George Soros and Genuine Neo-Nazi Conspiracy Theories

Left-wing and anti-racism bloggers, commenters and campaigners have pointed out again and again how right-wing conspiracy theories about the supposedly nefarious activities of the financier George Soros, such as those promoted by the far-right Fidesz government in Hungary, conform to the poisonous Nazi conspiracy theories about evil Jewish bankers. Mainstream Conservatives have also blamed Soros’s influence for opposition to their policies in Britain. For example, Jacob Rees-Mogg, apart from accusing John Bercow and another Jewish politico of being ‘Illuminati’ – which has its own anti-Semitic overtones – also claimed that George Soros was financing the Remain campaign.

But the conspiracy theories about George Soros don’t just resemble Nazi mythology. They are a part of it, at least in some of the material that arose from the neo-Nazi fringe in the 1990s. In his book on contemporary Nazi paganism, Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity (New York: New York University Press 2002) Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke discusses the work of Jan van Helsing, real name Jan Udo Holey, and his 1993 Geheimgesellschaften und ihre macht im 20. Jahrhundert (Secret Societies and their Power in the 20th Century). Two years later, in 1995, Helsing published Geheimgesellschaften 2. This consisted of his extended responses to interview questions. As you can imagine, despite Helsing’s avowed denials, it is a deeply anti-Semitic book. Goodrick-Clarke writes

Here he denies the charge of anti-Semitism, claiming Jewish friends and colleagues, before making the disingenuous distinction between Semitic Hebrews and Ashkenazi Jews or Khazars, who are his real antagonists in the persons of Rothschilds, Warburgs, the English royal family (!), Marx, Lenin, Stalin, etc. This ploy recapitulates the progressive disqualification of Jews from their Israelite heritage in Christian Identity doctrine. He then reprints several pages of Dr. Johannes Pohl’s vicious translation of the Talmud that was published by the Nazi Party in 1943 as anti-Semitic propaganda. On the Protocols, Helsing simply denies that their authenticity is an important issue: they exist and they are being applied. To complete his anti-Jewish rotomontade, he reveals that former Chancellor Helmut Kohl was born Henoch Koch and shows how George Soros is ruining East European economies through his liberal economic writ. Helsing’s dubious sources, his constant repetition of Jewish names as members of private and public organisations, and above all his emphasis on the assets and powerbroking influence of the Rothschilds as the top Illuminati family leave no doubt that his conspiracy theories are aimed at Jewish targets. (P. 296, my emphasis).

In case any of this sounds remotely credible, it’s worth noting that the royal family aren’t Jewish and neither were Lenin or Stalin. Stalin definitely not – he was a bitter anti-Semite. Helmut Kohl, the former German chancellor, wasn’t Jewish either. Van Helsing also believed that there’s a secret Nazi underground base in Antarctica, as well as colonies of other Reich Germans in the Canaries, the San Carlos area of Argentina, the Bermuda Triangle and the Himalayas. They also have a standing army of 6 million soldiers, including immigrants from Aldebaran. Yes, van Helsing believes the Nazi saucer mythology, in which Adolf and his band of thugs were helped by aliens from the star Aldebaran, who told them how to build flying saucers. Of which the Reich Nazis have an armada of 22,000.

When Jacob Rees-Mogg or the other Tories rant about George Soros, they are repeating an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory and should be criticised for it. But Conservative anti-Semitism has received nowhere near the amount of attention as the anti-Semitic smears against Corbyn and the Labour party. This is despite anti-Semitism being far lower in Labour. John Mann, the Tories’ anti-Semitism tsar, has shown himself completely uninterested in investigating it in the Tories, and blocked and called the children’s poet, Holocaust educator and broadcaster Michael Rosen a troll when he tried to draws Mann’s attention to some examples.

This shows how fake the Tories’ concern about anti-Semitism really is, just as the inclusion of George Soros in van Helsing’s wretched, vile anti-Semitic conspiracy theories show the real Fascism in similar fears about the financier in Tories like Rees-Mogg.

Ron Paul, Racism, Conspiracy Theories and Utter Looniness

One of the pieces I’ve reblogged from Still Laughing At UKIP a short while ago is a piece noting that John Gill, the admin of UKIP’s Facebook page, is a fan of far-right Republican presidential candidate, Ron Paul. The article provides detailed information on just how far-right Paul is, with friends and political collaborators in a host of Nazi and racist organisations, including the Klan, the National Alliance – by far the largest American nationalist organisation – the National Socialist Workers Party and the racist website, Stormfront. It also has links to several websites giving even more information on Paul and his noxious connections to the racist right.

