Throughout history, the power and influence of the Jewish Lobby has been legendary.\u00a0 This power in turn derives not from political might, nor from popular support, nor from moral rectitude, nor from God.\u00a0 It is, simply, the power of money.\u00a0 The wealthy have always held disproportionate influence in their societies, typically to the benefit of individuals or their families.\u00a0 But when a distinct ethnic minority works more or less collectively, with great wealth behind them\u00a0then that minority can exercise massively disproportionate power.\u00a0 This power is amplified by Jewish power deriving from ownership of media in the media age, their position as creators of media content (here<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, p. lvi), and their influence on elite culture, particularly in the academic world<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n Too often, though, one reads fulminations on the \u201crich Jews\u201d without knowing the history and without any facts or details behind it.\u00a0 My intent in this short essay is to provide some factual data, and to draw some plausible conclusions.\u00a0 The situation is, I think, more extreme than many have assumed.<\/span><\/p>\n As usual, a bit of history is helpful in order to establish the context for the present day (see also Andrew Joyce, e.g., here<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, and here<\/a><\/strong><\/span>).\u00a0 The earliest connection between Jews, money, and power seems to come from Cicero, around 59 BC.\u00a0 His speech Pro Flacco<\/em> offers a defense of a Roman propraetor in Asia by the name of L. V. Flaccus who was charged with embezzling Jewish gold shipments destined for Jerusalem.\u00a0 (Recall that Rome conquered Judea just some four years prior.)\u00a0 Cicero begins with a telling statement:<\/span><\/p>\n You know what a big crowd it is, how they stick together, how influential they are in informal assemblies.\u00a0 So I will speak in a low voice so that only the jurors may hear; for those are not wanting who would incite them against me and against every respectable man.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Cicero is clearly mocking the Jews, but their power must have been well-known by that point or else his jibe would be pointless. \u00a0He proceeds to give a rousing defense, citing Flacco\u2019s \u201cact of firmness, to defy the crowd of Jews\u201d and their \u201cattempt to fix odium on him.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n A second early allusion to Jewish wealth comes from Emperor Claudius in his third edict of 41 AD.\u00a0 Addressing civil unrest in Alexandria, Claudius singles out the Jews, who live \u201cin a city which is not their own.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cThey possess an abundance of all good things\u201d but abuse their wealth by continuing to oppose local authorities and sowing general discord.\u00a0 In a sense, writes Claudius, the Jews could be blamed \u201cfor fomenting a general plague which infests the whole world.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Then in 100 AD we have the well-known critique by Tacitus, in his Histories<\/em>.\u00a0 Amidst a discussion of \u201cthe race of men hateful to the gods\u201d\u2014a people who are \u201cbase and abominable,\u201d as well as \u201cdepraved\u201d\u2014he remarks that the Diaspora Jews, \u201cthe worst rascals among other people,\u201d have worked relentlessly to send \u201ctribute and contributions to Jerusalem, thereby increasing the wealth of the Jews.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s clear that this wealth was used for pernicious ends.<\/span><\/p>\n Around the year 220, Cassius Dio wrote his Roman History<\/em> in which he describes the second and third Jewish uprisings, of 115 and 132 AD, respectively.\u00a0 Of the latter event, Dio explains that \u201cJews everywhere were showing signs of hostility to the Romans.