By Dr. Steven Leonard Jacobs
Abstract
According to Swiss-born Canadian conspiracy theorist Henry Makow, author of the antisemitic text Illuminati: The Cult that Hijacked the World (BookSurge Publishing, 2008), Chicagoan Christopher Jon Bjerkness is a “scholar who knows what plagues mankind and believes his knowledge is necessary to stop Armageddon” (www.savethemales.ca). Bjerkness, who claims “Jewish descent” (?), is the creator of the website www.jewishracism.com “dedicated to protecting all Jews from the anti-Semitism and inhumanity of racist Jews.” He is the author of Albert Einstein: The Incorrigible Plagiarist (XTX, 2002, 2,826 pages!), and the additionally massive 574-page The Jewish Genocide of Armenian Christians (© 2006, 2007, Enlarged Second Edition), fully available at his website in PDF format. This paper is a review and analysis of its contents within the larger question of the ongoing exploitation of the concept of genocide for other agendas.
Introduction: www.jewishracism.com
It is a mainstay of anti-Semitism and anti-Semites[i] that conspiracy theories abound, most especially about supposed world-wide Jewish power and Jewish behind-the-scenes control and manipulation of all those currently in positions of political, governmental, economic, and military leadership. This has been very much in evidence since the beginning of the 19th century with the publication of the notorious Russian forgery The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a totally spurious and fraudulent document supposedly telling the story of a secret midnight cemetery meeting of a group of rabbis at which their leader spells out their plans in twenty-four “protocols” for world take-over. And while the Protocols have been successfully refuted in 1917 in Great Britain, 1934 in Switzerland, and 1993 in Russia, it continues to maintain a life of its own up to and including the present-day on websites and in print. (In 1927, in the United States for example, automobile magnate Henry Ford serialized them in his newspaper The Dearborn Independent and later republished them in a four-volume text entitled The International Jew and still available at these same sites.)[ii]
And, with the advent of the aforementioned technological assistance of the Internet and the ease of constructing websites, the haters have proliferated and continue to spew their filth through slick and professional-looking sites including streaming video, PDF books and documents, and the like. Indeed, a case could conceivably be made that the international community of haters—for this is truly a world-wide phenomenon and not confined to any one geographic locale—has become “unionized,” or, if not unionized, then, at the very least, networked. One finds much of the same material, including conspiracy screeds and downloadable and printable copies of the Protocols, available on many of them.
One such site—www.jewishracism.com— is that run by Christopher Jon Bjerkness (b. 1967) (“B’yerk-ness,” though I personally prefer to pronounce it with a “j”) of Chicago, IL, who, according to fellow traveler Henry Makow, PhD, of Winnipeg, Canada, and author of the anti-Semitic text Illumnati: The Cult that Hijacked the World (BookSurge Publishing, 2008), “a scholar who know what plagues mankind and believes his knowledge is necessary to stop Armegeddon”[iii], and whose site is “dedicated to protecting all Jews from the anti-Semitism and inhumanity of racist Jews.”[iv] Makow goes on to write:
He [Bjerkness] says a heretical cult, the ‘Shabbatian Frankists,’ controls organized Jewry, including Zionism and Freemasonry…According to their messianic system, Redemption requires that the Rothschilds become God, i.e. king of the world. They will see the sacrifice of 2/3 of all Jews and the destruction and enslavement of the rest of mankind. Bjerkness believes this demented creed actually is the motive force behind history, including all wars and “world government”…
I [Makow] think he exaggerates the importance of Jewish messianism but I may be wrong. His message is compelling and consistent with the Protocols of Zion where the author (whom I believe is Lionel Rothschild) talks about coming into his “kingdom.”[v]
Makow then goes on to cite the central argument from Bjerkness’ 574-PDF downloadable (2006, 2007, Enlarged Second Edition) text The Jewish Genocide of Armenian Christians, to wit:
The ruin of the Turkish Empire and the mass murder of the Armenian Christians were one step on the long and tumultuous Jewish march toward the death of mankind. The ruin of the Russian empire was another, followed by the repeated destruction of Europe, particularly Germany in the World Wars this Jewish cult [Sabbatian Frankists] created in an attempt to artificially fulfill Messianic prophecy and force the Jews of Europe against their will to flee to Palestine. (pg. 66)
It is to this text, then, that we now turn. But before doing so, however, I quote from another conspiracy theorist Eric Hufschmid (www.erichufschmid.net), long a proponent that the tragedy of September 11, 2001 (9/11) in the United States was a Zionist plot[vi]. I cite the following by Hufschmid to indicate that all is not uniformly well within the ranks of the haters and conspiracists as they routinely criticize and attack each other. In an audio file and transcript dated 23 October 2007, Hufschmid says of Bjerkness:
One man who has been trying for the past year to become known as an expert on the Armenian genocide is Chris Bjerkness. Bjerkness claims that he’s a good Jew who opposes Zionism, but as I’ve mentioned in some of my documents and audio files, the evidence suggests that he is actually a bad Jew who is secretly supporting some faction within the Zionist movement.
