Experiment with tolerance

The Jews have lived as a minority in the lands of others for centuries, often separately in dedicated quarters as second-rate citizens. From time to time, they had to flee murderous mobs, and if fortune smiled upon them, they only lost their belongings. Because of their imagined special relationship with that supposed dude in the sky who created everything, the Jews have chosen not to integrate into their host societies and accept their religions, which, according to their scriptures, were heresies. And so, the Jews became a separate community, more loyal to each other than to others. As a result, Jewish existence became an experiment in diversity and tolerance, which had once flourished in the multicultural Roman Empire, as even the Gauls could keep their druids. Yet, it came under pressure with the rise of the uncompromising monotheistic religions, Christianity and Islam. It makes Jewish history a learning experience for the issues plaguing multicultural societies today.

The issue of what to do with the Jews became known as the Jewish Question. Several thinkers, including Martin Luther and Karl Marx, couldn’t resist the urge to express their views on the Jews, which generally were unfavourable. Voltaire, a European Enlightenment philosopher, wrote very nasty things about them. He was a smart fellow, so why would he? Is it just ill-informed hatred? And Adolf Hitler sought a definitive solution by exterminating the Jews, in what became the Holocaust. Being creative thinkers, the Jews also came up with a solution under the influence of nationalism: a country of their own. The myth of Zionism claims that an invisible dude floating in the sky had promised them a land, Israel. The founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, wrote, ‘The Jewish Question persists wherever Jews live in appreciable numbers. Wherever it does not exist, it is brought in together with Jewish immigrants. We are naturally drawn into those places where we are not persecuted, and our appearance there gives rise to persecution.’

Herzl never asked himself what role the Jews themselves played in the problem. That was the task of the anti-Semites. The Jewish Question has proved impossible to resolve over the past 2,000 years, despite the smartest minds working very hard on it. The same issues plague multicultural societies today, so we should take the problems arising from differing habits and beliefs very seriously. They cause harm. Jews did usury, and Christian did pogroms. As money is today’s religion, we learned that usury is good, but it is among the greatest evils. And we have trouble dealing with our differences. We are constantly scheming, and most of our communication is gossip. In folklore, conspiracy theories circulate blaming the Jews for all kinds of stuff, ranging from spreading diseases, sacrificing children in their rituals, and conspiring to dominate the world. This tradition continues into the present, partly because the facts make some of these conspiracy theories seem plausible. A few examples are:

• Those who oppose the current financial system and don’t understand finance may blame the Jews for it, as the Jews have been moneylenders for centuries.
• Zionist Jews have taken a slice of Arab land that is now Israel, so a lot of Arabs hate Jews. The fight gets exported to other places where Jews and Arabs live.
• You may hear that Jews determine what you hear on the radio and see on television because they control the media. So, do they? Inquiring minds want to know.
• Perhaps you have read that Jews cause wars and revolutions, sometimes with the help of the secretive Freemasons and the elusive Illuminati.
• There is a worldwide trade in illegally harvested organs. Jews are also involved. It is not only Jews, but anti-Semites don’t care about the others.
• Perhaps we can’t trust Jews because they are more loyal to Israel than the country they live in. But what about migrants from other countries?
• The United States has a corrupt and dysfunctional political system. The Jews used it to their advantage. So, follow the money trail.
• The same goes for poor-quality Hollywood movies. Those sneaky bastards spread LGBTQ+ propaganda to destroy traditional Christian families by making people gay.
• We can blame the Jews for other things too, of course, not the ‘good Jews’, only the ‘evil Jews’, but it is hard to tell the difference. They are the perfect scapegoat.

These conspiracy theories are not entirely untrue. Denying or repressing the truth doesn’t help in the long run. The truth can set us free if we let go of hatred and resolve these issues. Otherwise, you can kiss progress goodbye, and the worst side of human nature will once again rear its ugly head as it did during the Holocaust. There is a relationship between ethnicity and conduct that goes via culture. Cultures emerge out of history and circumstances. You can’t blame someone for being raised in a particular tradition, but our traditions harm others when we live together. That is not only true for Jews. Just think of the damage whites have caused all over the globe. There is ethnicity-related organised crime, like the Italian mafia. In the United States, blacks do more violent crimes than other ethnic groups. Non-Western immigrants in Europe are also increasingly posing problems. So, if bigots allege that Jews do this or that, look at the facts. Maybe some of it is true.

There has been a longstanding Christian history of intolerance towards the Jews. Only, Christians were far more intolerant towards all other religions, including diverging versions of Christianity, which were heresies that had to be eradicated, until Protestants proved impossible to exterminate. Christians only tolerated the Jews, first because the Pope said so and later because they proved helpful for trade, tax collecting and moneylending, which Christians found morally reprehensible activities and didn’t wish to do themselves. Muslims were even more tolerant. Apart from Jews, they also tolerated Christians. Okay, they had to be submissive and pay special taxes to their Islamic overlords. Yet, despite all that tolerance, Christianity and Islam were the most intolerant religions. It proved crucial to their success. Today, Christians and Muslims together make up half the world’s population.

As a result of the spectacular success of their fairy tale collection, the Jews often found themselves in the crosshairs. Still, their plight was not much unlike that of other minorities that didn’t integrate into society. Humans strive for conformity and employ exclusion and violence to that end. And being beaten up is the least you can expect from peasants if you look peculiar, smell differently, and have strange ways. That is why Jews preferred to live in cities, where they mingled with others who wore extraordinary outfits and followed peculiar customs. It is human nature to be xenophobic, but we can get accustomed to differences. And you had to in cities. And you had to in cities. Otherwise, you would spend much of your time harassing strange-looking people, and get beaten up also, for there are more strange-looking people in the city than on the countryside.

Short primer on Jewish history

Reading the Bible might give you a wrong impression of Jewish history. It is a collection of myths mingled with facts. And it gives the Jewish perspective. A historian would present a very different narrative. Between 1200 BC and 900 BC, a few small nation-states emerged in Canaan, which is the area now covered by Israel and Palestine. Among them were Israel and Judah. These small states emerged because Egyptian power waned and the Egyptian vacated the area. In the Bible, you read that Moses led the Jews out of Egypt with the help of an intimidating cloud named God. There was a liberation from Egypt, but the Biblical account is greatly embellished. It took a few centuries for new, powerful states to emerge and overrun these small states. Israel fell into Assyrian hands in 720 BC. Judah was destroyed in 587 BC by the Babylonians, who had taken over the Assyrian Empire.