\u201d\u00a0 And they were evidently able to use their wealth to bribe others into coming to their aid:\u00a0 \u201cmany nations, too, were joining them through eagerness for gain.\u201d\u00a0 Clearly it must have taken considerable wealth to pay \u201cmany nations\u201d to fight at their side.\u00a0 And evidently the Jews succeeded in drawing in a multitude of others:\u00a0 \u201cthe whole earth, one might almost say, was being stirred up over the matter.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Though they would lose in that uprising, the Jews managed to regroup and reassert their power\u2014a power that had become legendary by 300 AD.[1<\/strong><\/span>]<\/a>\u00a0 It was at this time that Justin the Historian wrote his lengthy treatise Historiarum Philippicarum<\/em>.\u00a0 Book 36 addresses the ignoble origin of the Jewish people and explains the growth and cohesiveness of this singular tribe.\u00a0 Their pragmatic theology merged religion with politics in a way that proved to be highly successful; as a result, \u201cit is almost incredible how powerful they became.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Powerful, indeed.\u00a0 Around 420, the Roman poet Rutilius Namatianus could write, in his De redito suo<\/em>, of the Jews\u2019 ability, despite their being formally defeated by the Romans, to continue to exercise a dominating influence:\u00a0 \u201c\u2019tis their own conquerors that a conquered race keeps down.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n After the collapse of Rome and during the early rise of the Church, Jews continued to amass wealth and exercise power.\u00a0 We know this because they, as a small minority, still had the power to influence rulers throughout Europe.\u00a0 Charlemagne\u2019s son Louis the Pious (778\u2013840), emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, notably catered to the Jews, enacting a charter of privilege for them.\u00a0 This was a pragmatic move because, as Bacharach explains, Jews of that time were \u201cmilitant, aggressive, and powerful.\u201d[2<\/strong><\/span>]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Much of their power and wealth derived from usury, which accelerated during the early Renaissance.\u00a0 By the time of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, Pope Innocent III was prepared to enact canons targeting Jewish usury.\u00a0 \u201cThe more the Christians are restrained from the practice of usury, the more are they oppressed in this matter by the treachery of the Jews\u2026\u201d (Canon 67).\u00a0 Not being subject to Christian moral restrictions, the Jews dominated finance and lending at interest, profiting immensely.\u00a0 This situation drew a rebuke from Thomas Aquinas:\u00a0 \u201cIt would be better for [royalty] to compel Jews to work for a living\u2026than to allow them to live in idleness and grow rich by usury.\u201d[3<\/strong><\/span>]<\/a>\u00a0 It was still a problem for the Church 300 years later, as Martin Luther felt compelled to comment critically, calling the Jews \u201cthieves and robbers\u201d who profit \u201cby means of their accursed usury.\u201d[4<\/strong><\/span>]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n The secular world also took note of Jewish wealth and power.\u00a0 As early as 1798, German philosopher Immanuel Kant could make this surprising assessment:\u00a0 \u201cthe wealth of the Jews\u2026apparently exceeds per capita that of any other nation at the present time.\u201d[5<\/strong><\/span>]<\/a>\u00a0 In 1823, Lord Byron\u2019s poem \u201cThe Age of Bronze\u201d remarked on the fact that \u201call states, all things, all sovereigns they control.\u201d\u00a0 Indeed:\u00a0 \u201c\u2019Tis gold, not steel, that rears the conqueror\u2019s arch.\u201d\u00a0 In 1843, Bruno Bauer wrote that \u201cThe Jew\u2026determines the fate of the whole [Austrian] Empire by his financial power.\u00a0 The Jew\u2026decides the destiny of Europe.\u201d[6<\/strong><\/span>]<\/a>\u00a0 And perhaps more than Europe.