THE INTERNATIONAL BANKING CONSPIRACY: CAN’T YOU HEAR THE WHISTLE?

Only a few days ago Donald Trump proclaimed: “Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends and her donors.” Not surprisingly, this drew coverage in my local Jewish newspaper. Within a few hours’ comments began to appear on line protesting that the paper was biased. One comment from an orthodox Jew noted that Trump’s charge was factual. After all, the letter writer explained, there are many Jews in banking and therefore when Clinton met with those bankers undoubtedly some were Jewish.

Somehow this reminds me of the famous ad for Levi’s ’ Rye Bread: “You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levis.” I guess here it is “You don’t have to be a gentile to deny the existence of Anti-Semitism.”

Today, on the eve of the election, Trump has returned to this theme for his sealing the deal advertisement. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-rolls-out-anti-semitic-closing-ad

This ad alone should make any Jew considering a vote for Trump to think again.

As a starting point, let’s give Trump the benefit of the doubt and assume he was not referring to the Jews in these references (though in December of 2015 when he met for the first time with a group of Jewish Republicans, he began by saying, “You are not going to vote for me because I don’t need your money” which does lend itself to all sorts of interpretations). The danger is not what Trump meant but how the rank and file Trump supporter hears and understands this comment. The danger is also the signal it sends to the alt right.

For several days last week, I had a Facebook exchange with a friend of a friend of a friend from rural Ohio. She was certain that this banking conspiracy does exist and is led by the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers. Based on what my friend told me about her, she probably never heard this phrase before Trump used it. But she clearly had done her “research” She insisted that if I looked beyond the major media outlets I would see the truth.

I think we can assume that this woman did not go the local library to learn more, but — like all of us — relied on Google for her information. When one searches for “international banking conspiracy” on Google, more than half the hits are to websites like trueconspiracies.com or a YouTube video explaining how the conspiracy works. Yes, there were some “mainline” media sites that debunked the theory but since Trump has been telling his supporters to not trust the mainstream media, even if she visited one those sites what is the likelihood that mainline research is going to win out over such “superior” sources as trueconspiracies.com?

I patiently explained to her that this term is an anti-Semitic barb going back centuries, but she kept telling me to look beyond the mainstream media. When I posted excerpts from the Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt Right and excerpts from an alt right press conference where the leader of the movement said “Race is everything” and made clear Jews do not have a future here, she responded “bull shit” and repeated that I was an idiot to not see the truth. Trump, she insisted, was going to restore Christianity to America.

American Jews have been fortunate for the last 40 years to have lived in a world largely free from the anti-Semitic accusations that haunted our ancestors. Sure, maybe we heard about “exclusive clubs” or quotas but nothing serious. That may explain why my own informal survey showed that only about 1 in 3 Jews under the age of 30 had more than a passing knowledge of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. For that reason, they do not have the background to understand the potency and dangerousness of such sentiments. The claim that Jews used their wealth to hurt the masses goes back centuries and is responsible for countless massacres of entire Jewish villages.

The Role of The Court Jew in the Medieval Ages

The history of Jews in the Medieval Ages, is well beyond the scope of this discussion. But here is a very simplified explanation of the relevant facts.

Christianity early in its development decreed that a Christian could not charge interest for any loan to another Christian. This prohibition made it difficult for Kings or nobles to undertake significant building projects and the like.

Notably, the ban on Christianity was not on borrowing money, but lending money with interest. Kings would therefore invite Jews to settle in their land to gain access to their money. The more the King needed this cash the more favorable the charter granted to the Jews as an incentive to settle. Over time, if the King’s need for cash declined, the charter would become more restrictive or revoked altogether.

The Jews would not simply lend money to the King; they would serve as a quasi-official bank for the kingdom. They would collect the King’s taxes, advance money so that farmers could buy seed for their crops and then manage the market when the crop was harvested. At the same time, Jews were prohibited from most professions so that they could not compete with their gentile neighbors as farmers or tradesmen.

Under this feudal system and the role, the Jews were forced to assume, their fate was tied to the fate of the throne. If a King was not popular it was safer for the people to express their anger at the Jews than the King directly. This arrangement also benefited the King who could blame the Jews for the financial problems of the kingdom. Thus, in a year when the corps failed and the price for a sack of grain was well beyond the means of the masses, the Jew was blamed for having caused the famine so that he cold profit. Conversely, if the crop was successful and prices did not come down then the Jews could be blamed for being greedy. Of course, feudal Europe was not an open market based economy and the throne had tremendous influence if not direct control on the prices of major commodities. But it was in everyone’s interest (except the Jews) to have a system that allowed an outside third party to be blamed when necessary while the throne could claim any credit when things were going well.

