Europa: The Last Battle | |
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Directed by | Tobias Bratt |
Written by | Tobias Bratt |
Produced by | Tobias Bratt |
Edited by | Tobias Bratt |
Release date |
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Running time | 12 hours [1] |
Country | Sweden |
Language | English |
Part of a series on |
Antisemitism |
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Category |
Europa: The Last Battle is a 2017 [2] English-language Swedish ten-part [3] neo-Nazi propaganda film [11] directed, written, produced, and edited by Tobias Bratt, [12] a Swedish far-right activist associated with the Nordic Resistance Movement, a European neo-Nazi movement. [13] [14] It promotes antisemitic conspiracy theories, many in relation to World War II including Holocaust denial. [8] The film has been promoted across multiple social media platforms by individual users, particularly white nationalists and other conspiracy theorists. [9] [13]
Europa: The Last Battle promotes various antisemitic conspiracy theories, claiming that Karl Marx was part of a centuries-long plan by Jews to spread communism and take over the world [1] [15] and that Jews control the world's money supply [8] and are conspiring to engineer the downfall of the white "Aryan" race by encouraging immigration and interracial relationships. [5] It includes out-of-context quotes from Marx and Moses Hess's book Rome and Jerusalem to promote the idea that Jews are behind the evils of the world, and claims that Stalin supposedly having Jewish wives proves that Jews were controlling him. [15]
The film also engages in historical revisionism to claim that Jews started World War I and II as part of a plot to establish Israel by provoking the Nazis into acting in self-defence. [3] [16] [17] It also claims that Jews caused Germany's defeat in World War I, which is commonly referred to as the stab-in-the-back myth, and that Adolf Hitler was fighting against a global Jewish plot. [16]
Gregory Davis, a researcher at the United Kingdom-based anti-racism group Hope not Hate, said the film "denies the proven reality of the Holocaust whilst providing justifications for the violent antisemitism that fuelled it", adding, "Its mix of blatant falsehoods and slanted portrayal of real events gives it no historical legitimacy whatsoever, and it serves only to demonise the Jewish people and whitewash the crimes of the Nazi regime." [8]
The film has been promoted by white supremacists [2] [18] [19] and antisemitic conspiracy theorists, [2] [20] the British conspiracy newspaper The Light [21] and QAnon conspiracy theorists on Telegram. [25] It has also been shared on platforms such as Instagram, [13] BitChute, [4] Rumble, [26] TikTok [8] [15] and the Telegram chat of Disclose.tv, [7] a German disinformation outlet with a following that includes Holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis. [7] [27] [24] YouTube and Facebook have blocked the film from being uploaded, but links to the film on other sites can be shared. [13]
As of June 2023, Twitter was running advertisements for major brands such as Disney, Microsoft and ESPN next to tweets from verified users sharing long clips from the film. [9] [10]
Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against, Jews. This sentiment is a form of racism, and a person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Primarily, antisemitic tendencies may be motivated by negative sentiment towards Jews as a people or by negative sentiment towards Jews with regard to Judaism. In the former case, usually presented as racial antisemitism, a person's hostility is driven by the belief that Jews constitute a distinct race with inherent traits or characteristics that are repulsive or inferior to the preferred traits or characteristics within that person's society. In the latter case, known as religious antisemitism, a person's hostility is driven by their religion's perception of Jews and Judaism, typically encompassing doctrines of supersession that expect or demand Jews to turn away from Judaism and submit to the religion presenting itself as Judaism's successor faith—this is a common theme within the other Abrahamic religions. The development of racial and religious antisemitism has historically been encouraged by the concept of anti-Judaism, which is distinct from antisemitism itself.
A number of organizations and academics consider the Nation of Islam (NOI) to be antisemitic. The NOI has engaged in Holocaust denial, and exaggerates the role of Jews in the African slave trade; mainstream historians, such as Saul S. Friedman, have said Jews had a negligible role. The NOI has repeatedly rejected charges made against it as false and politically motivated.
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.
Salvador Borrego Escalante was a Mexican journalist and historical revisionist writer.
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.
Historians continue to study and debate the extent of antisemitism in American history and how American antisemitism has similarities and distinctions with its European counterpart.
Antisemitism, the prejudice or discrimination against Jews, has had a long history since the ancient times. While antisemitism had already been prevalent in ancient Greece and Roman Empire, its institutionalization in European Christianity after the destruction of the ancient Jewish cultural center in Jerusalem caused two millennia of segregation, expulsions, persecutions, pogroms, genocides of Jews, which culminated in the 20th-century Holocaust in Nazi German-occupied European states, where 67% European Jews were murdered.
Antisemitism has long existed in the United States. Most Jewish community relations agencies in the United States draw distinctions between antisemitism, which is measured in terms of attitudes and behaviors, and the security and status of American Jews, which are both measured by the occurrence of specific incidents. FBI data shows that in every year since 1991, Jews were the most frequent victims of religiously motivated hate crimes. The number of hate crimes against Jews may be underreported, as in the case for many other targeted groups.
Antisemitism in Canada is the manifestation of hatred, hostility, harm, prejudice or discrimination against the Canadian Jewish people or Judaism as a religious, ethnic or racial group.
