June 22, 2003
RACISM THEN AND NOW
Those crazy Protocols just won’t go away:
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion - supposedly a transcript of a meeting of the world's top Jews, called to discuss the achievement of world domination - was concocted by an ultra-orthodox member of the Tsar's secret police, Sergei Nilus in about 1903. By the early 1920s it was being widely circulated in Europe and America, was later taught in the schools of Nazi Germany and is now to be found on any good neo-nazi web-site near you. It is the classic of Holocaust-era anti-Semitism, portraying the Jews as a conniving, Machiavellian race, plotting how to gain power well beyond their puny numbers, through manipulation and money.
So what on earth is it doing in the twenty-first century manifesto of an Islamic movement?
Good question. David Aaronovitch seeks an answer.
Posted by Tim Blair at June 22, 2003 04:06 PMIf the West can be postmodern, surely others can too?
Posted by: Norman at June 22, 2003 at 04:12 PMUmm, yeah.. Well, I'm at a lost for words, once again. Geez, I hate it when this happens to me. Shit, this keyboard is brokkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk
Posted by: Tony at June 22, 2003 at 08:25 PMEvery nation has a founding mythology. Hamas seems to have opted for Tsarist Russias.
Posted by: Bruce Rheinstein at June 23, 2003 at 01:13 AMI just presented a 'paper' (actually, a 'stack of index cards held together by an elastic band') at a conference for Jewish librarians (Toronto's crawling with librarians this week, as you may have heard; they're fighting over whether or not Castro = bad...) I was all over this story way before Instapundit (sigh)
Anyway: I have a very Catholic and therefore pretty hopeless explanation: human nature. It just seems to be part of our fallen human nature to want and need to cling to these idolatrous fairy stories. And the Protocols are idols, in that they are false gods, representing a false 'creation story' of the way the world as we know it began.
A useful site re: this crap is ReligiousTolerance.org, run by a bunch of Canadian liberal 'educators' (at least they admit it--they've posted a call for conservative Christians to help 'em out) They conflate everything from Maria Monk and Chick comics to The Blood Libel under the heading Satanic Panic. Baby sacrifice, cannibalism, kidnapping: tropes that turn up in 2,000 year old lies about everyone from Christians to Jews to Your Name Here.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/sra_intro.htm
Posted by: Kathy at June 23, 2003 at 02:00 AMI think the reason is the diaspora which placed a minority of Jews everywhere most of whom would not assimilate because of their particularized monotheism.
Posted by: Theodopoulos Pherecydes at June 23, 2003 at 04:06 AMI think David Aaronovitch has become radicalized since he left the Independent and joined a real newspaper. He used to be much more "please pay no attention to the fact that I'm a Jew, I'm a good lefty, really." Every since he chose the pro-war side he seems to be standing up straighter.
Posted by: Yehudit at June 23, 2003 at 05:17 AM