whats your opinion on common perseptions as a dominant jewish banking establishment. casting aside any mystical cospiracy theories, to what extent is it true and why so.
There was a period of time when most Christian denominations spoke out against charging interest. Result? Most Christians did not charge interest. Therefore the motivation to loan people money was often not there, at least not in a business sense. So Jewish people were some of the few people who were willing to loan people money for a profit - thus the begining of Jewish people being involved with banks.
It was not just Christians who did not practice usury, it is also forbidden in Islam afaik.
but when those restrictions were gone, the bankers had already erected “barriers for entry” for non-jews?
One does not have to be a follower of David Duke to recognise that the Jews are the most succesfull ethnic group in the world and it is therefore fair to assume that they will be well respresented amongst the American elite including bankers. As I understand it the leading jewish bankers lobbied for US entry in WW1 and WW2. Of course they weren’t the only warmongering bankers, many WASP bankers did exactly the same thing for their own reasons - one of them was to prevent the allies loosing to the Germans and thereby defaulting on their war loans.
As has been mentioned above the religious restrictions in Medieval Europe channeled jews into certain professions like money lending. Money lending which later evolved into the banking institutions we recognise today demanded a great deal of skill and mental acuity than the dominant occupations of the time such as agricultural labour. Jews who couldn’t succeed in these demanding professions like banking and fell by the wayside had no alternative but to convert to Christianity in order to earn a living and essentially ceased to be members of the jewish community. Those jewish parents who were successful would not only pass on the secrets of their success to their children but also transmitted their jewish identity hence concentrating the jewish population into professions like banking.
This entire thing dates back to the Middle Ages when Jews charged interest on loans (usury) and Christians regarded them as evil for doing so. It is true that Jews are statistically more likely to be somehow involved in banking, film, and other lucrative businesses, but statistics also show that Askhenaz (sp?) Jews have the highest average IQ of all ethnic groups. So it seems that the “evidence” behind antisemitic conspiracy theories are nothing but a few unexplained observations.
krazy kaju the anti-semitic conspiracy theorists have plenty of evidence to support their claims that the world is run by a small clique of jews to their own advantage and everyone elses detriment, e.g. ‘jewish neo-cons manipulated America into invading Iraq for Israeli interests’ The evidence, however, never explains why so many gentiles collaborate with them because they share their values and flies in the face of the fact that jews are not all in hoc to one political ideology. Von Mises and Trotsky were jews living at the same time yet their politics were diametrically opposed to each other.
Besides we don’t need anti-semtic conspiracy theorists we have are own better one the conspiracy of the state.
Dude, I’m an ex-stormfronter. Trust me, there is no real evidence behind Jewish world conspiracy theories.
You are? Now that surprises me.
Is it really like one would imagine, angry white men spewing even more angry invectives against not quite as angry men of other skin color?
This surprises me as well, but since you are open about this I hope you will not mind a question. What caused you to change your point of view on these issues? I am asking because it could be valuable to those who would like to open the mind of others as yours has been. What was the tipping point for you in terms of a change in perspective. Thanks.
I’m more of an ex Polish nationalist. I never really minded other races or ethnicities, I was just one of those “Poland for the Poles,” “America for Americans” type of people. The more sensible stormfronters just want to “preserve European culture.” Of course, there are also all of the crazy nazi, fascist, white supremacist, Christian Identity, Heathen Front, etc. type of folks there as well.
They usually correctly bring up that there are average IQ differences between racial groups and that IQ scores do measure intelligence and that intelligence is mostly hereditary (40 to 80%). However, they consistently ignore individuals vs. groups (eg intelligent blacks vs. unintelligent whites). In my POV, white nationalism, black nationalism, regular nationalism, progressivism, socialism, paleoconservatism, etc. all suffer from looking at society as a series of collectives or aggregates instead of looking at society as a collection individuals.
As for my conversion, it began, ironically, when I began to read books like Herrnstein’s The Bell Curve, Rushton’s Race, Evolution, and Behavior, and Frank Miele’s Intelligence, Race, and Genetics with Arthur Jensen. These books ultimately convinced me that humans are individuals, not groups. Ron Paul’s emergence also allowed me to travel from a more conservative position to a libertarian one.
Something that I have wondered about in this regard. Could it have something to do with the fact that to read the Torah in the original language one must learn Hebrew. So, assuming you live somewhere other than you need to know at least more than one language to both practice your religion and function in greater society. This is bound to have a positive impact on IQ. This may explain the IQ thing.
People usually attribute it to the fact that Jews usually begin learning from a very early age. One Jewish writer (I forget who), once thought that the IQ difference might be due to a perverse form of natural selection, where the more intelligent Hebrews were able to survive better than the less intelligent ones, passing on their genes.
