JACOBS: THE OUTRAGEOUS CLAIM OF CHRISTOPHER JON BJERKNESS: THE JEWISH GENOCIDE OF ARMENIAN CHRISTIANS
By Dr. Steven Leonard Jacobs
Armenian Weekly
January 12, 2010
According to Swiss-born Canadian conspiracy theorist Henry Makow,
author of the antisemitic text Illuminati: The Cult that Hijacked
the World (BookSurge Publishing, 2008), Chicagoan Christopher Jon
Bjerkness is a "scholar who knows what plagues mankind and believes
his knowledge is necessary to stop Armageddon" ().
Bjerkness, who claims "Jewish descent" (?), is the creator of the
website "dedicated to protecting all Jews from
the anti-Semitism and inhumanity of racist Jews." He is the author of
Albert Einstein: The Incorrigible Plagiarist (XTX, 2002, 2,826 pages!),
and the additionally massive 574-page The Jewish Genocide of Armenian
Christians (© 2006, 2007, Enlarged Second Edition), fully available
at his website in PDF format. This paper is a review and analysis of
its contents within the larger question of the ongoing exploitation
of the concept of genocide for other agendas.
Introduction:
It is a mainstay of anti-Semitism and anti-Semites[i] that conspiracy
theories abound, most especially about supposed world-wide Jewish
power and Jewish behind-the-scenes control and manipulation of all
those currently in positions of political, governmental, economic,
and military leadership. This has been very much in evidence since the
beginning of the 19th century with the publication of the notorious
Russian forgery The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a totally
spurious and fraudulent document supposedly telling the story of a
secret midnight cemetery meeting of a group of rabbis at which their
leader spells out their plans in twenty-four "protocols" for world
take-over. And while the Protocols have been successfully refuted
in 1917 in Great Britain, 1934 in Switzerland, and 1993 in Russia,
it continues to maintain a life of its own up to and including the
present-day on websites and in print. (In 1927, in the United States
for example, automobile magnate Henry Ford serialized them in his
newspaper The Dearborn Independent and later republished them in a
four-volume text entitled The International Jew and still available
at these same sites.)[ii]
And, with the advent of the aforementioned technological assistance
of the Internet and the ease of constructing websites, the haters
have proliferated and continue to spew their filth through slick
and professional-looking sites including streaming video, PDF books
and documents, and the like. Indeed, a case could conceivably be
made that the international community of haters–for this is truly
a world-wide phenomenon and not confined to any one geographic
locale–has become "unionized," or, if not unionized, then, at
the very least, networked. One finds much of the same material,
including conspiracy screeds and downloadable and printable copies
of the Protocols, available on many of them.
One such site– is that run by Christopher
Jon Bjerkness (b. 1967) ("B’yerk-ness," though I personally prefer
to pronounce it with a "j") of Chicago, IL, who, according to
fellow traveler Henry Makow, PhD, of Winnipeg, Canada, and author
of the anti-Semitic text Illumnati: The Cult that Hijacked the World
(BookSurge Publishing, 2008), "a scholar who know what plagues mankind
and believes his knowledge is necessary to stop Armegeddon"[iii], and
whose site is "dedicated to protecting all Jews from the anti-Semitism
and inhumanity of racist Jews."[iv] Makow goes on to write:
He [Bjerkness] says a heretical cult, the ‘Shabbatian Frankists,’
controls organized Jewry, including Zionism and Freemasonry…According
to their messianic system, Redemption requires that the Rothschilds
become God, i.e. king of the world. They will see the sacrifice of
2/3 of all Jews and the destruction and enslavement of the rest of
mankind. Bjerkness believes this demented creed actually is the motive
force behind history, including all wars and "world government"…
I [Makow] think he exaggerates the importance of Jewish messianism
but I may be wrong. His message is compelling and consistent with
the Protocols of Zion where the author (whom I believe is Lionel
Rothschild) talks about coming into his "kingdom."[v]
Makow then goes on to cite the central argument from Bjerkness’
574-PDF downloadable (2006, 2007, Enlarged Second Edition) text The
Jewish Genocide of Armenian Christians, to wit:
The ruin of the Turkish Empire and the mass murder of the Armenian
Christians were one step on the long and tumultuous Jewish march toward
the death of mankind. The ruin of the Russian empire was another,
followed by the repeated destruction of Europe, particularly Germany
in the World Wars this Jewish cult [Sabbatian Frankists] created in
an attempt to artificially fulfill Messianic prophecy and force the
Jews of Europe against their will to flee to Palestine. (pg.
66)
It is to this text, then, that we now turn. But before doing so,
however, I quote from another conspiracy theorist Eric Hufschmid
(), long a proponent that the tragedy of September
11, 2001 (9/11) in the United States was a Zionist plot[vi].
I cite the following by Hufschmid to indicate that all is not
uniformly well within the ranks of the haters and conspiracists as
they routinely criticize and attack each other. In an audio file and
transcript dated 23 October 2007, Hufschmid says of Bjerkness:
One man who has been trying for the past year to become known as an
expert on the Armenian genocide is Chris Bjerkness. Bjerkness claims
that he’s a good Jew who opposes Zionism, but as I’ve mentioned in
some of my documents and audio files, the evidence suggests that he
is actually a bad Jew who is secretly supporting some faction within
the Zionist movement.
