International Jewish conspiracy

[[File:Protocols Spain 1930.jpg|thumb|right|165px|Spanish edition of ''[[The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion]]''.]]
{{antisemitism}}
{{Bronze}}{{cquote|I've heard that if you become a Jew, you get automatic membership of a shadowy international conspiracy that controls everything.<br>Which actually sounds quite good, but, then you have to weigh that up against the [[circumcision]].|||Somegreybloke, ''Choosing my religion''<ref>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEEMkGF9UEQ</ref>}}

The existence of an '''international [[Jewish]] conspiracy''' (or '''international Zionist conspiracy''' if you want to be [[Crypto-politics|a little more cagey]]) is an [[antisemitic]] [[canard]] which regularly features in various [[racist]] [[conspiracy theories]] and conveniently excuses any misdeeds carried out by gentiles, or indeed many larger systemic problems not necessarily inflicted by any one particular ethnic or religious group.

These dumb rumors basically say what you'd imagine: that an evil hive mind of ethnic Jews is working together to cause everything bad in the world, such as [[war]]s, economic meltdowns, left-wing politics, right-wing politics, income disparity, [[atheism]] (yes, you read that right), the [[impeachment]] of [[Donald Trump]],<ref>[https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/rick-wiles-trump-impeachment/ Did Pastor Rick Wiles Call Trump Impeachment a ‘Jew Coup’?] ''Snopes.''</ref> the last time you got food poisoning at a fast food place, every time you stub your toe on a table, etc. Basically, you name it, and someone has probably blamed the Jews for it. In this way, it functions as a [[unified conspiracy theory]].

Antisemitic conspiracy theories seem to have originated with hysterical claims from [[medieval]] Christians that Jews were [[blood libel|kidnapping Christian babies and drinking their blood]] and spreading the [[Black Death]],<ref>{{wpa|Jewish persecutions during the Black Death|}}</ref> but the phenomenon really took off during the nineteenth century as various hacks decided to cash in by writing shitty books and pamphlets about secret Jewish plots to take over the world.<ref>[https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/conspiracy-theories-the-jews/ Conspiracy Theories and the Jews]. ''My Jewish Learning.''</ref> The most (in)famous of these pamphlets is ''[[The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion]]'', which is now known by non-idiots to be a [[hoax]].

The only way that the international Jewish conspiracy that antisemites believe in could actually happen is if the Jews all had their brains secretly connected together like the Borg from Star Trek. And we don't have technology sufficiently advanced to make that possible.

==Origins==
===Antique and medieval claims of Jewish conspiracy===
The [[blood libel]], the conspiratorial slur that [[Jew]]s kill gentile babies to use their blood in the preparation of [[Passover]] matzos, dates back to antiquity (even back to before the advent of [[Christianity]], if we broaden the scope to any claims of human sacrifice<ref>{{wpa|blood libel}}</ref>). In [[medieval]] [[Europe]], popular wisdom commonly blamed outbreaks of disease on Jews poisoning wells; such attitudes and accusations could lead to [[pogrom]]s, [[murder]]s, and the governing authorities forcing Jews to live in [[segregation|segregated]] areas of cities called [[ghetto]]s.

Only in modern times did the [[Catholic Church]] stop assigning blame to the Jews for their purported [[Evil Jew#Christ-killers|deicide]] of [[Jesus Christ]]. In medieval Europe, anti-Judaists accused Jews of re-enacting [[Passion Play|Jesus's crucifixion and death]] by stabbing or mutilating the [[Eucharist|host]], which [[Catholic]]s regard as [[transubstantiation|transubstantiated]] into the body of Christ.

===Revisionist colonial American history: the "Franklin Prophecy"===
{{main|Franklin Prophecy}}
In 1934, an American magazine published that [[Benjamin Franklin]] delivered an antisemitic speech at the 1787 Constitutional Convention urging that Jews not be admitted to the United States.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20060603105503/http://www.adl.org/special_reports/franklin_prophecy/print.asp ADL on the Franklin Prophecy]</ref> Franklin's purported rationale included that Jews: refuse to assimilate wherever they move, are [[vampire]]s who must live among Christians, will attempt to financially strangle the country, will stream into the United States in such numbers that they will take over and rule the country ([[Eurabia|Sound familiar]]?). Franklin's so-called prophecy was allegedly recorded in a "private diary" of Charles Pinckney, [[Founding Fathers|Constitutional Convention]] delegate from [[South Carolina]], that is now in the possession of the Franklin Institute. The [[Anti-Defamation League]] exposed the fraud in 1954, yet references to the "prophecy" still persist on [[Stormfront|neo-Nazi messageboards]] and on [[Usenet]]. 

