Religion Today reports that anti-Semitic acts committed around the world last year increased for the first time in three years. The Jerusalem Post relates that the incidents of vandalism, violence, and hate speech against Jews has increased because of instability in the former Soviet Republics; the publicizing of financial compensations of Jewish Holocaust victims; and the stalled peace efforts between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Anti-Semitic acts, like any other outward acts of racial hatred, are merely indications that there are individuals whose hearts are filled with fear and hatred. The fuel of that fear and hatred is propaganda.
Adolph Hitler, like most politicians, knew the value of propaganda. The following are some quotes from his book, Mein Kampf, in which he recorded for all posterity his many deranged ideas:
"To whom should propaganda be addressed? To the scientifically trained intelligentsia or to the less educated masses? It must be addressed always and solely to the masses. What the intelligentsia....need is not propaganda, but scientific instruction. The content of propaganda is as far from being science as the object depicted in the poster is from being art. A poster's art lies in the designer's ability to capture the attention of the masses by form and colour."
"The receptive ability of the masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, their forgetfulness enormous. Therefore, all propaganda has to limit itself to a very few points and repeat them like slogans until even the very last man is able to understand what you want him to understand."
| Hitler believed that the Germans could be united by focusing on one major enemy, namely the Jews. Films, books, newspapers, speeches and rumors were used to demean and stereotype the Jewish people. Jews were depicted as lewd, money-grabbing Bolsheviks and a threat to Aryan purity. At the same time, propaganda was also used to deceive and mislead the outside world. A sign on the entrance to Auschwitz death camp, for instance, read, Work brings Freedom, leaving the impression to outsiders that it was only a place of work detention. |
The man that Hitler appointed as Minister in charge of the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda was Josef Goebbels. He declared that propaganda was no more than a means to an end. He subscribed to Hitler's Mein Kampf statement, the greater the lie the more chance it had of being believed. Author Aaron Delwiche writes, Propaganda can be as blatant as a swastika or as subtle as a joke. Delwiche points out:
"Propagandists love short-cutsparticularly those which short-circuit rational thought. They encourage this by agitating emotions, by exploiting insecurities, by capitalizing on the ambiguity of language, and by bending the rules of logic. As history shows, they can be quite successful."
The Institute for Propaganda Analysis [IPA] has identified seven basic propaganda devices employed by those attempting to influence the opinions of others. The purpose of each is to get people to rally to the side of a particular cause by influencing their passions through vivid, emotionally suggestive words and pictures. History records the use of such propaganda by political leaders against the Jewish people. For example Hitler and Stalin as well as Muslim nations have employed such techniques to foster fear and mistrust in the minds of non-Jews in order to rally public support for themselves or to divert attention away from a national crisis.
Current news articles reflect the fact that the scape-goating of Jews continues. On February 23, 1999, Newsday carried the article Fanning Anti-Semitic Flames. The article quoted a leader in the Cossack movement of Southern Russia. He named Russia's secret enemy as the Jews. He called them a special group of people with criminal intentions. He asserted that The Jewish nation are traitors. The article states that this Russian leader was speaking for hundreds of thousands of his fellow believers who need someone to blame for their hard times. [They] see their virulent hatred of Jews as their route back to glory. Newsday reported that the residents of one town awoke one morning to find notes in their mailboxes encouraging them to round up the Jews and have them burned. Russian Communists have joined forces with the Cossacks, inciting them to harass the Jews to protect Russia from non-Russians. The hatred of Jews has never ceased to exist in Russia due to the very effective propaganda campaign waged against them by Czar Nicholas II to strengthen his weak political position in the late 1800's.
Another recent anti-Semitic article titled The Talmud, the Jews and Human Sacrifice appeared in an Egyptian newspaper Al-Shaab on November 17, 1998. This article was one of many pieces of propaganda that has been printed in that nation. Some excerpts from the article follow:
The article describes the gory details of a blood libel, the supposed methods of torturous death carried out by Jews against Christians in order to obtain their blood. The source of this information is the infamous Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a fictitious concoction of libelous propaganda which alleges to have uncovered an international Jewish conspiracy to take over the world.
