Henry Ford Contests An Election (1918)

This Day in Esoteric Political History

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6 • 982 Ratings

🗓️ 14 November 2023

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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It’s November 14th. This day in 1918, famed industrialist Henry Ford starts to raise questions about the result of the Michigan Senate election, in which he lost by a narrow margin.

Jody, NIki, and Kellie discuss why Ford is contesting the vote, how it ties into his growing conspiratorial and anti-Semitic mindset — and how the worlds of business and politics began to meld in this era.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.
0:07.0	My name is Jody Avergan.
0:09.0	This day, November 14th, 1918, Henry Ford starts to press for a recount in his race against Truman
0:19.1	Newberry after losing the 1918 Senate election in Michigan a couple weeks earlier.
0:25.2	This was yes that Henry Ford, one of the wealthiest and most prominent businessmen in the
0:29.3	country taking a foray into electoral politics.
0:32.8	He ran a somewhat haphazard campaign, no real strategy mostly banking on his name recognition,
0:38.2	and then after at first accepting the results of the election,
0:41.2	he started to have second thoughts that maybe
0:43.7	something fishy had happened and he began to agitate and whip up his supporters
0:47.4	and facts be damned in the end he did manage to take down Newberry by
0:51.8	muddying the waters and painting his opponent as illegitimate.
0:56.0	So folks, does this sound like a familiar pattern and familiar behavior?
0:59.6	Not to mention the fact that Ford built much of his political career on xenophobia and paranoia.
1:04.8	I promise we won't try and spend the whole time drawing parallels to now, but this is a really
1:09.1	fascinating story. We haven't talked about Ford and politics before, so I'm glad we are getting to this
1:14.8	here as always Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wesley.
1:18.8	Hello there.
1:19.8	Hello Jody.
1:20.8	Hey there.
1:21.5	I'm curious and we'll get you know we should get into this but just very quickly did you read this story and say like oh my gosh Trump Trump.
1:27.6	Trump. Paralleles parallels parallels or is that just kind of the head space I'm in?
	...

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