The language is characteristic of late-nineteenth-century and early-twentieth century Antisemites and thus contains anachronisms that Franklin could have never written,<ref>{{cite web |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140617174532/http://archive.adl.org/special_reports/franklin_prophecy/print.html |title=The Franklin 'Prophecy' Modern Anti-Semitic Myth Making}}</ref> as Benjamin Franklin died in 1790. In addition, Franklin himself was a contributor to the building fund for Congregation Mikveh Israel, Philadelphia's oldest synagogue.<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20120425054755/http://www.mikvehisrael.org/e2_cms_display.php?p=past_our_history</ref>

Similar antisemitic sentiments have been falsely ascribed to [[George Washington]].<ref>https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/to-bigotry-no-sanction-2/</ref> Like Franklin, George Washington was sympathetic to Jews — indeed, writing a sympathetic letter to a Jewish congregation in Rhode Island in 1790:

{{quotebox|... the Government of the United States ... gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance. ... May the children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy."<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20150906082005/http://www.tourosynagogue.org/history-learning/tsf-intro-menu/slom-scholarship/86-washington-letter</ref>}}

But colonial North America was by no means free of antisemitism… as, for example, in this infamous quote from Thomas Paine's tract: ''Monarchy is ranked in scripture as one of the sins of the Jews, for which a curse in reserve is denounced against them.''<ref>Paine, Thomas, 1737-1809. Common Sense: the Call to Independence. Woodbury, N.Y.</ref>

===20<sup>th</sup> century claims of Jewish conspiracy===
[[File:Bolschewismus ohne Mask.png|thumb|right|200px|Nazi Party propaganda poster about "Jewish Bolshevism".]]
Modern antisemitic conspiracy theories depicting an elaborate secret hierarchy of controlling Jewish influences largely take their cue from ''[[The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion]]'', a 1903 tract purporting to be the manual of a Jewish secret society planning world domination. It is still widely circulated and occasionally cited as "evidence" by various clueless antisemites, despite being exposed as a fraud as early as 1921.

Max Weber (1864-1920), one of the founders of [[sociology]], believed that antisemitism was abhorrent but also expressed concern that the over-representation of Jews in the leadership of European radical groups would inflame anti-Jewish sentiment.<ref>Marianne Weber, ''Max Weber: A Biography'', Harry Zohn, translator and editor, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1975 p. 648</ref>

[[Automobile]] manufacturer [[Henry Ford]] further popularized the conspiracy during the 1920s by publishing the ''Protocols'' and antisemitic articles in his newspaper, ''The Dearborn Independent'', and distributing hundreds of thousands of copies of the ''Protocols''. Ford's antisemitic articles were later collected and published as a four-volume treatise entitled ''The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem''.<ref>[http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/ford1.html Henry Ford Invents a Jewish Conspiracy], Jewish Virtual Library</ref>

Ford's enthusiastic endorsement of an international Jewish conspiracy proved extremely popular in Weimar-era [[Germany]]. Ford provided substantial financial backing to Adolf Hitler in the 1920's and his writings were a significant influence on the formation of the Nazi party and its grassroots support. By 1933, when the Nazi Party came to power in Germany, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion was standard reading in German schools. Hitler admired Henry Ford and even emulated him by creating his own automobile, the Volkswagen.

Hitler further propagated the Jewish conspiracy in ''[[Mein Kampf]]'' and other [[propaganda]] blaming Jews for the rise of both [[communism]] and [[capitalism]], and for Germany's economic decline following the [[First World War]]. Despite this, individuals of Jewish descent controlled less than 1 percent of Germany's most powerful banking and credit institutions, and were significantly overrepresented only in {{wpl|private banking}} (personal banking for rich individuals).<ref>{{Cite book |last=Friedman |first=Jonathan C. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Sp8eBgAAQBAJ |title=The Lion and the Star: Gentile-Jewish Relations in Three Hessian Towns, 1919-1945 |date=2014 |publisher=University Press of Kentucky |pages=42}}</ref> (As for communism, see the section: {{sl|antisemitism and anti-communism}}.)

[[Spanish]] [[fascist]] dictator [[Francisco Franco]] similarly believed in a conspiracy of Jews, [[Freemason]]s, and communists intending to establish a [[one world government|world government]]. He often made reference to a vast "Judeo-Masonic conspiracy."<ref>Gustavo D. Perednik. [https://web.archive.org/web/20031214162550/http://www.jcpa.org/phas/phas-perednik-f03.htm Naive Spanish Judeophobia.] ''Jewish Political Studies Review'' 15:3-4 (Fall 2003)</ref>

===Millenarian antisemites===
[[Fundamentalist]] Christians of an antisemitic bent have promoted theories that intermingle the [[End Times]] with a worldwide Jewish conspiracy where the [[Antichrist]] is believed to be a Jew. Perhaps the most popular promoter of this lunacy was Nazi sympathizer Gordon Winrod.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20020911233239/http://www.adl.org/special_reports/winrod/print.asp The Winrod Legacy of Hate], ADL</ref> Winrod explained this brand of the conspiracy thusly:

{{quotebox|A Jewish Antichrist in the end of this age, pre-supposes an international system of Jewish government. There can be little doubt that such a system, based upon the Jewish Money Power, has already been created -- and is ready to step into the open and assume control of world affairs as soon as the time is ripe.<ref>From Winrod's 1936 pamphlet "Antichrist and the Tribe of Dan," quoted in Michael Barkun's ''[[A Culture of Conspiracy]]'', p. 43. [http://books.google.com/books?id=-0wFZRWKdfoC&pg=PA43&lpg=PA43&dq=%22antichrist+and+the+tribe+of+dan%22&source=bl&ots=7h6llfyjeH&sig=qdpAtZ6NVtz_HD7a0l0gbLutuEw&hl=en&ei=H60jTp6DLcuugQfQ87y-Cw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22antichrist%20and%20the%20tribe%20of%20dan%22&f=false]</ref>}}