He provides a lot of information about the Armenian genocide, but he
may be doing so only to lure us over to his side and away from other,
honest researchers. He may also be mixing in a little deception with
his information.
He wrote a book about that genocide, and it’s available for free at
his website, [www.]jewishracism.com. His audio interviews about this
genocide are also available for free at his site.[vii]
There’s nothing wrong with looking at his information, but you should
not trust him….
Bjerkness also provides a lot of evidence that Einstein was a
plagiarist, but this may also be bait to lure us over to his site
and away from other people who were making this accusation years
earlier….
If you think you can trust him, Bjerkness, ask yourself why he has
such a fascination with this Armenian genocide. Why is he struggling so
hard to expose this genocide? Why is he writing such extensive books,
doing so many interviews, and even traveling at his own expense from
his home in Chicago to Glendale, California to give a speech about
the genocide to a group of Armenians?[viii]
He’s spending a lot of his time and money to educate the Armenian
people. He appears to be, as he says, a good Jew who wants to expose
the bad Jews. But what are the chances that this is really what’s
happening? If he really wanted to expose the bad Jews, why doesn’t he
also expose the Holocaust, the Apollo moon landing [which Hufschmid
claims is a hoax.–SLJ], the world wars, and everything else?
Why has he selected only a couple of Zionist crimes to expose? And
why does he imply that the Holocaust really happened as the official
Zionist movement claims?
You might respond that he has simply not had the time to look into
the Apollo moon landing, or the Holocaust, and that he may find the
time to deal with those issues later….
Bjerkness claims to be a highly educated intelligent person with the
ability to analyze Einstein’s theories and show us that Einstein
plagiarized those theories. However, if he’s that intelligent and
educated, he should take about 20 seconds to figure out that the
Apollo moon landing was a hoax, and maybe two minutes to figure out
that the Holocaust is a hoax….
Furthermore, Bjerkness admits to be at least partly Jewish, and if
you have read the book The Jewish Mystique[ix], or read such magazine
articles with titles [such] as "Are Jews Smarter?", then you know that
Jews are smarter than the rest of us. Therefore, a Jew with a college
degree should need only 20 seconds to figure out the Apollo moon hoax.
So why is Bjerkness having so much trouble figuring out the Apollo
moon hoax and the HoloHoax if he has both a college degree and the
superior Jewish intellect?
The only conclusion is that he’s deliberately lying to cover up those
Zionist crimes. He’s a fraud.
Since he protects some Zionist crimes, why should you trust him to
expose any Zionist crimes? I suspect that he is exposing Einstein
and the Armenian genocide only to lure you over to his site and put
himself into the position of "Einstein expert" and "Armenian genocide
expert." If you fall for this trick, you will gather around a Jew
who will tell you what to think about Jewish crimes. Can you see
this trick?
Before I end this audio file, I want to mention that there are a lot
of extremely suspicious fires in Southern California right now. The
last time this happened I told some people that they were probably
set by Zionist Jews, but most people have a difficult time believing
me when I say Zionists would set fires. They can’t understand how
Zionists could benefit from fires.
The answer to this mystery is that they don’t benefit from the fires,
they benefit from the chaos that results…The Zionists would also be
able to take advantage of the chaos by killing some of their critics
who lived near the fire area, or burning down some of their homes
or businesses.[x]
The Jewish Genocide of Armenian Christians:
Chapter One–"Pre-history of the 1915 Genocide"
As noted previously, The Jewish Genocide of the Armenian Christian is
a massive 574-page PDF document available for downloading and printing
from Bjerkness’ website , along with his even more
massive Albert Einstein: The Incorrigible Plagiarist (2,826 pages!).
