Anthony Sutton's Defence of Judeo-Bolshevism: A Rebuttal
Professor Anthony Sutton - author of 'Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution' (1) among many other works on the Soviet Union and communism as well as one the rise of the NSDAP - is a name well-known in anti-communist and patriotic circles. As he is still frequently cited and discussed by those who represent the intellectual challenge on the right to existing power structures: jewish and gentile. The general thrust of Sutton's work is a theme that has become something of a sub-genre of intellectual and popular anti-communism namely the linkage of capitalism as a generally monopolistic entity with the assistance in the creation of communist states.
What is of particular interest to us is Sutton's second appendix entitled 'The Jewish-Conspiracy Theory of the Bolshevik Revolution', which is his short five page rebuttal to those who argued on the traditional lines of Bolshevism being a jewish inspired movement. As Sutton is still widely read and cited I think it is worthwhile responding to Sutton's claims one anti-Communist to another.
Sutton begins his argument by pointing out quite rightly that there was and is an extensive literature in English, French and German arguing the thesis that the Bolshevik revolution was essentially a jewish plot and more specifically he asserts a plot by 'jewish world bankers'. (2) However even here we begin to see the shaky foundations of Sutton's counter argument in that he does not define the points that those he seeks to oppose are using and nor does he differentiate between those who argued - or continue to argue - that Bolshevism was a jewish conspiracy independent of said 'jewish world bankers' and those who interpreted the Bolshevik revolution as part of a 'jewish banker world plot'. (3)
Nor does Sutton distinguish between those who utilize the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion as an intellectual framework to understand this and those who do not (who - like Arthur Keith Chesterton - tend to reject the Protocols en toto): he simply lumps them together as believers in 'an age-old religious struggle between Christianity and the “forces of darkness.”' (4)
One can see in this quoted phraseology a very old philo-Semitic canard in the implicit assertion that those who believe in - what Nesta Webster called - the 'jewish world menace' are merely religious bigots. This particular assumptions dates back at the very least to the seventeenth century if not earlier and was a particular favourite of the late nineteenth century's philo-Semitic and later twentieth century left-wing authors.
The assumption behind the logic is very simple in that it asserts that because jews are allegedly a purely religious group (a-la Judaism) anything negative said or later written about jews in either a cultural or racial context is de facto replacement religious bigotry. This is, of course, laughable as it presumes that Judaism is a confessionally-based religion - which it is not but is rather based on a biological caste system - and that jews stop being jews when they become say Christians and that all those who attack them are therefore merely attacking religious preference under various different abstract names. It fails to take into account the fact that you do not get an 'atheist Catholic', 'Islamic Hindu' or a 'Pagan Mormon' but that you do get 'Jewish Catholics', 'Jewish Hindus' and 'Jewish Mormons' (and in significant numbers I might add).
Thus there is something very distinct and different about jews and Judaism that cannot be simply transliterated across to 'religious confession' as Sutton and his many confrères would have it. That very distinct and different something is the fact that Judaism is a biologically-based/caste-based religion. (5)
Thus Sutton's rebuttal is already showing distinct signs of problematic a priori reasoning: however to not seem unkind to Sutton let us ignore his rather disquieting over-generalization of his opponents.
Sutton points out correctly that one finds - in the 1920s in particular - a surprisingly diverse number of people who purported a direct link between jews and Bolshevism including many who were in positions of authority and influence at an international level. Sutton to his credit picks a good - if overused - example of this in Winston Churchill's famous 1920 article 'Zionism versus Bolshevism' in the Illustrated Sunday Herald.
Sutton rightly summarizes Churchill's argument in that Churchill - basing himself off Nesta Webster's 'Secret Societies and Subversive Movements' and her earlier work 'The French Revolution' - drew a clear distinction between 'national jews' (who he styled as patriots) and 'international jews' (who he styled as being atheist revolutionaries). I disagree with Churchill's summation in the sense that I don't think you can arbitrarily assign jews to specific categories in terms of loyalty and religious conviction as we know of numerous cases where a jew was religious and not an alleged patriot, an atheist and an alleged patriot and also where jews fought against the Bolshevisation of Russia (albeit largely against other jews).
Sutton criticises Churchill for suggesting that with the exception of Lenin - who is now generally agreed to have been part-jewish - the 'majority of the leading figures of the revolution were jewish' and asserts without qualification that this is 'contrary to fact'. (6) However while this is a slight overstatement: it is not 'contrary to fact' as Sutton claims as jewish over-representation on the Tsentral'nyj Komitet (Central Committee) was massive for example in 1918 there were four jews out of fifteen members (five if you include Lenin) (7) (i.e., roughly thirty-three percent) and for comparison in the same committee before the October Revolution (i.e., during the Provisional Government/Kerensky epoch) we have six jews out of twenty-one members (seven if you include Lenin) (again roughly thirty-three percent). (8)
Now while we are talking about numbers of jews in the Central Committee it is important to stress that while numbers do often act as a general guide to scale of influence within an organisation: they never tell the whole story. In this case the fact there wasn't a jewish majority in the Central Committee either before or after the Bolshevik revolution is very deceptive as it doesn't take into account the unofficial power structure within the Russian Social Democratic party before, during or after this particular point in time.
