“Know that we have taken into
our hand, custody, and protection Leo the Jew our goldsmith and all his
affairs. And therefore we command that you keep ward and defend the said Leo
and all his affairs, doing no hurt or injury to him.”
Proclamation of King John of England, 10 Nov. 1199
Proclamation of King John of England, 10 Nov. 1199
“My office was created by law
and designed to protect the Jewish people throughout the world. Think about
that. The world’s greatest power is focused, by law and design, on protecting
the Jews.”
Elan Carr, U.S. State Department Envoy on Anti-Semitism, February 2019
Elan Carr, U.S. State Department Envoy on Anti-Semitism, February 2019
By almost every metric, Jews
are the most protected ethnic group on earth. At the frontline of this
protection, Jewish institutional security is heavily subsidised by taxpayers
throughout the West. In Germany, the government provides an annual stipend of $15 million to the Central Council of
Jews. In the UK, the government spends around $20 million annually on
both security for Jewish institutions and “Holocaust education” designed to combat
“anti-Semitic ideas.” This is in addition to the UK pledging almost $70 million for a new Holocaust
memorial designed to achieve the same ends. Hungary has promised $3.4 million
to “fight anti-Semitism in Europe,” and Sweden has handed over 2 million kronor for increasing security
at Jewish institutions. France has invested $107 million in “fighting
anti-Semitism” since 2015. This brings us to a grand total of over $215 million
in “protecting Jews” and “fighting anti-Semitism,” and doesn’t even take into
account spending in the United States (somewhere between $20 million and $50 million annually for frontline
security at Jewish institutions), or the spending of Jews on their own defense
(the ADL’s annual budget alone is in the region of $58 million). One gets the distinct and remarkable
impression that, globally, diaspora Judaism probably requires something
approaching $1 billion simply in order to feel safe.
Jews are protected in other
ways. Since mid-2018, resolutions and other legal measures against
anti-Semitism have been gathering in pace and increasing in spread. In May
2018, South Carolina became the first US state to pass the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, which effectively shuts down
speech against Israel on college campuses by requiring South Carolina’s public
institutions of higher education to “take into consideration the [State
Department’s] definition of anti-Semitism for purposes of determining whether
the alleged practice was motivated by anti-Semitic intent” when “investigating,
or deciding whether there has been a violation of a college or university policy
prohibiting discriminatory practices on the basis of religion.” In February
2019, President Macron of France announced a “crackdown on anti-Semitism” that would involve dissolving
three pro-White organizations, defining anti-Zionism as a form of
anti-Semitism, and introducing new laws against “hate speech” targeting Jews on
social media. Just a few weeks ago, Florida passed legislation defining anti-Semitism
and making it illegal under state law. Tennessee has attempted to pass an Anti-Semitism
Awareness Bill, and recently passed a resolution “fighting anti-Semitism”
by declaring unequivocal support for Israel. This, of
course, follows hot on the heels of the House resolution “condemning
anti-Semitism” in the aftermath of Ilhan Omar’s now notorious remarks on the
Israel lobby.
There simply isn’t another
ethnic group elsewhere on earth that enjoys the same level of financial and
legal protections enjoyed by Jews. Of course, the uninformed, when confronted
with such a fact, might reply that this level of support is both needed and
deserved. According to the received narrative, recent history suggests that
Jews are the West’s most vulnerable and victimised group. All of these laws,
and all of this funding, is therefore merely a response to an acute need. But
recent history has nothing to do with Jewish protection, and nor are these
measures responsive to any real immediate threat. In order to gain a full
appreciation for what exactly is going on, we need to go much further back in
time.
Should you ever happen to visit
the English town of Lincoln, I recommend you pay a visit to the Jew’s House
restaurant. As well as enjoying some fairly good cuisine, it will give you an
opportunity to look inside one of the five surviving houses of Medieval
England. The building was once, as the name suggests, a Jew’s house from the
middle of the twelfth century until the expulsion of the Jews from England in
1290. Its last Jewish owner is said to have been Belaset, daughter of the
moneylender Solomon of Wallingford. Belaset was hanged in 1279 for
coin-clipping, a 13th century practice whereby (predominantly Jewish) money
dealers would lightly shave gold and silver coins, eventually accumulating
enough shavings to create new, illicit money. Jew’s House is not the only
medieval home still standing in Lincoln. A short walk away is Norman House. Like Jew’s House, it was built around 1170
for a Jewish moneylender, Aaron of Lincoln, and also housed Jews until the
expulsion.
