The International Jew, by Henry Ford
The heading of this article presents difficulties. The correct use of the term "Gentile" is in question. It is a name that has been given us, not by ourselves, but by Jews, and it is by no means certain that it is accurately given. A very great chance exists that it is not. That, however, is a matter which "gentiles" do not bother to understand; they think, of course, that if one is not a Jew one must be a gentile This is only another instance of the Jewish view being "put over" without the "gentile" understanding or even questioning it. There is another difficulty: how shall one address "gentiles" collectively? When one addresses Jews he knows that the Jew is always a Jew; that every Jew acknowledges every other Jew; that Jews understand each other and are loyal to each other as against "outsiders"; that they think together and act together; that they stand together for Jewish defense, no matter how just the charge brought against them. When you address Jews you address a unit, and when you discuss Jews you get a united reaction from them. This cannot be said of gentiles. They are of many races, many nationalities, many religions, many tongues. They never think of themselves as being united under the name "gentiles." They are not race or class conscious; certainly they do not think of themselves as a unit with reference to the Jews as an opposite unit. "Gentiles" cannot be organized into one group nationally, let alone internationally, as Jews can. Jews of every shade of opinion, of every degree of religion and of unreligion, can unite all round the world, and do unite, having their own news service, their own telegraph service, their own "foreign department" (as they themselves describe it), by which they keep themselves united and informed for mass action. There is nothing even remotely approaching that among "gentiles." Not that this fact can be urged against the "gentiles" as a fault. There are reasons why the "gentiles" never can be united. And one reason is that among the so-called "gentiles" there is a regnant superior strain that is not "gentile" at all; no more is it Jewish. There are racial and moral strains among the non-Jewish section of the world which never can be brought into agreement. And, outside this superior strain, among the gentiles proper, the very basis for enduring union is lacking. So that the only union that can be expected is a union of the superior strain, which physically and morally is unconquerable, and whose task it is to liberate the lesser peoples who easily fall victims to subversion and have no reactive power to rescue themselves. It is to this human Gulf Stream that flows through the ocean of humanity, blessing it, that this address is offered. As to the identity of this section of humanity — "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." The others will not, because they cannot. There are many genuine gentiles mixed up in our common population, but it is not to them that these words are offered. The Jewish Question has existed for a long time, as the Jew knows and admits, and is a consequence of certain un-Jewish, or rather un-Israelitish ideas held by Jewish persons of power. The disability under which the Jew labors is that he is not a Jew, properly speaking, and does not desire to be. Just at that point is the soil and the root of the Jewish Question. Tackling the Jewish Question is not congenial work. The Race which this article now addresses has always shrunk from tackling it. Our Race has little disposition to chastise any portion of humanity, to arouse feeling or resist it. We have little taste for this surgical work which becomes absolutely necessary when certain corrupt influences deeply dislocate and seriously injure the common life. Nothing but a clear vision of the danger, nothing but an imperative sense of duty would impel any one of us to embark on a course which is subject to misunderstanding and which must, in the nature of things, wait long for its complete justification. Our Race is too fair, and has always been too fair, to enter hastily into judgement — and upon this fairness and long-suffering the offending groups have often seriously trespassed. Regarded by itself, as a separate entity, the Jewish Power is most impressive. International Jews today occupy literally every controlling lever of power. Building up for centuries, perfecting their teamwork from generation to generation, from country to country, they have practically reached the summit. Nothing but the Christian religion remains unvanquished by them, though through false "liberalism" even that has felt the Jewish assault. So great is this power that the very knowledge of it kills hope that any movement can ever dislodge it. Earnest, honest men have walked around it, surveyed it, measured its strength, and have given up the dream of changing it. In Russia they tried to segregate it, but while segregation went on from one side, infiltration proceeded from the other, and even the "anti-Semitic" Russian Government was honey-combed with Jews, as the end showed. In Germany they endeavored to vote the Jewish power out of politics, only to find the root deep-set in finance — and no country has yet attacked the sacred image of gold. In England the policy of absorption was adopted, and the result is that wherever a Jew was put in power the British Empire has reaped trouble, in Ireland, in India, in Palestine, the present vice-regents of all these possessions being Jews. Other little countries, exasperated beyond endurance, tried violence and failed just as miserably as the others. Why? Because every one of these methods is precisely the method that the Jew prefers to have people try. He knows their