One very obvious point should be raised in that most of the names that appear on the Central Committee at this time were largely transient and do not significantly figure in later Bolshevik history - either abroad or domestically - nor does this recognise that there are several major Bolshevik figures who do not appear in the Central Committee at this time. Three very obvious examples of non-included Bolsheviks are Maxim Litvinoff, Adolf Joffe and Karl Radek: all of whom were major figures in Bolshevik diplomacy and attempts to spread the 'revolution' until their deaths. (9)
Sutton doesn't mention either of these figures despite their obvious relevance to his charge of jews not being the major guiding force behind the Bolshevik revolution, which is an obvious weakness in his argument that in neglecting to mention it: he in fact endorses its destructive capacity for his counter-argument. In that if we have major Bolshevik figures who were jewish who were involved in October revolution in no small capacity who Sutton does not mention - yet obviously knows about (as Sutton was an academic specialist on Soviet Russia this would be unconscionable) - and tries to ignore then it suggests that their mention is fatal to his argument. This is indirectly suggested by Radek's own later joke that Stalin was comparable to Moses in that he (Stalin) takes jews out of the Communist Party rather than out of Egypt. (10)
Further the numbers of jews in the Central Committee who were not transient figures in the history of Bolshevism speak for themselves.
In the 1917 Central Committee we have:
Lenin (¼ Jewish)
Bukharin (Non-Jewish)
Dzerzhinsky (Non-Jewish) (11)
Zionviev (Jewish)
Kamenev (Jewish)
Sverdlov (Jewish)
Stalin (Non-Jewish)
Trotsky (Jewish)
(Or fifty percent jewish if we exclude Lenin)
In the 1918 Central Committee we have:
Lenin (¼ Jewish)
Bukharin (Non-Jewish)
Dzerzhinsky (Non-Jewish)
Zionviev (Jewish)
Sverdlov (Jewish)
Stalin (Non-Jewish)
Trotsky (Jewish)
(Or forty-three percent jewish if we exclude Lenin)
We can see by this breakdown of those who are not more transient figures in the history of Bolshevism then jews were actually a far more powerful element than at first might have appeared was the case. We may particularly note that Trotsky was - in addition to his later reputation - one of the most important Bolshevik makers and shakers at this point in history being both one of the best Social Democratic Marxist theoreticians (his major rival in this field was Bukharin), ideologues and also a leader waiting in the wings having already played a central role in a nearly successful and heavily jewish revolt against the Tsar in 1905. (12)
If we further point out that at this time Stalin was a relative non-entity in terms of influence; in spite of his later massive influence and political influence machine, (13) and that of the rest (with the exception of Lenin as their leader): Dzerzhinsky, Zionviev and Sverdlov were the strongest in terms of influence (14) then it becomes clear that what we are dealing with is in fact - if not in terms of absolute numbers - a jewish-run Russian Social Democratic Party before, during and after the October Revolution of 1917.
Thus it is not 'contrary to fact' as Sutton asserts to argue that the 'majority of leading figures were jewish' as it is clear that this was in fact the case as Figes confirms. (15) It is also clear from Sutton's own thesis that he understands the scale of jewish influence, but seeks in the tradition highlighted by Erich Haberer (16) to knowingly minimize it while yet mentioning its factual basis.
For example Sutton in his own thesis describes the leadership and power structure of the propaganda apparatus of the nascent USSR in 1918 thus: (17)
John Reed, Louise Bryant, Albert Rhys Williams, Robert Minor, Philip Price, Jacques Sadoul
(Field Operatives)
Reported Into
Boris Reinstein
(Bureau of International Revolutionary Propaganda)
Reported Into
Karl Radek
(Press Bureau)
Reported Into
Leon Trotsky
(People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs)
Now in the above power structure it is immediately obvious that there is something odd in play if we recognise that the 'field operatives' of the Bureau of International Revolutionary Propaganda were non-jewish socialists, Marxists and assorted fellow travellers: however their immediate superior Boris Reinstein was an American jew of Russian origin who had publicly espoused socialist beliefs since the early years of the twentieth century and who also served as a bomb-maker for various anarchistic and socialist causers. (18) Reinstein's immediate superior was the famous jewish Bolshevik - and later Comintern advisor to the KPD - Karl Radek, while Radek's immediate superior was none other than the infamous arch-jewish Bolshevik Leon Trotsky himself.
