International Jewish conspiracy

Theinternational Jewish conspiracyor theworld Jewish conspiracyhas been described as "the most widespread and durableconspiracy theoryof the twentieth century "^[1]and "one of the most widespread and long-running conspiracy theories".^[2]Although it typically claims that a malevolent, usually globalJewishcircle, referred to asInternational Jewry,conspires forworld domination,the conspiracy theory's content is extremely variable, which helps explain its wide distribution and long duration.^[2]It was popularized in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century especially by the antisemitic forgeryThe Protocols of the Elders of Zion.Among the beliefs that posit an international Jewish conspiracy areJewish Bolshevism,Cultural Marxism,^[3]Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory,White genocide conspiracy theoryandHolocaust denial.The Nazi leadership'sbelief in an international Jewish conspiracythat it blamed for starting World War II and controlling theAllied powerswas key to their decision to launch theFinal Solution.

History[edit]

Belief in an international Jewish conspiracy for world domination can be traced back to the thirteenth century, but increased in the second half of the nineteenth century under the influence of writers such asFrederick van Millingen,an Ottoman-born Englishman who wroteThe Conquest of the World by the Jewsin 1873, andHermann Goedsche,a Prussianagent provocateurpromoting a new ideological antisemitism. The invention of the newspaper invited the new accusation that Jews controlled the press.^[4]Goedsche's novelBiarritzwas plagiarized in the antisemitic forgeryThe Protocols of the Elders of Zionpublished at the turn of the twentieth century.^[5]The Protocolsappeared in print in theRussian Empireas early as 1903, published as a series of articles inZnamya,aBlack Hundredsnewspaper.^[6]^[7]The forgery was a creation of theOkhranasecret police.^[8]The Protocols popularized the belief in an international Jewish conspiracy such that this belief became essential to modern antisemitism.^[9]According toArmin Pfahl-Traughber,the Protocols are "the most significant document for propagating the myth of a Jewish world conspiracy".^[5]

Belief in this conspiracy increased following theRussian Revolution,spread at first by frustratedTsaristexiles.^[7]A popular British conspiracy theoristNesta Websterrecycled the olderIlluminaticonspiracy theories with a new emphasis on the role of Jews to explain the revolution.^[1]In the second half of the twentieth century, as overt antisemitism became increasingly unacceptable, many conspiracists found detours to avoid explicitly referencing Jews while retaining conspiracy theories descended from the Protocols and earlier beliefs of a Jewish world conspiracy.^[10]

TheJudeo-Masonic conspiracy theoryasserts thatFreemasonsare the agents of an international Jewish conspiracy.^[11]

Holocaust denialpresupposes the existence of a massive Jewish conspiracy that (according to Holocaust deniers) perpetrated the biggest hoax in history in order to scam money out of Germany and found the state of Israel. This conspiracy may be present either implicitly or explicitly in Holocaust denying works.^[12]^[13]

As of the 1970s, the expressionZionist Occupation Government(ZOG) has been used by antisemites to refer to the supposed Jewish control overWestern countries.^[14]^[15]

By country[edit]

China[edit]

Some Chinese people believe that Jews secretly rule the world and arebusiness-minded.^[16]Hongbing Song, aChinese AmericanIT consultant and amateur historian, published theCurrency Warsseries, believingJewish financiers controlled the international banking systemssince the era ofNapoleon.Song also says in his book that the key functions of theFederal Reservewere ultimately controlled by five private banks, includingCitibank,all of which maintained "close ties" with theRothschild family,one Jewish group that led to the1997 financial crisis.The book became a bestseller and even has been read by some high-ranking Chinese officials.^[17]^[18]

Germany[edit]

In his first recorded political speech in 1919,Adolf Hitlerclaimed that there was an international Jewish conspiracy plotting to weaken theAryan raceand Germany.^[19]

In documenting the appearance of fascism from the end of WWI to end of WWII, the historian Michael Kellogg noted that adherents of the "sinister world-wide Jewish" conspiracy theory included monarchist emigres who formed theAufbau Vereinigung,a conspiratorial anti-Semitic group that sought to re-establish a Tsar in Russia while perpetrating right-wing terrorism in Germany. The Aufbau cooperated with, and included as members, early German Nazis such asMax Erwin von Scheubner-Richter.The group, with its emphasis on claiming aProtocols-like myth, would influence the ideologies of Hitler andAlfred Rosenberg,mainly from 1918 to 1923, when Scheubner-Richter was killed by German police officers during theBeer Hall Putsch.^[20]^[21]

