JOURNALfor the STUDYof ANTISEMITISM

2011] CONTEMPORARY LEFTIST ANTISEMITISM? 269
editor at the Journal realized that “the big money bags of Zionist finance
capital” sounded more National Socialist brute than it did Revolutionary
Socialist highbrow. Or perhaps Clairmont knew it himself.
Then, in the next paragraph, there is another deletion of a phrase that is
redolent of Nazi anti-capitalist antisemitism. The Routledge version says,
“Excluding the huge German reparations, since 1950 Israel has received
yearly some US $5 billion, and that in a land of about six million.” The
original adds in a parenthetical after this statement: “(that is the private
sector payouts from international Jewry plus the US government),” and follows
by saying, “Any move to halt this . . . would be knifed by the Zionist
cabals.”
This is not, however, to say that the Routledge version does not have
its own blatant shortcomings. Consider this:
Israel is a brazen fascist monster. The mobilisation of its power in the
USA is by elected and appointed Zionist officialdom. A key to its power
is that it is a mass grassroots organisation buttressed by the financial support
of scores of millionaires, dozens of billionaires and a mass media
that is its handmaiden.
The review continues:
In many ways it has paralyzed the US Congress and the Executive. It
influences Treasury, State, the Pentagon and all leading Congressional
committees that relate to Israeli expansionism . . . The career profiles of
its professionals that are the quintessence of the “Fifth Column” are to be
found in every nook and cranny of Wall street, the globe-girdling corporate
law firms, the insurance industry, the big three stock market-rating
agencies, the big three accounting firms and the media. As the author
makes clear, pro-Israel career patterns and projections of power have
established a hegemony of US public life.
How does this conspiracy really differ from David Duke’s depiction of
“the Zionist media, political and financial matrix”? Yes, Duke uses the
word “Jewish” (to be more precise, “Jewish extremist power”), but the
Petras book echoes even that, citing “Judeo-Zionist hegemony.” (A fantasy
term, warmly quoted in Clairmont’s original article, “he [Petras] emphasizes
that ‘in effect pro-Israel career patterns and projections of power have
established a kind of Judeo-Zionist hegemony of US public life.’ ”)
The above paragraphs may remind those familiar with antisemitism of
the notorious forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, with its global
conspiracy theory and attendant imagery, such as a Star of David-bearing
octopus encircling the globe in its tentacles, or a Star of David-bearing spi-