From Newsgroup: rec.arts.books
"Bobbie" == Bobbie Sellers <bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com> writes:
Bobbie> On 1/15/25 22:23, Pluted Pup wrote:
Bobbie> When the Protocols were forged by the Russian
Bobbie> secret police under the reign of the Czars the Jews
Bobbie> under Russian control were one of the most mistreated
Bobbie> and suppressed minorities living mostly in the Pale of
Bobbie> Settlement. They were not allowed to own property or to
Bobbie> farm.
What I've read indicates it was a sort of affirmative action
program for Slavs. The Czars wanted to develop an urban middle
class among them, but they couldn't compete with the Jews, so they
tried to suppress them as competitors. They also tried to settle
them as farmers in new lands in the Kuban. Didn't work. The Jews
found ways of getting out of farming and going back to the
commercial activities they were used to.
Bobbie> But an industrious Jew might be hired by the big
Bobbie> landowners to collect taxes which of course were
Bobbie> excessive and the industrious person might profit a
Bobbie> bit. This is called "Tax Farming" but the
Bobbie> Landowner/Nobility/etc. stayed out of sight and the
Bobbie> negative reactions fell on the Jewish tax collectors
Bobbie> and by extension other Jews who did other jobs.
The other jobs included being Simon Legree on the lands of Polish
aristocrats, who mostly just wanted to extract money from the
peasantry so they could do aristocratic things like fighting,
drinking, gambling, chasing women, pursuing court intrigues etc.
The Jews were qualified for the task by their commercial talents
and their lack of fellow feeling for the peasantry. The situation
could get pretty annoying from the peasant's standpoint. E.g., a
lot of the churches were owned by the local aristocrat and when
grandma died you'd have to deal with his unsympathetic Jewish
factor to get the use the church for her funeral. He knew he had
you over a barrel, and used the knowledge.
Not a happy situation.
Apparently, Jews were also heavily involved in the vodka trade,
which had notoriously unfortunate consequences in East Slavic
lands.
Bobbie> If the PoEZ disappeared from the world it would not
Bobbie> make anti-semitism go away since it was endemic in
Bobbie> Europe long before the secret police got a bad idea.
Pretty common outside Europe as well, for example in the Islamic
world. Not, interestingly, in China, where they also have a
commercial culture and admire success. I think there was a
bestseller in China a few years back, a sort of self-help book,
entitled something like "Business Secrets of the Jews."
My favorite example of the somewhat amoral Chinese admiration of
success, by the way, is the Mao Zedong restaurants that serve the
Great Helmsman's favorite foods. He may have killed tens of
millions of Chinese, but he made China a respected power, and he
absolutely dominated her for decades, so these are the foods that
evidently worked for him!
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