The leaders ofNazi Germanybelieved thatWorld War IIwas a conflict pitting Germany against a massive conspiracy secretly engineered by Jews and fronted by theAllies.According to this conspiracy theory,Franklin Roosevelt,Winston Churchill,andJoseph Stalinwere merely puppets for the Jews.^[22]Nazi propagandarepeatedly accused "International Jewry" of starting and extending the war and plotting the extermination of Germany.^[23]Hitler and other Nazi leaders repeatedly stated that they would "exterminate" Jews before the Jews had a chance to enact this alleged plot.^[24]Nazi propagandists drew on earlier Jewish conspiracy tropes and updatedThe Protocols of the Elders of Zionwith prominent individuals from Europe and North America.^[25]According to historianJeffrey Herf,it was the Nazis' conspiratorial beliefs about Jews, rather than older antisemitic beliefs, that caused them to resort to extreme anti-Jewish violence. "The desire for a Final Solution to the Jewish question was inseparable from the Nazis’ view of the Jews as an internationally organized political power that was playing a decisive role in the events of World War II."^[26]

Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 under the pretext of fightingJudeo-Bolshevism.By August 1941,Nazi propagandawas already making radical assertions suggesting a global war against Jews. American entry into World War II prompted Nazi ideologues to plunge into further extremism, who claimed that an international coalition ofcommunismandcapitalism,led by a sinister "Jewish world conspiracy" were seeking the destruction ofAryan race.Radicalization ofanti-semiticdiscourse went hand in hand withNazi Germany's intensification of anti-Jewish persecutions andgenocide.^[27]

According to historianJeffrey Herf,the Nazis used the purported international Jewish conspiracy to answer "such seemingly difficult questions as, Why did Britain fight on in 1940 rather than negotiate? Why was it likely that the Soviet regime would collapse like a house of cards following the German invasion of June 1941? Why did Franklin Roosevelt oppose Hitler? Why did the anti-Hitler coalition remain intact as the Red Army continued to push toward Central Europe after spring 1943?"^[25]Nazi belief in a powerful, international Jewish conspiracy pulling the strings of world affairs was not dispelled by the ease with which the German Jewish community was expropriated and forced into exile.^[28]

Malaysia[edit]

Former Malaysian prime ministerMahathir Mohamadhas repeatedly asserted that Jews control the world by proxy.^[29]

Turkey[edit]

In 2007, the bestselling book in Turkey wasMusa'nın Çocukları: Tayyip ve Emine(The Children of Moses: Tayyip and Emine) byErgün Poyraz.Poyraz claims that there is an international Jewish conspiracy pulling the strings behind the world, including installingRecep Tayyip Erdoğanas prime minister of Turkey.^[30]

United States[edit]

InThe International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem,American industrialistHenry Fordlargely recycled theProtocolsand did more than any other American to promote them.^[31]^[32]During theFirst Red Scare,United States Congress investigated the veracity of theProtocols.^[33]The Protocols of the Elders of Zionwere well received by some conservative evangelicals in the 1920s and 1930s.^[34]However, even those evangelicals who believed that there was an international Jewish conspiracy against Christianity did not consider themselves anti-Jewish and hoped that Jews would convert to Christianity.^[35]By the end of the 1930s, the belief in an international Jewish conspiracy came to be discredited in conservative evangelical circles as it was seen as inconsistent with world events, especially the rise of Nazi Germany.^[36]In 2020, pro-Trumpcampaigner Mary Ann Mendoza was removed from the schedule of theRepublican National Conventionafter she retweeted a thread asserting a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world.^[19]In 2021, it was reported that almost half ofQAnonfollowers believed that there is a Jewish plot to take over the world.^[37]

References[edit]

