Late last month, the Daily News published this article: Harry Potter part of Zionist conspiracy, Iranian film claims. The ridiculousness of the video speaks for itself, and so, except for a couple of points that I think bear making, I am loathe to spend too much time responding to the analyses and accusations the Iranian so-called experts make:
- Note the subtle (and not so subtle) conflation of Jews with Zionists throughout.
- Note as well the reference to the idea of Jewish racial supremacy, which the film attributes to the Zionists in a way that – at least as I read the translation – could be read to suggest that the Jews (and not just the members of the purported global Zionist conspiracy) do indeed believe in our own racial superiority.
- Note the portrayal of Judaism as a religion of witchcraft and wizardry, a trope that has a long history in European antisemitism.
- Note the mention of Christian Zionists, which I confess I almost missed. It’s interesting to think about the significance of that mention in light of the discussion of Christian Zionism in part one my antisemtism series.
There are, I am sure, other things worth pointing out. Please have at it.
A few random thoughts …
I am reminded of Falwell’s contention that the Teletubbies were trying to turn kids gay, and of Kristin’s comments on the similarity between traditional antisemitic tropes and the Christian Right’s claims about the “Gay Agenda.”
That thought, in turn, has me thinking about the term “Hollywood élite” as its used by the Christian Right. I always thought it was a code word for (secular) Jews, but I think it’s actually a code word for secular Jews and gays, working together to dominate the world.
Harry Potter has some magical ability to make religious fundamentalists everywhere lose their minds. I’ve never read the books or seen the movies, but now I’m thinking maybe I should.
How would something like this be perceived in Iran or the Middle East in general? Would it have as much credence with the general public as people in the U.S. gave the Christian Right’s calls to boycott the Harry Potter books and movies or would some significant percentage of the population be nodding along in agreement?
Well, I’m off to dominate the world … busy, busy …
Oh my god, that’s the dumbest thing ever… Wow… I’m afraid I couldn’t get through the whole video, as YouTube keeps crashing my computer. *sigh* So, I missed the mention of “Christian Zionists.” But I did get through the first minute and a half or so, and I’d agree; whenever one sees “essences” deployed in this way, well, it’s rarely good.
That said… Conservative Christians *hate* Harry Potter. Did you hear about that controversial documentary (about a pentecostal kids’ training camp), Jesus Camp, in which the camp leader says: “If Harry Potter had been alive during Jesus’ time, he would’ve been stoned to death for being a warlock.”
I’ve no idea how something like this would be perceived in the Middle East in general. I… Hmm… I can’t really speak to that question. I don’t think attitudes about certain things like this kind of video can be generalized across the Middle East.
wrt the “gay agenda,” Chingona, just wanted to let you know that I first heard this comparison made in Michelle Goldberg’s book Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism. That book is the best summary I’ve ever read about that movement, and she talks quite a bit about her discomfort as a Jewish woman (conducting interviews in which she was faced with their weird idealization/fetishization of Jews). Anyway, she points to a number of ways in which these forms of rhetoric mirror/copy each other. I’d never thought about it before, but given the Christian Right’s obsession with the Gay Agenda, it was certainly…troubling.
Oh, btw, “Hollywood élite” is most definitely a coded word/dog whistle that includes LGBTQ people and “unchaste women.”
I had some My Little Ponys when I was a kid, and some of my parents’ friends decided that these were “demonic” too. And I was not allowed to have He-Man and She-Ra stuff. Childhood deprivation, that.
Yeah, so except for the weird intersection of antisemitism, this really does sound a lot about the “oh noes! Magic! Our children will become possessed by deomns!” bs that comes out of the Christian Right.
I hadn’t realized that witchcraft was a trope associated with Judaism. I know it’s associated with Africans (and used in lots of racist ways. I heard people prayer for “protection against the demonic in this Dark Land” in Mozambique. *sigh* And I yelled at a lot of people for that.), but as an antisemitic trope… I don’t get it. At a minimum, I can see where it comes from when one is approaching an animist culture (even though, no, it isn’t actually okay there either.). But… Isn’t the Torah sort of…the historical place where God starts smiting people for worshiping idols and declares He’s the one true god and…? Yeah? Is this witchcraft thing something that was spread through the Protocols of the Elders of Zion or something? I’m assuming so, since I once heard some religious right people criticize my grandfather for his membership in the Masons and their “association with witchcraft.”
sorry for all those typos… I was typing hastily/trying to get out the door quickly. Hope the above makes sense.
Anyway, I wasn’t trying to be trite there, just… Wow… I was always taught that the Jewish religion is what “delivered” people from witchcraft, so that trope is very foreign. Another thing I’ve learned from this blog.
