By Brigitte L. Nacos
Henry Ford, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, had the foresight to produce the first automobile that was affordable for the middle class. But the successful industrialist, who became one of the wealthiest persons of his time, was also a staunch antisemite. To spread anti-Jewish biases, he purchased in The Dearborn Independent, for which he wrote a series of conspiratorial articles about the so-called global Jewish threat. After some of those racist articles were published in book-form and translated into several foreign languages, Germany’s Adolf Hitler made no secret of his admiration for Ford’s anti-Jewish tracts. Indeed, in 1938 Hitler awarded Ford with the “Grand Cross of the German Eagle,” Germany’s highest award for foreigners.
A century later, Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla Motors, had the foresight to build electric vehicles that were applauded for their environmental benefits. Once he became the richest man in the world, Musk bought the social media platform Twitter and altered it into a far-right online media named X that did not fact-check certain hate speech. The day Trump was inaugurated, Musk used the “Heil Hitler” salute in his appearance before a celebrating MAGA crowd. Six days later, he gave his explicit support to the neo-Nazi Alternative fuer Deutschland (AfD) Party in Germany declaring in his virtual speech that it was time for Germany to “move on” from “past guilt.” His listeners understood what he meant, namely, that the German people should simply forget about the holocaust and the death of six million Jews during Hitler’s Third Reich.
Henry Ford was a politically influential player in the first decades of the 20th century. But neither Ford nor any other unelected person was ever given so much direct decision-making power as Musk got within the first two weeks of the Trump regime. That was his award for donating $277 million to the Trump campaign 2024.
The other day, it was reported that Musk and his minions gained unprecedented access to the Treasury Department’s records of the recipients of government payments. One can only assume that this is a key to the work of his imaginary Department of Government Efficiency and/or the new rule of revenge in the administration. The abrupt closing of the USAID agency’s headquarters and its work around the world is also part of the executive power grabs at the expense of the legislative branch.
The Republican majorities in both houses of the Congress are on their knees and not willing to defend their constitutional roles. Many are happy sycophants; others know better but are afraid of MAGA’s revenge against anyone not 100 percent behind the authoritarian rule of the oligarchs.
Those, who criticize congressional Democrats for not fighting what is unfolding, forget the restrictive role of the minority. It is only, when the negative consequences of the just started tariff war and other ill-advised policies of the current administration hit home in the electorate, that Democrats can and must blame those who caused the dilemmas to come…
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