==Modern variations==
[[File:Cm13.jpg|thumb|300px|Conspiracists hating other conspiracists because other conspiracists hate the wrong world-controlling minority group (based on the {{wpl|Blind men and an elephant}} parable).<ref group=note>Yo dawg, we herd you liked hate so we put some hate in yo hate so you can hate while u hate!</ref>]]
The [[myth]] of an international Jewish conspiracy remains common among far [[right-wing]] conspiracy theorists, [[Neo-Nazi]]s, [[Communist Party of the Russian Federation|some hardline]] [[communist]]s, Islamic extremists, [[black supremacy|black supremacists]], and other racist lunatics, and has been further perpetuated in recent years by these lunatics' rantings through the ease of posting on the [[Internet]].

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

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

===Antisemitism and anti-communism===

{{see also|Cultural Marxism}}
{{cquote|I myself was dubbed a Jew by ''{{wpl|Die Gartenlaube}}'' and, indeed, if given the choice, I'd just as gladly be a Jew as a 'Herr von'!|||[[Friedrich Engels]], unbothered<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Keßler |first=Mario |date=1998 |title=Engels' Position on Anti-Semitism in the Context of Contemporary Socialist Discussions |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40403692 |journal=Science & Society |publisher=Guilford Press |volume=62 |issue=1 |pages=127–144 |issn=0036-8237}}</ref><ref>Friedrich Engels (April 19, 1890). [https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/04/19.htm "On Anti-Semitism"]. Published in ''Arbeiter-Zeitung'', a paper for the Social Democrat Party in Austria (No. 19, May 9, 1890). Also found in "Karl Marx and Frederick Engels Correspondence 1846-1895", London 1934.</ref>}}
Anti-communists in Europe and North America often associated Jews with Bolshevism or communism in general. Among the modern proponents of this association is [[David Duke]], who claims that communism is a Jewish conspiracy.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20131106122742/http://www.amazon.com/Communism-Origins-Revolution-Greatest-Holocaust/dp/1892796015 Secret Behind Communism The Ethnic Origins of the Russian Revolution and the Greatest Holocaust the History of Mankind]</ref>

But particularly, European fascists believed that Jews were peddling Marxism, in part because one of the founders of Marxism was ethnically (though never religiously) Jewish. It may have been named after [[Karl Marx]], but [[Friedrich Engels]] (not Jewish, for those keeping track) contributed plenty to the foundational texts, too (e.g. the ''[[Communist Manifesto]]'' in part, ''The Principles of Communism'' in whole, ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'' in whole, ''The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State'' in whole, and ''[[Das Kapital]]'' volumes two and three in part). It was Engels who financially supported Marx so he could write his theories at all. Now, although Marx and Engels wrote the first Marxian theory together, they were far from the first "communists" in history (see: [[Communism#Early forms|communism § early forms]]). They even acknowledged this themselves, with (for example) Engels writing about the "utopian socialists" who came before Marxism in ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific''.{{efn|Marx and Engels used the terms "socialism" and "communism" interchangeably.<ref>[https://www.britannica.com/question/How-is-communism-different-from-socialism "How is communism different from socialism?"]. ''Encyclopædia Britannica''.</ref> The distinction between the two terms, among Marxists, stemmed from a later revision by Vladimir Lenin.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Rogers |first=Nick |date=2022 |title=Reflections on the economics of socialism |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/48713459 |journal=Journal of Global Faultlines |volume=9 |issue=2 |pages=138–157 |issn=2397-7825}}</ref>}}

As well, some prominent Communist leaders during the Russian Revolution were Jewish. The most frequently cited is perhaps [[Leon Trotsky]], who was the only Jewish person on the Council of People's Commissars in 1917.{{efn|Although Lenin had some Jewish ancestry (that he was most likely unaware of) through his mom's dad (who converted to Christianity), this would not make him Jewish according to Jewish ''[[halakha]]'' since it considers Jewishness to pass matrilineally (and so even his mother would not have been considered Jewish). Even under a different standard, the very strict [[Adolf Hitler#The Nuremberg Laws|Nuremberg Laws]] implemented by Nazi Germany, Lenin would have been a ''mischling'' of the second degree since one of his grandparents was Jewish. By a [[Judaism#Other|Karaite Jewish]] standard, by which Jewishness is passed patrilineally, his mother would have been Jewish, but Lenin himself wouldn't have been.}} There have been reports by scholars as to what proportion of the Bolsheviks were Jewish. David Stuart Lane writes they were only a "small minority" within the "heterogeneous" Bolsheviks.<ref name="DSLane">{{Cite book |last=Lane |first=David Stuart|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jtIKAAAAIAAJ&newbks=0 |title=The Roots of Russian Communism |date=1969 |publisher=Pennsylvania State University Press |isbn=978-0-271-01178-3 |pages=51 |language=en}}</ref> Thomas Henry Rigby and Jeffrey C. Herf estimate that about four or five percent of the total membership was Jewish from about 1917 to the 1920s; this put the category of "Poles, Latvians and other Baltic peoples" as more "over-represented" in the party than Jews were.<ref name="THRigby">{{Cite book |last=Rigby |first=Thomas Henry |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cDmNDwAAQBAJ |title=Communist Party Membership in the U.S.S.R. |date=2019-03-26 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-0-691-19854-5 |pages=~365 |language=en}}</ref><ref name="HerfJewBols">{{Cite book |last=Herf |first=Jeffrey C.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fBSMIAAACAAJ&newbks=0 |title=The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust |date=2008 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-02738-1 |language=en |pages=95–96 }}</ref>

