Jews know what legitim looks like and what anti

IT IS the conspiracy theory perhaps most beloved by antisemitic anoraks the world over. First peddled in the mid 19th century, nearly 200 years on, the myth that the Rothschild family — having plotted and profited from wars, caused the Holocaust and arranged the assassination of political opponents — secretly control the global economy is still going strong.

Freedom for Humanity, the controversial antisemitic mural which Jeremy Corbyn defended six years ago, graphically demonstrates how the hard left continues to view the Rothschilds: as part of a cabal of bankers and businessmen oppressing the working classes.

Kalen Ockerman, the graffiti artist responsible for the work, later confirmed that this was his message. “Some of the older white Jewish folk in the local community had an issue with me portraying their beloved #Rothschild or #Warburg etc as the demons they are,” he wrote in 2015.

Unsurprisingly, Palestine Live, the secret Facebook group which Corbyn was a member of, was littered with references to the Rothschild family. So, too, was another group on the social media site — Labour Party Supporter — which Corbyn was found this week to have personally joined.

But the far left does not have a monopoly on this one. Last year, Marine Le Pen drew none too subtle allusions between “the world of finance” and Emmanuel Macron — a former employee of the Rothschild investment bank — in what was dubbed “conspiracy-mongering”.

Indeed, the Rothschilds have long been a favourite target of fascists. The Nazis made a 1940 movie about them, while American white supremacists and antisemites have obsessed over their supposed control of the Federal Reserve Bank.

The original and most powerful Rothschild conspiracy theory dates back to 1846 and contains many of the core elements of its later variations. It was published in a pamphlet written under the pseudonym Satan and focuses on Nathan Rothschild, founder of the London branch of the bank and son of the dynasty’s creator, Mayer Amschel Rothschild.

As Brian Cathcart, professor of journalism at Kingston University and author of News From Waterloo: The Race To Tell Britain of Wellington’s Victory, has recounted, “Satan” (the cover adopted by a French left-wing antisemite Georges Dairnvaell), alleged that Nathan was on the battlefield in June 1815 to witness the French defeat. Hastily returning to Britain before the news broke back home, he was able to use his knowledge to make 20 million francs on the stock exchange.

Over time, the edifice upon which Dairnvaell constructed his story was demolished. Nathan was not at Waterloo. The newspaper which allegedly reported the story of his share spending spree turned out to contain no such item. And there was, in fact, not even a huge collapse in share prices from which he could have profited.

At most, Nathan, like others in the City, appears to have received news of the French defeat several hours before it officially broke. That news appears, too, to have allowed Nathan, as an employee of the bank wrote a month later, to have “done well” but, as Cathcart suggests, the market was not sufficiently buoyant to have allowed him to make gains anywhere near the scale alleged by Dairnvaille.

Nonetheless, thanks to the Rothschilds’ vast wealth vast conspiracies continued to be spun: that the family pulled the strings behind a succes- sion of 19th century French monarchs; turned Otto von Bismarck into an “agent”; and worked to provoke the 1870 Franco-Prussian war.

The idea that Rothschilds fomented and financed European wars has been coupled with the myth that they control America’s purse strings, a goal apparently achieved with the passage of the 1913 legislation establishing the Federal Reserve Bank. In reality, the Rothschild banks are not members of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (the biggest of the Fed’s 12 banks) and nor do those banks which are members “control” the Fed itself.

Similarly, the Rothschilds have also been accused of having “took over” the Bank of England during the famous “panic of 1825” stock market crash. Again, this is false: the Rothschilds helped ease the Bank’s liquidity crisis by giving it a loan which was later repaid.

The alleged saying of Nathan Rothschild — “The man who controls Britain’s money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply” — is frequently used to support theories about the Rothschilds’ control of the Fed and Bank of England. But these words appear never to have been uttered by Nathan. Instead, their origin seems to lie in a false 1939 quote by Robert L Owen, former chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency.

Perhaps the most pernicious and offensive of the Rothschild conspiracy theories, however, is that the family somehow engineered the Second World War and the Holocaust in order to generate the sympathy necessary to establish the state of Israel. But, as Dunning notes, the “only seed of truth” to the claim the Rothschilds “funded the Holocaust” is that the Nazis seized the Austrian Rothschilds’ assets, effectively holding the head of the family, Baron Louis, prisoner for several months as they stole his money. But for those wishing to stir the pot of antisemitism, the facts are never allowed to get in the way of a good story.

In reality, the Rothschilds banks are not members of the Fed

THE CLAIM from leftist activists is always the same: Jews are deliberately conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism to undermine the Corbyn agenda. When we speak out against Israel, say these activists, we’re not expressing any hostility towards Jews; we are simply stating our opposition to a colonialist, racist, murderous state in the Middle East. That’s not antisemitism, they say. That’s legitimate political discourse.

I understand Jews who get exercised by this accusation on the grounds that it’s plain nasty. They are right to do so. But my anger about it comes from an additional place. It’s not just nasty. It’s empirically wrong. Jews know what legitimate criticism of Israel looks like, and Jews know what antisemitism looks like. And most importantly, the vast majority can tell the difference between the two.

Only a very small minority of Jews — 6 per cent of us — describe any criticism of Israel whatsoever as “definitely antisemitic.” The remainder understands that the Israeli government can and indeed should be criticised where appropriate. In fact, a considerably larger proportion of us — 23 per cent — argues that simple criticism of Israel is definitely not antisemitic.

The rest — seven in ten — adopts a “sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t” position, although two-thirds of this group tend to give people the benefit of the doubt, arguing that simple criticism is “probably not” antisemitic in most cases. These are the results of the only serious empirical investigation of this topic, based on data gathered by an international consortium of Jewish social scientists working for JPR and Ipsos MORI under the auspices of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights in 2012. However, Jewish attitudes shift when particular types of criticism are investigated. For example, 34 per cent of us believe that support for boycotts of Israeli goods and products is “definitely antisemitic,” compared to just ten per cent who maintain that it is definitely not. The remainder — over half — is less certain, although most are inclined to think that an element of antisemitism is probably involved.

Attitudes shift further still when critics start to draw comparisons

It’s not just nasty, it’s empirically wrong