\n<\/p>\n
M<\/span>y first encounter with the Rothschild name happened in a thrift store. I was maybe nine years old and ran across a little wool dress coat just my size. The tag said \u201cRothschild,\u201d and when I showed my find to my mother, her eyes lit up. \u201cThe Rothschilds are very famous and wealthy,\u201d I remember her saying. \u201cThat\u2019s probably a very nice coat.\u201d<\/p>\n I don\u2019t remember how nice it was, and at the time I didn\u2019t know enough to wonder whether the Rothschilds, whose company<\/a> made my coat, were connected to those<\/em> Rothschilds, the remarkably successful banking family whose name is a longstanding byword among conspiracy theorists and antisemites. I think I wore it under the impression that the child<\/em> in Rothschild<\/em> was a family tribute (Roth\u2019s child), or perhaps a nod to their sale of children\u2019s attire.<\/p>\n But the seam in the word is not after the S but before it: roth-schild<\/em>, from the German for \u201cred shield.\u201d It\u2019s a reference to a marking on the home where Mayer Amschel Rothschild lived as he founded the family dynasty in the 18th century. By day, he served in the court of the princely House of Hesse, and at night, he returned to the cramped quarters of the Judengasse<\/a>, Frankfurt\u2019s prison-like, one-street ghetto in which Christian authorities literally locked the local Jewish population every night and every Lord\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n That\u2019s but one small piece of the history covered in Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories<\/em><\/a>, a new release from journalist Mike Rothschild, who is\u2014as the delightfully clever cover notes\u2014\u201cno relation\u201d of those<\/em> Rothschilds. The subtitle undersells the scope of the work, which traces the family\u2019s history from 1565 to present and examines the global development of Jewish tropes, legends, and conspiracy theories along the way.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a sprawling story, told over centuries and continents,\u201d as Rothschild writes in his introduction, replete with \u201cfake Russian counts, Parisian pamphlet wars, lizard people,\u201d and so much more. Thus does Jewish Space Lasers<\/em> cover everything from the Judengasse to the Battle of Waterloo to the titular lasers<\/a>\u2014the idea, pitched in a 2018 Facebook post by Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene before she ran for Congress, that a California wildfire was the result of a Rothschild-involved conspiracy to advance green energy projects and, of course, make gobs of money.<\/p>\n Rothschild promises early on that his book is \u201cnot a biography of the Rothschilds, nor is it a deep archival study of their various business ventures,\u201d nor \u201can examination of the political and societal forces at play\u201d in the many ways the Rothschilds have affected world history. It\u2019s a promise he doesn\u2019t quite keep and perhaps couldn\u2019t have: To effectively reject the idea \u201cthat Jews control everything, and that the Rothschilds are the \u2018Kings of the Jews\u2019\u201d requires quite a lot of biography, archival study, and examination of the political and societal forces. And if Jewish Space Lasers <\/em>bogs down in detail, this, too, is encouraged by the subject matter\u2014the book is repetitive, but so are the conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n But negative perceptions of the Rothschilds are not all Rothschild has in view. Perhaps the most pleasant surprise of Jewish Space Lasers<\/em> was its peek inside Jewish culture around the storied family. \u201cFor many Jews, the Rothschilds have been a beacon of hope in dark times, a reminder that anything is possible with unity and a steadfast devotion to family and tradition,\u201d Rothschild explains. \u201cThey were heroes who fought tenaciously for the freedom of other Jews, while never giving in to the temptations of conversion and assimilation.\u201d<\/p>\n The Rothschild allure was as much about their faithfulness and generosity as their aspirational wealth\u2014but the wealth was part of it too. For example, the source text<\/a> for Tevye\u2019s \u201cIf I were a rich man<\/a>\u201d refrain in Fiddler on the Roof<\/em> originally read \u201cIf I were a Rothschild.\u201d And Tevye\u2019s goals there are bigger than three staircases. \u201cIf I were Rothschild I would do away with war altogether,\u201d he muses. \u201cYou will ask how? With money, of course.\u201d<\/p>\n I knew going into Jewish Space Lasers<\/em> that money would be a big part of the story. It\u2019s impossible not to anticipate that, if you have any knowledge of our culture\u2019s stereotype of Jewish people as\u2014in the phrase of the first chapter\u2019s title\u2014\u201cgreedy, cheap, and blessed.\u201d And I knew, too, that centuries of gross and officially sanctioned<\/a> antisemitism would come into it; the history of how<\/a> some European Jews came to be bankers was already familiar.<\/p>\n But much of what Rothschild recounts was new to me, supplying a remedy for an ignorance both happy and untenable: happy because it came from a lack of exposure to explicit antisemitism; untenable because antisemitism is persistent and pernicious, and because it is difficult to push back against evil if you fail to recognize it when you see it.<\/p>\n One place we see the evil of antisemitism, of course, is in church history. Though Rothschild has a light touch in connecting antisemitism with Christianity, never painting with too broad a brush, the bulk of his tale is set in Christendom Europe. Even outside overt misuses of our faith to oppress Jewish people, then, the story of the West\u2019s antisemitism is undeniably a story about people who at least professed Christianity, whatever was in their hearts.<\/p>\n This history\u2014of expulsions and pogroms, blood libel and other slanders, forced conversions and baptisms\u2014is galling and repulsive. It\u2019s also absurd, because the core of our faith is that God became man and, as Rothschild observes, that man was Jewish.<\/p>\n Christian antisemitism can only exist through blatant rejection of God\u2019s commands (Eph. 2:11\u201322) and scandalously stupid misreadings of Scripture (Rom 1:16, 3:29, Gal. 3:28). But there\u2019s no escaping the fact that it has<\/em> existed, and not only in centuries past. Greene, the space-lasers theorist and a sitting member of Congress with a large, popular following, professes an evangelical faith, having been baptized<\/a> at the Atlanta-area North Point Community Church in 2011. In his 1991 book The New World Order<\/em>, the late Pat Robertson<\/a>, erstwhile head of the Christian Coalition, cited explicitly antisemitic works\u2014books with chapter titles like<\/a> \u201cThe Real Jewish Peril\u201d\u2014to posit a conspiracy of malevolent global domination, with the Rothschilds in on the scheme.<\/p>\n Are things getting any better? Considering the present and future state of antisemitism, Rothschild takes a dim view in the book and online, where he greeted<\/a> this week\u2019s news of war in Israel with worry for how it will affect Jews worldwide, because, \u201c[h]istorically, whatever can be blamed on Jews will be, no matter their nationality.\u201d<\/p>\n This century has seen a disturbing \u201cresurgence of public and unapologetic antisemitism,\u201d he argues in Jewish Space Lasers<\/em>. Today, \u201cnew extremists are espousing the same hateful tropes that were once relegated to being fodder for fringe pamphlets and whispered accusations. But now they aren\u2019t fringe, and they aren\u2019t whispering,\u201d Rothschild contends. \u201cThey are a danger to everyone. And they\u2019ll never stop\u2014because they never have.\u201d<\/p>\n I hope he\u2019s wrong in that prediction, and I wonder if he hopes it too. After all, why write a book-length debunking of hundreds of years of antisemitic theorizing unless you have some<\/em> hope that it will help? Not, perhaps, to the point of persuading confirmed antisemites, but at least to educate the rest of us and shock us well away from a hateful path that too many have trod.<\/p>\n Bonnie Kristian is the editorial director of ideas and books at Christianity Today<\/span>.<\/p>\n <\/div>\nThe Rothschild allure<\/h5>\n
New extremists and old tropes<\/h5>\n