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
Running alongside all this was the “ragtime” style of music which was a
legitimate development of Negro minstrelsy. Lyrics practically
disappeared before the numerous “cake walk” songs that deluged the
public ear. “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight”—the
marching song of the Spanish-American War, belongs to that period. The
“black and tan” resorts of the South began to reign over the nation’s
music both North and South. Seductive syncopation captured the public
ear. The term, “ma baby,” brought in on the flood of Negro melody has
remained in uncultivated musical speech ever since. Minstrelsy took on
new life. “Piano acts” made their appearance. “Jazz bands” were the
rage.
By insensible gradations, now easily traceable through the litter of
songs with which recent decades are strewn, we have been able to see the
gradual decline in the popular song supply. Sentiment has been turned
into sensuous suggestion. Romance has been turned into eroticism. The
popular lilt slid into ragtime, and ragtime has been superseded by jazz.
Song topics became lower and lower until at last they were dredges of
the slimy bottom of the underworld.
The first self-styled “King of Jazz” was a Jew named “Frisco.” The
general directors of the whole downward trend have been Jews. It needed
just their touch of cleverness to camouflage the moral filth and raise
it half a degree above that natural stage where it begets nothing but
disgust. They cannot gild the lily, but they can veil the skunk-cabbage,
and that is exactly what has been done. The modern popular song is a
whited sepulcher, sparkling without, but within full of the dead bones
of all the old disgusting indecencies. Plain print returns them to their
rightful status of disgust.
We are now in the period of “The Vamp”—that great modern goddess upon
whom tens of thousands of silly girls are modeling themselves—“The
Vamp.” The original “vamp” is to be found in a forbidden French novel
upon which Morris Gest founded his grossly immoral spectacle called
“Aphrodite.” In the Jewish popular song and the Jewish motion picture
film a unity has at last been reached in “The Vamp.” The vamp heroine
and the harem scene—a fitting climax!
There is work here for the Anti-Defamation League. That league knows how
to put the screws on anyone who disparages the Jews. From important New
York publishers, down to inconsequential country newspapers, the
Anti-Defamation League makes its power felt. There is work for it in the
movies and the popular song industry. Why does not the league put the
screws on those Jews who have degenerated the movies and debauched the
popular song movement and thus brought shame upon the racial name? Why
not? Is it possible that only the non-Jews are to be controlled, and
Jews let to run loose? Is it possible that “Gentiles” can be curbed as
by bridle and bit and that Jews cannot?
It is repeated: there is work for the Anti-Defamation League among the
Jews.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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