Esoteric Brezhnevism

  For a certain species of lowbrow anti-Semite – or, at any rate, people who present themselves as anti-Semites – every bad actor in culture, politics, and business must be a Jew. Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, David Rockefeller, and even Stephen Colbert have all been accused of being crypto-Jews. “All serial killers, pedophiles, organ harvesters, usurers, and terrorists are Jewish,” the blog Shadow Masterminds claimed in 2013, for one egregious example of this phenomenon [1]. The natural effect of such gross exaggeration, whatever its intent, is to taint, trivialize, and discredit more reasonable criticisms of Zionism or forms of criminality in which Jews play a disproportionate role. I recently came across a particularly stupid specimen of the genre, and one too laughable not to share. In “ Stalin the Crypto-Jew ”, Fitzpatrick Informer contributor “Josh” dramatically points the finger at the Soviet Union’s Man of Steel. At the top of the post is a photo collage of Stalin

  Vladimir Putin, when he assumed Russia’s presidency in 2000, was acknowledged as an unknown quantity in the American press, with Knight-Ridder newspapers running a story on him titled “The President Nobody Knows”. Deeming him a “puzzle”, the article also noted that the former KGB agent had been dubbed “Mr. Nobody” and the “Gray Cardinal”. Despite Putin’s “brutal campaign to seize and occupy Chechnya”, the piece quoted an analyst who suggested that the new president was “not necessarily dangerous for the world.” He had, for instance, expressed an interest in Russia joining NATO, and Bill Clinton had given him a “man-we-can-do-business-with endorsement” [1]. As Deputy Mayor of St. Petersburg in 1992, Putin met with a World Economic Forum delegation [2], and he purports to have participated in the WEF’s “Global Leaders for Tomorrow” or “Young Global Leaders” program, though information on this is murky [3]. The Guardian ’s Jennifer Rankin also relates: George Robertson, a former Labou