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The International Jew is a four-volume set of antisemitic booklets or pamphlets originally published and distributed in the early 1920s by the Dearborn Publishing Company, an outlet owned by Henry Ford, the American industrialist and automobile manufacturer.
The booklets were a collection of articles originally serialized in Ford's Dearborn Independent newspaper, beginning with The International Jew: The World's Problem, published on May 22, 1920.
At the beginning of 1920, Ford's personal newspaper, The Dearborn Independent , was languishing in subscriptions and losing money. Ford and his personal secretary, Ernest G. Liebold, began to discuss a series of articles on the Jewish question. [1] : 97 While it was Liebold who claimed to have come up with the title The International Jew, he turned to "the walking dictionary" William J. Cameron for most of the writing. [1] : 99,103 For 91 issues, the weekly paper announced a variety of stories featuring the supposed evilness of Jewish influence.
Editor E. G. Pipp left the Independent in April 1920 in disgust with the planned antisemitic articles, which began in May; he was replaced by Cameron. While Ford did not personally write the articles, he expressed his opinions verbally to Cameron and Liebold. Cameron had the main responsibility for expanding these opinions into article form. Liebold was responsible for collecting more material to support the articles. [1] : 98–100
The most popular and aggressive stories were then chosen to be reprinted into four volumes called The International Jew. [2] The first volume was published in November 1920 as an anthology of articles that had been published in the Independent from May 22 to October 2, 1920. The original print run of the first edition was estimated to be between 200,000 and 500,000 copies. Three additional volumes were published over the next 18 months. [1] : 145
Liebold never copyrighted The International Jew and therefore had no control over anyone else publishing it themselves. The book was ultimately translated into 16 languages, including six editions in Germany between 1920 and 1922, and has remained in the public domain. [1] : 145
Following the publishing of an article in the Independent that alleged Jewish control of New York banks that were holding Texas cotton farmers hostage financially, San Francisco lawyer and Jewish farm cooperative organizer Aaron Sapiro sued Ford and Dearborn Publishing for libel in a $1 million lawsuit. [1] : 211
During the trial, William J. Cameron, the editor of Ford's "Own Page", testified that Ford had nothing to do with the editorials even though they were under his byline. Cameron testified at the libel trial that he never discussed the content of the pages nor sent them to Ford for his approval. [1] : 220–221 Investigative journalist Max Wallace doubted the veracity of this claim and wrote that James M. Miller, a former Dearborn Independent employee, swore under oath that Ford had told him he intended to expose Sapiro. [3]
According to political scientist Michael Barkun, "That Cameron would have continued to publish such controversial material without Ford's explicit instructions seemed unthinkable to those who knew both men. Mrs. Stanley Ruddiman, a Ford family intimate, remarked that 'I don't think Mr. Cameron ever wrote anything for publication without Mr. Ford's approval.'" [4] : 35
Ultimately, the libel suit led Ford to issue a retraction and public apology in which he indicated having been unaware of the nature of the remarks, both those published in the Independent, and the subsequent pamphlets, and was "shocked" by the content. [1] : 238–240
Soon after the trial, Ford closed the Independent on December 31, 1927. [1] : 255
Ford's International Jew was translated into German in 1922 and cited as an influence by Baldur von Schirach, one of the Nazi leaders, who stated "I read it and became anti-Semitic. In those days this book made such a deep impression on my friends and myself because we saw in Henry Ford the representative of success, also the exponent of a progressive social policy. In the poverty-stricken and wretched Germany of the time, youth looked toward America, and apart from the great benefactor, Herbert Hoover, it was Henry Ford who to us represented America." [5] [6] : 80
Praising American leadership in eugenics in his book Mein Kampf , [6] : 80 Adolf Hitler considered Ford an inspiration, and noted this admiration in his book, calling him "a single great man". [7] : 241 Hitler was also known to keep copies of The International Jew, as well as a large portrait of Ford in his Munich office. [6] : 80 [7] : 241
After publication in the Independent, the articles were compiled as chapters into a four volume set as follows:
Volume 1: The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem (1920)
Volume 2: Jewish Activities in the United States (1921)
Volume 3: Jewish Influence in American Life (1921)
Volume 4: Aspects of Jewish Power in the United States (1922)
In June 1949, a 174-page, one-volume abridgement of the text appeared, titled The International Jew, subtitled "The World's Foremost Problem", edited by George F. Green, who was editor of the Independent Nationalist, a British fascist publication. [8] [9] The book was sold in the United States by the Christian Nationalist Crusade. [10] [11]
Henry Ford was an American industrialist and business magnate. As the founder of the Ford Motor Company, he is credited as a pioneer in making automobiles affordable for middle-class Americans through the system that came to be known as Fordism. In 1911, he was awarded a patent for the transmission mechanism that would be used in the Ford Model T and other automobiles.