He provides a lot of information about the Armenian genocide, but he may be doing so only to lure us over to his side and away from other, honest researchers. He may also be mixing in a little deception with his information.
He wrote a book about that genocide, and it’s available for free at his website, [www.]jewishracism.com. His audio interviews about this genocide are also available for free at his site.[vii]
There’s nothing wrong with looking at his information, but you should not trust him….
Bjerkness also provides a lot of evidence that Einstein was a plagiarist, but this may also be bait to lure us over to his site and away from other people who were making this accusation years earlier….
If you think you can trust him, Bjerkness, ask yourself why he has such a fascination with this Armenian genocide. Why is he struggling so hard to expose this genocide? Why is he writing such extensive books, doing so many interviews, and even traveling at his own expense from his home in Chicago to Glendale, California to give a speech about the genocide to a group of Armenians?[viii]
He’s spending a lot of his time and money to educate the Armenian people. He appears to be, as he says, a good Jew who wants to expose the bad Jews. But what are the chances that this is really what’s happening? If he really wanted to expose the bad Jews, why doesn’t he also expose the Holocaust, the Apollo moon landing [which Hufschmid claims is a hoax.—SLJ], the world wars, and everything else?
Why has he selected only a couple of Zionist crimes to expose? And why does he imply that the Holocaust really happened as the official Zionist movement claims?
You might respond that he has simply not had the time to look into the Apollo moon landing, or the Holocaust, and that he may find the time to deal with those issues later….
Bjerkness claims to be a highly educated intelligent person with the ability to analyze Einstein’s theories and show us that Einstein plagiarized those theories. However, if he’s that intelligent and educated, he should take about 20 seconds to figure out that the Apollo moon landing was a hoax, and maybe two minutes to figure out that the Holocaust is a hoax….
Furthermore, Bjerkness admits to be at least partly Jewish, and if you have read the book The Jewish Mystique[ix], or read such magazine articles with titles [such] as “Are Jews Smarter?”, then you know that Jews are smarter than the rest of us. Therefore, a Jew with a college degree should need only 20 seconds to figure out the Apollo moon hoax.
So why is Bjerkness having so much trouble figuring out the Apollo moon hoax and the HoloHoax if he has both a college degree and the superior Jewish intellect?
The only conclusion is that he’s deliberately lying to cover up those Zionist crimes. He’s a fraud.
Since he protects some Zionist crimes, why should you trust him to expose any Zionist crimes? I suspect that he is exposing Einstein and the Armenian genocide only to lure you over to his site and put himself into the position of “Einstein expert” and “Armenian genocide expert.” If you fall for this trick, you will gather around a Jew who will tell you what to think about Jewish crimes. Can you see this trick?
Before I end this audio file, I want to mention that there are a lot of extremely suspicious fires in Southern California right now. The last time this happened I told some people that they were probably set by Zionist Jews, but most people have a difficult time believing me when I say Zionists would set fires. They can’t understand how Zionists could benefit from fires.
The answer to this mystery is that they don’t benefit from the fires, they benefit from the chaos that results…The Zionists would also be able to take advantage of the chaos by killing some of their critics who lived near the fire area, or burning down some of their homes or businesses.[x]
The Jewish Genocide of Armenian Christians:
Chapter One—“Pre-history of the 1915 Genocide”
As noted previously, The Jewish Genocide of the Armenian Christian is a massive 574-page PDF document available for downloading and printing from Bjerkness’ website www.jewishracism.com, along with his even more massive Albert Einstein: The Incorrigible Plagiarist (2,826 pages!). The text itself consists of four chapters with copious endnotes:
1. Prehistory of the 1915 Genocide (pages 4-183; notes 1-168)
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Jews, Crypto-Jews[xi] and Freemasons[xii]—The Means
1.3 The Armenian Holocaust and the Battle of Armageddon—The Opportunity
1.4 From Herzl[xiii] to Malcom, Zionists Betray the Armenians
1.5 Blotting Out the Armenian Amakites[xiv]—The Motive
2. The Genocidal “Young Turks”[xv] were Zionist Crypto-Jews (pages 184-230; notes 169-188)
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Jews Foment Wars of Extermination and Genocidal Revolutions
2.3 Jewish Bankers Destroyed the Turkish Empire
2.4 Talaat Pasha[xvi], Djavid Bey[xvii], Atatürk[xviii], Etc. Were Jews
3. Rothschild[xix], King of the Jews (pages 231-440; notes 189-346)
3.1 Introduction
3.2 The Rothschild Plan to Take Palestine
3.3 Cabalistic[xx] Jews Calling Themselves Christian Condition the British to Assist in Their Own Demise—Rothschild Makes an Open Bid to Become the Messiah
3.4 The “British-Israel” Deceit
3.5 For Centuries, England is Flooded with Warmongering Zionist Propaganda
3.6 As a Good Cabalist Jew, David Hartley[xxi] Conditions Christians to Welcome Martyrdom for the Sake of the Jews
3.7 Jewish Revolutionaries and Napoleon the Messiah Emancipate the Jews
3.8 Hitler Accomplishes for the Zionists What Napoleon Could Not