The text itself consists of four chapters with copious endnotes:
1. Prehistory of the 1915 Genocide (pages 4-183; notes 1-168)
1.1 Introduction 1.2 Jews, Crypto-Jews[xi] and Freemasons[xii]–The
Means 1.3 The Armenian Holocaust and the Battle of Armageddon–The
Opportunity 1.4 From Herzl[xiii] to Malcom, Zionists Betray the
Armenians 1.5 Blotting Out the Armenian Amakites[xiv]–The Motive
2. The Genocidal "Young Turks"[xv] were Zionist Crypto-Jews (pages
184-230; notes 169-188)
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Jews Foment Wars of Extermination and Genocidal Revolutions
2.3 Jewish Bankers Destroyed the Turkish Empire
2.4 Talaat Pasha[xvi], Djavid Bey[xvii], Ataturk[xviii], Etc. Were Jews
3. Rothschild[xix], King of the Jews (pages 231-440; notes 189-346)
3.1 Introduction
3.2 The Rothschild Plan to Take Palestine
3.3 Cabalistic[xx] Jews Calling Themselves Christian Condition the
British to Assist in Their Own Demise–Rothschild Makes an Open Bid
to Become the Messiah
3.4 The "British-Israel" Deceit
3.5 For Centuries, England is Flooded with Warmongering Zionist
Propaganda
3.6 As a Good Cabalist Jew, David Hartley[xxi] Conditions Christians
to Welcome Martyrdom for the Sake of the Jews
3.7 Jewish Revolutionaries and Napoleon the Messiah Emancipate the Jews
3.8 Hitler Accomplishes for the Zionists What Napoleon Could Not
3.9 Zionists Develop a Strategy Which Culminates in the Nazis and
the Holocaust as Means to Attain the "Jewish State"
4. Mordecai Manual Noah[xxii] (pages 441-526; notes 347-352)
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Noah in 1818
4.3 Noah in 1837
4.4 Noah in 1844
Notes
In his first chapter, Bjerkness opens with an affirmation of the
validity of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, argues that
the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) in Turkey was dominated
by crypto-Jews whose agenda was "to establish a segregated ‘Jewish
state’ in Palestine," and to "instigate World War I, slaughter entire
Christian populations, and destroy the Turkish empire and supplant
Islamic religion and culture" (pg. 4). In support of his theses,
he quotes any number of documents, including newspaper articles
primarily from the 1800’s without attributed authorship as well as a
lengthy memorandum from Sir Gerard Lowther (1858-1916) who served as
Ambassador to Turkey and who used his position to spread anti-Semitic
texts throughout the Ottoman Empire. Additionally, again without
attribution, he references, for example, "well-intentioned people"
(pg. 14), "many people" (ibid.), "many persons" (pg. 15). He also
employs such rhetorical devices "it is a well-known fact that" (pg.
16), "it appears unquestionable that" (pg. 17) without any source
citation whatsoever. Early on, he makes the following claim (without
any supportive evidence) which appears throughout the text:
Jewish leaders then placed Adolf Hitler in power in the hopes that
he would chase the Jews of Europe into Palestine. (pg. 20)[xxiii]
Not content with this absurdity, he also rails against "the
Jewish controlled book publishing industry…Jewish controlled
academia…Jewish control of the press" (pg. 24), tropes which are
also included in the Protocols.
Fifty pages into this chapter, Bjerkness argues that "the genocide of
the Armenians the Jews committed through the Turkish Empire was also
intended to create a casus belli [justification/rationalization for
war] in the western world against Islam. The Jews are to this day using
the genocide of the Armenians as a weapon to agitate tensions between
Europe and Turkey so that they can kill off still more Christians
and Moslems" (pg. 50).
To be sure, there were Jews involved in the Committee of Union and
Progress and the Young Turk movement (among them the lawyer Emmanuel
Carasso [1862-1934] of Salonika], far fewer in numbers than others,
and, yes, among them were those who were descendants of the original
Jewish followers of Shabbati Zevi who converted to Islam, the DÓ§nmeh.
But for conspiracists and anti-Semites such as Bjerkness, their
numbers are irrelevant as he suggests that (1) Talaat Bey, (2),
Djavid Bey, and (3) Ataturuk were themselves so-called crypto-Jews
and thus their influence far outweighed their actual numbers. And,
yes, there were some among that same population who did participate
in genocidal activities against the Armenian people as members of the
Turkish military. But they were a decided minority and unrepresentative
of the overall Turkish Jewish community, despite Bjerkness’ claims.
Without evidence, he argues that there were six reasons why the Jews
of Turkey were "motivated" to murder Assyrians:
1. Jews consider the Armenians to be the Amalekites of the Hebrew
Bible, and in Jewish mythology, the Jewish God (sic) commands the
Jews to utterly exterminate the Amalekites down to the last man,
woman and child.
2. The Hebrew Bible, Jewish Talmud and Jewish Cabalistic writings
instruct Jews to murder Christians and to impose the "Noahide Laws"
in the "End Times," which laws forbid Christianity on pain of death,
because Jews consider Jesus to be an idol, and the Noahide Laws forbid
idol worship.[xxiv]
3. Jews wanted to discredit and ruin the Turkish Empire and the
religion of Islam in order to create a secure environment for the
formation of a Jewish colony in the Land of Palestine.
4. Jews wanted to remove an ancient enemy from the region–an enemy
which would oppose the anointment of a Jewish King in Jerusalem as
the crowning of the Anti-Christ.
5. Jews wanted to eliminate a skilled business and political
competitior.
6. Jewish wanted to foment a war between Christians and Moslems,
which would start in the Balkans and grow into a world war which
would destroy many of the empires and monarchies, and which would
artificially pit Moslems and Christians, Slavs and Teutons against
one another and leave the Jews standing in Jerusalem. (pg. 66)
(Needless to say, Bjerkness supplies no supporting evidence for any
of these claims because there is no supporting evidence to be had!)
Such was the supposed power of the Turkish Jewish community at
the turn of the 20th century that they manipulated and corrupted
the Armenian leadership into accepting their own extermination and
further convinced the Kurds of Turkey, some of whom were complicit
in the Armenian Genocide, that they would be rewarded for their
participation in the genocide (pgs. 93-95).[xxv]
Spread through this first chapter, and a staple of Bjerkness’ website
, is his frontal assault on the religion of
Judaism, nowhere more apparent than in the following excerpt:
Judaism creates and perpetuates a culture of racism, war, genocide,
segregation, deceit, theft, exploitation, supremacism, human
sacrifice, etc. The Jewish genocide of the Armenian Christians makes
for a good case study of classical and cultural Jewish racism and
Jewish deception. It demonstrates the highly developed Jewish arts of
genocide, war, control of public opinion to do evil while appearing to
be the victim, scapegoating others for Jewish crimes, etc. (pg. 131).
