Henry Ford, antisemitism, and the American Right

[Londoner]

I'm hoping we can discuss this dispassionately.

Does anyone know when and why the Right pushed antisemitism from the party's mainstream into the neo-nazi fringe?

Save Pat Buchanan, who is sympathetic to the Holocaust Denial movement, one can no longer find vocal antisemitism on the Right.

The old American Right was filled with a small, but very vocal coalition of people who did not trust Jews or Israel. I'm talking about the days when Jews were not allowed into country clubs. I'm talking about the days of Henry Ford.

Why are so many on the Right now afraid to be openly antisemitic and openly anti-Israel? This is not a rhetorical question or snarky potshot designed to call people on the Right closet antisemites -- I realize that the majority of people on the Right today are not antisemitic.

Can anyone explain how and why the party evolved away from antisemitism?

I'm trying to figure out if Cold War anti-Communism -- which invested heavily in Israel as a geopolitical asset -- was the reason for the shift. That is, once the party needed Israel to fulfill its visionary globalism (where Washington emerged as the chief facilitator and benefactor of the global market system), it was forced to keep antisemitism alive only on the margins, where it could still be used to agitate the base, e.g., Nixon's Liberal Jewish Media. [Of course, the true rightwing antisemite will tell you that Washington is Israel's puppet, not the other way around. They think the world is secretly run by a conspiracy of soulless Jewish bankers (-this is exactly what the Medieval Church and then Hitler said). Interestingly, you will not see the mainstream right denounce this conspiracy because it is candy for their uneducated base, who, in exchange for their electoral support, are given a political outlet for hating gays, Mexicans, Muslims, Jews, blacks, etc., etc.]

**I'm assuming people here are familiar with European antisemitism, and the way Jews were seen as Christ killers who were a plague on Christian culture. The Medieval church was ferociously anti-Jewish. Jews were literally constructed as agents of the devil because they rejected Jesus' revelation. Antisemitism in Europe calcified into a commonsense banality that affected generations of Christians. Christians in America were not immune to this.

 

[whitehall]

I'm still trying to figure out how the democrat party pushed their racism from the party's mainstream to the lunatic racist fringe. Al Gore's father, senator Al Gore was a segregationist. Democrat senator Harry Byrd who died last year was some sort of grand kleagle in the KKK and used the "N" word in public during his entire career.

 

[Londoner]

I'm still trying to figure out how the democrat party pushed their racism from the party's mainstream to the lunatic racist fringe. Al Gore's father, senator Al Gore was a segregationist. Democrat senator Harry Byrd who died last year was some sort of grand kleagle in the KKK and used the "N" word in public during his entire career.

I'm not sure there is still a racist fringe on the Left -- given that the Civil Rights Movement chased them all into the arms of the Right.

I've always wondered if FDR got in bed with the devil to pass the New Deal in the same way Goldwater, Nixon, and Wallace used the Southern Strategy to bring the conservatives out of their postwar wilderness.

Do you understand the complex ways antisemitism grew out of Christian European Culture? [And no, I'm no suggesting Christianity is responsible for the Holocaust, only trying to point out the Church's deep history of antisemitism and the ways in which in contributed to a kind of mainstream European antisemitism. Certainly the party of religion in the USA was not immune to this. Antisemitism thrived in America until the 60s social movements started institutionalizing tolerance]

 

[jgarden]

It may come as a surprise, but US Administrations, both Democrat and Republican remainded somewhat "aloof" from Israel until the 1960's because they feared further alienating the Mid-East, oil-producing nations.

From a security, economic and geo-political point of view, close ties with Israel has become an international "liability!"

Israel ranks 15th in the 2010 Human Development Index (ahead of Finland, Spain, Belgium, Denmark, United Kingdom), but it is still the #1 recipient of US foreign aid. Israel has the most powerful military in the region and has become one of the world's largest weapons producers.

Perhaps "Londoner" would care to defend Israel's moral position on the world stage, when it was all too willing sell weapons to "apartheid" South Africa, which in turn used them against its own black citizens!

 

[Oddball]

I'm still trying to figure out how the democrat party pushed their racism from the party's mainstream to the lunatic racist fringe. Al Gore's father, senator Al Gore was a segregationist. Democrat senator Harry Byrd who died last year was some sort of grand kleagle in the KKK and used the "N" word in public during his entire career.

Check your premise....It's still a part of the mainstream.

Check in on their attitudes toward people like Clarence Thomas and J.C. Watts to get your reality check.

 

[Avatar4321]

Id love to know when anti semetism has ever been part of the right.