This, of course, varied wildly between time periods and what organ of the party is considered; one could piece together a conspiracy by [[cherry-picking]] select (possibly brief) time periods for any number of demographics within any number of sub-bodies within significant organizations. Within very small party organs, there is greater opportunity for proportional "over-representation" because, for example, a body consisting of just ten people means each individual is ten percent of the entire body, so a shift of even just one person could mean a very radical shift in relative demographic proportion. The Bolsheviks changed leadership and organizational structure all the time. If one selects only the most extreme instances of "over-representation" within a group, omitting others, they can paint a misleading picture. Latvians, for instance, made up more than half of the Cheka (Bolshevik secret police) commissaries at one point in time (1918).<ref>Jānis Šiliņš (December 21, 2017). [https://eng.lsm.lv/article/culture/history/three-things-to-know-about-latvians-working-for-the-cheka.a261703/ "Three things to know about Latvians working for the Cheka"]. ''Public Broadcasting of Latvia''.</ref>{{efn|This was one fact that would have caused the anti-communist writer {{wpl|Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn}} to dislike Latvians. He stated: "I like the Estonians and the Lithuanians, but not the Latvians. When all is said and done, they started it all."<ref name="CaseForLatvia">{{Cite book |last=Rislakki |first=Jukka |url=https://archive.org/details/caseforlatviadis0000unse |title=The Case for Latvia: Disinformation Campaigns Against a Small Nation |date=2008 |publisher=Rodopi (Brill) |isbn=9789401206051 |series=On the Boundary of Two Worlds |volume=15 |language=en |translator-last=Richard |translator-first=Impola}}</ref>{{rp|79–85}} But indeed, to blame the Latvians for Bolshevism would be just as foolish as to blame the Jews when again, the Bolsheviks came from every background. Latvians became targets of the secret police with incidents such as the {{wpl|Latvian Operation of the NKVD||,}} and many prominent Latvians were purged throughout the 1930s.<ref name="CaseForLatvia"/>{{rp|83}}}} Returning to Herf, he further writes:

{{blockquote|[Benjamin] Pinkus estimated the percentage of Jewish members of the party in 1940 at 4.3 percent or less. By 1939, only 10 percent of the Central Committee was composed of Jews. After Trotsky, Kamenev, and Zinoviev had been ousted from the leadership in 1926, no Jews remained in the Politburo. In the Stalin era in the 1930s, Lazar Kaganovich became the only Jewish member of the Politburo — the exception that proved the rule. Of the 417 people who constituted the ruling elite of the Soviet Union in the mid-1920s (members of the Central Executive Committee, the party Central Committee, the Presidium of the Executive of the Soviets of the USSR and the Russian Republic, the ministers, and the chairman of the Executive Committee), 27 [individuals], or 6 percent, were Jewish. This proportion decreased radically in the 1930s, partly owing to the purge trials, which had strong antisemitic over-tones. During the Holocaust, the Stalin regime said very little about Nazi policies aimed specifically at Jews.<ref name="HerfJewBols"/>{{efn|{{wpl|Alexander Yakovlev||,}} a former Soviet official, wrote of Stalin himself: "In one of his interviews Stalin likened antisemitism to cannibalism, whereas in reality, as attested by his daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, he saw Zionists under every bed and repeatedly insisted that the history of the Bolshevik Party was a history of struggle against the Jews."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Yakovlev |first=Alexander |url=https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Century_of_Violence_in_Soviet_Russia.html?id=6qpPVaD2tq0C |title=A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia |date=2002 |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0-300-08760-4 |language=en}}</ref>{{rp|199}}}}}}

