To attack Obama's New Deal, Beck invokes Henry Ford -- the Nazis' friend
By David Neiwert Thursday Feb 12, 2009 12:17pm
Glenn Beck is one confused puppy.
Last week (in between weeping jags) he was all over the ideological map: warning us one day that America was on the road Communism, and the very next telling us we were traveling the path to Nazism. Of course, the source of much of that confusion became clear yesterday when he had on Jonah Goldberg to explain that this was all Liberal Fascism at work.
So in the very next segment of yesterday's show, Beck featured a right-wing crackpot named Burton Folsom Jr., who's out there hawking a book built on the historically and economically risible claims that FDR's New Deal was bad for Americans -- by way of explaining that Obama's similar economic-stimulus plans are, on Planet Beck, leading us to Liberal Fascist Socialism or something like that.
In the course of the conversation, Beck held up Henry Ford's opposition to the New Deal as a beacon of inspiration:
Beck: This blue eagle [holds up National Recovery Act poster], there were more of these in the windows of New York City than there were swastikas in Munich at the time of the war. This was -- if you didn't have this, you weren't American. People were told, don't shop at that store. Ford actually said, 'I don't want anything to do with it.' What happened to Ford?
Folsom: Ford said, 'If we lived up to it, we'd have to live down to it.' He thought it was a terrible code. He also thought it was unconstitutional. He said, 'We're not ready to be like Russia just yet.' He refused to go along with the code. General Motors did go along with the code, Ford did not, and so Ford was denied access to any government contract on automobiles that he submitted bids for.
Funny thing about Ford's opposition to the New Deal: It was indeed based on his belief it was 'socialist' in nature. But that brings up another aspect of Ford's political worldview: He was not only an admirer of Hitler and the Nazis -- as well as one of the major overseas investors in their war machine -- his naked anti-Semitism helped inspire the Holocaust.
That would be this Henry Ford:
That's a picture of Ford receiving the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest honor available to non-Germans, on July 30, 1938, his 75th birthday.
That would be the Henry Ford who in 1920 began publishing The International Jew -- one of the most infamous anti-Semitic screeds in history. This text first raised to national prominence the notorious Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion hoax -- and indeed may have been responsible for its subsequent wide distribution in Hitler's Germany as well.
Speaking of Hitler, here's what he had to say about the speculation in 1923 that Ford might run for president:
I wish I could send some of my shock troops to Chicago and other big American cities to help in the elections ... We look to Heinrich Ford as the leader of the growing fascist movement in America ... We have just had his anti-Jewish articles translated and published. The book is being circulated in millions throughout Germany."
As the ADL notes:
Though Ford apologized for The International Jew and closed the Dearborn Independent, he later accepted the Grand Cross of the German Eagle from Hitler's Nazi government in July, 1938.
Ford also probably did more than any American to help build the Nazi war machine in the 1930s. As Christopher Simpson describes in his book The Splendid Blond Beast, Ford invested heavily in German jobs during the Depression rather than American jobs, setting up a Ford auto factory in Cologne and investing elsewhere as well. At one point, Ford's German division made plans to purchase an 'Aryanized' firm called Stoewer-Werke AG -- part of the Nazi program to convert former Jewish-owned companies into fully 'Aryan' operations. Ford's cooperation was touted by the Nazis as proof of the "global reach" of the worldview behind Aryanization.
Ford also invested in proto-fascist organizations in America. It was reported (but never proven) that he was a secret investor in the German-American Bund, which turned out after the war to have had an abundance of Nazi connections, including being basically underwritten by the Nazi Party; and he was a major supporter of America First, whose leading members after the outbreak of war held a gathering where they planned to lead the Vichy-style occupational government after the Nazis inevitably defeated the U.S.
And his view of the New Deal was decidedly wrapped up in all this. As Neil Baldwin's Henry Ford and the Jews describes, his "private jottings reflected [Ford's] dislike of bankers, Jews, the New Deal and labor unions, and his major competitors, General Motors and Chrysler."
