Problem Management — examples
Anti-Semitism

The following is religious in nature, but doesn't require any specific religious beliefs to understand. It originally appeared in 9 March 1998 in the alt.conspiracy newsgroup in response to a question about why there is so much hostility toward Jews.

The truth is that anti-semitism is an essential tool of the greatest conspiracy the world has ever known.

It's easy to prove by comparing biblical and historical sources (even without having any personal religious views), and there are a number of booklets available on the subject, but most people have a hard time believing it, and even for those that do, accepting it enough to change their own lives seems nearly impossible.

Every Christmas, Easter, etc. we read newspaper articles about how these christian holidays have taken on the trappings of paganism. In fact the exact opposite is what happened.

That of course is the big conspiracy, of which hundreds of millions of people, all calling themselves christians, are unwitting participants.

These pagan festivals have actually existed for thousands of years. As the original christianity spread through the Roman empire during the late first and early second centuries, it gradually became a threat to the existing religious and political powers. Since the actual rituals and ceremonies practiced by the pagan churches weren't terribly important or fixed (a pagan god doesn't really care whether you call her Ishtar or Mary, or care whether the statue's face is that of Apollo, Constantine, or Jesus), the existing pagan churches began adding elements of the new christian religion to their own practices.

The ancient Egyptian image of the madonna and child was easy to label as Mary and Jesus, Saturnalia was easy to celebrate as Jesus's birthday, and Easter as his death memorial using some of the Passover rituals. And declaring Sunday to honour God's son instead of honouring the sun god was trivial. People really didn't care what things were called, just so long as they could still have their annual festivals. The large number of such transformations is amazing. In all cases though it was the pagans who accepted the christian trappings, and not the christians who accepted the pagan trappings as is commonly thought.

The Bible records that Jesus, and all his disciples for many decades after his crucifixion, continued following God's commandments and holidays. They celebrated Passover, the Feast of Tabernacles, etc., honoured the seventh-day sabbath, ate only clean meats, and followed the various other rites, rituals, etc. of the church of God. This is all recorded in any decent encyclopedia, even the Catholic Encyclopedia.

Now, if people are brought up with the idea that Jews and their practices are evil, this becomes a very powerful tool for the pagan powers.

Almost all of the writings available from the first few centuries were written by the Romans, so it is from their perspective that we see how things developed. We see the remnants of the original christian church referred to by such terms as Judaic practisers who are condemned for their heresies (i.e. practicing christianity).

Whenever branches of the small true christian church emerge, as they have continually done for nearly two thousand years, they can easily be dismissed as Jewish (a dirty word that instantly springs to mind at the mere mention of most of their practices), without ever being considered seriously.

Even protestant reformers, who were able to see much of this, could not bring themselves to go all the way. For instance, Martin Luther (a major anti-semite himself) rejected many of the Roman practices, yet even though he realized that the seventh day was God's sabbath he refrained from attempting to move it from Sunday since he realized that most people would not accept such a change and would rebel and accuse him of being Jewish.

And that (finally we get to the point of all this), is why it is so important that the nominal christian be anti-semitic, and why it is so important that despite everything that has happened to them over the centuries that the Jewish culture remain intact. Without Jews to hate, it might be possible for true christianity to emerge and take over from Roman paganism.