There was more than a hint of paranoiac rage here directed at Jewish letter writers, columnists, and newspaper reporters. The Kennedys had to blame someone for the criticism—and who better than Europe’s most venerable scapegoats. One of the staples of twentieth-century anti-Semitism, on the continent, in Great Britain, and in America, was the notion that the Jews had unfairly, perhaps criminally, seized control of the news media and were using it for their own ends. Kennedy grabbed hold of this myth even though it was clear that in numbers and ferocity, his gentile critics far outnumbered the Jewish.

His prejudices were reinforced by his friends the Lindberghs, the Astors, and Lord Beaverbrook. In a particularly vicious letter to Anne Morrow Lindbergh written on November 2, 1938, Lady Astor had mentioned that “only yesterday I was talking to someone who traces the origin of the ‘yellow press’ to an American Jew, named Pulitzer. . . . It is horrible how much one can trace back to them. I don’t believe in persecution, but there is something evidently wrong with their whole make-up.” Lord Beaverbrook, who as a newspaper mogul should have known better, agreed entirely that the Jews had far too much influence on both sides of the Atlantic. “The Jews are after Mr. Chamberlain,” he wrote American publisher Frank Gannett in December 1938. “He is being terribly harassed by them. .. . All the Jews are against him. … They have got a big position in the press here… .1 am shaken. The Jews may drive us into war … . their political influence is moving us in that direction.”

The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy, 2013