Images of Jewish Money Lenders Prevalent on Special Medals Issued Throughout The Middle Ages

Medals were not money but they often minted in the middle ages with the authority or at least consent of the throne. In an era without newspapers, medals were a way for the throne to disseminate messages to the masses. For this reason, the proliferation of medals portraying Jews as the evil banker both helped shape and reflect commonly held beliefs.

An early example is from the 1600s.

This medal captioned “Famine time” shows the Jew not caring about the starving Christians by allowing the grain in his sack to spill and be wasted. The reverse shows a play on a verse from Proverbs making clear that the minter believed that God sanctioned the views portrayed in the coin and reads, “ He That Withholdeth Grain, the People Shall Curse Him: but Blessing Shall Be upon the Head of Him That Selleth it”.

Here is an example of a medal made when the harvest was good.

Here we can see the that crops are doing well and the caption on the coin is “Expensive Time” because the Jew was making too much profit and therefore should be hung. Again, a Biblical verse from Luke supports the sentiment expressed.

Why did the Jews tolerate such conditions? Mobility was much more limited. And Jews could relocate without permission from the desired location. Essentially, Jews were trapped. After the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, Jews did not have many options. They were stuck where they ended up. Of course, having a captive group was, again, to the King’s benefit since once within his Kingdom they had few options.

One incident in 1738 illustrates the danger for Jews living in the Middle Ages. The Duke Karl Alexander, a native of Stuttgart, Germany served as the local “Lord” over Serbia for many years where he essentially governed with only one goal: To maximize his wealth without regard to the long-term prosperity of his subjects. In 1734 he was appointed Duke over his home town of Stuttgart where he apparently continued his harsh and abusive practices. The Duke’s finances were managed by the “Court Jew” Joseph Suff Oppenheimer. When the Duke died suddenly in 1737, he was succeeded by his nine-year-old son.

Perhaps to send a message to the son that he ought not to continue the same harsh policies as his father, the Court Jew was promptly arrested on a variety of charges, but in each instance for conduct that only have been undertaken either at the direction of or with the affirmative blessing of Duke Alexander.

No matter. Oppenheimer was convicted and pending his execution, he was told he should convert so that he might have an easier death. He refused. On the gallows, he was again offered baptism and responded by reciting the Sh’ma.

After being hung his body was put in a bird case and stayed there for seven years until the birds had devoured both his corpse and bones.

The people of Stuttgart were not ashamed of their actions. A medal was minted to commemorate the event for prosperity. The caption does not identify Oppenheimer as a banker, but simply as a Jew.

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The Church also used its own authority to keep the Jews in a subservient position. For the Church, the Court Jew presented a dilemma. How could someone from the People who had crucified the Savior prosper? Of course, the rejection of Jesus by his own people also needed explaining in a world based on loyalty to the crown. The explanation was that Jews had to be kept alive to witness the Second Coming but during that waiting period they should be barely tolerated.

One myth promulgated by the Church was known as “Discretion of the Host.” Jews allegedly would steal the holy wafers used for communion and then crunch them to torture the body of Christ.

One such incident occurred in 1370 in Brussels leading to the massacre of the entire Jewish population. The Church felt no shame only pride that they had protected Jesus from such cruel suffering. The story was told and retold and in 1670 a medal was minted in “honor” of the 200th anniversary of the great devotion Christians had shown to protect Jesus from being tortured by his own people. The Church issued a new medal every fifty years until 1820.

In another “famous’ incident, Germans continued to make pilgrimages to one local church until 1992 to remember how the town in 1367 had massacred the entire local Jewish population in response to a host desecration charge. These events were again seen as proof of the strength of Christian faith and commitment to Jesus. For instance, in 1867, 500 years after the incident, a medal was minted to recall how true Christians had done battle for Jesus.

The Catholic Church only officially rejected this claim as part of Vatican 2 in the 1960s but it was not until 1993 that annual pilgrimages to this small village in Germany finally stopped.

Why did the Jews tolerate such conditions? Mobility was much more limited. Jews could not relocate without permission from the desired location. Essentially, Jews were trapped. And after 1492 when 1,00,000 Jews were expelled from Spain, the number of Jews who could not find a safe haven was far greater than those who did.

One might think that a Jew could escape this misery by converting. But conversion — as much as the Church seemed to desire converts — did nothing to solve the problem. First, Jews who converted were always suspect, as depicted in the following coin where a Jew is about to baptized while the executioner waits to push him off a cliff.