\u00a0 In an essay of 1860, Ralph Waldo Emerson remarked on Jewish toughness, brought on by years of persecution and suffering:\u00a0 \u201cThe sufferance which is the badge of the Jew, has made him, in these days, the ruler of the rulers of the earth.\u201d[7<\/strong><\/span>]<\/a>\u00a0 In 1880, Laurent Oliphant could write of the Jews\u2019 \u201cfinancial operations of the largest scale.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cOwing to the financial, political, and commercial importance to which the Jews have now attained,\u201d they have become an indispensible ally in any future conflict.[8<\/strong><\/span>]<\/a>\u00a0 A decade later Goldwin Smith confirmed this view:\u00a0 \u201cJudaism is now [as of 1894] the great financial power of Europe, that is, it is the greatest power of all.\u201d[9<\/strong><\/span>]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n It was around this time that a French journalist named Edouard Drumont published a large and relatively influential book titled Jewish France<\/em> (1885).\u00a0 Here he made a shocking and frankly unbelievable claim:\u00a0 \u201cJews possess half of the capital in the world.\u201d\u00a0 Commenting specifically on France, he noted that the total wealth of that nation was around 150 billion francs, \u201cof which the Jews possess at least 80 billion\u201d\u2014that is, slightly more than half.[10<\/strong><\/span>]<\/a>\u00a0 One is taken aback at such claims; \u2018impossible,\u2019 we say.\u00a0 Obviously Drumont was somehow mistaken.<\/span><\/p>\n Or perhaps not.\u00a0 Consider the present-day situation in the United States.\u00a0 Of the 10 richest Americans, five (50%) are Jews:\u00a0 Mark Zuckerberg ($72B), Larry Page ($60B), Sergey Brin ($59B), Larry Ellison ($54B), and Michael Bloomberg ($50B).\u00a0 Most of this money comes from the high-tech industry:\u00a0 Facebook (Zuckerberg), Oracle (Ellison), and Google (Page and Brin).[11<\/strong><\/span>]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Of the 50 richest Americans, at least 27 (54%) are Jews.[12<\/strong><\/span>]<\/a>\u00a0 In addition to the above five, we have S. Adelson, S. Ballmer, M. Dell, L. Blavatnik, C. Icahn, D. Moskovitz, D. Bren, R. Murdoch (likely part Jewish), J. Simons, L. Lauder, E. Schmidt, S. Cohen, C. Ergen, S. Schwarzman, R. Perelman, D. Newhouse, D. Tepper, G. Kaiser, M. Arison, J. Koum, S. Ross, and C. Cook.\u00a0 Technically, this list should also include George Soros, whose net worth was around $26 billion until he \u2018donated\u2019 $18 billion to his own charity in early 2018.\u00a0 The combined wealth of these 27 individuals comes to roughly $635 billion.\u00a0 Note:\u00a0 If Jews were proportionately represented among the top 50, there would be one<\/em> individual on this list; instead, there are 27.<\/span><\/p>\n Or take another measure of wealth, CEO income.[13<\/strong><\/span>]<\/a>\u00a0 Among the 10 highest-paid American CEOs, four (40%) are Jews:\u00a0 Leslie Moonves[14<\/strong><\/span>]<\/a> (CBS), Nicholas Howley (TransDigm), Jeff Bewkes (Warner), and Stephen Kaufer (TripAdvisor).\u00a0 Among the top 35, no less than 19 (54%) are Jews; in addition to the above four are D. Zaslav, S. Catz, A. Bousbib, R. Iger, M. Rothblatt, S. Wynn, M. Grossman, J. Sapan, B. Jellison, R. Kotick, J. Dimon, L. Fink, B. Roberts, L. Schleifer, and S. Adelson.<\/span><\/p>\n Thus, whether looking at total assets or income, data shows that, in America, Jews in fact own or control about half of the wealth\u2014at least among the wealthiest elite. These people are the movers and shakers of our political process, and if the political situation was perceived by Jews as a crisis, the amount of money that would be poured into the political process is almost beyond comprehension.<\/span><\/p>\n Let\u2019s draw a plausible inference.\u00a0 If Jews control around half of all wealth at the top, it is reasonable to infer that they may hold a similar share throughout the wealth hierarchy[15<\/strong><\/span>]<\/a>\u2014at least among, say, the top 20% of wealth-holders, who collectively own more than 90% of all household wealth in the US. At any rate, the following is an attempt to use that inference to estimate total Jewish wealth in the U.S.