Joodse samenzwering in het Verre Oosten

 

De Joodse samenzwering is ook in het Verre Oosten populair als verklaring voor de Westerse, en met name Amerikaanse almacht. Het idee dat de Joden Amerika beheersen, zou afkomstig zijn van Europese reactionairen en antisemieten uit de late 19de eeuw, en zijn overgewaaid naar de Europese kolonieën. Chinezen hadden in Azië een vergelijkbare reputatie vanwege hun sociaal-economische positie, maar zonder religieuze component. En aangezien half Azië Chinees is, heeft ook nooit iemand geprobeerd ze allemaal uit te moorden...

 

Wouter

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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1063823.html
The Jewish conspiracy in Asia

By Ian Buruma


In the case of Mahathir, a twisted kind of Muslim solidarity is probably at work. But, unlike European or Russian anti-Semitism, the Asian variety has no religious roots. No Chinese or Japanese have blamed Jews for killing their holy men or suggested that their children's blood ended up in Passover matzos. In fact, few Chinese, Japanese, Malaysians, or Filipinos have ever seen a Jew, unless they have spent time abroad.

So what explains the remarkable appeal of Jewish conspiracy theories in Asia? The answer must be partly political. Conspiracy theories thrive in relatively closed societies, where free access to news is limited and freedom of inquiry curtailed. Japan is no longer such a closed society, yet even people with a short history of democracy are prone to believe that they are victims of unseen forces. Precisely because Jews are relatively unknown, therefore mysterious, and in some way associated with the West, they become an obvious fixture of anti-Western paranoia.

Such paranoia is widespread in Asia, where almost every country was at the mercy of Western powers for several hundred years. Japan was never formally colonized, but it, too, felt the West's dominance, from at least the 1850s, when American ships laden with heavy guns forced the country to open its borders on Western terms.

The common conflation of the U.S. with Jews goes back to the late 19th century, when European reactionaries loathed America for being a rootless society based only on financial greed. This perfectly matched the stereotype of the "rootless cosmopolitan" Jewish moneygrubber. Hence the idea that Jews run America.

One of the great ironies of colonial history is the way in which colonized people adopted some of the very prejudices that were used to justify colonial rule. Anti-Semitism arrived with a whole package of European race theories that have persisted in Asia well after they fell out of fashion in the West.

In some ways, Chinese minorities in Southeast Asia have shared some of the hostility suffered by Jews in the West. Excluded from many occupations, they, too, survived by clannishness and trade. They, too, have been persecuted for not being "sons of the soil." And they, too, are thought to have superhuman powers when it comes to making money. So when things go wrong, the Chinese are blamed, not just for being greedy capitalists, but also, again like the Jews, for being communists, since both capitalism and communism are associated with rootlessness and cosmopolitanism.

As well as being feared, the Chinese are admired for being cleverer than everybody else. The same mixture of fear and awe is often evident in people's views of the United States, and, indeed, of the Jews. Japanese anti-Semitism is a particularly interesting case.

Japan was able to defeat Russia in 1905 only after a Jewish banker in New York, Jacob Schiff, helped float bonds for Japan. In that sense, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" confirmed what the Japanese already suspected: Jews really did pull the strings of global finance. But, instead of wishing to attack them, the Japanese, being a practical people, decided that they would be better off cultivating those clever, powerful Jews as friends.

As a result, during World War II, even as the Germans were asking their Japanese allies to round up Jews and hand them over, dinners were held in Japanese-occupied Manchuria to celebrate Japanese-Jewish friendship. Jewish refugees in Shanghai, though never comfortable, at least remained alive under Japanese protection. This was good for the Jews of Shanghai. But the very ideas that helped them survive continue to muddle the thinking of people who really ought to know better by now.

 

Ian Buruma's latest book is "The China Lover." Copyright: Project Syndicate