by Eric Zuesse

On September 8th, an article I wrote for Strategic Culture Foundation, “What America’s Aristocracy Want,” was republished at the Donbass (far-eastern formerly Ukrainian) website, “South Front”. The article blamed a lot on America’s billionaires and centi-millionaires, “the American aristocracy” (as I referred to it), who own controlling blocs of stock in America’s largest corporations, and whose political donations control the U.S. federal Government. It defined the powerful Americans whose agenda is harmful for the world, as consisting of the very few richest Americans (and their agents who run their international corporations, ‘nonprofits’, ‘news’media, and lobbying). But the most-heavily up-voted reader-comments there, were from people who clearly received a very different message from that article. They blamed ‘Jews’ — and all of them (not merely the super-rich ones). America’s billionaires who aren’t ‘Jews’ were set aside from blame, in their comments. The first (the most popular) reader-comment was “No, the reason they think they’re superior isn’t being Aryan (quite the opposite) or especially cunning or whatever. They think so because it’s their religion – [the richest] american ‘1%’ is overwhelmingly jewish.” The second-most-favored comment was “America is NOT ruled by an aristocracy. It is ruled by a plutocracy. To be more precise it is ruled by a Judeo-pluto-kleptocracy.” The third-most-favored comment was “A better title would be ‘What America’s Jews Want’.”

So, I decided to see whether or not their basic assumption is true, that most of America’s billionaires and centi-millionaires — most of the people whose money controls the U.S. Government — are Jews. Although, obviously, there’s no scientifically justifiable reason to treat Jewish billionaires differently from non-Jewish ones, those readers believe that there is such a reason; and, so, seeking a possible fact-based reason for those comments (and for their popularity), I concentrated upon the allegation that America’s billionaires are “overwhelmingly Jewish.” It’s something that I had never looked into before, and it certainly would be interesting, if it is true (even if it doesn’t really relate to the question of how rational it is to ignore the impact that non-‘Jew’ish billionaires and centi-millionaires are having on American politics).

The Forbes 400 is the standard list of America’s wealthiest 400 individuals. At the present moment, as this is being written, on September 16th, here are the top 10:

#1: Bill Gates, $81B
#2: Jeff Bezos, $67B
#3: Warren Buffett, $65.5B
#4: Mark Zuckerberg, $55.5B
#5: Larry Ellison, $49.3B
#6: Michael Bloomberg, $45B
#7-8: Charles Koch, $42B
#7-8: David Koch, $42B
#9: Larry Page, $38.5B
#10: Sergey Brin, 37.5B

Zuckerberg, Bloomberg, and Brin, would have been called “Jews” by Adolf Hitler’s Nuremberg Laws (and, since Wikipedia’s censored article there ignores what the implications of being a “Mischlinge” or “mixed-race” person were, here’s that), which I presume is the standard, for what a “Jew” is, that those reader-comments were accepting and applying by their use of the term “Jew” — but those commenters didn’t indicate what they meant by “Jews.” One can only guess, but this seems to be the intent of those most-popular comments. If that’s what they were referencing, then 3 of the top 10 are probably “Jews.”

Next:

#11: Jim Walton, $35.6B
#12: S. Robson Walton, $35.5B
#13: Alice Walton, $35.4B
#14: Sheldon Adelson, $31.8B
#15: Steve Ballmer, $27.5B
#16-17: Jacqueline Mars, $27B
#16-17: John Mars, $27B
#18: Phil Knight, $25.5B
#19: George Soros, $24.9B
#20: Michael Dell, $20B

Adelson, Soros, and Dell, would probably have been treated as “Juden” in Hitler’s Germany.

Next:

#21: Paul Allen, $18.9B
#22: Len Blavatnik, $18.2B
#23: Laurene Powell Jobs, $17.7B
#24: James Simons, $16.5B
#25: Ray Dalio, $15.9B
#26: Carl Icahn, $15.7B
#27: Donald Bren, $15.2B
#28: Charles Ergen, $14.7B
#29: Abigail Johnson, $13.2B
#30: Harold Hamm, $13.1B

Blavatnik, Simons, Icahn, and Bren, probably would have qualified.

