Master Of Puppets:More Jews From Nowhere.

Godwin's law is an Internet era adage that states that the longer an Internet online discussion, or argument, goes on the more inevitable it is that one party will compare another to Adolf Hitler or the Nazis. Reverse Godwin's law, however, states that if you delve deep enough into any given conspiracy theory you will find that behind it all, pulling the strings, are the Jews.

I'd not heard of reverse Godwin's law before last night's Skeptics in the Pub - Online (Jewish Space Lasers with Mike Rothschild - no relation, I'll come to that) but it was only one of many interesting things I learned last night in a talk, more a conversation between Mike Rothschild and host Michael Marshall (who is still responsible for my most viewed blog ever) than the usual lecture format, which was both superb and fascinating as well as depressingly timely.

Of course, I refer to the horrific situation in the Middle East at the moment. Something I've not really proffered any views on yet. Primarily because it's too confusing, and too awful, to get one's head around and also because what difference will the views of an unemployed blogger from thousands of miles away really make? About as much difference as the soundbites that come out of Rishi Sunak's and James Cleverly's mouths. None.

What I will say, before getting back on topic, is that it is clear that there has to, eventually, be a two state solution (it's either that or keep killing each other until there's nobody left to kill) but with Benjamin Netanyahu in power in Israel and Hamas in power in Gaza there's no chance of that as each seem to be utterly devoted to the complete destruction of the other. The first step towards peace, and even then it'd be a very slim chance, is to depose both Netanyahu and Hamas. Qatar and Turkey should put pressure on Hamas and the US should put pressure on Netanyahu to stand down. It probably won't happen. Not until several thousand more children have died.

The talk didn't really get into current affairs, I watched Question Time and Newsnight later so I could hear people argue about that, and it began with Mike Rothschild explaining what inspired him to write his most recent book Jewish Space Lasers:The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy. Mike Rothschild (I'm using his full name to avoid confusion) is a journalist and conspiracy theory expert so with that name it seemed it was only a matter of time until he turned his attention to the famous Rothschild family to which he is, I reiterate, unrelated.

Why is it always the Jews targeted in conspiracy theories and why is it, specifically, the Rothschild family rather than other famous, and rich, Jewish families like the Guggenheims and the Warburgs? As with most myths and conspiracy theories there is a grain of truth in there. A grain of truth that has been garnished over the centuries with lots and lots of lies.

Jews have been linked to money since the 11/12c when Catholic law made usury (lending money and expecting interest on it when it's returned) not just a crime but a crime that was considered equal to murder. That, of course, didn't stop people needing to borrow money. Kings and popes needed money to build castles, palaces, and armies and as Catholics couldn't lend them any they turned to the Jews who were not bound by Catholic law.

Soon enough, some came to thinking that the Jews had too much money, that they had too much power, and that the interest rates they were charging were far too high. We've probably all felt that about bankers and money lenders, be they Jewish or not.

What really deepened the belief that the Jews were not just greedy but running the world was the 1903 release of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion which posited an antisemitic conspiracy theory that the Jewish people were involved in a plot for global domination and were intending to use their wealth to ensure that that happened.

Very quickly, it was proven that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a hoax - but the theories remained - and remain to this day. The fact that Jews dressed differently, wore their hair differently, and had different dietary concerns aroused suspicion among Christian communities and, as we can see with migrants today in the UK, many Jews were accused of sexual crimes. Some were tortured. Some were killed.

 

The famous Rothschild family worked as merchants and low level money lenders in Frankfurt and lived in that city's Jewish ghetto. Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812) was the first of the Rothschilds to really excel in banking and he worked his way up to a position as the court Jew of the Mayor of Hesse and was tasked by the Elector of Hesse, along with his son - Amschel Rothschild, with hiding funds from Napoleon and his army who, in 1806, invaded Hesse.

A myth took hold that another of Mayer's sons, Nathan Rothschild, was actually present at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 (where, if you know your Abba, Napoleon was defeated). The story had it that as it became clear Napoleon would lose, Nathan escaped Waterloo (in present day Belgium), crossed the channel in a horrendous storm, and made his way to the London stock exchange.

There he would buy up stock at depressed prices (depressed because in London it was still believed Napoleon would defeat Wellington) and then, as news reached London of Napoleon's loss, sell them again as the prices skyrocketed. None of this is true, and would rely on an awful lot of convenient coincidence, but the Rothschild family did make some money out of banking during the Napoleonic Wars as well as other wars in Europe - which there were a lot of back then. Once again a grain of truth had been garnished by a whole load of lies.