The reverse legend may be translated as: “A Jew rarely becomes a Christian unless he has done something wrong. He does it only for the money to avoid serious punishment, for if he would steal he would be punished too hard”. On the rim is an additional engraving: “When the mouse eats the cat, then a Jew becomes a true Christian. “

The emancipation of Jews in Europe beginning in 1791 put an end to the dynamics of the middle ages. However, these prejudices found new ways to manifest themselves.

The Myth in Modern Times

The claim that Jews control the world’s money supply has continued in modern times. In 1903 a book appeared in Russia called The Protocols of the Elders of Zio purporting to reveal the details of a secret meeting of Jews to plot their control of the world’s finances and media. Hitler mandated the teachings of the Protocols in German schools and used it to defend his persecution of the Jews.

Least you think that such “foolishness” has no audience in America, Henry Ford paid for the publication and distribution of 500,000 copies during the 1920s.

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, vocal antisemitism was no longer socially acceptable. But there has always been an undercurrent of white supremacy in America. The alt right — a term most people assume refers just to ardent conservatives — is just a clever rebranding for the new 21st century. The architect of the rise of this movement is Steve Bannon, now serving as the CEO for the Trump campaign. I have written extensively about the alt right. https://medium.com/@stephenfeingold/the-ultimate-game-of-thrones-is-happening-in-america-627ebe2f07ce#.xb0tcwbbd and https://medium.com/@stephenfeingold/a-yom-kippur-letter-to-ivanka-trump-b680bf464ea2#.juoc5bixn.

For some reason the Jewish community — quick to call out any criticism of Israel by Democrats as antisemitism — has been relatively mooted about this underbelly in the Trump campaign. But as the election comes to a close, Trump is now trying to seal the deal with voters by a heavy emphasis on the need for Americans to save the country from this global conspiracy.

The four readily identifiable American bad guys in the ad are Hillary Clinton, George Soros (Jewish financier), Janet Yellen (Jewish Fed Chair) and Lloyd Blankfein (Jewish Goldman Sachs CEO). See the ad here. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-rolls-out-anti-semitic-closing-ad.

The footprints of Bannon are all over the content and timing of the ad. In the end, it is not enough to talk about illegals, Islamic terror, and the like. To seal the deal, Trump squarely points the finger at the Jews.

Let’s return to the Trump supporter in Ohio. She is probably representative of many Americans. She is easy prey for this type of hate messaging. Her perceptions of Jews and the “power” we allegedly play are probably now part of her world view and will only be reinforced if Trump loses.

While this is obviously not good, do not underestimate the cleverness of Steve Bannon and the alt right. They have their eye on the long game.

The real danger is 4 or 8 years from now when the next Put America First candidate goes further down this path in any number of ways. For instance, given the isolationist foreign policy that runs through Trump’s campaign, it is easy to imagine someone arguing in 2020 that the best way to stop domestic Islamic terror is to stop supporting Israel. After all, that is (they will argue) the real reason Muslims hate us. And the only reason America has supported Israel is because of this global Jewish conspiracy that funds the biggest lobby in D.C: AIPAC. This new “leader” will claim that AIPAC is a glaring arrogant proof that American Jews do not put America first but Israel. Of course, this is not true. But the road to having that argument seem reasonable is the road being paved today by Donald Trump.

The ultimate question for any American Jew is whether they are willing to risk empowering the alt right by electing Donald Trump. Any sane Jew must ask him or herself if anything could be more dangerous to the future of American Jewry.

It is easy to look back at the past and think that had you been alive you would have clearly seen and chosen the proper path. The Italian Jews who supported Mussolini in the 1920s were convinced that Mussolini was net net positive for Italy and them. When the Democratic Socialists and the Communist parties refused to unite in 1932 to defeat Hitler they were convinced that the other was no better than Hitler. When Stephen Wise decided to hold his tongue and not share the destruction of European Jewry before it was made public he was convinced that he had to follow the lead of FDR.

There are many arguments that can be made for not voting for Clinton. But every Jew voting for Trump has a duty to articulate a risk greater than empowering a Neo Nazi to be the closest adviser to the next President of the United States. They have a duty to examine the pattern of whistles made by Trump over the last 12 months to the alt right and explain how they can trust a man who is willing to actively encourage anti-Semitic behavior. They have a moral obligation to consider how they will explain how they supported a man who is being advised by someone who believes that American Jews should either move to Israel or suffer the consequences.

For years Jews have vowed NEVER AGAIN. Jews now have the duty to vote consistent with that vow and vote for Hillary Clinton next Tuesday.

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