Thus, essentially, Bjerkness’ text is a retelling of not only the
classical canards of anti-Semitism, but a modernizing of the Protocols
of the Learned Elders of Zion as well, using as its point of departure
the fraudulent claim of the supposed Jewish genocide of Armenian
Christians without any documentation to back up his outrageous claims.
Again, so powerful was this tiny minority in Turkey that they
manipulated the Sultan Abdul Hamid II into believing that the
Armenians were a revolutionary counterforce out to destroy the Empire
(pg. 136). All this to bring about a return of Jews, willingly or not,
back to Palestine.
Chapter 2–"The Genocidal ‘Young Turks’ were Zionist Crypto-Jews"
Chapter 2 continues with more of the same, adding even more explicitly
than in the first chapter that Jews also controlled the League of
Nations (pg. 192), but adding as well that French Emperor Napoleon
(1769-1821) was also "a Zionist put into power by the Jewish bankers"
(pg. 226). Again, his standard trope:
Jewish leaders committed genocide against Armenian Christians,
instigated the Balkan Wars, instigated World War I and destroyed
the Turkish Empire, all so that they could steal Palestine from its
inhabitants. (pg. 201)
Bjerkness again reminds his readers–without documentation–that
both Talaat Bey, the primary architect of the Armenian Genocide,
and Kemal Ataturk were both "crypto-Jews" (pg. 226).
Chapter 3–"Rothschild, King of the Jews"
Chapter 3 begins with two rather nasty assertions: "the slain and
humiliated Jews of Europe were such a sacrifice to the ambitions of
the Zionists," and "the Holocaust was created in order to justify
the formation of an apartheid and racist ‘Jewish state’" (pg. 232);
While blaming the victim has a long and dishonorable history, only
someone whose real agenda couples anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism
would dare to posit such absurdities and totally deny the long history
of anti-Semitism in Western civilization and the historical context
which ultimately led to the Holocaust.
However, Bjerkness’ true goal in this lengthy third chapter is to show
his readers the overwhelming power of the Rothschild banking family,
their "desire to divide America up between Britain and France" (pg.
241), their employment of a "Jewish actor (not true!) named John Wilkes
Booth" to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln (14 April 1865) because
of Lincoln’s opposition to their plans (pg. 242), their ownership of
both "the Pope and Rome" (pg. 257), and other such calumnies.
What Bjerkness does not know and admits is how the Rothschilds came
to such a prominent position of power:
The machinations which brought them into this position remain a
mystery. It is not known who chose them or why. One could speculate
that the Jews have for a very long time perpetuated the myth that
certain families carry with them the royal messianic bloodline of King
David. Wealthy families would have an easy time creating this myth
for themselves. Since there never was a King David, it is difficult
to challenge them, though realistically speaking, Ashkenazi Jews
would have a far more difficult time linking their lineage to Judah,
let alone to King David who never existed, than would Sephardic Jews
who carry with them a stronger genetic tie to the Judeans. (pg. 282)
The only proof that Bjernkness can muster to support his notion of
Rothschild power is the fact that the British Balfour Declaration
of 2 November 1917 was in the form of a letter from the Foreign
Secretary Arthur James Balfour (1848-1930) to Baron Walter Rothschild
(1868-1937), a leader of the Jewish community of Great Britain,
declaring His Majesty’s Government ‘s "declaration of sympathy with
Jewish Zionist aspirations" towards "the establishment in Palestine
of a national home for the Jewish people." (Balfour also noted his
appreciation in the letter that its contents be shared with the
Zionist Federation.)
And while it is apparently true and accurate that the Sultan of
Turkey did put up the area known as Palestine as collateral surety
for a loan advanced by the House of Rothschild in the early 1800s,
possibly amounting to total to $100,000,000 Pounds, nothing ever came
of this financial transaction as far as Palestine was concerned. The
Rothschilds never called in the loan nor collected on the collateral
for breach of promise.
Casting his net even wider than the Rothschilds, Bjerkness also assets
in this chapter than Christianity itself was a plot of the Jews (Shades
of Adolf Hitler who argued that Christianity was perpetrated on German
Aryans and others by Jews as a means to subjugate them into docility!):
Christianity itself was probably nothing but a means to convert the
Romans to Judaism so that the Romans would then restore the Jews to
Palestine and force the Jews back to Judaism, which the Jews had
largely abandoned. After, or as, the Jews were being restored to
Judaism, Jews would then restore the Christians to Paganism. This
appears to be the plan of treacherous Paul, who was born a Jew named
Saul, and who set down this plan in Romans 9-11.[xxvi] The fulfillment
of this plan occurred in the Twentieth Century, when Communism and
Nazism largely destroyed the religion of European Christians and
forced Jews to move to Palestine out of fear. (pg.
