International Jewish conspiracy



I've heard that if you become a Jew, you get automatic membership of a shadowy international conspiracy that controls everything. Which actually sounds quite good, but, then you have to weigh that up against the circumcision.

The existence of an international Jewish conspiracy (or international Zionist conspiracy) is an antisemitic canard which regularly features in various racist conspiracy theories and conveniently excuses any misdeeds carried out by gentiles. These dumb rumors basically say what you'd imagine: that an evil hive mind of ethnic Jews is working together to cause everything bad in the world, such as wars, economic meltdowns, left-wing politics, income disparity, atheism (yes, you read that right), the impeachment of Donald Trump, the last time you got food poisoning at a fast food place, every time you stub your toe on a table, etc. Basically, you name it, and someone has probably blamed the Jews for it.

Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories seem to have originated with hysterical claims from medieval Christians that Jews were kidnapping Christian babies and drinking their blood and spreading the Black Death, but the phenomenon really took off during the Nineteenth Century as various hacks decided to cash in by writing shitty books and pamphlets about secret Jewish plots to take over the world. The most (in)famous of these pamphlets is The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, which is now known by non-idiots to be a hoax. The only way that the international Jewish conspiracy that antisemites believe in could actually happen is if the Jews all had their brains secretly connected together like the Borg from Star Trek. And we don't have technology sufficiently advanced to make that possible.

Antique and medieval claims of Jewish conspiracy
The blood libel, the conspiratorial slur that Jews kill gentile babies to use their blood in the preparation of Passover matzos, dates back to antiquity (even back to before the advent of Christianity ). In medieval Europe, popular wisdom commonly blamed outbreaks of disease on Jews poisoning wells; such attitudes and accusations could lead to pogroms, murders, and the governing authorities forcing Jews to live in segregated areas of cities called ghettos.

Only in modern times did the Catholic Church stop assigning blame to the Jews for their purported deicide of Jesus Christ. In medieval Europe, anti-Judaists accused Jews of re-enacting Jesus's crucifixion and death by stabbing or mutilating the host, which Catholics regard as transubstantiated into the body of Christ.

Revisionist colonial American history: the "Franklin Prophecy"
In 1934, an American magazine published that Benjamin Franklin delivered an anti-Semitic speech at the 1787 Constitutional Convention urging that Jews not be admitted to the United States. Franklin's purported rationale included that Jews: refuse to assimilate wherever they move, are vampires who must live among Christians, will attempt to financially strangle the country, will stream into the United States in such numbers that they will take over and rule the country (Sound familiar?). Franklin's so-called prophecy was allegedly recorded in a "private diary" of Charles Pinckney, Constitutional Convention delegate from South Carolina, that is now in the possession of the Franklin Institute. The Anti-Defamation League exposed the fraud in 1954, yet references to the "prophecy" still persist on neo-Nazi messageboards and on Usenet.

The language is characteristic of late-nineteenth-century and early-twentieth century Antisemites and thus contains anachronisms that Franklin could have never written, as Benjamin Franklin died in 1790. In addition, Franklin himself was a contributor to the building fund for Congregation Mikveh Israel, Philadelphia's oldest synagogue.

Similar antisemitic sentiments have been falsely ascribed to George Washington. Like Franklin, George Washington was sympathetic to Jews — indeed, writing a sympathetic letter to a Jewish congregation in Rhode Island in 1790:

But colonial North America was by no means free of antisemitism... as, for example, in this infamous quote from Thomas Paine's tract: Monarchy is ranked in scripture as one of the sins of the Jews, for which a curse in reserve is denounced against them.

20th century claims of Jewish conspiracy
Modern anti-Semitic conspiracy theories depicting an elaborate secret hierarchy of controlling Jewish influences largely take their cue from The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a 1903 tract purporting to be the manual of a Jewish secret society planning world domination. It is still widely circulated and occasionally cited as "evidence" by various clueless anti-Semites, despite being exposed as a fraud as early as 1921.

Max Weber (1864-1920), one of the founders of sociology, believed that antisemitism was abhorrent but also expressed concern that the over-representation of Jews in the leadership of European radical groups would inflame anti-Jewish sentiment.

