A Nazi on Wall Street Podcast
A Nazi on Wall Street Podcast
Fake news, Henry Ford, and the Dearborn Independent. With Dr. Victoria Woeste
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What is the backstory of A Nazi on Wall Street? In order to tell the story of Nazi spies in New York in 1940, we started with FDR and the New Deal last episode. Now, we take on Henry Ford. And, of course--always with an eye toward what's happening in the present day.
In this second episode by Elusive Films, EJ Russo and Dr. Jay Weixelbaum discuss the current problem of "fake news," propaganda, and conspiracy theory that has run rampant through the Trump era and the pandemic. They are joined by Dr. Victoria Woeste, author of "Henry Ford's War on Jews" to learn about the dramatic episode of the defamation case against Ford and his propaganda newspaper, the Dearborn Independent.
We ask: How do we help our fellow citizens think critically about what they read online? Join us as we unpack the Fairness Doctrine, the rise of rightwing media outlets, and how the echoes of Ford's vicious antisemitism has echoes online today.
Well, I'm glad that we have the Berkeley connection though. That's fun. EGA
Speaker 2Saw that and he got excited and I was like ,
Speaker 3Once a, once a Cal bear , always account, there
Speaker 4[inaudible] come to a Nazi on wall street podcast because every time history repeats, the price goes up.
Speaker 2I'm Dr. Jason Weichselbaum. I am a historian and filmmaker and expert in American companies doing business with Nazi Germany,
Speaker 1Jay Russo. I'm just a regular guy who got freaked out by the last administration and is just trying to figure out what the heck is really happening. Jay and I created this podcast in part to help promote his project Nazi on wall street, but to also discuss troubling current events and give them historical context, Jay, my friend, how are you doing today?
Speaker 2It's getting sunnier. The days are getting longer. So it's hard not to feel upbeat. There's more vaccines and arms and it feels good. It feels like we're going in the right direction. So let's just keep that up. Yeah.
Speaker 1I definitely am feeling the positivity vibe moving forward as we're kind of moving away from January right now, my family is trying to get our little two year old into daycare right now. And so we're starting to talk to nannies and daycare places, but we still have this underlying fear of like, do we worry about COVID and we're all vaccinated and everything, but it's so strange to meet people outside of a video chat. Now I had to shake someone's hand and it felt weird to me.
Speaker 2Humans are these amazing adaptable creatures, and it's kind of like a curse and a blessing because what ends up happening. And I'm sure this worked really well for us back pre 10,000 years ago when we were mostly hunter gatherer societies whatever's happening right now is like the static moment that we project endlessly into the future. If it's good right now, everything's good forever. If it's bad right now, everything's bad forever. And that we're at the super adaptable. Like we live in this like eternal present, right? And so we get used to stuff really easily. So we've gotten used to this pandemic life, the zoom life. And now it's like all of a sudden things are changing again. And everybody's got a lot of anxiety about that, even though like it's good where we're returning to kind of the regular human interaction that we really need. I wonder
Speaker 1How quickly we're going to snap back into normalcy because you can always tell when I was speaking to someone or I was conversing with someone that had lived through the great depression, because they had a very specific way of just going about their life. They had a certain mentality that they were brought up in that affected the rest of their life. And when, you know , my parents were brought up in the fifties and the sixties as baby boomers and my generation that grew up as the baby boomers children, we never had that perspective of living through the great depression and then world war two. And it's just astonishing to me how different their mentalities were to their generations, their progeny that followed them. And I'm just wondering how long this moment in history as a result of the pandemic will affect our lifestyle moving forward.
Speaker 2They know we've talked about this many times. I firmly believe as a historian that we're in some sort of paradigm shift politically, economically, culturally, and any of these things take a long time. It's not like a light switch, many years, usually in these STIG transition moments, at least in us , but probably more globally than we might think. I appreciate that you mentioned the great depression and status quos and change because that is the topic of our episode. Today. We're going to talk a bit about media and how people respond to it. The structures specifically how political ideas get broadcast through newspapers, radio, and then of course, TV and then cable news. And now the internet and how the structures or lack of them are really important.
Speaker 1I really want to discuss a topic that is probably bigger than just one podcast can suss out, but I'm feeling pretty competent today. And so I wanted to kind of take this challenge on any way . And so I want to start with breaking down the fake news part of this conversation. And I want to begin by explaining something called the fairness doctrine. Jay , do you know what the fairness doctrine was?
Speaker 2It's something I, that really came on my radar much more recently when in the last few years, because things had gotten so bad with the amount of right-wing vitriol that was on the airwaves and how that there's a connection between that vitriol and then people actually taking action, like attacking our capital . The fact that we're using the term fake news now is like this it's kind of a Testament to the way this has affected our , our lexicon. Let's
Speaker 1Start from the beginning. Really the fairness doctrine was a set of rules and regulations put forth by the federal government to replace an even older rule called the Mayflower doctrine. Jay , have you ever heard of the Mayflower doctrine?