330)
And further on, "Christianity itself was a movement to convert Gentiles
to Judaism in the guise of Liberalism, and to take the hatred and
menacing nature of the creator God of the Old Testament out of Judaism
so as to make it more palatable for Gentile consumption" (pg.
344).
Again picking up his tired thread of Hitler and Nazism equally as a
Jewish plot, he writes:
The Zionists put Hitler into power in order to bring about an allegedly
unprecedented human sacrifice (the Jewish genocide of Christian Slavs
under the yoke of Jewish Bolshevism was far worse), which would finally
atone for the Jews’ sins against God, through their own treachery to
the Jewish People…The Jews killed off many of their fellow Jews in
the Holocaust in the belief that they were fulfilling Old Testament
prophecies (for example: Ezekiel 5:12 ["A third of your people will
die of the plague or perish by famine inside you; a third will fall by
the sword outside your walls; and a third I will scatter to the winds
and pursue with drawn sword."], Zechariah 13:8-9 ["In the whole land,"
declares the LORD, "two-thirds will be struck down and perish; yet
one-third will be left in it. This third I will bring into the fire;
I will refine them like silver and test them like gold. They will call
on my name and I will answer them; I will say, ‘They are my people,’
and they will say, ‘The LORD is our God"] ). Their Jewish campaign is
not over and will not end until all assimilated Jews and all Gentiles
are dead. (pg. 338)
Continuing in this vein, he notes that "the numbing pain inspired by
the shocking images of the victimization of the Jews in the Holocaust
has been abused by racist Jews to shield themselves from criticism,
such that their arrogance makes them an open menace which tarnishes
the image of all Jews." (pg. 341)[xxvii]
Likewise, the perpetuation of anti-Semitism itself is part of the
Jewish political agenda towards world take-over:
These Sabbatian/Frankist Cabalistic Dualistic sects among
Jews–including the DÓ§nmeh who committed genocide against the Armenian
Christians–even promoted anti-Semitism–even Blood Libel[xxviii]
accusations–in order to promote their political agendas in an unbroken
chain of revolutionaries from the Frankists to the Marxists to the
political Zionists. (pg. 371)
These DÓ§nmeh who ultimately were responsible for the overthrow
of the Turkish Empire and the genocide of the Armenians, according
to Bjerkness, arose in response to the failure of the Jewish false
messiah Sabbatai Zevi:
Many had predicted that the year 1666 would make the arrival of the
Messiah. For Christians, this meant the second coming of Christ,
for the Jews, the long awaited arrival of the Jewish King. After
the Chmielnicki holocaust[xxix] which some saw as the sacrifice of
masses of Jewish lives as an act of atonement, Shabbatai Zevi declared
himself to be the Jewish Messiah and a large Messianic sect followed
him. He traveled to Palestine, as a good Jewish Messiah would, and
attracted a large Jewish following. While traveling through Turkey,
Shabbatai Zevi was taken prisoner and was forced to feign conversion
to Islam in order to save his life.
A branch of the sabbataian sect of crypto-Jews, called the DÓ§nmeh,
formed in Turkey. They pretended to convert to Islam, but practiced
Judaism in secret. For centuries this sect of crypto-Jewish Turks have
bred subversive crypto-Jewish agents, who have been sent around the
world to prepare the way for Jewish world domination. They created a
secret society in Paris and eventually led a revolt from Salonika. They
were the hidden masters of the "Young Turks" and flooded Turkey with
revolutionary propaganda defaming the Sultan.
Their reach extended across the globe.
The Sabbataians believed that Shabbatai Zevi’s Messianic spirit passed
from one Jewish King to the next in a process of Metempsychosis[xxx].
They argued that the line of David was a dynasty, which would not end
when any given King of the Jews died, but rather the spirit of the
Messiah would leave one body of the Jewish King and enter the next,
sort of like a kosher Dali Lama. In the form of the "Young Turks,"
the DÓ§nmeh eventually succeeded in overthrowing the Sultan, whose
ancestors had shamed Shabbatai Zevi. They also destroyed Turkish
culture and committed genocide against the Armenian Christians. (pgs.
419-420)
Chapter 4–"Mordecai Manual Noah"
This final chapter, after a relatively brief ten-page introduction,
is the reproduction of three of Noah’s discourses (1) "Discourse
Delivered at the Consecration of the Synagogue [K.K. She’erit
Yisra’el) in the City of New York on Friday, the 10th Day of Nisan,
5578, Corresponding with the 17th of April, 1818" (pgs. 451-474);
(2) "Discourse on The Evidences of The American Indians being the
Descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, Delivered before the
Mercantile Library Association, Clinton Hall, 1837" (pgs. 475-499);
and (3) "Discourse on the Restoration of the Jews; Delivered at the
Tabernacle, Oct. 28 and Dec. 2, 1844" (pgs. 500-526).
He does, however, introduce the chapter with the following italicized
comment:
In the Nineteenth Century, an influential American Jew, Mordecai
Manual Noah, spelled out a plan to take Palestine from the Turkish
Empire. Then, as today, well-connected Jews used their money and
influence to corrupt Christian Americans and the American Government
in the hopes that American Gentiles would soldier and slave for the
sake of the Jews. Noah’s plans were successful. (pg. 441)
That Noah himself was personally unsuccessful in his dreams
of a return of Jews to Palestine and his inability to bring the
American Government to use its influence to further his plan is of
no consequence whatsoever to Bjerkness. What matters is that he wrote
about it more than 150 years ago, and, subsequent to him, wealthy and
powerful Jews continue to manipulate America to do Jewish bidding,
and, as always, without concrete reference but always with speculation,
innuendo, and distortion.
