Jewish Board meets with Public Protector over anti-semitic book

THE South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) is requesting Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane refrain from endorsing or appearing to endorse Stephen Goodson’s book entitled A History of Central Banking (and the Enslavement of Mankind) and to unequivocally distance herself from the views expressed by its author. Wendy Kahn SAJBD National Director, said the board had requested a meeting with the Public Protector, to discuss her apparent endorsement of the book by a notorious anti-semitic conspiracy theorist, Nazi apologist, Holocaust denier and racist, Stephen Goodson.

“The Public Protector has since agreed to meet with the SAJBD at the end of July. While we welcome being allowed this opportunity, we are nevertheless disappointed that, given the gravity of the situation, the meeting has been scheduled so far in advance,” she said.

The book, reportedly endorsed by Advocate Mkhwebane, repeats the classic antisemitic libel that Jews, through their supposed underhanded, unscrupulous practices, are guilty of foisting the evils of usury and corrupt international finance on humanity. According to the board, Goodson seeks to justify anti-Jewish persecution by attributing it to the alleged criminal behavior of Jews themselves, blames Jews for instigating wars, revolutions and other such disasters and asserts that the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis during World War II, is a Jewish-spawned lie aimed at extorting reparations from Germany.

“Not only is Goodson a vocal, unapologetic antisemitic, his past pronouncements also reveal him to be an outright racist and defender of apartheid. Speaking on ultra-right white supremacist platforms, he has described black people as being incapable of successfully governing a country. Goodson has gone so far as to describe not only the National Party after 1966, but the Conservative Party and even Eugene Terre’blanche as being traitors to the cause of patriotic white nationalism,” Kahn said.

Kahn further added that, “the danger posed by those who, like Stephen Goodson, disseminate defamatory and absurdly counterfactual narratives under the guise of scholarly analysis is that they lend a veneer of intellectual respectability to ideas that in reality have no place in the world of sane, civilized discourse. For that reason alone, responsible leaders, intellectuals and opinion makers should make every effort not to give underserved credibility to their noxious theories.”