Speaker 2Not until we were talking about it today, although I really should know because it involves a character named Charles Kauflin who we're going to talk about probably in another episode or another time, or maybe even today. Yes . So he was at the rush Limbaugh of his time, right? He was , he was a priest. He was the , we had a very right wing view and he was like very big critic of president Franklin, Delano Roosevelt. And then the Mayflower doctrine came out and put some of the kibosh on what he was trying to do, but you explain it well, the Mayflower,
Speaker 1And I'm going to try and keep this as simple as possible, but the made flour doctrine was essentially an outright ban on political discussion on radio broadcast media. Apparently a few radio stations in the late thirties got into a fight over licensing. One accused the other of solely airing one-sided viewpoints and editorials, local and federal politicians that they opposed the FCC got involved. And as a result, the federal government declared that radio stations due to their public interest obligations must remain neutral in matters of news and politics. They were not allowed to give at a tutorial support or criticism to any particular political position or candidate. Uh , you could still read editorials and a newspaper that was totally fine. But when it came to radio broadcasting, a medium, the government held under stricter sanction. It was a no-go and that was the law of the land for years until 1949. Just in time for media networks like NBC and CBS to attain enough money and infrastructure to start creating their own television networks. The FCC released an editorializing report that stated that, although they still advised that these powerful networks not hold political influence on their audience, it was probably a bad idea to forbid outright political discourse and opinion entirely. And so it repealed the Mayflower doctrine laying the foundation for the fairness doctrine. So instead of never being able to discuss politics at all, media networks could then discuss politics as long as said, networks gave equal time to opposing ideologies. My understanding
Speaker 2As a historian is that this was really a sea change because, and for most of us media history, as far as I understand it, going back to newspapers and pamphlets in the early to mid 19th century, all the way through, you know, world war one interwar period is that newspapers were basically divided bipartisanship where people got their information was often either a one party aligned media outlet, newspaper or another. And so that was kind of the status quo as far as I understand it throughout most of this period, up until this major change by the FCC in 1949, of course, the advent of television
Speaker 1Newspaper. Yeah. Anything was pretty much fair game. However, if you owned a radio station and you gave airtime criticizing FDR, not only did you need to notify him, but you needed to give him an equal amount of airtime in rebuttal. Additionally, the doctrine also required broadcasters to provide enough reply, time to issue oriented citizens. For instance, if CBS wanted to have gore Vidal and William H. Buckley time on air to discuss the Vietnam war at the same time, the civil rights movement was in full swing in the background and the network for whatever reason, chose to not cover the civil rights movement at all, then the network could still be found in violation of the fairness doctrine. In case a civil rights, activists complained to the FCC and claimed that the movement was newsworthy, that it was a newsworthy event and that it should be covered. CBS would then be compelled to cover set event because it would directly affect the consuming electorate watching.
Speaker 2It's weird to me now think about this because the world I grew up in is not like what you're describing at all.
Speaker 1I know this sounds like some strange utopia people have to share different viewpoints on broadcast media. It's pretty nuts, but the fairness doctrine was the prevailing law in broadcast journalism up until the late 1980s, when Ronald Reagan decided to repeal the fairness doctrine after the Supreme court led by Antonin Scalia, deemed the law violated the first amendment rights of broadcasters. Now, why do you think they would think this?
Speaker 2If I had to guess it's that , uh, the first amend is absolute, whatever people want to say, including platforming right wing populous views. The end point of which is fascism is fair game.
Speaker 1Well, Jay, you are almost there. You are right there, because for most of that period of time, the fairness doctrine was in place. Most people saw that law as a protecting force against powerful broadcasters who would want to abuse their influence to shape and manipulate the voting public to their specific political views. This is especially bad in a democracy because this runs the risk of the voting public becoming too politically myopic and misinformed. In order to have a functioning democracy, you need to have an informed public, especially when it comes to all of the issues at hand. So by the time they go to the voting booth, they are voting in an informed and decisive way. Therefore, if broadcasters can run their political messaging and like a laissez Faire manner, we run the risk of having an audience that has been directly manipulated, which can strike a blow to the democratic process. However, some on the right championed the idea of, of Liberty. And self-responsibility the fact is that no one is forced to consume a particular radio or TV channel or show and that they can simply change the station. The audience has the ultimate choice as to what they consume preventing. This is not only positioning the federal government as a parenting entity perpetuating the, the nanny state idea that they'd like to say, but singularly hampers, the rights in particular profits, a company can earn as a result of appropriately selling to advertisers who would be willing to spend more money due to being able to then target specific demographics who consume those particular political shows. So for years, because we only had a couple television networks, the broadcasters were seen to have all the power, but this all changed. And this cable. Yes, exactly. So this perspective never really struck a chord with lawmakers due to the fact that there were very few news outlets at the time. And the risk of a political monopoly of taking place was, was too high. This perspective just all changed in the 1980s with the advent of cable dues , since there were many new options for audiences to consume their news, there was a much lower risk of a monopoly. The audience can now choose which news source they want to consume their news from the consumer. In theory now has the power over the broadcaster, making the fairness doctrine moot at best and unconstitutional at worst. So under the Reagan administration, the fairness doctrine was abolished. It kicked off the wild west of cable news, which is the world we live in today. And this is the part where we start seeing people emerge like rush Limbaugh and Rupert Murdoch, but no one really helped sculpt the landscape of conservative media in the void left behind by the repeal of the fairness doctrine as a man by the name of Roger. Yes ,
Speaker 2He is a powerful person in the media world and was able to build this Fox news empire that has such a huge influence on our politics today
Speaker 1As an influential person, he died in 2017, but yes, he was the cornerstone of what was to become right wing media in the nineties. And the two thousands. Roger Ailes was an American television exec of Fox news, which he essentially created from the ground up after he was hired by Rupert Murdoch. Ales grew up in Ohio as a sickly child in the fifties and an alcoholic teen in the sixties who found that he had a talent in the television business. When he got a job as a gopher on the Michael Douglas variety show, he quickly moved up the ranks in the TV biz and became an executive producer by the age of 25. However, it wasn't until Roger was introduced to one Richard Milhous Nixon, that he found his true calling in life, conservative politics. He became a political consultant for Nixon in his 1968 bid for the presidential campaign because he recognized Nixon's lack of charisma on television in particular. And it was crucial in changing Nixon's image in the media for Ailes . His infatuation with Nixon was very personal and it is kind of telling that the man who got him into politics in the first place would prove to be the most paranoid and dirty campaigners in American politics. Ales started early to blur the distinction between journalism and politics, developing a knack for manipulating political imagery that would later find its ultimate expression on Fox news decades later, he would fill audiences with GOP partisans and tell Nixon just to avoid facts and figures and play to people's emotions, stroke up the anger of white voters aggrieved by the advances of the civil right movement, ales , encouraged Nixon to play the race card. And in November Nixon won the presidential election. This is
