Citing the Nazis' hero, writer of The International Jew, publisher of the viciously anti-semitic Dearborn Independent that inspired Mein Kampf, and financier of the Nazi Party as a source of financial wisdom shows how the far left meets the far right in our political horseshoe: https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/from-suits-to-thugs-a89fcdb386a9
"Henry Ford was also among the Americans who financed and inspired the early Nazi Party through his paper The Dearborn Independent, whose 91 conspiracist anti-Semitic articles published from 1921–1927 were later compiled into the book The International Jew, which inspired Hitler’s Mein Kampf. From 1918–1930 Ford spent over $5 million on the paper, which carried no ads and no promotion of Ford vehicles, a complete lack of commercial consideration that showed ideological obsession alone drove the enterprise, as its first editor made clear:
“Ford’s first editor of the Dearborn Independent, Edwin Pipp, said that Ford “was bringing up the Jews frequently, almost continually in conversation, blaming them for almost everything….We had not published the paper more than six months before [Ford] commenced to talk persistently about a series of articles attacking the Jewish people. He said that he believed that they were in a conspiracy to bring on war for profits.” (Pool, 1978, page 93)
On May 22, 1920, the Independent, launched its anti-Semitic campaign:
“”The International Jew: The World’s Problem.” The first paragraph began: “There is a race, a part of humanity which has never yet been received as a welcome part.” This people, the article continued, has ever been fouling the earth and plotting to dominate it. In order to eventually rule the Gentiles, the Jews have long been conspiring to form an “international super-capitalist government.” This racial problem, the Independent said, was the “prime” question confronting all society.” (Who Financed Hitler, Pool, 1978, page 94)
Later articles in the series formulated an all-embracing worldwide conspiratorial view of Jewish power with titles like: “The Jewish Associates of Benedict Arnold,” “The Gentle Art of Changing Jewish Names,” “What Jews Attempted When They Had Power,” “The All-Jewish Mark on Red Russia,” and “Taft Once Tried to Resist the Jews-and Failed.”
Ford’s anti-Semitic campaign lasted 12 years and from 1919–1927 the Independent attained a circulation of 1/4 million, from 1923–1927 a circulation of 1/2 million.
Ford’s book The International Jew was translated into 16 languages, including Arabic. Its impact was worldwide, as this Jewish attorney confirmed:
“After completing a world tour in the mid-1920s, stated that he had seen the brochures in the “most remote corners of the earth.” He maintained that, “but for the authority of the Ford name, they would have never seen the light of day and would have been quite harmless if they had. With that magic name they spread like wildfire and became the Bible of every anti-Semite.” (Pool, 1978, page 89)
Germany was fertile ground and no exception, a fact confirmed at postwar Nuremberg war crimes trials by Ford’s readers whom he convinced to become members of the party he financed:
“If The International Jew was the Bible, then to the Nazis Henry Ford must have seemed a god. His anti-Semitic publications led many Germans to become Nazis. Baldur von Schirach, leader of the Hitler Youth movement, stated at the postwar Nuremberg War Crimes Trials that he had become an antiSemite at the age ofseventeen after reading The International Jew. “You have no idea what a great influence this book had on the thinking of German youth,” von Schirach said. “The younger generation looked with envy to the symbols of success and prosperity like Henry Ford, and if he said the Jews were to blame, why naturally we believed him. “ One of Hitler’s lieutenants, Christian Weber, boasted that Ford would be “received like a King” if he ever came to Munich….Hitler’s admiration for the auto magnate, the New York Times reported, was made obvious by the large picture of Henry Ford on the wall beside Hitler’s desk in the Brown House. In an adjoining room there was a large table covered with books, most of which were copies of the German translation of The International Jew.(Pool, page 90)
Theodor Fritsch, the owner of the German anti-Semitic publishing house Der Hammer, got forty thousand dollars from Ford to reprint anti-Jewish pamphlets in German translations, and then an additional $300,000 was later sent to Hitler through a grandson of the ex-Kaiser who acted as intermediary printed six editions from 1920–1922 and 29 editions by 1933. Ford collected no royalties on these editions, turning them into contributions to the Nazi Party, though this was far from Ford’s only contribution:
“Not only did Hitler specifically praise Henry Ford in Mein Kampf, but many of Hitler’s ideas were also a direct reflection of Ford’s racist philosophy. There is a great similarity between The International Jew and Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and some passages are so identical that it has been said Hitler copied directly from Ford’s publication.· Hitler also read Ford’s autobiography, My Life and Work, which was published in 1922 and was a best seller in Germany…one of his closest associates, Dietrich Eckart, specifically mentioned the Protocols and The International Jew as sources of inspiration for the Nazi leader”(Pool, 1978, page 91)
Ford’s packaging of the Protocols forgery supplied Hitler with a unified field theory of conspiracist antisemitism. The Dearborn Independent integrated disparate strands of medieval christian antisemitism and blood libel and secularized and racialized for use in 20th century democratic mass politics. Ford had his own private foreign policy, a rogue CIA-style covert disinformation operation; a far-right cracker-KKK version in which George Soros’ money, discretely laundered, meets paranoid QAnon blood libel.
Hitler’s discovery of racialized anti-Semitism, like the 1935 Nuremberg Laws’ cloning of American Jim Crow laws, was made in America:
“John Chamberlain, who edited the American edition of Mein Kampf, claimed that the use of racial anti-Semitism as the integral part of a political program was Hitler’s “Copernican discovery.” (Pool, 1978, page 91)
When Ford was forced due to lack of capital to curtail production in January 1921, which furloughed 15000 workers— headlines like “FORD BATTLES WALL STREET TO KEEP CONTROL OF PROPERTY” — were big news in Germany: “Hitler told reporters that the struggle of international Jewish finance against Ford. increased the support of the Nazis for their American hero.” (Pool, 1978, page 96)
When Hitler heard in 1923 that Ford might run for president, he offered to send some of his SA stormtroopers to help with Ford’s campaign:
“I wish that I could send some of my shock troops to Chicago and other big American cities to help in the elections. . .. We look to Heinrich Ford as the leader of the growing Fascist movement in America…. We have just had his anti-Jewish articles translated and published. The book is being circulated to millions throughout Germany.” (Pool, 1978, page 90)
Mein Kampf’s anti-Semitism was derived from Henry Ford’s pluto-populist anti-Semitism, to the point of echoing Ford’s book word for word:
“Ford deplored “the lack of moral standards” in modern commerce and blamed this on the Jews. Ford told one reporter: “When there’s wrong in a country you’ll find Jews…. The Jew is a huckster who doesn’t want to produce but to make something of what somebody else produces…One evening during a private dinner with his friends, Hitler spoke of the lack of standards in modern commerce and, like Ford, blamed such conditions on the Jews” (Pool, 1978, page 104–05)"
