Something to think about...
I know this will be a lot, but I think its worth the read... stick with it, you'll find it sort of amusing.... or maybe its just me.
THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW, Vol. 94, No. 4 (Fall 2004) 716-718
NEIL BALDWIN. Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate. New
York: PublicAffairs, 2001. Pp. xii 416.
Even those familiar with the facts of American anti-Semitism will find the
latest expose´ of Henry Ford to be an instructive tour. Neil Baldwin has
amassed a tide of evidence against the great American industrialist, and
with a fine eye for narrative and conflict, Baldwin has created a lucid and
important book. Henry Ford and his propaganda newspaper of the 1920s,
the Dearborn Independent, drew upon nearly every popular anti-Semitic
source available at the time, from ancient religious antagonism to the
latest scientific eugenic theory, and Baldwin does his best to document
and contextualize the vast material. Baldwin’s story of Henry Ford is an
excellent way to introduce readers to the breadth and penetration of modern
nationalist anti-Semitism.
Henry Ford was a visceral Jew-hater, someone who felt such internal
torrent bubbling up in him that he could not contain outbursts of outrageous
and exceedingly trite slurs, including those of Jewish conspiracy,
Oriental racial inferiority, and old-fashioned Christian disdain for the
‘‘Talmud’’ Jew. Although Ford kept at the tip of his tongue a staggering
repertoire of invective, in the end, his vision was primarily nationalist.
Just a few titles from his compendium of propaganda, the International
Jew, show the basic contours of his view: ‘‘Are the Jews a Nation?’’;
‘‘Jewish Influence in American Politics’’; ‘‘Bolshevism and Zionism’’;
‘‘Jewish Supremacy in the Theatre and Cinema’’; ‘‘Jewish Jazz Becomes
our National Music’’; ‘‘Liquor, Gambling, Vice and Corruption’’; ‘‘The
World’s Foremost Problem’’; ‘‘The High and Low of Jewish Money
Power.’’ Social, cultural, racial, and ultimately economic defilement was
the heart of the indictment. ‘‘Wall Street kikes’’ (p. 166) bothered him
most of all, since he believed they were conspiring to sap the good American
farmer and worker (in a word, the American Volk) of financial independence
through Jewish schemes such as Paul Warburg’s advocacy for
a centralized Federal Reserve Bank or the use of credit by Nathan Straus,
‘‘one of whose department stores operated under the Christian name of
R. H. Macy,’’ according to the Dearborn Independent (p. 215). If Ford’s
hatred had a fundamental motivation, it was his nostalgia for a pure,
uncomplicated, agrarian past, a past that the flivver-king himself had
done more than any American to decimate.
In that sense Ford’s romantic and volkish anti-Semitism was akin to
BALDWIN, HENRY FORD AND THE JEWS-ALEXANDER 717
that which grew in Europe at the time. Ford was in effect an American
Nazi; he was not a card carrier, but he shared a worldview with that
party and accepted medals from Hitler as late as 1938. As a propagandist,
Ford was both as animated and as pedestrian in his Jew hatred as Alfred
Rosenberg or Joseph Goebbels. Baldwin is absolutely correct to compare
the Dearborn Independent with the Vo¨lkischer Beobachter, together the world’s
leading anti-Semitic propaganda venues of the 1920s. I think this comparison
begs one more-namely, that Munich and Detroit may be viewed as
doppelga¨ngers in the period. Both were agrarian centers in transition;
and both acted as magnets of racist angst and violence from 1919 onward
(in 1921 the Detroit Klan had 875,000 members). They differed mainly
in that the sons of one locale had lost the last war while those of the other
had won. Ford’s massive nationalist campaign is a reminder of the political
possibility open to the nationalist right in 1920s America-if defeat
and freefalling depression had ravaged this country a decade earlier.
Of course historical possibility is not history, and as it happened,
Henry Ford became an American crackpot, as did William J. Simmons
of the Klan and others of their kind. The extent to which Jews themselves
were able to demote these nationalists to the margins of America’s political
spectrum is perhaps the best part of Baldwin’s book, since he records
with vigor what he calls ‘‘retaliation,’’ or Jewish reaction to anti-Semitism.
The reaction was swift and successful, and it announced a new era
for the American Jewish community, that of the vocal Jew. With the
publication of the first issues of the Dearborn Independent in 1919, Jacob
Schiff had repeated the traditional wisdom that ‘‘no notice be taken . . .
and the attack will soon be forgotten’’ (p. 112). But with the death of
Schiff just months later, and then with the publication and wide dissemination
of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion by Ford through his
car dealerships, Cyrus Adler of the American Jewish Committee (AJC)
declared the need for a new tactic:
[W]e have lost a lot of time by following the advice of Mr. Schiff. . . .