It thus clear that while Sutton is keen to try and discredit the thesis of Judeo-Bolshevism: his own discussion of the pertinent facts indicates that same broad conclusion of the direct link between Communism and the jews at this point in world - and more specifically Russian - history. After all what can Sutton say to the fact that he himself describes an overtly jewish power structure without acknowledging its obviously jewish leadership pedigree and then yet asserts that the argued link between jews and Bolshevism is 'contrary to fact'.
We may further point out that at the time that Churchill wrote his 1920 article there was a very wide variety of credible eye-witness testimony (which is actually still used to this day by specialists on the subject), (19) official documentation and news reports confirming just this scenario. (20) Thus it is rather asinine for Sutton to assert that Churchill's point about jews and the Bolshevik revolution was 'contrary to fact' as according to the facts as Churchill would have understood them what he said was the lord's honest truth and of all the things Churchill was and was not: he was not either a time-traveller or telepathic. He cannot be expected to know everything that Sutton knows from the intervening sixty years worth of research!
The fact that Churchill was broadly correct factually speaking is neither here nor there in the balance of things precisely because what matters is the facts available to a person at a given time: not so much what we find out years afterwards.
Sutton also criticises Churchill's argument on the latter's contention that jewish businesses and interests were not confiscated and jewish places of worship were not attacked by the Bolsheviks. Here Sutton is on much firmer ground in that jewish businesses and interests were routinely confiscated by their fellow Bolshevik members of the tribe and also there - as I have intimated several times in the past - was a visceral war between religious and atheist jews (21) to the extent that those jews who tended to flee to the West at this early juncture were the religious - not the atheist - ones.
The atheistic jews; like the jewish anarchist theorists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman only began fleeing to the West when they had all but lost the 'battle of ideas' (i.e., jewish egoistic competition on the national; and then later the international, stage) with their Bolshevik kin and the victorious sect - the Bolsheviks - finally acquired the method and means to persecute deviating left-wing heretics to the victorious 'Red October'.
However once again Sutton is criticising Churchill for not having access to far later information and I would reiterate that at the time when Churchill wrote: what he stated as truisms were just that. However subsequent research has shown that many of the details believed at the time were in fact incorrect: although again we do know of memoirs and cases which suggest that Churchill's position did have a significant grounding in fact. (22) Sutton does not mention any exceptions of the kind although he is likely to have known - or to have guessed - that they existed at the time of his writing this attack on the Judeo-Bolshevism thesis.
That said Sutton's claim that Bolshevism did not suit jewish interests (23) is quite absurd even at the time that he wrote it precisely because it has long been an established and undisputed fact that jews at this time were in the middle of a highly politicised split between those who advocated absolute assimilation (socialism and communism) and those who advocated jewish racial nationalism (Zionism) with all sorts of different shades of grey in-between. (24)
That Sutton does not recognise this is something of an intellectual conundrum unless we acknowledge that much of Sutton's 'problem' with the suggestion of the centrality of jews to Bolshevism and many later Communist movements is rooted in his lack of understanding of what a jew is. Sutton clearly assigns this a purely confessional religious connotation (25) however this in itself informs us that Sutton knows little about what he is writing and while he has expert knowledge of Soviet Russia: he is something of a mattoid (26) when it comes to speaking of jews as his mistake is not only elementary, but it's unsoundness destroys the credibility of his arguments against the Judeo-Bolshevism thesis as his premise for arguing against it is simply wrong.
Clearly Bolshevism - and Marxism in general - did suit jewish interests at this time as if this was not the case then the number of jewish involved as a proportion of major Marxist and Bolshevik theorists and the like should not have nearly been as high as it was. It is after all next to impossible to discuss the Bolshevik revolution and the Communist parties that affiliated to it through the Third International without discussing the highly visible roles that a considerable number of different jews played in it throughout the years.
To paraphrase Figes: it is not that a majority of jews were Bolsheviks, but rather that so many high-ranking and influential Bolsheviks were jews that concerns us and forms the core of the Judeo-Bolshevism hypothesis.
As I have pointed out above although Sutton may seem to wish to ignore the role jews played and just treat them as individual actors in a generalized socio-political context - as he seems to - then he is pointedly and 'unscientifically' (to use his parlance) ignoring the importance of understanding each individual actor's specific socio-political context and the necessary analysis of any patterns that arise from that. Sutton's objection on this score is probably - to be fair to him - less to do with meaning to downplay jewish involvement than applying a top-down approach to history (i.e., making fact fit theory) rather than my own preferred bottom-up (micro-historical) approach to the subject which stresses the need to understand the facts before theorizing and then altering your theory to take into account all the facts (not only a select few).
Sutton goes on to point out that Churchill argues - and he again he should have mentioned Churchill's citation of Nesta Webster's work as that is what Churchill is drawing on - that the 'international jews' are (part of') 'a sinister conspiracy' against gentiles for all the (alleged) things that gentiles have done wrong to them.