When a series of socialist revolutions swept across Europe in 1848, the sentiment was very anti-wealth and, therefore, very anti-Rothschild. Not, in most cases, because the Rothschilds were Jewish but because they were rich. Nevertheless, it still aided the construction of a conspiracy theory narrative.

James de Rothschild, another of Mayer's sons, had a plan to link Europe by train and was investing heavily in it (some of the lines he built still operate) but when there was a train crash north of Paris with around twenty casualties, a pamphlet was produced accusing James de Rothschild of intentionally building shoddy railroads to enrich himself. The idea of the Rothschilds as greedy and powerful grew.

Less than a decade earlier, the Damascus affair had been used even more egregiously for the same ends. When a Capuchin monk, Father Thomas, and his Muslim servant (seemingly not given the respect of a name) disappeared in Damascus the finger of blame pointed towards the Jewish community of the city and it was suggested that the Rothschilds had been involved in killing both the friar and his servant in some kind of blood libel (a conspiracy theory that has it that Jews kill Christian boys to use their blood in religious rituals and perhaps dates all the way back to the idea that the Jews killed Jesus - or even God. Deicide!

The Rothschilds didn't even have to be in a country to be pulling the strings there. Mayer Rothschild never moved to the USA (in a less astute move than usual, he thought there'd be no business opportunities in that country) but the myth of Jewish/Rothschild dominance took hold with the Jewish diaspora and people's suspicion of them.

During the American Civil War the Republicans claimed the Democrats were funded by the Rothschilds while others insisted the Rothschilds were funding the Confederacy. Either way they were manipulating US politics and potentially dragging America into yet another European/Jewish war. A belief that grew between World War I and World War II (Henry Ford promoted antisemitism almost religiously - think of that next time you're in a Ford Focus) and continues to this day with conspiracy theories like the Illuminati and the New World Order.

The Rothschilds were even accused of funding Hitler in World War II. Jews funding Hitler! Hitler, you may already be aware, had quite a dim view of Judaism (Kristallnacht, Auschwitz, the Final Solution). In reality, the Rothschilds, like all other Jewish families in Germany and across Europe, were on the run from the Nazi death squads. Some of the Rothschilds were killed by the Nazis.

I found it very interesting, though I'm trying not to read too much into it, that the Nazis had a lot of their antisemitic literature translated into Arabic because they were keen to turn the Muslims against the Jews. Mike Rothschild had it that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion has been translated into Arabic more than any other language and that on television in Syria there is a regular show that presents Jewish conspiracy theories quite simply as fact.

All of these myths and conspiracy theories moved, easily and quickly, on to the Internet when the world started to move online and that's, roughly, where we are now. Some of the tropes disseminated online may not mean to be antisemitic but are. In an echo of Jeremy Corbyn's support for the Freedom for Humanity mural in Tower Hamlets, the American conservative Christian media personality Pat Robertson (who died earlier this year) promoted a theory that the Rothschilds had plans to merge the worlds of the occult and high finance.

Which is, itself, pretty much a reboot for modern times of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Probably the biggest change in recent years regarding this centuries old conspiracy theory is that the Rothschilds are slowly being replaced by George Soros as string-puller number one. That's because Soros supports, and funds, many of the things that right wing America hates. He supports voting rights, prison reform, and the repeal of some drug laws.

It doesn't seem like these Jewish conspiracy theories are going away anytime soon but with people as bright and as curious as Mike Rothschild (and Michael Marshall) to guide us through the minefield, most of us should be able to stay well away from then. A fascinating Q&A took in 9/11, the Bilderberg Group, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Benjamin Netanyahu, aliens, galactic federations, the Russian Revolution, moonlanding denial, Ezra Pound, the Balfour Declaration, Benjamin Disraeli, QAnon (whom Mike Rothschild has written two books on), Ponzi schemes in Iraq, Covid (which some say the Rothschilds invented), freemasonry, and the former Coventry City goalkeeper and snooker commentator David Icke who obviously doesn't subscribe to Jewish conspiracy theories at all because when he talks about lizards controlling the world he definitely doesn't mean Jews.

Thanks to Mikes Rothschild and Marshall for an absorbing and engrossing evening in front of my computer screen and thanks to Skeptics in the Pub - Online for keeping these free events going and shedding some light on the darkness that seems to be engulfing the world today.