July 11, 2024 • 44 mins
At the turn of the 20th century, conspiracy theories about Jews ran rampant in American society. Many Americans – from the famed automaker Henry Ford to officers in the U.S. Army – believed that Jews controlled media, dominated international banking, and were conspiring to foment a communist revolution in the United States.
Featuring: Yair Rosenberg, Victoria Saker Woeste, and Joseph Bendersky
Narrated by Mark Oppenheimer
Written by John Turner and Lincoln Mullen
This series is made possible with support from the Henry Luce Foundation and the David Bruce Smith Foundation.
Antisemitism, U.S.A. is a production of R2 Studios at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Mark Oppenheimer (00:00):
Support for Antisemitism, U.S.A. comes from
the Henry Luce Foundation andthe David Bruce Smith
Foundation.
In 2018, wildfires were burningin California. 103 people lost
their lives and nearly 25,000homes and other buildings were
destroyed. Marjorie TaylorGreene is writing articles for a
(00:25):
website called American truthseekers. She's very active on
social media. And she's notabout to accept the
straightforward explanation forthese wildfires that well,
forests catch fire, especiallyin these days of climate change
and years of record drought.know she has a better answer,
and she goes to Facebook andposts her explanation. The fires
(00:49):
she says, are caused by Jewishspace lasers. Greenbelt believed
the fires were related toPacific Gas and Electric. She
had noticed that the company hadsome ventures in space and that
its stock was fluctuating. Shealso noticed that a man named
Roger Kimball was on the boardof Pacific Gas and Electric
(01:11):
Kimmel was also vice chairman ofRothschild Incorporated, which
Greene referred to as quote aninternational investment banking
firm. And then she wrote, thereare too many coincidences to
ignore. But what do I know? Ijust like to read a lot.
Marjorie Taylor Greene laterbecame a Republican
congresswoman from Georgia. Anda big part of her electoral
(01:34):
appeal was her belief in Q anonand a host of other conspiracy
theories, ranging from pizzagate to theories about the
September 11 terrorist attacks.So it's worth understanding her
somewhat garbled social mediapost about the forest fires.
When green brought up theRothschilds, she was connecting
her theories about the wildfiresback to a centuries old idea
(01:56):
that much of what went wrong inthe world could be traced to
Jewish bankers. And here we getto a crucial point about anti
semitism. When people stereotypeJews, they're usually drawing on
ideas of Jewish superiorityrather than inferiority. And
that's a unique kind of bigotry.Unlike other racial and
(02:19):
religious groups stereotyped asinferior. Jews are suspect
because they are seen as somehowsuperior. They are too good with
money or too smart or toowealthy. They have too much
political power. They're toocommon in the media. They're too
shrewd, too clever. You get theidea behind the stereotype that
Jews have the brains to besneaky. They're behind the
(02:41):
scenes secretly controllingeverything. Sadly, this idea can
be found all over the place. Itwould be pretty hard to find a
member of Congress morediametrically opposed to
Marjorie Taylor Greene on policyissues. Then representative
Ilhan Omar the Democrat ofMinnesota, but in the matter of
(03:01):
anti semitic conspiracytheories, the two politicians
have a good bit in common. In2012, Omar tweeted that, quote,
Israel has hypnotized the world.And when she was asked about
Israel's influence in the UnitedStates, she said it was about
the Benjamins baby. In Omar'sworldview, Jews, and in this
(03:21):
case Israelis and theirsupporters were controlling the
world through their money. Itwould be nice if we could
dismiss green and Omar as fringefigures, but we can't. And we
shouldn't. Once that someone hasmade it to Congress, she's
mainstream and more important,even wacky conspiracy theories
like Q anon pizza gate, and yes,Jewish space lasers are not an
(03:45):
aberration in American politics.
I'm Mark Oppenheimer, and thisis Antisemitism, U.S.A., a
podcast about the history ofanti semitism in the United
States. Episode Fiveconspiracies. Conspiracy
(04:11):
theories aren't new. Scholarshave been studying them for a
long, long time. In 1964,historian Richard Hofstadter
coined the term the paranoidstyle to refer to the sense of
heated exaggeration,suspiciousness and
conspiratorial fantasy thatpermeated the history of
American politics. As evidencehe pointed to other historic
(04:34):
events, including Senator JosephMcCarthy and the Red Scare of
the 1950s. Before that, in the1890s, the Populist Party
thought there was a conspiracybetween backers of the gold
standard in Europe and America.Before that Americans believed
there was a global internationalconspiracy by Catholics and
especially the pope againstdemocracy, even to the extent
(04:54):
that they feared Catholics werekidnapping children. Before that
Americans were desperatelyafraid of them. Bavarian
Illuminati and the Masons. Andbefore that they thought King
George the III was trying to putan Anglican bishop over all the
protestants in the 13 colonies.Here's journalist Yari
Rosenberg, a staff writer forThe Atlantic.
Yair Rosenberg (05:17):
Conspiracy theorists begin by rejecting
mainstream explanations forsocial and political events in
favor of supposedly suppressedknowledge and hidden hands. If
you think about it, conspiracytheories share a lot of things
in common. Antisemitism isn'tunique, but it's a lot older
than other conspiracy theories.So these people may not start
(05:37):
out as antisemites. Butantisemitism is out there, and
it has a multi 1000 year headstart on their crooked
conception of the world. Andit's produced centuries of
material casting with Jews asthe chief culprit. So once a
person is convinced themselvesthat an invisible hand is
manipulating the masses, there,just a couple of Google searches
(05:59):
away from discovering that itbelongs to an invisible Jew. If
you see somebody who's willingto publicly fulminate about a
morphus, they who is behind thescenes and causing social
strife, causing whateverproblems the person perceives in
the world. They will inevitablyland on the Jews at some point.
Mark Oppenheimer (06:17):
In the early years of the 20th century, a new
conspiracy about Jewish powerwas created in Russia and became
popular in Europe. It was calledThe Protocols of the Elders of
Zion, and it has an obscure andbizarre history. Here's
historian Victoria sacre wasty,author of Henry Ford's war on
(06:37):
Jews and the legal battlesagainst hate speech. It's a
rather astounding document. It'sa collection of mini essays that
purport to read as if they arethe collective thoughts of a
group of Jewish elders, who arelaying out their intent to take
over world governments andestablish a Jewish worldwide
(07:01):
state. These Jewish eldersallegedly controlled the banks
and the global economy. Theysupposedly knew how to destroy
morals through greed andpornography. They supposedly
knew how to topple governments,and they were responsible for
all sorts of evil. Like the 1901assassination of President
William McKinley. Portions ofthe protocols began appearing in
(07:22):
a Russian newspaper in 1903.They were probably written that
year or perhaps in 1902. Thetiming matters. In 1903, about
50 Jews were killed, and morethan 1000 homes were damaged in
the kitchen of pogrom in presentday Moldova should have and
other pogroms in Eastern Europeand Russia encouraged hundreds
(07:44):
of 1000s of Jews to emigrate.Many to the United States, the
same people who wrote andpublished in The Protocols of
the Elders of Zion, werefomenting violence against Jews.
And what they wrote justifiedthat violence. The version of
the protocols that became wellknown around the world, was
translated and published as anappendix to a book titled, The
(08:05):
Great in the small, the comingof the Antichrist and the rule
of Satan on Earth. To be clear,the Protocols of the Elders of
Zion aren't true, not even alittle bit true. They're just a
hoax, plain and simple, with nogrounding in facts or reality.
The only reality is the veryreal harm that the protocols did
in the world. And not only werethe protocols a hoax, they
(08:28):
weren't even original. In 1921,the Times of London revealed
that the protocols had adoptedan earlier French political
satire that didn't even mentionJews. The protocols came to the
United States after theBolshevik Revolution of October
1917, which overthrew theRussian Tsar and led to the
creation of a communist state inRussia. Left wing dissenters in
(08:52):
Russia were rounded up andimprisoned by the state, and the
government passed new laws tocensor political speech. There
were bomb scares created byanarchists. Americans were
terrified of revolution and ofan overthrow of our government.
And it was in that context thatthe protocols arrived here.
Enter Henry Ford, Ford hadlittle formal education, but he
(09:17):
had a knack for invention. Hisinnovative use of the assembly
line made automobiles plentifuland affordable, and made him one
of the richest men in thecountry. And Ford helped make
the protocols wildly popular.
Victoria Saker Woeste (09:32):
Once the Ford Motor Company was built,
and production of the firstautomobile rolled off what was
then a pretty rudimentaryassembly line, the money started
to roll in. And with that statuscame a great deal of public
adulation, huge amount of publicinterest, media interest,
(09:52):
everything that he said wasnews. He had this kind of folksy
charm that people foundappealing and By the time that
World War One swings around, hehas already become fairly
outspoken on the issues of theday and on what he believes
would be good for the country.
