The Committee of 300 is a conspiracy theory [1] that claims a powerful group was founded by the British aristocracy in 1727 and rules the world. [2] Proponents of the theory alleging the Committee's existence believe it to be an international council that organizes politics, commerce, banking, media, and the military for centralized global efforts.
The theory dates to a statement made by German politician Walther Rathenau in a 1909 article, "Geschäftlicher Nachwuchs", in Neue Freie Presse : [3] [4]
Three hundred men, all of whom know one another, guide the economic destinies of the Continent and seek their successors from their own milieu.
In context, Rathenau was actually deploring the oligarchic implications of this statement, and did not suggest that the "three hundred" were Jewish. However, by 1912, Theodor Fritsch had seized upon the sentence as an "open confession of indubitable Jewish hegemony" and as proof that Rathenau was the "secret Kaiser of Germany". The idea became more popular after World War I, and the spread of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion . Rathenau addressed the issue in a 1921 letter, stating that the three hundred referred to were leaders in the business world, rather than Jews. [5]
After Rathenau's assassination in June 1922, one of his assassins explicitly cited Rathenau's membership in the "three hundred Elders of Zion" as justification for the killing. [6]
Arthur Cherep-Spiridovich wrote that the group may also be known as the "Hidden Hand", which is headed by the Rothschild family of international financiers and based loosely around many of the top national banking institutions and royal families of the world. [7] This version of the conspiracy theory claims that the Rothschild family are merely a part of the club and not the leaders. [8]
The Committee of 300 is the main antagonist of the Science Adventure multimedia series. [9]
Antisemitism has increased greatly in the Arab world since the beginning of the 20th century, for several reasons: the dissolution and breakdown of the Ottoman Empire and traditional Islamic society; European influence, brought about by Western imperialism and Arab Christians; Nazi propaganda and relations between Nazi Germany and the Arab world; resentment over Jewish nationalism; the rise of Arab nationalism; and the widespread proliferation of anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist conspiracy theories.
Walther Rathenau was a German industrialist, writer and politician who served as foreign minister of Germany from February to June 1922.
The Rothschild family is a wealthy Ashkenazi Jewish noble banking family originally from Frankfurt. The family's documented history starts in 16th-century Frankfurt; its name is derived from the family house, Rothschild, built by Isaak Elchanan Bacharach in Frankfurt in 1567. The family rose to prominence with Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744–1812), a court factor to the German Landgraves of Hesse-Kassel in the Free City of Frankfurt, Holy Roman Empire, who established his banking business in the 1760s. Unlike most previous court factors, Rothschild managed to bequeath his wealth and established an international banking family through his five sons, who established businesses in Paris, Frankfurt, London, Vienna, and Naples. The family was elevated to noble rank in the Holy Roman Empire and the United Kingdom.
The Zionist occupation government, Zionist occupational government or Zionist-occupied government (ZOG), sometimes also called the Jewish occupational government (JOG), is an antisemitic conspiracy theory claiming that Jews secretly control the governments of Western states. It is a contemporary variation on the centuries-old belief in an international Jewish conspiracy. According to believers, a secret Zionist organization actively controls international banks, and through them governments, to conspire against white, Christian, or Islamic interests.
Hundreds of conspiracy theories about Freemasonry have been described since the late 18th century. Usually, these theories fall into three distinct categories: political, religious, and cultural. Many conspiracy theories have connected the Freemasons with worship of the devil; these ideas are based on different interpretations of the doctrines of those organizations.
Nesta Helen Webster was an English author who revived conspiracy theories about the Illuminati. She claimed that the secret society's members were occultists, plotting communist world domination, through a Jewish cabal, the Masons and Jesuits. She blamed the group for events including the French Revolution, 1848 Revolution, the First World War, and the Bolshevik Revolution. Her writing influenced later conspiracy theories and ideologies, including American anti-communism and the militia movement.
Antisemitism in Japan has developed over the years despite the presence of a relatively small and obscure Jewish population. Japan had no traditional antisemitism until nationalist ideology and propaganda began to spread on the eve of World War II. Before and during the war, Nazi Germany, an ally to the Japanese, encouraged Japan to adopt antisemitic policies. In the post-war period, extremist groups and ideologues have promoted conspiracy theories.
Major-General Count Arthur Cherep-Spiridovich was a major-general in the Imperial Russian Navy and an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist, who moved to the United States following the Bolshevik Revolution. He was a White Russian monarchist, and additionally he was heavily involved in Pan-Slavism, anti-Semitic activism, and various chivalric orders and cultural organizations, especially in the White Russian diaspora community in America. He is perhaps best known for authoring a book titled The Secret World Government, or, "The Hidden Hand" (1926), which presents his conspiracy theory that the world is being clandestinely governed by a group of 300 individuals of "Judeo-Mongol" ancestry.