The conceptual inspiration for The Protocols can be traced back to a political satire written by French satirist Maurice Joly. His work fell into the hands of a German anti-Semite Hermann Goedsche writing under a pen name. He adapted Joly's satire into a mythical tale of a Jewish conspiracy as part of a series of novels entitled Biarritz which appeared in 1868. He weaves a fantasy of a secret rabbinical conference which meets at midnight every hundred years and whose purpose it is to review the past hundred years and to make plans for the next century. Goedsche's plagiary of Joly's satire soon found its way to Russia where it was translated into Russian under the name Rabbi's Speech. Russian secret police used it as propaganda to bolster the weak position of Czar Nicholas II.
In France, fringe elements revised the earlier works of Joly and Goedsche into a new edition which they called The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. It was secretly brought to Russia and printed there. Russian immigrants brought The Protocols to western Europe where it was translated into many languages beginning in 1920. In 1921, a book was written documenting the fact that The Protocols was a forgery and fabrication. Nevertheless, an American, Herman Bernstein sponsored by Henry Ford, published The Protocols in the United States.
The Protocols of the Learned Elder's of Zion gave the Nazi's another 'justification' for the genocide of Jews during WW II. Protocols is a prime example of Hitler's statement that the greater the lie, the more chance it has of being believed. It is difficult to understand how anyone could believe such nonsense, but the statistics that bear witness to worldwide anti-Semitism defy all logic.
Recent polls bear testimony to the impact that Hitler's use of propaganda had on his generation as well as future generations. Time Magazine poll on the Internet was seeking to find the person considered to have had the greatest influence on mankind during the twentieth century. At of the beginning of May 1999, Adolph Hitler topped the list with over 35% of the vote. Jesus Christ was far behind in seventeenth place. In a 1992 Anti-Defamation League report their polls revealed that nearly forty million American adults (1 out of 5) hold strongly anti-Semitic views. Nearly 1 in 3 Americans believes Jews have too much power. One in 8 college graduates and 1 in 4 high school graduates is anti-Semitic. Of those polled, 35% believe Jews in this country are more loyal to Israel than to the U.S. Americans over age 65 are twice as likely to be more anti-Semitic, proof of the lasting effects of World War II propaganda against Jews. While the article did not delineate what portion of these individuals were professing Christians, based upon the numbers, one would have to assume that Christians were included.
While anti-Semitism should not exist in the Church, it does exist and is on the rise. Could this indicate that the ancient propaganda against Jews is concealed in the hearts of Christians? The Very Reverend Francis B. Sayre, Jr., Dean of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., in his 1972 Palm Sunday message, linked Israel's policies in East Jerusalem with the fatal flaw of mankind that resulted in the crucifixion of Jesus. More recently, the liberal church community has been among the strongest antagonists against the State of Israel for any action it takes on behalf of its own citizens. Liberal clergy and media were the first to raise their voices against Israel when they retaliated against the PLO and Shiite Muslims for an attack that killed innocent Israeli children in their classrooms; and continues to be the source of antagonism over Israel's defense of its Nation and citizens during the current intifada. Jesus said to His Jewish disciples:
"...the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers G-d service. And these things they will do to you because they have not known the Father nor Me." (John 16:2, 3)
Radical religious conservatives have also been tainted by anti-Semitism in blaming Zionists for the world's troubles. They too, imagine there to be a Zionist conspiracy to get American soldiers to die for Israel to further their objectives. (The New Anti-Semitism, McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1974)
As a professional propagandist, Satan (the father of liesJohn 8:44), realizes that if any one of his lies is exposed, his entire campaign against Israel and the Jews could be jeopardized. In speaking through Adolph Hitler, Satan revealed his recipe for success to be found in directing his lies to the massesthe masses of the nations, heathens and Christians alike. Anti-Semitism is Satan's lethal plot to destroy both Jew and Christian. Jesus implied in His parable of the Wheat and the Tares (Matt. 13:24-30 & 37-43) that there would be both wheat and tares (good and evil) planted in the Church. But at harvest-time, He said, they would be separated.
"The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat...Let both grow together until the harvest...I will say to the reapers, 'First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.'"
Propaganda is an intricately woven lie designed to do others harm. At the White Throne Judgment, G-d has reserved judgment for liars:
"But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the Lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death." (Revelation 21:8)