Of course this is all rather third hand and the insertion of the 'gentiles being nasty to jews' point is purely Churchill's and is not drawn from Webster's original work. However Churchill - again to put his argument in its intellectual and factual context - probably drew this claim from popular accounts of the Bolshevik revolution, which not infrequently included accounts of how the jews were reaping their revenge against the Russian aristocracy and people for 'centuries of oppression'. (27)
This idea of the 'oppressed jew' - which gained so much intellectual currency largely thanks to the jewish historian Simon Dubnow's two multi-volume magnum opuses on jewish history - was at this time in the intellectual ascendant alongside the competing - although partially compatible - narrative of the jew as the 'demon behind the curtain' in world history and as such Churchill combines the two warring positions with each other to synthesize the image of the eternally persecuted jew who has in turn - and then especially - turned on his persecutors and is reeking a terrible and bloody revenge on non-jews in the former Russian Empire.
The idea that jews are an international 'sinister conspiracy' against the West is an one of ancient pedigree dating as it does from the ancient and classical worlds where jews really did conduct gigantic conspiracies more than once to try and conquer the world in the name of Yahweh (on every occasion we know about an alleged Messiah had turned up). It does in itself in specific instances have much to recommend it as a method of explaining jewish behaviour and has owed its long-lasting career to its simplicity, ability to explain major events in history without needing a detailed understanding of them and also to the utilitarian ability to use it as an intellectual 'get out of jail free card' so that it is not one's fault that one was voted out of office or failed to get elected: it was a jewish conspiracy.
That said of course there are very real conspiratorial events undertaken by jews to serve their interests - the Israel Lobbies can be partially explained as several parallel or one united partial conspiracy - the attack on Paul Findley - for example - can certainly be explained as one as can the cover up of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in 1967.
However the problem comes - as before intimated - in the idea of the united conspiracy across the ages which is next to impossible to cogently track and has often been the subject of wild and unreasonable conjecture as Revilo Oliver noted in his famous speech 'Conspiracy or Degeneracy?'
This problematic theory in combination with Nesta Webster's popular theory of the Bavarian Illuminati surviving and flourishing after their exposure and breaking up serves as the intellectual backdrop from what Churchill is talking about. In a strictly intellectual sense Sutton is right to criticise it: however in doing so he forgets that Churchill was not a true exponent of this theory and his attention would have been much better spent in studying Webster's work or her less famous German intellectual doppelgänger Friedrich Wichtl who was writing at the same time and was just as detailed in his work - if not more so - as Webster was in hers. (28)
By not offering this vital context and criticising Churchill rather than Webster or Wichtl: Sutton is essentially choosing the path of intellectual least resistance and challenging the tacit believer in a given theory rather than the theorist themselves. We can see this in the fact he engages Churchill and later Henry Wickham Steed (a British former World War One propagandist, nationalist writer and modern artist) as archetypes of their position rather than debating the main theorists of that position: it is in many respects rather like going all out to debunk your local Christian minister rather than addressing the arguments of those from whom he derives his arguments. It is an intellectual cop-out on Sutton's part and I am sure as a man of great learning in his field he understood and recognised this when he wrote his short critique of the Judeo-Bolshevism thesis.
This lack of placing Churchill's comments in their historical and intellectual context comes to a boil when Sutton accuses Churchill of arguing - quite correctly I might add - that 'Zionism and Bolshevism are competing for the heart of the Jewish people' while being 'preoccupied' with the role of the Jew in the Bolshevik Revolution and the existence of a 'worldwide Jewish conspiracy'. (29)
What Sutton is trying to say in somewhat garbled fashion here is that Churchill is not so concerned about Zionism, but rather sees Bolshevism as an international danger that must be stopped at all costs. Sutton implies this is an inconsistent view by alleging by implication that Churchill should have focused on both Zionism and Bolshevism to be consistent with his thesis about a 'worldwide Jewish conspiracy'.
However the lack of context is damning here precisely because - as Sutton should have noted when talking about the distinction between 'national' and 'international' jews Churchill draws - he tells us that Churchill is drawing only in part on Nesta Webster's 'Secret Societies and Subversive Movements' in that he - unlike Webster - believes Zionist jews to be 'national jews' (or the better class of jew in Churchill's opinion) and Bolshevik jews to be 'international jews' (or the worse kind of jew in Churchill's opinion).
The 'international jewish conspiracy' that Churchill talks about is not a Protocols of Zion type scenario where all jews are controlling the world or trying to in a mass conspiracy, but rather a smaller much more compact part of jewry that is seeking to bring about an atheistic communist world-order via the medium of Bolshevism in Russia and the - then fresh and frequently jewish led - (30) attempted Marxist revolutions in other countries. (31)
What Churchill sees in the article is more or less what jewish academic anti-Communist Frank Meyer saw when he wrote about the centrality of dedicated cadre to the Communist international cause and how these often jewish individuals were trained to act and operate. (32) This argument of Churchill's is largely derived from the literature of the time (33) and is an accurate characterisation of how Marxist groups operated before, during and after the Bolshevik revolution of October 1917. (34) To wit: that Marxist parties aligned with the Third International were part of a disciplined, conspiratorial attempt to spread the Bolshevik revolution around the world.