Mark Oppenheimer (10:15):
In the US, even wealthy powerful elite
liked to cast their ideas as ifthey were just popular man of
the people views. That wascertainly true Ford, despite
being incredibly wealthy, heliked to identify himself with
farmers, and with views hethought would come from farmers,
and especially what farmersworry about, which he believed
(10:36):
was dead and begs.
Victoria Saker Woeste (10:39):
He styled himself as a populist, which in
many ways was actually not thatpopular, so to speak, after the
turn of the century, but therewas still a great deal of
working class farmer agitationover access to credit and the
financial system in general. Andthat dovetails with a pretty
(11:03):
standard anti semiticstereotypes, which is that
bankers are all Jews, Jewscontrol the money, and Jews are
out to enrich themselves.
Mark Oppenheimer (11:13):
The thought process goes like this. Farmers
are in debt and are likely toblame their financial problems
on Jewish bankers. And sincerich people's wealth is often
tied up in companies, ratherthan in cash, they often have
pretty substantial loans, whichwas the case for Ford and the
Ford Motor Company.
Victoria Woeste (11:31):
So as Ford becomes more and more of a sort
of corporate entrepreneur, andmore and more reliant on banks
for his financing, he becomesmore and more skeptical to the
point of outright hostilitytowards the banking system. He
doesn't begin to publiclyaccused Jews of controlling the
(11:55):
nation's finances until muchlater until after the war.
Mark Oppenheimer (12:00):
Because of a public conflict between Ford and
President Woodrow Wilson, overAmerican involvement in World
War One, the Chicago Tribunewrote an editorial calling for
an anarchist and ignorant. Fordbecame convinced that not only
were the banks out to get himbut so were the newspapers. So
Henry Ford sued the tribune forlibel. And this part gets pretty
(12:22):
funny. Ford probably would havewon his case, if he had just
sued the tribune for calling himan anarchist because he wasn't
an anarchist. But he also suedthe tribune for calling him
ignorant. And he was in fact,ignorant.
Victoria Woeste (12:35):
When that case went to court, he was the
world's worst client. He refusedto be prepared by his lawyers,
they tried so hard to prep himfor cross examination, and he
would have none of it. And heembarrassed himself on the
stand. And Ford at this trialwas unable to distinguish the
American Revolution from the Warof 1812. And he thought Arnold
(12:59):
was a writer could not identifyhim as a trader. So he proved
himself to be as ignorant on thestand as the tribune had
editorialized. And so, the juryfound that he had been libeled
because they called him ananarchist, but he had not been
damaged, and they awarded himsix cents. So that kind of
(13:20):
really fried his innards, so tospeak. And that had a lot to do
with why he purchased anewspaper in 1918.
Mark Oppenheimer (13:32):
Ford felt like he needed some good press, and
the quickest route to gettingsome was to buy a newspaper. So
he bought the DearbornIndependent. And from the papers
first issue under his ownership,the newspaper printed some
pretty vile antisemitic ideas.Now, you might ask, When did
Ford become an antisemite?
Victoria Woeste (13:52):
He grew up in antisemite, the whole country
was fused with antisemiticattitudes. It was in the
literature, it's in thenewspapers. It's in the common
conversations that people have,especially in rural areas where
Jews tended not to be. I mean,when Jews emigrated to this
(14:13):
country, they tended toestablish themselves in cities,
you didn't tend to see too manyof them out in the countryside.
So there probably was a fairdegree of suspicion and concern
that was tinged with antisemiticbeliefs.
Mark Oppenheimer (14:34):
It's the same idea that Jews control the
banks, the idea had beenpervasive. For centuries, no one
had to tell an early 20thcentury American just as no one
has to tell a 21st centuryAmerican that Jews were
associated with money and banks.By the time Ford bought the
Dearborn Independent in late1918, he may have read The
(14:56):
Protocols of the Elders of Zionand by the spring of none 1920
He had certainly read it.
Victoria Saker Woeste (15:02):
That document came into Ford's hands
through his executive secretaryErnest Leibold, who was a
descendant of German parents inMichigan and had come into
Ford's employ because he hadworked at the bank where Ford
did business in the early 1900s.Very carefully and very quickly
(15:24):
Leibold became the sort ofcentury so no one could get to
Ford except through Leibold. AndLeibold was in communication
with several Russian emigres whowanted to get Ford to contribute
money to the cause of restoringthe czarist regime. I saw no
evidence that Ford ever gavemoney to the Russians. But he
(15:48):
was clearly captivated by thechance to rewrite The Protocols
for an American audience. Andthat was what became the mission
of his newspaper, The DearbornIndependent beginning in 1920.
What Ford's antisemitismconsisted of was the belief that
(16:08):
Jews were responsible for everysocial evil in the country, that
Jews who worked in governmentdid so for the purpose of
insinuating themselves into thehalls of power so that they
could divert government to theirown insidious purposes, and that
the media could never be trustedto give accurate depictions of
(16:30):
national and world affairsbecause of Jewish influence.
Mark Oppenheimer (16:36):
Starting in May 1920, the Dearborn
Independent publishedantisemitic articles week after
week, in Ford's first issue, theheadline blazed The
International Jew (16:45):
The World's Problem, and text within the
newspaper read.
Victoria Saker Woeste (16:51):
In America alone, most of the big
business, the trust and thebanks, the natural resources,
and the chief agriculturalproducts, especially tobacco,
cotton and sugar, are in thecontrol of Jewish financiers.
Jews are the largest and mostnumerous landlords of residence
property in the country. Theyare supreme in the theatrical
(17:13):
world. They absolutely controlthe circulations of publications
throughout the country.
Mark Oppenheimer (17:19):
For 92 weeks, Ford and his associates printed
compelling articles thatcommented on excerpts from The
Protocols. They then compilethese articles and publish them
as a four volume book, titledThe International Jew: The
World's Foremost Problem. Thetitle and the subtitle really
say at all, according to Ford,American Jews weren't really
(17:42):
American. They were part of aninternational Cabal. And they
were the biggest threat toAmerica and the world. Here's
Victoria Saker Woeste
Victoria Saker Woeste (17:53):
We see the publication in a series of
articles that ended up taking 92weeks, from May of 1920 to
January of 1922, essentiallypresented the protocols to an
American audience and for massproduced everything. And he mass
produced the Dearbornindependent and sent it free of
(18:16):
charge to schools and librariesand hospitals and any kind of
institution you can imagine.They got a copy of it. And so he
made it a linchpin, not just ofhis sort of side operation of a
newspaper, but an integral partof his automobile sales, that
people should be presented withthis newspaper. I don't hesitate
(18:42):
call it propaganda, it waspropaganda. The front cover was
always Jewish article. Butinside you could also find a
poem by Robert Frost, you couldfind essays on literature or art
or anything along the lines ofwhat you'd find in the Saturday
Evening Post. That was reallythe aspiration was to make the
(19:03):
Dearborn Independent arrival tothat esteemed publication. And
so the Jewish articles weren'tthe only thing in the newspaper,
but they were the most importantfeature. For him. This was a
method of spreading the news theunvarnished truth, so to speak,
(19:24):
about the threat that Jewsrepresented, to the American way
of government to the Americanpolity, and, frankly, to the
idea that Jews should becomecitizens.
Mark Oppenheimer (19:37):
Ford pressured dealers to get multiple
subscriptions to his paper todistribute to customers.
Sometimes dealers stuffed copiesof the Dearborn Independent into
newly sold cars. Plenty ofAmericans were already primed to
worry about the banks. They werealready suspicious of
international affairs and theyalready disliked the Jews. Henry
(20:00):
Ford taught them to fear Jews byteaching them that Jews were
behind every problem from banksto wars, unfortunately,
alongside is automobiles, for toalso mass produced anti semitic
conspiracy theories. We askedVictoria Sake Woeste to describe
one of the pages from theDearborn Independent.
Victoria Saker Woeste (20:22):
So at the top of the page in a box says
all little pals together to savethe American farmer, exclamation
point. And then there arepictures of four prominent
American Jews Albert Lasker,former head of the shipping
board, Aaron Spiro, organizer ofAmerican farmers, Eugene Meyer,
(20:44):
Jr, former head of the warFinance Corporation. And then
finally, Bernard Baruch, formerhead of the War Industries
Board. There were a number ofJews in important positions in
Wilson's government. These threein particular Lasker, Meyer, and
Baruch, helped with the war,they basically organized the
(21:05):
financing of the US war effort.So under those pictures is a big
headline, Jewish exploitation offarmers organizations, and to
the story of the Sapiro boys.The first three articles were
meant to be read continuously.It's funny, you think the Sapiro
boys would refer to Sapiro andhis brother who was also a
(21:28):
lawyer, but it didn't, what itreally meant was that Sapiro was
linked to all of thesenationally prominent Jews, when
in fact, he wasn't. The DearbornIndependent wanted to insinuate
that they not only knew eachother, but were engaged in a
collective conspiratorial effortto undermine the government. And
(21:51):
that was one of the things inthe complaint that Aaron Sapiro
files in 1925 is that article inparticular, because the sort of
guilt by association inferencewas offence.