3.9 Zionists Develop a Strategy Which Culminates in the Nazis and the Holocaust as Means to Attain the “Jewish State”
4. Mordecai Manual Noah[xxii] (pages 441-526; notes 347-352)
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Noah in 1818
4.3 Noah in 1837
4.4 Noah in 1844
Notes
In his first chapter, Bjerkness opens with an affirmation of the validity of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, argues that the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) in Turkey was dominated by crypto-Jews whose agenda was “to establish a segregated ‘Jewish state’ in Palestine,” and to “instigate World War I, slaughter entire Christian populations, and destroy the Turkish empire and supplant Islamic religion and culture” (pg. 4). In support of his theses, he quotes any number of documents, including newspaper articles primarily from the 1800’s without attributed authorship as well as a lengthy memorandum from Sir Gerard Lowther (1858-1916) who served as Ambassador to Turkey and who used his position to spread anti-Semitic texts throughout the Ottoman Empire. Additionally, again without attribution, he references, for example, “well-intentioned people” (pg. 14), “many people” (ibid.), “many persons” (pg. 15). He also employs such rhetorical devices “it is a well-known fact that” (pg. 16), “it appears unquestionable that” (pg. 17) without any source citation whatsoever. Early on, he makes the following claim (without any supportive evidence) which appears throughout the text:
Jewish leaders then placed Adolf Hitler in power in the hopes that he would chase the Jews of Europe into Palestine. (pg. 20)[xxiii]
Not content with this absurdity, he also rails against “the Jewish controlled book publishing industry…Jewish controlled academia…Jewish control of the press” (pg. 24), tropes which are also included in the Protocols.
Fifty pages into this chapter, Bjerkness argues that “the genocide of the Armenians the Jews committed through the Turkish Empire was also intended to create a casus belli [justification/rationalization for war] in the western world against Islam. The Jews are to this day using the genocide of the Armenians as a weapon to agitate tensions between Europe and Turkey so that they can kill off still more Christians and Moslems” (pg. 50).
To be sure, there were Jews involved in the Committee of Union and Progress and the Young Turk movement (among them the lawyer Emmanuel Carasso [1862-1934] of Salonika], far fewer in numbers than others, and, yes, among them were those who were descendants of the original Jewish followers of Shabbati Zevi who converted to Islam, the Dӧnmeh. But for conspiracists and anti-Semites such as Bjerkness, their numbers are irrelevant as he suggests that (1) Talaat Bey, (2), Djavid Bey, and (3) Atatüruk were themselves so-called crypto-Jews and thus their influence far outweighed their actual numbers. And, yes, there were some among that same population who did participate in genocidal activities against the Armenian people as members of the Turkish military. But they were a decided minority and unrepresentative of the overall Turkish Jewish community, despite Bjerkness’ claims.
Without evidence, he argues that there were six reasons why the Jews of Turkey were “motivated” to murder Assyrians:
1. Jews consider the Armenians to be the Amalekites of the Hebrew Bible, and in Jewish mythology, the Jewish God (sic) commands the Jews to utterly exterminate the Amalekites down to the last man, woman and child.
2. The Hebrew Bible, Jewish Talmud and Jewish Cabalistic writings instruct Jews to murder Christians and to impose the “Noahide Laws” in the “End Times,” which laws forbid Christianity on pain of death, because Jews consider Jesus to be an idol, and the Noahide Laws forbid idol worship.[xxiv]
3. Jews wanted to discredit and ruin the Turkish Empire and the religion of Islam in order to create a secure environment for the formation of a Jewish colony in the Land of Palestine.
4. Jews wanted to remove an ancient enemy from the region—an enemy which would oppose the anointment of a Jewish King in Jerusalem as the crowning of the Anti-Christ.
5. Jews wanted to eliminate a skilled business and political competitior.
6. Jewish wanted to foment a war between Christians and Moslems, which would start in the Balkans and grow into a world war which would destroy many of the empires and monarchies, and which would artificially pit Moslems and Christians, Slavs and Teutons against one another and leave the Jews standing in Jerusalem. (pg. 66)
(Needless to say, Bjerkness supplies no supporting evidence for any of these claims because there is no supporting evidence to be had!)
Such was the supposed power of the Turkish Jewish community at the turn of the 20th century that they manipulated and corrupted the Armenian leadership into accepting their own extermination and further convinced the Kurds of Turkey, some of whom were complicit in the Armenian Genocide, that they would be rewarded for their participation in the genocide (pgs. 93-95).[xxv]
Spread through this first chapter, and a staple of Bjerkness’ website www.jewishracism.com, is his frontal assault on the religion of Judaism, nowhere more apparent than in the following excerpt:
Judaism creates and perpetuates a culture of racism, war, genocide, segregation, deceit, theft, exploitation, supremacism, human sacrifice, etc. The Jewish genocide of the Armenian Christians makes for a good case study of classical and cultural Jewish racism and Jewish deception. It demonstrates the highly developed Jewish arts of genocide, war, control of public opinion to do evil while appearing to be the victim, scapegoating others for Jewish crimes, etc. (pg. 131).