Churchill's opposition to Bolshevism stems from three basic factors that Sutton does not mention:
A) Religion in so far as Churchill was a devout - if rather pedestrian - Christian and - like many at the time - could not sympathize with a revolution that was not only devoutly atheist, but also engaged in possibly the single largest destruction of religious infrastructure since the Edict of Theodosius.
B) Class in that Churchill was an aristocratic scion of the Duke of Marlborough (also called Winston Churchill) and as such under a Bolshevik-style government he would not only lose everything he possessed as part of the hated bourgeoisie, but also quite probably his life as many French and Russian aristocrats had learned to their cost within living memory.
C) Patriotism in that Churchill - for better or for worse - was a devoutly jingoistic partisan of the British Empire and as such held fairly extreme views on how it was a force for good in the world and that it was its great burden to bring civilisation to all the corners of globe. Bolshevism directly undermined this by demanding the so-called 'emancipation' of all 'oppressed workers' and asserting that this bringing of civilisation was in reality nothing more than a conspiratorial rationalisation for the capitalistic exploitation of less advanced civilisations and peoples.
Thus Bolshevism flew in the face of everything Churchill believed and held dear.
In direct contrast Zionism did not (35) in so far as the jews had been strong partisans of Britain during the Great War and we even have some evidence to suggest that the perfidious Balfour Declaration of 1917 (which must always be seen in the hypocritical context of the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 [to carve up the Ottoman Empire between Britain and France] and British promises to the Arab rebellion under Prince Faisal and T. E. Lawrence [better known as 'Lawrence of Arabia']) was in fact a direct bribe to the jews of North America to prod President Wilson - (36) along with the assistance of the 'false-flag' Zimmerman telegram - into - what Donald Day styled as, singing 'Onward Christian Soldiers' as he sent American youth to their deaths in a war that was not their own let alone anything to do with them per se (after all the Allies were simply desperate having slaughtered a large proportion of their own men). (37)
Zionism was to Churchill a 'national movement' of the jews that if nurtured - he thought - would become a useful British client kingdom in the Middle East allowing the British Empire to have a secure base from which to dominate the region and potentially also disrupt and later attack French hegemony in Lebanon and Syria. Churchill's thought on this score was not something to be viewed as unusual among conservative politicians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as Joseph Chamberlain famously offered the Zionist movement the opportunity to colonise Kenya as a 'new Israel' rather than the then Ottoman province of Palestine.
This also famously nearly split the Zionist movement right down the middle as here was an offer of territory, but yet that territory wasn't the alleged jewish homeland of history. The homicidal jewish chemist Chaim Weizmann led the opposition to the proposal, while the more imaginative and less hidebound jewish author and novelist Israel Zangwill led the charge for Chamberlain's proposal. (38)
This is a historical lesson that anti-jewish activists today should remember in that jewry is no monolith and that if the jews are prone to one thing above it all: it is being argumentative. Causing jews to fight amongst themselves is a relatively easy to thing to do and the modern foe of all things jewish must utilize this historical tool to best advantage if they wish to succeed against the modern incarnation of the jewish problem.
If we thus place Churchill's support of Zionism and opposition to Bolshevism in symbiosis with each other it is clear that once again the three factors of Churchill's life come into play as a reflection of each other. With Churchill's religious views giving support to Churchill's messianic personal justification of Zionist ideas and policies (while feeding Churchill's religious opposition to Bolshevism), while Churchill's class would benefit from the success of Zionism as it would lead jews away from 'atheistic Bolshevism' and thus diminish the threat of Bolshevism - in Churchill's view - to his personal possessions, status and life. Patriotism meanwhile gave Churchill his realpolitik and rationalising justification for his support of Zionism (in creating a British client kingdom of jews in an unstable part of the world) while also feeding his anti-Communism by Bolshevism's well-known opposition to the 'colonial mission' of the West in civilizing the world (so-to-speak).
Sutton thus creates a false dilemma by asserting that Churchill's two views on Zionism and Bolshevism are contradictory as in the sense understood by Churchill's thought process - which is made manifestly obvious by actually reading Churchill's article - they are quite literally a case of 'good jews' fighting 'bad jews' for the soul of the jewish people and either the 'national jews' would win and all would be right with the world or the 'international jews' would win whence the world would be doomed.
This, of course, once again synthesizes the two rival views of jewish history at this time with the element of the negative, grasping jew taking vengeance (the 'international jew') taken from the anti-jewish historical tradition and the put upon, exploited jew who only wants to be left alone and contribute to the world (the 'national jew').
So therefore there is simply not contradiction in Churchill's thought as Sutton's claims by implication but it is rather an apparent figment of Sutton's imagination.
