From the USA to the UK, it seems that Anti-Semitism is on the rise (again) in the developed world. Evidence points towards the truism that while not all Donald Trump supporters are Nazis, all Nazis are Trump supporters; and equally, while not all Brexit supporters are Nazis, all Nazis are Brexit supporters.
The history of Anti-Semitism is a long one, and for the purposes of this article, I'll restrict things to the last hundred-and-fifty years or so, as this is when the idea of a "Jewish World Conspiracy" first really came into general parlance.
"A Jewish plot to take over the world"
In a way, it was Marx's misfortune that the founder of Communism was also a Jew, for this has ever since coloured how people (both its supporters and its detractors) saw it: Communism was seen as attractive to some of Jewish extraction (in Russia in particular) precisely because it was international and anti-establishment in its outlook and aims, and offered a political haven from persecution. It is also true that when the successful Bolsheviks took power in Russia, they did include a disproportionate number of Jews. Thus this fed into the belief that Communism was a Jewish plot to take over the world. This was certainly Tsar Nicholas II's point of view when he was forced from power, and was so insidious in enveloping much of political thought across the developed world during and after the First World War, and up to the present day (more on that later).
The odd aspect of this is that Marx himself had ambiguous feelings about his own Jewish heritage, and this then fueled the belief amongst some Anti-Semites at the time that Marx himself saw Capitalism as a kind of "Jewish Conspiracy", and that he was somehow fighting against Jewish domination of Capitalism. How this also squared with the understanding that Communism was also a "Jewish Conspiracy", is hard to understand.
The two main "centres" of Anti-Semitism by the second half of the Nineteenth century were Russia and Germany. Jews had been persecuted for centuries in Russia, being send to live in the "Pale" in the 18th century, and by the late Nineteenth century were trying to flee abroad to places like the USA. In Russia, this period also saw an unprecedented rise in political violence, which culminated in the anarchy of 1905. As an absolutist, deeply religious state, the Russian Empire was deeply paranoid of "Godless" Communism, which was then exacerbated by the document "The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion", a forgery by a fanatical Russian priest, which tied the anarchy in Russia with a Jewish conspiracy.
In Germany, Anti-Semitism had become almost "fashionable" in the social circles of the upper class and in the arts (such as Richard Wagner), which spread to the paranoia of its emperor, Wilhelm II. It's unclear where exactly this stereotype of the "corrupting Jew" (earlier seen in Grimm's fairly tales) came from, but the fact that Marx's ideas were initially influenced by the 1848 Year Of Revolutions may have been a factor. Again, the fact that Marx himself was German may have sent alarm bells ringing in some people's minds.
Like in Russia, much of Europe held the long belief that as Jews were "stateless" and "heathens", they were therefore deeply suspect in their allegiances (if they had any). The social and political tumult of 1848 had long-lasting effects on many parts of Europe. While many of the revolutions failed, the fact remained that the major European powers (Britain excluded) rolled on through a series of wars and upheaval for the next twenty-odd years, culminating in the Franco-Prussian War of 1871. Not long after this, in 1877-78, there were the wars between Russia and the Ottomans that led to Eastern Europe's boundaries being radically redrawn. And behind all this was the growing paranoia against a "Jewish Conspiracy". So by the time of the Bolshevik Revolution forty years later, and the end of the war in Germany a year after that, blaming the Jews had become a very convenient scapegoat.
Through all of this, its impossible to omit the rise in the influence of Zionism, an idea that largely came from East European (i.e. Russian) Jews who longed for a permanent homeland. With the re-drawing of the Middle Eastern map at the end of the First World War, Britain took control of the former Ottoman territory of Palestine, and the "Balfour Agreement" allowed Jews from Europe to settle in Palestine. The fact that the Jewish population was heavily outnumbered by local Arabs seemed a minor detail. Britain was used to ruling its colonies by "divide and rule", like in its "crown jewel", India.
The Bolshevik Revolution, and the immediate threat of Communism spreading across Europe and the developed world, led to a spike in anti-Semitism infecting political discourse. In Germany alone, political violence spiked dramatically in the years after the war: the short-lived "Munich Soviet" of 1919 eventually led to violence from the other end of the political spectrum; the infamous "Munich putsch" of 1923, which Hitler took part in. In these few years, political assassination became the norm, such as the assassination of Germany's foreign minister, the Jew, Walter Rathenau. A Bolshevik government, ran by Jews, was seen as the main threat to the world order, and thus every Jew became seen as a threat to the world order.
This would have remained a fringe obsession in the developed world, but for the Great Depression. In Germany, the views of the Nazis that were once considered outlandish paranoia were held by many as established fact. When the world was so unstable, it made sense that there must be some complex reason for why it was happening. It couldn't simply be due to simple human greed and arrogance; there had to be a more sinister motive - some kind of Jewish conspiracy. And if some sacrifices had to be made to re-establish order, then it was worth it.