#31: Steve Cohen, $13B
#32: Thomas Peterffy, $12.6B
#33: Ronald Perelman, $12.2B
#34: Elon Musk, $11.6B
#35: David Tepper, $11.4B
#36: Eric Schmidt, $11.3B
#37: Lucas Walton, $11.2B
#38: Rupert Murdoch, $11.1B
#39-40: Philip Anschutz, $10.8B
#39-40: Jim Kennedy, $10.8B

Cohen, Perelman, and Tepper, probably would have qualified.

So, amongst the richest 10% of the Forbes 400 richest Americans — and that’s the richest 40 of them — 13, or 32.5%, would (or at least might) have qualified as “Jews” in Hitler’s Germany. The rest definitely would not. That isn’t “overwhelmingly jewish,” and it’s not even mostly Jewish (not nearly that); it is, instead, 32.5% who are possibly ‘Jew’ish, in Hitler’s definition (which seems to be what the commenters are applying, though they didn’t say; perhaps they’re simply not intelligent enough to define their own central terms — and there’s no way of knowing whether, for example, converts to Judaism are “Jews,” to them).

However, what about the 67.5%+, who are non-‘Jews’, and all of whom would have qualified as “Aryans” under Hitler. Why do these readers, who had commented, ignore those “aristocrats” (who still are among the people that really control America)? My article was about “the aristocracy,” not about “the Jews” — not at all. Why are so many readers obsessed with ‘Jews’, as being subjects for special blame, absolving all non-‘Jews’ — even non-‘Jews’ who are far richer than 99.9% of Jews (according to any definition)? And, why are they blaming those 99.9% who are ‘Jews’, but who are not at all super-rich? Where does this religious (or is it racist?) hatred come from? It certainly is counter-factual (in any case). It certainly is delusional. And it certainly is harmful — and not only to Jews. It mis-focuses blame. The same thing happened in the U.S. Jim-Crow-era South, by the many lynchings of innocent Blacks. Everyone suffers bigots — of every type.

And, of course, there are bigots of every type — some are Whites, some are Blacks, some are Jews, some are Christians, etc. The group is irrelevant. So, why do so many people even raise that issue, which isn’t actually an issue, at all?  Slavery in the United States (and the slave-trade) was originally a business owned by the British King, but then became more generally a business owned by the British aristocracy, and subsequently became a business owned by the emerging U.S. aristocracy — and all of these were almost exclusively Christian aristocrats, despite bigots’ emphasis upon the Jews who participated — so, how can any person who has a brain, simply ignore the barbarizms by the Christians who constituted the vast majority of America’s aristocracy, throughout American history. There are good and bad people of all religions, and of no religion, and of every nationality. The group is irrelevant.

Progress can’t be made, when and where bigots are common. Why do bigots ignore the aristocracy, and focus instead against “Jews,” “Muslims,” “Blacks,” “Chinese,” etc.? This  is a deflection, of blame (and, clearly, the blame belongs to the richest 1% — the “oligarchy” or “aristocracy” — and doesn’t belong to any ethnic or cultural minority). It’s a deflection, of blame, quite specifically, away from aristocrats themselves, and onto vulnerable groups within the general public, instead. Usually, media funded by conservative billionaires stir up the bigots; but, sometimes, media funded by liberal billionaires stir them up. Do the aristocrats and their agents (the ‘news’media, etc.) want and encourage that deflection of blame, so as to distract the public away from the real source of problems? Are bigots merely the aristocracy’s fools? Is that what all of this (bigotry that’s displayed in those reader-comments) is actually about — distracting fools, away from the actual source of their problems, so as to protect the tiny economic elite who are actually guilty for (and profiting from) the ceaseless invasions, corruption, immense wastage, and the resulting misery that’s suffered by the millions of victims of the policies that billionaires demand their politicians to produce? Are there billionaires who own or control newsmedia that condemn all the other newsmedia for their deceiving the public into supporting evil invasions, etc.? Which billionaires spoke out about — and hired and promoted journalists to report on — the lies that were producing America’s invasion of Iraq? Which billionaires and media exposed the lies that were behind (and that have since covered-up) the U.S. coup in Ukraine? Why were all of America’s super-rich on the side of invasions, and of coups? Isn’t it even so much as noticed by the bigots, that all of the billionaires — of all ethnicities — either supported these atrocities, or else otherwise wouldn’t employ journalists who wanted to report about them? Even just one billionaire could have done that, but none did. None reported on George W. Bush’s lies leading up to America’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, nor on Barack Obama’s lies about his bloody coup in Ukraine in 2014. None. Not even one. Any one of America’s billionaires could have (because each one of them possessed the financial means to do it), but none did so. The lies went unchallenged. And that’s because no billionaire cared to separate himself or herself from all the others and tell their media companies to hire the reporters who would report about the lying, instead of simply to report the lying statements. Democracy is impossible without truth. Ethnicity has nothing to do with the real problem.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