The fact that England’s oldest
houses are almost all Jewish in origin, and that two of them are in Lincoln, is
no accident. Lincoln Jewry was both the most affluent and the most numerous of
all medieval Jewish communities in England, and the survival of these dwellings
owes much to two factors – Jewish wealth and the Jewish need for security. Jews
had the money to build homes with expensive local limestone, and they had a
desire to build very strong, almost impregnable, homes that could withstand the
onslaught of both Man and Time. A key architectural feature is asemi-sunken
undercroft that would have provided secure storage for the wealth of those
residing in the living accommodation above. This relatively luxurious style of living
was pioneered by the Jews who moved to Lincoln as part of the Norman conquest,
and was based on the Jewish experience of living closely with Norman elites in
the ducal halls of Normandy. The construction of such homes in 12th century
England thus sent a clear message: Jews were an intimate part of the new elite;
Jews were arriving predominantly as dealers in money; and, Jews expected to be
hated and to require high levels of protection. One thousand years has now
passed, and yet it is one of the remarkable features of world history that
these three aspects of Jewish life haven’t changed at all. Jews remain an
intimate part of the elite, Jews retain a ‘special’ relationship with money,
and the facts outlined at the beginning of this essay suggest that Jews fully
expect to be hated and require high levels of protection.
The Jewish strategy among
Europeans has always been predicated upon high-risk, high-reward ventures. For
much of the last thousand years, this primarily involved exploitative financial
relationships that were incredibly lucrative but contributed to tremendous
hostility among non-elite European populations. The standard method of
balancing profit and danger was to form a relationship with very strong elites,
and to implicate those elites in the sharing of profits (thus also ensuring
they would suffer a loss from any attack against Jews). Throughout European
history, when attempts to forge or maintain such relationships failed, the
results of high risk ventures were disastrous for Jews, as resentment from
below was finally allowed to fully vent. This can be seen in instances where
the power of the monarch weakened (e.g. the expulsions of Jews by Edward I as a
response to the rise of the barons), where there was a break between the death
of a king and the coronation of another (e.g. killings of Jews around the coronation
of Richard I), where the monarch was immovably hostile to Jews and their
interests (e.g. the creation of the Pale of Settlement by Catherine the Great),
and where popular support for government elites and their authority collapsed
rapidly (e.g. Weimar Germany and the subsequent rise of Adolf Hitler). Very
high levels of elite protection are thus seen by Jews, not entirely without
reason, as absolutely essential to the continuance of Jewish communities and
their behaviors among European populations.
Writing on Jews and the State
in medieval Europe, Robert Chazan writes that “the Jews were normally accorded
substantial protection by the secular authorities. This meant warnings against
violence when passions were inflamed, efforts to put down violence when it did
flare up, and finally the imposition of penalties when the attempts at
protection failed and Jews suffered loss of life and property. The basic thrust of
governmental policy towards the Jews was protection.”[1] [emphasis
added] Kevin MacDonald has argued that Jews have excelled as flexible
strategizers, and this ability to adapt to circumstances is certainly in
evidence in relation to the need to secure privileges in the form of elite
protection. Jewish historian Yosef H. Yerushalmi has pointed out that wherever
Jews lived they tended to establish liaisons with “the highest governmental
power available, whether that of emperor or caliph, count, duke, or king,
bishop, archbishop or pope.”[2] Yerushalmi
described such relationships as a “direct vertical alliance.” Magda Teter has
laid emphasis on the flexible manner in which Jews approach the establishment
of direct vertical alliances:
At the beginning of their
settlement in Poland, Jews forged a strong relationship with monarchs, who
issued privileges and assured the Jews’ protection. When Poland’s balance of
power shifted from a strong monarchy to a decentralised nobles’ republic, the
Jewish relationship with the king was transformed into a symbiotic relationship
with the powerful nobles. Jews’ reliance on royal protection was transferred to
reliance on the nobles. First kings, and then the nobles, often placed Jews in
positions that often gave them authority over Christians.[3]
As well as blending financial
interests with the nobles, another feature of the early modern period through
to the nineteenth century was intermarriage between Jews and the European aristocracy. This was quite literally the
physical joining of interests, perhaps the ultimate protection against
suffering a backlash from the elite. By the early 20th century, the scale of
Jewish intermarriage with the British aristocracy was such that it led L.G.
