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Blood Libel
When I first traveled to Israel in 1969-1970 for my junior year of college, an instructor in one of my classes brought up the topic of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. I had never heard of it, but what especially rooted in my mind more than 50 years later was the ugliness of the portrayals of the Jews in the book.
The Protocols were likely written in Russia in the early 20th century. Here is one description :
[The Protocols] is a fabricated text purporting to detail a Jewish plot for global domination. Largely plagiarized from several earlier sources, it was first published in Imperial Russia in 1903, translated into multiple languages, and disseminated internationally in the early part of the 20th century. It played a key part in popularizing belief in an international Jewish conspiracy.
The accusation of “blood libel” is one term used to describe lies about the Jews. In a recent article, Alan Dershowitz describes these accusations appearing much earlier in history:
A document from the end of the 15th century features an illustration of a bearded Jew extracting the blood of a Christian child. The adjoining text explains that Jewish law requires that Passover matzoh be baked with the blood of Christian children.
Such documents were widely circulated through Europe during the Easter season and led to frequent pogroms — murder, rape, and destruction — against Jewish children, women and men in revenge for allegedly killing Christian children for their blood to make matzoh. There was never any actual evidence of such cannibalism. In fact, Jewish law explicitly prohibits the consumption of any blood or its use in cooking.
This particular blood libel has endured through the centuries. When a child from the greater community would disappear, the Jews were blamed for kidnapping and killing the child for its blood. No evidence was ever found.
Why has the book repeatedly been discredited? Daniel Pipes has explained it this way:
The book’s vagueness—almost no names, dates, or issues are specified—has been one key to this wide-ranging success. The purportedly Jewish authorship also helps to make the book more convincing. Its embrace of contradiction—that to advance, Jews use all tools available, including capitalism and communism, philo-Semitism and antisemitism, democracy and tyranny—made it possible for The Protocols to reach out to all: rich and poor, Right and Left, Christian and Muslim, American and Japanese.
Pipes notes that the Protocols emphasizes recurring themes of conspiratorial antisemitism: ‘Jews always scheme,’ ‘Jews are everywhere,’ ‘Jews are behind every institution,’ ‘Jews obey a central authority, the shadowy ‘Elders’’, and ‘Jews are close to success.’
What led to the Protocols being such an enduring document, given the number of times it’s been discredited?
One theory that makes sense to me is that the human being, who desires stability and safety, fears forces that will destroy his well-being. Those forces are alien to the ordinary person, are viewed as mysterious and secretive and have the ability to control the world. And when the unforeseen happens, people desire to seize upon something or someone who could be responsible for these frightening incidents or outcomes. Since Jews historically kept to themselves in earlier times, to preserve their faith and traditions, they were at the very least puzzling to some people, and alarming to those who didn’t understand them.
They made the perfect culprit, a ready scapegoat.
The Protocols have been used as a credible reference in the 20th and 21st centuries. Henry Ford was a rabid anti-Semite who promoted the lies:
For nearly two years starting in 1920, the American industrialist Henry Ford published in a newspaper he owned —The Dearborn Independent — a series of antisemitic articles that quoted liberally from the Protocols. The actual author of the articles is generally believed to have been the newspaper’s editor, William Cameron. During 1922, the circulation of the Dearborn Independent grew to almost 270,000 paid copies. Ford later published a compilation of the articles in book form as ‘The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem.’
In 2012, Ilias Kasidiaris read them aloud in the Greek Parliament. And the Palestinian Solidarity Committee of South Africa distributed copies of the Protocols at the World Conference against Racism in 2002.
The political Right has had its offenders, too:
Mary Ann Mendoza was removed as a speaker for Trump’s campaign in 2020 after she re-tweeted an anti-Semitic link.
In her now-deleted tweet, Mendoza urged her roughly 40,000 followers to read a lengthy thread that warned of a plan to enslave the ‘goyim,’ or non-Jews. It included fevered denunciations of the historically wealthy Jewish family, the Rothschilds, as well as the top target of right-wing extremism today, the liberal Jewish philanthropist George Soros.
The thread also made reference to one of the most notorious hoaxes in modern history: ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.’
Although my recent citations to the Protocols are limited, the book still receives international attention. It’s just one source used to justify the hatred toward Jews.
* * * *
Human beings will always need scapegoats. They will always fear for their wellbeing. They will always need someone to hold responsible. In these times when we experience much fear, violence, and hatred, we want to blame someone.
As long as Jews live, anti-Semitism will exist.
Published in Religion & Philosophy
It’s easier to revile people for their relative success than it is to emulate the causes of that success: education, hard work, and perseverance. Of course, the same course leads to success for gentiles, Asians, Blacks …
You see there? It is a conspiracy!
I agree.
We are seeing the same technique being used here against President Trump to prevent his second term as President. Just observe a complete abandonment of the Constitutional “rule of law” principle in order to prosecute Trump on numerous bogus charges.
People either need to blame Lucifer or the Jews. To quote Tony Montana
Now Tony Montana is an evil man but he still had a point.
My favorite explication of PEZ is from Konrad Heiden’s Der Fuhrer. Published in 1941, it is an inside-Germany account of the rise of H****r and the setting.
Marvelous and utterly damning.
Could you please find another source for right-wing examples than the Daily Beast? The quote contains the claim that opposition to George Soros is equivalent to promoting the Protocols. Someone like Ben Shapiro probably has a good comment about Mendoza (or another relevant offender) that could replace the Daily Beast quote.