Notes
Bjerkness’ 352 endnotes (Chapter 1, #1-#168; Chapter 2, #169-#188;
Chapter 3, #189-#346; Chapter 4, #347-352) are a continuous "piling on"
of various bibliographic citations many, many of which were written
more than 150 years ago, many anonymous journalistic accounts and
letters to the editors of various newspapers without identification
other than the names themselves. Even more, many of the citations as
well as large amounts of the actual text bear no relation whatsoever
to Bjerkness’ central thesis that the Jews were responsible for the
genocide of the Armenians both at the end of the 19th century and early
on in the 20th century by both the Ottoman regime and its successors.
For someone interested in the preposterousness of his claims,
one can only assume that his intent is to inform his readers of
his vast erudition and his intellectual and analytical prowess,
especially those far less informed. Perhaps his fellow conspiracist
Eric Hufschmid is correct after all, " I suspect that he is exposing
Einstein and the Armenian genocide only to lure you over to his site
and put himself into the position of ‘Einstein expert’ and ‘Armenian
genocide expert.’" And other than Henry Makow’s reference to his
Norwegian Jewish maternal grandfather, it is almost impossible to
fine solid biographic data about him other than his Chicago (unlisted)
residence. He appears in neither the databases of the Anti-Defamation
League nor the American Jewish Committee. Who is he and why does he do
what he does remain open-ended questions. Additionally, his website
has no counter of "hits," nor do either of his two downloadable PDF
books. Thus, we have no way of knowing how many may have read all or
part of these texts. Nor do we know in what circles he travels.
Analyses and Conclusions
Fundamentally, The Jewish Genocide of Armenian Christians is a
repackaging of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion with an
even more anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist animus if such is, indeed,
possible. As is the case with all such prejudicial stereotyping,
it bases itself upon relatively small kernels of true facts and then
plays fast and loose with historical data, contextualizes nothing,
and returns again and again to the kinds of conspiracist thinking
which relies on myths, lies, and supposed "secrets" which have long
been the mainstays of haters.
That Bjerkness has not in any way, manner, shape or form proven his
case is close to irrelevant, His intended audiences are those already
committed to anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism and those who simply do not
know but tend to be easily swayed by what looks and sounds like solid
argumentation. And according to all recent surveys both nationally and
internationally, the numbers of such persons are growing. His website
his slick and professional looking; his documents print out easily
and well; his audio files load quickly and are easily listenable.
Among the real tragedies of Bjerkness’ claims and his willingness
to write and lecture about them whenever and wherever he is given
the opportunity is not that Jews find themselves having to confront
one more enemy in a growing list of enemies and one thoroughly at
home with the intricacies of modern technology. It is that some
in the Armenian community, at least on the radio and in person in
California, are willing to provide him forums to spew his filth. For
two communities who have both been the victims of genocide, and who
should be far more actively working to build bridges of trust and
mutual cooperation, Christopher Jon Bjerkness remains a discomforting
and disturbing presence.[xxxi]
Steven Leonard Jacobs, DHL, DD is the Aaron Aronov Endowed Chair
of Judaic Studies at the University of Alabama. Dr. Jacobs’ primary
research foci are in biblical studies, translation and interpretation,
including the Dead Sea Scrolls; as well as Holocaust and genocide
studies. This article is reprinted with permission of the Journal
for the Study of Antisemitism.
———————————– ———————————————
[i] Herein simply defined as hatred and haters of Judaism and Jews,
a careful distinction being drawn between this and anti-Zionism and
anti-Zionists, defined, in this context, as hatred and haters of the
State of Israel and Israelis, though such intellectual subtleties
are far removed from the mindsets of the haters who consistently lump
them together
[ii] See, for example, Ben-Itto, Hadassa, The Lie That Wouldn’t Die:
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (London and Portland: Vallentine
Mitchell, 2005); Bronner, Stephen Eric, A Rumor about the Jews:
Reflections on Antisemtism and the Protocols of the Learned Elders
of Zion (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000); Cohen, Susan, et. al.,
eds, "The Protocols of the Sages of Zion:" A Selected Bibliography
(Jerusalem: Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of
Antisemitism/Hebrew University, 2006); Eisner, Will, The Plot: The
Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (New York &
London: W. W. Norton and Company, 2005); Jacobs, Steven Leonard,
and Weitzman, Mark, Dismantling the Big Lie: The Protocols of the
Elders of Zion (Los Angeles & Jersey City: Simon Wiesenthal Center &
KTAV Publishing House, 2003); Segel, Binjamin W., A Lie and A Libel:
The History of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Lincoln and London:
University of Nebraska Press, 2005).