Mark Oppenheimer (22:04):
For Ford was against World War One and he
targeted Jews who supported thewar effort, including Aaron
Sapiro. Sapiro, tried to helpfarmers get a better price for
their crops by selling them as acooperative rather than
individually.
Victoria Saker Woeste (22:22):
What Aaron Sapiro saw as a real
advantage for farmers, Ford sawas a kind of communistic
approach, that could only leadto the defrauding of farmers by
someone exactly like AaronSapiro, who had, after all,
never been a farmer himself, andof course, was Jewish. So it
(22:47):
kind of was a perfect storm ofcircumstances in the mid 20s. I
see it as a kind of battle overyou know, who was going to
really gain the title of leaderof the agricultural cooperative
movement. And when Ford startshis agricultural series of
articles in 1924, cooperativemarketing and Aaron Spiro are
(23:10):
the twin targets. And AaronSapiro, is just taking it on the
chin, the hits in that magazinefrom week to week, were pretty
devastating. And when this wholecase gets to trial, he actually
gets to document just howdamaged his law practice was by
the allegations that Ford wasrepeating every week, many of
(23:32):
which were not, in fact, true.They actually accused him of
organizing farmers andcommodities that he had never
been close to. He had never beenanywhere near the first rule of
publishing is never ever, everpublish anything that you're not
completely sure that you canprove. And the Dearborn
(23:53):
independent, hired a reporter,who was an alcoholic, who was
basically just going and talkingto a few people in you know,
this city and then going toanother city and talking to a
few people and making up stuffthat fit the narrative he was
trying to construct. Andunfortunately, the newspaper
(24:14):
didn't realize how much of whatthey were publishing was not
accurate, until Sapiro, suedthem in 1925. And they had to
try to retrace the reportersresearch, and he couldn't do it.
Mark Oppenheimer (24:28):
To Ford it as newspaperman there was a
conspiracy of Jews around theworld. And there was also a
conspiracy here in the UnitedStates to unite farmers into
cooperatives. And Aaron Sapiro,a Jewish lawyer was one American
Jew, leading the farmersconspiracy.
In both instances, the claimsthat the Dearborn Independent
(24:50):
made were false. But there's animportant distinction. For one
of those claims the claimagainst Sapiro there was a legal
remedy. He could sue Ford and hecould seek damages for the loss
that his law practice sustainedbecause of Ford's lies. But what
about Jews collectively, today,we might call Ford's antisemitic
statements a form of hatespeech. In the 1920s, it was
(25:14):
called group libel. But then asnow, you can't be sued for
libeling a group. Here, let'smeet another character who
played an essential role in thestory. Lewis Marshall, he was
one of the founders of theAmerican Jewish Committee, and
then its longtime president. Hewas a big deal lawyer. He may
have argued more cases beforethe Supreme Court than anyone
else in his day, you would behard pressed to find a more
(25:37):
prominent Jew in America. WhenFord first started publishing
the antisemitic columns in theDearborn Independent, Marshall
sent a telegram before askinghim to cease and desist. He
called the articles a libel uponan entire people. In response,
Ford called Marshall, aBolshevist orator.
Victoria Saker Woeste (25:57):
So what Marshall did was write a statute
that made it a crime to publishan allegation or
characterization based on race,religion, and national origin.
So that if you cast aspersions,in an advertisement that you
published against Catholics, forinstance, you would be liable
(26:21):
under this group libel law.
Mark Oppenheimer (26:24):
Marshall lobbied the New York legislature
to pass a group libel law. Butthe proposal failed. The Anti
Defamation League supported asimilar campaign in other
states, but they were alsounsuccessful. But Aaron Sapiro
he as an individual could sueFord for libel in Michigan, he
had a pretty slam dunk case. Hislaw practice had taken a hit
(26:46):
there were clearly monetarydamages. And most of the things
Ford had printed about himsimply were not true. You can
throw in some ineptitude byFord's attorney, and it looked
like Sapiro was going to win forsure.
But that's when things took aturn. Henry Ford got in an
automobile accident. He may evenhave deliberately gotten in such
(27:09):
an accident to buy some timewith the judge. And then Ford's
bodyguard got a juror tospeculate to a newspaper
reporter that Ford haddeliberately caused the
accident.
Unknown (27:21):
Henry Ford's sort of mob affiliated bodyguard, Harry
Bennett, plants an interviewwith one of the jurors a woman
as turned out in the DetroitNews. And so the reporter gets
her to say, on the record, thatshe is suspicious about Ford's
accident and thinks that thatsomebody, she says is trying to
(27:44):
keep the case from going to thejury, which may have been true,
she may have had reason to thinkthat but it was absolutely
terrible that she said that to areporter. Because the reporter
then published that statement,and as soon as Ford's lawyers
put that newspaper in front ofthe judge, the judge declared a
mistrial. It was like game over.Even though Aaron Sapiro and
(28:09):
William Gallagher objectedstrenuously and offered to
proceed with 11 jurors, thejudge refused to let that
happen. And so, mistrial wasdeclared.
Mark Oppenheimer (28:21):
Ford was willing to go to any lengths to
avoid testifying in a secondtrial. At this point, Ford
wanted to make the problems hehad created go away. He
discontinued the newspaper, andhis people reached out to Lewis
Marshall. And remarkably, theyasked Marshall to draft an
apology for what Ford had beenpublishing for seven
years.Marshall was willing toplay ball. He was pleased that
(28:46):
Ford would admit that he'd beenpublishing lies. And he also
wanted to avoid a public debateabout whether or not Jews were,
quote, the world's foremostproblem.
Victoria Saker Woeste (28:54):
Marshall writes the statement, which
essentially ignores everythingthat had been entered into
evidence at trial for gets toexpress astonishment, that
employees at the newspaperpublished all these statements
without his knowledge orapproval, he had no idea that
American Jews thought he wasresponsible for this. He was
(29:16):
appalled that anyone would thinkthat he would harbor such biases
and prejudices, and he wasdetermined to make good on this
opportunity to apologize and toreset his relationship with
American Jews. And that was whatMarshall cared about. It wasn't
any particular plaintiff who hadlegitimate libel claims. It was
(29:39):
about the group libel interestsof American Jews. And so the
apology apologizes for the onething that Ford could never have
lost in court on which was thegroup libel claim. And Aaron
Sapiro and the other plaintiff,Herman Bernstein, do not merit a
mention. They're not mentionedin the subpoena. Ajit and the
(30:01):
statement gets blasted all overmedia all over the newspapers
and everyone thinks oh Ford hasapologized. And some Jewish
newspapers are happy to see itand others are skeptical that
Ford means it. But most of thesort of mainstream press thinks
that Ford has learned his lessonand that he's been sufficiently
(30:23):
embarrassed now that he won't doit again.
Mark Oppenheimer (30:26):
So Sapiro both won and lost. He lost in the
sense that he never got damagesfor the very real harm that Ford
had done to him. On the otherhand, he had forced Ford to
apologize. And perhaps LouisMarshall had won and lost to he
got what he wanted anacknowledgement from Ford,
however insincere, that hisclaims about an international
Jewish conspiracy were false. Heeven got forward to promise that
(30:49):
he would withdraw the Dearbornindependence articles and take
the international Jew out ofcirculation.
Victoria Saker Woeste (30:54):
The really meaningful thing is that
the one thing Marshall reallywanted was to get forward to
retract all the copies of theInternational Jew, which wasn't
impossible ask. Ford only hadcontrol over the Dearborn
publishing company, he didn'thave control over the
Argentinian and German andSpanish publishers who were
(31:17):
churning this pamphlet out
Mark Oppenheimer (31:20):
Ford's anti emitic publications never really
went away. If you hang out onsocial media long enough,
somebody will post a passagefrom them. And Ford never
stopped being an antisemite. Butour story is not entirely
negative. By fighting backthrough the courts, Sapiro
managed to make one of thewealthiest and most powerful men
in the country apologize for hisanti semitism. After the break,
(31:43):
we'll examine a governmentorganization that took the
International Jew too seriously.
Let's look at a group that tookthe conspiracy theory that Jews
control the world very, veryseriously. And it wasn't some
fringe group. It was the UnitedStates Army. After World War
(32:06):
One, the US Army officer corpswas generally antisemitic.
Officers were gentleman afterall, and gentleman disliked
Jews. Besides anti semitism asconspiratorial thinking and
antisemitism is racism. Therewas a lot of old fashioned
looking down on Jews by whiteProtestant elites, because they
came from different classes. Butthe army really took it up
(32:28):
another notch to the point ofdrawing up strategic plans about
what to do when the Jews triedto take over the world. Here's
Joseph Bendersky author of thebook, the Jewish threat.
