The Long And Violent History Of Anti-Semitic 'Disloyalty' Charges
In 1807, Napoleon Bonaparte summoned French Jewish leaders for a conversation about loyalty.
French Jews had gained the status of full citizens 16 years earlier. Napoleon wanted to understand how, as newly empowered civilians, they saw the world. So he asked them if they truly considered France their country, and Frenchmen their countrymen.
In 1894, French Army Captain Alfred Dreyfus was wrongfully convicted of treason. Two years later, incontrovertible new evidence made his innocence obvious. Even then, the French press, led by the anti-Semitic newspaper La Libre Parole, accused Dreyfus of being part of an international Jewish conspiracy and disloyal to France. He was retried and convicted again.
In September 1941, Charles Lindbergh spoke about Jewish Americans perceived agitation for war. Their greatest danger to their country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government, he said. Their country not the same as ours.
In 2017, former State Department official Dennis Ross wrote in The New York Times about a colleague who asked about a peer for whom Ross was a reference. The official asked if that peer was loyal to America, then, after Ross said yes, whether he would put Americas interests before those of Israel. Ross asked why his interlocutor would ask that question. Because he is Jewish, he said.
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mr_lebowski
(33,643 posts)He accused American Jews of being disloyal ... to Israel.
MyOwnPeace
(16,926 posts)I just can't believe we even need to have this conversation.
'Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.'
sandensea
(21,633 posts)One of the seldom-mentioned facets of the Holocuast, is the enthusiasm with which many French, Germans and Eastern Europeans turned in their Jewish neighbors - particularly the more prosperous ones, whom they resented.
You see a lot of that same sentiment among many Chumpkins today - especially those whose landlords (if said Chumpkins happen to be tenants) are Jewish.
Landlords are landlords anywhere you go in the world, of course - but having Jewish one really seems to irk some people something awful.
As a New Yorker, Cheeto knows this - and is more than happy to use that latent (and not-so latent) resentment against Jewish Americans whenever he deems convenient.
appalachiablue
(41,131 posts)influenced by currents of the 1920s- the Klan revival along with anti-Semite Henry Ford's prominence and promotion of the 'Elders of Zion' Jewish conspiracy fraud in his Dearborn paper. Add in the 1920s peak of the American Eugenics movement that Hitler was inspired by, as he wrote from prison in the early 1920s. Historyhound here, lol.
sandensea
(21,633 posts)People often forget - because they're almost never reminded - how much American big business, as a group, supported Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco.
It started with Prescott Bush and the Dulles brothers, as you know. They laundered so much Nazi money in Wall Street as early as 1927, they were known as "Hitler's bankers."
This sentiment, naturally, permeated into the petty rich - people like Fred Trump - and indeed some of the middle class at the time.