These small kingdoms had a national deity for fortune and protection. Their kings adopted a deity to promote a sense of a nation and to assert their authority. Yahweh was the deity of Judah and probably also of Israel. At first, Yahweh’s worship may not have differed much from the worship of other national deities, such as Chemosh, the god of Moab. When the Assyrians and Babylonians destroyed Israel and Judah, their inhabitants faced an identity crisis. The Babylonians took many Jews into exile in Babylonia while others remained. Jewish priests then compiled the Tanakh (Old Testament) from existing documents and circulating stories to define a sense of national identity around their deity, Yahweh, in the absence of a king or territory. In this way, the Jews became a people without a land. Their promised land, Israel, remained central to their religion.

Around 450 BC, the exiled Jews could return to Canaan. From 164 BC onwards, there was an independent Jewish state for 100 years until the Romans conquered it. At the time of Jesus, tensions were growing between the Jews and their Roman overlords. It led to uprisings between 66 AD and 136 AD. During these revolts, the Romans destroyed the Jewish temple. Over time, the majority of the area’s inhabitants became Christians and later Muslims. Jews remained in scattered communities around the Mediterranean. This is called the diaspora.

In ancient societies, only the elites received an education. The Jews introduced mass education for their people. Their scriptures became the pillar of their national education system. Divine knowledge, rules, and regulations became public. The value of education thus became embedded in Jewish culture. Nations came and went, but the Jews survived. Being a people without a land, and basing their identity entirely on religion and traditions, was a successful long-term survival strategy for the Jews. They have been around for more than 2,500 years, and without a homeland for nearly 2,000 of those years. It is also why not all Jews support the Zionist project of the state of Israel. A Jewish state might endanger the Jewish nation and identity if the Jews fail to defend their land.

The Jewish religion became the basis for Christianity and Islam, both of which regard Judaism as a legitimate religion, even though less advanced. Christians and Muslims allowed Jews to live in their lands, albeit as secondary citizens. In the Middle Ages, Jews built up a trade network in Europe and the Middle East. They had freedom and influence within Christian and Islamic lands. Jewish merchants had a chameleon-like ability to fit into spaces that were either ruled by Muslims or Christians. For centuries, the Jews faced few restrictions and held positions of power in Spain and Portugal. That changed later on, most notably after the Jews were expelled from Spain.¹

Living together was not always easy. Christians have blamed the Jews for killing Jesus. The Jewish high priests had accused Jesus of blasphemy as he had claimed to be the Son of God. The Jews believed that God had no son, and calling yourself the Son of God in a literal sense, which Jesus did, was most blasphemous indeed. Jesus apparently did some magic to back up that claim. Yet, not everyone was convinced. According to the Gospel, the Jewish high priests and a Jewish mob demanded the crucifixion of Jesus. That supposedly made the Jews forever responsible for the death of Jesus. It was a justification for Christian anti-Semitism. The Gospel, which means good news, by the way, goes into the particulars as to why that is so (Matthew 27:24-25),

When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. ‘I am innocent of this man’s blood,’ he said. ‘It is your responsibility!’ All the people answered, ‘His blood is on us and on our children!’

That was not good news for the Jews. And there was more bad news. From time to time, rumours spread that Jews abducted Christian boys for their secret rituals. It is known as the blood libel. When a boy had disappeared, it was an excellent occasion to murder some Jews. There was no basis for these beliefs, but few people knew about the Jewish religion and its practices, except that they wore funny suits and hats. And because of their ritual hygiene, the Black Death didn’t affect Jews as much as Christians. As a result, rumours spread that Jews spread the disease, leading to more evictions and murders.

Now look at the issue from the perspective of a medieval peasant. He didn’t know the cause of Black Death, for no one knew it was germs feasting on fleas feasting on rats, and Jews seemed not to catch the disease. Fearing they were behind it was rational. The information he had suggested that it might be true, and it was a matter of life and death, so it was better to be safe than sorry. Medieval people also burned witches at the stake when the harvest failed. If, due to a lack of knowledge, witchcraft seemed a cause of harvest failure, your survival might depend on burning witches. As Americans say, ‘Shoot first, ask questions later.’ That is how you survive. And if you wish to get rid of people you don’t like, and Jews were not well-liked, you can spread these rumours, and others will do the dirty work for you.

Some Jews had considerable influence, but as a group they had a low standing in popular culture. They worked in tax collecting, trade and finance, activities that were seen as reprehensible, as trade and finance often coincide with questionable ethics. Some languages have words or sayings that point to the issue. The English language has the term Jewish stock take, referring to a shopkeeper destroying his shop in a self-lit fire to claim insurance. The Dutch language has the word ‘jodenbod’, which means ‘Jew’s bid’, to indicate bids below a reasonable price that people in a desperate position might have to accept. And these stereotypes didn’t merely pop out of nowhere.

The spread of Enlightenment ideas in Europe led to religious tolerance. After a century of intense warfare between Catholics and Protestants, leading to one of the greatest massacres of all time, the Thirty Years’ War, Europeans became tired of murdering each other over issues of which they lacked sufficient knowledge, also because neither side could win, which probably mattered more. Piles of dead bodies with no victory in sight make the kind of environment that breeds enlightenment. The great Chinese wisdom expressed in Confucius’ teachings and the Tao Te Ching dates from a similar period of mass slaughter known as the Warring States Era. These hard-taught lessons still live on in European institutions like the separation of church and state.

After the French Revolution of 1789, Jews in Western Europe received citizenship. In Eastern Europe, where they were somewhat less enlightened because they hadn’t fought hard enough over religious trivialities, and most notably in Russia, they continued to face pogroms, which were riots that included robbery, destruction of property and sometimes killings. Around 1870, the first Jewish settlers entered Palestine. In 1896, Theodor Herzl published The Jewish State, claiming that the solution to the Jewish Question was a Jewish state. It marked the beginning of modern Zionism.

In 1873, the Vienna stock market crashed. A lingering slump followed, lasting until 1896. It was the first global economic crisis, known as the Great Depression. Compounding the woes was the expansion of the railroad network, which opened European markets to cheap grain from the United States and Russia, leading to a collapse in agricultural prices and a wave of bankruptcies in the Great Agricultural Crisis. Land prices dropped. Also, my great-great-grandfather was duped. He was a farmer who had bought land before the slump. The price of land would not return to its old level during his lifetime. This story still circulated within my family, illustrating the severity of the hardship.

The repercussions are not to be underestimated. Anti-Semitism rose in Germany, Austria and France. People blamed Jewish bankers. The unsettling events also set investigative minds to work to uncover why they happened, as would happen again during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The epicentre of the crisis was Austria, which helped give rise to the Austrian School of Economics and its theories on credit cycles. Yet, the primary cause of financial crises is usury, or lending at interest. Many people saw usury as a scam, making them blame the banks and the Jews. It was also the time when Silvio Gesell lived. He experienced the misery first-hand as a German businessman. It prompted him to investigate the underlying causes and, later, to write The Natural Economic Order. That Hitler came from Austria is not merely an accident but also a cultural-historical phenomenon. As was the Miracle of Wörgl occurring there. German-speaking people were very much aware of usury and its consequences.