Joseph Bendersky (32:41):
So he offers a course that is the crucial
institution. They're the oneswho make the decisions. What I
discovered was a deep seatedpervasive and institutionalized
anti semitism that had anegative impact on policies, not
just within the Army, both inthe US government and society.
(33:03):
Regarding Jewish Americansimmigration in the 1920s. The
term Jewish threat is not aninterpretive at my part, that's
an actual term that they use.And they spoke and wrote
frequently about a Jewish threatin its various dimensions.
Mark Oppenheimer (33:23):
To become an officer in the army before World
War One, you had to be part ofthe white Anglo Saxon Protestant
elite. And to be part of thatelite was to hold to a genteel
antisemitism, the country clubversion of the rural populist
antisemitism that motivatedHenry Ford.
Joseph Bendersky (33:40):
What we have here is a convergence of
traditional Christian culturalantisemitism. And that was still
there, it was still surfaced incertain reports. Jews as Christ
killers, anti Christians, andlike the canards about Jewish
businessmen, and how Jews areinsidious, they are selfish,
(34:01):
they have no loyalty to anycountry, show your traditional
antisemitism to have a betterroute or a way that works its
way in there that converges withthis modern form of sort of
scientific antisemitism, whereJews are defined as a separate
race with characteristics thatare inherited. And therefore,
(34:23):
the old solutions toantisemitism, conversion to
Christianity, assimilation areno longer viable. They are, in
fact, dangerous, because theywould undermine the civilization
pollute the gene pool, and inthat respect, be a threat to
civilization.
Mark Oppenheimer (34:44):
Now, Army officers have a particular set
of worries that most peopledon't have. Army officers worry
about threats to nationalsecurity, and about planning for
the next war. In their view,Jews were already not the right
kind of Americans. But when theylearned that Jews were supposed
recently engaged in aninternational conspiracy to
topple states. They took it veryseriously.
Joseph Bendersky (35:06):
By the 20th century, Jews are perceived as
not just acted in concert, butacting in concert now against
European and Westerncivilization, in general in the
role and interest, and this isgives rise to a variety of
conspiracy ideas, which thepublication of the translations
(35:27):
of the Protocols of the Eldersof Zion, served perfectly at
that time, because similar ideaswere surfacing. And now you had
this document that appeared toconfirm it. And the army and the
State Department did the studieson these. And for the most part,
we're convinced that thisdocument either was completely
(35:49):
correct, or at least had astrong semblance of truth in it,
about the activities of Jewsinternationally. And they
translated it they sent outcopies of the protocols to all
military attache is to assistthem in studying the so called
Jewish problem by which they metthe Jewish threat.
Mark Oppenheimer (36:11):
In our last episode, we talked about John
Trevor, who worked in theMilitary Intelligence Division
surveilling Jews whom heregarded as a security threat.
Trevor, you'll remember wasparticularly fearful of the Jews
of Manhattan, thinking theywould lead a communist uprising
in the US like the BolshevikRevolution in Russia. Trevor was
probably the most notorious ofthe bunch, but his fears were
(36:32):
widespread. And so the armyformulated plans about Jewish
threats based on what theythought they had learned from
the Protocols of the Elders ofZion.
Joseph Bendersky (36:42):
During World War One, we had military
intelligence, or really bosses,with hundreds of officers and a
couple of 1000s individualsworking in there as bureaucrat,
they expand this tremendousinvestigative network, looking
at all kinds of threats. Andwithin that, their surfaces now
(37:03):
of course, Jews, and theydevelop a separate category for
the study of Jews separateclassification, file 245, which
was a systematic way of keepingtrack of Jews. Later, the early
20s, when the protocol surface,they developed the separate
classification, for theexamination of the Protocols of
(37:27):
the Elders of Zion. So all thisaccumulated tremendous amount of
information. And thisinformation was coming from atta
Shea's was coming from agents,others reporting across the
United States, it was allaccumulating in the headquarters
in Washington, and on a dailybasis, getting constant reports.
(37:49):
The atmosphere was one well, ifthere's this much smoke, there
must be somewhere fire behind itall the salt to reinforce this
attitude about a real conspiracyout there. And so it took what
had been before prejudice. Andthen, of course, what appeared
to be scientific fact about Jewsand now raise the level of an
(38:12):
actual concrete threat that hadto be combated. Military
aftershaves for a couple ofdecades, are setting back these
reports on Jews, and in somecases, claiming that they
actually have proof that, let'ssay the takeover of the Soviet
Union, the Russian Revolution isactually an international
(38:34):
conspiracy of Jews. This is verywide ranging very often
contradictory. But there's verylittle effort except for a few
officers to challenges orcounteract this. It all seems to
fit together and ultimately itcreates a vision of an actual
threat. That has to be combated.
Mark Oppenheimer (38:55):
It wasn't just the army, Bendersky was cautious
to point out that we can knowhow much the army worried about
this fictitious InternationalJewish conspiracy, because we
have their documentation. TheArmy's response to this alleged
threat survived. The samedocumentation doesn't survive
from other branches ofgovernment. But that doesn't
mean there wasn't antisemitism.In fact, we have hints that anti
(39:18):
semitism was widespreadthroughout the government.
Here's Joseph Bendersky talkingabout naval intelligence at the
start of World War Two.
Joseph Bendersky (39:28):
I have this long report from the director of
Naval Intelligence in which heidentifies Jews with all of
these negative characteristics.And you cannot admit these
people to the United States eventhough they are suffering, but
they brought it on themselvesthat you have to protect America
(39:50):
against it. Moreover, he goes sofar as to claim that Jews are
acting as agents and thereforeThe security grounds should not
be admitted to the US. This wassomething that showed up in a
lot of the literature, refugeepolicy, where there was a fear
(40:11):
of a fifth column of Naziagents, including German Jews,
refugees who were beingblackmailed, and would serve as
Nazi agents. He was totally infavor of this, all of that
affected Roosevelt's decisions.
Mark Oppenheimer (40:26):
Okay, let's pull this all together. At the
very beginning of the 20thcentury, some antisemites in
Russia created a fake document ahoax, saying that an
international Jewish conspiracywas trying to destroy humanity.
By World War One, US Armyintelligence had studied the
matter exhaustively, andconcluded that the protocols
(40:46):
were real. And by World War Two,naval intelligence was worried
that refugee Jews fleeingpersecution were a real threat
to the United States, becauseJews were part of an
international conspiracy.
And that's where the real harmof the US military's
antisemitism becomes apparent.US Army officers want Nazis. By
(41:09):
and large, they disliked Nazis,and they thought that their
treatment of Jews was inhumaneand unChristian. But they blamed
the Jews for causing their ownpersecution, and they wanted to
stay out of war with Germany.And once the war started, the
antisemites and the officercorps were the same ones
deciding what to do about Jewishrefugees from the war and from
the Holocaust. They ended upbeing opposed to doing anything
(41:33):
to help Jewish refugees.
We'll talk more about the waysthe United States failed Jewish
refugees after the war. But it'simportant to note that even
after the war, even after theHolocaust, US Army officers
continued some of the sameantisemitic thought patterns
that they had learned bystudying the Protocols of the
Elders of Zion. Antisemitism isa shapeshifting problem. In the
(42:02):
early US, Christian antisemitismwas at the forefront, especially
in determining questions aboutcitizenship. By the end of the
19th century, racial sciencecreated a new form of
antisemitism, one that playedinto the hands of people who
wanted to restrict immigration.By the 1920s, antisemitism was
still both of those things, andupdated conspiracy theories
(42:24):
about Jewish financial power andworldwide revolution made
antisemitism even more potent.But by then, antisemitism was
also a conspiracy theory. Wehave to understand this history
of antisemitism as a conspiracytheory because of how it affects
the present. Consumer conspiracytheories are not just cooky
(42:45):
nonsense, they don't just stokebigotry. Conspiracy theories
also pose a threat. Theyencourage those who believe in
them to take action. And some ofthose true believers respond
with violence. The Protocols ofthe Elders of Zion and the
International Jew aren't true.Not even a little bit. But a
(43:06):
century after Henry Ford losthis lawsuit. People are still
reading them and they stillbelieve the lies.
Thank you for listening toAntisemitism, U.S.A. it's a
production of R2 Studios part ofthe Roy Rosenzweig Center for
History and New Media at GeorgeMason University. Visit R2
(43:29):
studios.org for a completetranscript of today's episode
and for suggestions for furtherreading. I'm your host Mark
Oppenheimer. Antisemitism,U.S.A. is written by John Turner
and Lincoln Mullen. Britt Tevisis our lead scholar Jim Ambuske
is our producer Jeanette Patrickis our executive producer. We'd
like to thank Zev Eleff forbeing our lead advisor and we'd
like to thank our advisory boardmembers, Laura Shaw Frank,
(43:49):
Riv-Ellen Prell, and JonathanSarna. Rachel Birch, Alexandra
Miller, and Amber Pelham are ourgraduate assistants. Our thanks
to Yair Rosenberg, VictoriaSaker Woeste, and Joseph
Bendersky for sharing theirexpertise in this episode. We're
able to bring you this showthrough the generosity of the
Henry Luce Foundation, the DavidBruce Smith Foundation, and many
individual donors like you.Thank you for listening, and we
(44:13):
hope you'll join us for the nextepisode.