Sutton then gives us a historical anecdote from the aforementioned Henry Wickham Steed - a British publicist and author - who was a long and somewhat trenchant critic of the jews until he - like so many critics of jews in the same period - got proverbial cold feet during the anti-jewish ripostes of the 1930s and publicly repudiated his views. (39)
Sutton correctly quotes Steed's earlier second set of memoirs to the effect that in March 1919 Steed happened to meet the famous Colonel Edward House who - according to Steed - (40) was disturbed over Steed's vocal and article criticism of the Bolshevik Revolution and most particularly the jewish role in it. House was at this time arguing for the opening up of economic relations with the Soviet Union (which is the partial subject of Sutton's book and a generally large gap in the scholarly literature on the Soviet Union) as a rational economic power (one is reminded of Lenin's famous aphorism [I paraphrase slightly] that the Communists will hang the Capitalists with the rope the latter sell them) while Steed was arguing - as was commonly done at the time - (41) that the Bolshevik revolution had been brought about by jewish and German interests which was now being used for the purpose of bring about a world controlled by jews.
Once again the intellectual debt of Steed to Webster's 'Secret Societies and Subversive Movements' is clear in that this precisely the argument that Webster makes where she asserts that an atheist jewish world order - facilitated by what she called 'Judeo-Masonry' - would rise out of the ashes of Russia if action was not taken to check it. Steed's argument focused on the role of Jacob Schiff and Max Warburg: both famous jewish financiers happily basking in the self-fostered legend - much as did the even more famous Rothschild family - of their own power in world affairs.
It is here that Sutton decides once again to create a strawman argument by citing only two pieces of evidence for the view propounded by Steed - i.e., that jewish financiers had had a major hand in assisting the Bolsheviks in the takeover of the former Russian Empire - and Churchill none of which are cited by Churchill, Steed, Webster or Wichtl. Sutton's citation of the State Department file (42) is correct from what I can ascertain: however in his analysis of the document we see what can only be described as Sutton's irrationality when it comes to the matter of jews and Bolshevism.
Sutton claims after a rather short and dismissive paragraph about the role of jewish financier in funnelling money to the Bolsheviks that 'the report ends with a barb at “International Jewry” and places the argument within the context of a Christian-Jewish conflict backed up by quotations from the Protocols of Zion.' (43)
There are three very fundamental things that are incorrect in this caricature of an argument from Sutton in that:
A) It bears no evidential weighting or bearing other than on the side of the argument the individual was on whether the author of the report entitled 'Bolshevism and Judaism' fired a 'barb' at 'International Jewry' or not. In much the same that it doesn't detract from the evidential value of a Bolshevik agent's telegrams who denounces the 'bourgeoisie' in them. We have to consider the evidence itself before we proceed to speculate on the man or woman who authored that evidence: Sutton fails to do this and thus argues ad hominem not around the evidence.
B) The idea that the report places the argument in the 'context of a Christian-Jewish conflict' is a misrepresentation precisely because every report that came out of Russia at this juncture tended to do this: precisely because those who were doing the reporting lived in a Christian frame of reference so as such the atheistic war on religion that was going on in Soviet Russia at this point - and the preponderance of jews within the Bolshevik and revolutionary ranks in general - would have never not have been interpreted in as a jewish-led attack on Christianity as that was more or less precisely what it was. To assert otherwise is to try to and abstract the simple meaning from the evidence in order to avoid having to state it quite so bluntly as I have just done.
C) The report doesn't contain any references - direct or otherwise - to the 'Protocols of Zion' let alone any direct 'quotes' as Sutton alleges. This is a falsehood on his part and particularly odious precisely because Sutton alleges these to have been 'included' in a 1918 report when the English translation of the Protocols of Zion only occurred in 1919 and even Sutton would have had to know the texts intimately to even spot two very dissimilar translations: one allegedly authored by an English journalist lately arrived from Russia and one by a Russian in America one year earlier (bearing in mind the Protocols themselves were circulating in several different forms at this time). (44)
Clearly Sutton was neither an expert on the Protocols not was Sutton being particularly honest!
Sutton dismisses the explanatory power of this document by citing another State Department file which gives a series of telegrams in late 1919 between the American Embassy in London and the State Department in Washington D.C. (45) Sutton claims that these 'disprove' the document: however he once again misrepresents their contents as the documents clearly state that the official in London had 'no proof' of the allegations of jewish transactions to Lenin, Trotsky and Bolsheviks, but that he was 're-investigating'. However in his next cable the author doesn't actually state or even imply that these reports are wrong as he merely states that it is 'unwise' to give publicity to these claims, which suggests (looking at the whole diplomatic exchange rather than two small pieces of it) that what the official in London is saying is not that the report 'Bolshevism and Judaism' is wrong - as Sutton implies - but rather that - as he sees it - there is no firm evidence to back it up he can find and thus it would be unwise to publicize (as it is clearly politically incendiary).