In France, anti-Semitism led to the conviction of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, the only Jewish member of the French general staff, of spying for Germany. He was innocent and was rehabilitated a decade later, following vigorous protests. During World War I, many Jews fought for their nation-states, also in Germany. Yet after the war, a myth emerged in Germany, suggesting Germany had lost the war because of leftists, anti-monarchists and a Jewish conspiracy. That was most ironic. The international Jewry was inclined towards Germany because it fought the Russian Empire, which had the most anti-Semitic government at the time. And it was Germany that helped spark the Bolshevik Revolution, seeking to undermine the Russian war effort by sending exiled radicals into the country and financing their activities. The Nazis later blamed the Jews for what Germany did.

Jewish state

As the international Jewish community mostly favoured the Germans during World War I, the British offered them Palestine to establish a national home for the Jews in a bid to get them on the Allied side. The Balfour Declaration was part of a letter from the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community who came from a prominent banking family that was once among the richest and most powerful. In conspiracy theories, they still are, and control the fate of nations. Shortly after the start of World War I, a Zionist British Cabinet member, Herbert Samuel, wrote a memorandum proposing to back the Zionist cause to enlist the support of Jews in the war. The Arabs living in Palestine had no say in this matter, which soon led to tensions and Arab resistance, which the British repressed. Between 1920 and 1940, 300,000 Jews migrated to Palestine. The Arabs revolted between 1936 and 1939. The British subsequently restricted Jewish immigration.

After World War II, large numbers of Jews entered Palestine illegally, many of them Holocaust survivors. The Holocaust became a trauma in the collective memory of the Jews. Nearly six million of them died in concentration camps and mass executions. It gave credibility to the Zionists, who believed that the Jews could only be safe once they had a country of their own. The atrocities the Jews had suffered from raised support for the Zionist cause in the West, most notably in the United States, which favoured the illegal immigrants who soon caused mayhem and attacked the occupiers and the indigenous population. The Zionists’ guerrilla war against the British comprised 70 terrorist attacks between 1937 and 1948, including the King David Hotel bombing that killed 91 people and the devastating bomb attack on the British police headquarters in Haifa.

In 1947, the United Nations planned to divide Palestine between the Jews and the Arabs. The plan allotted 62% of the land to the Jewish state despite the Palestinian Arab population numbering twice the Jewish population. The Zionists accepted it as it was a favourable deal for them. The Arabs rejected it because, in addition to forming a two-thirds majority, they owned a majority of the land. The Arabs were also unwilling to accept a division and sought Arab rule over Palestine.

After Israel declared independence in 1948, a civil war broke out. The neighbouring Arab countries attacked Israel, but the Zionists were prepared and well-trained, and the Arabs lost. Around 700,000 Arab Palestinians, or 80% of the population, fled or were expelled from their homes. The Palestinians call it ‘The Catastrophe’. The Catastrophe greatly influenced Palestinian culture and helped to create the Palestinian identity. Before that, they were merely Arabs. The Catastrophe means displacement, dispossession, statelessness and fracturing of Palestinian society, much like the Jewish diaspora.

During the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel conquered the remaining Palestinian territories. Israel started this war after Egypt blocked Israeli shipping through the Egyptian-controlled Strait of Tiran and brought military forces close to the Israeli border. An Israeli surprise attack caught the Egyptian forces off-guard, causing Egypt to lose nearly all its military aeroplanes. Jordan and Syria came to Egypt’s aid but were also defeated. Whether this pre-emptive war prevented an Egyptian attack on Israel remains a matter of debate.

Israel captured and occupied the Golan Heights from Syria, the West Bank from Jordan, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt. Around 300,000 Palestinians and 100,000 Syrians fled or were expelled from the West Bank and the Golan Heights. The remainder came to live under Israeli occupation. Zionist settlers began colonising the remaining parts of Palestine, most notably the West Bank. In 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack against Israel with the support of other Arab nations in the Yom Kippur War. After initial Arab successes, Israel repelled the attack.

Israel achieved peace with Egypt and Jordan, but the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains unresolved. Palestinian resistance came in the form of terrorist attacks such as blowing up buses filled with civilians in a bid to kill as many Jews as possible. At the same time, Jewish settlers kept grabbing the land of the Palestinians, often with violence. And both believed they had God on their side, so that their cause was just, whatever evil they perpetrated. Since 7 October 2023, after a terrorist attack by Hamas that killed over 1,000 Israelis, the hope for peace seems gone. Hamas gets its arse kicked. The Palestinians have yet to learn the hard lesson the Jews learned 20 centuries ago when the Romans routed them. You don’t have God on your side when you fight a vastly superior opponent. And Israel is not a colony in the traditional sense, so the Jews will fight to the death for their homeland. Now, let’s hope that there will be peace in Israel and Palestine, and that future generations can leave this bitter conflict behind.

Conspiracy theories

Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories range from crazy allegations to assertions backed by well-documented research, like the investigation into the Israel lobby by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. The stranglehold of Jewish interest groups is not a conspiracy theory, but a well-documented fact. There is a large grey area in between. It has long been a minefield because of the Holocaust and the wrath of the Israel Lobby. No sensible person would like to see pogroms, while few politicians opposing the Israel Lobby could stay in office. The Jews are a small group with an enormous clout and impact on world history. It fuels speculation. Is there a scheme behind it? Before going into that, there are a few general explanations for the remarkable successes of the Jews. These are:

• Education. The Jews invented mass education twenty-five centuries ago (it took twenty-four centuries for Western Europe to follow suit).
• Jews often went into occupations like trade and finance, which can make you wealthy and give you a position of power as you let others work for you.
• For centuries, the Jews lived under marginal and uncertain conditions. It required resourcefulness that became part of Jewish culture.
• The Jews are God’s chosen people. That was not always a blessing for the Jews themselves, nor did being chosen seem to be a blessing for Jesus.

Anti-Semitism has done tremendous harm as it led to the Holocaust. Yet, the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories aren’t entirely incorrect. When the CEO of the ADL, Jonathan Greenblatt, complained that the Christian identity movement is an anti-Semitic, racist, and poisonous ideology, he had a point. But then again, the Jewish lobby proved the point of the anti-Semites, as they have the MAGA politicians in their pocket, and even control the political branch of the Christian identity movement. That is how far things have gotten and why many people hate Jews, not only in the United States. A 2026 UNESCO report claims that three-quarters of European teachers have witnessed anti-Semitic incidents ranging from wearing Nazi symbols or Holocaust denial to physical violence.³ That also has to do with the migration of Muslims to Europe and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Things are escalating. Jews aren’t safe in more and more places. So it is better to view these conspiracy theories more objectively as hypotheses that might be supported by evidence, while recognising that they are part of a wider problem of tribalism and cultural differences. That requires emotional distance, as the truth can be painful for those involved in these conflicts. Still, if we can manage that, we might get closer to their resolution.