futility first; they find it out later. He knows how these methods positively help him; they discover that later. The knowledge thus won would be pure gain, were it not that it also seems to discourage the hope of men who know how seriously wrong the situation is. Besides this massive array of power, immovable as it appears, there is the veil cast over the Christian mind as to the supposedly peculiar destiny of "God's chosen people." The Christian cannot read the Bible except through Jewish spectacles, and, therefore, reads it wrong. The idea of "the chosen people" is one of the two great biblical ideas, but that the Jews constitute this Chosen People is entirely opposed to the statement of the Bible — even of the Bible which the Jews acknowledge, the Old Testament of the Christians. The blessings of world possession, world rule, superior population, commercial greatness, military power, constituted governments, "a great nation and a company of nations" — all of these means by which to spread light and healing among the nations — were truly promised to one people, to Israel, not to Judah. Judah's destiny was to be quite different. Very few Bible readers ever note the distinction between the House of Israel and the House of Judah, yet this distinction was marked from the time of Jacob; the prophets absolutely insist upon it. Israel seceded from Judah, being unable to live with that people any longer. Israel's destiny took them out into the world, and if the Bible be true, then Israel's destiny of greatness is being fulfilled in Israel, and not in Judah. The two Houses are distinct to this day, although a future reunion, a spiritual reunion, is promised to come. Yet the false idea that the Jews constitute All Israel has penetrated the Christian consciousness to an alarming extent, so that when the Jewish press insists, as it does every week, "We gave you your God, we gave you your Bible, we gave you your Christ," even Christian ministers cannot find an answer. The answer is that the Old Testament is nine-tenths an Israelitish book, and not a Jewish book. Abraham was not a Jew; Isaac was not a Jew; Jacob was not a Jew; Moses was not a Jew; Joshua was not a Jew; Gideon was not a Jew; Samuel was not a Jew; even Esther and Mordecai were not Jews, but Benjamites; the majority of the prophets were not Jews, but Israelites. Upon the coming of Judah into power, in the persons of David and Solomon, the misrule was so great that Israel seceded, and the secession was sanctioned by the prophets. In the New Testament, Jesus Christ found his disciples in Galilee, far out of Judea, and of them there was but one, Judas, whose name indicates that he was a Jew. St. Paul was of the tribe of Benjamin, "the light tribe," which was left with Judah "for a light." But there is a constant patter of preaching (the Russellites make it the great theme) that "the Jews are to rule the world because it is so prophesied." The amazing blindness with which Christians have regarded the open pages of their Bible is the only explanation of this one-sided teaching which is confusing to the Christians and exceedingly dangerous to the Jews. In the Bible, Israel is the Chosen People of Blessing, and the time is announced when Judah shall walk to Israel and recognize them and become one with them. There is a chosen racial breed, a select seed, a superior strain of blood and soul in the world, but it is not Judah. One thing, therefore, that Christians can do, as a contribution to the solution of the Jewish Question, is to read their Bibles carefully. The Jewish Question will be solved, and its solution will begin in the United States. But that does not mean that it will come as the result of a popular movement. Great changes do not occur that way. It makes little difference whether the mass of the people see the Question or not; the mass of the people are not always called into such matters. Their work is to hold the world steady while the change takes place. But a sufficient number of qualified persons have seen the Question to insure that now the era of solution has set in. The timid, the soft literary men in pulpits (with whose ilk Jeremiah had a keen acquaintance), the false preachers of "Peace, peace," the hush brothers and sisters of every name, the shallow shouters for "fairness," and all who are afraid of the truth in its surgical forms — these have no place in the healing of the hurt of these times; they are wedded to their softness. Nothing has been more shameful in the last two years than the spectacle of men bidding for the applause of bootleggers, and gamblers, and the lecherous masters of the modern stage, and the sinister Kehillah, and the anti-Christian American Jewish Committee, because, forsooth, some one has fulfilled the duty to tell the truth. However, these things must always be, and the evil influences among the Jews have learned just what kind of help they may expect and from what kind of people. THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT has not been making a fight but fulfilling a duty to shed light on a matter crying for light. THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT, therefore, has never urged any individual or organization to join it in this work. Nor has it charged with cowardice those who for prudential or other reasons have kept silent. Editors especially have been absolved; not one of them was asked to lend his aid, although the files of this office hold thousands of written assurances from newspaper men all over the land, and from all parts of the world, testifying to the truth of our statements. Organizations have been proposed, for various purposes; strong organizations have offered themselves as vehicles for the carrying out of any plan THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT might propose. But all such undertakings have been avoided, our belief being that simply to state the truth and let it work its own right will, was sufficient at this time. And to that belief and policy we have adhered. "But what shall we do?" is the constant question; "How shall we balk this system which surrounds us and infects so much of our common life?" Observe it, identify it, eschew it — that is more powerful than active opposition. The clear eye of the man who sees and understands is something that even the evil powers of Jewry cannot endure. But the most potent action any awakened person can take is this: to erect again our own moral landmarks, which the Oriental Jewish invasion has broken down. This would spell sheer doom to the whole evil system sponsored by the Jews. And this is the course which has never been tried. To go back to the principles which made our race great, the principles to which we have been recreant and therefore have fallen an easy prey — this is the only invincible course. It is an opposition which evil Jews cannot understand and cannot defeat. In place of the way of doing business which Jewish dealers have introduced, let the business men of the country adopt the old way of the white man, when a man's word was as good as his bond, and when business was service and not exploitation. Let the men and women of the country learn how to buy, let them learn how to test quallity in fabric and food, instead of being dependent on price tags. The merchandising practices of this country, in the hands of ruthless exploiters, have all but ruined honest merchants. Let any dweller in a great city recall the last twenty years, how the Christian merchants have been growing fewer and fewer. Why? Is it because the owners of Jewish department stores are better business men? No! The Jewish merchants began the practice of filling their store windows with goods that looked like the goods in reputable merchants' windows, and sold them for a much lower price. The helpless public, no longer able to determine the quality of goods, and guided solely by price tags, flocked to the Jews' store. The result is that one hears everywhere in ordinary conversation the complaint that "everything is shoddy." Of course it is, and it will remain so, until we educate people in the art of buying. That of itself will break down three-fourths of the abuses practiced in the commercial world today. Another contribution that can be made to the defeat of Jewish subversive influence is the examination of so-called "liberal" ideas, their source, their effect, their whole tendency. Men are thinking ideas today that poison them morally, socially and economically. These ideas are as deliberately shot into society as poison gas was shot into ranks of soldiers in France. Our mental hospitality has been grossly abused, the public mind has been made a sewer. The time has come for a custom barrier to be raised for the examination of imported ideas. Unrestricted immigration of ideas has been as bad for the American mentality as unrestricted immigration of people has been for American society. We have taken our amusements withought thought of what was behind them in the way of deliberate intent to make us common and careless and coarse. We have read our newspapers, wholly innocent of the propaganda mixed with the news. We have even taken our religion in a Judaized form, without toubling to inquire whether it squared with the Bible, the textbook of religion. We have read our novels and have failed to see what serum the author was injecting along with his story. And all this has been possible because we have been asleep, enjoying, as we thought, a life which was swiftly taken from us, and dreaming that the old principles still held sway. It is perfectly obvious that the cure for all this is to become awake, alert, to challenge the foreign influence, and to seek out again the principles that gave us our greatness. We have been weaned away from our natural leaders. We have been taught to look to those who cannot speak our language and who do not hold our institutions dear. A people that turns from its own leaders, or a people whose leaders have been turned from the sacred responsibilities of the high office of leading, is in a precarious position, and becomes an easy victim to confusion of soul. There is a dearth of voices in the land today, the prophets are dumb, or are reading beautiful essays to the people. Suspicion has been sowed like darnel seed between classes of the same race, the people have been broken up, and the subversive Jewish influence supports the oligarchy of unserviceable wealth at one end of the social scale, while it stimulates the baser elements of industrial unrest at the other end. And the race thus rent asunder to its own undoing, does not see this — capital does not see, and labor does not see — that the leaders of chaos are alien in blood and soul. To keep American and Christian the school, the church, the legislature, the jury room and the Government, is the most potent resistance that can be made to the evil influences that have been upon us and that this series of articles has partly uncovered. The strength of all subversive influence is in proportion as we cease to be what we ought to be. The evil influences surrounding this people can succeed only as they change this people into something less than it ought to be. Therefore, to go back to the old landmarks, whereby we made all the progress we ever made, is not only the part of wisdom, but the need of the hour. The school must be cleansed. The jury box must be kept inviolate — trial by jury has almost disappeared in Jewish New York. The church must be un-Judaized