It's shocking how we can be for treating people equally regardless of race or ethnicity and be criticized for that and yet somehow we are racist. makes no sense to me.

 

[Londoner]

It may come as a surprise, but US Administrations, both Democrat and Republican remainded somewhat "aloof" from Israel until the 1960's because they feared further alienating the Mid-East, oil-producing nations.

Perhaps "Londoner" would care to defend Israel's moral position on the world stage, when it was all too willing sell weapons to "apartheid" South Africa, which in turn used them against its own black citizens!

If you look at the money the USA poured into Israel and Saudi Arabia, especially during the Cold War, it might be hard to think of them as separate from America. They are client states who would not exist in their present form without US financial and military support.

Surely, you've seen the official record of the Iran-Contra Affair? Israel was integral to Reagan funneling weapons to Iran. Israel was very much a reflex of America's postwar ascendancy to global superpower, not least because middle eastern oil was/is the primary engine of wealth that fuels the system. What is a superpower? It is the thing which uses its military and economic power to run the globe according to its interests. This doesn't make America evil any more than the British Empire was evil. If we didn't do it, somebody else would. And don't kid yourself. When you run the globe, you form nasty coalitions with whoever is useful -- you spill blood when you have to spill blood.

Mother England was in India for the salt, which was the 19th century equivalent of oil. Of course she said she was "civilizing the world", and the homelanders bought it hook-line-&-sinker as they always do. America does the same thing with "Spreading Democracy" and "Fighting Evil Doers". Superpowers have always dressed up their global dominance with a flowery rhetoric of justice, freedom, progress, and exceptionalism. The only people who don't understand the evil that goes on in the outlying colonies are the woman, children, and conservatives back on the homeland. Great Powers have always needed to protect a segment of the population from the truth.

 

[DiveCon]

Id love to know when anti semetism has ever been part of the right.

It's shocking how we can be for treating people equally regardless of race or ethnicity and be criticized for that and yet somehow we are racist. makes no sense to me.

yeah that has always amazed me too
treat everyone equally based on the content of their character=racist today

 

[Madeline]

Henry Ford is fascinating historical figure. Londoner is correct, he was rabidly anti-semetic. He owned a newspaper called "The Dearborn Independent" and used it as a vehicle to editorialize and spin attacks on Jews -- it was all Jew hate, all the time. The most virulent of his editorials were collected and published as a book titled the "The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem".

I'd be last person on Earth to defend anti-semetism, but a few historical facts might help place this into perspective. First, obviously, the Holocaust had not yet happened and Israel had not yet been re-created. In 1920, no one was anti-Israel in the sense we use that word now. Ford's biggest fear likely was the spread of the labor movement and unions, and it is true, there was a sizable contingent of Jews in that movement here in the US. Plus, in 1915, the Blosevik Revolution took place. Rightly or wrongly (you be the judge...I think it's ridiculous), Ford blamed the overthrow of the Tzar on Jews. The First World War, which ended in 1918, was concluded by the Treaty of Versailles. Many people then and now view this as a strategic mistake. The treaty put Germany on its knees and largely prevented it from rebuilding economically, leading to the conditions in which Hitler rose to power. Now, there is no doubt Ford was a raving bigot, but others in his social circle would have been accepting or endorsing some of what he said as they sympathized with Germany, or later, wanted to isolate the US from war in Europe.

As for why anti-semetism is no longer a feature of the Right here in the US, that is a more complex story. I think it is in part due to the Holocaust and to the creation of the State of Israel, but no single paragragh can really tease out all the nuances.

 

[Londoner]

Id love to know when anti semetism has ever been part of the right.

This is fair.

FYI: I don't think antisemitism follows from true conservatism. I think the neo-nazi groups on the right fringe are similar to the kind of electoral-coalition-mistakes the left made with the racist Dixiecrats.

Are you aware of this term?
Jewish Bolshevism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Mr. Shaman]

I'm still trying to figure out how the democrat party pushed their racism from the party's mainstream to the lunatic racist fringe.

The Dems didn't have to do anything.

The racists (who called themselves "Dems"), moved to the Republican Party....after they felt unwelcome in the Party that initiated real Civil Rights legislation.

BTW.....calling the Republican Party the lunatic racist fringe would be considered (by most) to be somewhat a counter-productive sentiment, wouldn't you say??


​

 

[Mr. Shaman]

I'm still trying to figure out how the democrat party pushed their racism from the party's mainstream to the lunatic racist fringe. Al Gore's father, senator Al Gore was a segregationist. Democrat senator Harry Byrd who died last year was some sort of grand kleagle in the KKK and used the "N" word in public during his entire career.