George Shanks (1896–1957) was an expatriate Briton born in Moscow and was the first translator of Protocols of Zion from Russian into English. He was also a founding member of Radio Normandy. George Shanks was the son of Henry Shanks, a well-known British merchant who resided in Moscow. Henry Shanks managed the family firm of Shanks & Bolin, Magasin Anglais established by his father James Steuart Shanks in 1852. As a result of the Russian Revolution of 1917, the family lost their business and home and were forced to return to London. It is believed that the translation was completed during this period in London. His identity was not discovered until 1978; initially, it was believed that Victor E. Marsden was the translator, as his name came to be associated with the British English language translation of the Protocols in pamphlet or booklet form soon after he died in 1920.
Jewish Bolshevism, also Judeo–Bolshevism, is an antisemitic and anti-communist conspiracy theory that claims that the Russian Revolution of 1917 was a Jewish plot and that Jews controlled the Soviet Union and international communist movements, often in furtherance of a plan to destroy Western civilization. It was one of the main Nazi beliefs that served as an ideological justification for the German invasion of the Soviet Union and the Holocaust.
Antisemitic tropes, also known as antisemitic canards or antisemitic libels, are "sensational reports, misrepresentations or fabrications" about Jews as an ethnicity or Judaism as a religion.
The Judeo-Masonic conspiracy is an antisemitic and anti-Masonic conspiracy theory involving an alleged secret coalition of Jews and Freemasons. These theories are popular on the far-right, particularly in France, Turkey, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Russia, Serbia, Eastern Europe, and Japan, with similar allegations still being published.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a fabricated text purporting to detail a Jewish plot for global domination. Largely plagiarized from several earlier sources, it was first published in Imperial Russia in 1903, translated into multiple languages, and disseminated internationally in the early part of the 20th century. It played a key part in popularizing belief in an international Jewish conspiracy.
Currency Wars, also referred to as The Currency War, is an essay by Chinese author Song Hongbing. Originally published in 2007, it gained a resurgence in 2009 and has been described as a prominent exponent of a recently emerged genre labeled "economic nationalist" literature. Some people accused the book of spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories. The premise of the book is that Western countries are ultimately controlled by a group of international bankers, which, according to Song, runs their central banks. It uses the claim that the Federal Reserve is a private body to support its role.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a fabricated antisemitic text purporting to describe a Jewish plan to achieve global domination. The text was fabricated in the Russian Empire, and was first published in 1903. While there is continued popularity of The Protocols in nations from South America to Asia, since the defeat of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan in World War II, governments or political leaders in most parts of the world have generally avoided claims that The Protocols represent factual evidence of a real Jewish conspiracy. The exception to this is the Middle East, where a large number of Arab and Muslim regimes and leaders have endorsed them as authentic. Past endorsements of The Protocols from Presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat of Egypt, Iraqi President Arif, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, and Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi of Libya, among other political and intellectual leaders of the Arab world, are echoed by 21st century endorsements from the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Ekrima Sa'id Sabri, and Hamas, to the education ministry of Saudi Arabia.
The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews is a three-volume work of pseudo-scholarship, published by the Nation of Islam. The first volume, which was released in 1991, asserts that Jews dominated the Atlantic slave trade. The Secret Relationship has been widely criticized for being antisemitic and for failing to provide an objective analysis of the role of Jews in the slave trade. The American Historical Association issued a statement condemning claims that Jews played a disproportionate role in the Atlantic slave trade, and other historians such as Wim Klooster and Seymour Drescher concluded that the role of Jews in the overall Atlantic slave trade was in fact minimal.
Ernst Werner Techow was a German right-wing assassin. In 1922, he took part in the assassination of the Foreign Minister of Germany Walther Rathenau, whose insistence that Germany follow the terms of the Treaty of the Versailles, along with his Jewish faith, enraged far-right German nationalists. After his release from prison, Techow initially joined the Nazi Party, but soon fell out with the movement and dropped into obscurity. Late in World War II, he joined the Volkssturm. Techow was killed after being captured by the Soviet Red Army near Dresden on 9 May 1945.
Jan Udo Holey, and often known by his pen name Jan van Helsing, is a controversial German author who embraces conspiracy theories involving subjects such as world domination plots by freemasons, Hitler's continuing survival in Antarctica following World War II, the structure of the earth as hollow, and others. His theories draw from sources such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Economic antisemitism is antisemitism that uses stereotypes and canards that are based on negative perceptions or assertions of the economic status, occupations or economic behaviour of Jews, at times leading to various governmental policies, regulations, taxes and laws that target or which disproportionately impact the economic status, occupations or behaviour of Jews.
The international Jewish conspiracy or the world Jewish conspiracy has been described as "one of the most widespread and long-running conspiracy theories". Although it typically claims that a malevolent, usually global Jewish circle, referred to as International Jewry, conspires for world domination, the theory's content is extremely variable, which helps explain its wide distribution and long duration. It was popularized in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century especially by the antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Among the beliefs that posit an international Jewish conspiracy are Jewish Bolshevism, Cultural Marxism, Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory, White genocide conspiracy theory and Holocaust denial. The Nazi leadership's belief in an international Jewish conspiracy that it blamed for starting World War II and controlling the Allied powers was key to their decision to launch the Final Solution, which culminated in the Holocaust.