Anti-Semitic conspiracy is the most effective weapon for crushing revolutionary movements

Evidence

It is an image eerily reminiscent of the oil paintings from two centuries earlier depicting the Jewish blood libel—except now made real, and committed against Jews. According to Weinberg, “Ethnic divisiveness was a centrifugal force that diminished the capacity of Odessa workers to act in a unified fashion.” A lesson for the tsar, and a lesson for the ages: if you want to crush a revolutionary movement coming at you from below, nothing works quite like an anti-Semitic conspiracy that calls up hatreds older than Jesus Christ. — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 943

Categorization

• CANDY: The inverted blood-libel image — the atrocity painted in the libel now really done to Jews — is a sharp, shareable instance of history literalizing its own myth.