Speaker 2Also striking to me in the kind of larger historical trends too, because this is right at the moment of kind of this long cycle of political, where all these white democratic voters in the south become Republican voters. And you know, what is now famously called the Southern strategy by president Nixon. And so this is all happening at the same time with ales and Roger Stone, of course, and these folks that are, that are deliberately stoking white racial resentment to create political power and push this real line
Speaker 1Exactly and ales flourished in his newly found status as the right wing political wunderkind. He helped Reagan win in 1980 with the morning in America campaign. And then again in 1984, by telling Reagan now beginning to show signs of dementia to simply again, ditch the facts like he told Nixon back in 68, and then in 1988, he helped George HW Bush win the presidency. And so by that time, Ailes was considered one of the most, if not the most influential men behind the scenes in conservative politics, by the way, he helped Bush win by essentially rigging an interview between Dan rather and Bush, and also creating the now infamous Willie Horton ad. However, in the beginning of the nineties, Ellen started growing bored with politics. Luckily he found a new muse in conservative radio up and comer rush Limbaugh. And this relationship would prove to spawn ales his most important contribution, right wing media. He, with the help of money and influence from big tobacco was able to get rushes show on the small screen and into millions of homes around the country. And when Rupert Murdoch failed to buy CNN in the nineties, losing out to time Warner, he saw ales as a fantastic candidate to create his idea of a news network in the hope of being quote a counterweight to the left wing bias of CNN and quote, and to anyone out there wondering whether Fox news is a conventional news network, or if it's just a propaganda machine, you have your answer right there. That was from Rupert Murdoch's mouth. The entire original concept of the network was to act as revenge on time Warner for essentially stealing Murdoch's dreams of owning the cable news network. Regardless Murdoch found ales captivating. And once ale has got the network lineup all set with Neil Cavuto and Brett Hume and Steve Doocy, Tony snow well, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, all ails loyalists, by the way, he did the ingenious move of paying cable companies to broadcast Fox news. You see normally cable outfits pay content providers like MTV or the discovery channel for the rights to air their programs. However, with this clever albeit expensive move Fox news was guaranteed access to a mass audience bought and paid for straight out of the gate ales as chairman of a growing Fox dues rule the network with an iron fist and progressingly grew more and more.
Speaker 2I don't think a lot of people know, and I didn't know that Ailes and limbo were working together.
Speaker 1Roger Ailes didn't kick off rush Limbaugh. He had his own radio show. Uh, what he did was he got him television airtime or on, on some network. I forget what the network that broadcasted Russia's radio show on TV, but that's really what made rush Limbaugh a household name.
Speaker 2What's interesting to me. And it's kind of the common thread here. It seems to be that there are these legal structures either in place or, or non-existent that kind of drives what's happening, right? So if there's Mayflower, then some of this vitriol seems to be curved. And then when there's a fairness doctrine only I think 37 years out of all of us history. Whereas the status quo is normally very partisan . You have to share both sides and then that legal structure goes away. And then we get to this as you, so aptly put it the San and wild west period. And to me, it's like right-wing voices. People who take this kind of absolute view of the first amendment up to , and maybe including incitement of violence. As we're seeing now with Trump's words and the January six attack, if there's no legal structure or legal challenge in place, then they're just going to keep going with
Speaker 1Ales , essentially unrestricted. He had free range to control his network. As he saw fit, Rupert Murdoch was not really a hugely influential voice on the day-to-day side of Fox news. It was Roger Ailes all the way. And as the main controller of this growing network of Fox news during the nineties, he ruled this network with an iron fist and progressively grew more and more paranoid. All staff would have to take a litmus test in order to get a job there. Ales would ask everyone if they were liberal or conservative, when they came in to interview and said he was quote , trying to get rid of all the liberals in news, media and quote, he would openly challenge staff whom he suspected weren't taking hard enough of a right-wing stance by asking them in front of everybody. Why are you a liberal and embarked on numerous purges of existing staff from the network? As a result, ales was determined not to let the professional ethics of journalism get in the way of his political agenda. And his agenda was to create the outward appearance. That Fox news was just like any other newsroom, but everyone knew, especially those who worked there that the underlying color of that network was red, deep red through the nineties. Ailes had Fox news keep up a relentless drum beat against the Clinton administration, constantly broadcasting smears, and spreading unfounded rumors. And they received a boost in viewership as a result of the Monica Lewinsky and impeachment scandal. Now
Speaker 2That we have the hindsight, a Hillary Clinton's loss and the 2016 election is really such a long time coming these years, years of campaign drum beat by the ale shop against the Clintons.
Speaker 1Yeah. They started gaining a viewership as a result of all of that. However, it was actually the election of George W. Bush that revealed the true power of Fox news as a political machine. When a wave of numbers showed Bush with a narrow lead after midnight on election day, even with Florida too close to call ales had John Ellis, George w bushes. First cousin, mind you jump on the data to declare Bush the winner on Fox news, a move that spurred every other network to follow suit with leads of Bush wins headlines all over the morning papers. And when Newt Gingrich went down to Florida and the Supreme court made their ultimate decision, it was then apparent that the fix was in. And I want you to dwell on this. Jay , we witnessed a news network controlled by a GOP operative who had spent decades shaping just such political narratives, including those that helped elect the candidates father George H w Bush, declare that George W. Bush, the Victor, based on the analysis of a man who had later admitted to openly proclaiming himself loyal to Bush over the facts. What we witnessed was a bloodless coup
Speaker 2I hate to Godwin things constantly. Although this podcast is called a Nazi on wall street and the word that keeps popping into my mind, this word, glaze shift , tongue Germans, please be gentle. Gleick Shaq tongue. It was roughly translated coordination. It was a principle , especially early on by the Nazis as part of their COO . What it means is you have these ideological, true believers, you do the litmus test. You make sure that they are believers and then you place them all over various institutions that have power, and then they coordinate and work together. So you do glycine outside of the police force. Do you do it in the media? You do it in government. And then when you have enough [inaudible] then suddenly you are the government and you control things. That's a big part of the history of how the Nazis took over Germany. And I think often time, right ? Right-wing populous . They may not be thinking about what the Nazis did. They may be, but it's the same playbook. Yeah. And kind
Speaker 1Of how Henry Ford was able to manipulate his newspaper, which spoilers we'll find out in the interview with Dr. [inaudible] ales knew exactly who was watching Fox news each day. He was adept at cling to their darkest fears, especially when it came to the age of Obama and where Ford tried to conjure negative feelings towards Jewish people. Ales tried to do the same exact thing when it came to Barack Obama, you see the typical viewer of Fox news is Holt . It's white, it's male, it's it's religious. And, and I don't mean to disparage anyone uneducated from the time that Obama began contemplating his candidacy. Fox news went all out to convince its white viewers, that he was a Marxist, a Muslim, a Kenyan , a black nationalist, and in 1960s, radical the Obama era has spurred sharp changes in the character and tone of Fox news. Since the Obama administration, his election drove Fox to be more of a political campaign than it ever was before they echoed Sarah Palin's lies about death panels and convinced their viewers, that Obamacare was a government takeover on the healthcare industry. The result of this concerted campaign of disinformation is a viewership that knows almost nothing about what is going on in the world. According to reason , polls Fox news viewers are the most misinformed of all news consumers. It's really
Speaker 2No surprise. This is when Trump enters the fray, right? Letting this birther conspiracy, which again is amplified on Fox news. And now that I know more about Roger Ailes working with Richard Nixon, it all is starting to make sense. Again, it's coordination seems to keep popping up.