Support for Antisemitism, U.S.A. comes from
the Henry Luce Foundation andthe David Bruce Smith
Foundation.
In 2018, wildfires were burningin California. 103 people lost
their lives and nearly 25,000homes and other buildings were
destroyed. Marjorie TaylorGreene is writing articles for a
(00:25):
website called American truthseekers. She's very active on
social media. And she's notabout to accept the
straightforward explanation forthese wildfires that well,
forests catch fire, especiallyin these days of climate change
and years of record drought.know she has a better answer,
and she goes to Facebook andposts her explanation. The fires
(00:49):
she says, are caused by Jewishspace lasers. Greenbelt believed
the fires were related toPacific Gas and Electric. She
had noticed that the company hadsome ventures in space and that
its stock was fluctuating. Shealso noticed that a man named
Roger Kimball was on the boardof Pacific Gas and Electric
(01:11):
Kimmel was also vice chairman ofRothschild Incorporated, which
Greene referred to as quote aninternational investment banking
firm. And then she wrote, thereare too many coincidences to
ignore. But what do I know? Ijust like to read a lot.
Marjorie Taylor Greene laterbecame a Republican
congresswoman from Georgia. Anda big part of her electoral
(01:34):
appeal was her belief in Q anonand a host of other conspiracy
theories, ranging from pizzagate to theories about the
September 11 terrorist attacks.So it's worth understanding her
somewhat garbled social mediapost about the forest fires.
When green brought up theRothschilds, she was connecting
her theories about the wildfiresback to a centuries old idea
(01:56):
that much of what went wrong inthe world could be traced to
Jewish bankers. And here we getto a crucial point about anti
semitism. When people stereotypeJews, they're usually drawing on
ideas of Jewish superiorityrather than inferiority. And
that's a unique kind of bigotry.Unlike other racial and
(02:19):
religious groups stereotyped asinferior. Jews are suspect
because they are seen as somehowsuperior. They are too good with
money or too smart or toowealthy. They have too much
political power. They're toocommon in the media. They're too
shrewd, too clever. You get theidea behind the stereotype that
Jews have the brains to besneaky. They're behind the
(02:41):
scenes secretly controllingeverything. Sadly, this idea can
be found all over the place. Itwould be pretty hard to find a
member of Congress morediametrically opposed to
Marjorie Taylor Greene on policyissues. Then representative
Ilhan Omar the Democrat ofMinnesota, but in the matter of
(03:01):
anti semitic conspiracytheories, the two politicians
have a good bit in common. In2012, Omar tweeted that, quote,
Israel has hypnotized the world.And when she was asked about
Israel's influence in the UnitedStates, she said it was about
the Benjamins baby. In Omar'sworldview, Jews, and in this
(03:21):
case Israelis and theirsupporters were controlling the
world through their money. Itwould be nice if we could
dismiss green and Omar as fringefigures, but we can't. And we
shouldn't. Once that someone hasmade it to Congress, she's
mainstream and more important,even wacky conspiracy theories
like Q anon pizza gate, and yes,Jewish space lasers are not an
(03:45):
aberration in American politics.
I'm Mark Oppenheimer, and thisis Antisemitism, U.S.A., a
podcast about the history ofanti semitism in the United
States. Episode Fiveconspiracies. Conspiracy
(04:11):
theories aren't new. Scholarshave been studying them for a
long, long time. In 1964,historian Richard Hofstadter
coined the term the paranoidstyle to refer to the sense of
heated exaggeration,suspiciousness and
conspiratorial fantasy thatpermeated the history of
American politics. As evidencehe pointed to other historic
(04:34):
events, including Senator JosephMcCarthy and the Red Scare of
the 1950s. Before that, in the1890s, the Populist Party
thought there was a conspiracybetween backers of the gold
standard in Europe and America.Before that Americans believed
there was a global internationalconspiracy by Catholics and
especially the pope againstdemocracy, even to the extent
(04:54):
that they feared Catholics werekidnapping children. Before that
Americans were desperatelyafraid of them. Bavarian
Illuminati and the Masons. Andbefore that they thought King
George the III was trying to putan Anglican bishop over all the
protestants in the 13 colonies.Here's journalist Yari
Rosenberg, a staff writer forThe Atlantic.
Yair Rosenberg (05:17):
Conspiracy theorists begin by rejecting
mainstream explanations forsocial and political events in
favor of supposedly suppressedknowledge and hidden hands. If
you think about it, conspiracytheories share a lot of things
in common. Antisemitism isn'tunique, but it's a lot older
than other conspiracy theories.So these people may not start
(05:37):
out as antisemites. Butantisemitism is out there, and
it has a multi 1000 year headstart on their crooked
conception of the world. Andit's produced centuries of
material casting with Jews asthe chief culprit. So once a
person is convinced themselvesthat an invisible hand is
manipulating the masses, there,just a couple of Google searches
(05:59):
away from discovering that itbelongs to an invisible Jew. If
you see somebody who's willingto publicly fulminate about a
morphus, they who is behind thescenes and causing social
strife, causing whateverproblems the person perceives in
the world. They will inevitablyland on the Jews at some point.
Mark Oppenheimer (06:17):
In the early years of the 20th century, a new
conspiracy about Jewish powerwas created in Russia and became
popular in Europe. It was calledThe Protocols of the Elders of
Zion, and it has an obscure andbizarre history. Here's
historian Victoria sacre wasty,author of Henry Ford's war on
(06:37):
Jews and the legal battlesagainst hate speech. It's a
rather astounding document. It'sa collection of mini essays that
purport to read as if they arethe collective thoughts of a
group of Jewish elders, who arelaying out their intent to take
over world governments andestablish a Jewish worldwide
(07:01):
state. These Jewish eldersallegedly controlled the banks
and the global economy. Theysupposedly knew how to destroy
morals through greed andpornography. They supposedly
knew how to topple governments,and they were responsible for
all sorts of evil. Like the 1901assassination of President
William McKinley. Portions ofthe protocols began appearing in
(07:22):
a Russian newspaper in 1903.They were probably written that
year or perhaps in 1902. Thetiming matters. In 1903, about
50 Jews were killed, and morethan 1000 homes were damaged in
the kitchen of pogrom in presentday Moldova should have and
other pogroms in Eastern Europeand Russia encouraged hundreds
(07:44):
of 1000s of Jews to emigrate.Many to the United States, the
same people who wrote andpublished in The Protocols of
the Elders of Zion, werefomenting violence against Jews.
And what they wrote justifiedthat violence. The version of
the protocols that became wellknown around the world, was
translated and published as anappendix to a book titled, The
(08:05):
Great in the small, the comingof the Antichrist and the rule
of Satan on Earth. To be clear,the Protocols of the Elders of
Zion aren't true, not even alittle bit true. They're just a
hoax, plain and simple, with nogrounding in facts or reality.
The only reality is the veryreal harm that the protocols did
in the world. And not only werethe protocols a hoax, they
(08:28):
weren't even original. In 1921,the Times of London revealed
that the protocols had adoptedan earlier French political
satire that didn't even mentionJews. The protocols came to the
United States after theBolshevik Revolution of October
1917, which overthrew theRussian Tsar and led to the
creation of a communist state inRussia. Left wing dissenters in
(08:52):
Russia were rounded up andimprisoned by the state, and the
government passed new laws tocensor political speech. There
were bomb scares created byanarchists. Americans were
terrified of revolution and ofan overthrow of our government.
And it was in that context thatthe protocols arrived here.
Enter Henry Ford, Ford hadlittle formal education, but he
(09:17):
had a knack for invention. Hisinnovative use of the assembly
line made automobiles plentifuland affordable, and made him one
of the richest men in thecountry. And Ford helped make
the protocols wildly popular.
Victoria Saker Woeste (09:32):
Once the Ford Motor Company was built,
and production of the firstautomobile rolled off what was
then a pretty rudimentaryassembly line, the money started
to roll in. And with that statuscame a great deal of public
adulation, huge amount of publicinterest, media interest,
(09:52):
everything that he said wasnews. He had this kind of folksy
charm that people foundappealing and By the time that
World War One swings around, hehas already become fairly
outspoken on the issues of theday and on what he believes
would be good for the country.
Mark Oppenheimer (10:15):
In the US, even wealthy powerful elite
liked to cast their ideas as ifthey were just popular man of
the people views. That wascertainly true Ford, despite
being incredibly wealthy, heliked to identify himself with
farmers, and with views hethought would come from farmers,
and especially what farmersworry about, which he believed
(10:36):
was dead and begs.
