Daily conspiracy

[Fake Messiah]

"The Conspiracy": A New Documentary Traces the History of Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theory

The subject, of course, couldn’t be more timely. The film arrives at a moment when these insidious ideas, which seem to have the life of Hydra heads (you can cut them off but can’t kill them), are reasserting their way back into politics and culture. Kanye West and his crackpot tweets grab headlines, but it’s important to note that Ye’s point-of-view mirrors the mindset of increasing numbers of right-wing true believers in Europe and America.

The roots of anti-Semitism go back to the blaming of Jews for Christ’s death and the “blood libel” of the 12th century that accused Jews of murdering children in private ceremonies as a way to restage the Crucifixion. But according to “The Conspiracy,” the birth of actual conspiracy theory about Jews dates back to the French Revolution, when the Jesuit priest Augustine Barruel argued that the Revolution itself was a conspiracy, planned and executed by a network of secret societies. Barruel received a lot of fan mail, and one letter asked him why it was only in passing that he mentioned “the Hebrew sect,” which the letter writer linked, through the Jews’ alleged leverage over gold and silver, to control of the Illuminati, the Jacobins, and the Freemasons, “seeking to destroy the name of Christ wherever possible.”

Barruel, sharing that letter with powerful people all around the world, became the person responsible for launching the modern theory of a secret Jewish cabal. After receiving the letter, Russia’s Czar Nicolas I became convinced that a Jewish conspiracy was overtaking Europe, and he began his rule by banning Jews from major cities, restricting where they could live to a desolate Southwestern territory known as the Pale of Settlement. Throughout Europe, the issue of whether Jews should have civil rights became the subject of debate.

“The Conspiracy” puts together how anti-Semitic conspiracy theory was the snake that slithered through World War I, the Russian Revolution (most spectacularly through the figure of Leon Trotsky, the Bronstein family heir who fantasized that the embrace of Marxism could wipe out anti-Semitism), and the rise of Nazi Germany. The movie records how Henry Ford, who had published “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” in his newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, made a substantial financial contribution to the fascist movement in Germany. And in doing so it lends a newly filled-in context to the rise of Hitler, one that doesn’t allow us to say, as so many Holocaust documentaries do, “That was then, this is now.” That the snake still lives makes you wonder: Where does it slither next?

https://variety.com/2022/film/reviews/th...235440435/