4. The association of Jews with the financial world and accompanying conspiracy theories began with Louis de Bonald
Louis-Gabriel-Ambroise, viscount de Bonald (1754-1840) was a prominent counter-revolutionary and political philosopher. De Bonald was an enemy of Napoleon Bonaparte, and amongst his many dislikes of the Emperor’s policies was his extension of equality to all Frenchmen, including Jews. A strident Roman Catholic, de Bonald hated Jews so much that he risked his life by speaking against their new-found rights during Napoleon’s rule. In 1806, he wrote an article entitled Sur les Juifs (‘on the Jews’), which argued that the Jews were violently-immoral parasites against whom good Frenchmen needed to be protected. Make them wear special badges, he thundered.
Most disturbingly of all, de Bonald invented several facets of today’s antisemitism. He stressed their racial differences to ‘normal’ people, criticised their financial dealings, and also claimed that they fostered plans to take over the world through ‘Jewish financial feudalism’. Sound familiar? Furthermore, he advocated keeping Jewish people entirely separate from the rest of society, because ‘the Jews cannot and never will be – no matter what is said – citizens under Christianity, unless they become Christians’. De Bonald held several influential offices after Napoleon’s downfall, and his antisemitic thought can be traced through most subsequent anti-Jewish literature and thought.