Thus, essentially, Bjerkness’ text is a retelling of not only the classical canards of anti-Semitism, but a modernizing of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion as well, using as its point of departure the fraudulent claim of the supposed Jewish genocide of Armenian Christians without any documentation to back up his outrageous claims.
Again, so powerful was this tiny minority in Turkey that they manipulated the Sultan Abdul Hamid II into believing that the Armenians were a revolutionary counterforce out to destroy the Empire (pg. 136). All this to bring about a return of Jews, willingly or not, back to Palestine.
Chapter 2—“The Genocidal ‘Young Turks’ were Zionist Crypto-Jews”
Chapter 2 continues with more of the same, adding even more explicitly than in the first chapter that Jews also controlled the League of Nations (pg. 192), but adding as well that French Emperor Napoleon (1769-1821) was also “a Zionist put into power by the Jewish bankers” (pg. 226). Again, his standard trope:
Jewish leaders committed genocide against Armenian Christians, instigated the Balkan Wars, instigated World War I and destroyed the Turkish Empire, all so that they could steal Palestine from its inhabitants. (pg. 201)
Bjerkness again reminds his readers—without documentation—that both Talaat Bey, the primary architect of the Armenian Genocide, and Kemal Atatürk were both “crypto-Jews” (pg. 226).
Chapter 3—“Rothschild, King of the Jews”
Chapter 3 begins with two rather nasty assertions: “the slain and humiliated Jews of Europe were such a sacrifice to the ambitions of the Zionists,” and “the Holocaust was created in order to justify the formation of an apartheid and racist ‘Jewish state’” (pg. 232); While blaming the victim has a long and dishonorable history, only someone whose real agenda couples anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism would dare to posit such absurdities and totally deny the long history of anti-Semitism in Western civilization and the historical context which ultimately led to the Holocaust.
However, Bjerkness’ true goal in this lengthy third chapter is to show his readers the overwhelming power of the Rothschild banking family, their “desire to divide America up between Britain and France” (pg. 241), their employment of a “Jewish actor (not true!) named John Wilkes Booth” to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln (14 April 1865) because of Lincoln’s opposition to their plans (pg. 242), their ownership of both “the Pope and Rome” (pg. 257), and other such calumnies.
What Bjerkness does not know and admits is how the Rothschilds came to such a prominent position of power:
The machinations which brought them into this position remain a mystery. It is not known who chose them or why. One could speculate that the Jews have for a very long time perpetuated the myth that certain families carry with them the royal messianic bloodline of King David. Wealthy families would have an easy time creating this myth for themselves. Since there never was a King David, it is difficult to challenge them, though realistically speaking, Ashkenazi Jews would have a far more difficult time linking their lineage to Judah, let alone to King David who never existed, than would Sephardic Jews who carry with them a stronger genetic tie to the Judeans. (pg. 282)
The only proof that Bjernkness can muster to support his notion of Rothschild power is the fact that the British Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917 was in the form of a letter from the Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour (1848-1930) to Baron Walter Rothschild (1868-1937), a leader of the Jewish community of Great Britain, declaring His Majesty’s Government ‘s “declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations” towards “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” (Balfour also noted his appreciation in the letter that its contents be shared with the Zionist Federation.)
And while it is apparently true and accurate that the Sultan of Turkey did put up the area known as Palestine as collateral surety for a loan advanced by the House of Rothschild in the early 1800s, possibly amounting to total to $100,000,000 Pounds, nothing ever came of this financial transaction as far as Palestine was concerned. The Rothschilds never called in the loan nor collected on the collateral for breach of promise.
Casting his net even wider than the Rothschilds, Bjerkness also assets in this chapter than Christianity itself was a plot of the Jews (Shades of Adolf Hitler who argued that Christianity was perpetrated on German Aryans and others by Jews as a means to subjugate them into docility!):
Christianity itself was probably nothing but a means to convert the Romans to Judaism so that the Romans would then restore the Jews to Palestine and force the Jews back to Judaism, which the Jews had largely abandoned. After, or as, the Jews were being restored to Judaism, Jews would then restore the Christians to Paganism. This appears to be the plan of treacherous Paul, who was born a Jew named Saul, and who set down this plan in Romans 9-11.[xxvi] The fulfillment of this plan occurred in the Twentieth Century, when Communism and Nazism largely destroyed the religion of European Christians and forced Jews to move to Palestine out of fear. (pg. 330)
And further on, “Christianity itself was a movement to convert Gentiles to Judaism in the guise of Liberalism, and to take the hatred and menacing nature of the creator God of the Old Testament out of Judaism so as to make it more palatable for Gentile consumption” (pg. 344).
