Few individuals changed the world like Henry Ford. By 1930, four of out of every five American families owned a car, thanks primarily to his genius. But Ford could be stubborn, irrational and disdainful of experts and the criticism he received in the press.
To counter what he perceived as negative coverage, he acquired a weekly newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, that soon had a circulation of more than 900,000. Ford car dealers were compelled to sell a subscription to every customer who purchased a Model-T.
The newspaper achieved notoriety in the spring of 1920 when the editor, Ernest Liebold, with Ford’s full support, ran a series of 91 articles on “The International Jew: The World’s Problem,” which depicted a Jewish conspiracy to rule the globe. Influenced by the eugenics movement, Ford had long believed that Jewish bankers and moneylenders were the curse of civilization. The series was later reissued as a pamphlet.
George Soros, chairman of Soros Fund Management, is often described by right-wing commentators in terms consistent with historic antisemitic tropes. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/ The Associated Press files)
The basis of the articles in the Independent as the newspaper’s acquisition of the English version of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a notorious piece of propaganda that can be traced back to writers in Czarist Russia in the early 1900s. The book, organized in 24 chapters or protocols, purports to be the minutes of meetings held by Jewish leaders detailing their alleged “secret plans” to manipulate and dominate the world’s economy and press.
In 1921, the Times of London exposed the Protocols as a fraud, but that did not stop Ford from continuing to spread its hateful message — a message soon embraced and utilized by Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime. To this day, the Protocols are still referenced and can be found on the internet. Legal proceedings in 1927 forced Ford to apologize and repudiate the charges of a conspiracy, but this contrition did not alter his antisemitic beliefs.
The Nazis distributed many copies of the “International Jew” pamphlet as well as many editions of the Protocols, some used by schools.
One infamous Nazi propaganda drawing from the late 1920s and early 1930s, that incorporated the Protocols’ main idea, depicted an ugly stereotyped Jewish puppet master, pulling the strings of various global figures.
In the past few decades and up to the present time, that antisemitic imagery of the malevolent Jewish puppet master has been levelled at 92-year-old billionaire George Soros, a financier and philanthropist.
Born in Hungary in 1930 to a secular Jewish family, Soros survived both the Holocaust and the Soviet takeover of Hungary following the end of the Second World War. When he was 17, he escaped to Britain where he obtained an education and eventually embarked on a career as a highly successful and lucrative hedge fund manager in New York. In 1992, he made a fortune in currency markets.
As a survivor of Nazism and Communism, he dedicated himself to fighting autocracy and human rights abuses. The Open Society Foundations he established promotes “democratic governance, freedom of expression, and respect for individual rights” around the world.
To this end, Soros has donated millions of dollars to the U.S. Democratic Party, though mainly indirectly via Super PACs. His objective, he has said, is to strengthen “the infrastructure of American democracy: voting rights and civic participation, civil rights and liberties, and the rule of law.”
This is no different than the millions of dollars Charles Koch and David Koch have contributed to conservative causes and Republican Party candidates over the years. But that is beside the point for such Republicans as former president Donald Trump and Florida governor Ron DeSantis. In their distorted view, Soros is allegedly a cunning puppet master, the wizard behind-the-curtain, manipulating American and world events to for his own evil purposes.
As Linda Qui of the New York Times recently noted, Soros, “has for years been a boogeyman on the right, confronting attacks that portray him as a ‘globalist’ mastermind and that often veer into antisemitic tropes.”
In 2018, Trump implied that Soros was funding migrant caravans that were journeying the U.S.-Mexico border. Most recently, he has been accused by Trump as playing a devious role in Manhattan District Attorney’s Alvin Bragg’s decision to convene a grand jury that led to Trump’s indictment. In their non-stop attack on Bragg, Trump, DeSantis and other Republicans have peppered their public remarks with such phrases as “Soros-backed,” “Soros-financed” and “Soros DA.” Congressman Matt Gaetz blamed Trump’s indictment on “the Sorosification of the criminal justice system.”
In fact, Soros, who declared that he did not know Bragg, contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Color of Change PAC, which did endorse Bragg’s candidacy in 2021 as well as other Democratic Party district attorneys.
Soros is no saint. He is outspoken and has used intemperate language over the years — like suggesting in 2006 that the government of George W. Bush employed Nazi and Communist-like propaganda in their War on Terror. And it goes without saying that you can criticize him and not automatically be labelled an antisemite.
But Trump and his acolytes can’t help themselves. Even if the racist “dog whistle” is subtle, implying that Soros is a “radical liberal” and at the centre of a global Jewish conspiracy to destabilize America confirms what many of his fanatical followers already believe. It is propaganda that Henry Ford would have no doubt understood.
Now & Then is a column in which historian Allan Levine puts the events of today in a historical context.