One of these is to an article in the liberal journal, Mother Jones, listing some of the extreme and offensive opinions expressed in Paul’s bulletins, which he issued from 1975 onwards. Paul tried to disown some of them, by saying that he’d never read them until after they were issued, but as he’s listed on them as ‘editor’, this seems unlikely. The views are what you’d expect from a pillar of the American far right: racist, homophobic and with a venomous hatred of any type of welfare and its recipients, whom he views as simply lazy. He also has a line in barking conspiracy theories. Two of his assertions stood out in particular to me. These were

1) AIDS was a secret experiment that escaped from Fort Dettrick, and

2) 95 per cent of Black American men in DC are criminals.

AIDS: The Germ Warfare Experiment

The idea that AIDS was secret germ warfare experiment emerged in the 1990s. Kevin McClure, a long time weird watcher, who has edited a series of small press magazines since the 1970s covering all aspect of the paranormal and alternative spirituality, tackled this one twenty years or so ago in an edition of his small press mag The Wild Places. From the evidence, it looks like this story was a piece of Soviet disinformation in retaliation for the American line that the KGB was behind the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II, rather than a group of Turkish Fascists called the Grey Wolves.

A medical doctor writing in the American conspiracy magazine, Steamshovel Press, noted that the story was believed by large numbers of Black Americans. It was especially plausible to them, he pointed out, because of the Tuskeegee experiments in the 1930s. This was a programme in which a group of Black share croppers were given syphilis and refused treatment in order to examine the progress of the disease. Their funerals were, however, paid for by the state. The American government also conducted mind control experiments on American servicemen and unwitting civilian personnel. Again, those victimised were the poor, and particularly Blacks. Paul believed it because he’s a Nazi who’s paranoid about his government. Blacks, on the other hand, had every reason to believe it, because experiments like it had been inflicted on them.

Locking Up Black Americans, Just in Case They Commit Crime

As for Paul’s assertion that 95 per cent of Black males in Washington D.C. were crims, this largely stemmed from his own racism and bizarre belief in the absolute rectitude of his bonkers views. According to him, the only Black men, who weren’t criminals were those, who agreed with him in wishing to end the welfare state and affirmative action and anti-segregation programmes. It’s bizarre, but unfortunately, Paul’s not alone. There are plenty of others, who have similar opinions. An American friend of mine told me about one Republican politico, who decided that most crime was committed by young Black men between 18 and 30. He therefore had a simple solution to solving America’s crime rate: lock up every Black American male between those ages.

Another Republican politico had a similar, though less severe suggestion. He wanted everyone to be locked up in prison for three days on their 18th birthday, in order to deter them from a life of crime. With these, you really are dealing with the part of the Republican Party rationality forgot.

Ernst Zundl and the Nazi Flying Saucers

One of the links also takes you to a website, which details Paul’s links to Ernst Zundl. Zundl’s a notorious Canadian Nazi, who’s been publishing Holocaust Denial rubbish for decades. Back in the 1990s he was one of the talking heads on a Channel 4 documentary about the designer of gas chambers for the American prison system. Sponsored by various American Neo-Nazi organisations, this particular expert went off to examine the surviving gas chambers at Auschwitz. He concluded that there was no evidence to support the assertion that they were gas chambers. A Jewish researcher was also featured, who knocked down every piece of evidence this particular individual used in his argument.

Along with promoting Holocaust Denial, Zundl has also published stuff claiming that UFOs were really super-secret spacecraft created by Nazi scientists. One version of this claims that these ships were built under scientific instructions from an advanced technological civilisation on planets orbiting the star Aldebaran. See the video, UFO Secrets of the Third Reich, produced by Royal Atlantis Films. Kevin McClure and the anti-Ufologists over at Magonia debunked the Nazi saucer myth about a decade ago. It’s pernicious, bonkers stuff, as some of it is produced by Nazis keen to keep the myth of a technologically advanced Third Reich alive. Zundl, however, although he publishes it, doesn’t appear to believe it. He has apparently said that he only publishes it because it makes money.

This really tells you all you really need to know about Ron Paul and the really, really lunatic fringe of the American political system he represents: vindictive, racist and with a strong desire to lock anybody and everybody up, even if they’re innocent of any crime, because, well, just in case.

And these are the people John Gill admires.