Thread by @VictoriaSWoeste

Ways that Donald Trump is just like Henry Ford, And Why That’s Not Good for American Democracy: a Tweetstorm
On Thursday, speaking at a Ford Motor Company plant, Donald Trump paid his latest homage to Henry Ford 1/

lauding the family’s “good bloodlines” with Ford’s great grandson in the front row. Ford, like Trump, was obsessed with bloodlines—with the idea that race and genetic origins determined who counted as the “best people.” 2/

Trump has put antisemitism at the center of his administration’s vision of America as a white nationalist ethnostate. Like Ford, he has built a nationwide public following by signaling his approval of a racially structured society. 3/ sixoh6.com/2019/12/11/tru…

Like Ford, Trump has mastered the art of speaking in coded language that signals his true intent to racists, xenophobes, and antisemites. Why it works so well for Trump has been the question of his entire political ascendance. The answer is that it worked really well for Ford 4/

Trump is following a script steeped in Americans’ unchecked tendency to make cultural heroes out of industrial kings, a script Ford honed to perfection. 5/

washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/08…

Here are 7 ways that Donald Trump takes after Henry Ford:
1.The “bloodlines” fixation is no accident

One century ago yesterday, Ford published the first of 92 articles under the banner headline of “The International Jew.”

7/ The series closely tracked the conspiratorial logic of the Russian antisemitic screed The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Ford’s newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, rewrote the Protocols for its American audience.

8/ Ford thus mass produced the most widely read piece of antisemitic propaganda in American history. The publication repeatedly drove home the idea that Jews were a separate race, not just a religious people

9/ and that their own leaders admitted it:
“Blood is the basis and sub-stratum of the race idea, and no people on the face of the globe can lay claim with so much right to purity of blood, and unity of blood, as the Jews” ( p. 438).jrbooksonline.com/PDF_Books_adde…

10/ Ford’s published anti-Jewish campaign ran for the better part of a decade. For years he defied a libel lawsuit he had no hope of winning, and then he evaded the consequences of his newspaper’s hate speech by torpedoing the case and issuing an apology written by another.

11/ 2. Immigrants cannot be part of their America

Though Ford professed to accept immigration as a good thing for his business and the country, his “Sociology Department” at Ford Motor made it clear that the only good immigrant was an assimilated immigrant

12/ abstentious, square dancing, minimally educated Christian immigrants made the best assembly line workers. Quiescent and apolitical workers would do as they were told and certainly would have no need to join unions.

13/ Trump goes Ford one better: no immigrants, no asylum seekers, no brown people; deportation is the official policy; he would whitewash the entire country if he could. “America First” invokes the history of American isolationism and the memory of Charles Lindbergh,

14/ who was just as antisemitic as Ford. The "America First" Trump foreign policy immediately drew condemnation from the ADL: timesofisrael.com/adl-to-trump-c…

15/ That is why Trump consciously and deliberately invokes Ford’s racism—the appeal to “bloodlines” was merely the latest variation on the theme that gives succor to white nationalists—at opportune moments

16/ such as his visit to the Ford plant in the midst of pandemic and natural disaster in Michigan. The racism and antisemitism have become the point, for Trump as they were for Ford, because both seek to remake American society in a particular mold.

17/ 3. The media is the enemy
Ford resented the function of a free press in American society, all the while adeptly using the press to control his image and burnish his brand. He purchased the Independent in 1918 to aid in his attack on the Chicago Tribune

18/ after it called him an “ignorant idealist” and an “anarchist” (a Michigan jury awarded him $.06 in damages!) because he felt he could not reach Americans through the filter of the press.

19/ Trump’s attacks on “fake media” have been a staple of his relationship with the press; he regularly wages war against CNN, MSNBC, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and other outlets here on Twitter. Every reference to fake news is here: trumptwitterarchive.com

20/ Attacking the press is one of the hoariest antisemitic tropes of all: the idea that Jews control the press as part of their conspiracy to take over the world. washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-h…

21/ the Nazi chant of "lugenpresse" (lying press) surfaced during Trump's presidential campaign: washingtonpost.com/news/worldview…

22/ 4. Nazis are our friends
Ford flirted with open admiration of Hitler during the 1930s, accepting the Grand Cross of the German Eagle in 1938 and encouraging antisemitic publishers to reissue The International Jew without the bother of respecting copyright.

23/ Hitler returned the favor, alluding to Ford in Mein Kampf and keeping Ford’s portrait in his office.

