Jewish influences in American life : $b volume III of the International Jew, the world's foremost problem : being a reprint of a third selection from articles appearing in the Dearborn IndependentFord, Henry
Religion
Jewish influences in American life : $b volume III of the International Jew, the world's foremost problem : being a reprint of a third selection from articles appearing in the Dearborn Independent
Ford, Henry
Antisemitic literature; Jews -- United States; United States -- Ethnic relations
In the previous article it was rehearsed how Tammany besmirched its name
by association with Jews who used the organization as a protection for
their traffic in vice. This was in 1894. The revelations were so
terrible that in any other community they would have led to a complete
abolition of any possible chance of recovery, but as it was never made
plain to the people that the traffic in vice was not a sudden appearance
of rottenness among Americans, but was the normal activity of an alien
racial strain, the moral power of exposure was dissipated. The people
were left staggered by what they were allowed to believe about the
origin of the horror. People said it was Tammany because the press said
it was Tammany, and yet people could not understand how it could be
Tammany, and so in the midst of hesitancy the fire of reform burned out.
It was exactly like these days when we are told that “American business
men” abroad are doing terrible things; yet even while the press declares
them to be “American” we cannot understand how Americans could do such
things—and we never get the key to the matter, nor see the solution,
until we stumble on to the fact that these so-called “Americans” are not
Americans at all, but alien Jews. Over in Canada the name “American” is
becoming a stigma because it is borne by men who are not Americans. What
Canadians point out in the United States as definitely “American” is
mostly Jewish, but how are the Canadians to know? The national name
suffers. The whole cause of evil is camouflaged and a nation pays the
price of a racial group’s misdeeds. There should be some method of
protecting this forging of national names.
Thus Tammany became a synonym for what was not characteristically
Tammany at all, but what was characteristically Jewish.
The exposure of 1894 disclosed that vice was really a thing of cold
blood. Evil that springs from passion and impulse really amounts to far
less than is commonly supposed. It is when passion is deliberately
cultivated and impulse stimulated, that the great bulk of the world’s
social evil occurs. And this stimulation is undertaken in cold blood by
those who make profit out of providing the means of gratification—like
the old-fashioned bar keepers who served very salty free lunches to
stimulate the sale of beer.
This kind of vice is not a thing to be shamed by exposure as can be done
with involuntary vice, as it might be called. This cold-blooded
merchandising of human weakness was merely a matter of profits, and if
business had been interfered with by a Lexow Committee it was rather
unfortunate, but good business required that operations be resumed at
the earliest possible moment. And so, though the investigations of 1894
were successful and the exposure duly made, it was not to be expected
that mere oratory and printer’s ink would suffice to keep the serpent
down.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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