I've been trying to answer (or even just ask) why Jews were hated in Europe. This is a very difficult question to ask because the answers are either outright racist or hide behind racism. You either get a Nazi answer or a liberal one, and these days that's the same thing. Today Jews are hated the world over, which begs the question even more, since we seem to be stuck in an infernal time loop. Why were the Jews hated back then, and what does this mean going forward?

Sources

Going back to my elementary school training, because the internet is broken, I'm referencing three books here. From Court Jews to the Rothschilds, No Return (by Rowan Dorin, and edited by a Rothschild), and The Court Jew (by Selma Stern). As you can see, these books are all by Jews, and the first two are funded or edited by the Rothschilds themselves. As they say in The Big Short, “they're not confessing, they're bragging.”

Jews and Capitalism

The short answer is that Jews were deeply connected to capitalism, which people hate, and get disproportionate flack for it because they're disproportionately involved. There's some question about responsibility (not all Jews, what about the rulers they served) but at this point it's moot. Jews today have a state of their own, most of them support it, and they're doing the most condensed European evil imaginable. I'm very critical of Whiteness, and by taking up that mantle, Jews can take their drubbing too.

In fact, the Jewish question is one of the more interesting ways to understand the rise of carnivorous capitalism, because they (particularly Court Jews) personify it. European Jews did play a unique role in early state capitalism, as Court Jews like the Oppenheimers and Jud Suss and then bankers like the Rothschilds. Ghetto-to-ghetto, Jews were able to network European financial networks together, becoming—as a community—the first capitalist information infrastructure. The Jewish community was the wetware that presaged modern communications technology, they could move a note from Amsterdam to London through family connections, and thus move money, supplies, armies, and nations. As Selma Stern relates,

The organization of the government had not yet developed to the extent that it could dispense with entrepreneurs and intermediaries who stood outside the hierarchy of officials. Prince Eugene characterized the epoch very aptly when he wrote that one could see almost everyday examples where a charming woman, or a black-robed churchman, or an imposingly-bearded Jew decided the fate of whole nations.

What Stern and the Rothschild-funded books and editors don't really address, however, is was this change good? They dismiss prior church bans on usury, but those were there for both moral and social reasons, as Michael Hudson gets into. In hindsight, didn't Jewish collaboration with and creation of capitalism not unleash a horrific Golem upon the world, which ate them also? Stern's preface is fascinating because she admits that she started the book (probably in the 1930s and 40s) believing in progress and now (post-Holocaust) doesn't, but the book still has the assumption that becoming more European and helping Europe was good. But it obviously wasn't, was it? If you make deals with the devil you and eventually the planet get roasted.

This seems to be a pattern in Jewish history. Some Jews help administer and grow the state, which then turns around and uses that state to pogrom and expel them. Rinse and repeat, this happens over and over. In Germany (where Stern was from, and the language this book was written in), Court Jews built up the early capitalism that morphed into Nazism. Then, after an industrialized pogrom that they effectively helped finance, 'Israel' was deeded to Lord Rothschild, a banker. Was this freedom or just another expulsion? If you look at it this way, 'Israel' is really the final ghetto for the Jews. In Torah terms, 'Israel' is supposed to be created by the Messiah, but that's not who Court Jews were following. The letter was written from the historical wicked Britain to a categorically wicked banker in Lord Rothschild. These are people who followed the love of money, ie the root of all evil, it Satan. Jesus Christ kicked the money-lenders out of the temple, but the inchoate Anti-Christ installed them there in the form of ersatz 'Israel'. So here we are, end times upon us in more ways than one.

Now, from their new ghetto in 'Israel' (the only place Jews are safe, according to Joe Biden) Jews play a unique role in late stage capitalism. Unlike the European past, however, when most Jews were poor and uninvolved, now almost the entire Jewish population is involved in imperialism's genocidal violence. Jews are bound up in this system, by their own admission. And now they're hated the world over, marking the end of not just the Zionist project but perhaps the Jewish one.

