Mitt Romney is preparing to kick off his presidential campaign at the Henry Ford Museum. This is not parody. And of all of the places to begin a campaign, why kick it off at the museum honoring Ford unless you want to burnish your nativist credentials in the face of fundamentalist questions about Mormonism? Romney’s campaign will symbolically play the anti-immigration card even at the peril of being associated with anti-Semitism and Nazism.
From the AP story:
Romney will use The Henry Ford museum in suburban Detroit tomorrow as a backdrop for his presidential announcement.
The National Jewish Democratic Council say doing so goes against Romney's rhetoric of inclusiveness and understanding of all people.
The group noted Ford's history of anti-Semitism. Adolph Hitler bestowed Ford with the Grand Service Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle.
And now for some samples of Ford's writing that might not appear in the Henry Ford Museum.
From the International Jew, Ford’s own Protocols of the Elders of Zion:
"If there is one quality that attracts Jews, it is power. . . Wherever the seat of power may be, thither they swarm obsequiously."
And, though it was too early to deny the Holocaust, Ford, ever the innovator, did deny the reality of pogroms:
"This propaganda of pogroms – ‘thousands upon thousands of Jews killed’ – amounts to nothing except as it illustrates the gullibility of the Press. . . No one believes this propaganda and governments regularly disprove it."
And ever wonder why baseball has gone into a tailspin? Ford knows the answer.
"If ‘fans’ wish to know the trouble with American baseball, they have it in three words – too much Jew."
And for these courageous efforts, Adolph Hitler singled out Ford for praise in Mein Kampf:
"Every year makes them [the Jews] more and more the controlling masters of the producers in a nation of one hundred and twenty millions; only a single great man, Ford, to their fury, still maintains full independence."
I guess that’s what the Romney spokesperson refers to as Ford’s "bold, innovative spirit."
From Ken Silverstein’s article in The Nation, "Ford and the Führer: New Documents Reveal the Close Ties Between Dearborn and the Nazis":
Ford eagerly collaborated with the Nazis, which greatly enhanced its business prospects and at the same time helped Hitler prepare for war (and after the 1939 invasion of Poland, conduct it). . . . While Ford Motor enthusiastically worked for the Reich, the company initially resisted calls from President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Churchill to increase war production for the Allies. The Nazi government was grateful for that stance, as acknowledged in a letter from Heinrich Albert to Charles Sorenson, a top executive in Dearborn. Albert had been a lawyer for German Ford since at least 1927, a director since 1930 and, according to the Treasury report, part of a German espionage ring operating in the United States during World War I. "The 'Dementi' of Mr. Henry Ford concerning war orders for Great Britain has greatly helped us," Albert wrote in July of 1940, shortly after the fall of France, when England appeared to be on the verge of collapse before the Führer's troops.
So message received, Mitt Romney: the way to shift attention away from your own minority religious status is to trash another minority religion! Wrap yourself in the cloak of xenophobia and maybe, just maybe fundamentalists won’t remember that you’re not one of them.
What a way to kick off a campaign. Where to next, Mitt? The Father Charles Coughlin Center?