This essentially comes down to the nurture vs. nature debate, but whatever the cause, I view intelligence as the primary factor behind the prominence of Jewish intellectuals, film-makers, bankers, etc.
Interesting, thanks for the information. Ron Paul has had an interesting impact on the movement. There are issues I do not agree with him on but there are also issues I do not agree with Ayn Rand on and she was the figure who brought me over to libertarianism.
Yeah, the Ron Paul movement ultimately convinced me that free markets are good. In search for more knowledge, I began reading the Mises, Cato, and FEE websites which eventually lead me to market anarchism.
Agreed. I’ve dealt with individuals like that before, albeit on more highbrow venues dedicated to racial/cultural preservation and I’ve debated their knowledge of economics. They try, sometimes, to dismiss Mises by claiming he’s a “Jew”. Aside from polylogism, which few if any attempt as a defence, they have virtually no argument, other than occasional appeals to quasi-mysticist philosophers like Evola. What they do blame the Jews for is best understood as a problem caused by the State, and this is what I try point out. Blaming random ethnic groups is futile, as they’re not the cause of modern political malaise. The best way to bring them over, as is the best way to bring anyone over, is to show that anarchism is consistent with their goals, i.e. that non-aggression and freedom of association is the way to go in organizing a society, and not statism. Some of them are openly hostile to markets and anarchism &c., and might not be worthwhile wasting time on. One just needs to be careful with terminology. Many individuals on these sites are thoughtful, intelligent and willing to engage in discussion… although there are the more usual Nazi/WN morons as well. They’re not NDP thugs. I do hate the leftist morons (incl. National Socialists) that frequent these sites though, much as I hate most socialists.
-Jon
I see a lot of mentioning of charging interest but there was more to it than that (that is a factor). But also that Jews were often prohibited from owning land and if they did own it, it was liable to be siezed by the next Monarch or perhaps a conquering monarch so that land could be distrubuted to the many landless nobels that fought for them. Jews had to have mobile capital to prosper and so that is what they had. Banking and Jewelry. (no one ever mentions a Jewish Jewel conspiracy for some reason but the roots are there for that as well).
Apparently the most tolerant Monarch in the middle ages towards Jews was Charlemagne. Jews in Gaul (there was no France or Germany then) were landed and noted for their wine.
The Jews in Spain and Salonica also traded with Jews in Latin Europe which over-rode prohibitions on trading with Greeks after the great Schism and trading with the Muslim world. Many European monarchs had Jewish communities under their direct protection because of this valuable trade.
The “conspiracy” part comes from the fact that the Jews were a small group of vulnerable people. A new power could emerge in a geographic area and their assets could be taken to pay mercenaries of the new conquerer, so they as a community were often forced to suck up to as many local powers as possible to limit the damage that a change in power could have on them.
Take the Jews of Salonica. They most likely arrived in the first Diaspora when the Romans destroyed Jeruselem and the Temple..so perhaps around 100AD. During this time they put up with Goths, Huns, Romans, Byzantines, Bulgarians, Avars, Pechnegs, Arabs, Turks, Serbs, and Greeks…and they survived and prospered with a few “retaliations” by winners who did not feel they supplicated themselves enough. After a takeover they always managed to be on the better side of those in power…which was quite a task in one of the most fought over pieces of real estate in Europe.
So, if you were on the losing side of a power struggle in Salonica it would be easy to blame the Jews and their money. If you were on the winning side of a power stuggle in Salonica you might be aware that the Jews and their money also supported your oppenent to a degree (it would never be a centralised conspiracy where someone proclaims “all Jews give money to Khan Krum since he is going to win”) so their method of survival also lead to suspicion of their actions.
But it worked well in Salonica …until the Na_zi_s brought 1800 years of a Jewish community to an end by killing them all.
That’s interesting because I too am ex-stormfronter the only difference was I used be an objectivist until I started having grave doubts about their their nuke the world, invite the world approach to the outside world (which quickly had me ex-communicated as a heretic) so I pretty much cast myself adrift from libertrarian ideologies and tried on every nationalist ideology I could find but they never really fit. (At one point I found myself reading Mein Kampf.) When I’d finally moved over into a rather bizzare fringe movement called national-anarchism I started rediscovering my anti-statist ideas which led me back to seriously study anarcho-capitalism, which I had only dimly been aware of as an objectivist and I was delighted to discover so called paleo-libertarians like Hans-Hoppe and Peter Brimelow who reconciled my nationalist concerns with my pro-liberty disposition.
Hah, Hoppe proselytized me too, but mostly because I used to be a monarchist (not so much a nationalist.) Rand convinced me on the morality of libertarianism, though.
-Jon