This five-part series on the global rise and risks of anti-Semitism in the form of anti-Zionism and its worryingly unashamed endorsement by parts of the UK’s anti-globalist ‘freedom movement’ was prepared before the brutal Hamas attack on Israel on October 7.
Tragically, some of the reaction in the West to this Nazi-like sadistic pogrom provides a dramatic, albeit unwelcome, confirmation of the authors’ fears. Jewish intellectuals Karen Harradine, anthropologist and social commentator, and Norman Fenton, a mathematician and Bayesian analyst, explain their dismay at this reversion to a dangerous and ignorant prejudice that discredits the case against globalism. Several of the freedom movement’s ‘opinion leaders’ and ‘spokesmen’ have, shockingly, either condoned this massacre of Jews or openly blamed Israelis for it under an anti-Zionist or ‘the bankers behind the war’ type narrative.
Visible to all now must be the latent anti-Semitism behind the ugly but ‘acceptable’ face of anti-Zionism, manifest in the terrifying displays of open hatred against Jews as well of the Jewish state across Western cities, on social and mainstream media and in open calls for their gassing or extermination.
It was a book containing the specious ‘critique’ that the globalist agenda is a Zionist plot, unashamedly distributed at a recent freedom conference, that was the original catalyst for these articles. Harradine and Fenton believe the Freedom movement risks discrediting itself by countenancing such anti-semitism, albeit updated (and upgraded) under the facade of anti-Zionism. The purpose of the series is to explain why, if the Great Reset is to be resisted, such ideas need to be rejected once and for all.
In today’s Part One they set out the historic basis of anti-Zionist hatred.
WHILE outright anti-Semitism is no longer widely tolerated outside the Middle East, anti-Zionism – in which hatred of Jews is simply replaced with hatred of Zionists (supporters of the state of Israel) – has spiralled out of control. Worryingly, even historical anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, birthed mainly from a medieval blood libel, and the Tsarist forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, are enjoying a revival as ‘Zionist plots’ amongst parts of what we now loosely know as the Freedom Movement.
The blood libel, a lie with deadly consequences, originated in 12th century England where the Jews of Norwich were falsely accused of murdering a Christian on the instructions of an imaginary international gathering of Jews. The superstitious accusation that Jews ritually sacrifice Christian children at Passover to obtain blood for unleavened bread emerged in medieval Europe in the 12th century and has persisted for hundreds of years since then, leading to pogroms in England, the Pale of Settlement and the Middle East.
The Protocols, the most notorious and widely distributed anti-Semitic publication of modern times which accuses Jews of a conspiracy to control the world, is partly responsible for the persecution and genocide of Jews of the last 100 years and more. Both the blood libels and The Protocols have been rebranded for the 21st century, the word ‘Jews’ simply replaced with the word ‘Zionists’. Both forms lead to the killing and persecution of Jews.
Where this can lead are grounded in our own families’ history of persecution. Karen’s great grandparents were forced to flee pogroms ignited by The Protocols in the Ukraine. Norman’s and his wife’s maternal grandfathers were born in Jerusalem in the 1890s; in both cases their families had to flee after one of many Arab pogroms.The Nazis used this same forgery to justify their slaughter of six million Jews. Norman’s father was the sole Holocaust survivor of a large extended family in Poland.
Historically, an often tragic consequence of most ‘social engineering projects’ cast as Zionist plots is the scapegoating and persecution of Jews. The same is happening with the latest and largest such project, the United Nations’s (UN) ongoing ‘global’ sustainability project.
In her brilliant 2011 book Behind the Green Mask: U.N. Agenda 21, Rosa Koire exposes it as a corporate manipulation using the ‘Green Mask’ of environmental concern to forward a totalitarian globalist plan that impacts us all. The Green Mask is the false face of the hijacked ecology movement; the world’s ruling elites behind the UN have done the hijacking. What they are masking is a set of ‘sustainable development’ initiatives and projects aimed at making the world into the image they desired. Koire predicts and explains everything that the globalists, with their Great Reset and Net Zero policies, have executed in the last few years through to the totalitarian UN Agenda 2030 and its catastrophic implications for humanity. But no, this isn’t a Zionist plot.
Early in the book Koire warns that one reason why the general public were not aware of the earlier UN Agenda 21 was ‘because opposition to it is often conflated with anti-Semitism. Calling it a “Zionist plot” is absurd considering that Zionism is an ultra-nationalistic movement that is completely opposed to the dissolution of national boundaries. (Israel is about the size of Vancouver Island and slightly larger than New Jersey). If you’re approaching it from that angle I urge you to drop those attitudes. It is not productive, not realistic (you could say it’s a Protestant plot, would that make sense?), and feeds right into the dialectic that pits us against one another. The mainstream media can then refer to it as “fringe” and that justifies their lack of reportage. Demonizing all liberals is foolish and wrong’. She tells us not to ‘play the alienation game’ and that ‘we need to work together’.
Koire’s warning, that anti-Semitism in all its forms discredits any movement indulging in it, is as apposite today as it was 12 years ago.
At the Better Way Conference in Bath in June, where scientists, doctors and lawyers gathered to discuss solutions to global health tyranny, all speakers and sponsors were given a beautifully wrapped present of Feargus O’Connor Greenwood’s book 180 Degrees: Unlearn the Lies You’ve Been Taught to Believe. Written in an engaging style, the book is being praised for exposing sinister conspiracies. It is the book’s promotion of conspiracies about Zionists and Israel that triggered our concerns.
First, it is important to acknowledge that ludicrous claims of anti-Semitism have been extensively used to silence criticism and shut down debate on the ‘official’ Covid-19 narrative and the Great Reset – this is the despicable left-wing tactic of accusing anybody who criticises ‘globalists’, or even Jewish globalists such as George Soros or Mark Zuckerberg, of being either anti-Semitic or using anti-Semitic dog whistles.
It’s certainly not anti-Semitic to use the word ‘globalist’ when referring to supranational organisations such as the UN, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), Open Society Foundations (OSF), and the World Economic Forum (WEF). It is also not anti-Semitic to highlight the role that the Rothschild banking family has played in global events over many years, any more than it would be to highlight the role of non-Jewish families such as the Rockefellers!
That organisations like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Board of Deputies of British Jews (BOD) have been disgraceful in their suppression of free speech through false accusations of anti-Semitism is a matter of deep concern. Their championing both of woke leftist tyranny and oppressiveCovid-19 mandates were and are inexcusable.
One of the most notable examples of wrongful accusations of anti-Semitism was against MP Andrew Bridgen for his comments on vaccine harms. In their fanatical attempts to silence Bridgen, and any debate on the Covid-19 vaccine, his detractors trivialised the concept of Holocaust denial.
We also agree that it’s not anti-Semitic to criticise Israeli governments and politicians. Such criticism is perfectly valid when based on facts and evidence. In her writings for TCW, Karen has lambasted Israel’s self-destructive lockdown, masks and vaccine mandates, see here, here, here, and here. Norman has written extensively about the dangerously misguided behaviour of the Israeli Ministry of Health in promoting the Pfizer vaccine on the basis of flawed studies claiming high efficacy and safety while ignoring the mounting Israeli research evidence of harms.
But these critiques are nothing to do with ‘anti-Zionism’ which once again has reared its ugly head amongst our fellow dissenters. Sadly, it was evident in Greenwood’s book too. This we will detail and explain in Part Two.