At no time, in my opinion, even in the darkest days of the Middle Ages,
has the danger been so great or the enemy so powerful or united. . . .
There are reactionary forces hitting at the Jew . . . endeavoring to
bring back the old order as it existed before the War. . . . It is really
necessary now for decent Jews to show themselves among men.
(p. 143)
In 1920, on the heels of the Red Scare and massive anti-immigrant
sentiment, Adler did not exaggerate the possible threat. Both Adler and
718 JQR 94:4 (2004)
his eminent colleague at the AJC, Louis Marshall, threw themselves into
the tussle with little consideration for how the new Jewish assertiveness
might be taken by the ‘‘old order’’ of Anglo-Saxon America, and time
proved that they were right. At the insistence of Adler and Marshall, by
1921 practically every leading politician had denounced Ford in writing,
while the AJC was quick to publish and distribute the material. In 1927,
hounded by public-relations pressure linked to slouching sales of the
Model A, Ford recanted every anti-Semitic word he had ever published
in an apology prepared by Marshall himself (Ford signed the statement
unread). Though nationalism was alive and even popular in 1920s
America, ultimately it could not become legitimate as it did in Europe,
most likely because the booming American economy would countenance
no scapegoat at the time. In fact, it insisted on the opposite requirement-
not to offend the pool of consumers.
Which is not to say that Henry Ford’s ‘‘mass production of hate’’ didn’t
matter. Since the time of Ford’s ‘‘discovery’’ and revival of the Protocols
in 1920, Jews have become the world’s antination. Demagogues of Asia
and the Middle East, who have little historical connection to the medieval
European roots of nationalist anti-Semitism, now routinely imagine Jews
as the subversive, international, all-powerful, alien network, against
which true peoples are defined. At least in part, fault for the globalization
of the mythical Jewish menace rests with Henry Ford. Nazi propagandists
appear to have taken their version of the Protocols from the International
Jew, which they translated into sixteen languages and then brought
along on their conquest of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. The
Protocols has since been translated many times over and now acts as a
theoretical cornerstone of nationalist movements worldwide. That is quite
a legacy for Henry Ford. Maybe it is not as significant for world history
as the mass production of automobiles, but then again, maybe it is. Neil
Baldwin has provided us a great service by recounting this legacy in so
compelling, thorough, and accessible a book.
University of Oklahoma MICHAEL ALEXANDER
THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW, Vol. 94, No. 4 (Fall 2004) 716-718
NEIL BALDWIN. Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate. New
York: PublicAffairs, 2001. Pp. xii 416.
Even those familiar with the facts of American anti-Semitism will find the
latest expose´ of Henry Ford to be an instructive tour. Neil Baldwin has
amassed a tide of evidence against the great American industrialist, and
with a fine eye for narrative and conflict, Baldwin has created a lucid and
important book. Henry Ford and his propaganda newspaper of the 1920s,
the Dearborn Independent, drew upon nearly every popular anti-Semitic
source available at the time, from ancient religious antagonism to the
latest scientific eugenic theory, and Baldwin does his best to document
and contextualize the vast material. Baldwin’s story of Henry Ford is an
excellent way to introduce readers to the breadth and penetration of modern
nationalist anti-Semitism.
Henry Ford was a visceral Jew-hater, someone who felt such internal
torrent bubbling up in him that he could not contain outbursts of outrageous
and exceedingly trite slurs, including those of Jewish conspiracy,
Oriental racial inferiority, and old-fashioned Christian disdain for the
‘‘Talmud’’ Jew. Although Ford kept at the tip of his tongue a staggering
repertoire of invective, in the end, his vision was primarily nationalist.
Just a few titles from his compendium of propaganda, the International
Jew, show the basic contours of his view: ‘‘Are the Jews a Nation?’’;
‘‘Jewish Influence in American Politics’’; ‘‘Bolshevism and Zionism’’;
‘‘Jewish Supremacy in the Theatre and Cinema’’; ‘‘Jewish Jazz Becomes
our National Music’’; ‘‘Liquor, Gambling, Vice and Corruption’’; ‘‘The
World’s Foremost Problem’’; ‘‘The High and Low of Jewish Money
Power.’’ Social, cultural, racial, and ultimately economic defilement was
the heart of the indictment. ‘‘Wall Street kikes’’ (p. 166) bothered him
most of all, since he believed they were conspiring to sap the good American
farmer and worker (in a word, the American Volk) of financial independence
through Jewish schemes such as Paul Warburg’s advocacy for
a centralized Federal Reserve Bank or the use of credit by Nathan Straus,
‘‘one of whose department stores operated under the Christian name of
R. H. Macy,’’ according to the Dearborn Independent (p. 215). If Ford’s
hatred had a fundamental motivation, it was his nostalgia for a pure,
uncomplicated, agrarian past, a past that the flivver-king himself had
done more than any American to decimate.