To the extent that Jews could have been uniquely attracted to the Bolsheviks, one of the factors that increasingly would have caused this despite initial opposition among many Jews to the faction was the fact that the Bolsheviks were eventually the major party that ''wasn't'' causing or aiding attacks against Jewish communities in repeated murderous pogroms so often as others were.<ref>{{wpa|Pogroms during the Russian Civil War}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|chapter=Jewish Communists and the Soviet Response to Antisemitism, May–December 1919 |date=2019 |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/antisemitism-and-the-russian-revolution/jewish-communists-and-the-soviet-response-to-antisemitism-maydecember-1919/EEA4FBAF41F3CA1DC785329A2F2F9CE5 |title=Antisemitism and the Russian Revolution |pages=140–182 |editor-last=McGeever |editor-first=Brendan |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-107-19599-8}}</ref><ref name="HanebrinkTheMyth"/>{{rp|20–21}} So, that was a bit of a [[self-fulfilling prophecy]]: by violently alienating Jews from the rest of society (in part by, you know, ''straight-up massacring them''), the antisemitic wing of the anticommunists propped up their own bogeyman, [[My enemy's enemy|pushing]] one of Russia's then-largest minority groups<ref>{{wpa|1926 Soviet census}}</ref> under the influence of the Bolsheviks.{{efn|There are plenty of rough analogues to this throughout history. See for example the attempts by the [[CPUSA]] to recruit black Americans in the early-to-mid 1900s, and subsequently the recruitment successes of the [[Black Panther Party]], as a response to racial injustices in the United States. These parties wouldn't have broken ground on this if there wasn't a massive unaddressed problem in the first place.}}

A similar thing is said to have taken place with the minority Latvians of the Russian Empire. The Finnish author Jukka Rislakk writes: "Lenin and the Bolsheviks promised independence, Kerensky and the White generals did not, and therefore many Latvians decided to support Lenin — even with gun in hand. … In all, 8,000-9,000 Latvians joined the Red Guard in Russia. The {{wpl|Red Latvian Riflemen|Latvian Red Riflemen}} believed that only a Bolshevik victory would free Latvia."<ref name="CaseForLatvia"/>{{rp|80–81}} Rislakk notes that not just Jewish people, but also Latvian and Chinese people<ref>{{wpa|Chinese in the Russian Revolution and in the Russian Civil War}}</ref> were blamed for the Bolsheviks' revolution by {{wpl|Great Russian chauvinism|Russian chauvinists|.}}<ref name="CaseForLatvia"/>{{rp|80}} To pin it all on minorities alone, much less any especial few minorities, is a very crude and reductionist response clearly motivated by Russian nationalism, however. Though the proportion varies between time and bureaus, we can say with certainty that a substantial part of the Bolsheviks were Russian (78 percent of the Bolsheviks in 1907 per D.S. Lane; 72 percent of the party in 1922 and 65 percent in 1927, per T.H. Rigby).<ref name="DSLane"/><ref name="THRigby"/>{{efn|To the extent the relative representation of Jewish and Latvian people among the Bolsheviks was higher than one might have expected, this was partly because they were relatively more urbanized/literate populations.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Kenez |first=Peter |date=1982 |title=Liquidating Illiteracy in Revolutionary Russia |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/24652703 |journal=Russian History |volume=9 |issue=2/3 |issn=0094-288X}}</ref>{{rp|176}} With time, the USSR's overall literacy increased, and this was a factor behind the party's ability/desire to recruit other populations in higher numbers (but again, other peoples made up a substantial portion of the party regardless of time period).}}

The advent of Rosa Luxemburg in Germany seemed, to European fascists, to lend credence to the notion of "Jewish Bolshevism", even though several other prominent leaders of the Spartacus League were not Jewish (including Clara Zetkin, Franz Mehring, and Karl Liebknecht). Some of the Jewish leaders other than Luxemburg who may be cited as proof that the November Revolution in Germany was a Jewish conspiracy played a marginal role, such as Gustav Landauer (who was actually a pacifist). There is also the key fact that the revolution was in the first place sparked by (largely non-Jewish) war-weary sailors in the {{wpl|Kiel mutiny||.}} This has parallels to the [[October Revolution]] in Russia as well, which was fueled by the Bolsheviks exploiting low war morale and general war-weariness. In Germany, the [[stab-in-the-back legend]] attributed this low morale and its consequences to the Jews, among others.

There is the case of the Polish Communist Party in the 1920s: the country had a (relatively) very large Jewish population, at about 10 percent of the general population (with much higher percentages in some regions of the country). Paul Hanebrink, in ''A Specter Haunting Europe: The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism'', points out that: "20–40 percent of the members of the Polish Communist Party in the 1920s were individuals of Jewish origin. But only about 7 percent of Polish Jews voted for the Communist Party during this time. According to the most thorough analysis of the electoral data from this period, 'Jews were no more Communist than Catholic Poles.'"<ref name="HanebrinkTheMyth"/>{{rp|21}} Somebody forgot to tell 93 percent of one of the continent's then-largest Jewish populations about the Jewish communist conspiracy. He adds that, in fact: "In the east and southeast of the country, a much greater part of the party’s support in the 1920s came from Belarussians (43 percent of the Communist vote in central and eastern Poland) and Ukrainians (46 percent of the Communist vote in the south) looking for a political outlet to express resentment about their treatment in the Polish nation-state."<ref name="HanebrinkTheMyth"/>{{rp|21}}