Check your premise....It's still a part of the mainstream.

Check in on their attitudes toward people like Clarence Thomas and J.C. Watts to get your reality check.

oooooooooooooooooooooooo.....great examples.....zero details.....typical, of you.

 

[Mr. Shaman]

Id love to know when anti semetism has ever been part of the right.

You political-neophytes can always be depended-upon to expose your history-challenged nature.

Nixon Tapes Reveal Anti-Semitic Remarks​

 

[Mr. Shaman]

Henry Ford is fascinating historical figure. Londoner is correct, he was rabidly anti-semetic. He owned a newspaper called "The Dearborn Independent" and used it as a vehicle to editorialize and spin attacks on Jews -- it was all Jew hate, all the time. The most virulent of his editorials were collected and published as a book titled the "The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem".

Henry Ford (for all the good, he did, expanding-upon the Industrial Revolution) was a fascist; in the purest-form of the word....​

fascism: a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.

"Ford was a nobody until 1914 when he announced a $5.00 per day pay scale for his workers. This move brought him nationwide publicity.

Hundreds of thousands of men from all over the U.S. arrived in Detroit, and Ford had the pick of the youngest and strongest, to man his mass production rapidly moving assembly line.

In order for the men to qualify for the $5.00 per day pay scale they had to meet certain criteria set up by Ford. He set up a special department modeled after the Inquisition called the Sociology Department. The initial staff consisted of 30 "investigators" who visited the homes of all his workers and noted every detail of their private lives. Any worker who got divorced, used alcohol, or took in boarders was disqualified from the higher pay scale.

In 1931, Ford employed an ex-boxer and "tough guy" named Harry Bennett to head up his security division or Service Department as it was euphemistically called.

Eventually Bennett had the largest private army of thugs, hoodlums and ex-convicts in the world. Ford deferred to him in EVEYTHING. He ran the Ford Motor Company with an iron fist. Hitler's Gestapo was modeled after the Ford Service Department, with its army of ruffians and thugs.

The Battle of the Overpass, which took place on May 26, 1937, was an example of Ford's Service Department in action. The workers HATED the police state at the Ford factories but even thinking about joining a union could get you fired . . . after a severe beating from Bennett's bullies."

The Ford Motor Company​

 

[Mr. Shaman]

Id love to know when anti semetism has ever been part of the right.

This is fair.

FYI: I don't think antisemitism follows from true conservatism. I think the neo-nazi groups on the right fringe are similar to the kind of electoral-coalition-mistakes the left made with the racist Dixiecrats.

Yeah....right.....The Left bound & kidnapped racists, and forced them to join the Democratic Party.

​

 

[Madeline]

Ever been to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan? It's amazing how they whitewash his life story. They make it seem as if Ford was the Walt Disney of the Industrial Revolution.

Disney was a pretty rabid anti-semite himself, BTW.

 

[whitehall]

I'm still trying to figure out how the democrat party pushed their racism from the party's mainstream to the lunatic racist fringe. Al Gore's father, senator Al Gore was a segregationist. Democrat senator Harry Byrd who died last year was some sort of grand kleagle in the KKK and used the "N" word in public during his entire career.

I'm not sure there is still a racist fringe on the Left -- given that the Civil Rights Movement chased them all into the arms of the Right.

I've always wondered if FDR got in bed with the devil to pass the New Deal in the same way Goldwater, Nixon, and Wallace used the Southern Strategy to bring the conservatives out of their postwar wilderness.

Do you understand the complex ways antisemitism grew out of Christian European Culture? [And no, I'm no suggesting Christianity is responsible for the Holocaust, only trying to point out the Church's deep history of antisemitism and the ways in which in contributed to a kind of mainstream European antisemitism. Certainly the party of religion in the USA was not immune to this. Antisemitism thrived in America until the 60s social movements started institutionalizing tolerance]

Whether you are sure about it is not the issue. Democrat Senator Harry Byrd was a racist until the day he died. Dig up the cartoons in the mostly democrat leaning newspapers regarding the first Black secretary of state. They were unapologetically racist. The attacks on Justice Thomas might be political but the hard core liberal racists can't resist using racial epithets to ridicule him. It's ingrained in the democrat party. As far as overt anti-semitism goes today, it is almost entirely on the left side of the political spectrum. Since the democrat party is left of center it is reasonable to assume that anti-semitism percolates within the party. Go ahead and cherry pick fifty year old alleged antisemite statements on the right. It's easy to see that it is an Alinsky type tactic generated to camouflage the left's support of the muslem brotherhood's rise to power in the mid-east.