Pine, editor of Burke’s Peerage from 1949–1959, to write in 1956 that “the Jews have made
themselves so closely connected with the British peerage that the two classes
are unlikely to suffer loss which is not mutual.” Given the trends of history
in the centuries prior to the 1950s, it’s extremely difficult to imagine that
this occurred by accident, or without some level of conscious or unconscious
design.
As flexible strategizers, Jews
were more than capable of handling the transformation from aristocratic rule to
social democracy that occurred between the 19th and 20th centuries. As an
interregnum of sorts, however, there were early problems with Jewish security
while the new form of direct vertical alliance was established. A general rule
worth operating by is that where the elite is pro-Jewish or tied to Jewish
interests, Jews are likely to be reliable supporters of the governmental status
quo, to support strong government, and to be against the freedom of the
individual (e.g. see overwhelming contemporary Jewish support for gun control).
Conversely, when elites are perceived as less inclined to support Jewish
interests, Jews are likely to be vastly over-represented among anti-elite
elements, as radical socialists, and as regicidal revolutionaries (e.g. the
Bolshevik Revolution). Where the form of government merely weakens, Jews are
forced to reconfigure their strategies in a more time-consuming, but no less
pressing, manner. Indeed, a key feature of 19th century socialism was a strong
anti-Semitism that rejected Jewish claims to being part of “the people,” and
many anti-Jewish socialists portrayed such claims as opportunistic and cryptic
strategies to secure power anew under the new form of government. One of the
most memorable statements of the era in this regard is the French socialist
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s remark that far from being a genuine socialist, Karl
Marx was “the tapeworm of socialism.” Proudhon (1809-1865), seen by many as the
father of anarchism, regarded apparently socialist Jewish “allies” like Heinrich
Heine as “nothing but secret spies” whose hidden agenda was merely to secure
Jewish privileges and protections under the guise of social justice – a
perspective apparently lost on the ignorant hordes who today believe themselves
to be anarchist “Antifa” while striving to protect similar “tapeworms” in their
midst.
As social democracy became
ascendant, Jewish strategies to maintain privileges and security had to make
significant adaptations. Most obviously, social democracy was ostensibly the
move to protect mass interests over those of an elite. Since Jews were an
intimate part of the elite, this would necessarily lead to a decline in power,
unless Jews could undergo a transformation in the popular mind into a more
generic “mercantile elite,” “bourgeois elite,” or even most audaciously, masquerade as part of the proletariat. It was in eastern Europe that
the clash between Jews and the interests of the masses became most acute. Faced
with increased calls for freedom and democratic representation, the Tsars sided
with the masses rather than the Jews, freeing the serfs and withdrawing
protections and privileges from Jews. I would argue that this move, rather than
the specific content of Bolshevism or Communism, was the most decisive factor
in the eventual rise of the Jews against the Tsar and the Russian aristocracy
during the Bolshevik revolution. The apparently incongruous position of Jews
fighting alongside the peasant class against the elite wasn’t altogether lost
on contemporaries. As one Ukrainian Communist put it in 1876, “The weight of
the Jews’exploitation is great and their harmfulness unlimited … If we find it
possible to preach revolution, and only revolution against the nobles, how can
we defend the Jews?”[4] But
Jews did want to be defended, and if they weren’t going to be defended by the
Tsar, and they couldn’t trust the masses, then they would simply disguise
themselves as part of the proletariat (Proudhon’s “secret spies”) and establish
their protections and privileges themselves.
The perceptivity of figures
like Proudhon and the Ukrainian Communist was lacking in the overall movement,
where Jews were dominant in intellectual and activist roles. Within weeks of
the revolution, Jews were able to cancel all restrictions imposed on them by
earlier Tsarist regimes and abolish the Pale of Settlement initiated by
Catherine the Great. Between 1918 and 1930, anti-Semitism was legislated
against and massive amounts of literature purporting to debunk anti-Semitic attitudes
were disseminated as part of a society-wide “education” campaign. Plays and
films were made portraying Jews and anti-Semitism is a strongly philo-Semitic
manner, and trials of individuals convicted of “anti-Semitic crimes” were made
very public. It was the 20th century equivalent of building the Jew’s House of
Lincoln, now constructed not of heavy limestone, but of slick lies and
oppressive legislation.