Again picking up his tired thread of Hitler and Nazism equally as a Jewish plot, he writes:
The Zionists put Hitler into power in order to bring about an allegedly unprecedented human sacrifice (the Jewish genocide of Christian Slavs under the yoke of Jewish Bolshevism was far worse), which would finally atone for the Jews’ sins against God, through their own treachery to the Jewish People…The Jews killed off many of their fellow Jews in the Holocaust in the belief that they were fulfilling Old Testament prophecies (for example: Ezekiel 5:12 [“A third of your people will die of the plague or perish by famine inside you; a third will fall by the sword outside your walls; and a third I will scatter to the winds and pursue with drawn sword.”], Zechariah 13:8-9 [“In the whole land,” declares the LORD, “two-thirds will be struck down and perish; yet one-third will be left in it. This third I will bring into the fire; I will refine them like silver and test them like gold. They will call on my name and I will answer them; I will say, ‘They are my people,’ and they will say, ‘The LORD is our God”] ). Their Jewish campaign is not over and will not end until all assimilated Jews and all Gentiles are dead. (pg. 338)
Continuing in this vein, he notes that “the numbing pain inspired by the shocking images of the victimization of the Jews in the Holocaust has been abused by racist Jews to shield themselves from criticism, such that their arrogance makes them an open menace which tarnishes the image of all Jews.” (pg. 341)[xxvii]
Likewise, the perpetuation of anti-Semitism itself is part of the Jewish political agenda towards world take-over:
These Sabbatian/Frankist Cabalistic Dualistic sects among Jews—including the Dӧnmeh who committed genocide against the Armenian Christians—even promoted anti-Semitism—even Blood Libel[xxviii] accusations—in order to promote their political agendas in an unbroken chain of revolutionaries from the Frankists to the Marxists to the political Zionists. (pg. 371)
These Dӧnmeh who ultimately were responsible for the overthrow of the Turkish Empire and the genocide of the Armenians, according to Bjerkness, arose in response to the failure of the Jewish false messiah Sabbatai Zevi:
Many had predicted that the year 1666 would make the arrival of the Messiah. For Christians, this meant the second coming of Christ, for the Jews, the long awaited arrival of the Jewish King. After the Chmielnicki holocaust[xxix] which some saw as the sacrifice of masses of Jewish lives as an act of atonement, Shabbatai Zevi declared himself to be the Jewish Messiah and a large Messianic sect followed him. He traveled to Palestine, as a good Jewish Messiah would, and attracted a large Jewish following. While traveling through Turkey, Shabbatai Zevi was taken prisoner and was forced to feign conversion to Islam in order to save his life.
A branch of the sabbataian sect of crypto-Jews, called the Dӧnmeh, formed in Turkey. They pretended to convert to Islam, but practiced Judaism in secret. For centuries this sect of crypto-Jewish Turks have bred subversive crypto-Jewish agents, who have been sent around the world to prepare the way for Jewish world domination. They created a secret society in Paris and eventually led a revolt from Salonika. They were the hidden masters of the “Young Turks” and flooded Turkey with revolutionary propaganda defaming the Sultan. Their reach extended across the globe.
The Sabbataians believed that Shabbatai Zevi’s Messianic spirit passed from one Jewish King to the next in a process of Metempsychosis[xxx]. They argued that the line of David was a dynasty, which would not end when any given King of the Jews died, but rather the spirit of the Messiah would leave one body of the Jewish King and enter the next, sort of like a kosher Dali Lama. In the form of the “Young Turks,” the Dӧnmeh eventually succeeded in overthrowing the Sultan, whose ancestors had shamed Shabbatai Zevi. They also destroyed Turkish culture and committed genocide against the Armenian Christians. (pgs. 419-420)
Chapter 4—“Mordecai Manual Noah”
This final chapter, after a relatively brief ten-page introduction, is the reproduction of three of Noah’s discourses (1) “Discourse Delivered at the Consecration of the Synagogue [K.K. She’erit Yisra’el) in the City of New York on Friday, the 10th Day of Nisan, 5578, Corresponding with the 17th of April, 1818” (pgs. 451-474); (2) “Discourse on The Evidences of The American Indians being the Descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, Delivered before the Mercantile Library Association, Clinton Hall, 1837” (pgs. 475-499); and (3) “Discourse on the Restoration of the Jews; Delivered at the Tabernacle, Oct. 28 and Dec. 2, 1844” (pgs. 500-526).
