Methods of Prosperity

“A man who is diligent in his business shall stand before kings, not before common men.”

– Proverbs 22:29.

Last week on Methods of Prosperity:

The industrial revolution disrupted old ways of life. Hyperinflation hit Germany’s fiat currency. Hatred of the Jews contributed to growing unrest. Populists needed someone else to blame. Anti-Semitism had existed for centuries. Now economic inequality added more fuel to the fire. The Nazis exploited anti-Semitism to gain power in Germany. In March 1938, Hitler sent German troops into Austria without a declaration of war. The Austrian government collapsed. The Nazis annexed Austria into Germany. The invasion faced little resistance. Consensus agreed it was a complete action. Six weeks in, and the Nazis arrested over 70,000 Jews. It was only the beginning of the persecution of Austria’s Jews. In 1935, enacting of the Nuremberg Laws deprived Jews of German citizenship. Marriage and sexual relations between Jews and Germans was illegal. One family was too important to kill. They financed the Austrian monarchy. Now they faced confiscation of their property and persecution by the Nazis. The Austrian head of this family was Louis Nathaniel von Rothschild. The Nazis arrested him and held him captive in Vienna.

The following is Methods of Prosperity newsletter number 18. It was originally deployed October 19, 2023. As of June 27, 2024, original subscribers have received up to issue number 54 (Sir Richard Branson, continued).

TL;DR

Conspiracy theories are often rooted in misinformation. They’re irrational beliefs stemming from poor judgment. Justified belief renders information immune to criticism. You draw conclusions based on perceived authority rather than evidence. Creationism is an example. Believers accept it as fact based on religious authority. Some believe in conspiracy theories without seeking alternative explanations.

The Rothschild family has been a frequent target of such conspiracies. Nazi propaganda depicted them as manipulative and greedy financiers. This is an anti-Semitic narrative. The Nazi regime propagated this narrative through films and media. This contributed to widespread anti-Jewish sentiment.

Zionism is the cause for the establishment of a Jewish homeland. The Rothschilds played significant roles in various domains throughout history. Zionism in particular. Palestine was a territory not a people group. Edmond de Rothschild supported early Jewish settlements in Palestine during Ottoman rule. This paved the way for modern Israel.

The family’s legacy extends beyond their financial endeavors. They’re no longer perceived as the wealthiest individuals on planet Earth. Today, conspiracy theories about the Rothschilds and others continue to proliferate. Hence the persistence of such irrational beliefs.

Key Lessons:

• Understand historical context.

• Recognize irrational thought.

• Question everything.

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Conspiracy theories are irrational. You can usually trace them back to a particular source of misinformation. If a person wants to accumulate wealth, chances are slim for that person if he or she has poor judgement. That is, lacking the discernment of sorting fact from fiction. Understanding factual information isn’t enough. How is the factual information slanted?

Notice that my words are not about “who” is the source of misinformation. That’s a thing called justified belief. Justified belief refers to a concept in epistemology. You believe a thing to be true because it’s supported by justifiable reasons. Justified beliefs are often seen as preferable to unjustified beliefs. To the untrained mind, you’re unaware of a subtle error.

If you conflate belief with knowledge, your information is immune to criticism. Justified belief draws conclusions about unobserved cases from observed ones. You base your conclusions based upon who the information comes from, or by what authority.

For example, creationists believe that God created the heavens and the earth. They believe God created the first humans, Adam and Eve. Some believe that a supernatural being also created dinosaurs. Creationism is the idea that the designer of all biological adaptations is God. Why not a wizard? Theories of that form are bad explanations. Unless supplemented by hard-to-vary specifics, they don’t address the problem. You can’t claim that “a wizard did it.” But why not?

This logic poses a dilemma. Was the wizard, or God, there already? That would serve no explanatory purpose. Why not claim that the biosphere was there already? The heavens and the earth came complete with all its organisms.

A supernatural being is an unseen being. Why not believe extraterrestrials created us? If so, who created them?

Creationists believe this theory as if it’s a fact. The church tells them it is true and accurate. Evolutionists believe in evolution as if it’s a fact. “Science” tells them so. That’s justified belief.

Irrational conspiracy theories are also justified belief. They seek no other valid explanation beyond “trust me, bro”. It’s the same as a parent telling an inquisitive child: “because I said so”.

In the same way, the Rothschilds are fodder for conspiracy theories. It is “because they are Rothschilds”. Exploited workers blame their employers for their poverty. Hitler blamed Germany’s failed economy on the “Jewish problem” which he pledged to solve. 

Nazi propaganda attacked the Rothschilds by name. It started in a 1921 Nazi publication. Hitler called them “a group of Jewish capitalists who control the socialist press”. In at least two speeches in 1922, he described them as:

“financiers of wars and revolutions, who brought the peoples into interest servitude through loans”.

The Nazis came to power in 1933. Joseph Goebbels was the Minister of Propaganda for Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler. He played a significant role in shaping the propaganda machine of the Nazi regime. Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry gained control over various aspects of media, arts, and information. His superpower was propaganda. He used emerging media, such as radio and film, for propagandistic purposes. Goebbels orchestrated an extensive propaganda campaign. The aim was to secure the loyalty of German citizens and their compliance with Nazi policies. This included anti-Jewish measures. Goebbels went out of his way to clamp down on any opposing viewpoints to the Nazi ideology.

Populist sentiment against the wealthy House of Rothschilds was ripe. Goebbels took advantage by distorting the Rothschild’s image even further. He produced a film depicting them as the inciters of a conspiracy to take over the world. The Rothschilds (Die Rothschilds), was a 1940 Nazi German historical propaganda film. Directed by Erich Waschneck, it portrayed the role of the Rothschild family. The story was set during the Napoleonic wars. Consistent with the anti-Semitic policy of Nazi Germany, it was negative and anti-Semitic. The film depicts the Jewish Rothschilds as manipulative and greedy. It focuses on their alleged involvement in the financing of the Battle of Waterloo. The film portrays them as profiting from the war and the suffering of others.