The Star of David is a hate symbol now, carved into captives foreheads and dug into the earth of ravaged Gaza with tank treads. Jews have finally gotten what they wanted, assimilation into White Empire (née Europe, now America), but just as it's collapsing, just in time to hold the bag for the whole thing, bearing the hatred of everyone. This seems to be a historical pattern, and they're stuck in it. Jews might have thought 'Israel' was freedom but no, it was just the final ghetto.

Is This Question Antisemitism?

It's easy to get dismissed as antisemitic for talking about Jews at all. But I must assert that I don't even accept antisemitism as a category. As the martyr Refaat Al-Areer said, we already have the concept of racism, why do we need a special one (for white people)? Antisemitism is a uniquely European phenomenon, a dispute within whiteness, and has nothing to do with me as a Sri Lankan. I'm not white and didn't do anything to the Jews, historically. I just look at them like any other historical group asserting identity, and which can and should be discussed accordingly.

Today, the idea that Jews control politicians and the media isn't an antisemitic conspiracy theory. It's not obviously true. AIPAC (a Jewish lobby group) openly bribes politicians and the media openly runs the Jewish state's propaganda, inciting genocide and actively participating. Jews today are killing children and corrupting societies. It's not blood libel if it's true. You can say not all Jews, and yes, but if upwards of 80% support the genocidal violence and all Jewish institutions have circled the wagons, we can certainly say Jews.

How Did Jews Get Powerful?

How did a small population (less than 20 million today), ghettoized for most of its history, play such an outsized role in modern history? Part of the answer is in the ghettoization. Jews were never able to hold a state of their own together (for more than 80 years) and so they were always communities within states. This enabled them to form a continuity between states across history, as empires rose and fell. This started in the Muslim world where, as Yosef Kaplan said in From Court Jews to the Rothschilds,

Jews in Muslim countries managed to enter ruling circles by virtue of their skills, connections, wealth, and ambition. In many cases, personal and intimate ties were formed between them and the heads of state they served. Their rise to positions of power and authority permitted them to advance other Jews — family members and associates — and to grant them influential positions and functions.

He also said, “The Jewish courtier, as the result of his vulnerability and absolute dependence on the ruler, could not constitute a political danger in a world rife with intrigue,” and “the staunch solidarity of the Jewish world and its extensive network of connections dispersed nearly everywhere within the Islamic empire and beyond it.” Viewed this way, there isn't a significant break between the Muslim and Christian worlds, Jews form the glue. As Kaplan continues,

The Christians had inherited their administrative system from the Muslims, and as Jews were familiar with the techniques involved in implementing policy, they were successful collectors of taxes and state revenues.

We'll get into it more later, but you can get a clue as to what the common people in these states might think of Jews. They likely wouldn't see the poor Jews in the ghetto, but they would see the rich ones taking their money, land, and possibly freedom. Jews were tax farmers and they were given various monopolies as collateral. They'd be the ones taking your money, grain, or over-charging you for essentials because the king went on some campaign. Jews did the dirty work for kingdoms, and got thrown out like used gloves when through.

In many ways Jews did best under Muslim kingdoms, but when the long process of reconquista in Spain began, they were active on the Christian side (that would eventually purge them). As Kaplan continues, “From the beginning of the wars of reconquista, Jews were active in the ranks of the conquering kings… The conquering kings found the Jews necessary and useful in consolidating their regimes, in establishing an administrative infrastructure, for colonization following the expansion of their borders, and for the development of commerce in newly conquered urban centers.”

This trend comes up over and over again. Jews finance the administrations that eventually purge them. In Spain, Jews formed an early interface between Muslim and Christian administrations (in Spain), before the Christians kicked them out entirely. The pattern you can see here is Jews collaborating with whoever's in power for survival, but then giving them even more power to purge them! As Malachi Haim Hacohen says in Jacob & Esau,

“It is a maxim that Esau hates Jacob,” [Jacob commonly being the Jews and Esau being the Christians] was a favorite dictum of Eliezer Shakh (1899–2001), Israel’s most eminent Ultra-Orthodox rabbi in the last decades of the twentieth century. He chastised Israeli statesmen repeatedly for engaging in world politics and making enemies and friends, instead of pacifying the powers that be – whoever they may be – and fortifying Judaism.