Victoria Saker Woeste (10:39):
He styled himself as a populist, which in
many ways was actually not thatpopular, so to speak, after the
turn of the century, but therewas still a great deal of
working class farmer agitationover access to credit and the
financial system in general. Andthat dovetails with a pretty
(11:03):
standard anti semiticstereotypes, which is that
bankers are all Jews, Jewscontrol the money, and Jews are
out to enrich themselves.
Mark Oppenheimer (11:13):
The thought process goes like this. Farmers
are in debt and are likely toblame their financial problems
on Jewish bankers. And sincerich people's wealth is often
tied up in companies, ratherthan in cash, they often have
pretty substantial loans, whichwas the case for Ford and the
Ford Motor Company.
Victoria Woeste (11:31):
So as Ford becomes more and more of a sort
of corporate entrepreneur, andmore and more reliant on banks
for his financing, he becomesmore and more skeptical to the
point of outright hostilitytowards the banking system. He
doesn't begin to publiclyaccused Jews of controlling the
(11:55):
nation's finances until muchlater until after the war.
Mark Oppenheimer (12:00):
Because of a public conflict between Ford and
President Woodrow Wilson, overAmerican involvement in World
War One, the Chicago Tribunewrote an editorial calling for
an anarchist and ignorant. Fordbecame convinced that not only
were the banks out to get himbut so were the newspapers. So
Henry Ford sued the tribune forlibel. And this part gets pretty
(12:22):
funny. Ford probably would havewon his case, if he had just
sued the tribune for calling himan anarchist because he wasn't
an anarchist. But he also suedthe tribune for calling him
ignorant. And he was in fact,ignorant.
Victoria Woeste (12:35):
When that case went to court, he was the
world's worst client. He refusedto be prepared by his lawyers,
they tried so hard to prep himfor cross examination, and he
would have none of it. And heembarrassed himself on the
stand. And Ford at this trialwas unable to distinguish the
American Revolution from the Warof 1812. And he thought Arnold
(12:59):
was a writer could not identifyhim as a trader. So he proved
himself to be as ignorant on thestand as the tribune had
editorialized. And so, the juryfound that he had been libeled
because they called him ananarchist, but he had not been
damaged, and they awarded himsix cents. So that kind of
(13:20):
really fried his innards, so tospeak. And that had a lot to do
with why he purchased anewspaper in 1918.
Mark Oppenheimer (13:32):
Ford felt like he needed some good press, and
the quickest route to gettingsome was to buy a newspaper. So
he bought the DearbornIndependent. And from the papers
first issue under his ownership,the newspaper printed some
pretty vile antisemitic ideas.Now, you might ask, When did
Ford become an antisemite?
Victoria Woeste (13:52):
He grew up in antisemite, the whole country
was fused with antisemiticattitudes. It was in the
literature, it's in thenewspapers. It's in the common
conversations that people have,especially in rural areas where
Jews tended not to be. I mean,when Jews emigrated to this
(14:13):
country, they tended toestablish themselves in cities,
you didn't tend to see too manyof them out in the countryside.
So there probably was a fairdegree of suspicion and concern
that was tinged with antisemiticbeliefs.
Mark Oppenheimer (14:34):
It's the same idea that Jews control the
banks, the idea had beenpervasive. For centuries, no one
had to tell an early 20thcentury American just as no one
has to tell a 21st centuryAmerican that Jews were
associated with money and banks.By the time Ford bought the
Dearborn Independent in late1918, he may have read The
(14:56):
Protocols of the Elders of Zionand by the spring of none 1920
He had certainly read it.
Victoria Saker Woeste (15:02):
That document came into Ford's hands
through his executive secretaryErnest Leibold, who was a
descendant of German parents inMichigan and had come into
Ford's employ because he hadworked at the bank where Ford
did business in the early 1900s.Very carefully and very quickly
(15:24):
Leibold became the sort ofcentury so no one could get to
Ford except through Leibold. AndLeibold was in communication
with several Russian emigres whowanted to get Ford to contribute
money to the cause of restoringthe czarist regime. I saw no
evidence that Ford ever gavemoney to the Russians. But he
(15:48):
was clearly captivated by thechance to rewrite The Protocols
for an American audience. Andthat was what became the mission
of his newspaper, The DearbornIndependent beginning in 1920.
What Ford's antisemitismconsisted of was the belief that
(16:08):
Jews were responsible for everysocial evil in the country, that
Jews who worked in governmentdid so for the purpose of
insinuating themselves into thehalls of power so that they
could divert government to theirown insidious purposes, and that
the media could never be trustedto give accurate depictions of
(16:30):
national and world affairsbecause of Jewish influence.
Mark Oppenheimer (16:36):
Starting in May 1920, the Dearborn
Independent publishedantisemitic articles week after
week, in Ford's first issue, theheadline blazed The
International Jew (16:45):
The World's Problem, and text within the
newspaper read.
Victoria Saker Woeste (16:51):
In America alone, most of the big
business, the trust and thebanks, the natural resources,
and the chief agriculturalproducts, especially tobacco,
cotton and sugar, are in thecontrol of Jewish financiers.
Jews are the largest and mostnumerous landlords of residence
property in the country. Theyare supreme in the theatrical
(17:13):
world. They absolutely controlthe circulations of publications
throughout the country.
Mark Oppenheimer (17:19):
For 92 weeks, Ford and his associates printed
compelling articles thatcommented on excerpts from The
Protocols. They then compilethese articles and publish them
as a four volume book, titledThe International Jew: The
World's Foremost Problem. Thetitle and the subtitle really
say at all, according to Ford,American Jews weren't really
(17:42):
American. They were part of aninternational Cabal. And they
were the biggest threat toAmerica and the world. Here's
Victoria Saker Woeste
Victoria Saker Woeste (17:53):
We see the publication in a series of
articles that ended up taking 92weeks, from May of 1920 to
January of 1922, essentiallypresented the protocols to an
American audience and for massproduced everything. And he mass
produced the Dearbornindependent and sent it free of
(18:16):
charge to schools and librariesand hospitals and any kind of
institution you can imagine.They got a copy of it. And so he
made it a linchpin, not just ofhis sort of side operation of a
newspaper, but an integral partof his automobile sales, that
people should be presented withthis newspaper. I don't hesitate
(18:42):
call it propaganda, it waspropaganda. The front cover was
always Jewish article. Butinside you could also find a
poem by Robert Frost, you couldfind essays on literature or art
or anything along the lines ofwhat you'd find in the Saturday
Evening Post. That was reallythe aspiration was to make the
(19:03):
Dearborn Independent arrival tothat esteemed publication. And
so the Jewish articles weren'tthe only thing in the newspaper,
but they were the most importantfeature. For him. This was a
method of spreading the news theunvarnished truth, so to speak,
(19:24):
about the threat that Jewsrepresented, to the American way
of government to the Americanpolity, and, frankly, to the
idea that Jews should becomecitizens.
Mark Oppenheimer (19:37):
Ford pressured dealers to get multiple
subscriptions to his paper todistribute to customers.
Sometimes dealers stuffed copiesof the Dearborn Independent into
newly sold cars. Plenty ofAmericans were already primed to
worry about the banks. They werealready suspicious of
international affairs and theyalready disliked the Jews. Henry
(20:00):
Ford taught them to fear Jews byteaching them that Jews were
behind every problem from banksto wars, unfortunately,
alongside is automobiles, for toalso mass produced anti semitic
conspiracy theories. We askedVictoria Sake Woeste to describe
one of the pages from theDearborn Independent.
Victoria Saker Woeste (20:22):
So at the top of the page in a box says
all little pals together to savethe American farmer, exclamation
point. And then there arepictures of four prominent
American Jews Albert Lasker,former head of the shipping
board, Aaron Spiro, organizer ofAmerican farmers, Eugene Meyer,
(20:44):
Jr, former head of the warFinance Corporation. And then
finally, Bernard Baruch, formerhead of the War Industries
Board. There were a number ofJews in important positions in
Wilson's government. These threein particular Lasker, Meyer, and
Baruch, helped with the war,they basically organized the
(21:05):
financing of the US war effort.So under those pictures is a big
headline, Jewish exploitation offarmers organizations, and to
the story of the Sapiro boys.The first three articles were
meant to be read continuously.It's funny, you think the Sapiro
boys would refer to Sapiro andhis brother who was also a
(21:28):
lawyer, but it didn't, what itreally meant was that Sapiro was
linked to all of thesenationally prominent Jews, when
in fact, he wasn't. The DearbornIndependent wanted to insinuate
that they not only knew eachother, but were engaged in a
collective conspiratorial effortto undermine the government. And
(21:51):
that was one of the things inthe complaint that Aaron Sapiro
files in 1925 is that article inparticular, because the sort of
guilt by association inferencewas offence.
Mark Oppenheimer (22:04):
For Ford was against World War One and he
targeted Jews who supported thewar effort, including Aaron
Sapiro. Sapiro, tried to helpfarmers get a better price for
their crops by selling them as acooperative rather than
individually.