The nuances of these historical events are often lost regardless of their re-stating. In no small part, that's because the haunting propaganda-image of "Jewish Communism" is the crux of what's being impressed. Hanebrink also wrote about how it only required a [[kernel of truth|''kernel'' of truth]] ({{IdEst}}, that there were ''some'' prominent communists who were Jewish) to succeed as a dehumanizing propaganda tool utilized by people who often played fast-and-loose with the actual facts (even labeling non-Jewish non-Bolsheviks as being "in on the Jewish Bolshevik plot").<ref name="HanebrinkTheMyth">{{Cite book |last=Hanebrink |first=Paul |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv24w652b |title=A Specter Haunting Europe: The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism |date=2018 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-04768-6 }}</ref>{{rp|14–22}} Grains of truth only serve to obscure the deceit underlying the caricature. Or, as Sartre put it: "They delight in acting in [[bad faith]], since they seek not to persuade by [[soundness|sound]] argument but to intimidate and disconcert."<ref name=jps>[https://web.archive.org/web/20151010062724/http://abahlali.org/files/Jean-Paul_Sartre_Anti-Semite_and_Jew_An_Exploration_of_the_Etiology_of_Hate__1995.pdf ''Anti-Semite and Jew'' by Jean-Paul Sartre (1995 [1948]) Schocken Books. Translated by George J. Becker. ISBN 0805210474.</ref>{{rp|13}}

===Jews and business===
[[File:Great and Powerful Wizard of Debt.png|thumb|right|250px|Modified [[Ben Garrison]] cartoon claiming that Jews control the global monetary system.]]
Believers in an international conspiracy may claim [[Evil Jew#Money-controllers|wealthy Jews in the financial sector]] and other industries. The [[Rothschild family]] regularly appears in some versions of this theory.

According to a 2015 New World Wealth report, Christians own a hefty majority (>55%) of the world's wealth, while just 1.1 percent of global wealth is held by people of Jewish religion.<ref>(January 14, 2015). [https://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/christians-hold-largest-percentage-of-global-wealth-report-115011400822_1.html "Christians hold largest percentage of global wealth: Report"]. ''Business Standard''.</ref> As Jewish people make up ~0.2% of the global population, this is not one to one with their population size, but also isn't so disproportionate as to reflect what would be expected from a massive conspiracy. Several straightforward explanations have been proposed. One is that Jewish people simply tend to have a higher education level, which is promoted from an early age in Judaism<ref>(December 13, 2016). [https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2016/12/13/how-religion-may-affect-educational-attainment-scholarly-theories-and-historical-background/#b03e5fbaf4b4ba194b3ac5dd381159be "Religion and Education Around the World / 7. How religion may affect educational attainment: scholarly theories and historical background / Judaism"]. Pew Research Center. {{blockquote|High levels of Jewish educational attainment may be rooted in ancient religious norms, according to some recent scholarship. The Torah encourages parents to educate their children. This prescription was not mandatory, however, until the first century.<br><br>Sometime around 65 C.E., Jewish high priest Joshua ben Gamla issued a religious decree that every Jewish father should send his young sons to primary school to learn to read in order to study the Torah. A few years later, in the year 70, the Roman army destroyed the Second Temple following a Jewish revolt. Temple rituals had been a pillar of Jewish religious life. To replace them, Jewish religious leaders emphasized the need for studying the Torah in synagogues. They also gave increased importance to the earlier religious decree on educating sons, making it a compulsory religious duty for all Jewish fathers. Over the next few centuries, a formal school system attached to synagogues was established.<br><br>These developments signaled “a profound transformation” of Judaism, according to economic historians Maristella Botticini of Bocconi University and Zvi Eckstein of the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya. Judaism became, they write, “a religion whose main norm required every Jewish man to read and to study the Torah in Hebrew and to send his sons from the age of 6 or 7 to primary school or synagogue to learn to do so. … Throughout the first millennium, no people other than the Jews had a norm requiring fathers to educate their sons.”}}</ref> and confers economic benefits. Another is that Jewish people tend to be geographically concentrated into urban centers within the [[Western world]], which may have economic benefits.

A more complicated theory, applying primarily to certain industries like banking, suggests that some Jewish families may have had a relative {{w|first-mover advantage}} (of sorts) in some countries. This would be due to the fact that, in the Western world and until the 19th century, the largely-Christian populations obeyed a [[religious]]ly-motivated prohibition on charging interest on loans ([[usury]]), with the role of banker historically falling on Jewish businessmen who were sometimes even specifically licensed by sovereigns to charge interest.<ref>https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/13j9b87/christians_used_to_be_not_allowed_to_charge/</ref> This history is reflected in, e.g., Shakespeare's ''The Merchant of Venice'', where the villain Shylock is a Jewish money lender demanding the exorbitant price of a pound of flesh for defaulting on his loan.<ref group=note>Whether or not Shylock is even a ''villain'' (as opposed to simply an antagonist) is up for debate — it is widely believed that Shakespeare was more sympathetic to Jews than most other Gentiles of his time.</ref> Though not accounting for the whole picture, these historical quirks can have a lasting impact, as is demonstrated by a 2016 study finding that the wealthiest families in Florence, Italy, were frequently the same ones who were wealthy as of the ''<u>1400s</u>''.<ref>Aamna Mohdin. [https://qz.com/694340/the-richest-families-in-florence-in-1427-are-still-the-richest-families-in-florence "The richest families in Florence in 1427 are still the richest families in Florence"]. ''Quartz''.</ref><ref>Caroline Hallemann (May 19, 2016). [https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/tradition/news/a6257/wealthy-families-florence/ "Tax Data Shows That the Wealthiest Families in Florence Have Been Wealthy Since 1427"]. ''Town & Country''.</ref>

