A wry look at the absurd origins of Rothschild conspiracy theories
Despite its subtitle, “Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories” is not a biography or a history of the Rothschilds, the famous banking family. As author Mike Rothschild (no relation, the cover jokingly but firmly informs us) tells us in the introduction, there are other books that cover that, “and most don’t touch on the lurid and bizarre whispers about them.”
“Instead, this is the biography of an idea,” he writes, “and it’s a simple enough one: that Jews control everything, and that the Rothschilds are the ‘Kings of the Jews.’” In other words, this Rothschild set out to write a book not about those Rothschilds, but about the conspiracy theories around them and Jews more generally. The title is a tongue-in-cheek example: In 2021 it was uncovered that, a few years prior, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) — then a private citizen — wrote on Facebook that she believed “Rothschild Inc, international investment banking firm” was involved in California wildfires, which were, in this telling, caused by a beam from a “space solar generator.”
Author Rothschild’s writing style is smart but breezy. Readers might be reminded of the wry narration found in animated histories, or on the mockumentary show “Cunk,” or even from Gonzo in “The Muppet Christmas Carol.” After a paragraph on the perils facing early-modern Jews whose financial labors funded Christian rulers, he dryly remarks, “Court Jews may have been courtly, but they were still Jews.”
While the book is not a comprehensive history of the Rothschild family, it does offer some brief background. We are introduced not only to Mayer Amschel Rothschild, founder of the banking dynasty, but also to his earliest known relative, Isak, a “fairly prosperous merchant” in the 1500s, and Isak’s grandson, Naftali. Because the Jews of Frankfurt were not allowed to have last names, they went by a mix of surnames, eventually adopting Rothschild. Sometimes “Space Lasers” moves through their genealogy with dizzying speed: In the course of one paragraph, we meet Mayer’s great-grandfather, grandfather and father, Amschel Moses, who “worked his way into becoming the court Jew to Crown Prince William … son of the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, one of the wealthiest states in the empire,” which largely made its fortune by renting out professional soldiers as foreign mercenaries.
“It was into this contradiction, a well-heeled family lending money to one of the wealthiest states in the Holy Roman Empire while simultaneously living in squalor as near prisoners, that Mayer Amschel Rothschild was born,” we learn. Mayer Amschel would also become court Jew, traveling the Holy Roman Empire and making contacts for potential business dealings. When the French Revolution became war in Europe, the prince needed money, and Mayer was able to make “loans and deals as he saw fit. He was now likely one of the richest Jews in Frankfurt, with Rothschild business quickly becoming a European affair.” His sons eventually moved to different cities, where they were also involved with the family business. (Contrary to enduring belief, they were not sent out simultaneously to conquer the continent.) Mayer and his oldest son, Amschel, became crown agents of Holy Roman Emperor Franz II, while his other sons, Nathan and Jakob (who later went by James), expanded the family textile business and protected “business against plunder by the forces of Napoleon,” respectively. By the 1820s, “much of the family fortune had been made — and much of its lore already cemented.” The subsequent triumphs and stumbles of the family are also briefly but compellingly explained.
So, too, does Rothschild offer the reader some insight into Jewish history’s intersection with European history and financial history more generally. As he explains early on, “Mayer’s story, and that of his entire family, isn’t atypical of other Jews in that sphere — modestly prosperous, hemmed in by culture and tradition, and trying to keep their own company as pressure increased for them to convert.” While the Rothschild family was material for conspiracy theorists, for many Jews, it was a source of pride and inspiration.
But the exposition is really a means to examine the point at which fact swerves off the road and accelerates into absurdities. We learn, for example, about individuals who pushed Rothschild conspiracy theories, such as the French journalist and pamphlet writer Mathieu Georges Dairnvaell, who made hateful claims about the family under the name Satan, a choice that was somehow not a warning sign to his many thousands of readers. Characters more familiar to modern readers, like Alex Jones, make appearances, too. The chapters on the Rothschild family in pop culture and how conspiracy theories manifest differently around the world are particularly readable. The author also capably demonstrates how today’s boogeyman, the Hungarian-born billionaire philanthropist George Soros, is an inheritor of the outlandish claims.
Unfortunately, author Rothschild lets everyone but far-right conspiracy theorists off the hook too easily when he writes, “If someone has to be blamed for the genesis of the Soros conspiracy, blame it on Lyndon LaRouche.” LaRouche — known for his extremist views and multiple presidential runs — played his part in pushing baseless claims in the United States, but he is not necessarily more blameworthy than Dennis Hastert, who was speaker of the House, or Glenn Beck, who devoted three consecutive evenings of his Fox show to Soros in 2010.
But the main function of the book, I think, is also its strongest point, which is that fact is not conspiratorial fiction. The Rothschild family is not, and has never been, responsible for conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theorists were and are the responsible party. The theories are largely distinct from what the family actually did. There is Jewish history and antisemitic history. These are two different things. (It might have been interesting for the author to spend slightly more time on what function the smears have served, and why people have been so invested in pushing them, but his central message is enough to carry the book.) Jews are not responsible for what antisemites say. Similarly, what antisemites might say should not stop frank, fair study, including honest criticism, of Jewish history, including that of the Rothschild family. That is a valuable thing to read in our day and age.
And not only our day and age. This book, dealing as it does with present-day political actors and claims, is very much of its time. But it is also quite timeless in how it elegantly untangles fact from fiction. I can imagine encouraging people interested in the function and history of antisemitic conspiracy theories to read it for years to come.
Jewish Space Lasers
The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories
By Mike Rothschild
Melville House. 318 pp. $32.50
This article has been archived for your research. The original version from The Washington Post can be found here.