 

[LibocalypseNow]

Times change i guess. The American Left are today's Anti-Semitic Racists for the most part. This is also true of the European Left,especially the UK. The Left is made up of mostly Atheists who are very hostile towards Christians. Most Conservatives tend to be a bit religious and mostly Christian. Conservatives also have a soft spot for the Nation of Israel based on the fact it was Jesus' Homeland. They see the Jews as the caretakers of Israel,therefore you don't see so much Anti-Semitism/Anti-Israel sentiment coming from them. The Left who are mostly Atheists,despise Conservatives therefore they also despise Christians & Jews. The equate Christianity & Judaism with Conservatism. It's a flawed mentality and very much political for them.

Then you have to bring the Islam aspect into things. The Left tends to be very sympathetic towards Muslims while at the same time being very hostile & confrontational towards Christians & Jews. They see siding with Islam as a way of hurting both Christianity & Judaism. Again,a very flawed mentality. David Horowitz spells this out quite well in his book 'Unholy Alliance.' He explains it much better than i can. It's a combination of things that have led most on the Left to be Anti-Semitic while the Right has moved away from that. It's just a matter of flawed mentalities & political convenience for the Left to be Anti-Semitic/Anti-Israel. This just isn't the case with the American Right. Good post & discussion. Thanks.

 

[Madeline]

I'm still trying to figure out how the democrat party pushed their racism from the party's mainstream to the lunatic racist fringe. Al Gore's father, senator Al Gore was a segregationist. Democrat senator Harry Byrd who died last year was some sort of grand kleagle in the KKK and used the "N" word in public during his entire career.

I'm not sure there is still a racist fringe on the Left -- given that the Civil Rights Movement chased them all into the arms of the Right.

I've always wondered if FDR got in bed with the devil to pass the New Deal in the same way Goldwater, Nixon, and Wallace used the Southern Strategy to bring the conservatives out of their postwar wilderness.

Do you understand the complex ways antisemitism grew out of Christian European Culture? [And no, I'm no suggesting Christianity is responsible for the Holocaust, only trying to point out the Church's deep history of antisemitism and the ways in which in contributed to a kind of mainstream European antisemitism. Certainly the party of religion in the USA was not immune to this. Antisemitism thrived in America until the 60s social movements started institutionalizing tolerance]

Whether you are sure about it is not the issue. Democrat Senator Harry Byrd was a racist until the day he died.

Without a doubt.

Dig up the cartoons in the mostly democrat leaning newspapers regarding the first Black secretary of state. They were unapologetically racist.

NY Times, San Fransisco Chronicle, WaPo....YOU show us any "racist cartoons" of Colin Powell. I smell bullshit here, myself.

The attacks on Justice Thomas might be political but the hard core liberal racists can't resist using racial epithets to ridicule him.

Again, smells like bullshit. Let's see you back this up.

It's ingrained in the democrat party. As far as overt anti-semitism goes today, it is almost entirely on the left side of the political spectrum.

Example?

Since the democrat party is left of center it is reasonable to assume that anti-semitism percolates within the party.

Ah, imputing bad motives. With no evidence...gotcha.


Go ahead and cherry pick fifty year old alleged antisemite statements on the right. It's easy to see that it is an Alinsky type tactic generated to camouflage the left's support of the muslem brotherhood's rise to power in the mid-east.

WTF is this Alinsky guy? Whether it has any bearing on the Revolution in Egypt, the facts about Henry Ford are there for anyone to see. And 1920 was ninety one years ago, not fifty. Yanno, in case we would want to be somewhat precise and all.

 

[Mr. Shaman]

Ever been to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan? It's amazing how they whitewash his life story. They make it seem as if Ford was the Walt Disney of the Industrial Revolution.

I'd say that's an appropriate-tag.....pitching the Industrial Revolution as a World O' Wonder, by those folks who were CA$HING-IN on other people's labor.

*

The Saviour of American-industry will (eventually) be recognized; W. Edwards Deming.....after he'd been dismissed by Old-Boy/Old-Guard Corporate America (for suggesting CEOs/Upper-Management DIDN'T have all the answers).....and, went on to PROVE IT.....in Japan!!!!!

Key Principles For Management

Disney was a pretty rabid anti-semite himself, BTW.

He was (definitely) an icon of the Good Ol' 1950s.

Top 10 Things You Didn't Know About Walt Disney