Anti-Semitism hasn’t gone away in the U.S.
“There is a Jewish plan to control the world, not by territorial acquisition or governmental subjugation, but instead by control of the machinery of commerce and exchange. Moreover, it is not that there are a few Jews among those who controlled international finance; rather, it is that these world-controllers are exclusively Jews.”
A century ago, a Michigan newspaper called the Dearborn Independent made this claim. During the 1920s, the newspaper’s circulation climbed as high as 700,000, delivered not just to households across the state, but also distributed in Ford motorcar showrooms across the country. This was not surprising: In 1920 the renowned industrialist and reviled anti-Semite Henry Ford bought the newspaper and, like the Model-T’s rolling off his assembly lines, transformed the anti-Semitic publication into a vehicle for the masses.
The approaching centenary of this anniversary falls at a tragically appropriate moment. On Saturday, another mass murder shook our country. It was not a school this time, but instead a synagogue in Pittsburgh where a man identified as Robert Bowers burst into a morning Sabbath service and, shouting “All Jews must die,” killed 11 congregants with his AR-15.
Inevitably, politicians have presented their prayers and, like Gov. Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania, portrayed the event as “senseless.” Apologies to Gov. Wolf, but this attack is not senseless. A brief look at the Independent, and what followed, suggests that anti-Semitism, while not quite as American as apple pie, nevertheless has a long history in our country.
Shortly after becoming publisher of the Independent in January 1920, Ford launched a series of exposés under the gripping title: “The International Jew: The World’s Problem.” The articles, eventually gathered into a four-volume collection titled The International Jew, fingered the Jew as the source of all of America’s ills. “Whichever way you turn to trace the harmful streams of influence that flow through society, you come upon a group of Jews.” Their baleful influence was at work from matters great — like the start of World War I — to matters small — such as the 1919 Black Sox scandal.
The Klu Klux Klan embraced the Independent, as well as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a notorious forgery by Russian police — also distributed by Ford — that “revealed” the plot of Jewish leaders to take over world finance. This embrace was important: By the early 1920s, the KKK boasted four million members. The group identified African-Americans and Catholic Americans as insidious elements that had insinuated themselves into American society. Yet its principle bogeyman was the Jew. These “Christ-killers,” the KKK declared, constituted a “government within the government” and were responsible for countless hostile acts against Christian America. One act of aggression was evolutionary theory, which the KKK labeled a “foreign and Jewish conspiracy.”
We do not know Bowers’ views on Charles Darwin or Shoeless Joe Jackson, but we do know his views on Jews matched those of Ford and the KKK. Among his posts on social media, Bowers denounced Jews as the “children of Satan” and declared below a doctored photo of Auschwitz that “Lies Make Money.” Shortly before grabbing the AR-15 from the arsenal of
21 guns registered under his name, we also know Bowers posted his intentions: “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered.”
But we know more than this. Bowers’s worldview, reflecting the worldview of The International Jew and the Protocols, reveals that anti-Semitism, like the plague bacillus, sleeps but never dies. We also know that the spirit of the KKK, though a shadow of its former self, hovered over the white supremacists participating in last year’s fatal march in Charlottesville.
We know, moreover, that investor George Soros has been transmogrified, in the crucible of Fox News and conservative talk radio, into a national menace. Though no mention is made of his Jewish background, no mention needs to be made. He is portrayed as the puppet-master behind events ranging from protesters at the Kavanaugh hearings to the caravan of Central American migrants approaching our southern border. In fact, Gov . Greg Abbott invoked the puppet metaphor in a fundraising letter last year. The left-wing billionaire, he warned, had “already unloaded a whopping $1 million to install his liberal puppets in positions of power this fall.”
We also know that the Anti-Defamation League reported a dramatic increase in anti-Semitic incidents during 2017, the first full year of the Trump presidency. The preceding year, Trump’s presidential campaign ended with an ad warning against occult “global special interests” and featuring pictures of Janet Yellen, then-head of the Federal Reserve; Lloyd Blankfein, chairman of Goldman Sachs, and Soros. All three are Jewish.
We know two last things. First, our president must do more than smile and say nothing when his crowds chant that Soros must be locked up, just as he must say something other than that there were “very fine people” on both sides in Charlottesville. Finally, deep down we know that the truly shocking aspect to Saturday’s mass murder is that, as we reach the midpoint of Trump’s presidency, we were not shocked when it happened.