[ History lesson ]
The conspiracy theory of the Jew as the hypnotic conspirator, the duplicitous manipulator, the sinister puppeteer is one with ancient roots and a bloody history. In the New Testament, it is a small band of Jews who get Rome — then the greatest power in the world — to do their bidding by killing Christ. Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, speaks to the Jews about Jesus in the book of John: “Take him yourselves and judge him according to your own law.” But the Jews punt the decision back to Pilate: “We are not permitted to put anyone to death.” And so Pilate does the deed on their behalf. In the book of Matthew, the implications of this manipulation are spelled out: “His blood is on us and our children,” the Jews say — a line that has been so historically destructive that even Mel Gibson cut it from his “Passion of the Christ.”
In the two millenniums that followed, even after 1965, when the Catholic Church
formally disavowed the belief that the Jews killed Jesus, this was the template for the anti-Semitic conspiracy: the ability of this tiny minority to use its wiles and its proximity to power to con others into accomplishing their evil ends. It has led to countless expulsions, murders, massacres and pogroms throughout Europe and elsewhere.
The Jewish power to hypnotize the world, as Ms. Omar put it, is the plot of Jud Süss — the most successful Nazi film ever made. In the film, produced by Joseph Goebbels himself, Josef Süss Oppenheimer, an 18th-century religious Jew, emerges from the ghetto, makes himself over as an assimilated man, and rises to become the treasurer to the Duke of Württemberg. Silly duke: Allowing a single Jew into his city leads to death and destruction.
After seeing the final cut of the film,
in August 1940, Goebbels wrote in his diary: “An anti-Semitic film of the kind we could only wish for. I am happy about it.” And no wonder: It premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it received the Golden Lion Award. By some estimates, more than 20 million people saw it.
Since then, the myth of the wily Jewish manipulator of those in power continues to persist in various forms. During the Iraq War, it became common to blame Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith — Bush administration figures who happened to be Jewish — for a military campaign that had been ordered by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. In the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump blamed “globalists” with names like Lloyd Blankfein and George Soros for America’s economic woes.
(full article online)
Opinion | Ilhan Omar and the Myth of Jewish Hypnosis
