Economic antisemitism
[4] Antisemites have often promulgated myths related to money, such as the canard that Jews control the world finances, first promoted in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and later repeated by Henry Ford and his Dearborn Independent.
[18] William I. Brustein describes popular economic antisemitism in Europe before the 19th century as based on accusations of Jews using alleged unethical business practices in second-hand trade, petty commerce and money-lending.
Local rulers and church officials closed many professions to the Jews, pushing them into marginal occupations considered repugnant, such as tax- and rent-collecting and money-lending, but tolerated them as a "necessary evil".
[23] Another aspect of economic antisemitism is the assertion that Jews do not produce anything of value but instead tend to serve as middlemen, acting as "parasites in the production line" of non-Jews, who are doing the real work.
For example, Robert von Mohl characterised European Jews of the 19th century as being concentrated in trade and finance, with some representation in the artistic and intellectual fields.
[28] Jews have tended to show an "entrepreneurial spirit" and "capacity for risk-taking", which lead them to innovate financial concepts like negotiable instruments of credit, international syndicates, department stores, holding companies and investment banks.
[29] Krefetz suggests that Jews have frequently chosen professions that are "portable" or involve duties as a middleman, because of their long historical background, based on trading and "heightened awareness of continual persecution".
[36] Niewyk and Nicosia describe economic antisemitism as focusing on "excessive" Jewish wealth and power growing out of the Jews' success in commerce, banking and professional careers.
[37] Marvin Perry asserts that much antisemitism in the European commercial world derived from the fact that non-Jewish merchants could not match the "economies of scale and advertising promotions" of Jewish competitors.
[39] Similarly, Foxman writes that it is likely that non-Jews in medieval or Renaissance Europe had feelings of fear, vulnerability and hostility towards Jews because they resented being beholden to Jewish lenders.
[49] Laurel Platt attributes antisemitic attitudes that extend back to the Middle Ages for the tendency to blame Jews for the problems of capitalism and urbanisation that arose in the late 19th century.
[63] The expression was the title of a pamphlet, The Jewish Bolshevism, and became current after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia, featuring prominently in the propaganda of the anti-Bolshevik "White" forces during the Russian Civil War.
[73] The result of those occupational restrictions was to push Jews into marginal roles, considered socially inferior, such as tax and rent collecting and moneylending, which were tolerated as a "necessary evil".
For example, in 1638, Venetian Rabbi Simone Luzatto contended that Jews were suited to be commercial agents because of the skills they developed from their exclusion from other career options.
[104] Howard Sachar wrote that throughout much of the 19th century, popular literature and theatrical performances in the Austrian and German empires were merciless in their caricatures of the Rothschilds as "Jewish cash bags" or "Jews behind the throne".
[71] One example of economic antisemitism was promulgated in France by Édouard Drumont in his 1879 pamphlet What we Demand of Modern Jewry that contrasted the poverty of French workers with the wealth of Jewish bankers and industrialists.
From the early 1880s, declining farm prices also prompted elements of the Populist movement to blame the perceived evils of capitalism and industrialism on Jews because of their alleged racial/religious inclination for financial exploitation.
[108] Although Jews played only a minor role in the nation's commercial banking system, the prominence of Jewish investment bankers, such as the Rothschilds in Europe, Jacob Schiff, and Kuhn, Loeb & Co. in New York City, made the claims of antisemites believable to some.
The syndicate was now selling the bonds for a profit, and the Populists used that as an opportunity to uphold their view of history that both Washington, DC, and Wall Street were in the hands of international Jewish banking houses.
Hitler's book Mein Kampf (German for "My Struggle") included the following passage, which was representative of much antisemitism in Germany and Europe: "The Jewish train of thought in all this is clear.
Sporadic violence against the Jews became widespread with the Kristallnacht riots, which targeted Jewish homes, businesses and places of worship, killing hundreds across Germany, including the newly-annexed Austria.
After the Kristallnacht (commonly known as "Night of Broken Glass") pogrom of 9–10 November 1938, Nazi leaders stepped up "Aryanization" efforts and enforced measures that increasingly succeeded in physically isolating and segregating Jews from their fellow Germans.
The Anti-Defamation League documented one of the more common aspects of money-related antisemitism: the claim that the United States' Federal Reserve System was created by Jews and is run by them for their own financial benefit.
In a 1968 conference at the University of Cairo, a speaker proclaimed that "money-worship [is among the] inherent qualities in them [the Jews] [...] They are characterized by avarice and many other vices, which arose from selfishness, love of worldly life, and envy [...]"[128] Arabs' discourse on the Holocaust displays various instances of economic antisemitic rhetoric.
[129] In the book, Jews are characterised as a swindler people starting both world wars for selfish economic gain and taking over the German economy as a result of their sinister fiscal techniques.
Tantawi used that perception of Jews as a justification for Hitler's genocidal agenda and said that it is "iittle wonder that the Germans rose against them several times and employed all the means of killing, expulsion, and pillage".
"[133][134] Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, told the United Nations General Assembly in 2008 that the Zionists[135] "have been dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers [...] in a deceitful, complex, and furtive manner".
[138] Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan has also elaborated on these concepts in speeches, making statements such as "The Federal Reserve is the synagogue of Satan, [...] the House of Rothschild" and "The Black man and woman have always been looked upon as the 'property' of White America, and particularly, members of the Jewish community".
[138][140] In the 1970s, the white supremacist movement in the United States adopted the position that Jews are "parasites and vultures" who are attempting to enslave Aryans by dominating world banking and media.
Its leaders include Bo Gritz, who alleges that the Federal Reserve System is controlled by Jews, and John Trochman, who believes that the nation's problems are the fault of a Jewish "banking elite".