Automobile manufacturer Henry Ford further popularized the conspiracy during the 1920s by publishing the Protocols and anti-Semitic articles in his newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, and distributing hundreds of thousands of copies of the Protocols. Ford's anti-Semitic articles were later collected and published as a four-volume treatise entitled The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem.

Ford's enthusiastic endorsement of an international Jewish conspiracy proved extremely popular in Weimar-era Germany. Ford provided substantial financial backing to Adolf Hitler in the 1920's and his writings were a significant influence on the formation of the Nazi party and its grassroots support. By 1933, when the Nazi Party came to power in Germany, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion was standard reading in German schools. Hitler admired Henry Ford and even emulated him by creating his own automobile, the Volkswagen. Hitler further propagated the Jewish conspiracy in Mein Kampf and other propaganda blaming Jews for the rise of both communism and capitalism, and for Germany's economic decline following the First World War.

Spanish fascist dictator Francisco Franco similarly believed in a conspiracy of Jews, Freemasons, and communists intending to establish a world government. He often made reference to a vast "Judeo-Masonic conspiracy."

In Mein Kampf, Hitler outlined the notion that Jews were the driving force behind both International Communism and International finance-capitalism.

Millenarian Antisemites
Fundamentalist Christians of an anti-Semitic bent have promoted theories that intermingle the End Times with a worldwide Jewish conspiracy where the anti-Christ is believed to be a Jew. Perhaps the most popular promoter of this lunacy was Nazi sympathizer Gordon Winrod. Winrod explained this brand of the conspiracy thusly:

A Jewish Antichrist in the end of this age, pre-supposes an international system of Jewish government. There can be little doubt that such a system, based upon the Jewish Money Power, has already been created -- and is ready to step into the open and assume control of world affairs as soon as the time is ripe.

Modern variations
The myth of an international Jewish conspiracy remains common among far right-wing conspiracy theorists, Neo-Nazis, some hardline communists, Islamic extremists, black supremacists, and other racist lunatics, and has been further perpetuated in recent years by these lunatics' rantings through the ease of posting on the Internet.

Variations on these conspiracies that may not appear overtly anti-Semitic often have a latent anti-Semitism about them, as the words "Globalists", "Illuminati", "New World Order," "Zionists", "international bankers", "international monetary elite", "financiers", "Cultural Marxists", or "cultural elites" (among other terms) are Mad Libbed in for "Jews" and "international Jewry". Antisemitic conspiracy theorists often focus on Zionism and the founding of Israel, or on denying the existence or scale of the Holocaust and claiming it is a myth fabricated or exaggerated to serve Jewish interests.

Individual theories vary widely. Many claim that "international Jewry" is in control of the Freemasons, Illuminati, and other real or perceived secret societies. Often the international Jewish conspiracy is portrayed as an active part of, or the major power behind, that greatest of all conspiracies, the New World Order. Much as many religious fundamentalists often use "Goddidit" to explain that which they cannot explain, conspiracy theorists will often use "Jewsdidit".

Anti-semitism and anti-communism
Anti-communists in Europe and North America often associated Jews with Bolshevism, particularly European fascists, who believed that Jews were peddling Marxism, since the founder of Communism was Jewish and since several prominent Communist leaders during the Russian Revolution were Jewish, like Leon Trotsky. The advent of Rosa Luxemburg in Germany seemed to lend credence to this notion. David Duke also claims communism is a Jewish conspiracy.

Jews and business
Believers in an international conspiracy often claim that Jews are secretly running the United States government in collaboration with Israel. They point to examples of wealthy Jews in the financial sector and other industries (the Rothschild family regularly appears in these theories), and to the apparently disproportionate numbers of Jews involved in the movie industry in Hollywood. On the other hand, such a period of "Jewish" domination in American cinema includes the Golden Age of American cinema in which a great number of movies of high quality with excellent writing (often by Jews) and acting (likewise). Contrary to the myth that Jewish involvement in culture must lead to its debasement, the Jewish studio bosses established a production code that precluded profanity, nudity, gratuitous violence, and the mockery of all religions. The same studio bosses excoriated the moral rot of juvenile delinquency and organized crime, even using Christian clergy as characters to that end, as in in which a Catholic priest better fits the culture of the Irish-American community than would a rabbi.

