Often left out of the historical record of reactionary right wing conservatism since the New Deal is how deeply and profoundly anti-Semitic it has always been.
This frequently gets papered over by the right wing's supposed "support" for Israel, which, in the mind of the right wing follower, means they "love" Jews.
Self-aggrandizing Right Wing Christian "love" for Jews has a thousand year tradition, and Jews know exactly where it leads.
As Benjamin Disraeli, the first (and only) Jewish prime minister of Britain, famously put it as far back as the 1860s: "The Jews are a nervous people. Nineteen centuries of Christian love have taken a toll."
This is important to remember as we watch frothing know-nothing reactionary racists and clueless buffoons like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin attempt to trigger the lizard brain mythology of the ugliest and vilest of the right wing fear and xenophobia through code words and meaning structures that they're probably only dimly aware of.
The "mistake" when Sarah Palin invokes the "Blood Libel" or Glenn Beck continues to hatch conspiracy theories about "communists" infiltrating Christian society, who all, of course, are Jewish (Soros, Alinsky, Frances Fox Piven, etc.), masks the truth of how deeply and embedded anti-Semitism has been in the right wing movement since "Franklyn Delano Rosenfeld" enacted the liberal/commie/Jewish conspiracy known as the "New Deal" in the 1930s.
This is a short diary, so I will go quickly through the historical events, but the conservative and mostly Southern anti-Semitism that began in the 1920s and 1920s when immigrant Jews poured through Ellis Island by the millions has always followed a few basic 19th Century influences:
- Karl Marx was Jewish and Communism is a "Jewish conspiracy"
The notion of communism as a Jewish plot to undermine the nation was a paranoid hysteria as far back as the late 19th Century Russian paranoia fueled by the forgery called "The Protocols of The Learned Elders of Zion" which claimed to expose the global Jewish money conspiracy to take over the world.
Sound familiar?
It should.
The same global money conspiracy in which the face of the Jewish George Soros is now plastered over Glenn Beck's paranoid rantings.
The same global Jewish money conspiracy that fueled the rise of the KKK's anti-Semitism in the 1920s, and continues to fuel The Turner Diaries "global conspiracy" paranoids in the radical right wing fringe today.
The same global money conspiracy that Sarah Palin's guest pastor ranted about right before "blessing" Sarah Palin in her Wasilla church a few years ago:
- The New Deal was lead by elite liberal Jewish communists to take down Christian industry
This rampant anti-Semitic paranoia was that Jews were "redistributing wealth" to take down the true heroic Ayn Rand titans of industry, which were, of course, the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts, the Henry Fords, etc.
Henry Ford, himself such a rampant anti-Semite that he published excerpts from The Protocols of Zion in The Dearborn Independent in the 1920s (basically the Koch of his day), believed that Jews were intent on taking down industry through communist redistribution of wealth.
Again, does any of this sound familiar?
This is the same coded meaning structures at work today in the republican party. The only difference? They don't say "Jew." They say "urban elite" or "cultural elite" or "San Francisco values" or "George Soros's moneylending ways".
It's Christian Passion Play writ political, Mel Gibson Passion of the Christ paranoia in which the heroic Jesus Christians of Industry are nailed to their cross by the disbelieving Jewish communist liberals.
Soros.
Alinsky.
Piven.
The names may change, but the framework is exactly the same as it was for Henry Ford.
- In the 1950s -- the McCarthy witch hunts about Jewish/Communist influence in Hollywood
Joseph McCarthy's investigation of "Communists" in Hollywood was a clearly coded paranoia about Jewish influence of Christian youth, the classic "Blood Libel" thematic idea of Jews praying on Christian children that Sarah Palin still doesn't understand.
The lynching of Leo Frank for being accused (falsely) of relations with a Christian girl in the 1920s echoing the 1950s execution of the Rosenbergs.
While conservatism has always required a paranoia about an "enemy" of the nation undermining it, and it has not always been Jews, it has always followed the same script.
- The Jewish Power Structure (Rahm Emannuel, George Soros) is at work behind Barack Obama as his financiers
Again, one of the oldest narratives in the book. I turn to 1980's "The Blues Brothers" to explain it:
Today it could be Muslims, gays, Mexicans or whichever "enemy of the state" the right wing hate machine turns the switch to for this month.
But under it all is the pervasive and rampant anti-Semitism that began the Conservative movement as a reaction to immigration fears of the 1920s and the New Deal of the 1930s, the paranoia about Hollywood of the 1950s, the paranoia about hippies like Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman in the 1960s, and the continuing rants about the "War on Christmas" from blowhards on Fox News today.
This anti-Semitic framework is so central to the republican party, it's actually more deeply embedded in the narrative mythos than the more surface racism we see directed at "welfare queens," gay people, Muslims and "Mexican anchor babies."
I would even argue all that racism at other more overt ethnics is just a variation of the central bigotry that has informed the Christian conservative movement for a hundred years now: that Jews are undermining the purity of the Christian Nation from within by spreading left wing communist ideas as a cover for a global financing plan to destroy the world.
This is what the buffoon Glenn Beck manages to channel in his daily hypnotic rant state.
The fact a few Jewish faces show up, like Bill Kristol, to defend the indefensible, or the fact they claim to "love" Israel so much that it can do no wrong, does not change what is really underneath this odious, fanatical, hateful and destructive political movement we've seen in this country since the 1920s.