An American joke goes like this: ‘Why does Israel not become a state of the United States? Well, if Israel does, it will have only two Senators.’ Israel has had the United States’ unconditional support for decades. Whatever Israel did, such as taking Palestinian land or attacking its Arab neighbours, it had US support. Senators and members of Congress who held different views faced the powerful Israel Lobby. The lobby would fund their opponents’ campaign, thereby ensuring their defeat. Campaign financing corrupts US politics, and the Jewish lobby is a major player in the corruption game. The survival of the Jewish state was at stake. A book claims there is a secret Jewish plot to gain world domination.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a work of fiction made up by the Russian secret service’s Paris branch around 1900. The Russian regime was hostile towards Jews. In 1917, the communists toppled it, and there were many Jews in the communist movement. A few radicals taking over such a large country? It can’t be a coincidence. Indeed, Germany had a hand in it. Since then, more people began to take the Protocols seriously because humans are religious creatures who need myths to believe in. The Protocols claim the Jews form a secret cult conspiring to gain world dominance using all kinds of spectacular schemes hidden from the public eye. The absence of evidence proved the secrecy and brilliance of their planning. Adolf Hitler and the automaker Henry Ford believed it, as did many others. Yet, if you look at the world today, the work looks prophetic. That is the irony of history or God’s plan.

The main themes of the Protocols and related conspiracy theories are control of world finance, organisation of radical movements and interference with diplomacy to cause wars that kill non-Jews. There are racist, political and religious aspects to these claims. You can read ‘evil Jews’ between the lines. Anti-Semites use so-called whistle words such as ‘our overlords’ or ‘lizard people’. That was also because automated message board moderation tools were taking out negative comments mentioning the word Jews. Not everyone gets it, and humans are fairy-tale-believing creatures, so more and more people now think that reptilians run the world. Jewish advocacy groups pointed out the racism, bigotry and false claims. It didn’t help. The Protocols are a model of reality that offers a particular explanation for phenomena such as Jewish influence and involvement in finance. It seems to explain much, also because reality resembles the fiction.

The political scientists John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt investigated the Israel Lobby’s activities and concluded that if you criticise Israel in the United States, you will be branded an anti-Semite, which means that you are a racist Jew-hater. Major newspapers subsequently published editorials calling their research anti-Semitic, thereby proving their point because they backed their claims with evidence. AIPAC is the most prominent organisation in the Israel Lobby. Mearsheimer and Walt concluded,

AIPAC’s success is due to its ability to reward legislators and congressional candidates who support its agenda, and to punish those who challenge it. AIPAC makes sure that its friends get strong financial support from the myriad pro-Israel PACs. Those seen as hostile to Israel, on the other hand, can be sure that AIPAC will direct campaign contributions to their political opponents. The bottom line is that AIPAC, which is a de facto agent for a foreign government, has a stranglehold on the U.S. Congress. Open debate about U.S. policy towards Israel does not occur there.²

Stranglehold is considered a whistle word as it implies that evil Jews run US politics, which supposedly is an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. Still, it is a well-documented conclusion, for you can’t get far in US politics without the approval of the Israel Lobby. And so, the anti-Semitism argument increasingly fails to convince. It has long been forbidden to say the truth in the open, so that it festered below the surface. The same is true for other issues plaguing multicultural societies. These feelings are understandable, but the alternative is worse. Political correctness has sought to keep the troubles at bay, but in doing so, it hasn’t solved the underlying problem of our believing different myths, which puts us in conflict. A multicultural society may work if the state is strong and respected by everyone, and if we are all tolerant or believe the same myths. And it requires a fair social contract. These are fairy-tale-like conditions.

If you think of the consequences of anti-Semitism in the past or that millions of Jews face displacement if Israel collapses, it is understandable why Jewish interest groups go to great lengths to keep American support. Equally understandable is that many Palestinians hate the Jews so much that they want to kill them because they have taken their land. The Jews occupy their country. And so, the alternative to the myth of multiculturalism is tribal warfare, and the situation in Israel and Palestine perfectly illustrates that alternative. The only solution is a final solution. That is what Hamas and the Israeli government might agree on. It is only that, for multiculturalism to succeed, we must all identify as one people.

Suppressing the truth may work for a while, but it can become a self-defeating strategy if problems go unaddressed and escalate. People may get angrier and succumb to increasingly extreme fantasies. MAGA is a good example of the level of delusion people can reach. And the crazies aren’t entirely wrong. Millions of immigrants entered the United States unchecked, so half the Americans were willing to accept any lie to stop this. And think of the possibility that Epstein was a Mossad agent. It remains unproven but, given the evidence at hand, is a realistic possibility. Dealing with the truth is like opening a can of worms. The obsession with Jews that many have distracts from other lobbies operating in the corrupted US political system, some of them representing foreign national interests. Still, few lobbies attract as much attention as the Israel Lobby. So why is the Israel Lobby so powerful, visible and aggressive? There are some possible answers:

• The Israel Lobby has long had broad popular support. Anti-Semitism led to the Holocaust, so the Israel Lobby could easily gain sympathy.
• Jews feel insecure. The Holocaust is their collective trauma. Criticism of Israel provokes the fear that the legitimacy of the Jewish state is at stake.
• Israel ignores international law by colonising Palestinian land. The unconditional support of the United States helps Israel to do that.
• You can’t reason with fanatical opponents like Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad who will not stop until either they or Israel has been fully annihilated.
• And finally, the elites run the political system, and about half of the wealthiest Americans are Jewish, while Jews make up 2% of the population.

The Israel Lobby is the most visible in the United States but has significant clout elsewhere. The rationale for fighting anti-Semitism is the Holocaust. The Woke, also known as the Frankfurt School, copied these same tactics. In his book Critique of Pure Tolerance, Herbert Marcuse argued that freedom of speech limits freedom. He proposed a so-called liberating tolerance. It is intolerance of right-wing movements and tolerance of left-wing movements. To them, radical left-wing propaganda was acceptable while radical right-wing propaganda was not. The Frankfurt School originated in Germany and was obsessed with preventing the resurgence of Nazism, which explains its particular view of free speech. The group has had a significant influence, as it brought us political correctness, and it is more commonly known as cultural Marxism.

