Debunking Henry Ford: A Short Summary

synopsis of the material covered in my workshop

--  a short summary --

                    

Debunking Henry Ford           

                              

by Evyn Rubin      

The anti-Semitism that has re-emerged today has a root in the ideology deliberately promoted by Henry Ford a century ago. Ford was a major figure in the repackaging of classic Jew-hating into modern anti-Semitism. The old accusation of Deicide lost its centrality and a myriad of current concerns were brought into focus, with prejudice and falsification preserved.

 

Henry Ford was a major player in the development of anti-Semitism in the Twentieth Century. He is best known for having escalated the scale of anti-Semitic propagandizing through his series of articles he produced in the "Dearborn Independent," (1920-1927). This was a local newspaper Ford bought and transformed into a vehicle of hate and harm. Ford assembled a team and used a modern corporate division of labor to repackage anti-Semitism, drawing on and competing with this activity in Europe. Ford quoted amply from the grandfather of fake news, the so-called "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," applying its distortions to a wider range of interests, from baseball to banking,  labor, movies, music, farming, prohibition, war. Ford taught his readers a methodology of scapegoating that still lingers, in pockets in the U.S. and elsewhere.

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But Ford perpetrated his treachery before and after the "Dearborn Independent" years. Ford sent money and other support to Hitler.  Ford attempted to infltrate the peace movement of his day with anti-Semitic interpretations.  And while the gas chambers in Europe still functioned, Ford financed an early example of what came to be known as Holocaust Denial.

How did the Jewish community respond and combat this peril? Through a grass roots boycott of Ford vehicles, through sermons by rabbis,  through libel suits, protest letters, face to face educating, attempted legistlation, petty vandalism, and more. The boycott attracted the participation of non-Jewish allies as well and made a dent in Ford's marketing statistics. Rabbi Leo Franklin of Detroit is noteworthy for his persistance, his organizing of a joint statement, for his sermon that saw through Ford's phony apology. Rabbi Stephen Wise gave the strongest interviews. A lawyer who organized farmers, Aaron Sapiro deservedly became a hero for the conduct of his libel suit. It is invigorating to redeem these and other memories of resistance, as they are a counterweight to the stress of Ford's treachery.