and Christianized. The Government must be Americanized. Let there be the utmost freedom of thought and speech, but let there be also with it a discrimination which will prevent the people being victimized by every spurious idea, every "gold brick" economic proposal which comes along. It needs only that men be awake to their better interests and to leave no place in their scheme of life for the practices which destroy the very foundations of confidence. Surely it must be understood by this time that the Jews rule, not by reason of their brilliance or their money, but by ideas which are not even properly Jewish, but Babylonian. They have captured the castle from within. They have been able to do so only because of our ignorance of the lineage and dignity of the stock of ideas upon which our civilization has been founded. Our people needs to engraft itself again on the parent tree and draw again the sustenance which made it great and fruitful. Many so-called "gentiles" are somewhat affected by the Jews' wails of "persecution." This has been sufficiently discussed in previous articles, but "gentiles" can further contribute to the solution of the Jewish Question by looking about them to see if they can discover any evidence of "persecution" here — unless it be persecution of the Christians by the organized agencies of the Jews! In this month's Atlantic Monthly a Jewish rabbi, who undoubtedly knows better, assumes that his race is a hated race. He rather enjoys the thought and accepts it as a distinctive honor. Our "gentile" might also observe how untrue this is — how, indeed, in this mixture of nations, the Jew gets off with less even of the harmless kind of racial animosity than any other foreign admixture. Above all, the "gentile," so-called, who in ninety cases out of every one hundred is no gentile at all (as the Jews may well admit) will do well to avoid fear. Nothing is more abject than "the fear of the Jew," and nothing more disastrous to the Jew than the tactics he employs to sustain that fear. The Jewish subversive power has been powerful only for evil and only where there was a disposition to evil. It has never yet succeeded in bringing shame or confusion to the right. Indeed, there is one sure way of gaining the respect of the Jew, and that is, Tell The Truth. No one knows better than the Jew whether statements made about Jews are true or not. "Gentiles" may never be certain whether a statement made about the Jews may be relied upon, but Jews always know. That is why prejudice, abuse, hatred, scorn, ridicule, false charges roll off them as water off a duck. The Jews have never in all their history feared the lies of their enemies; but they have feared the truth. And if they only fear the truth in the ancient sense, not to be afraid of it but to fear to violate it, and to fear to have the truth testify against them, then the day of Judah's return to standing has come. The truth is Judah's friend, and Israel's friend, and the world's friend. It makes hard demands; it is sometimes not easy to speak and harder still to hear; but the truth heals, as Judah is due to discover. There is this to say, that among the many thousands of persons who have written to THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT confirming out of their own observation and experience the statements made in this series of articles, there has been a most gratifying absence of the spirit of violence. At the beginning a few rabid Jew-baiters made themselves known and expressed their hope that at last a regular program of pogroms was to be instituted. We never knew how far these advances were made with knowledge of the Jewish leaders, but we do know that for a year and a half in this United States the Jewish press, and Jewish thugs, and Jewish politicians, and even some of the most respectable of the Jewish organizations did their utmost, and in some of the strangest ways, to compel this Study of the Jewish Question to lead into violence and disorder. There was nothing that the Jewish leaders more desperately desired or more tirelessly worked for. That was their first setback. Everywhere else in the world they had always been able to foment this sort of thing and label it "anti-Semitism." The label "anti-Semitism" is one of the choicest weapons in the Jewish armory. But in the United States their plan failed. It is their first notification that in this country the Question is going to be solved; it is not to be given a new lease of life by following the old mistakes. THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT knows the temper of the American people in this question, that it is cool, fair, and somewhat more determined than it formerly was. But the Jews know this temper better than anyone else. Hence the magnitude and superb rashness of the propaganda with which they are literally flooding the country. THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT is grateful for the flood of Jewish propaganda. It has served in hundreds of important cases to give the confirmation to our statements which was wanted. Jewish literature has been a powerful informer of the gravity of the Jewish Question in the United States. The result was not what the Jewish leaders wished, of course, but it was serviceable to the truth just the same. Now that the Question is open, now that the press is able to print "Jew" when necessary, now that a bunch of keys has been provided by which the people may unlock doors and make further inquiries, THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT will follow other aspects of the Question, discussing them from time to time as circumstances may warrant. [THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT, issue of 14 January 1922] |