Much of the news coverage about the Republican Party’s creation of a new America First Award for President Donald J. Trump has focused on the name of the award being out of sync with the President’s actions in some people’s view.
A few of the many examples:
Is starting a major war against Iran, which has begun to claim American lives, while also causing gasoline prices to skyrocket, really putting America First?
Is shutting down the government and thus creating hours-long lines and inconvenience to get through airport security really putting America First?
Is the deployment of thousands of ICE officers, taught to use violence and avoid judicial process to round up and deport U.S. citizens and long-term residents of color who have done little or nothing illegal, really putting America First?
The problem here is that the answer to all of these questions is framed by politics – the 40 percent of Americans who support the President versus the 56 percent who do not.
There are no new issues in this discussion.
There should be. Here is one that is being ignored.
Where are the voices of people who object to an America First Award for the President because the name, America First, originated at a dark time in American history?
It is a name that is inextricably linked to racism and antisemitism.
It is a name that should embarrass the group that thought it up and the man who accepted it. It should horrify the rest of us, regardless of political party.
The America First Committee was formed in September 1940, a time when unemployment in the U.S. was running at the frightening rate of 12 to 13 percent, Germany had started World War II with its invasion of Poland a year earlier, and the Holocaust had begun with Jews being imprisoned and murdered in large numbers in Eastern Europe.
A growing number of people in America wanted no part of another war in Europe. Among other things, the debt from World War I had been $25 billion, the equivalent of $500 trillion today.
The leaders of America First included Charles Lindbergh, likely the second most popular person in America, behind only President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was about to win an unprecedented third term, and Henry Ford, the Elon Musk of his time in terms of wealth and influence.
Ford and Lindbergh both were supporters of Hitler and the Nazi movement, and both proudly received medals from Nazi Germany.
Ford was a supporter of the Ku Klux Klan, and, although he readily employed African Americans in his automotive plants, the positions they held were concentrated in the foundry, where the jobs were the most dangerous and conditions the most unpleasant.
Ford also used a portion of his enormous wealth to create and disseminate vitriolic antisemitic literature nationwide. He acquired and became the publisher of a newspaper that was entirely dedicated to antisemitic lies and attacks. He required all of his Ford dealerships in the country to distribute copies of the weekly newspaper and to have them available for reading in their showrooms.
Footnote: One Ford dealership – just one – finally refused to comply and surrendered its Ford franchise. The franchise was owned and operated by a Jewish family in Sioux City, Iowa. Here’s my Substack newsletter about that family.
Lindbergh, meanwhile, found antisemitism a useful tool in building support for isolationism.
The Jews of America were one of the major forces pushing the country toward war, Lindbergh said repeatedly. The Jews posed a danger to America, he said, because of their “large ownership and interest in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government.” The unstated implication was that the Jews were promoting war because they could profit from it.
The Jews, he added, “wish to involve us in war” for “reasons which are not American.”
He also warned against the “infiltration of inferior blood” within what he considered America’s native bloodline, the Western Europeans.
The America First isolation effort collapsed quickly following the attack at Pearl Harbor.
It arose again, however, during the war with some of the leaders of the earlier effort – not Lindbergh or Ford – creating the America First party, which looked and smelled like its namesake as it embraced racist and antisemitic views.
Gerald L. K. Smith was the party’s presidential candidate in 1944. Almost 48 million people voted in that election. Smith received 1,780 votes.
America finally got it right in 1944, turning its back on America First and what it stood for. Unfortunately, however, the name now has resurfaced, and the evils associated with that name, racism and antisemitism, are on the rise.
It is time to rid America once again of the name of the organization that stood for racism and antisemitism, while also targeting the prejudices represented by that organization.
Thank you for reading Arnold Garson: Second Thoughts . . .
. . . a part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, which represents more than 60 professional writers with Iowa roots. My goal today was to provide an enjoyable, informative, or worthwhile reading experience – ideally, two or three of these things. Although my subject matter is widely varied in an increasingly specialized Substack world, I hope you may view this diversity as added value that promotes thought. But I digress. This newsletter is and will remain free. Which makes me all the more appreciative of those who choose to contribute. I am deeply grateful for such entirely voluntary support. In response, I will give all net proceeds to nonprofit organizations that promote freedom of speech or cover local news in the Midwest. As a paid subscriber, you are thus encouraging me to continue writing so that both of us may effect some overall good for our society. Best wishes and happy reading.
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