KING REIDYZ
ALLAH IS BLACK 😎
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The stereotype of Jews controlling the media and the banks is related to the myth of Jewish conspiracy I have described above. Both of them have their basis in European history of the 19th century and in the rise of nationalism.
Nationalism in this time, and especially in the latter half of the 19th century, made it necessary for many societies to ask the question, who is part of our nation; who is German/French/Austrian/Czech/Polish etc. In a lot of ways this first came to the forefront of European discourse with the wars of liberation against Napoleon, who in many territories emancipated Jews and others and gained traction in many countries with the general movement of religious emancipation, constituionalism, and national unification such as in the cases of Italy and Germany.
Jews in Europe had a history of being seen as the other for several reasons, among them for example their status as imperial subjects rather than subjects to the local lord and because of their specific function in many communities where there were Christians as well as Jews. While the narrative of Jews being used to circumvent certain Christian conventions of money landing, this history is vastly overstated and can only apply in certain localities. One only needs to look at the most effective and prominent banking businesses of the Medieval and Early Modern Age and rather than Jews, the names that will come up are the Welsers, the Fuggers, the Medici, and the city republics of Venice and Genoa rather than Jewish families. But I digress.
Given their history of being othered, it is hardly surprising that when in the age of nationalism the question of who was to be part of the nationa arose it had to be answered with regards to a population that for so long been perceived as the other. And there were different answers. The French revolutionaries answered it with yes, Jews can and should be part of the citizenship. Others delivered different answers, a whole slew of them answering no with a variety of reasons, including among them the völkisch tradition I have described above (It has been pointed out to me before that I should clarify the German terms: völkisch is a term that in its modern sense originated with German nationalist romantics such as Fichte and has been used by movements of racist nationalism and anti-Semitism in Germany in the latter half of the 19th and first half of the 20th century to describe their world view based on Social Darwinism and pseudo scientific race theory).
With the emancipation of Jews in many European states, those who had answered the question of who was to be part of the nation with "not the Jews" tended to dwell on examples of Jews -- who in their opinion could not be German/French etc. -- or alleged Jews -- since not all of those examples were people who practiced Judaism but rather people who had converted and assimilated -- in what they perceived as positions of power where they didn't belong. People like Gobineau and Chamberlain pointed to examples like the Rothschild family and asserted that people who were not "part of the nation" should hold such a position because it afforded them too much power. Some, like the advocates of the völkisch movement, even asserted that this was all part of a larger conspiracy by those who they perceived as Jews to control the world.
As for "moderate" anti-Semites, a lot demanded that Jews be only represented in society according to their overall percentage of the population, advocating for quotas in the university system, the media, etc., which of course is a bogus argument since for example in Germany by the 1920s nobody - except some political nutcases - would have demanded a quota for universities that confined Lutherans and Catholics to their percentage in the population too.
In any case, the stereotype originates with a in its essence paranoid nationalistic movement that directed attention to certain examples and only on basis of one or two cases asserted an over-representation or control of certain parts of society such as the media and banking by people they perceived as the fundamental other - Jews. They pointed to a limited example of cases while the majority of the Jewish population of Europe was dirt poor and confined to the pale of settlement in the Tsarist empire and while the overarching conspiracy fantasy of Jews wanting to control the world has outside of the circles of nutcases and Neo-Nazi wankers largely disappeared, the sub-stereotpyes of this idea, banking, media etc., is still around.
Nationalism in this time, and especially in the latter half of the 19th century, made it necessary for many societies to ask the question, who is part of our nation; who is German/French/Austrian/Czech/Polish etc. In a lot of ways this first came to the forefront of European discourse with the wars of liberation against Napoleon, who in many territories emancipated Jews and others and gained traction in many countries with the general movement of religious emancipation, constituionalism, and national unification such as in the cases of Italy and Germany.
Jews in Europe had a history of being seen as the other for several reasons, among them for example their status as imperial subjects rather than subjects to the local lord and because of their specific function in many communities where there were Christians as well as Jews. While the narrative of Jews being used to circumvent certain Christian conventions of money landing, this history is vastly overstated and can only apply in certain localities. One only needs to look at the most effective and prominent banking businesses of the Medieval and Early Modern Age and rather than Jews, the names that will come up are the Welsers, the Fuggers, the Medici, and the city republics of Venice and Genoa rather than Jewish families. But I digress.
Given their history of being othered, it is hardly surprising that when in the age of nationalism the question of who was to be part of the nationa arose it had to be answered with regards to a population that for so long been perceived as the other. And there were different answers. The French revolutionaries answered it with yes, Jews can and should be part of the citizenship. Others delivered different answers, a whole slew of them answering no with a variety of reasons, including among them the völkisch tradition I have described above (It has been pointed out to me before that I should clarify the German terms: völkisch is a term that in its modern sense originated with German nationalist romantics such as Fichte and has been used by movements of racist nationalism and anti-Semitism in Germany in the latter half of the 19th and first half of the 20th century to describe their world view based on Social Darwinism and pseudo scientific race theory).
With the emancipation of Jews in many European states, those who had answered the question of who was to be part of the nation with "not the Jews" tended to dwell on examples of Jews -- who in their opinion could not be German/French etc. -- or alleged Jews -- since not all of those examples were people who practiced Judaism but rather people who had converted and assimilated -- in what they perceived as positions of power where they didn't belong. People like Gobineau and Chamberlain pointed to examples like the Rothschild family and asserted that people who were not "part of the nation" should hold such a position because it afforded them too much power. Some, like the advocates of the völkisch movement, even asserted that this was all part of a larger conspiracy by those who they perceived as Jews to control the world.
As for "moderate" anti-Semites, a lot demanded that Jews be only represented in society according to their overall percentage of the population, advocating for quotas in the university system, the media, etc., which of course is a bogus argument since for example in Germany by the 1920s nobody - except some political nutcases - would have demanded a quota for universities that confined Lutherans and Catholics to their percentage in the population too.
In any case, the stereotype originates with a in its essence paranoid nationalistic movement that directed attention to certain examples and only on basis of one or two cases asserted an over-representation or control of certain parts of society such as the media and banking by people they perceived as the fundamental other - Jews. They pointed to a limited example of cases while the majority of the Jewish population of Europe was dirt poor and confined to the pale of settlement in the Tsarist empire and while the overarching conspiracy fantasy of Jews wanting to control the world has outside of the circles of nutcases and Neo-Nazi wankers largely disappeared, the sub-stereotpyes of this idea, banking, media etc., is still around.
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