E. Michael Jones is an anti-Semitic Catholic writer who promotes the view that Jews are dedicated to propagating and perpetrating attacks on the Catholic Church and moral standards, social stability, and political order throughout the world. He portrays the Jewish religion as inherently treacherous and belligerent towards Christianity. He describes Jews as “outlaws and subversives [who use] religion as a cover for social revolution,” and claims that Judaism possesses “a particularly malignant spirit.” Jones also imagines the contemporary world, with its social ills, as having been cast in the imprint of Judaism, characterizing 21st-century civilization as “a Jewish world run on commercial principles.” He also identifies this “Jewish modernity” as representing “blood, the law, calculation, and hate.”
In the tradition of conspiracy theorists, Jones credits Jews with orchestrating occurrences as varied and disconnected from the Jewish experience as the Protestant Reformation and the French Revolution. He also blames Jews for Bolshevism, Freemasonry, and an alleged contemporary “Jewish takeover of American culture.” Jones reaches for tenuous connections to paint “the Jews” as inherently wicked and prone to colluding openly or secretly to threaten other populations around them.
Jones argues that mass killings of Jews throughout history have been understandable reactions to Jewish beliefs and behavior. He goes so far as to justify Eastern European pogroms and even the Nazi Holocaust on these grounds. As he wrote in a 2003 Culture Wars article, “[T]he Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jews was a reaction to Jewish Messianism (in the form of Bolshevism) every bit as much as the Chmielnicki pogroms flowed from the excesses of the Jewish tax farmers in the Ukraine.”
Jones' views are not limited to religious Jews. He applies his theory of Jewish subversiveness to Jews of all ideological and religious stripes, from traditional rabbis and political conservatives to militant atheists and Marxists. For Jones, any Jew who does not embrace Christianity rejects God and the natural order of the universe. Jones therefore concludes unambiguously that “every Christian, insofar as he is a Christian, must be anti-Jewish.”
Jones' anti-Semitic writings are premised on the idea that Catholic doctrine obligates the faithful to oppose Judaism, regardless of the behavior of individual Jews. The Vatican and most Catholics have thoroughly repudiated anti-Semitism, but Jones still declares himself to be a defender of normative Catholic teachings. Jones' contention that his beliefs have theological foundations may give him a degree of legitimacy among some Catholics who would otherwise be dismissive of his extremist conclusions.
Writing on the controversy surrounding Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard Williamson of the ultra-traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, Jones criticizes the Vatican's condemnation of Williamson's words: “the Church can have unity or she can have good relations with the Jews, but she can't have both.” Jones herein expresses his ideological opposition to anything Jewish; although he does not deny the Holocaust himself, he believes that the Church must at all times oppose Jewry and must not acknowledge Jewish grievances even when valid.
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