^^a ^bKonda 2019,p. 67.
^^a ^bBangerteret al.2020,p. 206.
^Jay, Martin."Dialectic of Counter-Enlightenment: The Frankfurt School as Scapegoat of the Lunatic Fringe".Salmagundi Magazine.Archived fromthe originalon 24 November 2011.
^Rathje 2021,pp. 54–56.
^^a ^bRathje 2021,p. 56.
^Balakirsky Katz, Maya (2 January 2021)."Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Antonio Gramsci, and the Myth of Niccolò Machiavelli".East European Jewish Affairs.51(1): 18–35.doi:10.1080/13501674.2021.1952024.ISSN 1350-1674.S2CID 238861172.
^^a ^b"Protocols of the Elders of Zion".encyclopedia.ushmm.org.Retrieved29 December2021.
^"A Hoax of Hate: The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion".Anti-Defamation League.Retrieved4 January2022.
^Konda 2019,pp. 51, 67.
^Rathje 2021,pp. 46, 64–65.
^Poli, Barbara De (2014). "The Judeo-Masonic Conspiracy: The Path from the Cemetery of Prague to Arab Anti-Zionist Propaganda".Conspiracy Theories in the United States and the Middle East.De Gruyter.ISBN 978-3-11-033827-0.
^Achcar, Gilbert (2011)."Assessing Holocaust Denial in Western and Arab Contexts"(PDF).Journal of Palestine Studies.41(1): 82–95 [85].doi:10.1525/jps.2011.XLI.1.82.
^Cohen-Almagor, Raphael (2009–2010)."Holocaust Denial is a Form of Hate Speech".Amsterdam Law Forum.2:33.doi:10.37974/ALF.96.
^Swain, Carol (2003).Contemporary voices of white nationalism in America.Cambridge, UK New York: Cambridge University Press. p.253.ISBN 0521816734.
^Issitt, Micah; Main, Carlyn (16 September 2014).Hidden Religion: The Greatest Mysteries and Symbols of the World's Religious Beliefs.ABC-CLIO. pp. 31–32.ISBN 9781610694780.
^Davis, Bob (14 May 2014)."Is China Anti-Semitic? One Jew's Reflections".The Wall Street Journal.Retrieved9 January2023.
^McGregor, Richard (25 September 2007)."Chinese buy into conspiracy theory".Financial Times.Retrieved9 January2023.
^Keating, Joshua."The World's Most Persistent Conspiracy Theories".Foreign Policy.Retrieved9 January2023.
^^a ^bWhitfield, Stephen(2 September 2020)."Why the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion' is still pushed by anti-Semites more than a century after hoax first circulated".The Conversation.Retrieved3 December2021.
^Schwonek, Matthew R. (2006)."Review of The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917–1945; Victims of Stalin and Hitler: The Exodus of Poles and Balts to Britain".The Russian Review.65(2): 335–337.ISSN 0036-0341.JSTOR 3664431.
^Stackelberg, Roderick; Kellogg, Michael (2006)."Reviewed Works: The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917–1945 by Michael Kellogg; Victims of Stalin and Hitler: The Exodus of Poles and Balts to Britain by Thomas Lane".The American Historical Review.111(5): 1618–1619.doi:10.1086/ahr.111.5.1618.ISSN 0002-8762.JSTOR 10.1086/ahr.111.5.1618.
^Herf 2006,pp. 9–10.
^Herf 2006,p. 2.
^Herf 2006,p. 7.
^^a ^bHerf 2006,p. 8.
^Herf 2006,p. 10.
^Longerich, Peter (2012). "19: An Ideological War of Annihilation".Heinrich Himmler.New York, USA: Oxford University Press. pp. 529, 530.ISBN 978-0-19-959232-6.
^Herf 2006,p. 37.
^"Former Asian leader won't stop claiming Jews 'rule the world'".Washington Post.Retrieved3 December2021.
^Baer 2013,p. 523.
^Konda 2019,p. 50.
^Ariel 2013,p. 146.
^Ariel 2013,p. 147.
^Ariel 2013,pp. 142–143.
^Ariel 2013,p. 148.
^Ariel 2013,p. 150.
^"Nearly half of QAnon followers believe Jews are plotting to rule the world".Newsweek.28 June 2021.Retrieved3 December2021.

Sources[edit]

Ariel, Yaakov (2013). "Evangelical Christians and Anti-Jewish Conspiracy Theories".An Unusual Relationship: Evangelical Christians and Jews.New York University Press.ISBN 978-0-8147-6293-6.
Baer, Marc David(2013). "An Enemy Old and New: The Dönme, Anti-Semitism, and Conspiracy Theories in the Ottoman Empire and Turkish Republic".Jewish Quarterly Review.103(4): 523–555.doi:10.1353/jqr.2013.0033.S2CID 159483845.
Bangerter, Adrian; Wagner-Egger, Pascal; Delouvée, Sylvain (2020). "How Conspiracy Theories Spread".Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories.Routledge.doi:10.4324/9780429452734-2_5.ISBN 978-0-429-45273-4.S2CID 214062615.
Herf, Jeffrey(2006).The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during the World War II and the Holocaust.Harvard University Press.doi:10.4159/9780674038592.ISBN 978-0-674038-59-2.
Konda, Thomas Milan (2019).Conspiracies of Conspiracies: How Delusions Have Overrun America.University of Chicago Press.doi:10.7208/chicago/9780226585932.001.0001.ISBN 978-0-226-58593-2.S2CID 198104368.
Rathje, Jan (2021). "'Money Rules the World, but Who Rules the Money?' Antisemitism in post-Holocaust Conspiracy Ideologies ".Confronting Antisemitism in Modern Media, the Legal and Political Worlds.Vol. 5. De Gruyter. pp. 45–68.doi:10.1515/9783110671964-005.ISBN 978-3-11-067196-4.