Josef Joffe deftly highlights the absurdity of this Iranian TV clip. Even if you don’t watch it—and you certainly should—you can tell, from Joe’s observations, that its preposterousness makes it an unintended parody of the claim that has been hurled for a long time by anti-Semites against Jews that they secretly conspire to dominate the world by manipulating various forms of power, ranging from economics to politics to the media. Joe even takes mock umbrage at the silliness of this particular version of that claim. Can’t the Iranians do better than turn Harry Potter into an agent of the world Zionist conspiracy?
The trouble is that this kind of claim has been very successful in its justification for, and incitement of, anti-Semitism, including anti-Semitism of the most bloody sort.
The most famous of the conspiracy theories was (and remains, since it’s still in print throughout the world, especially the Arab/Muslim world) the Russian forgery that Joe mentions, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (which itself was plagiarized from earlier conspiracy theories that had nothing to do with Jews).
In 1905, the anti-Semitic Russian Black Hundreds, and the Tsarist secret police, used the Protocols to blame the Jews for liberalization efforts in Russia, helping fan anti-Jewish pogroms. Hitler cited the Protocols in Mein Kampf as demonstrating the way the Jews plotted, and he and other Nazis cited it afterward as proof of the “Jewish-Bolshevik” conspiracy. In fact, the idea you didn’t have to be Jewish to be a part of the conspiracy—a strong theme in the Iranian clip—was central to the repeated arguments made by Hitler as well as Goebbels and other leading Nazis throughout the period of the Third Reich. They frequently claimed that the Jews were behind the Soviet Union, Britain and America, all of which did the Jews’ bidding, and that the Jews would, through their direct actions (such as their control of the economy) or through their control of the Allies, destroy and ultimately exterminate the Germans if the Germans didn’t destroy and exterminate them first.
It’s this theme of the Jews using great powers as their tools that’s powerfully evident in the Iranian video clip’s argument that the Zionists are behind the military activities—by, after all, not Israel but the forces of the United States and other countries–in Afghanistan and Iraq.
I should add that this video clip, absurd as it is, is part of the wave of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that have washed across the Arab/Muslim media for may years—a wave that, in recent years, has reached tsunami-like proportions. By far the most common version of these theories has been the publication and re-publication of the Protocols—in Egypt, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and on the part of Hezbollah, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. The Middle East Media Media Research Institute (MEMRI) has translated some remarkable examples of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that have raced across the pages and television screens of the Arab/Muslim media, which have included resurrections of versions of the medieval “blood libel,” which has Jews murdering non-Jewish children in order to use their blood to bake Passover matzah. Excellent examples and analysis for this phenomenon in the Palestinian Authority may be found here and here; for Egypt, here, here, and here; for Syria, here and here; and for Iran, here. And an excellent overview of anti-Semitism in the Arab/Muslim media may be found here.
Clearly, as Joe Joffe demonstrates, the video clip is so absurd as to seem like a joke. And as one watches its absurdity one can’t help but laugh. But it’s part of a larger pattern that is hardly funny—and that, in other places at other times, has been central to the propaganda that was believed by vast numbers of people and served as much of the rationale that was claimed to justify the mass-murder of many millions of Jews. Once one realizes this, one has to stop laughing, as absurd as this particular clip is.
One question that remains for me has to do with the extent to which the anti-Semitic propagandists themselves have actually believed in their propaganda. Clearly, many of those who published the Protocols in Russia knew they were foisting a forgery. Eventually, many of those who published and read it—not only in Russia but also across Europe, America and the Arab world—thought it was true. Hitler and Goebbels certainly thought it was true, and they and their fellow Nazi leaders also thought the other anti-Semitic charges they made were true. And many in the Arab/Muslim world—my guess is that, to one extent or another, most—believe that many of the anti-Semitic charges with which they’ve been bombarded for years are true.
Did the Iranian commentators presented in the television video clip as experts on the “Ziono-Hollywood” conspiracy behind Harry Potter really believe what they said? Does the learned “Iranian film critic” really believe that the Harry Potter film series really portrays theories of witchcraft that originate in the Kabbala and are derived from “a rabbi or magicians of ancient Egypt, and were passed down to the Knights Templar”? Does the “Iranian expert on religious cinema” really believe that the Harry Potter series is part of a Zionist-led “cultural Crusader war”? Does the “Iranian university lecturer” (does he have tenure?) really believe that the Zionists have used a belief in Jewish racial supremacy “as a pretext to achieve their Zionist goals”? I have no idea. I don’t even have a clue as to whether they are the people they’re identified as being or actors. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they are indeed those people, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they actually believe what they say in that clip. What I’m convinced of, though, is that many of the Iranians who watched this clip on their television sets weren’t unaffected by it.
And that, I think, is a real—and potentially very bloody—problem.
Copyright Middle East Strategy at Harvard 2009
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mesh/2009/03/irans-protocols-of-potter/#comment-1875