Speaker 1Yep . The tea party became a national movement due to the direct support of Fox news. And that, like you said, gave way to people like Ted Cruz and ultimately Donald Trump. And now we are seeing networks taking the lead of ales is Fox news and going even further down that right wing conservative tabloid news avenue with Newsmax and one American news network, it's just on NPR today.
Speaker 2There was a story about parlor , which had been shut down because, you know, there were literal white supremacists neo-Nazis and what have you like posting violent threats , posting videos of them attacking our Capitol and everything, and it got taken down. Right. But then these free speech warriors they've taken part of the back up .
Speaker 1Yeah. I mean, before his death in 2017, Ailes had molded our country into his sole vision. He built the most formidable propaganda machine ever seen outside of the communist block, pioneering a business model that effectively monetizes conservative politics through its relentless focus on the bottom line. And we are living in that right now. And it is now growing well past what he ever could have envisioned solely because of the advent of social media and paranoia. And I'll end on this quote that ales had boasted before he passed away. I'm not in politics, I'm in ratings and we're okay .
Speaker 2Wow. I'm an S man, I guess that's why Trump talks about ratings all the time. Yeah. We have a wonderful guest today. I'm very, very grateful for Dr. Victoria. We see to talk a little bit about Henry Ford. I know this sounds like a little bit of a U-turn, but in kind of a similar Henry Ford was also in some ways a media mogul of his time. And I wanted to talk a little bit more about this or right on right on time. Yes, indeed. You are. Hello. Hi. How
Speaker 1Are you? That was totally by accident by the way
Speaker 2It was rushing behind the seat . Well, I was just going to ask you how you are doing today and where you are in the state of our current pandemic moment.
Speaker 3Well , I've actually been volunteering in the county health department clinic, so I've, I've gotten my vaccines. Um , oh yeah. And my husband got his second one yesterday and he's upstairs crashed. So I'm retired from 25 years as a research professor at the American bar foundation. But I'm continuing as an independent scholar on my own. And the last two years, I have been swamped with conversations and writing opportunities surrounding the whole topic of fake news. And it ties into the long, long history of conservative American politics. And even further, it goes back further into the 20th century when industrial Titans such as Henry Ford saw themselves, not just as businessmen, but as we would say today, cultural influencers because Ford had all kinds of little structures in his company to enable him to train his workers, to educate his workers, children, to assimilate them into American culture, by teaching them English, by encouraging them to attend Protestant churches. So Ford had this real obsession that he needed to remake American society in his name and in his vision. And he really comes to our attention around the time of world war one. He's already started the $5 a day wage, which was a turning point in labor history. And he's churning out model T's by the thousands every year. But Henry Ford, who was not a terribly well-educated person was prone to search out conspiratorial analysis of world and national events. And he had an enabler in his personal private executive secretary, man named Ernest Lee , bold , who was born in Detroit of German parents, but who us intelligence investigated during world war one because they thought that he was in fact, a spy for Germany. They never could prove it, but they also never let up on their surveillance. So that gives you a sense of the kind of person that Henry Ford was surrounding himself even then. But he starts to attract media attention for his political views. When he starts saying things like the Jews started world war one. And then when he was asked for evidence, he would tap his jacket pocket and say, I'm starting to gather it. It's all here and it'll blow you away, but I'm not going to tell you what it is just yet.
Speaker 1That totally reminds me of how Donald Trump totally ran his entire campaign. And there was always two weeks. It will, we'll let you know in two weeks or we're working on it right now, are these unnamed sources that he would talk to like we're working on it. Wow. That just strikes a chord . There are
Speaker 3So many exact parallels, particularly around communications between Ford and Trump, even down to how both men didn't really have the gift of articulation. They're not very polished speakers and they didn't sound very educated and their employees would translate their meaning for the media. So after Henry Ford held a press conference, the reporters would gather around earnest labeled and Earth's labeled will say, well, what I believe Mr. Ford was trying to say to you was this. And I think for exploited that it put him in an even more powerful position because he could say things and not be responsible for them. And we saw that with Trump every step of the way. It's amazing to me that Trump never tried to buy a newspaper or TV station.
Speaker 1There was a rumor in 2016 leading up to the election. That the only real reason why Trump was interested in running for election was just to increase his brand so that he could create his own show or media outlet that was never substantiated by any facts or anything. It was all just conjecture, but that is something that people were discussing at the time.