As with anything, it matters how the statistics are presented; you can always find some weird metric to support whatever claim you like, if you're willing to torture numbers and the English language enough. For example, historian {{w|Jonathan C. Friedman||:}} writes that individuals of Jewish descent controlled fewer than 1 percent of Weimar Germany's most powerful banking and credit institutions (what would be most relevant to the average everyday person), but were significantly overrepresented in {{w|private banking}} (personal banking for very rich individuals).<ref>{{Cite book |last=Friedman |first=Jonathan C. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Sp8eBgAAQBAJ |title=The Lion and the Star: Gentile-Jewish Relations in Three Hessian Towns, 1919-1945 |date=2014 |publisher=University Press of Kentucky |pages=42}}</ref><ref>BadEmpanada (January 15, 2022). [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mX3VWNNX8UE "Jews DID NOT 'Control the Banks' in Weimar Germany - Refuting Vaush's Nazi Lies"]. ''YouTube''.</ref>

More recently, there have been conspiracy theories targeting financier [[George Soros]], whose actions including promoting liberal democracy in eastern Europe and opposing [[Brexit]] in the UK are seen as part of a Jewish conspiracy to impose western rule on Eastern Europe and deny the will of the British people.<ref>[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/geore-soros-brexit-antisemitism-jew-conspiracy-theories-telegraph-story-plot-hungary-broke-bank-of-a8201651.html George Soros: The billionaire investor who became the favourite target of conspiracy theories and antisemitic hatred], ''The Independent'', 8 Feb 2018</reF>

====Media and culture industry====
{{see also|Kevin MacDonald#Jews and media|Kevin MacDonald § Jews and media}}
The apparently disproportionate numbers of Jews involved in the movie industry, such as in [[Hollywood]], may feature in some versions of the conspiracy theory. On the other hand, such a period of "Jewish" domination in American cinema includes the Golden Age of American cinema in which a great number of movies of high quality with excellent writing (often by Jews) and acting (likewise). Contrary to the myth that Jewish involvement in culture must lead to its debasement, the Jewish studio bosses established a production code that excluded profanity, nudity, gratuitous violence, and the mockery of all religions. The same studio bosses excoriated the moral rot of juvenile delinquency and [[organized crime]], even using Christian clergy as characters to that end, as in {{wpl|Angels With Dirty Faces||,}} in which a Catholic priest better fits the culture of the Irish-American community than would a rabbi.

===In the Muslim world===
This [[canard]] is also common in parts of the [[Islamic]] world, especially among [[Palestinian]] resistance movements. For example, the founding charter of [[Hamas]] asserts the existence of a [[Zionist]] conspiracy, working internationally through secret organizations such as the Freemasons as well as the government of [[Israel]], and cites the ''Protocols of the Elders of Zion'' as the embodiment of their plans.<ref>[http://www.mideastweb.org/hamas.htm The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas)], reproduced at MidEastWeb. (See especially articles 17 and 32.)</ref> Although conspiracy theories about Israel and Jews in general are widespread throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds,<ref>{{wpa|Conspiracy theories in the Arab world}}</ref><ref>{{wpa|Antisemitism in the Arab world}}</ref><ref>Mehdi Hasan (September 5, 2014). [https://newrepublic.com/article/119344/muslim-world-must-stop-leaning-conspiracy-theories "Why Is The Muslim World in Thrall to Conspiracy Theories?"]. ''The New Republic''.</ref> they are certainly not unanimously accepted: in example, {{wpl|Hassan Nasrallah}} (the general-secretary of [[Hezbollah]] until his death) argued that rather than Israel controlling the United States, it was the other way around.<ref>(2018; republished 2021). [https://counter-hegemonic-studies.site/nasrallah-israel-usa/ "Israel does not control America: Hassan Nasrallah, 2018"]. ''Centre for Counter Hegemonic Studies''.</ref> Despite this, Hezbollah's media network al-Manar has claimed that Jews deliberately spread AIDS, and has accused Jews of Blood Libel.<ref>(2004) [https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2004/12/22/us-bans-al-manar-says-tv-network-backs-terror/0df6c836-5e6d-4ca1-957e-7891ea01d799/ "U.S. Bans Al-Manar, Says TV Network Backs Terror"]. ''The Washington Post''.</ref>

===9/11===
{{see also|9/11#It was carried out by Mossad to galvanize American support for Israel and destroy their enemies|9/11 § It was carried out by Mossad to galvanize American support for Israel and destroy their enemies}}
Various antisemitic [[9/11 conspiracy theories]] sprang up in the wake of the [[9/11]] attacks — especially among Neo-Nazis and Islamists — claiming that a Jewish or Israeli conspiracy was behind the attacks, or that the whole incident was faked in order to serve Jewish and Zionist interests. A common myth, spread by racist websites and chain emails, is that hundreds or even thousands of Jewish employees in the World Trade Center were forewarned of the attacks and missed work on September 11th 2001.