Occasionally, Ford merged these components together into an imagined conspiracy against the Ford Motor Company, losing ground in a competitive consumer marketplace. "Our competitors are behind all tax and N.R.A. plans, with the bankers' international, and they are running all the governments in the world," Ford free-associated. "Unions are created by finance and industry." In another place, he scrawled, as if reminding himself, "The Jew is out to enslave you."
So Glenn Beck wants us to heed the wise words of the Nazis' best friend in America? But isn't that heading us down the path of ... ?
Oh, nevermind. Anyone who thinks Liberal Fascism is "a great book" is a lost cause anyway.
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From WiKi...
"In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Edsel (who was president of the company) thought it was necessary for Ford to come to some sort of collective bargaining agreement with the unions, because the violence, work disruptions, and bitter stalemates could not go on forever. But Henry (who still had the final veto in the company on a de facto basis even if not an official one) refused to cooperate. For several years, he kept Bennett in charge of talking to the unions that were trying to organize the Ford company. Sorensen's memoir[22] makes clear that Henry's purpose in putting Bennett in charge was to make sure no agreements were ever reached."
I was in line at the bank today and heard the guy behind me grousing about the G*D* Democrats and how they're going to "give away the country to the lazy, illegals, and minorities." I almost turned around and said something and realized I would NEVER change this guy's mind.
So I didn't bother.
Ye should have just said "If you don't like it you can leave and go live in China!"
a professor in one of my classes start off on a whole tangent about the same type of stuff. He said that the media are just completely in love with Obama and that George Bush was a good man that was persecuted by the media. Al gore invented the Internet Ha Ha Ha, that kind of stuff. It sounds like my class is being taught by Glenn Beck himself.
You'll never change their mind, but you'll let them know that there are people who will oppose their ideas. Wingnuts are usually bullies and cowards as well. Goes hand in hand with their fear-based worldview.
yet, despite his fascism, dickishness, and anti-semitism Ford STILL understood what glenn beck can't grasp: if people can't afford to buy shit, they won't.
beck is a cheerleader for the transfer of wealth to the ruling class, more so than ford was, even though Ford was a member of said ruling class...
glenn beck is a well-worn puppet, who ass smells like the hand of corporate america
but he did understand that you have to price your product so your own workers could buy them. Demand comes first, not supply. And a living wage is what gets you there. Pretty simple concept that the Milton Friedmans of the world get wrong.
Broke the heads of his workers when they asked for decent pay and demanded a safer workplace.
Anti-Union all the way.
Neiwert,
about Nazi friends, where were you in regards to Prescott Bush all these years?
Do you only write about Nazi connections when they are fools like Beck and shy away from the real Nazis?
Um, no, not exactly. In fact, I'm pretty sure I was one of the first mainstream journalists to write about Prescott Bush.
And believe me, I've dealt with many real life Nazis over my career. Moreover, I'm able to distinguish between them and the right-wing corporatists who enable them, unlike (it seems) some folks.
"He was not only an admirer of Hitler and the Nazis -- as well as one of the major overseas investors in their war machine -- his naked anti-Semitism helped inspire the Holocaust."
Wait a minute...Jonah Goldberg told me that Liberals were Nazis not right winger like Henry.OH OH! *cue laughing trumpet sound and canned applause*
After all, what's the big deal about a little world war and genocide?
I thought everyone new that Ford was a total Nazi sympathizer.
From the Wikipedia:
Ford and Adolf Hitler admired each other's achievements.[30] Adolf Hitler kept a life-size portrait of Ford next to his desk.[30] "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration," Hitler told a Detroit News reporter two years before becoming the Chancellor of Germany in 1933.[30] In July 1938, four months after the German annexation of Austria, Ford was awarded the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest medal awarded by Nazi Germany to foreigners.[30]
Was the Grand Cross like the medal of freedom or something?
n/t
Isn't it going just a tad bit too far to accuse Ford of having "helped inspire the Holocaust" ??? Do you think there's a some room for differentiating between being a paranoid racist and being a promoter genocidal mass murder?