[iii] Taken from his own website and column of 22
July 2007, "What Every Jew (and Non-Jew) Should Know" and accessed
8 January 2009. Makow (b. 1949), who received his PhD in English
Literature from the University of Toronto, is himself a well-known
conspiracy theorist who sees the world controlled by a secretive and
hidden hand (read "Jews" and "Freemasons") whereby the media stifle
information, democracy is a means of social control, and a central
banking cartel based in London (read ""Rothschild") is pulling the
strings. Makow made his money from the sale and translation of his
board game Scruples, which sold several million copies world-wide.
[iv] Bjerkness, who claims pride in his Norwegian and Jewish heritage
attempts to legitimate himself somewhat in the eyes of his readers
by arguing that he has a "Jewish connection" because his maternal
grandfather, a famous Norwegian musician, was Jewish. Having such a
relative, however, does not do so either in the eyes of the organized
Jewish community or among the network of haters.
[v]
[vi] In a speech in Italy on 17 September 2006, and available on his
website Hufschmid said:
There are also reports of Israelis operating a moving company near
the World Trade Center. Some of those Israelis may have been involved
in installing explosives in the towers. After they were finished,
they went back to Israel…But the evidence is overwhelming that the
attack was conducted by Larry Silverstein, top Israeli officials, and
other Zionists…Nobody has yet figured out who planned and executed
the September 11 attack, but there is overwhelming evidence that
Americans did not do this by themselves. The connection to Israel and
Zionism cannot be overlooked. Actually the Zionists appear to have
been the masterminds…The September 11 attack appears to have been
designed by Zionists in order to create anger towards Arabs. It is
similar to their bombing of the Kind David Hotel in 1946, in which
they tried to make the British angry at Arabs.
[vii] One of those interviewers who appears to support Bjerkness’
view of the Armenian Genocide is Armenian clergyperson Rev. Bedross
Hajian who has conducted several interviews with him.
[viii] The speech was given on 30 July 2007 at the Hye Club Forum in
Glendale, CA, according to the site
[ix] Ernest Van Den Haag. The Jewish Mystique. New York: Stein and
Day, 1977.
[x]
[x i] The term "crypto-Jew" historically refers to Jews who publicly
converted to either Christianity (especially Roman Catholicism)
during the period of the Spanish Reconquista (710-1492) or after the
conversion of Shabbtai Zevi (1626-1676) to Islam in Turkey but who
secretly maintained their adherence to religious Judaism. Bjerkness
is misappropriating the term to argue that a variety of persons
whom he names were, in fact, totally loyal to their "Jewish roots"
as part of their conspiratorial agenda.
[xii] Freemasonry is an historically secretive male crafts
organization (supposedly tracing its roots back to King Solomon’s
Temple in ancient Jerusalem) actually begun in Europe in the 17th
century with international fraternal lodges all over the world. It
has long been a subject of anti-Semites and other conspiracists as
the primary organization plotting world overthrow and control. Jews
have been both welcomed and rejected as members of Masonic lodges,
depending on both historical circumstances and locales.
[xiii] Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), an Austro-Hungarian journalist,
is best known as the "father of modern political Zionism:" and the
author of Der Judenstaat ("The Jewish State"), his call for Jews to
return to their historic land of origin and said to have been written
in response to his experience of public anti-Semitism when covering
the trials of French Jewish Army Captain Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935)
accused of treason by the French in sharing information with Germany.
Dreyfus was later acquitted of all charges and restored to rank.
[xiv] According to the Hebrew Bible (Exodus 17, Numbers 24, and other
references), the Amalekites were the enemies of ancient Israel and
attacked them from the rear (location of women, children and old
people) during their forty-years of wandering in the desert prior to
their return to Palestine/Israel. In the long Jewish journey, Amalek
came to symbolically stand for all enemies of the Jewish people, and
some minority positions within historical Jewish literatures equated
Amalekites with Armenians, but this is decidedly not the view of the
majority of the world’s Jews either historically or contemporarily.
[xv] The "Young Turks" were a late 19th century and early 20th century
coalition of various political movements initially attempting to
reform the government of Turkey while opposing the monarchy of Sultan
Abdul Hamid II. They were, indeed, young as well as progressive and
modernist in their thinking and included among their cohort artists,
intellectuals, and scientists.
[xvi] Mehmet Talat (1874-1921) was one of the original leaders of
the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) which controlled Turkish
politics in the Ottoman Empire during the period of the First World
War, at times serving as Minister of the Interior and Grand Vizier
and was among those primarily responsible for shaping the Armenian
Genocide. He fled to Germany in 1918 and was later assassinated by
Soghomon Tehlirian (1897-1960) in 1921 who was later found innocent
by virtue of temporary insanity having himself survived the genocide.
[xvii] Djavid Bey, former Minister of Finance and former member of
the "Young Turk" movement which overthrew the Sultan Abdul Hamid II
(1842-1918), Bey was later hanged in 1926 by President Kemal Ataturk
for financial and other improprieties.
[xviii] Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (1881-1938) was the first President
of Turkey after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in which he played a
significant military and governmental and diplomatic role. A reformer
by inclination, Ataturk was an admirer of the 18th century European
Enlightenment and sought to transform Turkey into a democratic,
modern, and secular nation-state.
