Read Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History for Free Online Page B

11
    In the autumn, the Spectator praised the Morning Post for its stance. “The evidence that the paper brings to support its plea of conspiracy is clearly of enough substance and enough importance to justify its action,” argued the magazine. “We most sincerely wish that some body of the nature of a Royal Commission could be appointed to inquire into the whole subject.” 12 One wonders now what such a royal commission would have been called, but the Spectator was in no doubt as to what ought to happen if such a body were to find the case against the Jews proved. In that situation, it demanded, “We must drag the conspirators into the open, tear off their ugly masks and show the world how ridiculous as well as how evil and dangerous are such pests of society.” Blackwood’s Magazine , unwilling to wait, advocated that Jews be excluded from public office and influence.
    The Protocols crossed the Atlantic. In October 1919, they were published in the Philadelphia Public Ledger but with the Jewish references omitted. Soon afterward, an editorial in the Christian Science Monitor linked the Protocols to world events and argued, “It could be a tremendous mistake to conclude that the Jewish peril . . . does not exist . . . That a secret political organization exists, working unremittingly . . . is, to the man who can read the signs of the times, a thing unquestionable.” On June 19, 1920, the Chicago Tribune carried an article headlined “Trotsky Leads Jew-Radicals to World Rule. Bolshevism Only a Tool for His Scheme.” There was, the author claimed, a world revolutionary movement, part of which aimed “for the establishment of a new racial domination of the world. So far as the British, French and our own department’s inquiry have been able to trace, the moving spirits in this second scheme are Jewish radicals.”

    Ford and the Protocols
    The man who more than any other popularized the Protocols in America—and, as a result, abroad—was the industrialist Henry Ford. The Flivver King was the Bill Gates of his day. He had taken a modern product that few could afford and many wanted—the motor car—and turned it from a luxury into an everyday household item. He had liberated millions of Americans in that vast land from dependence on irregular public transport or horse-drawn conveyances. He had grown his business from a small workshop into one of the largest and most truly industrial in the whole of America.
    However, the successful capitalist also had a social conscience and a political and social philosophy. Ford was one of those enlightened bosses who believed that screwing as much work for as little pay as possible out of your workforce was counterproductive. It was better to hire good folks and keep them happy, and to that end the Ford Company’s Sociological Department employed fifty people to vet new employees. Those who were sober and didn’t take in boarders (considered inimical to family life) were eligible for substantial bonuses. One irony of Ford’s political philosophy was that despite its emphasis on traditional American values, his industrial techniques—and the machine that they produced—were altering America forever.
    Ford hated war, describing it as “murder, desolation and destruction.” From 1915, when America’s involvement in the First World War began to be discussed, Ford argued vehemently against it. Parasites and absentee owners, he told a press conference that summer, wanted to get involved in an unnecessary venture. “New York wants war,” he claimed, referring presumably to Wall Street. “The United States doesn’t.” 13 In the autumn of 1915, a woman antiwar activist met Ford at his Highland Park factory in Michigan. During the course of their meeting, Ford paused, slapped his breast pocket, and exclaimed, “I know who caused the war—the German-Jewish bankers! I have the evidence here! Facts!” It was a statement that he repeated at least once more during the