Trade and usury

The Jew as usurer is a well-known theme in anti-Semitic folklore. Jews traditionally often worked in trade and finance. In the Middle Ages, Jews were forbidden to perform honourable crafts or own land and were pushed further into activities Christians deemed reprehensible. The most successful merchants are the greedy ones. A most nefarious practice was money lending at interest, or making money without working for it. It creates a money shortage, leading to deflationary collapses in which usurers can buy up at fire-sale prices, thereby further enriching themselves at the expense of the poor. Merchants make money without working by making others work for them. Worse yet, they make people compete, which has led to an explosion in wealth but has also pushed humanity into an innovation death spiral that is now nearing its final phase.

The Roman Catholic Church forbade Christians to charge interest to fellow Christians. The Bible says, ‘You shall not charge interest on loans to your brother.’ (Deuteronomy 23:19) Christians and Jews didn’t see each other as brothers, so that Jews could lend money at interest to Christians. Jews never had a monopoly on trade and banking, and Christian bankers invented schemes to circumvent the anti-usury laws by relabelling interest as administrative fees, or they came up with other gimmicks, yet Jews being involved in these activities goes a long way in explaining the sentiments against them. Today, the long-term consequences of interest charges and trade are poorly understood, but they are the main drivers of the efficiency and innovation drive that drives our collective suicide.

It is not that the Jews didn’t know. Rabbis wrote commentaries on usury in their scriptures. One explains that interest works like a snake’s bite. Initially, it appears insignificant, but it will eventually take the person’s life. Interest eventually consumes the borrower, leaving him no way out of his ever-increasing debts. The lender appears to be increasing his wealth through interest. However, like cancer, interest eventually consumes him also. The economy will ultimately collapse due to wealth inequality, with borrowers unable to repay their debts. Modern finance, despite its seeming advanced, is merely an extend-and-pretend fantasy to keep the Ponzi scheme of usury going. And it has worked so far because economic growth and inflation helped to keep the debt load manageable.

Interest is most vicious but largely imperceptible, as it works over the long term across several human lifespans, so once you have seen the truth, you are among the few and already on your way to the grave. At the same time, the next generation of uninformed suckers swarm the streets. The accumulation of capital into the hands of a few brings down individuals, businesses, nations, and ultimately, entire civilisations. In the Middle Ages, everyone knew that usury was evil. Interest rates were high, sometimes as much as 20% to 30% annually. The misery it caused was plain for everyone to see. Yet, for lenders, the risks were also high, so at 10% interest, their business would have been loss-making. These rates were a ‘fair’ market price, yet a societal curse. Persecuting Jews was also profitable for their debtors. In 1290, King Edward I expelled the Jews from England, confiscated their assets, and defaulted on the loans he had received from them.

Large-scale borrowing can’t occur without debt markets and interest. There would have been no capitalism without interest on debts. In the 16^th century, interest rates fell to around 10% annually as financial markets became more developed and efficient, thereby reducing lending risk. As interest rates fell and because of the Protestant Reformation, religious objections to interest waned. Interest became an essential part of the capitalist economy, and Western culture largely remained ignorant of the problematic nature of interest charges. Once Christians could charge interest on fellow Christians, the Jewish role in money lending reduced, but it remained significant, and it affected Jewish culture. In his work On the Jewish Question, Karl Marx wrote,

Let us not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion, but let us look for the secret of his religion in the real Jew. What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. […] The Jew has emancipated himself in a Jewish manner, not only because he has acquired financial power, but also because, through him and also apart from him, money has become a world power and the practical Jewish spirit has become the practical spirit of the Christian nations. […] Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man – and turns them into commodities[…] The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange[…] The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general.⁴

Several commentators have rushed to denounce the work as a classic example of anti-Semitic propaganda. And the anti-Semites, who see Marxism as a Jewish conspiracy, pretend it doesn’t exist. Karl Marx came from a non-religious Jewish family that had adopted Protestant Christianity. It gave Marx an inside view of the ways of non-religious Jews. And he didn’t base his observation merely on personal experience. He cited the work of others who investigated the matter when it was not politically incorrect to do so. He quotes Bruno Bauer, who has also shared his thoughts on the Jewish Question,

The Jew, who in Vienna, for example, is only tolerated, determines the fate of the whole Empire by his financial power. The Jew, who may have no rights in the smallest German state, decides the fate of Europe. While corporations and guilds refuse to admit Jews, or have not yet adopted a favourable attitude towards them, the audacity of industry mocks at the obstinacy of the material institutions.

So, when the Vienna stock market collapsed, many blamed the Jews. Marx’s language feels rather disagreeable in this post-Holocaust world, as he speaks of ‘the Jew’. Had he instead spoken of ‘the German’, no one today would have minded. And if you read carefully, it is admiration rather than hatred. Marx intended his writing as cultural criticism, so that everyone, Jews and Christians alike, could benefit. Marx argued that the money religion corrupts us. The Jews have to deal with their cultural heritage, which also affects Christians, as ’emancipation from huckstering and money, consequently from practical, real Judaism, would be the self-emancipation of our time.’

Silvio Gesell, who came up with the holding fee on money, became a fierce opponent of Nazism and condemned scapegoating the Jews. Gesell believed that hatred would divert attention from genuine economic issues, which he sought to address through land reform and a holding fee on money. Yet, in his work The Natural Economic Order, Gesell uses the phrase ‘Jewish stockbrokers with the keen intellects of their race’ and calls the Jewish pawnbroker ‘the money usurer’ as opposed to the German landowner who was the ‘land usurer.’⁵ So, an intelligent man with business experience, who opposed blaming Jews, nonetheless used the stereotype because it reflected reality.

Jews still play a prominent role in the financial sector in the United States. Several heads of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, and Janet Yellen, were Jewish. Financial services made about 25% of corporate profits between 2000 and 2020. Bribes, dubbed campaign financing, play a central role in US politics and ensure favourable regulations for the financial industry. Receiving 25% of the money made in the economy without producing anything and bribing politicians to secure favourable regulations demonstrate the parasitism in finance. Ordinary people struggle to make ends meet, but the top 1% is doing well. Nearly half of the richest Americans are Jewish, despite them making up 2% of the US population. It is not an accident. After the Soviet Union collapsed, there was a scramble for the state’s assets. Many of the oligarchs who came out on top in that dubious process were also Jewish.