I thought we learned the lesson about not grouping wildly disparate concepts together under one umbrella with the whole lumping together of sarin gas and nuclear weapons under the label "weapons of mass destruction" scandal.
one can be a fascist without attempting a holocaust. After all, there have been many fascist regimes that didn't engage in mass murder, at least not on a grand scale. They all abuse civil rights and they all murder but some are smart enough to not want the attention from the outside world that comes with killing in numbers too large. A fascist and a Nazi are not the same thing. A Nazi was just a fascist political party in one particular country. While all fascist organizations use foreigners or minorities as "enemies of the state", the object of the hate will differ according to the culture of the country. With modern American fascists their ire is more likely to be directed at Mexicans or Arabs or Muslims. Ford was not a Nazi since he was not a German citizen or a member of that political party but he was most certainly a fascist.
And if you aren't bright enough to figure out how the Germans translating Ford's anti-Semitic screeds and distributing them to millions of Germans helped feed the hatred that led to the holocaust then I'm afraid I don't have the educational abilities needed to teach you...
You're overlooking one fact: The International Jew gave impetus to Hitler's waving The Protocols as justification for his "Aryanization" program of the 1930s and the subsequent Final Solution. In fact, Hitler had a special edition of Ford's book published in German in Germany in 1938, and it was given special attention along with his Iron Eagle award.
is that better?
Their mentality never dies. It just morphs into new realities and expressions. Take a look at the history of the Bush Family for instance. Take a look at financial manipulation and domination over a population. I think David has written extensively about the Bush history with the Nazi mentality in earlier pieces.
If this is true, I'll take my foot out of my mouth and check it out...
that with all the negative attention and revisionism going on President Roosevelt doesn't stand a chance at a second term. And I had such hopes for him.
{ Deleted, upon request. SiteMonitor}
I really need to read more before I comment
Everyone makes mistakes. You're part of a much smaller group that has the courage and integrity to admit it.
Speaking of which, TruthB, where's your mea culpa.
Dave has written about Bush and Smedly Butler numerous times. Try checking the files before self-righteously ordering others about. Or start your own blog.
Or Hedley, depending on which movie you're watching.
good with details, facts, or truthful observations...
I gotta talk about Beck's crying. For whatever reason I saw part of his show, I think it was last week. He had a father on whose son was missing somewhere. The father was very controlled as he spoke of his son, but Beck began crying and telling the father that the network he used to work for wouldn't let him pursue the case of finding the son but the network he worked for now would. Beck was crying and trying to talk. I mean if the father could hold himself in check, why couldn't Beck? It was unnerving and strange and it made me grab the remote to turn it off as fast as I could.
This Beck guy is one odd duck!
I've been mentioning Gen. Smedley Butler on this site for a couple of years.
And the Prescott Bush connection to Hitler since the BBC radio 4 broadcast making the connection.
Ford made the rank and file army vehicles for the Wehrmacht, although officials drove BMW's.
I also heard he sent Hitle $10,000 every year as a birthday gift.
Lots and lots of Opel trucks were left on the steppes of Russia.
It makes you wonder if there isn't some secret contest at Fox to see which host who can "out crazy" the others.
The people at FOX have to compete with pro-wrestling, monster trucks, and snorting a line of meth follwed by kicking the snot out of your wife and kids.
NASCAR
I remember a clip of Beck saying he went into Rupert's office with his "plan" for his show and that before he could speak Rupert "pretty much" told Beck everything Beck was gonna say to Rupert. In other words Beck is Rupert's lapdog, and that by being so he is freeing up the other yakkers (ORielly) to sound more sane. (Although BillO can't help himself! Give him enough rope and he'll hang himself, GO Helen Thomas!)
Beck was hired to be the crazy. He'll go way the f out there and "say what needs to be said". Then the others can echo it with their favorite "some people say...."
...like Coulter, injecting the unmentionable into the public discourse so that more well-groomed useful fools can go into the mainstream and 'chat' about it in a reasonable, avuncular manner...Making sure, of course, to keep the memes circulating and make them appear plausible.
