’s Anti-Semitic Writings
Henry Ford firmly believed what was quickly becoming a national consensus at the time, that all of the money dealers in the world, from Wall Street to the Bankers, were Jewish and seeking total control over all Americans. He believed that Jews cheated everyone in business and were merciless profiteers. Jews became a symbol of manipulation and control to Ford, and the source of all the problems of the world. ‘If there is one quality that attracts Jews, it is power’, Ford wrote in The Dearborn Independent. ‘The Jews are the scavengers of the world. Wherever there’s anything wrong with a country, you’ll find the Jews on the job there.’ The Jewish people have been the popular scapegoats for the world’s problems for a long time, without much of a pushback from more progressive individuals. It’s only after the horrific events of the Second World War and the Holocaust that the world was able to recognise the evils of anti-Semitism in any serious way.
Ford made a distinction between what he saw as the two types of Jews, the poor Jew and the ‘International Jew’. The International Jew is seen as a predatory archetype that Ford describes as a ‘rich exploiter of his race’. Henry Ford believed that there was a complete justification for what he considered to be an intelligent and rational form of anti-Semitism based on his own paranoia about the International Jew:
The Jew is again being singled out for critical attention throughout the world. His emergence in the financial, political and social spheres has been so complete and spectacular since the war, that his place, power and purpose in the world are being given a new scrutiny, much of it unfriendly.
Ford seemed to operate on the philosophy that if an idea, no matter how bad or wicked, is popular enough or thought to be true by enough individuals then it’s valid. This is the same logic that wo
uld create a horrific reality for so many in Germany years later under the rule of the Nazi regime.
Ford would also reprint an inflammatory and notorious anti-Semitic text from 1903 that had its origins in Russia, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This forged set of documents detailed the vast, imaginary, international Jewish conspiracy that Ford himself would adamantly assert was real. The basic idea was that there was an elite group of wealthy and powerful Jews who controlled the fates of the world. An abridged version of the documents would be included in article form in The Dearborn Independent and eventually in the contents of his book, The International Jew.
Despite the fact that The Times of London had already exposed The Protocols of the Elders of Zino as completely false in 1921, Ford would continue to publish the contents of the document. The Protocols would go on to be taught as absolute fact in children’s classrooms throughout Nazi Germany. In fact, prior to the Second World War, the National Socialist Party would reprint The Protocols twenty-three times. In his public apology that was issued in 1927 (discussed later in this chapter), Ford would acknowledge The Protocols as ‘gross forgeries’.
On 29 May 1920, Ford published an editorial on the topic of the German outlook on the topic of Jews and the blame he felt they carried for the state of things in Germany after the First World War. He starts the article by stating:
Humanity has become wise enough to discuss those forms of physical sickness over which it formerly drew the veil of shame and secrecy, but political hygiene is not so far advanced. The main source of the sickness of the German national body is charged to be the influence of the Jews, and although this was apparent to acute minds years ago, it is now said to have gone so far as to be apparent to the least observing. The eruption has broken out on the surface of the body politic, and no further concealment of this fact is possible. It is the belief of all classes of the German people that the collapse which has come since the armistice, and the revolution from which they are being prevented a recovery, are the result of Jewish intrigue and purpose. Ford didn’t believe that Jews had any place in German society,
The Jew in Germany is regarded as only a guest of the people, Ford wrote, ...he has offended by trying to turn himself into the host. There are no stronger contrasts in the world than the pure Germanic and pure Semitic races; therefore, there has been no harmony between the two in Germany; the German has regarded the Jew strictly as a guest, while the Jew, indignant at not being given the privileges of the nation-family, has cherished animosity against his host.
One pervasive theme throughout Ford’s writing is something he calls the ‘Jewish Question’. He discusses in-depth his feeling that Jews weren’t being discriminated against or singled-out due to their religion, but rather due to the attitude of inclusiveness involved in Jewish culture and various attributes that he considers a part of their genetic make-up as an ethnicity.
In today’s world the question of political correctness is often a hot-button issue, especially in America. There is a firm divide between people who believe in sensitivity and dignity for all and those who believe speech, and the way we address things like gender, sexuality, race and religion, should not be altered at all with modern terminology or progressive ways of thinking. This can often lead to labels and attitudes that many find offensive. It’s clear from Ford’s writing that racial sensitivity was an issue of debate even back in the 1920s, particularly when it pertains to anti-Semitism:
The chief difficulty in writing about the Jewish Question is the super sensitiveness of Jews and non-Jews concerning the whole matter. There is a vague feeling that even to openly use the word ‘Jew,’ or to expose it nakedly to print, is somehow improper. Polite evasions like ‘Hebrew’ and ‘Semite’, both of which are subject to the criticism of inaccuracy, are timidly essayed, and people pick their way gingerly as if the whole subject were forbidden, until some courageous Jewish thinker comes straight out with the good old word ‘Jew’, and then the constraint is relieved and the air cleared.
