A businessman who revolutionized the automobile business decides that he now needs to change the way he thinks the world, so he buys a media property to use as a megaphone. Their diatribas validate the sausages of many people while encouraging the enemies of democracy worldwide.
This sounds like Elon Musk and its social media site X in 2025, but it was also Henry Ford and its article, The Dearborn Independent, in the 1920s. Ford, the inventor of the T model, bought a weekly suburban and remake it to boost its anti -Semitic views. The Dearborn Independent published a long -standing series called “The International Jew”, which blamed the Jews for the evils of the world, and advertised “the protocols of the elderly of Zion”, a deception document. The Nazis gave Ford a medal.
Ford was perhaps the most shameless example in a long tradition of the magnates who bought media platforms and then used them to promote hateful views. These magnates of the last technology used to reach the broader audience, either high -speed newspapers or, in the case of Ford, their automobile dealers network.
Conduct in its new T model and there would be the independent dearborn in the seat. The newspapers at that time were local companies. With the dealers, the Dearborn Independent became one of the highest documents of the country, printing more than 750,000 copies of each number in its peak.
The biggest difference between Ford and other media titans such as Rupert Murdoch was that the latter generally promoted his views hiring editors and anchors of related ideas. The Dearborn Independent announced on its cover that it was the “Ford International Weekly”, and included a full page editorial signed by Ford.
Mr. Musk’s actions point to a return to Ford’s personal approach. The billionaire of Tesla and Spacex public, replaced and backed by the incorrect or inflammatory statements about X that Social Security is fraudulent, that the Democrats are importing immigrants to win age elections aging judges that depend.
There are many precedents for what Mr. Musk is doing with X. But he has process tasks at an unimaginable level even recently. The site says it has 220 million followers, an impossible statement to verify. Even if it is only a fraction of that number, X has an optimized bone to expel the owners of its owner as widely as possible. People see them and listen to them.
The purchase of $ 44 billion of Mr. Musk of what was then Twitter in 2022 at the beginning seemed to be a mistake, only for him. He was then perceived as the toy of a billionaire. In last year’s elections, it became a weapon. He used his political views to form an alliance with Donald J. Trump, who then rummaged to be put in the government lover to close as much as possible.
The repercussions are still developing. But for Mr. Musk, it was a clear victory. In the name of government efficiency, agencies fired regulators who were in a position to supervise their empire. Mr. Musk now has a much more free hand with its cars and rockets. (An X spokesman did not provide a comment)
“This is not like anything we have seen,” said Rick Perlstein, author of a chronicle of four modern American canning volumes. Observing the frequent use of Mr. Musk of Memes and Images, the historian added: “It is the policy of the nervous system, not the high functions of the brain. There are no arguments, they only fear Mumering.”
The magnates in the United States and Great Britain have owned the media with the purpose of exercising influence since the creation of the modern newspaper at the end of the 19th century. Duration The First World War, Viscount Northcliffe or Great Britain controlled approximately 40 percent of the morning circulation and 45 percent of the night circulation there. Its properties included the Daily Mail, read by the working class and the Times, read by the elites.
The Biscount, whose name was Alfred Harmworth, played a crucial role in the deposit of Prime Minister Herbert Aschch in December 1916. Winston Churchill wrote that the Baron of the press “aspired to exert a dominant influence on the events.” The influence of Viscount Northcliffe in the war was so great that the Germans sent warships to kill him in 1917, bombing his coastal house.
In the United States, media control was more a local phenomenon. In western Texas in the early 1960s, the Ultraconservative Whoutenburg family owned the Daily News yellow, the NBC television station and the dominant radio station. There were few competitive voices.
“If you feed people a diet of extreme right media, it will end with an almost exclusive population in the extreme right,” said Jeff Roche, a historian who wrote “The Conservative Frontier”, an upcoming study of the region’s policy. “Yellow became the most right city in the United States.”
“The ownership of the media and political influence have been hand in hand since the first of the newspaper industry,” said Simon Potter, a professor of modern history at the University of Bristol who studies the media. “During time, people have worried about this intimate relationship between media and politics, does it really serve the public interest?”
Behind that question is another: Does your megaphon really give them power, or are you shouting in a vacuum? An American precursor or Mr. Musk, William Randolph Hearst provides an answer. Hearst, the owner of the Upstart New York Journal, sent correspondents to Cuba in 1897 to cover a war with Spain. Their interests were less humanitarian than promotional. I was in a war of circulation.
A version of how that story was developed showed Hearst as a tycoon of the almighty media:
The magazine’s correspondents discovered that there was no war. “Everything is calm,” Frederic Remington, the newspaper illustrator, Cableed Hearst. “There will be no war.” They wanted to leave.
Hearst replied: “Please stay. Provide the photos and provide war.” Then he stirred in his documents for the war that President William McKinley begged in a short time. He released Cuba and acquired parties to the Spanish empire for bets.
The story was first published in a book by a Hearst’s colleague called James Creelman and then immortalized in “Citizen Kane” by Orson Welles. It has a completely discredited leg over the years. There was no evidence that Hearst once said he would supply a war. The correspondents found a lot to illustrate. But the anecdote persisted because it showed a Magul so powerful that he could make wars out of nowhere.
When Hearst tried to move from his efforts in times of war to advance his own political career, he stumbled. A seat was secured in the House of Representatives in 1902, but offer to become the Mayor of New York he hesitated twice. He also lost a 1906 campaign for the Governor of New York.
David Nasaw, who wrote “The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst”, believes that the use of Mr. Musk or the X supporters to meet is as illusory as the supposed creation of a Heartst war.
“Anyway, anyway, Twitter takes out the magician vote,” he said.
Hearst, in Mr. Nasaw’s opinion, reflected the feelings of his readers instead of guiding them. But the historian agreed that something new was happening with Mr. Musk. Hearst, Ford, even the viscount Northcliffe and the other Lords of the British press before World War II, all had something in common that finally limited them.
“They were out of the room, shouting,” Nasaw said. “Twitter was important for Musk, but only to take it inside the room, in the government. It is unique in being both inside and outside without constructions in its behavior. There is never any of that.”
Tesla’s sales are looting. Hearst and Ford could have warned Mr. Musk: cutting controversy with hate views is bad for their reputation and, usual, also bad for their business.
Ford was headquarters for Lurbel about Dearborn Independent and became the theme of boycots. He closed the newspaper in 1927, although he did not make his views. A stain remained.
Hearst faced President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s, placing his anti-rosevelt rules on the cover of his documents. As the publishers became more and more abundant, the readers had to choose: Who are we going to support, the president or the editor?
“They chose Roosevelt,” Nasaw said. “What Hearst Potal meant destroyed himself and his newspapers.”