As in Germany in the late Nineteenth century, in the years after the Wall Street Crash, this Anti-Semitic view became common in social circles across the developed world, including in the USA and Britain. Fascism was seen as a "necessary evil" to combat the threat of Communism, which seemed all the more possible after economic chaos of the Great Depression. Besides, it could be argued, not all Fascists were Anti-Semitic; Mussolini wasn't, for instance. These "apologists" argued that fascists were "good people with a few bad ideas", rather than the opposite. We all know how that ended for Europe's Jews.
Anti-Semitism in the Arab world, meanwhile, had long been a part of life, but on the whole the two communities had got on pretty well. The change of rulers in the Middle East, from the Muslim Ottoman dynasty to the Christian British and French "mandates" after the end of the First World War, had caused them to re-think their perspective, which led to the rise of the "Muslim Brotherhood" in Egypt and elsewhere. By the 1930s and the rise of Fascism in Germany as well as already in Italy, Muslim leaders in the Middle East were getting tired with Britain's perceived preferential treatment towards the Jews (regardless of the more complex reality), and began to fraternize with Fascists. This Anti-Semitic connection between Islamic Extremism and the politics of Fascism lives on to this day.
New neighbours, more problems
The end of World War Two began to see a different form of Anti-Semitism coalescing. The Second World War led to the defeat of Fascism in Germany and Italy (Spain's, with its own form of Fascism, lived on to the 1970s). The aftermath of the Second World War also resulted in the implosion of Britain's control over the Middle East, with Palestine's Arabs being evicted and the territory turned into Israel, the Jewish people's first homeland for two thousand years.
For the Arabs of the Middle East, the shock of the Jews being able to carve out a state from the Palestinians was comparable to that which Europe's elite felt with the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. The Second World War had destroyed the poison of Anti-Semitism in Europe (for a couple of generations, at least), but had inadvertently replanted it in the Middle East with the creation of Israel.
As Bolshevism had become a convenient Jewish "hate figure" in the developed world after the First World War, Israel became a convenient Jewish "hate figure" in the Middle East after the Second World War. This quickly became apparent with the rise to power of Colonel Nasser in Egypt in 1953. Coming to power as part of a cabal that had overthrown the pro-British (and thus, by implication, pro-Israel) King Faruk, Nasser quickly established his credentials with the Arab "street".
Israel's war of independence in 1948 was known simply as "the disaster" to the Arabs. Nasser quickly established himself as the moral leader of the Arab world, and sought to create a united Arab front against the Jewish homeland, by 1967 pushing for combined Arab war to "drive the Jews into the sea". The Six Day War of that year was an Israeli "preventative war" that quickly gathered its own momentum and exceeded their own wildest expectations in massively expanding their territory at their Arab neighbours' expense.
This second Arab humiliation, followed by the failure of the surprise Yom Kippur War of 1973, simply left a gaping hole in Arab self-esteem. The answer was Political Islam and Islamic extremism, which both grew in scope from the 1970s onward, turning the earlier Anti-Semitism of the likes of the "Muslim Brotherhood" into an even more dangerous sort of beast. Like with the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, the Islamic Revolution in Iran was followed by other attempts at uprisings elsewhere: an attempt to take control of Mecca, and the assassination of Egypt's leader, Sadat, by a Muslim radical, due to his policy of peace towards Israel. Using Israel and its support from the "Great Satan", the USA, Arab leaders have sown the belief that world government is controlled from the Jewish homeland.
Since the founding of Israel, we have seen the politics of the Middle East become consumed by Anti-Semitism. Used as a cynical weapon by both secular and Muslim leaders alike, in the modern day, it has become a staple: a "self-evident fact" that doesn't even need to be supported by evidence.
It is the cynical "feeding the crocodile" of Anti-Semitism that has also led to the growth of extremism in the Middle East, and the "Nazis Of The Middle East", ISIS. But now that the genie has been let out of the bottle, no-one knows how to put it back. While they may finally be on the verge of defeat on the battlefield, in the battle of the mind, they are an ever-evolving and tenacious enemy.
"Re-branding" Anti-Semitism
In the USA, the onset of the Cold War quickly led to Anti-Semitic paranoia of Communist infiltration of the highest levels of society. Encouraged by Joseph McCarthy and supported by the head of the FBI, J Edgar Hoover, its most infamous case was against the Rosenbergs. As it became an all-consuming obsession for the best part of a decade, it was only truly cauterised by the fall from grace of McCarthy himself and the gradual marginalisation of J Edgar Hoover, who still had an insidious influence on domestic affairs up until his death in 1972.
While the Anti-Semitic hysteria bound up with the "Red Threat" receded, and the USA eventually became a strong supporter of Israel, Anti-Semitism in the developed world, and in Europe in particular, began to be associated with anti-Imperialism. The Soviet Union had already took advantage of this, and struck out into the Middle East. While before the Second World War being linked with the "Jewish Conspiracy", by the 1950s it began to court the Arab powers' campaign against Israel.
