[Peace-discuss] Anyone want this book?

[Robert Naiman]

Are there any markings in the books that indicate their ownership by
someone who lived in Champaign County?

My wife directs the Champaign County Historical Archive which is housed at
the Urbana Free Library. She might be interested if we can document the
ownership of the books by someone who lived in Champaign County. There's
stuff in the archives about the Klan in Champaign County, showing how
"upstanding members" of Champaign County society were members. There's
stuff in the archives about sundown towns in Champaign County, towns where
black people were not welcome under threat after sundown.

So maybe they'd be interested in a historical record of how someone in
Champaign County owned and was perhaps influenced by *The International
Jew, *which was a collection of Ford's antisemitic articles from *The
Dearborn Independent, *and which was cited by leading Nazis, including
Hitler himself, as a significant inspiration to them, including at the
Nuremberg trials.

Ford was a hugely influential character in American history; it might be
useful to try to understand him better.

Ford was a passionate anti-Semite and fiercely anti-union, even compared to
other industrialists at the time; Ford was the last automaker to sign a
contract with the UAW, and Ford did everything he could to sabotage the
negotiations, even threatening to break up the company rather than accept a
UAW contract; reportedly he relented after his wife threatened to divorce
him if he broke up the company.

On the other hand, Ford was genuinely concerned about the well-being of
workers, not only in his own company, but in the economy as a whole; he
reduced work hours and increased wages compared to other employers, partly
because he believed this would increase productivity, partly because he
believed that workers should have more leisure so they could buy more
stuff. The idea of the Model T was to build a car that workers could afford
to buy, so that owning and driving a car wouldn't be a luxury exclusive to
the super-rich. Ford hired black workers, more than others at the time. And
Ford was a pacifist. He believed that war was substantially caused by war
profiteers who sought to get rich from war production [we don't need to
look beyond the U.S. role in the Saudi war in Yemen to see how right he was
about that.] He also believed that war could be substantially prevented by
ensuring widespread prosperity, an idea that is now commonplace.

I think we're better off overall acknowledging that all these ideas existed
in the same person and had huge influence for both good and evil; and how
the good ideas Ford had - and the fact that they were too rare at the time
- helped propel and give currency to the evil ideas. The parallels to Trump
are obvious. Many liberals are horrified by the currency of Trump - as they
should be - without taking responsibility for how the failures of American
liberalism helped give rise to Trump, by creating a vacuum which Trump
could fill. If we want Trumpism to fail, we have to fill the vacuum with
something else that appeals to some of the people who were seduced by
Trump, not simply denounce Trump.


===

Robert Reuel Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
(202) 448-2898 x1






On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 3:52 AM John W. via Peace-discuss <
peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:

>
> Before I throw it in the trash, it occurred to me to wonder if any of you
> ultra-AWARE folks might want this book for your historical archives.  I
> found it among the free books on the bookshelf outside the Cancer Center at
> Carle.  I don't ordinarily throw books away, but I make an exception for
> books like this one:
>
> "The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem"  The Complete 4
> Volumes by Henry Ford.
>
> Let me know if you want it.
>
> John Wason
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss
>
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