There is extreme sensitiveness about the public discussion of the Jewish Question on the part of Gentiles...the Jew still remains the enigma of the world.
Ford was increasingly obsessed with his conspiracy theories. He was convinced that the ‘Jewish Question’ comes down to the power and control that he claims the Jews were seeking around the world:
Is there a Jewish Question in Russia? Unquestionably, in its most virulent form...Whether you go to Rumania, Russia, Austria or Germany, or anywhere else that the Jewish Question has come to the forefront as a vital issue, you will discover that the principal cause is the outworking of the Jewish genius to achieve the power of control.
Ford goes on to describe his view of the Jewish people:
The Jew is the world’s enigma. Poor in his masses, he yet controls the world’s finances. Scattered abroad without country or government, he yet presents a unity of race continuity which no other people has achieved. Living under legal disabilities in almost every land, he has become the power behind many a throne. There are ancient prophecies to the effect that the Jew will return to his own land and from that centre rule the world, though not until he has undergone an assault by the united nations of mankind.
Ford and his newspaper were getting a lot of negative feedback about his articles highlighting what he considered the threat of the ‘International Jew’, and he was less than sensitive to their concerns in reply. When faced with mass criticism of the outright racist and hateful nature of the articles in his newspaper, Ford actually managed to take the stance of the victim:
This series of articles is already being met by an organized barrage by mail and wire and voice, every single item of which carries the wail of persecution. One would think that a heartless and horrible attack were being made on a most pitiable and helpless people – until one looks at the letterheads of the magnates who write, and at the financial ratings of those who protest, and at the membership of the organizations whose responsible heads hysterically demand retraction. And always in the background there is the threat of boycott, a threat which has practically sealed up the columns of every publication in America against even the mildest discussion of the Jewish Question.
The Jewish Question in America cannot be concealed forever by threats against publications, nor by the propagandist publication of matter extremely and invariably favorable to everything Jewish. It is here and it cannot be twisted into something else by the adroit use of propaganda, nor can it be forever silenced by threats. The Jews of the United States can best serve themselves and their fellow-Jews all over the world by letting drop their far too ready cry of ‘anti-Semitism...’
Henry Ford - The Ignorant Anarchist
It could be assumed that Henry Ford was a brilliant man, because of the immense impact that his business had on the world, but to do so would be getting ahead of ourselves. Ford was cunning, ruthless, driven and certainly inventive. It’s not uncommon for someone to be highly gifted in an area of life and ignorant in many others. Henry Ford was an under-educated farm boy and a lot of his ideas about society and the world may have been skewed by this fact. Evidence of Henry Ford’s lack of comprehension came to light in 1919, when he sued the Chicago Tribune for libel.
The strides that Ford made for his workforce and the immense, self-promoting marketing campaign he embarked on certainly worked wonders on his public image. Henry Ford was used to being the darling of most columnists and writers, so much so that he couldn’t deal well with anything but being unconditionally beloved. When Henry Ford opposed American military action in Mexico, he began to find criticism in the pages of the Chicago Tribune. The Tribune was in support of drafting men into the National Guard, even vowing to hold jobs for anyone called to duty, while the pacifist Henry Ford refused to do so. An article with the headline: ‘Henry Ford is an Anarchist’ called Ford an ‘ignorant idealist’ and an anarchist-enemy of the nation. This accusations enfuriated Ford and he decided to fight back in court.
Ford
took the Chicago Tribune to court, seeking one million dollars in damages. The trial began in the summer of 1919 and took fourteen weeks to present each side. It was during this trial that the ignorance and weak character of Henry Ford became evident. One observer, author John Tebbel, reflected on Ford’s testimony: ‘He was virtually illiterate, obviously, and his philosophy was unashamedly out of the cracker barrel.’ This was a very telling insult to Ford’s intelligence. The use of the term ‘cracker barrel’ refers to the old barrels of crackers that would be in the local country stores during the late nineteenth century. The stereotype is that the plain and simple country folk would gather there to talk, much like the ‘water cooler’ is used as a reference today. Cracker barrel philosophy was thought to be the inane ramblings of ignorant rural citizens.
The primary lawyer for the Tribune, Elliott K. Stevenson, began to ask Ford a number of questions on American history, in order to establish his level of ignorance and validating the newspaper’s position on his intelligence. Among the absurdities, Henry Ford was found to believe that the Revolutionary War occurred in 1812, and thought that notorious traitor Benedict Arnold was a writer. It has been said that copies of Ford’s testimony were printed and sold near the courthouse, inspiring an immense amount of laughter and mockery from the public. The entire experience served only to show a wilful ignorance in Ford. Ford refused to read in front of the jury, making excuses about forgetting his glasses and that his eyes watering; when asked if he wanted to leave the jury with the impression that he was illiterate, Ford is said to have replied: ‘Yes, you can leave it that way.’ Throughout the eight days of questioning, Henry Ford would often lose interest and wander around the courtroom, looking out the windows and fidgeting. He was clearly out of his league in the proceedings.
A Secret History of Brands Page 6