He does, however, introduce the chapter with the following italicized comment:
In the Nineteenth Century, an influential American Jew, Mordecai Manual Noah, spelled out a plan to take Palestine from the Turkish Empire. Then, as today, well-connected Jews used their money and influence to corrupt Christian Americans and the American Government in the hopes that American Gentiles would soldier and slave for the sake of the Jews. Noah’s plans were successful. (pg. 441)
That Noah himself was personally unsuccessful in his dreams of a return of Jews to Palestine and his inability to bring the American Government to use its influence to further his plan is of no consequence whatsoever to Bjerkness. What matters is that he wrote about it more than 150 years ago, and, subsequent to him, wealthy and powerful Jews continue to manipulate America to do Jewish bidding, and, as always, without concrete reference but always with speculation, innuendo, and distortion.
Notes
Bjerkness’ 352 endnotes (Chapter 1, #1-#168; Chapter 2, #169-#188; Chapter 3, #189-#346; Chapter 4, #347-352) are a continuous “piling on” of various bibliographic citations many, many of which were written more than 150 years ago, many anonymous journalistic accounts and letters to the editors of various newspapers without identification other than the names themselves. Even more, many of the citations as well as large amounts of the actual text bear no relation whatsoever to Bjerkness’ central thesis that the Jews were responsible for the genocide of the Armenians both at the end of the 19th century and early on in the 20thcentury by both the Ottoman regime and its successors.
For someone interested in the preposterousness of his claims, one can only assume that his intent is to inform his readers of his vast erudition and his intellectual and analytical prowess, especially those far less informed. Perhaps his fellow conspiracist Eric Hufschmid is correct after all, “ I suspect that he is exposing Einstein and the Armenian genocide only to lure you over to his site and put himself into the position of ‘Einstein expert’ and ‘Armenian genocide expert.’” And other than Henry Makow’s reference to his Norwegian Jewish maternal grandfather, it is almost impossible to fine solid biographic data about him other than his Chicago (unlisted) residence. He appears in neither the databases of the Anti-Defamation League nor the American Jewish Committee. Who is he and why does he do what he does remain open-ended questions. Additionally, his website has no counter of “hits,” nor do either of his two downloadable PDF books. Thus, we have no way of knowing how many may have read all or part of these texts. Nor do we know in what circles he travels.
Analyses and Conclusions
Fundamentally, The Jewish Genocide of Armenian Christians is a repackaging of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion with an even more anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist animus if such is, indeed, possible. As is the case with all such prejudicial stereotyping, it bases itself upon relatively small kernels of true facts and then plays fast and loose with historical data, contextualizes nothing, and returns again and again to the kinds of conspiracist thinking which relies on myths, lies, and supposed “secrets” which have long been the mainstays of haters.
That Bjerkness has not in any way, manner, shape or form proven his case is close to irrelevant, His intended audiences are those already committed to anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism and those who simply do not know but tend to be easily swayed by what looks and sounds like solid argumentation. And according to all recent surveys both nationally and internationally, the numbers of such persons are growing. His website his slick and professional looking; his documents print out easily and well; his audio files load quickly and are easily listenable.
Among the real tragedies of Bjerkness’ claims and his willingness to write and lecture about them whenever and wherever he is given the opportunity is not that Jews find themselves having to confront one more enemy in a growing list of enemies and one thoroughly at home with the intricacies of modern technology. It is that some in the Armenian community, at least on the radio and in person in California, are willing to provide him forums to spew his filth. For two communities who have both been the victims of genocide, and who should be far more actively working to build bridges of trust and mutual cooperation, Christopher Jon Bjerkness remains a discomforting and disturbing presence.[xxxi]
Steven Leonard Jacobs, DHL, DD is the Aaron Aronov Endowed Chair of Judaic Studies at the University of Alabama. Dr. Jacobs’ primary research foci are in biblical studies, translation and interpretation, including the Dead Sea Scrolls; as well as Holocaust and genocide studies. This article is reprinted with permission of the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism.
[i] Herein simply defined as hatred and haters of Judaism and Jews, a careful distinction being drawn between this and anti-Zionism and anti-Zionists, defined, in this context, as hatred and haters of the State of Israel and Israelis, though such intellectual subtleties are far removed from the mindsets of the haters who consistently lump them together
[ii] See, for example, Ben-Itto, Hadassa, The Lie That Wouldn’t Die: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion(London and Portland: Vallentine Mitchell, 2005); Bronner, Stephen Eric, A Rumor about the Jews: Reflections on Antisemtism and the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000); Cohen, Susan, et. al., eds, “The Protocols of the Sages of Zion:” A Selected Bibliography (Jerusalem: Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism/Hebrew University, 2006); Eisner, Will, The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (New York & London: W. W. Norton and Company, 2005); Jacobs, Steven Leonard, and Weitzman, Mark, Dismantling the Big Lie: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion(Los Angeles & Jersey City: Simon Wiesenthal Center & KTAV Publishing House, 2003); Segel, Binjamin W., A Lie and A Libel: The History of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2005).
