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One would hope a Jewish journalist would know that it isn’t a *Soviet* hoax? The Protocols were first published c. 1903 (but similar antisemitic conspiracies circulated in Russia in the late 1800s) in tsarist Russia. https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/1296243777275928577
Contrary to Tapper’s suggestion that the antisemitic Protocols were a hoax created by Communists, the Protocols were used to discredit & target the Bolsheviks, who antisemites portrayed as a disproportionately Jewish movement operating on behalf of ‘International Jewry’ https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/1296243777275928577
If you’re going to write about this, @jaketapper, you have a responsibility to not push misinformation. JudeoBolshevik conspiracies, which merged the Protocols with anti-Communist fearmongering, were the most popular form of 20th C antisemitism & a core part of Nazi ideology.
The Protocols are specific form of conspiratorial antisemitism that targeted leftist Jews, influenced Mein Kampf (which explicitly equates Jews & Bolsheviks), as well as US versions of right-wing antisemitic anti-Communist propaganda by Henry Ford & Elizabeth Dilling. @jaketapper
The Protocols were a direct influence on Henry Ford’s The International Jew, Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and Elizabeth Dilling’s The Octopus & The Red Network. There were definitely other types of antisemitism in the USSR, but it’s important to be accurate about this stuff, @jaketapper
Do yourself a favour and read “A Soecter Haunting Europe: The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism” (and maybe a few other books that situate these ideological strands of antisemitism in the context of US political history too) @jaketapper https://www.amazon.ca/Specter-Haunting-Europe-Myth-Judeo-Bolshevism/dp/0674047680
It’s important, @jaketapper, not only because American kneejerk USSR-fearmongering is boring, but also because this right-wing blend of antisemitism & anti-Communism via the Protocols and Henry Ford can be traced through the 20th century directly to modern day MAGA & QAnon.
The Protocols & Henry Ford lead to Father Coughlin & Charles Lindbergh & the America First movement, then to HUAC and McCarthy and the Red Scare, to John Birchers, to Pat Robertson, to white supremacists & the alt right, to current anti-Soros conspiracies. @jaketapper
There’s a continuous ideological thread from the Protocols to current anti-Soros conspiracies that claim rich socialist Jews secretly control BLM & immigration, which have directly inspired antisemitic mass shootings, @jaketapper, & it runs through the US far-right, not the USSR.
I expect non-Jews to be woefully misinformed about the history & ideologies of antisemitism but it’s frustrating/disappointing when prominent fellow Jews - especially journalists - get basic information so aggressively wrong, especially at a time when this is very relevant