Speaker 3Uh, it was speculated that his post presidential plans included building a television network to compete with Fox because he got disillusioned with Fox because they weren't quite loyal enough to use his word. He really expects obeys ons , right? Everybody should genuflect to him. And frankly, Henry Ford did too. And people did people really thought Henry Ford was the leader, American needed. You know, the guy thought about running for president three times. The third time was 1924 and he cut a deal with Calvin Coolidge to take over the muscle Shoals, Alabama nitrate dam that the us military owned for a song. So Coolidge said, yeah, you can have it. What , whatever pitons Ford wanted to pay. And so Ford withdrew from the primaries and was never really a force in presidential elections from that point on the real point I want to make here is that when Ford gets in trouble and I'm talking serious trouble, not just ridicule during world war, one, things take on even a more grave tone. For instance, he expressed views that the United States should not be going to war that the military should not be drafting. People should not be readying, should leave the Mexican border well alone. He really was quite firm on this point. And so the Chicago Tribune in a rather splashy editorial called him an anarchist and an ignorant idealist before the days of New York times for Sullivan, the case that made it very difficult to Sue newspapers for liable . When you're a public figure, Henry Ford sued the Chicago Tribune for libel . And the case went to trial in 1919 in a sleepy little Berg about 30 miles north of Detroit. But before that trial got going, Henry Ford bought a newspaper, a small sleepy newspaper in Dearborn, Detroit on the verge of going out of business and retooled it literally and figuratively into being his voice to the people. I could not
Speaker 2Recall when Ford actually got interested in buying the Dearborn independent. I knew it was around the mid twenties and around the time, or at least I thought it was around the time of this , uh, deciding to run for president in 1924. But it was actually earlier as part of the, his reaction to this case.
Speaker 3Uh , you really wanted to shape propaganda about the trial, which was taking place in Mount Clemens. And he knew that the Detroit press would treat him terribly earlier
Speaker 2When we were talking about fake news, I guess this is a term that goes back much further back to that time I stand corrected.
Speaker 3Yes it does. And in fact, it was a complaint that Ford made in just so many words. When the publicity around the libel lawsuit starts to gin up in 1918, particularly after the armistice in November of 1918, the pre-trial stuff is starting to gain momentum. And Ford is absolutely determined to get ahead of the story, as we would say today, and to shape the narrative that was coming out of the courtroom. So the newspaper he bought was called the Dearborn independent and his vision for it was that it would be a kind of Saturday evening post sort of publication. It would have high brow stuff like poetry and essays by quite distinguished American writers and poets, but it turns into quite something else. It's interesting
Speaker 1Because when Rupert Murdoch first developed his idea for Fox dues , he actually wanted it to be more highbrow than what Roger Ailes later developed it into. Rupert Murdoch had envisioned more of a 60 minutes type of quality to his shows than Hannity
Speaker 3Well, and bill O'Reilly , you know, bill O'Reilly set the tone at Fox for the better part of two decades, Tucker has doubled down. I think we can say fairly long story short Henry Ford wins the battle, but loses the larger war in this case. So the jury finds that he has been libeled and awards him as damages, the grand sum of 6 cents. So it's pretty astounding as a defeat. You know, this Michiganders who are sitting in judgment of Henry Ford, and they're basically saying, you know, it kind of was true what the paper said about you. You're pretty fricking ignorant that had to have smart it. And at the very same time, 1919 earnest Lee bold gets a hold of a copy of the protocols of the elders of Zion on which is this czarist Russia tract that was being brought out of Russia during world war II and circulated among, you know, the political elite , uh, social lead of New York being sent out to all kinds of organizations and earnestly pulled, gets his hands on it and shows it to Henry Ford and Henry Ford decides we need to put this into words that Americans can understand. And so beginning in may of 1920, the editor of the independent William Cameron started writing and publishing weekly articles that rewrote the protocols for an American audience. So basically
Speaker 1Ford, just try to publish an anti-Semitic propaganda piece in the disguise of actual news.
Speaker 3Right? Right. And it wasn't until 1921 that the London times published a long series that proved that the protocols were plagiarism and a fake, they weren't written by this weird cabal of secret leaders. It was put together by a Russian mystic who wanted to keep the SARS and power, but
Speaker 1The damage has been done at that point. Damage
Speaker 3Has been done. It's so hard to get that toothpaste back in that tube. And Ford has already started serializing the protocols, and he begins to publish the articles as pamphlets starting in November, 1920. He circulating any sending the paper and the book to anybody who wants them and even to people and institutions that didn't ask for it. So he's sending it to schools and universities all over the country. You know, he's really trying to drive American awareness of this plot that will happen here in which Jews take over all forms of communication, culture, sports, music, concerts, theater, everything. He found a way to blame juice for cigarettes, which was a habit. He completely aport , no one could smoke in his presence. This is all being done at Ford's behest, even though his name never appears on the newspaper. And it doesn't appear as the author of any of the articles later on, people start publishing this book of all of the articles and giving for the authorship and they could do it because Lee bold and Ford never trademark , never copyrighted the international Jew, which is what the series was called.
Speaker 2There was this major rise in antisemitism , in the 1920s in the U S and elsewhere Jewish people were well-established in American society. So how did Jewish groups feel about this major prominent businessman pushing these viral anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, very energetically.
Speaker 5Sure . They felt right about it, or what
Speaker 2Did they do? How did they feel? What do they do?
Speaker 3Question and what I talk about in my book, by the way, which is titled Henry Ford's war on Jews and the legal battle against hate speech is how the Jewish community isn't really a Jewish community. It's several different groups divided by religion, divided by region, divided by profession. And so the more elite New York lawyer reform Jewish community formed the American Jewish committee in 1906 to advocate for Jewish rights in America. And then Steven Wise , a reform rabbi broke off and formed the American Jewish Congress in 1918. By the time the Dearborn independent hits the streets in 1920, these two organizations are at each other's throats and all through that first year of the publication of these articles, the leaders of these two organizations and other rabbis and Jewish leaders are in this pitched battle over what they should do. The two major positions that emerged out of these two groups were, we must act. Now we must criticize Ford . We must condemn this with every fiber of our being. And that was the American Jewish Congress, the more rabble-rouser organization, that was what they felt. And then Louie Marshall, who was president of the American Jewish committee from its inception, always prefer to handle these things behind the scenes, not to make a big deal of it because the more bad press Jews draw and they will draw bad press for complaining about their rights not being respected. The harder it is to be accepted as full and equal American citizens. That argument takes months to finally resolve in this joint statement that they put out in December saying they never mentioned Ford by name. They condemned the Dearborn independent, and they go on to describe at length what Jews have contributed to American life. So it's a defense brief that doesn't actually refute the premise of the protocols because of course, there's no way to refute the protocols. The protocols are fake and you can't prove the negative, but in the logic of the protocols, it actually says this. It says, Jews will be the only ones who will say this is fake, but they won't be able to prove it. And that tells you it's true. This gets so convoluted. And I mean, it's, it's a complete, you know , rock and a hard place kind of thing. Yeah. What a, what a catch 22. Yeah.