===Alt-right and neo-Nazis===
[[File:StoneToss-billionaires-comic-1.png|thumb|right|275px|[[StoneToss]] being StoneToss.]]
In the 21st century, the idea that Jews secretly conspired to spread [[political correctness]] and to enable mass immigration by non-white people (especially Muslims) is often advocated or alluded to online by Neo-Nazis, sometimes not calling themselves Nazis but instead using paper-thin euphemisms like "[[white nationalist]]" or "[[alt-right]]". For example, alt-right Twitter accounts with [[Groyper]] avatars will often use [[meme]]s like "the Goyim know", meaning: non-Jewish people are starting to learn about this supposed Jewish conspiracy. The neo-Nazi [[Kevin MacDonald]] is a key proponent of this theory, and is sometimes cited by its adherents. [[Neoreactionaries]] like "Mencius Moldbug" (who is part-Jewish) push basically the same idea, but with Jews replaced by liberal/progressive elites, who they term "communists". Jews on the alt-right (a rare breed) sometimes combine the two theories, claiming that liberal diaspora Jewish elites, but not conservative Jews like them, are the primary driving force behind mass non-white immigration to the West — rather than, say, businesses looking to keep their labor costs down and/or recruit more skilled professionals (on the "pull" side), or immigrants seeking a better life (on the "push" side), or Mexican or Libyan gangs (acting as people traffickers for undocumented immigrants{{efn|Strangely, ''white'' undocs don't count [[racism|for some reason]].}}).

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

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

It is widely suspected that claims of vast lizard conspiracy by eccentric conspiracy theorists are in fact a thinly-veiled way of discussing a Jewish conspiracy, as best demonstrated by [[David Icke]].<ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/mar/17/features.weekend Beset by lizards], Mark Ronson, ''[[The Guardian]]'', 17 Mar 2001</ref> Before foregrounding lizards, Icke wrote more overtly about an international Jewish conspiracy.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20181109154656/http://www.cjnews.com/news/canada/anti-semitic-conspiracy-theorist-david-icke-gives-talk-vancouver Anti-semitic conspiracy theorist David Icke gives talk in Vancouver], Canadian Jewish News, 7 Sep 2017</ref> His claims of innocence aren't helped when his website publishes a photo of a member of the [[Anti-Defamation League]] with the caption "Our job is simple — to brand anyone who exposes Israel and the Rothschilds as a racist. Er, that's it."<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20180313170355/https://www.davidicke.com/article/440859/exposing-shocking-continuing-alliance-zionism-anti-semitism Exposing the Shocking and Continuing Alliance Between Zionism and Anti-Semitism], Andrew Cheetham, DavidIcke.com, 26 November 2017</ref>

==See also==
*[[Antisemitism]]
*[[Holocaust denial]]
*[[Holodomor#As an excuse for antisemitism|Holodomor § As an excuse for antisemitism]]
*[[New World Order]]
*[[Cultural Marxism]]
*[[Rothschild family]]
*[[List of conspiracy theories]]
*[[Evil Jew]]
*[[9/11 conspiracy theories]]
*[[Zionist Occupation Government]]
*[[Louis Thomas McFadden]]

==External links==
*{{wpa|Antisemitic canard}}
*{{wpa|Economic antisemitism}}
*{{wpa|Jewish Bolshevism}}
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20100419142339/http://www.adl.org/main_Extremism/liberty_and_truth_austin_texas.htm Anti-Semites Exploit Anti-Government Sentiment], ADL
*[http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/jan/15/usa.davidaaronovitch The Ultimate Jewish Conspiracy Theory], David Aaronovitch
*[https://mischrev.substack.com/p/judeo-bolshevism Judeo-Bolshevism: Fact from Fiction], William Vivare (Mischling Review)
*[http://nation.time.com/2013/10/10/anti-semitic-elmo-gets-prison-time-for-girl-scout-extortion/ Anti-Semitic Elmo Gets Prison Time for Girl Scout Extortion], ''TIME'' (Yes, you're not hallucinating.)
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20150530072626/http://www.theonion.com/article/local-jew-feels-left-out-of-worldwide-jewish-consp-809 Local Jew Feels Left Out Of Worldwide Jewish Conspiracy], [[The Onion]]
*[https://imgur.com/gallery/opBuw Do you know about... The Hibernian Conspiracy?]

==Notes==
{{reflist|group=note}}
==References==
{{reflist|2}}

[[Category:Alt-right]]
[[Category:Antisemitism]]
[[Category:Atheophobia]]
[[Category:Conspiracy theories]]
[[Category:Conspiracy theorist scapegoats]]
[[Category:Judaism]]
[[Category:Nazism]]
[[Category:Neo-Nazism]]
[[Category:Purity culture]]
[[Category:Racism]]
[[Category:Scapegoating]]
[[Category:Unified conspiracy theory]]
[[Category:White supremacy]]
[[Category:Xenophobia]]

Categories: Alt-right, Antisemitism, Atheophobia, Conspiracy theories, Conspiracy theorist scapegoats, Judaism, Nazism, Neo-Nazism, Purity culture, Racism, Scapegoating, Unified conspiracy theory, White supremacy, Xenophobia