Could you clarify who made this video? Did it come from the government, or is it just some dumbass somewhere with an internet connection?
By the way, I’d be very, very leery of attempts to generalize based on anecdotal experiences in Iran, which is frankly…very unique in the region in a number of ways and which doesn’t have nearly the power to shape mass opinion that Saudi Arabia has.
Kristin, if you look at things like the blood libel, Jews as Christ-killers, etc., the idea that Judaism is basically black magic and devil worship is THE traditional Christian view of Jews. Even if we grant the most generous interpretation to the Christian idealization of Jews — even if we say it is not antisemitic at all — it’s basically a modern innovation, coming maybe in the last 50 or 60 years, which is a blink of the eye in the 2000 year history of Christianity.
Yes, yes, I knew about blood libel and Jews as “Christ killers,” but I didn’t realize this was explained as a result of “witchcraft.”
Anyway, it’s also the traditional Christian view of *everyone* who is non-Christian, so I hadn’t realized this was specific to Jewish history as such.
Kristin: I was not generalizing to the Middle East based on anecdotal experiences in Iran, which I understand more as an Asian nation anyway (which is how Iranians tend to view themselves for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the long history of Arab-Iranian mutual antipathy), and I know what you mean about Iran being unique in the region. So for me, the term Middle East does not automatically include Iran, and so my point about the Protocols was about countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Yemen, to name a few where I know it has been published widely and often given by heads of state as gifts.
The association of Jews with mysticism and magic, not necessarily with witchcraft per se the way it was understood during the witch persecutions that targeted mostly women, is connected more to the medieval Church’s original perception of Kabbalah, if I remember correctly, than the tropes that chingona mentions, and while it might be correct that Christians now tend to view anyone who is not Christian in that way, it’s important to remember that, for the medieval Church, the Jews held a special significance, since we were the ones who should have, but did not, and continued to refuse to, accept Christ; and that could only be due to shortcomings in us, one of which was our addiction to mysticism.
Oh, as far as I can tell, the video was shown on the official state TV station in Iran.
Well, I can see how needing the blood of Christian children to perform religious rituals pretty quickly turns into “witchcraft.”
And yes, it’s the traditional Christian view of non-Christians, but you have to remember that the Jews are particularly bad from this standpoint. They were there when Jesus did his thing and didn’t follow him and indeed killed him for doing his thing, and then they live among Christian people for 2,000 years, with more than ample opportunity to see the error of their ways, they keep right on rejecting Jesus.
Okay, so you’re talking about the medieval Catholic Church then? I knew about the witch burnings, obviously, but never realized that they had any association with interpretations of Kabbalah.
chingona: That’s fine. I just don’t think it’s fair to speak as if all Christian children are universally told this story. They aren’t. I hadn’t realized that this version was so widespread; I guess my assumption was that the idea that “Jews killed Jesus” was relegated mostly to Europe since it originated there and I only heard stories about it there. Obviously, that’s a narrow assumption, and I’ve realized it was wrong, but… Well, you can’t think the fundamentalist Christians give an objective rendering of their history, can you? Clearly, it’s going to be whitewashed.
Also, Catholics and Protestants (not to mention all the variations on each) don’t generally consider themselves to be a part of the same movement, and something that the Medieval papal church did would not be interpreted, I would guess by most Protestants in the US, as any part of “our history.” That’s a problem, of course, but just for the record.
“Well, I can see how needing the blood of Christian children to perform religious rituals pretty quickly turns into “witchcraft.”
Is this something that some people still believe?
I was writing while Richard’s comment went up. I could be conflating a little in a way that isn’t historically accurate. Being burned at the stake as a heretic and being burned at the stake as a witch aren’t, technically, the same thing.
oops, sorry, Richard, I just realized I had misread your statement differentiating between the witch burnings and antisemitism wrt “Jewish mysticism.”
Look, I’m sorry, chingona. I… I haven’t learned anything about this since high school, and I learned about Lutherans, Anabaptists, Jews, Muslims, etc. being burned at the stake as heretics. I was never taught this as a specifically Jewish or Christian story. And certainly, my liberal secular education mostly used it as an example of why theocratic political rule is oppressive, and aren’t we glad we have democracy now? So, I suspect we are both talking about this history from far different vantage points.
Our comments are getting offset in a way that it looked like some stuff was in response to things it actually isn’t in response to.
1. I’m admitting to and taking back some conflation that I did. I’m not an expert on this period of history and I mushed some things together that don’t belong together.
2. Yes, lots of people got burned at the stake for all kinds of things. I’m not trying to say that Anabaptists had it easy.