[iii] Taken from his own website www.savethemales.ca and column of 22 July 2007, “What Every Jew (and Non-Jew) Should Know” and accessed 8 January 2009. Makow (b. 1949), who received his PhD in English Literature from the University of Toronto, is himself a well-known conspiracy theorist who sees the world controlled by a secretive and hidden hand (read “Jews” and “Freemasons”) whereby the media stifle information, democracy is a means of social control, and a central banking cartel based in London (read ““Rothschild”) is pulling the strings. Makow made his money from the sale and translation of his board game Scruples, which sold several million copies world-wide.
[iv] Bjerkness, who claims pride in his Norwegian and Jewish heritage attempts to legitimate himself somewhat in the eyes of his readers by arguing that he has a “Jewish connection” because his maternal grandfather, a famous Norwegian musician, was Jewish. Having such a relative, however, does not do so either in the eyes of the organized Jewish community or among the network of haters.
[vi] In a speech in Italy on 17 September 2006, and available on his website Hufschmid said:
There are also reports of Israelis operating a moving company near the World Trade Center. Some of those Israelis may have been involved in installing explosives in the towers. After they were finished, they went back to Israel…But the evidence is overwhelming that the attack was conducted by Larry Silverstein, top Israeli officials, and other Zionists…Nobody has yet figured out who planned and executed the September 11 attack, but there is overwhelming evidence that Americans did not do this by themselves. The connection to Israel and Zionism cannot be overlooked. Actually the Zionists appear to have been the masterminds…The September 11 attack appears to have been designed by Zionists in order to create anger towards Arabs. It is similar to their bombing of the Kind David Hotel in 1946, in which they tried to make the British angry at Arabs.
[vii] One of those interviewers who appears to support Bjerkness’ view of the Armenian Genocide is Armenian clergyperson Rev. Bedross Hajian who has conducted several interviews with him.
[viii] The speech was given on 30 July 2007 at the Hye Club Forum in Glendale, CA, according to the site http://hyeclubforum.com.
[ix] Ernest Van Den Haag. The Jewish Mystique. New York: Stein and Day, 1977.
[x] www.erichufschmid.net/Hufschmid-23Oct2007.html
[xi] The term “crypto-Jew” historically refers to Jews who publicly converted to either Christianity (especially Roman Catholicism) during the period of the Spanish Reconquista (710-1492) or after the conversion of Shabbtai Zevi (1626-1676) to Islam in Turkey but who secretly maintained their adherence to religious Judaism. Bjerkness is misappropriating the term to argue that a variety of persons whom he names were, in fact, totally loyal to their “Jewish roots” as part of their conspiratorial agenda.
[xii] Freemasonry is an historically secretive male crafts organization (supposedly tracing its roots back to King Solomon’s Temple in ancient Jerusalem) actually begun in Europe in the 17th century with international fraternal lodges all over the world. It has long been a subject of anti-Semites and other conspiracists as the primary organization plotting world overthrow and control. Jews have been both welcomed and rejected as members of Masonic lodges, depending on both historical circumstances and locales.
[xiii] Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), an Austro-Hungarian journalist, is best known as the “father of modern political Zionism:” and the author of Der Judenstaat (“The Jewish State”), his call for Jews to return to their historic land of origin and said to have been written in response to his experience of public anti-Semitism when covering the trials of French Jewish Army Captain Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935) accused of treason by the French in sharing information with Germany. Dreyfus was later acquitted of all charges and restored to rank.
[xiv] According to the Hebrew Bible (Exodus 17, Numbers 24, and other references), the Amalekites were the enemies of ancient Israel and attacked them from the rear (location of women, children and old people) during their forty-years of wandering in the desert prior to their return to Palestine/Israel. In the long Jewish journey, Amalek came to symbolically stand for all enemies of the Jewish people, and some minority positions within historical Jewish literatures equated Amalekites with Armenians, but this is decidedly not the view of the majority of the world’s Jews either historically or contemporarily.
[xv] The “Young Turks” were a late 19th century and early 20th century coalition of various political movements initially attempting to reform the government of Turkey while opposing the monarchy of Sultan Abdul Hamid II. They were, indeed, young as well as progressive and modernist in their thinking and included among their cohort artists, intellectuals, and scientists.
[xvi] Mehmet Talat (1874-1921) was one of the original leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) which controlled Turkish politics in the Ottoman Empire during the period of the First World War, at times serving as Minister of the Interior and Grand Vizier and was among those primarily responsible for shaping the Armenian Genocide. He fled to Germany in 1918 and was later assassinated by Soghomon Tehlirian (1897-1960) in 1921 who was later found innocent by virtue of temporary insanity having himself survived the genocide.
[xvii] Djavid Bey, former Minister of Finance and former member of the “Young Turk” movement which overthrew the Sultan Abdul Hamid II (1842-1918), Bey was later hanged in 1926 by President Kemal Atatürk for financial and other improprieties.
[xviii] Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938) was the first President of Turkey after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in which he played a significant military and governmental and diplomatic role. A reformer by inclination, Atatürk was an admirer of the 18th century European Enlightenment and sought to transform Turkey into a democratic, modern, and secular nation-state.