Victoria Saker Woeste (22:22):
What Aaron Sapiro saw as a real
advantage for farmers, Ford sawas a kind of communistic
approach, that could only leadto the defrauding of farmers by
someone exactly like AaronSapiro, who had, after all,
never been a farmer himself, andof course, was Jewish. So it
(22:47):
kind of was a perfect storm ofcircumstances in the mid 20s. I
see it as a kind of battle overyou know, who was going to
really gain the title of leaderof the agricultural cooperative
movement. And when Ford startshis agricultural series of
articles in 1924, cooperativemarketing and Aaron Spiro are
(23:10):
the twin targets. And AaronSapiro, is just taking it on the
chin, the hits in that magazinefrom week to week, were pretty
devastating. And when this wholecase gets to trial, he actually
gets to document just howdamaged his law practice was by
the allegations that Ford wasrepeating every week, many of
(23:32):
which were not, in fact, true.They actually accused him of
organizing farmers andcommodities that he had never
been close to. He had never beenanywhere near the first rule of
publishing is never ever, everpublish anything that you're not
completely sure that you canprove. And the Dearborn
(23:53):
independent, hired a reporter,who was an alcoholic, who was
basically just going and talkingto a few people in you know,
this city and then going toanother city and talking to a
few people and making up stuffthat fit the narrative he was
trying to construct. Andunfortunately, the newspaper
(24:14):
didn't realize how much of whatthey were publishing was not
accurate, until Sapiro, suedthem in 1925. And they had to
try to retrace the reportersresearch, and he couldn't do it.
Mark Oppenheimer (24:28):
To Ford it as newspaperman there was a
conspiracy of Jews around theworld. And there was also a
conspiracy here in the UnitedStates to unite farmers into
cooperatives. And Aaron Sapiro,a Jewish lawyer was one American
Jew, leading the farmersconspiracy.
In both instances, the claimsthat the Dearborn Independent
(24:50):
made were false. But there's animportant distinction. For one
of those claims the claimagainst Sapiro there was a legal
remedy. He could sue Ford and hecould seek damages for the loss
that his law practice sustainedbecause of Ford's lies. But what
about Jews collectively, today,we might call Ford's antisemitic
statements a form of hatespeech. In the 1920s, it was
(25:14):
called group libel. But then asnow, you can't be sued for
libeling a group. Here, let'smeet another character who
played an essential role in thestory. Lewis Marshall, he was
one of the founders of theAmerican Jewish Committee, and
then its longtime president. Hewas a big deal lawyer. He may
have argued more cases beforethe Supreme Court than anyone
else in his day, you would behard pressed to find a more
(25:37):
prominent Jew in America. WhenFord first started publishing
the antisemitic columns in theDearborn Independent, Marshall
sent a telegram before askinghim to cease and desist. He
called the articles a libel uponan entire people. In response,
Ford called Marshall, aBolshevist orator.
Victoria Saker Woeste (25:57):
So what Marshall did was write a statute
that made it a crime to publishan allegation or
characterization based on race,religion, and national origin.
So that if you cast aspersions,in an advertisement that you
published against Catholics, forinstance, you would be liable
(26:21):
under this group libel law.
Mark Oppenheimer (26:24):
Marshall lobbied the New York legislature
to pass a group libel law. Butthe proposal failed. The Anti
Defamation League supported asimilar campaign in other
states, but they were alsounsuccessful. But Aaron Sapiro
he as an individual could sueFord for libel in Michigan, he
had a pretty slam dunk case. Hislaw practice had taken a hit
(26:46):
there were clearly monetarydamages. And most of the things
Ford had printed about himsimply were not true. You can
throw in some ineptitude byFord's attorney, and it looked
like Sapiro was going to win forsure.
But that's when things took aturn. Henry Ford got in an
automobile accident. He may evenhave deliberately gotten in such
(27:09):
an accident to buy some timewith the judge. And then Ford's
bodyguard got a juror tospeculate to a newspaper
reporter that Ford haddeliberately caused the
accident.
Unknown (27:21):
Henry Ford's sort of mob affiliated bodyguard, Harry
Bennett, plants an interviewwith one of the jurors a woman
as turned out in the DetroitNews. And so the reporter gets
her to say, on the record, thatshe is suspicious about Ford's
accident and thinks that thatsomebody, she says is trying to
(27:44):
keep the case from going to thejury, which may have been true,
she may have had reason to thinkthat but it was absolutely
terrible that she said that to areporter. Because the reporter
then published that statement,and as soon as Ford's lawyers
put that newspaper in front ofthe judge, the judge declared a
mistrial. It was like game over.Even though Aaron Sapiro and
(28:09):
William Gallagher objectedstrenuously and offered to
proceed with 11 jurors, thejudge refused to let that
happen. And so, mistrial wasdeclared.
Mark Oppenheimer (28:21):
Ford was willing to go to any lengths to
avoid testifying in a secondtrial. At this point, Ford
wanted to make the problems hehad created go away. He
discontinued the newspaper, andhis people reached out to Lewis
Marshall. And remarkably, theyasked Marshall to draft an
apology for what Ford had beenpublishing for seven
years.Marshall was willing toplay ball. He was pleased that
(28:46):
Ford would admit that he'd beenpublishing lies. And he also
wanted to avoid a public debateabout whether or not Jews were,
quote, the world's foremostproblem.
Victoria Saker Woeste (28:54):
Marshall writes the statement, which
essentially ignores everythingthat had been entered into
evidence at trial for gets toexpress astonishment, that
employees at the newspaperpublished all these statements
without his knowledge orapproval, he had no idea that
American Jews thought he wasresponsible for this. He was
(29:16):
appalled that anyone would thinkthat he would harbor such biases
and prejudices, and he wasdetermined to make good on this
opportunity to apologize and toreset his relationship with
American Jews. And that was whatMarshall cared about. It wasn't
any particular plaintiff who hadlegitimate libel claims. It was
(29:39):
about the group libel interestsof American Jews. And so the
apology apologizes for the onething that Ford could never have
lost in court on which was thegroup libel claim. And Aaron
Sapiro and the other plaintiff,Herman Bernstein, do not merit a
mention. They're not mentionedin the subpoena. Ajit and the
(30:01):
statement gets blasted all overmedia all over the newspapers
and everyone thinks oh Ford hasapologized. And some Jewish
newspapers are happy to see itand others are skeptical that
Ford means it. But most of thesort of mainstream press thinks
that Ford has learned his lessonand that he's been sufficiently
(30:23):
embarrassed now that he won't doit again.
Mark Oppenheimer (30:26):
So Sapiro both won and lost. He lost in the
sense that he never got damagesfor the very real harm that Ford
had done to him. On the otherhand, he had forced Ford to
apologize. And perhaps LouisMarshall had won and lost to he
got what he wanted anacknowledgement from Ford,
however insincere, that hisclaims about an international
Jewish conspiracy were false. Heeven got forward to promise that
(30:49):
he would withdraw the Dearbornindependence articles and take
the international Jew out ofcirculation.
Victoria Saker Woeste (30:54):
The really meaningful thing is that
the one thing Marshall reallywanted was to get forward to
retract all the copies of theInternational Jew, which wasn't
impossible ask. Ford only hadcontrol over the Dearborn
publishing company, he didn'thave control over the
Argentinian and German andSpanish publishers who were
(31:17):
churning this pamphlet out
Mark Oppenheimer (31:20):
Ford's anti emitic publications never really
went away. If you hang out onsocial media long enough,
somebody will post a passagefrom them. And Ford never
stopped being an antisemite. Butour story is not entirely
negative. By fighting backthrough the courts, Sapiro
managed to make one of thewealthiest and most powerful men
in the country apologize for hisanti semitism. After the break,
(31:43):
we'll examine a governmentorganization that took the
International Jew too seriously.
Let's look at a group that tookthe conspiracy theory that Jews
control the world very, veryseriously. And it wasn't some
fringe group. It was the UnitedStates Army. After World War
(32:06):
One, the US Army officer corpswas generally antisemitic.
Officers were gentleman afterall, and gentleman disliked
Jews. Besides anti semitism asconspiratorial thinking and
antisemitism is racism. Therewas a lot of old fashioned
looking down on Jews by whiteProtestant elites, because they
came from different classes. Butthe army really took it up
(32:28):
another notch to the point ofdrawing up strategic plans about
what to do when the Jews triedto take over the world. Here's
Joseph Bendersky author of thebook, the Jewish threat.
Joseph Bendersky (32:41):
So he offers a course that is the crucial
institution. They're the oneswho make the decisions. What I
discovered was a deep seatedpervasive and institutionalized
anti semitism that had anegative impact on policies, not
just within the Army, both inthe US government and society.
(33:03):
Regarding Jewish Americansimmigration in the 1920s. The
term Jewish threat is not aninterpretive at my part, that's
an actual term that they use.And they spoke and wrote
frequently about a Jewish threatin its various dimensions.
