Anti-semitic conspiracy theories + Chinese version of TikTok =

July 18, 2023 10:37 AM

In less than eight minutes, the video’s narrator accuses Jews of starting China’s “century of humiliation” by financing the Opium Wars, and describes their cunning Fugu Plan. This 1939 Japanese proposal to resettle German Jews in the puppet state Manchukuo was named after the deadly blowfish that is a delicacy if handled correctly and was based on "expert" analysis of the fabricated antisemitic text The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. While about 20,000 Jews found refuge in Japanese-occupied Shanghai between 1938 and 1941, the Fugu Plan never gained traction, even with the putative beneficiaries. Nonetheless, in July 2023, the Fugu Plan is in the top search result for the word “Jew” (犹太人) on Douyin.
posted by spamandkimchi (12 comments total)

While about 20,000 Jews found refuge in Japanese-occupied Shanghai between 1938 and 1941

Interestingly, this was less out of the benevolence of local authorities generally (though there were individual heroic efforts by certain civil servants) and more because of the tremendous wealth and influence of a handful of Jewish families who'd settled there in the 19th century and undertook massive relief efforts as well as engaging in political pressure to keep emigration possible, as it was not in most of the rest of the world. (Unfortunately, much of that wealth was, in fact, accumulated in the opium trade, though of course Jewish people did not control British foreign policy and were not responsible for the Opium Wars.) I recently read an interesting book about them in this time period, The Last Kings of Shanghai.
posted by praemunire at 11:01 AM on July 18, 2023 [12 favorites]

The flip side of what one of my HK hosts said to me during my first business dinner in Hong Kong in 1990, "Chinese people, Jewish people -- same thing", which was followed by a series of stereotypes, all of which were given a heavy positive spin. First time I'd heard this idea, which was the beginning of my education about the self-image of some in the Chinese diaspora in the rest of Asia.
The Fugu Plan was only part of a story relatively unknown in the West. That part of the story started with Jacob Schiff 1n 1904, and is described in most if its glory, far better than I ever could, in the second podcast of a series written and narrated by Dara Horn, Frozen Jews: What happens when a country hears about an antisemitic conspiracy theory and takes it literally?
The rest of the podcast series is similarly well-informed, and is a companion to Horn's recent book, whose title might raise an eyebrow or two.
Enjoy!
posted by Citizen Cane Juice at 11:27 AM on July 18, 2023 [14 favorites]

Came in to share the Dara Horn podcast and book as well. She’s an amazing novelist, but her recent work documenting anti-semitism has been fantastic.

There’s actually a long history of countries inviting Jews in to help boost their economies - generally in the Catholic / Christian world where laws against practices like lending money and collecting interest didn’t apply to Jewish businesspeople. And then, as soon as the economy picked up and/or Jewish business leaders became noticeably wealthy, turning on the Jewish residents and expelling them again. Basing anti-semitic conspiracy theories on the Fugu Plan is an interesting twist on that, since it didn’t actually happen - and especially since there were already small, fairly well-established Chinese Jewish communities both in mainland China and in Hong Kong who had nothing to do with the plan at all. One truly fascinating example are the Kaifeng Jews, who date back to the Song Dynasty.

Thanks for posting this - I was looking for something new to get depressed about (and to learn about too).
posted by Mchelly at 2:22 PM on July 18, 2023 [8 favorites]

“As with most conspiracies, the Jewish-Japanese blood libel contains a kernel of truth. It is based on a little-known episode in World War II known as the “the Fugu Plan” (河豚计划).”

I think that gets things backwards. People routinely misunderstand conspiracy thinking, assuming that it’s a worked out theory that stems logically from faulty axioms. I don’t think that’s true at all. It’s essentially a string of memetic units that are strung together with language. The conspiracy theory isn’t based on anything, it’s just a little dung beetle, rolling its ball of shit along the ground, and some random kernel gets stuck to it. But it’s just chance, which kernel gets rolled up into the conspiracy theory.