Speaker 2I mean, it reminds me of so much fascist propaganda that would come after that and Nazi Germany, and then even unfortunately, stuff we see today where it's like a lie travels halfway around the world before the truth gets its pants on. And it is kind of a hallmark of fascism to put this stuff out. That's just blatant falsehoods . One
Speaker 3Thing, Louis Marshall , who was the celebrated constitutional lawyer did not want to do was Sue Ford for libel because he thought that would be exactly the wrong thing to do. But in another sign that Marshall did not control all of American Jews. Naturally when the Dearborn independent started criticizing a Jewish lawyer out of California, who was organizing farmers kind of the way you'd organize wage laborers into unions. That's when things really start to get heated because this scrappy lawyer named Aaron Sapiro has built this nationwide movement of agricultural cooperatives in just about every commodity produced in the country. And for a while , they are amazingly successful and they get all the legal ratification that they need. The federal law is upheld in Congress and all the state cooperative marketing laws that Aaron superhero spearheaded were upheld. And that's 38 states in five years. That's a revolution. That's stunning . It's so difficult to get 38 states to agree on anything but Ford attacked Aaron's PIRO because as the independent said, there's no legitimate interest that Jews can possibly have in farming, which is ridiculous because there were many, many Jewish farmers all over the world, but certainly in America who were out there working their plans . So Aaron Sapiro does not take this line down and long story short, he issues a demand for retraction . The newspaper says, ha make us. And Aaron's parents says fine. And he files a federal libel suit in Detroit's district court in 1925. The story of this case is the major part of the book because it's so wild. It's beyond fiction. No one could make this up for, did not want to be served with a subpoena to testify. And so the process server found him at one of his airports and drop the subpoena in his lap, and then Ford's goons beat them up, but it was served. So it was not beyond Ford and his people to use violence, to try to obstruct the legal process. And again, just like Donald Trump, Henry Ford believes that he can manipulate courts, that he can make the law produce the results that he wants. I mean, look at the lawyers that Trump hired, they're really bottom of the barrel, bottom feeding Rudy Giuliani's.
Speaker 2I mean, it goes to that point that I think brings, brings these two conversations together, right? The fairness doctrine, and then the legal challenge to it. And then the rise of limbo and Ailes , like extreme right-wing influence on our politics. And it's the legal structures that really are like the only guard rails here, like forget norms because forward and Trump and when they start attacking the courts, that's when we really have a problem.
Speaker 3If we look forward, we've got 200 federal judges that got confirmed during Trump's term, many of whom were rated as unqualified by the ABA , which tries to take a nonpartisan approach to evaluating judicial nominees. This is not over the struggle for control of the courts. It's been the right wings , laser-focus for the last 40 years, and they're very close to realizing their goal. Anyway, long story short with the libel lawsuit, it goes to trial it's front page news, everywhere. Adolf Hitler, who at that time had been released from prison, was editing a German magazine. He sent a reporter to the courtroom to report on the events of the day, every day. So a couple of days later, Adolf Hitler was propagandizing about this case too. And the, the relationship between Ford and Hitler is a really one. And I basically have nothing to prove that Ford ever gave Hitler money, but it's clear that Hitler was a big admirer. I
Speaker 2Have tried to answer that question in my own research. I was not able to turn up anything. In fact, our government also asked that question in the records that over at college park, in the national archives, there doesn't seem to be any evidence, but of course the question still remains. Maybe it happened. We just don't have the evidence
Speaker 3For the Ford archives became the Benson Ford research center with this gorgeous building and a beautiful reading room and reorganized files and digitized everything. The finding aids for the correspondence of the corporation and everybody connected with it were so arcane and coded that nobody alive had the decoder. No one could unscramble the code by which these letters were organized. You think they would have organized by date and correspondent like most institutions do, but no, they had it by first two letters of addresses, first name plus the first three letters of the month that it was written. I threw up my hands. I , there was no way I was going to be able to untangle that. The other thing is it's a private archive. They can destroy whatever they want, you know, and I'm really surprised they didn't destroy all of the papers. 88 boxes of papers relating to this libel case, including boxes of the work product of Ford's own attorneys. It's really amazing that stuff is actually now digitized. And you can, I think, get it on the web. I can paint a picture
Speaker 2For our listeners here because I as well have spent time at the Benson Ord center. It's just inside the gates of a Ford themed amusement park where a choo choo ride goes past the window of the reading room at a regular schedule about every 15 minutes, you know, with a little like voice over Ford motor company, yada yada, yada, do this and that. It's amazing scholars do research at public and private institutions all the time. But we struck me, especially in this particular private institution, how much it is like we are letting you in here, but this is very much a Ford controlled space. And even though they have organized the documents, it's still a challenge and no offense to the wonderful archivists there, who've done a lot of work and they do restrict various collections related to Nazi Germany. Some which were not restricted right before I scheduled time became restricted when I was there. And that is documented in my dissertation.