Post-Scriptum by The Saker:

Frankly, when I posted this article I knew that it would elicit a lot of angry comments.  The word “Jew” seems to elicit in some people an instantaneous disconnection of the cerebral cortex combined with a simultaneous outburst of hateful rage.  Sure enough, this happened in this case too.  Here is a sampling of what I am referring to: “Eric Zuesse writes on this subject and he writes on it as a gatekeeper”, “This is bog standard journalism and I can’t for the life of me understand how this drivel got onto The Saker”, “Zuesse is intentionally missing the real point”, “The Zuess and like side is the worst of hypocrit and talmudic liar”, “The Zuess rational is so low level trash” “Eric Zuesse is a gatekeeper”.

So, first things first, while I cannot apologize for the idiots who wrote this, I can apologize to Eric for the failure of my moderators to intercept such inane and ugly personal attacks.  Second, while it is undeniably true that Eric’s article does miss a lot of the “big picture”, it never was his intention to paint the full picture to begin with!  I am shocked at the fact that so many commentators totally fail to understand that.  Eric’s article is not entitled “Jewish power in the USA”.  It is entitled “Is it really true that America’s richest 1% are ‘overwhelmingly Jewish’?”.  All Eric did is try to ascertain the validity of one specific thesis.  Critical comments should therefore focus on Eric’s methodology or evidence and that’s it.  Heck, you can even criticize him for the narrow scope of his discussion!  but discussing Eric’s putative motives (‘he is intentionally missing the real point‘) or his character (‘the worst of hypocrit and talmudic liar‘) or his function in society (‘Eric Zuesse is a gatekeeper‘) is evidence of an intellect unable to understand the scope of the topic being discussed and an overall nasty, petty, disposition.

Something good will, however, result from this.

I have been thinking about it for many months already and this latest embarrassment has convinced me that I need to make a fundamental change in how comments are moderated.  To put things bluntly: this blog has a very real problem: idiots.  Stupid people who by their stupid comments simply pollute an otherwise interesting discussion.  What we must do about this has to be a community-wide decision and I will write a separate post and appeal for comments to see what the best way to tackle this problem is.  But I am frankly getting tired of people who apparently cannot read what the article says, or don’t understand the scope of a discussion, or who believe that a roaring personal attack on the author is an argument.

Sorry, but my patience with this bullshit has reached its limit.

I now fully intend to kick out all the imbeciles who are unable to participate in what should be an intelligent discussion amongst educated adults.  I am still unsure as to how I will do it, but I promise you action in the near future.

Finally, I also want to offer my apologies to all those commentators whose contributions were drowned out in the vituperative and sophomoric outbursts of the low-IQ/high-aggression camp.

One more thing: I have been accusing of antisemitism AND of being a “Jew lover”.  This topic, Jews/Judaism/Zionism, is an important and interesting one.  My goal for this blog is to have a free and intelligent discussion of this topic.  While I fully understand that those who have suffered from hatred and persecution for being Jewish or, which is so often forgotten nowadays, at the hands of Jews, are very emotional about this, this blog is not the correct place to vent such resentments or to engage in the endless spewing of a stream of hostility saturated consciousness.  Simply put, if you feel the need to vomit – do it elsewhere.  I personally will not yield to those accusing me of being anti-Jewish any more than I will yield to those accusing me of being pro-Jewish.  I am pro-truth, period.  If that is not your cup of tea – then read some other blog.

The Saker