| | | You, Hitler, and the Ayatollah... quite a threesome.
The Rothschild Conspiracy Theory in Iran
Rothschild-based conspiracy theories are popular all over the world, including in Iran. From the 1960s and due in no small part to the speeches of Ayatollah Khomeini, a number of baseless claims were circulated about Jews in Iran. The Rothschild conspiracy theory was co-opted into this narrative. Targeting Iran’s relations with Israel was one of the main thrusts in Khomeini’s campaign against the then-Shah of Iran, and eliciting the idea of a global ‘cabal’ spearheaded by Jews helped to unite Iranians.
Iran’s so-called Jewish Studies Centre regularly produces antisemitic, anti-Israeli and anti-Baha’i articles and papers. During Khomeini’s early campaign it published an article falsely claiming that Abbas Afandi – better known as Abdu’l-Bahá, the son of the founder of the Baha’i faith – had worked with members of the Rothschild family in the project to settle Jews in Palestine, thereby playing a central role in the creation of the State of Israel. The idea that these two minority groups were conspiring together became entrenched in the rhetoric of the time, and has helped justify the mistreatment of Jews and Baha’is in Iran ever since....
...In the early 20th century, the long-standing suspicion toward Jews already present in many countries had gained further currency with the emergence of a publication called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: a forged document first published in Tsarist Russia in 1903 which purported to describe a Jewish plot for world domination. The claims in The Protocols fell on fertile ground due to a widespread and centuries-old hostility to Jews throughout Christian Europe and further afield.
In the aftermath of World War I, many people in Germany found solace in the fantasy that they had not been defeated on the battlefield, but rather had been betrayed by Jews and left-wing elements living among them. This was despite the fact that German Jewish men had fought and died in their thousands in the trenches alongside their non-Jewish comrades.
The Nazi movement led by Adolf Hitler seized the opportunity to magnify these claims of a Jewish anti-German conspiracy by claiming that ‘Jews are the cause of all our misfortunes’, blaming them variously for the threat of communist revolution, economic disasters such as hyper-inflation, and the social disaster of mass unemployment in the Great Depression. After the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship in 1933, mass propaganda campaigns, from posters to news coverage to tub-thumping speeches in countries across Europe and further afield, were instrumental in spreading these fictions and indoctrinating the general public.
Among them was a film, Die Rothschilds, which was produced in 1940 in Nazi Germany. Playing on an already-debunked myth, it claimed the Rothschild family had bankrolled the Napoleonic Wars before making a fortune on the London stock exchange by spreading false rumours about the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo. The film concluded with the suggestion that the Rothschilds were poised to set up a Europe-wide banking network that would next be ‘targeting’ England. By this time the Rothschilds were already a well-known Jewish family and this false narrative helped to bolster fear and hostility toward Jews among its audiences - which was, of course, the intention.
These conspiracy theories about Jews bolstered Nazi racial ideology which defined Jews as a separate race that were a ‘biological threat’ to the ‘superior’ German ‘race’. Jews were portrayed as an evil, powerful group bent on the destruction of civilizations and on world domination. This intolerable situation, Nazi Germany’s leaders insisted, called for a ‘Final Solution’.
During the Second World War these unfounded, irrational and paranoid fears contributed to a systematic program of mass murder and the deaths of six million Jewish men, women and children throughout the European continent. The very fact that this was possible is evidence enough - if any were needed - that the claim that Jews were a dominating force in the world was no more than a delusion. Rather, they were a small, vulnerable minority in every European country in which they had a presence. The schemers were the Nazis themselves, and the malevolent intent was found not only in the leaders of the Nazi movement, but also in the homes of ordinary people across Europe who turned against their Jewish neighbours.
The Rothschild Conspiracy Theory in the Present
At the time of writing, the world is engulfed in the coronavirus pandemic. Entire national ways of life and economies have turned upside down in a matter of months by efforts to halt the spread of a potentially deadly new disease, Covid-19.
Sadly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, conspiracy theories are again circulating. The most common claim is that the virus was manufactured in the interests of a global elite. Internet memes and sensationalist articles have recently accused the Rothschilds, as well as Jews in general, alongside states such as China and a number of wealthy individuals – from Bill Gates to Jeff Bezos (who are not Jewish) – of fabricating the current crisis, in order to make vast fortunes from a vaccine they have already developed, or else to kill off a vast proportion of the global population. This is said to be a part of a plot to create a ‘New World Order’: an obsession which predates the coronavirus crisis by a long way and one in which the Rothschilds have almost always been placed front and centre.
In a global emergency such as this, we rely on one another. These theories prey on people’s fears at times of great social anxiety and appeal to their pre-existing prejudices. They not only promote antisemitism and hatred; they are dangerous in the context of a pandemic as they undermine trust in scientific experts, health care professionals and institutions giving the best available advice on how to suppress, contain, and defeat this new contagion. This puts us all at risk.
For as long as antisemitic theories and widely available publications like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion continue to persist, Jews in general and the Rothschilds in particular will be accused by some of conspiring to control the world. And those who believe or spread these conspiracy theories, in Iran and across the globe, will continue to damage their societies as well as their own ability to understand the world in which they live.
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