QANON, ORLÉANS, THE PROTOCOLS AND OTHER CHOOSE-YOUR-OWN ADVENTURE STORIES

From Bakunin who, according to Pierre-André Taguieff, “in 1872 unites the capitalist pole (Rothschild Bank) and the communist-Marxist pole (Marx) into the same Jewish plot for world domination, or two sides of an ‘exploitative sect’”¹, to the US Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who in late 2018 used Facebook to advance a conspiracy theory blaming Rothschild-funded space lasers for the forest fires in California, to those who casually argue that Jews ran out of the Twin Towers on September 11 because “they knew”… We should be flattered by all this attention given to our people.  

Because honestly, I find it hard to imagine conspiracy theorists don’t harbour a little admiration for us. And this is not surprising on some level. We are a simple people—Machiavellian, yes—but admirable just the same. It isn’t easy to continually bring the world to its knees while being so few in number and so hunted; juggle the creation of global pandemics since the Middle Ages, vaccines used to control people, and antagonistic political ideologies that prompted the Cold War; organize the white slave trade as well as slavery and the great Barbarian Invasions that replaced Western Christian populations with migratory hordes from the East—keep in mind that we are the only people who have managed to kill God (or his son, let’s not split hairs)—I don’t know about you, but I think we’re pretty good.

All the same, despite our omnipotence and total(itarian) art, it’s a shame we didn’t see all the pogroms, massacres, genocide, and lynchings coming. So—are we everywhere or not?

Let’s look at two conspiracy theories that have nothing to do with each other: the Rumour in Orléans and QAnon. Nonetheless, they do have one element in common—us.

Rumour in Orléans

This rumour is intriguing first because it is not very old (although it does pre-date the Internet); and second because it was created after the Holocaust, neither in Syria nor in Russia, but in a mid-sized town in the French department. To make a long story short: May 1969, a rumour begins to spread through the capital of the Loiret; a woman has disappeared while shopping on the rue de Bourgogne, in a Jewish (or Israelite)-owned clothing store. Soon the number rises to three, fifteen, then thirty-eight women who have disappeared, all in shops owned by Israelites. They slip through trap doors hidden in fitting rooms and are taken to basements where they are tied up, drugged, and brought to the banks of the Loire River where a submarine is waiting to whisk them off to Latin America or the Middle East where they will be forced into prostitution. Word spreads quickly through the city and surrounding area. The police investigate, the media investigates, and the townspeople gather in front of the shops on rue de Bourgogne to make threats. When the press determines the story is completely unfounded and the police assure the residents that not a single woman has disappeared from Orléans, the crowd digs in its heels: the Jews have (also) bought off the press and the police.

In June, Edgar Morin and five other sociologists go to Orléans to conduct their own investigation. He publishes a remarkable book with Seuil: La rumeur d’Orléans (Rumour in Orléans) where he writes: “One thing that is not openly stated but which becomes apparent in studying the rumour is that all the merchants targeted were Jews. This rumour reflects an unconscious anti-Jewish bias that can be traced directly to the medieval period in which the Jew plays the age-old role of scapegoat. Il acts as a catalyst for the entire population’s fears.” Unconscious anti-Judaism or the denial of anti-Semitism… Isn’t that what we hear from the mouth (and from lots of other mouths) of the man who believes he is reassuring: “No, of course this isn’t anti-Semitism”²?  Strangely, I don’t feel any better.

QAnon

This is a fascinating theory, first because it is current and then because it seems limitless. Q is the anonymous author who has been posting messages on Internet forums since the fall of 2017, Anon stands for anonymous, like these forums (4chan, 8chan, 8kun…). QAnon is an American movement that sees Donald Trump as “a Christ-like figure”, reported Tristan Mendès-France for France Inter last September ³. Trump is said to be fighting a war against the “deep state,” an organized group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles that have links to lizard people (I can’t make this stuff up) or reptilian humanoids who have been controlling the world. Notable among these are the Clintons, Obamas, Rothschilds, Queen Elizabeth II, etc.

Q posts cryptic messages that an entire community rushes to interpret through endless and pathetic online discussions. This community of QAnon supporters has created a parallel universe in which truth is secondary to consistent messaging. This widens the scope of possibility, creating a vast terrain for goose chases and enigmas, an escape room the size of a country, a continent, a planet (which could very well be flat, by the way).

These are people who crave mystery, who have an aversion to government, authority, or expertise, who want to be part of the game—and why shouldn’t they, after all? But what does this have to do with “us” (yes, “us”, the Chosen People)?

That’s precisely the problem: QAnon forms a kind of gluttonous nebula that swallows and integrates all conspiracy theories and, hey! We Jews clearly figure into the family portrait. Yair Rosenberg wrote in Tablet last February⁴: “You might get into conspiracy theory as a free agent with no particular gripe against the Jews, but as you dig deeper into this world it is likely you will end up pointing fingers, identifying Jews as the root of all evil. Many conspiracy theories have followed this arc towards anti-Semitism.”

In this case, there’s no shortage of it: QAnon claims that the lizard people of the “deep state” feed off adrenochrome, a substance derived from the blood of kidnapped children—which is a science-fiction spin on the longstanding notion of blood libel. Q and its supporters do not hesitate to call attention to anti-Semitic bias, such as with this tweet: “What is the real virus infecting our world? (((Them)))”—in which the use of triple parentheses is a known anti-Semitic symbol. Let’s not get too brazen, after all.  

The AQnon narrative—that a secret cabal is taking over the world and claiming responsibility for the government, financial sector, and the media; they kidnap children, kill them, and drink their blood to make them stronger; they are pedophiles; they want to dilute the purity of the white race in order to destroy it—is essentially copied and pasted from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fabricated text dating from 1903 Russia that focuses on a Jewish plan to wipe out Christianity in its quest for global domination.

IF ONLY IT WERE TRUE

We can also mention our irrefutable responsibility for creating the Covid-19 pandemic, where, as the Internet explains, “the Jewish-controlled government is exploiting the virus to serve Jewish interests.” Mike Mazzone, a prominent anti-Semite on the web, mused: “How long will it take for the coronavirus to be more profitable than the Holocaust?”

Or even allude to how, according to the author (writing under a pseudonym) of Financial Origins of National-Socialism, Three Conversations with Hitler, it was once again the Jews who financed the rise of National Socialism in Germany. Clearly, there isn’t anything we can’t do.

We won’t go into the details; it would be endlessly repetitive. I can already hear all the sociological, psychological, and historical reasons that prompt the masses to blame their failures on someone else, but it really is crediting us with a lot. Either that or I don’t have the right connections, I don’t know. In any case, to prove all our conspiracy-loving friends right (since we can neither make them see reason nor get the better of them), my life would be much simpler—if only out of pure altruism—if we Jews would actually start dominating government, finance, and the media.

1. Pierre-André Taguieff, La Judéophobie des Modernes : Des Lumières au Jihad mondial, Odile Jacob, 2008
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2. 1969 : La rumeur d’Orléans | Archive INA | Affaire classée | ORTF | 05/08/1969 –
https://tinyurl.com/ina-orleans
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3. France Inter, L’instant M, « Qanon : le mouvement complotiste pro-Trump gagne l’Europe », September 17, rebroadcast on www.franceinter.fr
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4. Yair, Rosenberg, “Why Conspiracy Theorists Like Marjorie Taylor Greene Always Land on the Jews”, Tablet, February 2021 – https://tinyurl.com/tablet-rosenberg
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Translated by Arielle Aaronson