24/ Trump’s astonishing embrace of modern American neo-Nazis as “fine people” was part of a long-term plan to associate the influence of his presidency with the most abhorrent manifestation of twentieth-century fascism.

25/ 5. Follow the money
Ford had an interesting relationships with wealth and lending institutions. He was the most famous self-made man in American history, rising from meager means and a sixth grade education to become the world’s richest individual.

26/ much of that narrative was built on carefully constructed mythology. Ford didn’t invent the automobile, or even the internal combustion engine

27/ Like many enterprising auto manufacturers, he adapted the inventions of others and then fought like hell in the courts to protect his patents and industrial processes. He bought out shareholders rather than pay dividends

28/ and he manipulated the legal system to obtain the results he desired or to avoid the consequences when he lost. Still, Americans saw him as a populist taking on the financial establishment

29/ and he played that role precisely. He proclaimed his independence from banks and lenders, demonizing them as part of the worldwide Jewish conspiracy, while lapping up outside financing when it suited him.

30/ The Ford Motor Company was bailed out by bank financing in 1920 just as Ford began his anti-Jewish campaign.

31/ Likewise, Trump turned an entrepreneurial style into a marketable product, which he sold to banks, developers, and financiers first to build his real estate empire, then to keep up the appearance of empire when he could not manage his debt. The brand was everything.

32/ Trump’s real estate dominion is little more than a pyramid scheme in which he borrows against his properties to build new properties that are in turn mortgaged beyond their value. Nearly every project lands him in bankruptcy, yet he always manages to find new investors.

33/ Like Ford, who branched out into projects designed to give him control over all the raw materials he needed for his car, Trump moved into global financial markets to expand his empire. Over the past thirty years he has sold notes to Saudis, Russians, and east Asians;

34/ the details of these transactions remain interred with his undisclosed tax returns. In short, both men used exactly the global financial structures they decried in their populist appeals to create the appearance of secure wealth nytimes.com/2016/08/21/us/…

35/ Finally, both fiercely resisted inquiries into their affairs to protect both their businesses and their carefully curated public images.

36/ 6. Propaganda doesn't sell
Ford had to give away his thinking. He ordered his car dealers to press Independent subscriptions on automobile buyers, then forced them to give the paper away at their own expense in order to meet circulation quotas. sup.org/books/title/?i…

37. Trump’s resorts bought thousands of copies of The Art of the Deal to sell to visitors and ended up comping them just to move the inventory.

38/ 7. Suck-ups only need apply
Ford surrounded himself with sycophants and like-minded racists who encouraged his baser instincts and promoted his brand. His prolific catalogue of public statements left reporters confused as to what he really meant, and enablers such as

39/ Independent editor William J. Cameron and private secretary Ernest Liebold routinely “explained” to the press what Mr. Ford intended to convey. Anyone who questioned Ford’s business strategies or undermined his commercial and cultural brand got the boot.

39/ Even loyalists such as Cameron and Liebold eventually outlived their usefulness and yet in retirement continued to explain—and defend—the boss.

40/ Trump, too, works in a bubble constructed by a small coterie of advisors who tell him what he wants to hear and do not trouble him with inconvenient facts, even when pandemic threatens the lives of the people he is supposed to serve. washingtonpost.com/politics/34-da…

41/ Roger Stone, Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn and many more have lied, laundered money, and served jail time for Trump, long past the point when rational minds wonder what is in it for them. Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s racist state, is Trump’s Ernest Liebold,

42/ writing his speeches and coaching him on contextually appropriate allusions. univision.com/univision-news…

43/ Americans need not wonder where Trump gets his racist program from. We should worry about where he will go with it next. Praising the bloodlines of his commercial and political model was merely the latest of his unsubtle cues, this one with a eugenic flair.

44/end Trump doesn’t have to quote Ford directly to signal his allegiance to Ford’s racism. It’s up to Americans to decode the signals and stand up for what they value. We never repudiated Ford. It's time now to sweep both him and Trump aside.

Forgot my tags:
#twitterstorians #HenryFord #Antisemitism #Bloodlines #racism

@tribelaw @LarryGlickman @pastpunditry @werehist @womnknowhistory @jbf1755 @agordonreed @thelauracoates @BillKristol @DavidAstinWalsh @KevinLevin @WriteLeungWrite @n_hold @waltshaub @msnbc I’m pretty proud of this; want to make sure you see it

@SethCotlar just in case

@threadreaderapp unroll please