Empire of the Mind: Hidden Hebrew Hegemonies
Or: What Makes an International Conspiracy Jewish Anyway? (SWTOOSTAO # 11)
“The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.” —Winston Churchill
The Octopus
“It can be hard to think clearly and reason calmly about antisemitism. For 15 million Jews around the world, its resilience engenders fear, pain, sadness, frustration, and intergenerational trauma going back to the Holocaust and beyond. The superficial sense of security that many Jews feel on a daily basis in the contemporary world turns out to be paper-thin. Jews know enough of their own familial stories to realize that in historical terms, such moments of safety have often been fleeting, followed by renewed persecution.” —Noah Feldman, “The New Antisemitism,” Time, Feb 2024
In April 2023, Joe Biden announced his War on Antisemitism. Quite prescient for a senile old codger! A year later, the ancient but eternally renewing war seems to be raging on all sides of the polemic.
Certainly, whatever the ADLers and Time magazine may say, there is such a thing as “an international Jewish conspiracy” (even if the word “Jewish” remains problematically ill-defined). But then so is there such a thing as an international Catholic (or Jesuit) conspiracy, an international drug trafficking conspiracy, an international Fabian conspiracy, an international Anglo-American conspiracy, an international Masonic conspiracy, and so on.
Widely known organizations such as the CFR, CIA, NSA, FBI, DOD, WHO, WEF, FDA, MI6, ADL, UN, NATO, Club of Rome, Knights of Malta, etc., all have their interlocking international influence on world affairs. All are made up of so many different sub-groups, individuals, alliances both open and covert, and agendas both secret and public, that—however “over-represented” Jewish interests, ideologies, and individuals might be in all of this—to attempt to place them at the head of the “Octopus” would seem absurd at best, at worst maliciously disingenuous.
That said: there are at least two factors I can think of that might single out “Jews”—or at least Jewishness—as being unusually accountable for covertly directing world affairs over the past two or three thousand years. These factors are to be ignored—by Gentiles or Jews—at our collective peril.
First up, as a displaced people (even post-Israel) that resists assimilation, self-identifying Jews have succeeded in spreading their numbers—via the diaspora—across many nation states, and thereby “permeated” (the Fabian method) global culture and society in ways that, possibly, are unequaled by any other racial or religious group. (Christians would seem an obvious competitor; but nominally Christian groups have proceeded more via open conquest and conversion than covert infiltration.)
This perspective is still rather less than robust, however. For one thing, it assumes a firm definition as to what really constitutes Jewishness, when a close examination reveals that, as definitions go, it is very much a moving target.
So if Jewishness, for many secular, non-practicing Jews, is nothing but an ethnicity, why hasn’t it been a lot more “assimilated”?
Jewish Identity Politics
“Today, thankfully, almost no one wants to be accused of antisemitism.” —Noah Feldman, “The New Antisemitism,” Time, Feb 2024
I spoke about this topic with Jim Kunstler last week, and I hope he’ll forgive me if I now use him as an example. Both in that talk and here at my substack, Jim argued that, growing up in New York in the 50s, he “saw a completely assimilated, Americanized culture around” him. And yet, paradoxically, Jim still refers to Jews (including Israeli Jews) as “my people.” What gives?
The only reason I even know that Kunstler is Jewish is because he mentions it (and refers to Jews as “my people”). And even though I do know it, he still doesn’t really seem Jewish to me. (I mean that as a compliment, Jim!)
Ironically, this might be getting us close to the nub of the “Jewish problem”: an illegitimate and/or gratuitous assertion of group identity that, oddly enough (Jim definitely won’t like this comparison), has something in common with the transgender assertion of pronouns.
What I mean by that is that, at least some of the time, an assertion of Jewish identity—like that of a gender identity—can be a form of pride that verges on aggression, albeit aggression cunningly disguised as the self-defense of a persecuted minority.
(Kunstler, to be clear, is the mildest possible case of Jewish-identity-assertion one could hope to find, so using him as an example might seem odd; I am only doing so because he’s fresh at hand!)
Be all this as it may, the question is: why would someone with no interest in or affiliation with Judaism, who has otherwise been “completely assimilated” into New York American culture, and who passes for white with no obvious physical Jewish characteristics, still wish to self-identify as Jewish, at all? Isn’t this itself a bit of a mystery?
After all, “having” a Jewish identity isn’t really like having a piece of land, or even a kippah. So isn’t the tendency towards Jewish identification—in and of itself—an attempt to resist cultural assimilation? If so, by extension, does that also make it congruent with a desire to exert influence over the culture that hosts it?
And isn’t the constant reference to the threat of anti-Semitism central to such a “policy” (or psychological bent)?
Loaded questions; but how else to unburden ourselves of the load of either a Jewish, a non-Jewish, or an anti-Semitical identification?
This load is written large on the social landscape now by self-identifying but secular Jews who support Israel, for no good reason that I can see (especially now), besides this one: that they self-identify as Jews.
And yet, I am fairly confident that, if these same Jews were asked if an ancient piece of religious scripture should be used as the basis for making geopolitical economic decisions about who has the right to own what piece of land—in any other case besides that of Israel—they would dismiss such an idea as asinine barbarism.
That assertion of identity is the root of all evil is an idea echoed by Stephen Norquist’s phrase (Haunted Universe), “Affirmation of being is the work of Satan,” and, more famously, by Marshall McLuhan’s maxim, “All forms of violence are quests for identity.”
A Closed Totality (Rudolf Steiner on the Jews)
“The fact that Judaism still exists is an error of world history, the results of which were inevitable.” —Rudolf Steiner
The second salient argument for a secret Jewish world hegemony I wish to cite is less obvious and less remarked on, and pertains to Judaism as opposed to Jewish ethnicity (insofar as they can be separated).