If it is even true that Jews are disproportionately represented in business, one must be careful to note that correlation does not equal causation. In the Western world until the 19th century, the largely Christian populations obeyed a religiously-motivated prohibition on charging interest on loans, with the role of banker historically falling on Jewish businessmen who were sometimes even specifically licensed by sovereigns to charge interest. To assume that the disproportionate number of Jews involved in finance proves they're engaging in a Zionist conspiracy through manipulation of capitalism is to ignore the historic role of Jews in banking due to the Christian prohibition against usury. This is reflected in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, where the villain Shylock is a Jewish money lender demanding the exorbitant price of a pound of flesh for defaulting on his loan.

More recently, there have been conspiracy theories targeting financier George Soros, whose actions including promoting liberal democracy in eastern Europe and opposing Brexit in the UK are seen as part of a Jewish conspiracy to impose western rule on Eastern Europe and deny the will of the British people.

In the Muslim world
This canard is also common in parts of the Islamic world, especially among Palestinian resistance movements. For example, the founding charter of Hamas asserts the existence of a Zionist conspiracy, working internationally through secret organizations such as the Freemasons as well as the government of Israel, and cites the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as the embodiment of their plans.

9/11
Various anti-Semitic 9/11 conspiracy theories sprang up in the wake of the 9/11 attacks — especially among Neo-Nazis and Islamists — claiming that a Jewish or Israeli conspiracy was behind the attacks, or that the whole incident was faked in order to serve Jewish and Zionist interests. A common myth, spread by racist websites and chain emails, is that hundreds or even thousands of Jewish employees in the World Trade Center were forewarned of the attacks and missed work on September 11th 2001.

Alt-right and neo-Nazis
In the 21st century, the idea that Jews secretly conspired to spread political correctness and to enable mass immigration by non-white people (especially Muslims) is often advocated or alluded to online by Neo-Nazis, sometimes not calling themselves Nazis but instead using paper-thin euphemisms like "white nationalist" or "alt-right". For example, alt-right Twitter accounts with Groyper avatars will often use memes like "the Goyim know", meaning: non-Jewish people are starting to learn about this supposed Jewish conspiracy. The neo-Nazi Kevin MacDonald is a key proponent of this theory, and is sometimes cited by its adherents. Neoreactionaries like "Mencius Moldbug" (who is part-Jewish) push basically the same idea, but with Jews replaced by liberal/progressive elites, who they term "communists". Jews on the alt-right (a rare breed) sometimes combine the two theories, claiming that liberal diaspora Jewish elites, but not conservative Jews like them, are the primary driving force behind mass non-white immigration to the West — rather than, say, businesses looking to keep their labor costs down and/or recruit more skilled professionals (on the "pull" side), or immigrants seeking a better life (on the "push" side), or Mexican or Libyan gangs (acting as people traffickers for undocumented immigrants).

Sometimes the far right further suggest that Jews are trying to increase non-white immigration in order to achieve a goal of "white genocide". However, what they actually seem to mean by "white genocide" is simply a loss of 100% pure white "blood lines" as inter-racial dating and marriage — which neo-Nazis absolutely cannot stand — becomes more and more common. It never seems to occur to them that the observed trends of a significant number of diaspora Jewish men "marrying out" of their ethnic group or religion, and diaspora Jewish couples having few or no children, do not fit in with this demographic domination theory. Depending on whether the theory is aimed at religious Jews or all Jewish people, regardless of their religion or lack thereof, the trend for many Jewish immigrant families to gradually turn atheist over the generations could be argued to not fit in with the theory either.

Other random Jew-haters
In Bobby Fischer's later years, he became a very vocal believer that the Jews controlled the United States and that they should be rounded up, executed, and those that remain made slaves.

It is widely suspected that claims of vast lizard conspiracy by eccentric conspiracy theorists are in fact a thinly-veiled way of discussing a Jewish conspiracy, as best demonstrated by David Icke. Before foregrounding lizards, Icke wrote more overtly about an international Jewish conspiracy. His claims of innocence aren't helped when his website publishes a photo of a member of the Anti-Defamation League with the caption "Our job is simple — to brand anyone who exposes Israel and the Rothschilds as a racist. Er, that's it."