In that sense Ford’s romantic and volkish anti-Semitism was akin to
BALDWIN, HENRY FORD AND THE JEWS-ALEXANDER 717
that which grew in Europe at the time. Ford was in effect an American
Nazi; he was not a card carrier, but he shared a worldview with that
party and accepted medals from Hitler as late as 1938. As a propagandist,
Ford was both as animated and as pedestrian in his Jew hatred as Alfred
Rosenberg or Joseph Goebbels. Baldwin is absolutely correct to compare
the Dearborn Independent with the Vo¨lkischer Beobachter, together the world’s
leading anti-Semitic propaganda venues of the 1920s. I think this comparison
begs one more-namely, that Munich and Detroit may be viewed as
doppelga¨ngers in the period. Both were agrarian centers in transition;
and both acted as magnets of racist angst and violence from 1919 onward
(in 1921 the Detroit Klan had 875,000 members). They differed mainly
in that the sons of one locale had lost the last war while those of the other
had won. Ford’s massive nationalist campaign is a reminder of the political
possibility open to the nationalist right in 1920s America-if defeat
and freefalling depression had ravaged this country a decade earlier.
Of course historical possibility is not history, and as it happened,
Henry Ford became an American crackpot, as did William J. Simmons
of the Klan and others of their kind. The extent to which Jews themselves
were able to demote these nationalists to the margins of America’s political
spectrum is perhaps the best part of Baldwin’s book, since he records
with vigor what he calls ‘‘retaliation,’’ or Jewish reaction to anti-Semitism.
The reaction was swift and successful, and it announced a new era
for the American Jewish community, that of the vocal Jew. With the
publication of the first issues of the Dearborn Independent in 1919, Jacob
Schiff had repeated the traditional wisdom that ‘‘no notice be taken . . .
and the attack will soon be forgotten’’ (p. 112). But with the death of
Schiff just months later, and then with the publication and wide dissemination
of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion by Ford through his
car dealerships, Cyrus Adler of the American Jewish Committee (AJC)
declared the need for a new tactic:
[W]e have lost a lot of time by following the advice of Mr. Schiff. . . .
At no time, in my opinion, even in the darkest days of the Middle Ages,
has the danger been so great or the enemy so powerful or united. . . .
There are reactionary forces hitting at the Jew . . . endeavoring to
bring back the old order as it existed before the War. . . . It is really
necessary now for decent Jews to show themselves among men.
(p. 143)
In 1920, on the heels of the Red Scare and massive anti-immigrant
sentiment, Adler did not exaggerate the possible threat. Both Adler and
718 JQR 94:4 (2004)
his eminent colleague at the AJC, Louis Marshall, threw themselves into
the tussle with little consideration for how the new Jewish assertiveness
might be taken by the ‘‘old order’’ of Anglo-Saxon America, and time
proved that they were right. At the insistence of Adler and Marshall, by
1921 practically every leading politician had denounced Ford in writing,
while the AJC was quick to publish and distribute the material. In 1927,
hounded by public-relations pressure linked to slouching sales of the
Model A, Ford recanted every anti-Semitic word he had ever published
in an apology prepared by Marshall himself (Ford signed the statement
unread). Though nationalism was alive and even popular in 1920s
America, ultimately it could not become legitimate as it did in Europe,
most likely because the booming American economy would countenance
no scapegoat at the time. In fact, it insisted on the opposite requirement-
not to offend the pool of consumers.
Which is not to say that Henry Ford’s ‘‘mass production of hate’’ didn’t
matter. Since the time of Ford’s ‘‘discovery’’ and revival of the Protocols
in 1920, Jews have become the world’s antination. Demagogues of Asia
and the Middle East, who have little historical connection to the medieval
European roots of nationalist anti-Semitism, now routinely imagine Jews
as the subversive, international, all-powerful, alien network, against
which true peoples are defined. At least in part, fault for the globalization
of the mythical Jewish menace rests with Henry Ford. Nazi propagandists
appear to have taken their version of the Protocols from the International
Jew, which they translated into sixteen languages and then brought
along on their conquest of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. The
Protocols has since been translated many times over and now acts as a
theoretical cornerstone of nationalist movements worldwide. That is quite
a legacy for Henry Ford. Maybe it is not as significant for world history
as the mass production of automobiles, but then again, maybe it is. Neil
Baldwin has provided us a great service by recounting this legacy in so
compelling, thorough, and accessible a book.
University of Oklahoma MICHAEL ALEXANDER