[xix] The Rothschild international banking family began in Germany with the success of its founder Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812), whose five sons established banking houses in Frankfurt, Vienna, London, Naples, and Paris. It remains active today and has long been a source for the anti-Semites who continue to rail against supposed Jewish domination of the world’s financial markets as part of the agenda of global Jewish domination.
[xx] The Kabbalah—usually spelled with a “K” as opposed to a “C”—is the term for the Jewish mystical and literary religious tradition said to have been already in evidence in the 2nd century in Palestine, though contemporary scholars see its rise much later during the Middle Ages. Its agenda is to discern the meaning of human existence in concert with the Divine nature of the universe, and its writings concern themselves with extensive commentaries on the Hebrew scriptures (Torah) as well as philosophical and theological texts.
[xxi] Non-Jew David Hartley (1705-1757) was both a physician and a philosopher whose primary text was Observations on Man, his Frame, his Duty, and his Expectations (1749) and who believed that the mind was a blank slate but as the human body began to grow, sensations developed as did associative relationships between mind and body and ideas themselves.
[xxii] Mordecai Manual Noah (1785-1851), born in Philadelphia, PA, was a Jewish-American diplomat, journalist, and playwright, who, as an early Zionist, believed the Jewish people would return to their ancient homeland. His “Discourse on the Restoration of the Jews” (1845) spelled out his understanding and called upon the United States to take the lead in this endeavor.
[xxiii] Not only was Hitler a dupe of the Jews, according to Bjerkness, but so was Josef Stalin and George W. Bush (pg. 97) as well as the President of Iran Mahmoud Amadinejad (pg. 169)! Historically as well, so was Napoleon (pg. 372), American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (pg. 430), and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (pg. 430) who were either crypto-Jews, Zionists, or manipulated dupes.
[xxiv] Jews do not consider Jesus an idol, but, historically, a false or failed messianic pretender. The laws themselves, according to Talmudic tradition, were given by God to Noah to re-establish human communities after the Great Flood. They included prohibitions against idolatry, murder, theft, blasphemy, dietary restrictions (specifically eating flesh taken from a living animal), and the establishment of a judicial system.
[xxv] Bjerkness also argues that contemporary Jews have manipulated the Kurds to destroy not only present-day Iraq, but Iran, Turkey, and Syria with an ultimate goal in the Middle East of “nuclear massacres” (pg. 177).
[xxvi] Throughout this volume, there are many places where Bjerkness piles on passages from both the Hebrew Bible and New Testament as supposed supportive evidence for his claims. In doing so, however, he shows nothing of their historical contexts, nor how such material was understood either historically or contemporarily by their religious communities.
[xxvii] That some Jews, both individually and collectively organizationally have abused the memory of the Holocaust and its Jewish victims remains an ongoing source of both sadness and debate with the organized Jewish communities and the State of Israel. And, yes, some have exploited the Holocaust as moral capital to justify their actions or the actions of others as above reproach. Such thinking and behavior, however, is not above critique. See, for example, specifically with regard to the State of Israel, Burg, Avraham, The Holocaust is Over: We Must Rise from Its Ashes (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); Segev, Tom, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993); Zertal, Idith, Israei’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Israel Studies, 14(1): Spring 2009 Special Volume “Israelis and the Holocaust: Scars Cry Out for Healing.”
[xxviii] Among the most insidious of all anti-Semitic charges of long-standing in European history and now making its way into the Middle East has been the lie that prior to Passover, Jews will kidnap innocent Christian children, murder them, drain their blood and use it in the making of the matzot, the flat unleavened cakes associated with the festival. See, for example. Dundees, Alan, ed., The Blood Libel Legend: A Casebook in Anti-Semitic Folklore (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991); Friedman, Saul S., The Incident as Massena: Anti-Semitic Hysteria in a Typical American Town (New York: Stein and Day, 1978); and Hsia, R. Po-chia, The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988)
[xxix] The Chmielnitzki massacres of as many as 100,000 Polish Jews in 1648-1649 at the instigation of Bogdan Chmielnitzki, Hetman (Leader) of the Ukrainian Cossacks, occurred during the revolution against the Polish Catholic nobility. Jews were its indirect victims.
[xxx] Metempsychosis is a philosophical term in Greek referring to the transmigration of the soul, especially its reincarnation after death.
[xxxi] The recent reluctance of the American Jewish communities, and in particular the Anti-Defamation League and its Executive Director and Holocaust survivor Abraham Foxman, to support the passage of US House Resolution 106 affirming the historical validity of the Armenian Genocide out of a genuine concern with alienating the State of Israel’s only Middle Eastern and Muslim ally Turkey who continues to deny this tragedy as genocidal is a further case in point, one where realpolitik takes precedence over morality. For a people who continue to insist on the world’s affirmation of the historicity of the Holocaust and who continue to argue that anti-Semitism and Nazism (and neo-Nazism) are far from dead—and correctly so—such recalcitrance is disturbing to say the least.
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