They're just moving the measurements again. With Beck as the "new far-right" pretty soon David Duke will be center-right and Obama will be a radical liberal fascist... dammit! It's already happened.
Republicans are practicing SUBVERSIVE forms of demagoguery and guerrilla obstructionism that are intended to destabilize our economy for purposes of political exploitation.
Republicans AREN’T making a sincere effort to stop the bleeding their incompetent leadership and failed policies created. Instead, they’re using conflicting economic theories as a smokescreen to conceal their real agenda, which is to undermine President Obama and cause him and America to fail.
Republicans are laughably professing that their disgraceful political whoring had nothing to do with the banking, real estate, stock market and employment catastrophes that resulted.
Republicans are trying to hamstring Obama to prevent him from undoing the incompetent negligence of George W. Bush.
Republicans are offering up subjective controversial arguments they know no one can agree on in order to disrupt and deny progressive change. They’d rather create political gridlock than endure the political consequences of effective Democratic governance. That’s how they gained power and that’s how they’re trying to retain it.
Republicans are not the LOYAL OPPOSITION. They are the ENEMY WITHIN whose political priorities have eroded their moral and ethical standards to the point that treachery and betrayal are their preferred methods of operation.
It’s one thing to vigorously advocate their conservative beliefs; it’s another thing entirely for them to willfully sabotage America’s government because a successful Democratic president would not be vulnerable to the fears and hatreds that have produced and sustained the radical Republican corporatism and extremism that have poisoned and divided America.
... Seriously..
Listen to these two freaks!
My goodness..
So farkin stupid.
Calm yourself, my good man! We're all friends here.
You write well- OK if I send a variant of your post to newspapers? Not that they're likely to print them!
About 30 seconds is all I could take. It is a waste of my time to listen to this repetative propaganda. The same old Republican spin, take a negative about what they themselves are, i.e. 'fascist', and project it upon your opponent. Repetition is the foundation of propaganda.
Another example, if I don't vomit first. Having studied the entertainment industry, one key to success as a 'celebrity' is hidden sexuality. Thus, I will repeat, the same old Republican spin, take a negative about what they themselves are, i.e., in this case something not 'liberal', but use the word as in 'liberal fascist' above and project it upon your opponent via transexual Ann C., most people have a 'strange' reaction to transexuals, thus, this uneasy feeling is associated with 'liberal'. How often does she use this word?
And if the media is controlled as it now, this can be repeated 24/7.
Beck complains of how industrialists like Ford refused to submit to price-fixing and was thereby victimized by the horrible, socialist New Deal.
What bullsh*t. During World War 2, Ford and the rest of the manufacturers in the US made colossal profits on cost-plus military contracts, many awarded without competitive bidding. Factory owners routinely padded their costs, then added a 20% margin of profit on top of their inflated estimates. Though unethical, this was perfectly legal. It was socialism for the industrial sector, and it bought the support of the capital-owning class for the war effort. This was the beginning of the Military-Industrial Complex.
During the war, prices of practically everything were regulated and goods were rationed by government decree (with war production getting first priority on raw materials). There was no production of durable consumer goods (cars, washing machines, radios, etc) for the duration of the war, which created a vast black market. Consumers sacrificed, industry benefited. Workers supported this because it meant full employment, and the ability to build up savings after the long Depression years.
Beck and this idiot author ignore all this, because they want to pretend that government-mandated "socialism" for the masses in the midst of a crisis is a terrible thing, while refusing to acknowledge how profitable the very same socialism can be for the rich in wartime.
good post Dave. I've read a lot about this stuff, and I still learned from this.
I assume Beck will have no problem reviewing George Bush's grandad, Prescott Bush, and his dealings with the nazi war machine. Esp. the Thyssen group.
I mean, it would only be fair and balanced of him, right?
...and his 'procurements' on behalf of Remington et al in the course of his duties as chief of the Ordnance, Small Arms, and Ammunition Section of the War Industries Board during WW1.
What a shame the National Archives burned his records of that time 'to save space'.