[xix] The Rothschild international banking family began in Germany
with the success of its founder Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812),
whose five sons established banking houses in Frankfurt, Vienna,
London, Naples, and Paris. It remains active today and has long been
a source for the anti-Semites who continue to rail against supposed
Jewish domination of the world’s financial markets as part of the
agenda of global Jewish domination.
[xx] The Kabbalah–usually spelled with a "K" as opposed to a "C"–is
the term for the Jewish mystical and literary religious tradition said
to have been already in evidence in the 2nd century in Palestine,
though contemporary scholars see its rise much later during the
Middle Ages. Its agenda is to discern the meaning of human existence
in concert with the Divine nature of the universe, and its writings
concern themselves with extensive commentaries on the Hebrew scriptures
(Torah) as well as philosophical and theological texts.
[xxi] Non-Jew David Hartley (1705-1757) was both a physician and a
philosopher whose primary text was Observations on Man, his Frame,
his Duty, and his Expectations (1749) and who believed that the mind
was a blank slate but as the human body began to grow, sensations
developed as did associative relationships between mind and body and
ideas themselves.
[xxii] Mordecai Manual Noah (1785-1851), born in Philadelphia, PA,
was a Jewish-American diplomat, journalist, and playwright, who, as
an early Zionist, believed the Jewish people would return to their
ancient homeland. His "Discourse on the Restoration of the Jews"
(1845) spelled out his understanding and called upon the United States
to take the lead in this endeavor.
[xxiii] Not only was Hitler a dupe of the Jews, according to Bjerkness,
but so was Josef Stalin and George W. Bush (pg. 97) as well as the
President of Iran Mahmoud Amadinejad (pg. 169)! Historically as well,
so was Napoleon (pg. 372), American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
(pg. 430), and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (pg.
430) who were either crypto-Jews, Zionists, or manipulated dupes.
[xxiv] Jews do not consider Jesus an idol, but, historically, a false
or failed messianic pretender. The laws themselves, according to
Talmudic tradition, were given by God to Noah to re-establish human
communities after the Great Flood. They included prohibitions against
idolatry, murder, theft, blasphemy, dietary restrictions (specifically
eating flesh taken from a living animal), and the establishment of
a judicial system.
[xxv] Bjerkness also argues that contemporary Jews have manipulated
the Kurds to destroy not only present-day Iraq, but Iran, Turkey, and
Syria with an ultimate goal in the Middle East of "nuclear massacres"
(pg. 177).
[xxvi] Throughout this volume, there are many places where Bjerkness
piles on passages from both the Hebrew Bible and New Testament as
supposed supportive evidence for his claims. In doing so, however,
he shows nothing of their historical contexts, nor how such material
was understood either historically or contemporarily by their religious
communities.
[xxvii] That some Jews, both individually and collectively
organizationally have abused the memory of the Holocaust and its Jewish
victims remains an ongoing source of both sadness and debate with the
organized Jewish communities and the State of Israel. And, yes, some
have exploited the Holocaust as moral capital to justify their actions
or the actions of others as above reproach. Such thinking and behavior,
however, is not above critique. See, for example, specifically with
regard to the State of Israel, Burg, Avraham, The Holocaust is Over:
We Must Rise from Its Ashes (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008);
Segev, Tom, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust
(New York: Hill and Wang, 1993); Zertal, Idith, Israei’s Holocaust
and the Politics of Nationhood (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2005); Israel Studies, 14(1): Spring 2009 Special
Volume "Israelis and the Holocaust: Scars Cry Out for Healing."
[xxviii] Among the most insidious of all anti-Semitic charges of
long-standing in European history and now making its way into the
Middle East has been the lie that prior to Passover, Jews will kidnap
innocent Christian children, murder them, drain their blood and use it
in the making of the matzot, the flat unleavened cakes associated with
the festival. See, for example. Dundees, Alan, ed., The Blood Libel
Legend: A Casebook in Anti-Semitic Folklore (Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1991); Friedman, Saul S., The Incident as Massena:
Anti-Semitic Hysteria in a Typical American Town (New York: Stein
and Day, 1978); and Hsia, R. Po-chia, The Myth of Ritual Murder:
Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany (New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 1988)
[xxix] The Chmielnitzki massacres of as many as 100,000 Polish Jews in
1648-1649 at the instigation of Bogdan Chmielnitzki, Hetman (Leader)
of the Ukrainian Cossacks, occurred during the revolution against
the Polish Catholic nobility. Jews were its indirect victims.
[xxx] Metempsychosis is a philosophical term in Greek referring to the
transmigration of the soul, especially its reincarnation after death.
[xxxi] The recent reluctance of the American Jewish communities, and
in particular the Anti-Defamation League and its Executive Director
and Holocaust survivor Abraham Foxman, to support the passage of US
House Resolution 106 affirming the historical validity of the Armenian
Genocide out of a genuine concern with alienating the State of Israel’s
only Middle Eastern and Muslim ally Turkey who continues to deny this
tragedy as genocidal is a further case in point, one where realpolitik
takes precedence over morality. For a people who continue to insist
on the world’s affirmation of the historicity of the Holocaust and
who continue to argue that anti-Semitism and Nazism (and neo-Nazism)
are far from dead–and correctly so–such recalcitrance is disturbing
to say the least.