Henry Ford and Father Coughlin Love the Jews

Update: I can't possibly do this subject justice during breakfast, but this is simply a quick "off the top of my head" writeup. I'll be the first to admit that it contains simplifications and generalizations of Coughlin's speech. But that doesn't mean he wasn't a dirtbag.

From the May 28, 1927 issue of The New Yorker:

A visitor calling on the Marxes in their dressing-room, incidentally, arrived just as another gentleman departed. "That fellow you saw leaving," explained Harpo (of the red wig), "is the greatest salesman in the world...He must be, because he just convinced two Marx Brothers that Henry Ford loves the Jews, and sold them Lincoln cars."

Henry Ford's extreme anti-semitism is no secret, but this reminds me of another psycho, this one Canadian: Father Coughlin.

I make it a habit (or rather a duty) to listen to every old time radio show that comes my way. The wonderful otrcat site includes comprehensive "samplers" of shows when you order from them, so even though I haven't purchased the Father Coughlin collection, I still listened to one of his 1938 broadcasts called "Jew, Christian, and Persecution."

I don't have a lot of time for racists, and that includes anti-semites. It's always confused me that certain people (including Ernst Zundel, who was just sentenced to jail in Germany and who used to live across the street from a friend of mine in Toronto) stereotype Jews as being incredibly capable on one hand -- able to control the entire WORLD, apparently -- but incredibly inferior on the other. If one race has managed to dominate the financial and political machinery throughout the entire world then the rest of us are a bunch of lazy bums.

So sitting through an hour of Father Coughlin wasn't my favourite thing to do, but it did hammer home the lessons that racists -- and ideologues in general -- use to twist the facts.

The most disgusting and cynical technique of all is false sympathy. He repeatedly and vehemently sympathises with the Jewish victims of persecution in Germany...then proceeds to blame them for their persecution. And this is how he does it:

1. In Russia, the Czar treated the people well (he never states this outrageous claim, but it's a necessary unspoken premise for everything that follows).
2. The only reason that the people suffered was because the bankers in Russia were greedy.
3. Jews dominate the banking community, therefore the Jews made the people in Russia suffer (pogroms, anyone?)
4. As a reaction to this Jew-created suffering, the people were willing to embrace any ideology that would save them.
5. So they embraced Communism, an idea developed and bankrolled by "secular Jews" (must of Father Coughlin's broadcast consists of his proving this link, but I don't think it's particularly relevant. Since Coughlin hates Communism almost as much as he hates the Jews, however, this link is important to him).
6. Communism is evil, not because it resulted directly and indirectly in the deaths of millions of people (which the world community wasn't much aware of in 1938) but because it's GODLESS, thanks to those secular Jews who developed and paid for it.
7. Nazism is sorta bad and represses people (Coughlin gives lip-service to Hitler's badness, but is most angry that people focus on the repression of Jews in Germany, and don't give equal time to repression of Christians...so one of Hitler's most heinous crimes is of eclipsing repression of Christians by repressing so many darn Jews).
8. Nazism is simply a response to the GODLESS THREAT OF COMMUNISM!

That's the big point of Coughlin's speech, which leads us to his final rhetorical swoop: since Jews are responsible for Communism, they are ALSO responsible for their own victimization in Germany! And as Coughlin ominously says, if communism isn't stamped out here in America, something akin to Nazism will arise in America as well, and the Jews will suffer.

But you see, Coughlin says he doesn't WANT the Jews to suffer (it's apparent that he really doesn't want Jews getting any sympathy). He really loves the Jews. Meanwhile, from the other side of his face he's exposing the Great Jewish Conspiracy to Spread Communism. So excuse me if I don't buy into his false sympathy routine.

Why am I mentioning all this? Because this is one of the most complicated and bizarre anti-semitic slippery slopes I've run across, and also because people have forgotten Father Coughlin, who was born in Hamilton Ontario so therefore not so very far from where I live. He's better left forgotten, but he is a potent reminder of how offensive hatred often hides itself as concern and defense.

PS: If it's any consolation, FDR managed to get Coughlin shut down in the early '40s. Not because of his antipathy towards Jews, but because of his opposition to FDR's policies, mainly as they regarded American entry into WWII.

PPS: And where did Hitler plan to relocate all the Jews in Europe? You guessed it: Madagascar.

The Roly-Poly Smokador

No, he's not rubbing a lit cigarette against this woman's wooden leg...he's using the Smokador, a product terminally advertised in the pages of The New Yorker! It's a tall ashtray with weighted bottom...tall enough for easy cigarette-snubbing, but balanced so it won't fall over when your guests bump into it (which happens a lot when they're drinking illegally-imported rubbing alcohol with a label on it that says "scotch.")