Media and public opinion

In 2012, six corporations owned 90% of the mainstream media in the United States. Most had Jewish CEOs and owners. Journalists are also often Jewish. How much that affects their reporting remains to be seen. In 2008, Philip Weiss remarked that in a few months, several serious people suggested that Jews predominate in the American media. For instance, at a forum at the Nixon Center, the former high-ranking government official Dov Zackheim said, ‘Jews don’t dominate the policy-making process, but the media is a different story.’ Based on his personal experience, Weiss claimed that most newspaper editors were Jewish.⁶

Does it matter? Weiss thinks so if the reporting concerns the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He cites a few Jewish journalists who admitted to having a bias.⁶ Yet, J.J. Goldberg wrote in The Forward that, although Jews hold many prominent positions in the US media, they do not prioritise Jewish concerns and that Jewish Americans generally perceive the media as anti-Israel.⁷ During the Gaza War, the New York Times instructed its journalists covering Israel’s war on Gaza to limit the use of terms like ‘genocide’ or ‘refugee camp’ and avoid using the phrase ‘occupied territory’ when referring to the West Bank.⁸ The New York Times also featured an article about how extremist settlers took over Israel.⁹ So, whether the New York Times is biased is a matter of debate, but it is not uncritical of Israel, and also honest journalists can have biases.

And what about Jews dominating Hollywood, which is another Jewish stereotype? Joel Stein of the Los Angeles Times mocked the efforts of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which is another part of the Israel Lobby, to re-educate the American public:

I have never been so upset by a poll in my life. Only 22% of Americans now believe ‘the movie and television industries are pretty much run by Jews,’ down from nearly 50% in 1965. The Anti-Defamation League, which released the poll results last month, sees in these numbers a victory against stereotyping. Actually, it just shows how dumb America has gotten. Jews totally run Hollywood.¹⁰

Anti-Israel messages on the Internet proved more difficult to handle, as political correctness has given way to rudeness in a bid to safeguard the freedom of opinion. Israel has countered the issue by paying students for posting pro-Israel messages on social media.¹¹ It was part of a public relations effort named ‘hasbara’ that some call propaganda.

The Israel lobby further tried to steer the academic debates. In 2007, about 300 academics called for academic freedom from political pressure, most notably from groups portraying themselves as defenders of Israel. In 2009, sociology professor William Robinson sent an email to students in which he compared the Israeli occupation of Gaza with the Nazi-controlled Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. The ADL then campaigned to discipline him for violating the faculty code of conduct, so the academic variant of a spanking.

Linguistics professor Noam Chomsky, a left-wing political activist who is highly critical of US and Israeli policies, claimed that the ADL had a 150-page dossier on him. Chomsky had defended the right to deny the Holocaust as freedom of speech. The ADL called him a Holocaust denier, describing him as ‘a dupe of overweening intellectual pride who is incapable of distinguishing between totalitarian and democratic societies and between oppressors and victims.’ The ADL collected information to use against him. Chomsky said an ADL insider sent him a copy of the file. It included conversations, correspondence and other materials. Chomsky added it read like an FBI file. He further noted,

It’s hard to nail this down in a court of law, but it’s clear they essentially have spies in classrooms who take notes and send them to the ADL and other organisations. The groups then compile dossiers they can use to condemn, attack or remove faculty members. They’re like J. Edgar Hoover’s files. It’s kind of gutter stuff.¹²

It was not an isolated incident, as Jews seemed to have established an intelligence and surveillance network in the United States. In 1993, the police department raided the San Francisco ADL’s Northern California office. It kept files on more than 600 predominantly leftist civic organisations and over 10,000 individuals. The police estimated the ADL had illegally obtained 75% of that information. The police investigation uncovered information about the ADL’s spying operations.¹³ The ADL went after Americans who oppose Israel’s oppression of Palestinians.¹⁴ District Attorney Arlo Smith dropped the case. It was not the only intelligence operation of a regional ADL branch.

For much of its history, the ADL has operated as a foreign intelligence organisation in the United States. The organisation’s spymaster, Irwin Suall, ran a nationwide network of agents and informants from the ADL’s New York City headquarters. Suall employed covert operatives in the field. One was Roy Bullock, who ran the operation in Northern California. According to a secret 1993 FBI memorandum, the San Francisco Police Department received information from a reliable source that two Israeli generals were about to travel to Washington, DC, to press for an end to the FBI’s investigations.

Wars and revolutions

During the French Revolution, the revolutionaries decided that Catholics, Protestants and Jews would all become full members of society. In 1797 and 1798, a French Jesuit and a Scottish physicist published two remarkably similar books claiming secret societies were undermining the social order and had started the French Revolution. Both named the Freemasons and the Illuminati as the main culprits. The Freemasons promoted a secular state, thus a separation of Church and State. Some of their members played prominent roles in the American and French Revolutions. Jews also came into the crosshairs as they benefited. It marked the beginning of the conspiracy theories as we know them today. Much of contemporary conspiracy thinking still centres around secretive groups and Jews.

Another conspiracy theory is that the Jews started the 1917 Russian Communist Revolution. Anti-communists brought that up during the ensuing civil war to exploit existing anti-Jewish sentiments. There indeed were a significant number of Jewish Communist Party leaders during the revolution. The anti-Semitism of the imperial Russian government may have induced them to join radical political movements. Yet, it doesn’t explain why so many Jews joined radical movements in other countries. Milton Friedman found that Jews wrote a significant part of the revolutionary anti-capitalist literature and disproportionately filled the ranks of communist parties in several countries.¹⁵ And anti-Semitism did not disappear in the Soviet Union. In 1948, Stalin started a campaign against the so-called rootless cosmopolitans, a whistle word for Jewish intellectuals.

Friedman gave two reasons as to why that might be so. First, the left promised Jews equal citizenship, while the Christian right did not. Second, the stereotype of Jews being profiteers and usurers persuaded them to show themselves and others that they are not selfish and heartless but public-spirited and idealistic.¹¹ A third reason, which Friedman didn’t mention, was that many intellectuals were Jewish, causing them to make an outsized contribution to both socialist and capitalist thinking. For conspiracy theorists, it was proof that the Jews control both sides, thus the capitalists as well as the communists.

From 1968 onwards, the left in the West gradually alienated itself from its traditional worker base in favour of disadvantaged groups like ethnic minorities, women, and LGBTQ people. The Marxist Frankfurt School played a significant role in this development. The Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory alleges that the Marxists of the Frankfurt School undermine Western civilisation with civil rights movements, feminism, multiculturalism, and LGBTQ propaganda, causing a breakdown of traditional Christian values. Several prominent thinkers of the Frankfurt School were Jewish, so some stress that fact to illustrate the Jews who are behind the so-called destruction of Christianity rather than the spread of rational thinking.