Pacifying, ie serving, the powers that be, however, could also make them more warlike. And serving the rulers could easily piss off the population around. I'm skipping around historically (please read the books yourself), but if you look at what Court Jews did, it was certainly off-putting. It's not discussed too directly, but you can understand what populations would feel based on the contracts Court Jews got.

In one case (via Selma Stern), “In the contract with the Court of Munich, Wolf Wertheimer obligated himself to lend 1,200,000 florins partly in cash and partly in jewels. The Elector Max Emanuel, for his part, promised to repay the money in six years. As security certain domestic and foreign revenues of Bavaria were made over to Wolf Wertheimer at whose disposal they were to be until the capital and interest had been repaid. The rate of interest was 6%, but was to be considerably increased if the debt was no repaid in time.” Once these payments got late, the interest rate doubled and, “In 1727, by which time the interest had reached a fantastic sum, Elector Charles Albert declared that the solemnly promised rate of interest of 12% was inadmissible and offered only 6%.”

What we have here is still the relationship of finance capital to nations, where bankers (still disproportionately Jewish) lend money to nations, and then demand repayment with compound interest that becomes impossible. Then they seize assets or government revenues through the IMF or other pressure, and make the common people pay for it. You can see this same process in microcosm with the Court Jews of the baroque period in Europe.

Most of their deals with rulers are like this. The Court Jew gets the rights to revenues from salt, or roads, or to supply wine or cloth, in exchange for a loan. But sometimes that loan is for some dumb shit—like a king wanting to maintain an opera house or just spend on his household—and the common people have to pay for it. More often the loan is for war, which common people just die in and see little benefit from. Stern acknowledges this up to a point. She says,

The masses knew little about the intrigues, hatreds, setbacks and discouragements to which the war contractor was subjected. They saw only despised Jews, who only a short time before had been expelled from the country, now returning as distinguished gentlemen, speaking the language of the language of the country, wearing the clothes of the time, dealing with ministers, politicians and generals, living in beautiful homes in which they imagined there must be fabulous treasures. They themselves were burdened with heavy taxes and duties, their business had declined to the vanishing point, their fields lay waste, their houses had been destroyed by the weapons of the enemy, their soldiers suffered hunger and cold, went without uniforms and were seldom paid.

The absolute ruler who planned and carried out the wars, who levied and collected the taxes and who was little concerned about the lot of his soldiers, was far removed from his subjects. He was as infallible and as unapproachable as God Himself. To him they owed blind obedience. The Jew who lived in their midst, however, could be reached.

Beyond this point, however, Stern generally excuses and even admires the Court Jews. They're just serving the king faithfully, trying to get ahead, and lifting their community up with them. They bear no responsibility for their usurious loans and the ruin they cause. As Stern says,

The tragic fate, however, which befell many of the Court Jews and plunged them into poverty and despair was caused not by any fault of their own but by the chaos of the period in which they lived. They fell because they were bearers of a new and revolutionary political and economic conception which was bitterly attacked by the old legitimist powers.

Stern seems blind to the fact that these changes might have been bad for the planet, the colonized, and (of least concern) the people of Europe. Her narrative still attributes the popular backlash to no-fault of the Jews when they were front and center at the beginning of capitalism. You can say the Court Jews were just following orders, certainly, but if this excuse wasn't good enough for the Nazis and Nuremberg, how does it excuse Court Jews? In my view it doesn't, because what these Court Jews were doing is fundamentally bad (and we'll get religiously fundamentalist about it soon). A big part of what they were doing was usury, which was a sin for a reason. Beyond that they were funding war and bankrolling the worst European projects, including colonization. We'll cover more of that next time. This was just an introduction.