In Sutton's next and last piece of quoted evidence he cites another State Department document that he claims is a 'review of a translation of the Protocols of Zion' (46): however immediately we note two very fundamental things wrong with Sutton's alleged picture.
A) The State Department document is from 1913 rather than 1919 (when the Protocols was being widely and properly translated having gained evidential currency through the First World War, the Bolshevik Revolution and the aftershocks of both events) and thus according to Sutton is reviewing an at best fringe and at worst utterly obscure piece of work that for unknown reasons has been 'translated' into a foreign language (presumably English) and then has been judged for unstated reasons to be so much of interest to US Intelligence that a review of it was necessary for the intelligence files of the United States. I suspect Sutton made a typing error and meant 1919, but I cannot prove it so thus I am forced to assume he did really mean 1913.
B) The report makes no mention of the Protocols of Zion and instead talks of 'definite evidence that Bolshevism is an international movement controlled by jews', which is actually referring to the correctly perceived domination of jews in the power politics of the early Soviet Union. The notion of communications passing from jewish leaders in Europe and North America is a bad misreading of the context once again as the 'jewish leaders' mentioned are not the 'Wise Men of Zion' but rather the radical leaders of Europe and North America who were disproportionately jewish and even if they were gentile they were frequently perceived as such both by the population at large and the intelligence services. (47)
Sutton then opines that the references in the communication chain to 'letters intercepted from various groups of international Jews setting out a scheme for world domination' would potentially provide support for the 'unsubstantiated hypothesis' of Judeo-Bolshevism if the letters could be located and authenticated. (48)
Once again however Sutton's reading of the evidence is heavily skewed by his a priori argumentation in so far as Sutton does not realise that the references to these letters is simply a reference to the much ink spilled between revolutionary and general subversive organisations across Europe and North America about the Bolshevik revolution and as such is not so much evidence for a 'Protocols of Zion' type scenario, but does indirectly point out the inherent truthfulness of the Judeo-Bolshevism thesis by indirectly informing us of what we can independently verify: the revolutionary movement across Europe and North America was at this time heavily dominated and influenced by jews.
This is the simpler and less assumption-based hypothesis that Sutton does not seem to even consider as for him everything is related to the conspiratorial activity of monopolistic bankers and capitalists as evinced by Sutton's own pseudo-Marxian comment at the end of his attack on the Judeo-Bolshevism thesis that 'the real operators' were deliberately diverting attention onto the jews as a re-generated form of 'medieval prejudice'. (49)
As I have before stated this is a nonsensical attitude as the jews were very clearly involved in the creation, enfranchisement and sustenance of the Bolshevik revolution and to assert that rather than this being the case: it was 'controlled' by faceless 'real operators' is an appeal to mystery and as such has intellectual value as it cannot explain all that happened after one to two years of the USSR's existence.
Thus Sutton's appendix attacking the thesis of Judeo-Bolshevism can be said to be not only incorrect, but actually misrepresenting evidence, lacking in vital contextual information, selectively quoting evidence and also reasoning from a conclusion reached a priori.
So having thus dissected Sutton's attack on anti-Semitic anti-Communism: we can leave it on side as a debunked attempt to discredit the Judeo-Bolshevism thesis.
References
(1) Anthony Sutton, 1981, 'Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution', 1st Edition, Veritas: Morley
(2) Ibid., p. 185
(3) As succinctly if somewhat indirectly pointed out by Albert Lindemann, 1988, 'Anti-Semitism: Banality or the Darker Side of Genius?', Religion, Vol. 18, pp.183-195
(4) Sutton, Op. Cit., p. 185
(5) Emmanuel Feldman, 1998, 'On Judaism: Conversations on being Jewish in Today's World', 2nd Edition, Shaar Press: New York, pp. 269-270
(6) Sutton, Op. Cit., p. 185
(7) Specifically Zionviev, Sverdlov, Sokolnikov and Trotsky. On Lenin's jewishness see Albert Lindemann, 1997, 'Esau's Tears: Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews', 1st Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York, p. 432
(8) Specifically Zionviev, Kamenev, Sverdlov, Sokolnikov, Trotsky and Uritsky.
(9) Robert Service does an excellent job of tracking their subversive activities, in Robert Service, 2011, 'Spies and Commissars: Bolshevik Russia and the West', 1st Edition, MacMillan: London.
(10) Lindemann, 'Esau's Tears', Op. Cit., p. 452
(11) There are one or two internet talking-heads who like to claim Felix Dzerzhinsky was jewish, but this is not the case as none of his biographers mention this (he was a Polish nobleman) and no reputable authority on the period mentions this either. It seems to very much be a figment of their imagination although I don't doubt I will abused again for poking a pin in their dearly held personal belief systems. For a summary discussion of this allegation see Ibid., pp. 433-434.