Speaker 3Let me just tell you a little bit about Greenfield village, which is what you're talking about. The amusement park it's actually meant to be an encapsulation of Americana from the late 19th century to the early 20th. Although the museum is called Henry Ford museum in Greenfield village, the museum is like a mini Smithsonian. They have a collection of presidential limousines going back to William McKinley. It includes the car in which JFK was writing when he was shot. It includes all kinds of computer technology from the very beginning, you know, like one of the first PCs, one of the first apples, it's really an amazingly well financed, attempt to paint in broad brush strokes as sort of teleological. I love using network a teleological American history in which we go from better to better, to better to best right technology is under our control. And we use it to make our country great. The whole America first platform that Trump dusted off in 2016, that goes all the way back to the isolationists of the 1920s too . So let me just wrap up here really quickly. The lawsuit ends in a mistrial that Ford arranges the details are fabulous. And while the lawyers are negotiating with the judge for a new trial date, Ford sends word by courier through back channels to Louie Marshall in New York and asks him to find a way to settle this. He doesn't address that to the plaintiff's attorney, that's who he should have talked to, right? That's who his lawyer should have told him to talk to. And I don't think his lawyers even knew about this. In fact, I'm sure they didn't, but Louis Marshall jumped at the chance to write a face saving statement for Ford that would scuttle this case forever. And Aaron Sapiro agreed to it because by then he was nearly bankrupted by this litigation and he was going to get considerable repayment of his expenses. But really what Marshall writes is it's difficult to stomach it's in Ford's voice. And Ford says, essentially, I had no idea what my employees were doing in my name. And I'm shocked, shocked, and appalled to find that my Jewish friends think I don't like them because that couldn't be further from the truth. And it doesn't mention Aaron superhero at all. It doesn't mention everything that had been proved in court, nothing that all got whitewashed out of the narrative. And when that statement got published, Ford was greeted in some quarters as a hero. And in other quarters, as someone who had caved to the almighty power of the Jews,
Speaker 1Kind of reminds me of someone asking wrappings burger for 11,780 votes. And then later denying that and then found that if there was a recording. So there was no denying that
Speaker 3Again, I, you know, I probably could write a book about the parallel lives of these men. They're both revered as industrial Titans, but if you look through the forensic accounting, they're both houses of toothpicks. We know Trump is up to his eyeballs in debt and Ford was at various points in his life, leveraging debt and building new and better plants and forcing his dealers to essentially bear the costs of his expansions. Now, when he died, he left in a state of about $300 million, which in 1947 terms is a lot. So he did make money, but at certain times, let's just say he cut corners. He did fast dealing . And he preyed upon people that he knew were not powerful enough to stop him . And the international Jew after this case is settled. After the case is off the front pages, it becomes a worldwide bestseller . Ford's name gets put on the title page as the author. And if you look for Henry Ford online, once you get through all the Ford motor company stuff, you see Henry Ford author of the international Jew. So Henry Ford is right up there with the author of the protocols in terms of being the source of these ideas about who's creating the news and what news is fake and what sources are legitimate. And in particular, it's become a cudgel in the hands of extreme right wing fundamentalists who will never, ever accept Jews as equals. And we know that that's still animating these people because they found a copy of the protocols in the Longworth office building on the Capitol campus two weeks ago. And one of the synagogue shooters had a copy of the protocols in his car. You know, I'm just surprised it wasn't the international Jew for
Speaker 2The timing. We're recording this podcast on March 21st. So this is just the current events, finding a copy on the security cards desk. I have two questions. What happens to Dearborn independent after this? And then the other question is the split between Louie Marshall and, and , uh , rabbi wise. Well,
Speaker 3And there was a story rabbi who used to be neighbors with the Fords before they moved out to Dearborn, which was of course redlined , you know, Jews and blacks could not live in Dearborn until the 1950s, but after the Fords moved out to their huge estate , Ford kept in touch with this rabbi rabbi, Leo Franklin. And he had been in the habit of giving Franklin a new Ford car every year. And in 1928 , Franklin sent it back and it's totally apocryphal, but it's been repeated so many times. People think it actually happened that Ford picked up the phone and called rabbi Franklin and said, rabbi Franklin, my friend, whatever has come between us. There's absolutely no proof for that. None I suspect this is going to happen with the Trump literature too. But if you take any book written about Ford and put them in chronological order of publication and look for footnotes, that attribute sources to particular quotes, you find it's the same quotes and they just cite the nearest previous book or they cite , you know, what is really the Bible of the three volume trilogy written in the 1950s, which is about the most exhaustive history of the Ford motor company and a biography of Henry Ford. But that was a court history that was commissioned. And so it's all to rosy . Oh, and there's another point I wanted to make that museum of Americana in Greenfield village. There's nothing, no evidence that the Dearborn independent, ever existed. We went there at the day of my book launch in Detroit and my kids were like, where's the newspaper
Speaker 5Not there. And what actually happened to the Dearborn. One thing
Speaker 3That Henry Ford does promise to do in this letter that Marshall wrote for him is that he will shut down the newspaper and publish a full retraction. And he actually keeps both those promises and Aaron Shapiro did get his, I don't know, 120, $160,000, but there were a lot of things Aaron wanted in the settlement that he did not get because Marshall never talked to him. And I got a lot of trouble. I've actually I'm , I, I didn't realize just how badly I burned my bridges with the Louie Marshall fans of the country. But when my book came out, they really felt that I had betrayed him because he's such a great man. He is so universally revered, but his law partner was representing another client in a suit against Henry Ford. So for him to interfere in ongoing litigation was a violation of professional ethics back then. And they all knew it, Marshall , his law partner, Aaron superhero , and Aaron superhero's lawyer, they all knew it, but there was nothing to be done once that statement got signed, it was over. So the newspaper gets shut down. Aaron superior moves ahead with his life, although he's never the same. And he ends up moving back to California, dying in obscurity. It's very sad story actually, but he should be remembered. He should be celebrated. Probably he will never get his just due. And the pro Marshall sentiment is quite strong, but I think it's possible to look at that case and identify objectively true missteps that hurt the valid, legal interests of the parties in the lawsuits. I think Marshall sold out because he wanted to get this sort of bromide, this PRN of praise from Ford that would settle the dust of this ugly litigation and put it behind them.
