(Mirror. Mirror. Mirror.)

Der Moment, formally linked to the Jewish People’s Party [Folkspartay] and edited by the Zionist Tsvi Pryłucki and his son Noyekh (Noah),⁸ evolved into a Revisionist tribune in the mid‐1930s and […] In 1936, Der Moment figured on the list of subventions awarded by [Fascist Italy’s] embassy for publication of articles written in a tone stipulated by the embassy.

According to Polish historian Stanisław Sierpowski, in the first quarter of 1936 [Fascist Italy’s] embassy paid out subventions of this type to the editorial boards of the periodicals Dziś i Jutro (1,200 złoty), Der Moment (1,000 złoty), ABC (450 złoty), and Kurier Codzienny (300 złoty). In the second quarter of that year, Der Moment was top of the list regarding the numbers of articles inspired by the not specified fascio di Varsavia.³⁹

Jerzy W. Borejsza, citing [Fascist] archive material, also averred that Der Moment offered the [Fascist] embassy its services in running propaganda supporting the Abyssinian war for a sum of 2,500 złoty.⁴⁰

Ambassador Giuseppe Bastianini commented on this proposal as follows: “I believe that, as has already been done with Kurier Polski, in which such articles achieved their objective, given a financial outlay not exceeding 2,500 złoty it is possible to achieve valuable propaganda results among that most mistrustful and least accessible of communities: international Jewry”.⁴¹ The extent of [Fascism’s] influence on journalism in Der Moment requires further research beyond the scope of this article.⁴²

It certainly does not necessarily mean that all the articles on [Fascist] Italy published in Der Moment in that period toed the [Fascist] embassy’s line; suffice it to mention the somewhat subversive text by Shaul Stupnicki, who on the one hand enumerated the civilising benefits that subjugated Abyssinia would come to enjoy under [Fascism], but on the other contrasted Rome with Jerusalem, where the exiled Ethiopian emperor had taken asylum.⁴³

A brief surge in the editors’ interest in the war in Abyssinia is indeed discernible on the sole basis of a cursory review of the newspaper for the last quarter of 1935 and the first half of 1936; it ran a large number of pieces on the subject and devoted considerable attention in them to the Jews living there, who were known as the Falashas.⁴⁴

Around the same time, Jabotinsky emerged as the author of the paper’s political leader (published in almost every Friday issue and usually running to several columns),⁴⁵ completely overshadowing other journalists associated with Der Moment, such as Noyekh Pryłucki and Hillel Tseytlin.⁴⁶

[…]

It is important to remember that in the wake of the great financial crisis, the editorial board of Der Moment struggled with serious financial problems throughout the 1930s. Eventually, in 1938, these forced the appointment of an official receiver in the person of the Revisionist lawyer Mark Kahan (for more see Weiser, Jewish People, 243–4; Pryłucki, Wspomnienia, 157, 162, 167–73).

Perhaps the subvention from the embassy helped cover the fees for Jabotinsky, Gottlieb, and Jabotinsky’s ‘adjutant’ Józef Schechtman? Pryłucki intimates that they commanded high salaries (Pryłucki, Wspomnienia, 148–9).

Concerning Zionist support for fascism, Moyshe Kleinbaum, who wrote for the similar (but unrelated) Zionist newspaper Haynt, made an important observation:

Meanwhile, Kleinbaum continued, not only did some Jews support fascism, but an entirely Jewish strain of fascism had emerged: “No‐one even dares to mention that Revisionism is a vehicle of fascist ideology within the Jewish nation, and that broad swathes of the Jewish bourgeoisie, including rabbis and professors, and many respected, wealthy Jews, are beginning to flock to Revisionism”.⁴⁹

Kleinbaum believed that the support for fascism was born out of a fear of communism and socialism: “For the Jews, too, fascism is a mortal enemy. But fear and hatred of socialism are shepherding whole camps of Jews, including national Jews [natsionale yidn], into the arms of fascism”;⁵⁰ as an example, he cited the support of the Zionists for the Dollfuss régime in Austria.

He believed that only a small minority of the Jewish bourgeoisie and bourgeois Zionists were actively opposed to both fascism from without and Jewish fascism, and he warned prophetically: “All of them, the fascist Jews and the Jewish fascists, believe that fascism already rules humanity. They do not see that it is merely shaping up for the decisive battle for the shape of the world. They do not understand that a victory for fascism would mean the annihilation for the Jewish nation — their own”.⁵¹

I have touched on this before. Jews have almost always been a very international people, whereas Fascism was an ultranationalist phenomenon, so the clash between these two was, I would argue, inevitable. Even in the 1920s, before the Third Reich entered the scene, Fascist gentiles would express their antisemitism as individuals and usually in discrete ways (a phenomenon known among intersectionalists as ‘microaggressions’). While it was unusual for the Fascists to assault European Jews during the 1920s, Libyan Jews were less fortunate.

The note on class is also important: bourgeois Jews were just as prone as bourgeois goyim to supporting fascism when the alternative was socialism. Since Zionism remains an ethnonationalist phenomenon, it is unsurprising that so many Zionists approved of a (para)fascist régime, too. Simply put, lower‐class Jews have more in common with lower‐class gentiles than either of them have with upper‐class Jews.

For most of the 1930s, Der Moment continued to defend Italian Fascism as a ‘moderate’ alternative to Germanic Fascism:

In light of the rising tide of unease that, under Hitler’s influence, Mussolini’s views on the Jewish question would change, [Zionism’s] Yiddish press made considerable efforts to convince its readers that there was nothing to fear from Mussolini. In fact, the authors of these texts appear to be attempting to convince themselves above all.

In April 1933, Der Moment expressed the hope that “Rome would come to the aid” of the persecuted German Jews and noted with satisfaction that the post of Italian finance minister was still held, unchallenged, by the Jew Guido Jung.⁶³

(Emphasis added in all cases.)

Only in 1938, when Fascist Italy made antisemitism a policy and it became more interested in settling Jews in Ethiopia rather than a spot in the British Empire (read: Palestine), did Zionism’s press lose respect for European Fascism:

Noyekh Pryłucki did not spare bitter reproaches at the governments of Europe and the European intelligentsia for allowing themselves to be convinced that fascism and Hitlerism “are not export goods”,⁸² and that as such it was not appropriate to criticise other countries’ internal affairs.

But fascism did start to seep out of Italy, and it was only then that the realisation came that “fascism is cancer that must be tackled at once, in the first minute that signs of its emergence are noticed”.⁸³ […] The year 1938 put an end to any remaining illusions about fascism that anyone might still have harboured.

Of course, as socialists we are unimpressed with such lentitudinous backlashes. The Fascists’ lethal force and terror against thousands of socialists, the lower classes’ declining living standards under Fascism, and the appalling subjugation of Libya—to name only a few of the most obvious examples before 1938—should have served as adequate warning signs that something was deeply wrong with Fascism, but the petty bourgeoisie and the upper classes have their own concerns.