What explains the remarkable appeal of Jewish conspiracy theories in Asia? Precisely because Jews are relatively unknown in Asia, they are mysterious, but also associated with the West, which makes them an obvious fixture of the widespread anti-Western paranoia nurtured by several hundred years of domination by Western powers.
TOKYO – A Chinese bestseller, entitled The Currency War , describes how Jews are planning to rule the world by manipulating the international financial system. The book is reportedly read in the highest government circles. If so, this does not bode well for the international financial system, which relies on well-informed Chinese to help it recover from the current crisis.
Such conspiracy theories are not rare in Asia. Japanese readers have shown a healthy appetite over the years for books such as To Watch Jews Is To See the World Clearly , The Next Ten Years: How to Get an Inside View of the Jewish Protocols , and I'd Like to Apologize To the Japanese - A Jewish Elder’s Confession (written by a Japanese author, of course, under the made-up name of Mordecai Mose). All these books are variations of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion , the Russian forgery first published in 1903, which Japanese came across after defeating the Czar’s army in 1905.
The Chinese picked up many modern Western ideas from the Japanese. Perhaps this is how Jewish conspiracy theories were passed on as well. But Southeast Asians are not immune to this kind of nonsense either. The former prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Bin Mohammed, has said that “the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them.” And a recent article in a leading Filipino business magazine explained how Jews had always controlled the countries they lived in, including the United States today.
TOKYO – A Chinese bestseller, entitled The Currency War , describes how Jews are planning to rule the world by manipulating the international financial system. The book is reportedly read in the highest government circles. If so, this does not bode well for the international financial system, which relies on well-informed Chinese to help it recover from the current crisis.
Such conspiracy theories are not rare in Asia. Japanese readers have shown a healthy appetite over the years for books such as To Watch Jews Is To See the World Clearly , The Next Ten Years: How to Get an Inside View of the Jewish Protocols , and I'd Like to Apologize To the Japanese - A Jewish Elder’s Confession (written by a Japanese author, of course, under the made-up name of Mordecai Mose). All these books are variations of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion , the Russian forgery first published in 1903, which Japanese came across after defeating the Czar’s army in 1905.
The Chinese picked up many modern Western ideas from the Japanese. Perhaps this is how Jewish conspiracy theories were passed on as well. But Southeast Asians are not immune to this kind of nonsense either. The former prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Bin Mohammed, has said that “the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them.” And a recent article in a leading Filipino business magazine explained how Jews had always controlled the countries they lived in, including the United States today.