<\/span><\/p>\n So, how much money is this?\u00a0 In 2018, the Wall Street Journal<\/em> reported that the total assets of all private households in the US hit $100 trillion for the first time ever.[16<\/strong><\/span>]<\/a>\u00a0 If American Jews own or control half of this, then it comes to some $50 trillion.<\/span><\/p>\n Now, this demands a moment of reflection.\u00a0 If Drumont\u2019s numbers were shocking, this one is absolutely jaw-dropping.\u00a0 Think of it:\u00a0 American Jews possessing $50 trillion\u2014or for those numerically challenged readers, 50,000 billion dollars<\/em>.\u00a0 If the true numbers are anything close to this, perform this thought experiment: Think of how much power one man<\/em> with one<\/em> billion dollars possesses; now consider the equivalent of 50,000 such individuals, working more or less in unison.\u00a0 That\u2019s the financial power of American Jewry.<\/span><\/p>\n Take a specific example.\u00a0 Tom Steyer is typical of a middling Jewish billionaire, with net assets of merely some $1.5 billion.\u00a0 But he is exceptionally active in the political scene, as anyone who has been following politics knows.\u00a0 Steyer is a top donor for the Democrats, and is leading the national charge to impeach Trump.\u00a0 In 2018 it was announced that he would spend $110 million \u201cto redefine the Democrats\u201d\u2014to his liking, of course.\u00a0 This made him \u201cthe largest single source of campaign cash on the left,\u201d and put him on the road \u201cto create a parallel party structure\u201d of his own.\u00a0 If one minor but motivated billionaire can do this, think of what the equivalent of 50,000 billionaires can do.<\/span><\/p>\n Of course, there are nowhere near that many American billionaires.\u00a0 In fact, the total number (Jews and non-Jews combined) was recently estimated by Forbes to be just 585.\u00a0 If the above analysis is roughly correct, around 290 of these are Jews.\u00a0 Their total wealth would then be about $1.5 trillion.<\/span><\/p>\n We can press a bit further.\u00a0 Depending on how we define them, there are something like 6 million Jewish Americans.\u00a0 These 6 million therefore control, on average, about $8 million per person\u2014$8 million for every Jewish man, woman, and child.\u00a0 A typical family of four would thus own about $32 million.\u00a0 Not a bad living.<\/span><\/p>\n And then consider the Jewish \u201c1%\u201d, which comes to about 60,000 individuals.\u00a0 If the same rough distribution holds among them as among the public at large, then this top 1% owns about 35% of total Jewish wealth.\u00a0 Thus, the top 60,000 Jews would own about $18 trillion.\u00a0 The remaining $32 trillion would therefore be divided amongst the other 5,940,000 Jewish Americans, yielding a still mind-boggling \u00a0more than $5 million per person.<\/span><\/p>\n At this point, a whole variety of further questions arise:\u00a0 Apart from the named individuals, who else pulls the strings on all this wealth?\u00a0 As I said, the top 27 only account for slightly more than half a trillion dollars.\u00a0 The top 290 richest Jews own around $1.5 trillion.\u00a0 And the top 60,000, around $18 trillion.\u00a0 Who are these people?\u00a0 Apart from the handful at the very top, can we even begin to know who the other leading individuals are?<\/span><\/p>\n And what form is this wealth in?\u00a0 Cash?\u00a0 Stocks?\u00a0 Real estate?\u00a0 Precious metals?\u00a0 (Do Jews still hoard gold?)\u00a0 All of the above, no doubt.\u00a0 But where is the cash?\u00a0 Which stocks?\u00a0 Which real estate?\u00a0 Foreign or domestic?<\/span><\/p>\n And then the larger questions:\u00a0 What, if anything, can be done about this?\u00a0 Simply on the face of it, it seems grossly unjust for, say, 60,000 Jewish Americans to own around $18 trillion in assets.