That said, it was an interesting bit of history to learn about.
posted by Kattullus at 4:43 PM on July 18, 2023 [16 favorites]

Not sure where it fits, but this struck me what with RFK Jr's creative ideas about COVID immunity in Chinese and Jewish people.
posted by atomicstone at 5:29 PM on July 18, 2023

The flip side of what one of my HK hosts said to me during my first business dinner in Hong Kong in 1990, "Chinese people, Jewish people -- same thing", which was followed by a series of stereotypes, all of which were given a heavy positive spin.

I've been told pretty much exactly the same thing by a friend of mine in HK. His family owns restaurants so it lead to a conversation where he noticed that he's never seen a food vendor in HK selling kosher hot dogs and that with the right Jewish business mascot figurehead (yours truly) he might be able to contribute something fresh (or at least strictly preserved) to the family business.
posted by WaylandSmith at 6:37 PM on July 18, 2023 [2 favorites]

Mod note: One deleted. Please remember to comment with mindfulness, and follow our guidelines which include being aware of your privilege and speaking for yourself, not others by refraining from making wide generalizations about other countries outside of the US and UK.
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 8:03 PM on July 18, 2023

> There’s actually a long history of countries inviting Jews in to help boost their economies - generally in the Catholic / Christian world where laws against practices like lending money and collecting interest didn’t apply to Jewish businesspeople. And then, as soon as the economy picked up and/or Jewish business leaders became noticeably wealthy, turning on the Jewish residents and expelling them again.

I'm no historian, but Julie Mell's recent history rejects this point. Most Jews were very poor. Laws against lending at interest first applied just to clergy, then to all Christians and Jews alike.
posted by Grimp0teuthis at 9:45 PM on July 18, 2023 [4 favorites]

That’s really fascinating- thanks for sharing. It looks like her work is specifically addressing moneylenders and usury laws. But the history of Jewish migration into and out of countries that invited them in and then later kicked them out is well documented. Of course most Jews weren’t wealthy - I was surprised to see her treating that as something surprising (but if there are people who believe that, then it’s important she’s addressing it). But there were wealthy merchants among them, and the impetus to allowing them into the borders of countries before they were banned was often financial in nature. I can point to the example of the community of Speyer (source of the Jewish last name Shapiro / Schapiro) - where there’s a specific edict from the bishop at the time saying that he’s establishing a protected Jewish community as a way to increase the prosperity of the city. I definitely want to dive deeper into her work because wow, re-examining Jews as exclusive moneylenders is pretty significant, and seeing history through the lens of Jews as actually being wealth agents only magnifies anti-Semitic tropes… but I think it still holds that rulers at the time believed it was true. The case in point of this FPP confirms that, sadly.
posted by Mchelly at 6:17 AM on July 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

This is not something of which I have deep knowledge, Mchelly, and of course it's important not to make too sweeping generalizations over several centuries, but as you research I would suggest that you keep in mind that the idea that "banks" (which did not much resemble modern banks) and lending at interest are important for the prosperity of a broader community is not one you'd see commonly articulated in a medieval context. Whether or not it was explicitly forbidden (and semi-independent of actual practice), usury was generally perceived as harmful and exploitative. Note that lending is not mentioned in the Speyer charter. Rather, it's trade, which of course did not have any kind of religious bar to participation but which it is unsurprising that some of the far-flung Jewish people of Europe, with their family connections, superior literacy rates, and possibly wider/earlier adoption of the use of Arabic numerals, were perceived as being particularly well-suited for.
posted by praemunire at 8:29 AM on July 19, 2023 [3 favorites]

Exactly - if her research is right, then banking has very little (if anything) to do with it at all; it’s all necessarily based on trade. That’s why I think it’s so fascinating!
posted by Mchelly at 10:25 AM on July 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

"Chinese people, Jewish people -- same thing", which was followed by a series of stereotypes, all of which were given a heavy positive spin

You know, I’ve known a couple of old Jewish guys with offputting, but theoretically complementary, takes on the Chinese, too (specifically, as you might already have guessed, in context of intermarriage in their family)…
posted by atoxyl at 5:05 PM on July 19, 2023 [1 favorite]