3. I do feel that the religious persecution of Jews was above and beyond that suffered by other groups in Europe because it extended across all strands of Christianity, across all countries and political entities, across centuries.
4. The antisemitism of the medieval Church set the tone for antisemitism as we still experience it and know it today, so it seems to me that it continues to be relevant, even if it seems like ancient history. (It seems to me that the shift from religious to ethnically based antisemitism has some of its roots in the Inquisition, which post-1492 disproportionately targeted conversos, but I’m not sure about that.)
As for whether anyone still believes in blood libel, I have no idea. I thought no one believed in the horns thing anymore, and apparently they do. I’m familiar with an accusation of blood libel in New England in the early 1900s, and Richard mentioned several post-WWII cases in Poland. So it was still around as recently as 50 – 60 years ago.
Kristin, thanks for coming out strong on Alas. I found Dianne’s comment pretty upsetting, but I felt like I had to take about 10 deep breaths and deal with it in good faith lest I come off as … an overemotional Jew.
Kristin: A guy to read who I find really interesting on antisemitism in medieval Europe is Sander Gilman. Two books: Jewish Self-Hatred and The Jews’ Body. There are others, but I can’t think of the titles or authors off the top of my head.
chingona: Heh, yeah, that was a pretty ridiculous comment. Anyway, I thought your response was pretty remarkably restrained.
Richard: I’ll look into the books.
It is a pretty good illustration, though, of why it can be so hard to have a rational conversation about a question like “Is Zionism racist?” Is this person someone who understands the price that Jews have paid for living in the minority but believes ultimately Zionism wasn’t the right response, or is this person someone who believes the mere existence of the phrase “Chosen People” is evidence of Jews’ belief in their own racial superiority (which in turn implies that Jews bring antisemitism upon themselves with their beliefs and actions)?
That’s why I responded the way that I did. The reason I found it upsetting, nonetheless, is the next logical step is that the Jews bring antisemitism upon themselves with their beliefs (as I said in the comment I was writing to Kristin before I saw your last comment).
That stuff is in there. You can find a lot of nasty stuff in most religious texts. I don’t have a lot of patience with Americans who hold up one or two excerpts from the Quran that they saw quoted somewhere as evidence that Islam is inherently violent. My offense isn’t reserved for ignorant comments directed at my group.
And like I said, that’s why I responded the way I did. Do you think I bit her head off? I tried not to.
I’ve fielded questions like that as part of more wide-ranging discussions about religion with people I know in real life and not had the emotional reaction I had to what Dianne wrote. I think it was that she wrote it in response to your critique of the racial superiority aspect of the video that got my hackles up.
As an aside, I suspect that the Jewish experience in the Diaspora has strongly influenced what I think is the dominant view of “chosen-ness.” Certainly the religious part of the settler movement and the Greater Israel types basically take it for granted that the Jewish people are chosen in the sense of favored and superior. But I think a lot of Jews (most Jews?) look at that phrase “Chosen People” in the light of all the tragedies that have befallen us as a people and can’t help but think it might have been better not to be chosen. (I prefer the midrash in which God is holding the mountain over the Israelites myself.)
Well, to me, it did sound like she was trying to explain the “reasonableness” of the video. I dunno… If she were one of my students, I’d have more patience.
chingona: Yeah, I’ve heard people use a few passages from the Qur’an to argue that Muslims are inherently violent as well. Ugh…
And, I mean, who thinks that all religious people literally believe every word included in their religious texts?
I don’t know much specifically about how this stuff is received throughout the Middle East – though the fact that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is so popular there and some other anecdotal evidence I have heard suggests to me that people would find it eminently believable – but I do know that, in Iran, the Zionist conspiracy is taken for granted by every day people with a casualness I have found truly frightening, whether I encountered it directly or heard about it second hand from my wife, who is from Iran and is not Jewish, when she told me about her friends saying it to her when she went back for a visit.
Let me second chingona’s thanks here, Kristin, though I have to say I did not find Dianne’s comment as troubling as you and chingona did. Maybe I am just used to it, but I do see how someone who does not know what “chosenness” means within a Jewish context could read it as signifying a kind of superiority, especially given that other rhetorics of chosenness do in fact signify the kind of superiority Dianne was alluding to. I guess – especially because of her footnotes – I read the question as one of honest ignorance. I also have to say that it is possible, given – for example – the story of God’s command to exterminate the nation of Amalek, even down to their farm animals, as well as some of the other things that the Jews/Israelites do in the Torah, for someone whose selective reading is not malicious, but just partial because it is partial and without a complete context, to conclude that there is within the tradition of Jewish thinking a strand of the kind of racial supremacy that we usually associate, say, with white supremacists.