Rudolf Steiner’s (now redacted) view of Judaism, post-Christianity, may also be close to the heart of this “Jewish identity-problem”—including the problem of anti-Semitism—and it might be summed up most succinctly with the phrase: Yesterday’s God is tomorrow’s Devil (or despot).
In 1888, in his critique of the epic work Homunculus by the Austrian author and poet Robert Hamerling, published in From Symptom to Reality in Modern History (CW 185), Steiner wrote:
It is certainly undeniable that Judaism presently appears as a closed totality and as such it has often influenced the development of present conditions in a manner that was anything else than useful to the foundations of Western culture. However, Judaism as it is has long exhausted its existence, has no right to exist in modern national life. The fact that Judaism still exists is an error of world history, the results of which were inevitable. We do not mean only the forms of the Jewish religion, but above all the spirit of Judaism, the Jewish way of thinking (p. 152).
Steiner viewed “post-Golgotha” Judaism as a “social element that is antisocial as regards to the whole of humanity.” When greater society revolves around individual peoples alone (group identities), he thought, it manifests as an “Ahrimanic element” (i.e., fragmentary and oppressively restrictive). “The Old Testament is to be maintained in an Ahrimanic form” (ibid, p. 166-167).
In a 2012 essay, “Rudolf Steiner and the Jews: ‘That Judaism Still Exists is an Error of History,’” Israel Koren writes:
According to Steiner, the abstract spirit, carried especially by Jews as the remains of the biblical spirit, is not special to Jews and also appears in modern science. It was this spirit that attracted Jews to medicine: “The Jews still feel very drawn to medicine because it is in keeping with their abstract thinking. This abstract Jehovistic medicine fits in with their whole mode of thinking.” (“Characteristics of Judaism” [lecture], 1923, p. 44).
This last point is a rather curious one, considering the rise of medical totalitarianism in the 2020s. Also, Jim Kunstler’s joke (told to me in our chat), about how Jewish mothers always want their sons to be either doctors or lawyers, begins to take on more ominous overtones.
If Christ came to fulfill (and thereby end) the Law of Moses (the Torah, and by extension the Talmud and the rest of the Old Testament), then Steiner’s statement would seem, theologically if not politically, correct. The continued existence of Judaism might then be seen as a willed defiance of Christian grace, i.e., as the spirit of Antichrist.
This is the most traditional rationale for anti-Semitism, and Sabbateanism (and Sabbatean-Frankism) would seem to most fully embody this spirit (but that’s a topic for another time—if ever.)
What Greater Subjection? (Blake on the Jews)
“The philosophy of the east taught the first principles of human perception: some nations held one principle for the origin & some another, we of Israel taught that the Poetic Genius (as you now call it) was the first principle and all the others merely derivative, which was the cause of our despising the Priests & Philosophers of other countries, and prophecying that all Gods would at last be proved to originate in ours & to be the tributaries of the Poetic Genius, it was this, that our great poet King David desired so fervently & invokes so patheticly, saying by this he conquers enemies & governs kingdoms; and we so loved our God that we cursed in his name all the deities of surrounding nations, and asserted that they had rebelled; from these opinions the vulgar came to think that all nations would at last be subject to the jews. This said he, like all firm perswasions, is come to pass, for all nations believe the jews code and worship the jews god, and what greater subjection can be.” —William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
As Blake wrote in the 1790s, religious Jews have managed to insert Yahweh—of whom they are the chosen people assigned this very task—into many nations and across continents, via the Trojan Horse of Christianity (and, it could be argued, Islam). The result is that the Torah, at least as much as the Gospel, forms the religious backbone of western society, thereby bestowing upon “the Jews” a special position, privilege, and role within it.
This is perhaps most evident via the Christian view of Jews as the chosen people of God, who is also then identified as Yahweh. Such a strange allegiance is most fully exemplified by Christian Zionism. It is also, admittedly, a mixed blessing, since it brings with it its exact counterpoint, that of “Christian anti-Semitism,” via the belief that (religious) Jews “murdered Christ” (historically questionable, especially since Jesus himself was a Jew, which ought to balance the scales).
More provably, they rejected him as the Messiah; and insofar as they have not converted to Christianity, continue to do so.
In my favorite go-to Substack essay on this subject, “The complicated relationship between the central bank owners and the Jewish people,” the author cites a theory of Adam Green that Christian acceptance of the Jews as the chosen people, their adopting the Old Testament as a cornerstone of their religion, and by extension the Jewish God, makes them “unable to fully oppose Judaism”:
while there are periodic pogroms over the centuries, it was a half-hearted opposition based on Jews killing Christ where the Jews represented an errant cousin religion. In other words, gentiles adopting Christianity resulted in elevating Jews to a special position which they never possessed among the Hellenists. Romans had treated Judaism as an unexceptional sect among a multitude of sects that the Roman Empire managed without special status or preferment. Green posts many videos of Orthodox Jewish rabbis who publicly argue this point: they state, in a semi-conspiratorial tone, that Peter and Paul were Jewish double agents sent to convert pagans to Christianity so they would obey the Noahide laws and worship the Jewish God. Therefore Christian antagonism to Jews is half-hearted and it serves Jewish purposes by preventing assimilation. The same argument would apply to Islam, which is another religion “of the Book.” (Emphasis in original)
The author mentions in a footnote an old Jewish tradition that Simon Peter “joined the early Christians at the decision of the rabbis [and] was said to remain a practicing Jew. . .”
Over the Paywall: Cunning Linguistics (Leonard Schlain’s The Alphabet Vs the Gooddess), Original Sin-Tax & Seminal Semitism, Tikkum Olam Backwards, and a word from Aeolus Kephas.
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