From 1968 onwards, the left in the West gradually alienated itself from its traditional worker base in favour of disadvantaged groups like ethnic minorities, women, and LGBTQ people. The Marxist Frankfurt School played a central role in this. The Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory alleges that the Marxists of the Frankfurt School undermine Western civilisation with civil rights movements, feminism, multiculturalism, and LGBTQ propaganda, causing a breakdown of traditional Christian values. Several prominent thinkers of the Frankfurt School were Jewish. That led some to believe that the Jews are behind the increase in atheism and more people turning queer.

Several wars are, to a significant extent, the outcome of neoconservative ideology, built on Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilisations. Huntington wrote that Western nations would lose their dominance if they failed to recognise the irreconcilable nature of cultural tensions. Huntington claimed that Islam posed a fundamental problem to the West.¹⁶ He argued that the West should adapt to a new era where it is no longer dominant. The neoconservatives viewed it differently. Leo Strauss, who was Jewish and the founder of American neoconservatism, proposed a restoration of the vital ideas underpinning Western civilisation, such as classical Greek philosophy and the Judaeo-Christian heritage, and promoted faith in the West’s moral purpose.

They were conservatives who believed in the Hegelian dialectic and hoped to bring about progress through war and revolution, which places them in the tradition of the Bolsheviks and Lenin, who overthrew the Russian government. It is a reason why the neoconservatives pressed for war to bring liberal democracy to Iraq. The underlying problem was the unresolved Hegelian dialectical conflict between the West and Islam, and they reasoned that Western values are superior, and that the Iraqis would accept them. Several neoconservatives were Jewish, which promoted speculation that Israel’s security was their main concern. That might be so, but the efforts of the non-Jewish Vice-President Dick Cheney, a political asset of the oil industry, were more decisive.

Allegiance

Jewish loyalty is another issue that attracts attention. Every minority in a foreign country faces the question of allegiance. It isn’t a big issue when the minority and the host country don’t have a conflict of interest, or when the minority has little influence. Jews have significant clout in the United States and elsewhere. In his book By Way of Deception, Victor Ostrovsky, a former operative for the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, claimed that this service recruits helpers among the Jews outside Israel for its operations.¹⁷ Other secret services also enlist compatriots for espionage abroad, so it is not a particularly Jewish thing to do, but the Mossad is legendary for its daring operations on foreign soil. Yet, Russia and Iran have engaged in similar activities like murdering opponents abroad.

One of the most well-known ‘helpers’ was Jonathan Pollard. As a young Navy intelligence analyst, he claimed that the United States withheld information from its close ally, Israel. And so, he took it upon himself to correct this injustice, at a profit to compensate for the inconvenience that comes with treason. He sold classified US documents to Israel. Sensitive documents stolen by Pollard ended up in the hands of the Soviet Union, putting the lives of US intelligence assets at risk. A few other cases of Israeli espionage in the United States came to public knowledge, such as the arrests of former AIPAC officials Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman.

A noteworthy incident is the Israeli attack on the spy ship USS Liberty during the 1967 Six-Day War, which killed 34 Americans and wounded 170. The assault consisted of an air attack followed by a sea attack with gunboats. The official story is that Israeli forces mistakenly identified it as an enemy vessel. US Ambassador to Lebanon, Dwight Porter, recounted a conversation between an Israeli pilot and the Israel Air Force war room picked up by an NSA aircraft and inadvertently cabled to CIA offices around the world, which gives a different narrative:

Israeli pilot to war room: This is an American ship. Do you still want us to attack?
War room to Israeli pilot: Yes, follow orders.
Israeli pilot to war room: But sir, it’s an American ship – I can see the flag!
War room to Israeli pilot: Never mind; hit it.

Earlier that day, Israeli reconnaissance planes had already identified the ship as an NSA intelligence vessel. The presumed exchange between the pilot and the war room raises questions. What reasons could the Israelis have had? Why would they risk angering their ally, the United States? The journalist Peter Hounam claimed that President Johnson, fearing he would lose the election, sought a pretext to let the United States join the war on the Israeli side and had asked the Israelis to stage a false flag attack. That would also have been in Israel’s interest. It makes sense, but there is no proof that this is the truth.

The highly intriguing coincidences surrounding the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 have kept conspiracy theorists on edge. They were indeed of the kind that only a vast plot could accomplish. One that has received special attention is that a New York housewife had spotted five Israelis filming the attacks on the World Trade Center from a rooftop just after the first strike had hit the Twin Towers. The Israelis appeared full of joy. The police arrested them with $4700 in cash, foreign passports and a pair of box cutters of the type used by the hijackers. Two were Mossad agents. The FBI claimed they believed they were spying on Islamic extremist networks.¹⁸

Well, were they? The FBI interrogated them for weeks and concluded that there was no evidence they had foreknowledge of the attacks. But the Israelis were uncooperative, so it was impossible to extract much information from them. Later, some of them discussed the events on an Israeli talk show. One said, ‘We come from a country that experiences terror daily. Our purpose was to document the event.’¹⁸ The evidence suggests the Israelis knew more, likely some specifics of the attack plan. An Israeli official told the Associated Press, ‘Everybody knew about a heightened alert and knew that bin Laden was preparing a big attack.’ He said the Israelis had passed on this information to Washington and denied Israel had concrete intelligence that could have prevented the attacks.¹⁹

The Mossad is known for its daring operations. In the aftermath of the Hamas terrorist attacks of 7 October 2023, Israel scored some remarkable successes against Hezbollah and Iran with the help of its secret services. Mossad agents had duped Hezbollah into buying thousands of explosive pagers and walkie-talkies. When Israel attacked Iran in 2025, it killed senior commanders and nuclear scientists and disarmed Iran’s air defences. Commando forces operated in Tehran and across the country, while Iran’s security and intelligence agencies remained unaware. Mossad teams targeted air defence missiles, ballistic missiles, and missile launchers. Israel had already assassinated several Iranian nuclear scientists and acquired Iranian nuclear information.²⁰

Influence on the United States government

An evangelical Christian desire to return the Jews to the Holy Land has promoted the Zionist cause in the United States, as they believe it to be a prerequisite for the Second Coming of Jesus. Consequently, there is strong support for Israel amongst Evangelical Christians and Republicans. Jewish Americans often back Democratic candidates, so Democrats pay close attention to their Jewish voters. This ensured support for Israel in both political parties. US politicians need donations to fund their campaigns, making them open to bribes by corporations and wealthy individuals. Jews generously donate to political campaigns. In 2006, 60% of the Democratic Party’s fundraising and 25% of the Republican Party’s fundraising came from Jewish-funded Political Action Committees.