British Jews have experienced antisemitism - discrimination and persecution as Jews - since a Jewish community was first established in England in 1070. They experienced a series of massacres in the Medieval period, which culminated in their expulsion from England in 1290. They were readmitted by Oliver Cromwell in 1655. By the 1800s, an increasing toleration of religious minorities gradually helped to eliminate legal restrictions on public employment and political representation. However, Jewish financiers were seen by some as holding disproportionate influence on British government policy, particularly concerning the British Empire and foreign affairs.
The Right Stuff is a neo-Nazi and white nationalist blog and discussion forum and the host of several podcasts, including The Daily Shoah. Founded by American neo-Nazi Mike Enoch, the website promotes Holocaust denial, and coined the use of "echoes", an antisemitic marker that uses triple parentheses around names to identify Jewish people.
BitChute is an alt-tech video hosting service launched by Ray Vahey in January 2017. It describes itself as offering freedom of speech, while the service is known for hosting far-right individuals, conspiracy theorists, and hate speech. Some creators who use BitChute have been banned from YouTube; some others crosspost content to both platforms or post more extreme content only to BitChute. Before its deprecation, BitChute claimed to use peer-to-peer WebTorrent technology for video distribution, though this was disputed.
The claim that there was a Jewish war against Nazi Germany is an antisemitic conspiracy theory promoted in Nazi propaganda which asserts that the Jews, framed within the theory as a single historical actor, started World War II and sought the destruction of Germany. Alleging that war was declared in 1939 by Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist Organization, Nazis used this false notion to justify the persecution of Jews under German control on the grounds that the Holocaust was justified self-defense. Since the end of World War II, the conspiracy theory has been popular among neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers.
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.
The Goyim Defense League (GDL) is an American neo-Nazi, antisemitic hate group and conspiracy theory network of individuals who are active on social media websites and operate an online video platform called GoyimTV. The GDL also performs banner drops, papering neighborhoods with flyers, and other stunts to harass Jews. The GDL emerged in 2018 and is led by the antisemitic provocateur Jon Minadeo II. The GDL is currently tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group.
Logically is a British multinational technology startup company that specializes in analyzing and fighting disinformation. Logically was founded in 2017 by Lyric Jain and is based in Brighouse, England, with offices in London, Mysore, Bangalore, and Virginia.
Disclose.tv is a disinformation outlet based in Germany that presents itself as a news aggregator. It is known for promoting conspiracy theories and fake news, including COVID-19 misinformation and anti-vaccine narratives.
Jon Eugene Minadeo II also known as Handsome Truth, is an American antisemitic conspiracy theorist, neo-Nazi, white supremacist, indophobe, and former rapper. He is the leader of the antisemitic hate group and conspiracy theory network Goyim Defense League (GDL). He is known for his video platform GoyimTV, banner drops, and his distribution of neo-Nazi propaganda.
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Antisemitism on social media can manifest in various forms such as emojis, GIFs, memes, comments, and reactions to content. Studies have categorized antisemitic discourse into different types: hate speech, calls for violence, dehumanization, conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial.
The link to the antisemitic documentary Europa: The Last Battle, a 12-hour film that among other claims asserts that Jews created communism with a goal of 'total world domination', has been shared multiple times in the chat, sometimes multiple times per day.
But last week, the underlying antisemitic content that GhostEzra had always been pushing came to the fore in a series of posts on their Telegram channel that left no doubt about just how extreme the account was. It began by promoting the neo-Nazi film "Europa – the Last Battle" a 10-part film that claims Jews created Communism, and deliberately started both world wars as part of a plot to found Israel by provoking the innocent Nazis, who were only defending themselves.
For example, the antisemitic and neo-Nazi film Europa – the Last Battle (2017), a 10-h film which is banned from YouTube, is found across several Bitchute channels.
The "flat_earth_truther_6_million" account has 17 video posts of the film "Europa: The Last Battle," a neo-Nazi revisionist film that paints Jewish people as conspiring the downfall of the white "Aryan" race through encouraging immigration and interracial relationships...
By May 20, he was posting links to neo-Nazi propaganda film "Europa: the Last Battle" and to the Wikipedia page for "crypto-Judaism."
Some share outright neo-Nazi propaganda, encouraging others in the Telegram chat to watch Europa - The Last Battle.
Films viewed by the NRM in such sessions include the Swedish-produced antisemitic propaganda miniseries, Europa – the Last Battle, which praises Hitler and claims that Jews started both World Wars, and Dennis Wise's revisionist film, Adolf Hitler: The Greatest Story Never Told.
In the QAnon channel, a poster opines that "The power of the mainstream media is waning ... People are instead finding alternative media sources ... Real people, not algorithms, are sharing documentaries like Europa: The Last Battle ...". These information sources are respectively an anti-Semitic revisionist history of WWII...
Similarly, in the group for Disclose.tv, a sketchy news aggregator site that began as a paranormal and conspiracy theory forum, users shared links to other channels filled with neo-Nazi propaganda.
Piper and Thomas found what they described as "hate speech and Holocaust denial" flourishing in Disclose.TV's groups on the Discord app and Russia-based messaging service Telegram.