Maxine Waters, black representative of California's 35th congressional district in Los Angeles County, does not have a deep or bright mind; but she has a fertile imagination. She believes that a small group of decision makers at Goldman Sachs were driving a wide range of financial policy decisions regarding the financial crisis. (See the news video of her questioning of the Secretary of the Treasury here.)
What is the mental template from which she is working that brings together the supposed linkages between institutions and the Treasury and Federal Reserve to Goldman Sachs? The most obvious template is the old canard that Jews run (national and international) finance and get together weekly privately to plot out their control of financial institutions and, indirectly, governments. This was Henry Ford's delusion during World War I. Such a conspiracy theory is behind the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (English translation of the Protocols, here), a Czarist Russian forged document outlining a Jewish plot to overthrow the governments of Europe (see also here). When the Protocols appeared in the US, they were associated with notions of a Jewish bankers' conspiracy in Russia.The Protocols re-emerged as a source of popular anti-semitism in the Islamic world in the 1980s. In the US, the fraudulent document was distributed by Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam. Maxine Waters is connected to one of the nation's largest black-owned banks; her husband sits on its board. Waters was involved last year with setting up a meeting to get federal money for that bank. Her involvement was exposed. Where does she think the exposure originated?
Anti-semitism has re-emerged in Europe and America as the global financial crisis has deepened. I think we are seeing its fingerprints in Water's imputed allegations.
(Thanks to Instapundit for the initial link.)
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