100 pages • 3 hours read
Upton SinclairA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Chapters 1-3
Chapters 4-6
Chapters 7-9
Chapters 10-12
Chapters 13-15
Chapters 16-18
Chapters 19-21
Chapters 22-24
Chapters 25-27
Chapters 28-30
Chapters 31-33
Chapters 34-36
Chapters 37-39
Chapters 40-42
Chapters 43-45
Chapters 46-48
Chapters 49-51
Chapters 52-54
Chapters 55-57
Chapters 58-60
Chapters 61-63
Chapters 64-66
Chapters 67-69
Chapters 70-72
Chapters 73-75
Chapters 76-78
Chapters 79-81
Chapters 82-84
Chapters 85-92
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Ford begins to publish Brasol’s information in the Independent, making it into a mouthpiece for anti-Semitic propaganda for twenty weeks in a row. Specifically, he advocates a conspiracy theory that alleges the existence of a Jewish World Programme: a plot for world domination and the destruction of Gentile civilization that is secretly responsible for such diverse phenomena as “the world’s troubles, wars, strikes, insurrections, revolutions, crime, drunkenness, epidemics, and disasters,” all of which as “the work of organized, malignant, corrupting Jews” (109). The paper claims that it publishes only information that has been thoroughly fact-checked and proven, and members of the public who believe Ford to be an honest person take the paper’s claims at face value.
Some Jewish Americans protest the claims Ford’s paper makes. In response, Ford “set[s] to work to get the facts about the American Jews and what they [are] doing” (109). The results of this “investigation,” which he publishes in the Independent, are more anti-Semitic tales from Ford’s “spy department,” which moves from Dearborn to New York and claims that the various perceived moral ills of the time (drunkenness, licentiousness, jazz music, short skirts, and Bolshevism) are the deliberate work of Jewish conspirators set on destroying American society.