(12) Ronald Segal, 1979, 'The Tragedy of Leon Trotsky: Traitor, Hero or Prophet?', 2nd Edition, Hutchinson: London, pp. 65-73
(13) Simon Sebag Montefiore, 2008, 'Young Stalin', 1st Edition, Phoenix: London, pp. 349-350
(14) Ibid., p. 358; Sverdlov was particularly powerful before his early death per Helen Rappaport, 2009, 'Ekaterinburg: The Last Days of the Romanovs', 1st Edition, Random House: London, pp. 104-105
(15) Orlando Figes, 1997, 'A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924', 1st Edition, Random House: New York, p. 696
(16) Erich Haberer, 2004, 'Jews and Revolution in Nineteenth Century Russia', 2nd Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York, p. xi
(17) Sutton, Op. Cit., p. 107
(18) www.buffalonews.com/spotlight/article628584.ece
(19) A large number of transcribed English language oral histories from this period of Russian history are held at the University of California's Bancroft library's Oral History Centre and are accessible to the general public on application and appointment.
(20) Some examples are Carl Ackerman, 1919, 'Trailing the Bolsheviki: Twelve Thousand Miles with the Allies in Siberia', 1st Edition, Charles Scribner's Sons: New York; Viscountess Snowden, 1920, 'Through Bolshevik Russia', 1st Edition, Cassell: London; William Daniel, n.d. (prob. 1919/1920), 'Russia: 1918: Bolshevism in Practice', 1st Edition, Self-Published: Stockport and James Houghteling Jr., 1918, 'A Diary of the Russian Revolution', 1st Edition, Dodd, Mead and Company: New York.
(21) Segal, Op. Cit., pp. 45-46
(22) For example Moses Gurwitsch, Dora Wirth (Trans.), n.d., 'The Autobiography of a Russian Jew', 1st Edition, Self-Published: Liverpool, pp. 86-87
(23) Sutton, Op. Cit., p. 186
(24) For an informative summaries see Haberer (Op. Cit.) or Lindemann ('Esau's Tears', Op. Cit.).
(25) Sutton, Op. Cit., p. 189
(26) I.e., a genius at one thing, but an idiot at another but because of the genius of his main area of expertise he is taken as a genius in other areas he wishes to comment on.
(27) For example Viscountess Snowden, Op. Cit., pp. 27-28
(28) Friedrich Wichtl, 1921, 'Weltfreimaurerei, Weltrevolution, Weltrepublik', 8th Edition, J. F. Lehmanns Verlag: Munich (The work went through eight editions in three years having been originally published in 1919.)
(29) Sutton, Op. Cit., p. 186
(30) On this see Ruth Gay, 1992, 'The Jews of Germany: A Historical Portrait', 1st Edition, Yale University Press: New Haven, pp. 240-242
(31) This kind of fear is well characterised in Howard Sachar, 2002, 'Dreamland: Europeans and Jews in the Aftermath of the Great War', 1st Edition, Vintage: New York, pp. 291-296
(32) Frank Meyer, 1961, 'The Moulding of Communists: The Training of Communist Cadre', 1st Edition, Harcourt, Brace and World: New York, pp. 3-6
(33) For example see R. M. Whitney, 1924, 'Reds in America', 1st Edition, Beckwith Press: New York.
(34) David Kirby, 1998, 'The Origins of the Third International', pp. 15-26 in Tim Rees, Andrew Thorpe, 1998, 'International Communism and the Communist International 1919-1943', 1st Edition, Manchester University Press: Manchester
(35) See Martin Gilbert, 2007, 'Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship', 1st Edition, Henry Holt: New York.
(36) Sachar, Op. Cit., pp. 32-33
(37) John Mosier, 2001, 'The Myth of the Great War: A New Military History of World War One', 1st Edition, Profile: London, pp. 303-306
(38) Meri-Jane Rochelson, 1992, 'Review of Joseph H. Udelson: Dreamer of the Ghetto: The Life and Works of Israel Zangwill', AJS Review, Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 120-121
(39) Margaret MacMillan, 2002, 'Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World', 1st Edition, Random House: New York, p. 80
(40) I cannot find any reference to this meeting in the published papers of Colonel House: however it more than likely did occur as it 'reads right' as they say.
(41) For example Donald Thompson, 1918, 'Donald Thompson in Russia', 1st Edition, The Century Co.: New York, pp. 166-167
(42) US State Department Archive Box/File 861.00/5339
(43) Sutton, Op. Cit., p. 187
(44) On this see Cesare de Michelis, 2004, 'The Non-Existent Manuscript: A Study of the Protocols of the Sages of Zion', 1st Edition, University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln.
(45) Sutton, Op. Cit., pp. 187-188
(46) Ibid., p. 188
(47) A good example is Karl Liebknecht who was probably not jewish, but never-the-less has a known possible jewish ancestor.
(48) Sutton, Op. Cit., pp. 188-189
(49) Ibid., p. 149