Today, Jews still reside
safely, if a little paranoid, in a house built with lies and legislation. They
have established “direct vertical alliances” with every Western elite,
including the most “populist.” I smile wryly at the theatre of Viktor Orbán
toying with George Soros, while he pumps millions into Jewish education
programs throughout Europe educating people on the “dangers of anti-Semitism”
and provides a European “hotline” for concerned Jews to call in the event that
they feel a little insecure. The same situation prevails with the “populist”
boy wonder Sebastian Kurz in Austria. Kurz recently unveiled a “Catalogue of
Policies to Combat Antisemitism.” The policies, endorsed by Kurz and later to
be introduced to the entire European Union, include:
·
a commitment of a percentage of GDP annually to fighting
antisemitism;
·
barring antisemites from political parties and public office;
·
committing financial and other resources to guaranteeing
security for Jewish communities in Europe;
·
making Internet companies liable for antisemitic content on
their platforms;
·
and advising companies not to do business with countries or
organizations that support antisemitism in any way.
These measures reach a level of
protection for Jews not seen since the immediate aftermath of the Bolshevik
Revolution, and only contribute to the growing reality that much of our
politics now seems to exclusively revolve around the issue of anti-Semitism. It
used to be the case that Jews considered everything within the framework “Is
this good for the Jews?” Today, it seems that our governments, media, and
academia are preoccupied with the same question. This reality, of course,
clashes dramatically with the narrative that Jews have no overarching influence
in our politics and society. On this note, I might add that I was recently axed
from Twitter for the ninth time. On my last two Twitter accounts, I pursued a
strategy of presenting such glaring contradictions in short, witty comments –
just enough information to make the point clearly, and just enough humor to
make it stick in the mind. In very short periods of time, I amassed many
thousands of followers before the accounts were invariably suspended for
“targeted harassment” even though I never interacted with other users, and
merely presented facts or witticisms. I don’t think I will now return to
Twitter, but one of my last parting shots, before being reported by a
delusional neurotic named Gabe Hoffman (who apparently claimed I insulted him
personally, without evidence, despite the fact I never interacted with other
users), was:
Jews are the most oppressed
people in history and I know this because they used their extraordinary wealth,
their near monopoly of mass media, their massive political influence, and their
censorship of alternative viewpoints to make sure I got the message.
This is the central paradox of
our time. Jews enjoy extraordinary privileges while presenting themselves as
the most oppressed people in history. Were they oppressed when they lived in
the fortress in Lincoln? When they received the personal protection of King
John? When they received charters and special protections to live in the German
principalities, complete with reinforced walls for the streets in which they
lived? When they intermarried with the aristocracy? Were they oppressed when
the Tsar and his family were butchered? Were they oppressed when they made
anti-Semitism illegal, had show trials against anti-Semites around Russia, and
flooded the schools and universities with information on how marvellous they
truly are? Are they oppressed when they produce legislation for the European
Union and have it imposed at their will? Are they oppressed when they dictate to
Big Tech what is and isn’t allowed on their platforms, under legal penalty? Are
they oppressed when they demand a percentage of the GDP of each one of our
nations to protect them? Are they oppressed when a leading figure at the U.S. State
Department says: “The world’s greatest power is focused, by law and design, on
protecting the Jews.”
No. They are not oppressed.
Oppression is having your hands cut off by the King’s men because you refused
to pay your debt to Aaron the Jew. Oppression is being told what you can’t say
in your country, your own land that your fathers sweat and bled on in the hope
that you could one day walk on that soil a free man. Oppression is being made
to hand over your taxes and a percentage of your GDP, without any vote taking
place on the matter, so that it can be passed to a population already
influential and extraordinarily wealthy. Oppression is being banned from
participating in politics because you happen to object to the influence of
foreign actors in the business of your own people and country. Oppression is
when the wealthy and powerful use their influence to starve you financially
into submission to their interests. Oppression is when you go to prison because
you disagree with something written in the history books.
The situation, I will admit,
doesn’t look hopeful. But just as history relates a tale of direct vertical
alliances, and all that they entail, it also relates the stories of collapsing
elites, uneasy interregnums, and the rise of figures who side with their people
and reject such alliances. One day in 1290, the Jew’s House of Lincoln stood
silent, cold, and unoccupied, its money vaults emptied, its past residents
hanged or exiled. It stands today, to my mind, not as a testament to
durability, but as a monument to hubris and a mockery of pretensions to
invulnerability. I see a time when our contemporary hubristic constructions are
hollowed out and left vacant by the sweeping rush of history.
Notes
[2] Quoted
in M. Teter, Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland: A Beleaguered Church in the
Post-Reformation Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 28.
[3] Ibid.
[4] R.
Wistrich, From
Ambivalence to Betrayal: The Left, The Jews and Israel(University of Nebraska Press,
2012), 187.