Stalin himself had played a large part in gradually purging the Communist Party of its "Jewish" elements, the last act of this being the "Doctor's Plot" in the last years before his death in 1953. In this way, while Anti-Semitism had been an obsession of Fascism's up to the Second World War, after this it increasingly became one of the extreme left's, supported by the Soviet Union under the banner of "anti-Imperialism". This explains how the Anti-Semitism of the Arabs (supported by both secularist governments and Islamists) became to be so strongly associated with the European Leftism: the link was the Soviet Union. Again, this Anti-Semitic link between Arab nationalism, Islamic Radicalism, and radical Leftism, continues to this day; a legacy of the USSR.
We have seen that even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia still did what it could to maintain its influence in the Middle East, with the common thread of Anti-Semitism. Inside Russia itself, while some of the most powerful "oligarchs" are Jewish, others have been forced into exile if they have been able to escape prison. Since the rule of Russia under Putin, a culture of nativism, nationalism and crude Anti-Semitism has been encouraged, even if not officially endorsed. This explains why so many Russian Jews emigrated to Israel as soon as they could (and radicalising the make-up of Israeli society in the process).
Russia's influence in the Middle East, thanks to the common thread of Anti-Semitism, is now a given. Russia has courted the favour of Iran since the end of the Cold War, thanks to their "common enemy", the USA, and by extension, Israel. This influence in the Middle East has only grown since the Arab Spring; while the initial beneficiary of the "Arab Spring" looked to be Turkey, in the longer-run, this "Great Game Of The Middle East" has turned out better for Russia. While having little obvious historical heritage in the region, unlike Turkey, Russia has played its hand much more cleverly, being on the side of Iran and Syria, and understanding the fluid and fickle nature of the forces that brought about the "Arab Spring". Its Cold War ties served as a good enough bond of trust to its allies, who now look as if they have weathered the worst of the storm.
Coming Full Circle
The modern-day version of the "International Jewish Conspiracy" is meant to be that of the "Imperialist forces" arranged against Muslims, the forces supporting Israel and its "Capitalist stooges" in Washington and elsewhere. This also explains how the EU, in being seen as a supporter of Israel (however easily it is to qualify or debunk that assertion), is part of the conspiracy, and thus considered a legitimate (and "soft") target for Islamic extremists. In a different manner, this linking of Israel with the USA and the EU suits the agenda of Russia, in creating a false equivalence between the growing violence of Islamic extremism and the growth of decadent "Jewish" values in the West.
Those decadent "Jewish" values are what was mentioned earlier: that Jews were seen as "stateless", and "Godless" i.e. people of the world, and thus a threat to national cultures. For the obsession with Israel is only one side to this. In the same way that the Great Depression created the conditions necessary for Anti-Semitism to become prevalent in the developed world, the Financial Crisis helped to create the conditions for its revival in the those same, highly-developed societies. The only reason we didn't have a second Depression in 2008 was that the banks were bailed out. In the same way that a scapegoat was needed for the greed and arrogance that caused the Wall Street Crash, the same is true today. "Globalisation", and its agenda of internationalism, is now seen by the Anti-Semites as the same "Jewish Conspiracy" that was once used when talking about Bolshevism. A hundred years ago people talked darkly of the Federal Reserve; now they talk darkly of Goldman Sachs.
Populism's rhetorical link with Fascism stretches from over a hundred years ago to the present day: it has always been about "country" values versus "city" values, and this is where the link to Anti-Semitism comes in. The Jews were seen as stateless nomads who therefore would thrive in city life, and thus do their best to promote Capitalist values. In this way, returning to "traditional values" is as much about fleeing the "corruption" of the city and all that is "bourgeois". It is a flight from Industrialisation.
The rise in Anti-Semitism in today's society comes from the same re-emergence of "nativist" values in the West; a softening of the Fascist rhetoric of the past, but with the same cultural implications. Theresa May, Britain's Prime Minister, at her party's conference last year, decried "people of the world" who have no national allegiance, and thus are a threat to cultural values. This is the same kind of rhetoric that was used decades earlier against the Jews: it is "Fascism by other means". This is what Brexit represents: a modern reincarnation of nationalist values in Britain. It is for this reason why the strongly Eurosceptic elements of Britain's media lambasted the "EUSSR"; implying it was some kind of quasi-Communist plot, seeing it (like Russia) as a "decadent" organisation that was somehow against "national values". While in Britain and the USA the rhetoric is often more Islamophobic in nature that Anti-Semitic, that simply depends on who you are talking to.
The Anti-Semitism that exists in the developed world today, in an evolution of the term, is often meant by its advocates in an "ironic" sense, so they claim. In this way, the Anti-Semitism of the far-right - with its roots in Fascism - has "plausible deniability", in spite of its earnest hatefulness; meanwhile the Anti-Semitism of the far-left - with its roots in Anti-Imperialism - can be excused as "over-exuberance" coming from a well-meaning intent.
This is what Britain, the USA, Russia and Turkey all have in common in a different kind of way: their leaders are in hock to the same forces of discord, feeding the same crocodile.
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