That’s the author’s opinion. I’m not interested in protecting Mendoza. Maybe next time she’ll be more careful about the tweets she forwards. We’ve all done foolish stuff and have to live with the consequences–including me.
The Soviet Union intentionally promoted anti-antisemitism for political reasons.
Fascinating. The Russians would go back and forth on anti-Semitism. They supported creating Israel.
Anti-Semitism was repressed in the Soviet Union starting in 1945. Stalin liberated Auschwitz and other death camps. His popularity with Jews had never been higher. But as close as the Soviet Union was to Israel, the US seemed to be closer. Then the brand new Israeli government sent Golda Meir as their minister plenipotentiary to the Soviet Union. She was a huge hit among Soviet Jewry. They would mob her chanting “nasha Golda” (our Golda). No one in Russia mobbed Joe chanting endearments. (No one would dare.) One didn’t run around Stalin’s Russia being more popular than Stalin. It just wasn’t done. Less than three weeks after Meir arrived in Moscow, Stalin broke with Israel and something called “the anti-cosmopolitan campaign” was launched. It was something like Krystalnacht, except whereas Germans are efficient, Russians are not, and Russian commies are worse than that. It still got people killed, though. Russia started aligning with Israel’s enemies.
Thanks, Percival. It’s messy, isn’t it.
Just to be clear, its not the characterization of Mendoza as an anti-Semite that I was objecting to (I never heard of her, but promoting an article about the ‘Rothschilds enslaving goyim’ sounds more than a little anti-Semitic to me, as well), but rather the part about equating opposition to George Soros with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories (which is essentially a Daily Beast smear against every conservative, even if its an association that anti-Semites try to make to recruit ignorant people).
It is just what you say. I assume that by now, those who say criticisms of Soros are anti-Semitic smears are discounted by our readers, who know better. He has been criticized on this site numerous times (including by me).
Weird coincidence: My wife and I were talking about this very thing- Soviet Antisemitic propaganda and its exploitation of Islamic Antisemitism- minutes ago.
The people who claim any criticism of Soros is anti-Semitic have no problem criticizing observant Jews like Ben Shapiro or Dennis Prager.
I do kind of get it in that people are calling Soros
aan evil mastermind who uses his riches funding a secret group of people to undermine government and that’s pretty much everything short of weather machines and blood cookies in the accuse-a-Jew department.I kind of think the survival of Hamas disproves these conspiracy theories all on it’s own; a murder terrorist cult literally on Israel’s doorstep that only survives because the international community has put an enormous amount of pressure on Israel to not destroy it.
….and so it has gone throughout history. It’s never enough.
Similarly in the Muslim world, during Ramadan or on any Friday, and centuries before the Protocols forgery existed.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion remains extremely popular in the Muslim world:
In 2020 blogger Elder of Ziyon found 15 translations of, or books about, it at the Muscat International Book Fair in Oman.
Month-long dramatizations of the Protocols during Ramadan have been a yearly feature on Egyptian TV in recent years.
Mein Kampf also continues to be very popular.
Excellent information, Paul, I didn’t know all that, and it confirms my thoughts. Thanks.
Muslim propaganda is not sophisticated — it doesn’t have to be. The paranoid style in Muslim daily life (to adapt a phrase) is like oxygen. Much of mass communication has the appeal of Chick tracts, except that few recognize them for the er advocacy represented. Modern Muslim mass communications can be well-produced and set in well-appointed studios, and then devolves into counting months of breastfeeding to rule on the admissibility or not of marrying one’s first cousin.
It’s as if the masses walked around with their faces stuck in Tik Tok, Facebook, Instagram, state-approved news, and porn all day. Oh, wait.
Ain’t that the truth?? Hamas has openly talked about and have been caught staging footage of “civilian” casualties to engender international outrage and condemnation of Israel yet the western media unfailingly falls for it every freaking time.
I remember some years ago when they were carrying off a “casualty” on a stretcher and the guy fell off and walked away.
I have been glad to see a lot of the Pallywood coverage resuming this week.
Not sure if this fits here or not. David Mamet wrote an interesting essay. Worth the read, as they say.
How the Democrats betrayed the Jews
https://unherd.com/2023/10/how-the-democrats-betrayed-the-jews/
Love Mamet. I have his audiobooks. Great reading. “The Secret Knowledge” and uh “Recessional” I think is the more recent one.
I generally like Mamet. I was a little uncomfortable with his blaming Christians in general for Jewish persecution. He paints with too broad a brush:
Jesus’ statement is specifically aimed at those who are plotting to kill him (Joh 8:40 but now you seek to kill me,)
I don’t want to get into the weeds but I think it’s a little silly to accuse Jesus of anti-antisemitism.
Otherwise I liked the article.
Yes, it may be a small thing, but the first Christians were Jews, and most Christians today hold Jews in very high regard (some Christians, even higher regard than Christians themselves). Holding the beliefs and actions of Christians in the middle centuries, or however long is was or when it might have been, as representative of how Christians saw Jews for the past two hundred years and determining their voting habits is a bit of a stretch. On the other hand the world does seem to have always hated the Jews.
Depends on the Christians.
There are all kinds, but I was thinking of a very large congregation of Messianic Jews. The only thing was no one in the congregation was Jewish. Not even the leadership.