Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech during a session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. Photo: Reuters/Maxim Shemetov

i24 News – On the eve of the International Holocaust Memorial Day, the U.S. State Department published a report on an issue that has deep historical links to the mass murder of Jews by the Nazi regime: the antisemitic conspiracy theories issuing out of Russia for over a century, including those that helped ignite the murderous Nazi obsession.

.@EinatWilf: Equating Israel and the star of David with colonialism, racism, Nazism, apartheid etc and then laundering the libels through international instutitions is an old Soviet strategy that has deep continuities with the antisemitic fabrications produced by Tzarist Russia. pic.twitter.com/LvU2vc2TAO

— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) January 11, 2024

“For over a century, Tsarist, Soviet and now Russian Federation authorities have used antisemitism to discredit, divide, and weaken their perceived adversaries at home and abroad,” the report’s executive summary opened, pointing to the rarely interrupted continuity between the Tzarist regime that produced the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Soviet Union’s “anti-Zionist” propaganda campaigns and the rhetoric of Vladimir Putin’s government.

Mahmoud Abbas's long record of Holocaust denial & distortion relies on age-old tropes. Yet the conspiracy's modern day iteration, where 'Jew' is swapped for 'Zionist,' hails from Soviet Russia, couched in a language progressives find irresistible, @IzaTabaro tells @laura_i24: pic.twitter.com/O4NQaiRkYT

— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) November 20, 2023

“Today, Kremlin officials and Russia’s state-run or state-controlled media spread conspiracy theories, fueling antisemitism intended to deceive the world about its war against Ukraine. These tactics build on a long tradition of exploiting antisemitism to create division and discontent,” the report reads.

A chapter in that dark history that remains uniquely pertinent today is the Soviet demonization of the world’s only Jewish state, which took gained momentum following the defeat of Soviet client states Egypt and Syria in the Six Day War of 1967 against Israel. An entire pseudo-academic discipline — known as “Zionology” — was forged, devoted to rebranding an ancient hatred in a way that would make it palatable to the progressive left.

Unbeknown to the dimwits who recite it today, leftist word salad re 'imperialist Nazi Zionist colonizers' is lifted wholesale, with virtually no innovations, from a deeply sinister Soviet propaganda campaign shot through with the basest antisemitism, @IzaTabaro tells @laura_i24 pic.twitter.com/hjVFOfiCkL

— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) December 18, 2023

“During the 1960s-1980s, the Committee for State Security (KGB) implemented several antisemitic active measures, a Soviet term for covert influence operations, to discredit its perceived adversaries — the Catholic Church, West Germany, the United States — as antisemitic,” the State Department report reads. “The KGB also targeted the Zionist movement and Soviet Jewish dissidents.”

According to writer Dara Horn, “The Soviet Union thus pioneered a versatile gaslighting slogan, which it later spread through its client states in the developing world and which remains popular today: it was not antisemitic, merely anti-Zionist.”

The premier expert on the topic today is Soviet-born U.S.-Israeli historian Izabella Tabarovsky, who has shown in great detail the pertinence of the propaganda tropes spread by a long-dead regime to current events. One prominent example is Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, a leader with a long record of minimizing, inverting or outright denying the Holocaust; his PhD from Moscow is a vital clue for understanding the kind of antisemitic rhetoric that thrives in Palestinian society, Tabarovsky argues.

When the Palestinian Authority issued a statement denying the Hamas massacre, the parallels with its president's rich record of Holocaust denial jumped out. The Soviet origins of Abbas's lies merit closer scrutiny, @IzaTabaro tells @laura_i24: https://t.co/T68s2WHqJV pic.twitter.com/GFkjlcPedv

— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) November 21, 2023

Today much of the Kremlin’s antisemitic propaganda targets Ukraine and its leader, often through bizarre insinuations, such as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s reference to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler’s alleged Jewish heritage.

“The Kremlin falsely portrays Ukraine and its supporters as Nazis, antisemites and Russophobes, demonizes Ukraine’s Jewish president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, accuses Jews of being the worst Nazis, and manipulates the history of the Holocaust for political purposes,” the State Department report states.