The dark legacy of Henry Ford’s anti-Semitism (COMMENTARY)
SANIBEL, Fla. — Mayor Randy Henderson of nearby Fort Myers recently had to withdraw a proposal to rename a local bridge in honor of Henry Ford. In 1915, Ford built a winter residence next door to Thomas Edison’s house, and today the two homes are a popular tourist attraction.
But Alan Isaacs, the director of the local Jewish Federation, and others criticized the idea: “He (Ford) really has a very dark history as far as the Jewish community and Jews are concerned.”
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In 1919, Ford purchased The Dearborn Independent, then an obscure newspaper published in the Michigan city that was the headquarters of his automobile company. For the next eight years, the weekly publication reflected his bigoted views.
One of the paper’s chief targets was the so-called “International Jew,” a sinister figure cited as the root cause of World War I. In 1921, The Independent printed the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” even though the book had by then been exposed as a forgery created by the Russian czar’s secret police in 1905 to foment virulent anti-Semitism.
The fraudulent document described an alleged secret cabal of Jewish leaders who plotted to control the world. Nevertheless, the Independent published the discredited document, giving it both wide distribution and global credibility. Ford’s newspaper merged racism with anti-Semitism by calling Prohibition-era whiskey “n_-r gin” and labeling jazz “Yiddish moron music.”
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