Even better you can place the Smokador in the center of a group of rebellious flappers, and they can easily tip it towards each other when they want to deposit their ashes. Not to mention that the column of the Smokador is hollow, so the ashes drop down into the base, supposedly creating a less smokey environment (or, I suspect, an environment in which the smoke just puffs out of the ashtray in a more stale and concentrated form).

A few weeks ago Vanilla commented that advertisements used to be wordier. As far as I can tell this was the case until the mid '60s, which was probably when advertisers realized that people really DO buy stuff ONLY because of the pretty girl, and not because of the overblown, deceptive hyperbole in the ads. This Smokador article is a prime example of wordy advertisements, telling us not just the exact composition the metal but also repeating -- several times -- where the unit is most conveniently paced (they do not, sadly, mention Madagascar as a placement option).

The advert is FAR too long to quote, but I do need to mention that the Smokador has a "patented roly-poly 'Rock-a-by' base."

Gimme one in Chinese Red, please!

Happy Valentine's Day, Madagascar!

A few days ago I posted an impromptu distillation of William T. Vollmann's article about Madagascar ("The Jealous Ones"). I was struck by Vollmann's uncharacteristic dislike of pretty much everything he saw and everybody he met in that country (and I actually wrote the distillation before I'd gotten to the REALLY disturbing stuff).

What are the chances that somebody reading this blog is actually FROM Madagascar? It's a small world after all, and one reader made it clear that they didn't much like this characterization of their country.

Here at The Muffyblog we like to be fair to everybody except Anna Nicole Smith. Aware that I should never swallow somebody's viewpoint without independent verification I decided to learn what OTHER people have to say about Madagascar. I figured I'd find all sorts of websites warning travellers away from the country...but other than comments that it "isn't for everybody" and that you shouldn't walk around outside at night, I couldn't find a single Vollmann-style negative comment about rampant thievery or people getting ammonia sprayed in their eyes. Shock!

I trust Vollmann's characterizations but in this case he's outnumbered. I don't know the real story -- I'd have to actually GO there to find out -- but I can at least say that if other people find the country as unpleasant as Vollmann did, they either aren't posting reviews online or they didn't survive to tell the tale.

So in the spirit of Valentine's day -- and since I don't have Somebody Special of my own -- I decided that MADAGASCAR is my valentine. To prove it, here's a picture of me comparing my ring-legs to a ring-tail, next to the Lemur who loves me:

Rising Up and Rising Down: Madagascar

After Vollmann's novellas about Cambodia (where all bad things are "just politics" and he manages to rescue a 12-year-old prostitute who turns out to be absolutely terrified of him) and the former Yugoslavia (where people constantly lie to him and he is unable to confirm anybody's stories, and where his car hits a landmine and he spends an hour in shock and fear lying behind the dead body of his childhood friend and the comatose, violently vomiting corpse-to-be of another journalist), Vollmann goes to Africa to learn more about violence and necessity. Because he hasn't learned enough, you see.

I promised myself that I'd find a nice -- but still emblematic -- excerpt to post here, but his story about Madagascar ("The Jealous Ones") is by far the most horrible one yet. He describes it as a place where the have-nots are constantly (and violently) taking from the haves, but even the haves are desperately poor...so everybody is essentially just stealing from everybody else. The anecdotes are less horrific, traumatic, and violent than those in the other stories, but the constant menace and extortion in "The Jealous Ones" is exhausting. And Vollmann is very good at describing the endless, exhausting sameness that breeds thoughtless violence.

It doesn't help that his interpreter/companion for this trip -- "O." -- is not a sympathetic character like the ones in other stories...she's 100% a product of the environment: poor, desperate, and terminally jealous. Apparently, in Madagascar, people are honest when they steal things from other people: they say they do it because they're jealous. And everybody there is jealous of everybody else, especially when somebody has a zebu.

But regardless. Here's probably the nicest emblematic statement I've read so far in "The Jealous Ones." This isn't a condemnation, it's a statement of fact:

When I think of Madagascar, I remember eroded roads and hills (they say that astronauts can see the erosion from the moon), jungle stumps with the soil between them now desert; I remember the smell of woodsmoke; I remember people's long skinny brown legs, and above all I remember dirty feet. Almost everybody goes barefoot. Beautiful women in dainty dresses think nothing of walking unshod through open sewers (or for that matter adding to them; Madagascar is one of those countries where one can excrete almost where one pleases, and people do; every day I'd see O. squat down in the middle of the street, urine slowly hissing between her bare or sandaled feet, and afterward she'd smile and say: Ah, darling, a very sweet piss!)