Several Jewish Americans achieved influential positions in the United States government. Some were also Israeli citizens. In 1994, the Israeli paper Ma’ariv wrote that the Clinton Administration had allowed more Jews in sensitive positions than any government before. The article noted their achievements had brought them there. The Jewish component of the Democratic government was significant, but there were also Jews heading for top positions in the Republican Party, for example, Paul Wolfowitz.²¹

Wolfowitz was one of the neoconservatives, a political movement whose ideology played a significant role in American policies after 11 September 2001. In 2000, he was one of the supporters of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which promoted the removal of Saddam Hussein. After 11 September 2001, the PNAC pushed for an attack on Iraq. The security of Israel played a role in the considerations of the neoconservatives, but there is little evidence that protecting Israel was a principal reason for starting the Iraq war.

Mearsheimer and Walt wrote that pro-Israel figures have established a commanding presence at the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Security Policy, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and that these think tanks are all decidedly pro-Israel.²

In most cases, the US supported the position of Israel, but there are a few instances in which the US government did not. The Eisenhower administration forced Israel to withdraw from the Sinai after the Suez Crisis. The administration of Bush Sr. delayed support to Israel because of the settlements in the Palestinian territories. The Israeli government and the Obama administration differed on the settlement issue and how to deal with Iran, and the Israel Lobby organised resistance against the US government. Still, the degree to which US administrations have done Israel’s bidding is remarkable. US Representative Thomas Massie revealed that every Republican in Congress has an AIPAC babysitter. The money of the Israel Lobby helped to end his political career in the most overspent GOP primary campaign ever.

Irony of history

The Jews are well-organised. The situation as it is today makes even the most bizarre conspiracy theories as laid out in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion appear convincing. Had these Protocols been for real, the situation today may not have been much different. And so, Manny Friedman wrote in the Times of Israel,

We have, for example, AIPAC, which was essentially constructed just to drive agenda in Washington DC. And it succeeds admirably. And we brag about it. Again, it’s just what we do. But the funny part is when any anti-Semite or anti-Israel person starts to spout stuff like, ‘The Jews control the media!’ and ‘The Jews control Washington!’ Suddenly we’re up in arms. We create huge campaigns to take these people down. We do what we can to put them out of work.²²

The Jewish lobby organisation AIPAC drives the agenda in Washington DC, the guy wrote. They take down their political opponents. Massie was just one in a long list. He goes on,

And let’s not forget AIPAC, every anti-Semite’s favourite punching bag. We’re talking an organisation that’s practically the equivalent of the Elders of Zion. I’ll never forget when I was involved in Israeli advocacy in college and being at one of the many AIPAC conventions. A man literally stood in front of us and told us that their whole goal was to only work with top-50 school graduate students because they would eventually be the people making changes in the government.²²

He wrote that AIPAC is the equivalent of the Elders of Zion, because its operations resemble those described in the Protocols. Fact checkers have a hard time explaining that the Protocols are a fantasy when the facts, so how Jews operate, suggest otherwise. The Protocols were likely drawn up using existing stereotypes. As stereotypes are often grounded in reality, this outcome is less surprising than it might seem at first glance. Then Friedman draws the following conclusion,

The truth is, the anti-Semites got it right. We Jews have something planted in each one of us that makes us completely different from every group in the world. We’re talking about a group of people that just got put in death camps, endured pogroms, their whole families decimated. And then they came to America, the one place that ever really let them have as much power as they wanted, and suddenly they’re taking over. Please don’t tell me that any other group in the world has ever done that. Only the Jews. And we’ve done it before. That’s why the Jews were enslaved in Egypt. We were too successful. Go look at the Torah — it’s right there. And we did it in Germany too.²²

In other words, Adolf Hitler was right when he feared that the Jews would take over Germany, and Henry Ford wasn’t crazy either. It is only that hatred isn’t the solution. Some German Jews had amassed fortunes. Otherwise, the Nazis couldn’t have robbed them of all these precious artworks. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a group of oligarchs grabbed much of Russia’s wealth. About 25% of the Russian oligarchs are Jewish, while Jews make up 1% of the Russian population. It is a pattern. Friedman could say it because he is a Jew. But if you are not, you will be branded an anti-Semite.

In other words, Adolf Hitler had good grounds to fear that the Jews would take over Germany, and Henry Ford wasn’t crazy either. It is only that hatred isn’t the solution. Some German Jews had amassed fortunes. Otherwise, the Nazis couldn’t have robbed them of all these precious artworks. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a group of oligarchs grabbed much of Russia’s wealth. About 25% of the Russian oligarchs are Jewish, while Jews make up 1% of the Russian population. It is a pattern. Friedman could say it because he is a Jew. But if you are not, you will be branded an anti-Semite.

Whenever the upper class of society coincides with an ethnic minority, trouble is brewing. Hatred among the general population might manifest as racism. In the past, the Jews often lived at the margin and had to be resourceful to survive. These skills became part of Jewish culture, so Jews often came out on top when no one stopped them. And due to trade and usury, wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, and traders and usurers were often Jewish. It is an example of cultural differences causing harm. White nationalists have appropriated the discussion, so it has become a poisoned debate, for the problem of multiculturalism includes white culture as well. Anti-Semitism and its causes are an example of behavioural differences between cultural groups causing trouble. Culture is key to the solution. And the basis of our cultures is the fairy tales we believe in.

Latest revision: 25 October 2026

Featured image: German picture of 1493 depicting human sacrifice by Jews.

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2. The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt (2006). London Review of Books.
3. UNESCO survey finds antisemitism present in three quarters of EU classrooms. UNESCO (2026).
4. On the Jewish Question. Karl Marx (1844).
5. The Natural Economic Order. Silvio Gesell (1918).
6. Do Jews Dominate in American Media? And So What If We Do? Philip Weiss (2008). Mondoweiss.net. [link]
7. Jewish power: inside the American Jewish establishment. Goldberg J.J. (1997). Basic Books. pp. 280–281.
8. Leaked NYT Gaza memo tells journalists to avoid words ‘genocide,’ ‘ethnic cleansing,’ and ‘occupied territory.’ Jeremy Scahill, Ryan Grim. The Intercept (2024).
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10. Who runs Hollywood? C’mon. Joel Stein (2008). Los Angeles Times. [link]
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18. Five Israelis were seen filming as jetliners ploughed into the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. The Scotland Herald (2003). [link]
19. Context of ‘August 23, 2001: Mossad Reportedly Gives CIA List of Terrorist Living in US; at Least Four 9/11 Hijackers Named’. Cooperativeresearch.org.
20. Israel’s unprecedented attack shows Iran has become a ‘playground’ for the Mossad. Tamar Michaelis, Oren Liebermann and Jeremy Diamond (2025). CNN.
21. The Jews Who Run Clinton’s Court. Avinoam Bar-Yosef (1994). Maariv.
22. Jews DO control the media. Manny Friedman (2012). Times of Israel. [link]