Mark Oppenheimer (33:23):
To become an officer in the army before World
War One, you had to be part ofthe white Anglo Saxon Protestant
elite. And to be part of thatelite was to hold to a genteel
antisemitism, the country clubversion of the rural populist
antisemitism that motivatedHenry Ford.
Joseph Bendersky (33:40):
What we have here is a convergence of
traditional Christian culturalantisemitism. And that was still
there, it was still surfaced incertain reports. Jews as Christ
killers, anti Christians, andlike the canards about Jewish
businessmen, and how Jews areinsidious, they are selfish,
(34:01):
they have no loyalty to anycountry, show your traditional
antisemitism to have a betterroute or a way that works its
way in there that converges withthis modern form of sort of
scientific antisemitism, whereJews are defined as a separate
race with characteristics thatare inherited. And therefore,
(34:23):
the old solutions toantisemitism, conversion to
Christianity, assimilation areno longer viable. They are, in
fact, dangerous, because theywould undermine the civilization
pollute the gene pool, and inthat respect, be a threat to
civilization.
Mark Oppenheimer (34:44):
Now, Army officers have a particular set
of worries that most peopledon't have. Army officers worry
about threats to nationalsecurity, and about planning for
the next war. In their view,Jews were already not the right
kind of Americans. But when theylearned that Jews were supposed
recently engaged in aninternational conspiracy to
topple states. They took it veryseriously.
Joseph Bendersky (35:06):
By the 20th century, Jews are perceived as
not just acted in concert, butacting in concert now against
European and Westerncivilization, in general in the
role and interest, and this isgives rise to a variety of
conspiracy ideas, which thepublication of the translations
(35:27):
of the Protocols of the Eldersof Zion, served perfectly at
that time, because similar ideaswere surfacing. And now you had
this document that appeared toconfirm it. And the army and the
State Department did the studieson these. And for the most part,
we're convinced that thisdocument either was completely
(35:49):
correct, or at least had astrong semblance of truth in it,
about the activities of Jewsinternationally. And they
translated it they sent outcopies of the protocols to all
military attache is to assistthem in studying the so called
Jewish problem by which they metthe Jewish threat.
Mark Oppenheimer (36:11):
In our last episode, we talked about John
Trevor, who worked in theMilitary Intelligence Division
surveilling Jews whom heregarded as a security threat.
Trevor, you'll remember wasparticularly fearful of the Jews
of Manhattan, thinking theywould lead a communist uprising
in the US like the BolshevikRevolution in Russia. Trevor was
probably the most notorious ofthe bunch, but his fears were
(36:32):
widespread. And so the armyformulated plans about Jewish
threats based on what theythought they had learned from
the Protocols of the Elders ofZion.
Joseph Bendersky (36:42):
During World War One, we had military
intelligence, or really bosses,with hundreds of officers and a
couple of 1000s individualsworking in there as bureaucrat,
they expand this tremendousinvestigative network, looking
at all kinds of threats. Andwithin that, their surfaces now
(37:03):
of course, Jews, and theydevelop a separate category for
the study of Jews separateclassification, file 245, which
was a systematic way of keepingtrack of Jews. Later, the early
20s, when the protocol surface,they developed the separate
classification, for theexamination of the Protocols of
(37:27):
the Elders of Zion. So all thisaccumulated tremendous amount of
information. And thisinformation was coming from atta
Shea's was coming from agents,others reporting across the
United States, it was allaccumulating in the headquarters
in Washington, and on a dailybasis, getting constant reports.
(37:49):
The atmosphere was one well, ifthere's this much smoke, there
must be somewhere fire behind itall the salt to reinforce this
attitude about a real conspiracyout there. And so it took what
had been before prejudice. Andthen, of course, what appeared
to be scientific fact about Jewsand now raise the level of an
(38:12):
actual concrete threat that hadto be combated. Military
aftershaves for a couple ofdecades, are setting back these
reports on Jews, and in somecases, claiming that they
actually have proof that, let'ssay the takeover of the Soviet
Union, the Russian Revolution isactually an international
(38:34):
conspiracy of Jews. This is verywide ranging very often
contradictory. But there's verylittle effort except for a few
officers to challenges orcounteract this. It all seems to
fit together and ultimately itcreates a vision of an actual
threat. That has to be combated.
Mark Oppenheimer (38:55):
It wasn't just the army, Bendersky was cautious
to point out that we can knowhow much the army worried about
this fictitious InternationalJewish conspiracy, because we
have their documentation. TheArmy's response to this alleged
threat survived. The samedocumentation doesn't survive
from other branches ofgovernment. But that doesn't
mean there wasn't antisemitism.In fact, we have hints that anti
(39:18):
semitism was widespreadthroughout the government.
Here's Joseph Bendersky talkingabout naval intelligence at the
start of World War Two.
Joseph Bendersky (39:28):
I have this long report from the director of
Naval Intelligence in which heidentifies Jews with all of
these negative characteristics.And you cannot admit these
people to the United States eventhough they are suffering, but
they brought it on themselvesthat you have to protect America
(39:50):
against it. Moreover, he goes sofar as to claim that Jews are
acting as agents and thereforeThe security grounds should not
be admitted to the US. This wassomething that showed up in a
lot of the literature, refugeepolicy, where there was a fear
(40:11):
of a fifth column of Naziagents, including German Jews,
refugees who were beingblackmailed, and would serve as
Nazi agents. He was totally infavor of this, all of that
affected Roosevelt's decisions.
Mark Oppenheimer (40:26):
Okay, let's pull this all together. At the
very beginning of the 20thcentury, some antisemites in
Russia created a fake document ahoax, saying that an
international Jewish conspiracywas trying to destroy humanity.
By World War One, US Armyintelligence had studied the
matter exhaustively, andconcluded that the protocols
(40:46):
were real. And by World War Two,naval intelligence was worried
that refugee Jews fleeingpersecution were a real threat
to the United States, becauseJews were part of an
international conspiracy.
And that's where the real harmof the US military's
antisemitism becomes apparent.US Army officers want Nazis. By
(41:09):
and large, they disliked Nazis,and they thought that their
treatment of Jews was inhumaneand unChristian. But they blamed
the Jews for causing their ownpersecution, and they wanted to
stay out of war with Germany.And once the war started, the
antisemites and the officercorps were the same ones
deciding what to do about Jewishrefugees from the war and from
the Holocaust. They ended upbeing opposed to doing anything
(41:33):
to help Jewish refugees.
We'll talk more about the waysthe United States failed Jewish
refugees after the war. But it'simportant to note that even
after the war, even after theHolocaust, US Army officers
continued some of the sameantisemitic thought patterns
that they had learned bystudying the Protocols of the
Elders of Zion. Antisemitism isa shapeshifting problem. In the
(42:02):
early US, Christian antisemitismwas at the forefront, especially
in determining questions aboutcitizenship. By the end of the
19th century, racial sciencecreated a new form of
antisemitism, one that playedinto the hands of people who
wanted to restrict immigration.By the 1920s, antisemitism was
still both of those things, andupdated conspiracy theories
(42:24):
about Jewish financial power andworldwide revolution made
antisemitism even more potent.But by then, antisemitism was
also a conspiracy theory. Wehave to understand this history
of antisemitism as a conspiracytheory because of how it affects
the present. Consumer conspiracytheories are not just cooky
(42:45):
nonsense, they don't just stokebigotry. Conspiracy theories
also pose a threat. Theyencourage those who believe in
them to take action. And some ofthose true believers respond
with violence. The Protocols ofthe Elders of Zion and the
International Jew aren't true.Not even a little bit. But a
(43:06):
century after Henry Ford losthis lawsuit. People are still
reading them and they stillbelieve the lies.
Thank you for listening toAntisemitism, U.S.A. it's a
production of R2 Studios part ofthe Roy Rosenzweig Center for
History and New Media at GeorgeMason University. Visit R2
(43:29):
studios.org for a completetranscript of today's episode
and for suggestions for furtherreading. I'm your host Mark
Oppenheimer. Antisemitism,U.S.A. is written by John Turner
and Lincoln Mullen. Britt Tevisis our lead scholar Jim Ambuske
is our producer Jeanette Patrickis our executive producer. We'd
like to thank Zev Eleff forbeing our lead advisor and we'd
like to thank our advisory boardmembers, Laura Shaw Frank,
(43:49):
Riv-Ellen Prell, and JonathanSarna. Rachel Birch, Alexandra
Miller, and Amber Pelham are ourgraduate assistants. Our thanks
to Yair Rosenberg, VictoriaSaker Woeste, and Joseph
Bendersky for sharing theirexpertise in this episode. We're
able to bring you this showthrough the generosity of the
Henry Luce Foundation, the DavidBruce Smith Foundation, and many
individual donors like you.Thank you for listening, and we
(44:13):
hope you'll join us for the nextepisode.
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