Imagine the treasures of knowledge that Beck would have at his fingertips were that not so.
;)
That quote at the end of the segment attributed to Hugh Johnson - "this is the greatest social advance since Jesus" - sounded a little too tailor made for Glenn's fear fest. Googling it produces 2 hits -- both to the transcript for his show. Is Beck privy to some secret freedom-fighting information that can't be shared with others?
From managing death-labor camps architect to designing CODEX Alimentatarius in 1962, Fritz ter Meer's genocide machinery is busy as ever, powered in part by the modern US FDA.
Just fifteen years after they were convicted in the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, Bayer, BASF and Hoechst (now Sanofi-Aventis -- Brad) were again the architects of the next major human rights offences. In 1962, they established the Codex Alimentarius Commission. (Remark made by the Dr. Rath Health Foundation)
This dark period of German history is inextricably bound to one man, Fritz ter Meer:
* He was a member of the Managing Board of IG Farben from its inception to its dissolution. As the Wartime Manager, he was responsible for IG Auschwitz.
* In the Nuremberg Tribunal, ter Meer stated: "Forced labor did not inflict any remarkable injury, pain, or suffering on the detainees, particularly since the alternative for these workers would have been death."
* In 1948, ter Meer was sentenced by the Nuremberg Tribunal to seven years in prison for plundering and slavery.
* In 1952, his sentence was commuted, due to the influence of powerful friends.
* From 1956-1964, he was reinstated as a member of the Managing Board of Bayer AG.
* In 1962, ter Meer was one of the architects of the "Codex Alimentarius - Commission" and one of the main designers of the schemes that would profit from human suffering. (Remark made by the Dr. Rath Health Foundation)
More...
"If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from that person's angle as well as from your own."
[Henry Ford]
"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."
[Henry Ford]
"You can't learn in school what the world is going to do next year."
[Henry Ford]
so of course this idiot has him on the air
I think even the brain-dead audience of the propaganda network laugh this idiot off. I would scratch my head to figure out why they employed his pathetic services to host a program to their lame and weak minded audience, but it's a waste of my time.
Honestly, this buffoon is the male equivalent of she-man coultier with saying assinine things to get a reaction and more name recognition. I say, let the butt hole spew and ignore him. He is so ridiculous, not even the geriatric crowd of right wing Nazis that watch his program and take to heart his words can take him seriously. He is the network clown.
I agree Coulter is vermin, but calling her a 'she-man' seems a term designed to insult trans gendered people- Please lets not do that
Funny, the right wing holds such seething scorn and contempt for academia and intellectuals- and it shows-
When right wingers like Beck and Billo try to cite history to make a point, they wind up looking like idiots- Because all they succeed in doing is demonstrate a gross ignorance of basic history.
I'm beginng to think the Republican right wing would prefer German Naziism over FDR's New Deal ideology
Charles Lindbergh was another vile Nazi supporter- at least his Nazi views earned him enemies in FDR's administration that kept him sidelined. Was Charles Lindbergh as bad as Ford in his support of Hitler and the Nazi philosphy of anti Semetism?
Seriously folks, enough with the "Glenn Beck is a twit!" stuff.
It's good for a laugh at first, but after a while, it just feels like making fun of the handicapped.
I'm another of those people who can't look at something really stupid without stopping to say, "That's really stupid," but sometimes you just have to reassure yourself that some things are self-evident.
Really, he just wants attention. Don't feed the troll.
.
Why not Prescott Bush?
.
What about Prescott Bush...
http://www.politicalfriendster.com/showPerson...
To label him as merely "the Nazis' friend" is reductionist, willfully ignorant, and wrong. The innovations he brought to manufacturing did more to improve humankind than any politician that ever lived.
However, his ideological affinity with the Nazis has a direct bearing on his animus towards the New Deal, and is thus the relevant feature under discussion here.
As vile a creature as Ford was, it might be a good idea to post something about Folsom's central contention that NRA was bad for America in the 1930s (and therefore any new New Deal will be bad for America now). Shouldn't the NRA argument be dealt with head-on?
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