The Dearborn Independent, also known as The Ford International Weekly, was a weekly newspaper established in 1901, and published by Henry Ford from 1919 through 1927. At its height during the mid-1920s it claimed a circulation of between 700,000 and 900,000. If true, this would make it second only to The New York Times in terms of national readership. Those numbers were largely due to a quota system for promotion imposed on Ford dealers. Lawsuits regarding antisemitic material published in the paper caused Ford to close it, and the last issue was published in December 1927. The publication's title was derived from the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, Michigan.
The history of the Jews in England goes back to the reign of William the Conqueror. Although it is likely that there had been some Jewish presence in the Roman period, there is no definitive evidence, and no reason to suppose that there was any community during Anglo-Saxon times. The first written record of Jewish settlement in England dates from 1070. The Jewish settlement continued until King Edward I's Edict of Expulsion in 1290.
Jewish political movements refer to the organized efforts of Jews to build their own political parties or otherwise represent their interest in politics outside the Jewish community. From the time of the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans to the foundation of Israel, the Jewish people had no sovereign territory and were largely denied equal rights in the lands in which they lived. Thus, until the emancipation of the Jews in the 19th century, almost all Jewish political struggles were internal, and dealt primarily with either religious issues or local community concerns.
Isaac La Peyrère, also known as Isaac de La Peyrère or Pererius, was a French-born theologian, writer, and lawyer. La Peyrère is best known as a 17th-century predecessor of the scientific racialist theory of polygenism in the form of his Pre-Adamite hypothesis, which offered a challenge to traditional Abrahamic understandings of the descent of the human races as derived from the Book of Genesis. In addition to this, La Peyrère anticipated Zionism, advocating a Jewish return to Palestine, within the context of premillennialist Messianic theology. He moved in prominent circles and was known for his connections to the Prince of Condé and the abdicated Queen Christina of Sweden. Born to a Huguenot family, possibly of Portuguese Jewish converso or Marrano heritage, La Peyrère was pressured to renounce his views and publicly converted to the Catholic Church towards the end of his life, though the sincerity of this conversion has been questioned.
The Jewish question was a wide-ranging debate in 19th- and 20th-century Europe that pertained to the appropriate status and treatment of Jews. The debate, which was similar to other "national questions", dealt with the civil, legal, national, and political status of Jews as a minority within society, particularly in Europe during the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.
Boris Leo Brasol, born Boris Lvovich Brazol, was a Russian lawyer and literary critic. After the October Revolution he settled in the United States.
Christian Nationalist Crusade was an American political advocacy organization founded by Gerald L. K. Smith in 1947. It nominated Smith for President in 1948 and Douglas MacArthur in 1952.
Antisemitic tropes, also known as antisemitic canards or antisemitic libels, are "sensational reports, misrepresentations or fabrications" about Jews as an ethnicity or Judaism as a religion.
Herman Bernstein was an American journalist, poet, novelist, playwright, translator, Jewish activist, and diplomat. He was the United States Ambassador to Albania and was the founder of Der Tog, the Jewish daily newspaper.
Aaron Leland Sapiro was a Jewish American cooperative activist, lawyer and major leader of the farmers' movement during the 1920s. One of the many issues he spoke on was cooperative grain marketing and was particularly active in California and Saskatoon in Saskatchewan where he addressed several meetings between 1923 and 1924.
Leo Morris Franklin was an influential Reform rabbi from Detroit, who headed Temple Beth El from 1899 to 1941.
The Anglo-Saxon Federation of America is a British Israelite group founded by Howard Rand in 1930.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a fabricated text purporting to detail a Jewish plot for global domination. Largely plagiarized from several earlier sources, it was first published in Imperial Russia in 1903, translated into multiple languages, and disseminated internationally in the early part of the 20th century. It played a key part in popularizing belief in an international Jewish conspiracy.
Giovanni Preziosi was an Italian fascist politician noted for his contributions to Fascist Italy.
Economic antisemitism is antisemitism that uses stereotypes and canards that are based on negative perceptions or assertions of the economic status, occupations or economic behaviour of Jews, at times leading to various governmental policies, regulations, taxes and laws that target or which disproportionately impact the economic status, occupations or behaviour of Jews.
Ernest G. Liebold was the business representative and personal secretary of Henry Ford. A fervent antisemite, he took an active part in the antisemitic campaign conducted by the industrialist's weekly newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, from 1920 to 1927. He was also put under investigation by the United States Department of War for being a suspected German spy during the First World War.
Reuben H. Sawyer or Reuben Herbert Sawyer (1866–1962) was an American clergyman and a leader of the Ku Klux Klan in Oregon until 1924. He was an important advocate of Anglo Israelism. He associated religious beliefs with ultra-conservative and radical political activism.
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William John ("Billy") Cameron (1878–1955) was a newspaper editor most well known for his work at The Dearborn Independent, where he was responsible for publishing a series of anti-Semitic articles known as "The International Jew". He also was influential in the British Israel movement, helping Howard Rand launch the Anglo-Saxon Federation of America.