Die Rothschilds was one of three anti-Semitic films made in 1940 under the Nazi regime. The Eternal Jew and Jud Suss were the other two. These films were part of a larger propaganda campaign. Nazi propaganda spread anti-Semitic messages and distorted public perception of Jewish people.

In contrast to Nazi propaganda, The House of Rothschild was a 1934 American film. It presented the Rothschilds in a more positive light.

The Nazis released Louis Nathaniel von Rothschild in July 1938. Upon release, he headed for the United States, where he became an American citizen. The Nazis seized and expropriated assets of the Austrian Rothschilds. The family’s banking operation forced to sell at a fraction of its real worth. Placed under compulsory administration was the firm of S M von Rothschild. Valuables from the Rothschild family estates, including art and other precious objects disappeared. Much of it found its way into Austrian museum collections. Nazi officers took possession. They confiscated, plundered, and destroyed the Rothschild palaces in Vienna. It would be the end of Austria’s branch of the House of Rothschild.

The French House of Rothschild was still standing. Until June 14, 1940, after the fall of Paris. That’s when the Nazis targeted the French Rothschilds’ art collections. The Nazis confiscated more than 5,000 pieces from various Rothschild families. This included 1,200 from the Alphonse Kann collection and 2,600 from David-Weill. By Nazi decree, the looted artworks were often labeled as “ownerless”. Jews in France and most of Europe were now considered “stateless” and had no property rights.

A condensed history of Israel:

During the rise of the Nazis there was no sovereign Jewish state. Jews had no homeland since the Babylonian Exile in 586 BCE. That ended the Kingdom of Israel. Antiochus III moved several thousand Jewish families from Babylonia to Asia Minor. That was approximately 210-205 BCE. Jews returned under Cyrus The Great in 516 BCE. In 70 CE, Vespasian expelled the Jewish people from the Roman province. The Siege of Jerusalem during the Jewish–Roman War was between 66–73 CE. In 135 CE, Hadrian renamed Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina. He changed the name of the province from Judaea to Syria Palaestina. This was a deliberate attempt to disassociate the land from its Jewish history.

Zionism is the cause of the establishment of a Jewish homeland. Edmond de Rothschild played a significant role. He funded the first Jewish settlements in the region in the 1880s. He encouraged the development of agriculture and industry. He provided support for Jewish colonists, overseeing dozens of new colonies. He bought 2-3% of the land that now makes up present-day Israel from Ottoman landlords.

In 1891, there lived a Bavarian philanthropist. His name was Baron Maurice de Hirsch. He founded the Jewish Colonisation Association (JCA). This organization helped Jews from Russia and Romania settle in Argentina. Baron de Hirsch died in 1896. Thereafter the JCA began to also assist the Jewish settlement in Palestine. It was a territory, not a people group. At that time, the area was under Ottoman rule. The Palestine branch of the JCA formed in 1899. The JCA operated the Rothschild settlements at that time.

The British Mandate of Palestine established in 1920. Now under British rule, Baron Edmond de Rothschild reorganized. The JCA branch in the territory became the Palestine Jewish Colonisation Association (PICA). That transition was in 1924. It was under the direction of his son, James de Rothschild (1878-1957). PICA acquired more than 125,000 acres (50,586 ha) of land and established a range of business ventures.

The British Mandate of Palestine became a place of refuge from Nazi Germany.

In 1917 during World War I, the British government issued The Balfour Declaration. It supported a “national home for the Jewish people” in the territory of Palestine. The territory of Palestine was an Ottoman region with a small Jewish population.

Chaim Weizmann was a Russian Zionist who later became the first president of Israel. The 2nd Lord Rothschild was Walter Rothschild. He played a significant role in the Balfour Declaration. He was the recipient of the proposal and a close friend of Chaim Weizmann. Walter Rothschild’s involvement in the Balfour Declaration was instrumental. It secured British support for the Zionist cause.

In conclusion, very few dynasties in history hold a legacy like the Rothschilds. After WWII, the two remaining banks, in London and Paris, built up their fortunes again. In 1981 Francois Mitterrand’s socialist government nationalized Banque Rothschild. Baron Guy de Rothschild’s son David created a new company under the name Paris Orléans. Jacques Chirac became prime minister in 1986. This allowed for the revival of the Banque Rothschild name.

Paris Orléans was the holding company for the London and Paris banks in 2015. David de Rothschild rebranded it as Rothschild & Co. This raised internal controversy. Infighting family branches sued to make the brand name Rothschild illegal in 2018.

Jacob Rothschild, 4th Baron Rothschild, is the head of the Rothschild dynasty today. Jacob and his son Nat are both assumed to be billionaires. Few Rothschilds show up on the various rich lists. The divided family fortune is among many cousins. The Rothschilds are no longer recognized as the richest individuals on planet Earth. They’re still up there. They helped finance everything from the DeBeers diamond mines to the French railroads. They’ve contributed to New York City subways as well as Club Med. British Rothschilds financed the Israeli Knesset, the Supreme Court, and the national library. They’ve also financed Israeli public television.

There are still conspiracy theories spreading like a virus online. False claims that the Rothschilds financed both the Bolshevik Revolution and Nazism. Conspiracy theories that Rothschilds engineered World War II and the Holocaust. What do you expect from Zionists? I’m sure people who believe lies like that feel justified.

I like you,

– Sean Allen Fenn