Speaker 1So to kind of put this in perspective and to come full circle, it sounds to me that the world surrounding Ford and his newspaper and what he was able to essentially get away with and the world that we live in now, when it comes to, as I referred to in my segment as the wild west of cable news, now that they don't have the fairness doctrine in place and Jay alluded to, okay, so how is everything maintained? How do we maintain control of this information? And I had alluded to lawsuits and the legal battles, which is kind of what Ford had went through. And unfortunately we all just heard the result of that. How do we, at this point in our world at the time that we live now, when we not only are dealing with Fox news, but the offspring of Fox news, which is Newsmax and things that they're now taking, what Roger Ailes did and what Ford started and have just taken it to a completely different level. It's , it's almost like the , the fractal realization of right wing media. And now that there is no federal rules to keep information in check so that people are listening to actual factual evidence instead of just conspiracy and hearsay and conjecture, how do move forward or what is the avenue that we take in order to be extreme
Speaker 5Ify the American public? When
Speaker 3I wander onto the comment sections of my local media here, or I read comments attacking my friend, Heather Richardson, who writes this daily letter on American politics, as she'd been doing it for a year and a half, and it's basically become this sort of guiding pillar. It's the lighthouse for a lot of people who were really despairing before the election, but she has been absolutely mercilessly attacked. I want to say that I think it starts with, I hate to say this, but reforming public education. Most of the textbooks used in this country are published by Texas book publishers who are catering to the creationist pro celebration of American history. That was encapsulated in that 1776 commission report that was issued before Trump left office and promptly canceled by Biden. When he came in, I mean, it's difficult because we have the postmodernist to thank for the widely accepted idea that there's more than one possible reading for any text. It's ironic, actually that is because of the influence of the right , that that has so paralyzed people from being able to agree on facts and the inability to separate fact and opinion is hobbling our entire civic bond. We can't relate to people with whom we disagree. We can't even talk to them because we can't agree on shared premises. We can't agree that the constitution protected slavery, that the electoral college is an artifact of pro slave land owners and legislators. If we can't agree on those kinds of fundamental facts, I fear for the future of the Republic. Now I was a lot more afraid before November 7th, when Joe Biden was finally certified the winner , but was he really right? Was he because the big lie, you know, that's itself, a term out of, out of Nazi, Germany is being used now to keep people in this heightened state of anger and agitation and unwillingness to accept the legitimacy of the current president of the United States. And that's really concerning. And I think we have to go back to teaching children better, not teaching down to them. Kids are actually amazingly capable of understanding historical complexity. We've got to get public education out of the hands of the Koch brothers and Betsy Devoss and these right wing religious school boards.
Speaker 2I recently connected with somebody I believe is a Trump supporter. And for a long time , uh , I couldn't talk to them, but I know that minds are changed through these conversations, through education for our kids and for the adults. What did we talk about the whole time we talked about media literacy and just how to understand the things we're reading to know what is fake news and what is legitimate assess credibility, because you know, the legal guardrails, sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. And the real change as you aptly point out comes from all of us being able to be better, more informed citizens,
Speaker 1I guess I'm just hoping for a threshold to be reached. I don't know if a threshold can be reached at this point where people are just like, yeah, no. Okay. You know what? We're just kidding. Let's go back to normal. I was kind of hoping that January 6th was going to be that big wake up call to a lot of people. And I actually to go to your point, Jay, I have seen some people that were leaning towards that direction. Family members included that just saw that moment as the yeah, yeah, no more for me. Thanks. Kind of moment that started happened , but it didn't happen more or is it more of like a gradual thing that we'll see it more in the 2022 midterms then we'll see, like now I guess what my point is is that I am a huge cynic when it comes to humanity as a collective, I love people, groups of people do very stupid things. And I am just worried that we have reached a huge threshold as far as my ability to be okay with this American experiment on January 6th. And I don't think that that resonated as much as it should have. January 6th
Speaker 3Has taken a back seat to crisis management that had to happen in order to control the pandemic. There's an ongoing discussion. I know in Congress about what kind of commission should be organized to investigate it. And commissions like that have a lot of opportunity to shape the narrative, to define terms, to establish facts. I mean the nine 11 report people read that thing. You know, I think they'll read this one too. And I hope we get as good as a political or as well-rounded a group for the January 6th commissioners we got for nine 11. I can't talk you out of your cynicism EGA because it's really difficult to argue with someone who insists on something like, well, it was Antifa and BLM that attacked the Capitol . When we all watched that day, there were almost no black people in that crowd. They were all carrying Trump signs. Oh, well, you know, there's always a way to explain these inconvenient facts away, right? Well, that was part of their disguise. Again, when these people start to go on trial that will break into the media silence that has kind of been dropped around this. And I think that's a part of it that the media is complicit
Speaker 2Just to tie this all together . This Nazi on wall street podcast was created in part to support the Nazi and wall street project, which talks a lot about 1940. I know historians here understand that while we have the benefit of hindsight, people didn't know in 1940, which way it was going to go. If America was going to stay in neutral, if we would end up with Charles Lindbergh as president, if America first was going to be the dominant idea. And of course we know now that you know, America went on to fight fascism, but here we are again, in this kind of paradigm shifting moment and paradigm shifts, it's not a light switch. It takes months and years for these transformations to come about and we're right in the middle of it. So we really don't know which way things are going to go, but we can keep having conversations with each other and uh , with our kids and maybe with our way word friends and yes, to help bring them back to the light because we can know facts and we can have a shared consensus on reality, despite what the postmodernists say and lead ourselves into a more informed world.
Speaker 4A Nazi on wall street is brought to you by elusive films maker of the , uh , Nazi on wall streets , film and television series. It was recorded and edited by DJ Russo . Original music was written and performed by Joseph Mulholland . We can't bring these stories to life on screen without your support. So please consider donating to our crowdfunding campaign@elusive-films.com . That's elusive hyphen films.com for chasing Wexel Baum I'm EGA Russo . Thank you. And we will see you next episode.