\u00a0 Especially when the bottom half of Americans\u2014about 160 million people\u2014own a combined<\/em> total of about $0.3 trillion.\u00a0 And when the bottom 25% of Americans\u2014around 80 million people\u2014have a negative<\/em> net worth, i.e., more debt than assets.\u00a0 This is not an accident, and it\u2019s not just bad luck.\u00a0 The wealth distribution system in America is designed to achieve this outcome, and Jews earn a hugely disproportionate benefit from it.<\/span><\/p>\n What could be done to ensure a more just allocation of national wealth?\u00a0 In the old days, circa 100 AD, Roman authorities instituted a fiscus Judaicus<\/em>, a \u2018Jew tax,\u2019 precisely to offset the extra cost burden placed on society by Jews.\u00a0 Dare we suggest reinstating such a thing?\u00a0 A few trillion dollars could go a long way to right the wrongs of modern society.<\/span><\/p>\n Unrealistic, you say.\u00a0 Perhaps.\u00a0 But it has to start somewhere.\u00a0 Someone needs to raise these possibilities in print, in public, in order to begin the conversation.\u00a0 Stranger things have happened in the past.\u00a0 Stranger things will surely happen in the future.<\/span><\/p>\n Thomas Dalton, PhD, is author of <\/strong>Debating the Holocaust<\/strong><\/em> (2015) and\u00a0<\/strong>The Holocaust: An Introduction<\/strong><\/em> (2016).<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n [1]<\/a> See Kevin MacDonald, Separation and Its Discontents (Chapter 3)<\/a><\/em> for an account of Jewish wealth and power in the fourth century and particularly the concern with Jews enslaving non-Jews.<\/span><\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Early Medieval Jewish Policy and Western Europe<\/em> (1977), p. 104.<\/span><\/p>\n [3]<\/a> De regimine judaeorum<\/em>, 81-88.<\/span><\/p>\n [4]<\/a> On the Jews and Their Lies<\/em>, p. 242.<\/span><\/p>\n [5]<\/a> Anthropology<\/em> (1798\/1978), p. 102.<\/span><\/p>\n [6]<\/a> Cited in Marx, \u201cOn the Jewish Question,\u201d The Marx-Engels Reader<\/em>, 1978, p. 49.<\/span><\/p>\n [7]<\/a> \u201cFate\u201d, in Conduct of Life<\/em> (1860).<\/span><\/p>\n [8]<\/a> The Land of Gilead<\/em> (1880), p. 503.<\/span><\/p>\n [9]<\/a> Essays on the Questions of the Day<\/em> (1894), p. 260.<\/span><\/p>\n [10]<\/a> In The Jew in the Modern World<\/em> (Mendes-Flohr and Reinharz, eds.), 2011, p. 315.<\/span><\/p>\n [11]<\/a> Some claim that the single richest man, Jeff Bezos of Amazon ($156B), is either wholly- or part-Jewish, although this seems to be unsubstantiated.\u00a0 But Amazon does seem to regularly defend Jewish interests, as in their censorship of books that challenge the Holocaust narrative, and in their illegal blockade of alternate translations of Mein Kampf<\/em>.\u00a0 And he retained Jewish chief editor Martin Baron when he bought the Washington Post<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n [12]<\/a> Data from Bloomberg Billionaires Index, accessed August 2018.<\/span><\/p>\n [13]<\/a> According to the New York Times<\/em> (25 May 2018).<\/span><\/p>\n [14]<\/a> Moonves has of course since been fired for sexual harassment claims against him.<\/span><\/p>\n [15]<\/a> There is some evidence that the Jewish percentage declines as we consider the broader pool of wealth.\u00a0 In 2009, Steve Sailer estimated that, of the 400 richest Americans, around one-third were Jewish.\u00a0 But this is a 10-year-old analysis, and I am not aware of any more recent assessment.\u00a0 In fact the proportion of wealthy Jews may well have increased since then.<\/span><\/p>\n [16]<\/a> https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/u-s-net-worth-surpasses-100-trillion-1528387386<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\nSome Context<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Middle Ages to the Present<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Naming Names<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Some Troubling Questions<\/strong><\/h2>\n