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AUDIENCE: So first of all,
thank you for being here.

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We've talked about
immigration in the past.

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And with regard to
the Haitian refugees,

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I think it also applies.

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And one of the
themes we studied,

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I believe with
Professor Tormund was,

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what's the actual reason that
people do not want immigrants

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in the country versus the
reasons that they state?

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So for example, one of the
reasons that people would state

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would be that immigrants
are ruining the economy.

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But if you look at--

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NOAM CHOMSKY: One of the
reasons why people stay?

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AUDIENCE: Oh, sorry.

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One of the reasons that
people state that they don't

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want immigrants in the country.

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NOAM CHOMSKY: Oh,
state that they--

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AUDIENCE: Yeah.

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Is because they
say that immigrants

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will ruin the economy.

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But then, Professor Tormund
pointed out the fact

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that Mayor Bloomberg
of New York,

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or the former Mayor
Bloomberg of New York,

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said that New York could
not run without immigrants.

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So what do you think are the
actual reasons that people

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do not want immigrants
in the country?

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00:01:10,370 --> 00:01:13,640
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, first of
all, it's not a new phenomenon.

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And it's not the United States.

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So for example, in
Europe, a majority

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of the population
of Europe, majority,

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thinks that Europe should not
permit any Muslim immigrants.

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Europe has a certain history.

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It's called crematoria,
for example.

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That's part of the background.

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And that's part of the
immigration background

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here, too.

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I can talk about it from a
very personal point of view.

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My father happened to be able
to come to the United States

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before fleeing from
Czarist Russia.

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Horrible conditions,
especially for Jews.

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He made it before the
Immigration Act of 1924.

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In 1924, Immigration Act for
the first time barred Europeans.

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Prior to that, there were
racist immigration acts,

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like it kept out Orientals.

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But Europeans were admitted.

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And there was a very
simple reason for that.

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We were exterminating the
indigenous population.

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So there was a
lot of open space.

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That's what you see
glorified in stories

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about covered wagons going
to the West-- the pioneers.

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Of course, they were
displacing some people

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who happened to live there,
but it's another story.

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Anyway, there was an open-- the
continent was open after you've

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exterminated the population.

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And you want the right
kind of people to come in.

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And if you go back, the question
of the right kind of people

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was quite delicate.

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So for example,
Benjamin Franklin,

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who was the leading figure of
the Enlightenment in the United

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States, he thought we should
have discriminatory immigration

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rules to keep out the
wrong kind of people.

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People who were too dark.

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And the people who were too
dark were Swedes and Germans.

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That's Benjamin Franklin.

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So we got to watch out.

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Keep out Germans and Swedes.

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They're too siwrly.

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But that was finally relaxed.

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Anyway, they needed
Europeans to come in.

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By the beginning of
the 20th century,

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they didn't need immigrants
any longer to fill the country.

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And the constant racism emerged.

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So the 1924 Act
was-- in reality,

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it was based against
Jews and Italians.

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What they said is East
and Southern Europeans.

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But that meant
Jews and Italians.

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Well, OK.

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What happened to
the Jews who were

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unable to come until the 1960s?

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They ended up in concentration
camps and crematoria.

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So it's a serious issue.

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That's most of my
family, incidentally.

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The ones who didn't make it.

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So the story goes way back.

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It's not something new.

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And it's not just
the United States.

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Western society generally is
infected by very deep racism.

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And it's even more extreme
in many ways in Europe

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than in the United States.

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In fact, in Europe, it's
even more frightening

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than the United States.

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So take this
morning's newspaper,

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if you happened to look at it.

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00:04:41,381 --> 00:04:45,210
The government of
Austria-- there

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was a coalition
government, but it

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wasn't able to have
an agreement, so they

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have to have an election.

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And the concern is that the
most popular figure in Austria

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might win the election.

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He happens to be a neo-Nazi.

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That's Austria.

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There's a little bit
of history in Austria.

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Well, that's scary.

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And it's happening all over.

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Here, it has a special character
because of white supremacy.

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White supremacy is very deeply
rooted in the United States.

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There are comparative
studies of white supremacy.

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The major ones by
George Fredrickson,

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a good sociologist who
did a comparative study

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of white supremacy
in many countries.

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It's more extreme in the
United States than any country

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that he studied, including
South Africa under apartheid.

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And you see it all
over the place.

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I mean, when the Nazis
in the early '30s

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were trying to find models
for the Nuremberg laws,

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00:05:54,420 --> 00:05:57,390
the racist laws, they
looked around the world.

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And the only country where
they could find good models

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was the United States.

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They took US models.

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The US had miscegenation
rules-- rules

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00:06:07,933 --> 00:06:10,603
against interracial
marriage-- which

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lasted, in fact, until
they were finally

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00:06:12,572 --> 00:06:15,975
struck down in the 1960s.

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00:06:15,975 --> 00:06:20,046
The Nazis didn't
entirely take the US laws

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00:06:20,046 --> 00:06:23,316
because they regarded
the US laws as too harsh.

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So the US laws were based on the
concept of one drop of blood.

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None of this means anything
from a biological point of view.

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It's all totally meaningless.

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But these are socially
constructed categories.

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And one drop of blood meant
if you-- by whatever category

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00:06:46,112 --> 00:06:52,245
was concocted, you had one drop
of Negro blood, you're black.

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And then, you can't
marry a white.

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Those were laws that were
not struck down, I think,

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until 1967.

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00:07:01,587 --> 00:07:05,958
And you see it all over
the place right now.

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I mean, it's right in
front of us all over.

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In fact, if you look at
Afro American history

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00:07:14,700 --> 00:07:17,270
in the United States,
it's pretty remarkable.

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In fact, that's something
that really should be studied.

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00:07:21,174 --> 00:07:24,043
The two topics that
should be studied

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00:07:24,043 --> 00:07:26,879
are, what happened to
the native population

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00:07:26,879 --> 00:07:29,549
and what happened to
the black population?

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Anything else is secondary
for the United States.

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Without going
through the details--

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I presume you know them.

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But the first slaves
were brought here

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in Massachusetts 400 years ago.

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That's 400 years.

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You look over those
400 years, there

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00:07:46,466 --> 00:07:50,069
have been literally
a few decades.

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Maybe 30 years scattered in
which African Americans had

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kind of a small opportunity
to enter the general society.

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That's quite a record.

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00:08:02,081 --> 00:08:04,217
And, of course,
it has a residue.

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00:08:04,217 --> 00:08:09,889
The residue shows in things
like mortality, wealth.

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The wealth of African American
families is virtually zero.

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What there was, was pretty
much destroyed by the crash.

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It shows up in, why are
there murders in ghettos

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in Chicago and Baltimore?

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It's not the genes.

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Everywhere you look, you see it.

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And it shows up.

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00:08:34,013 --> 00:08:36,048
Going back to your
question, it shows up

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in the racist immigration
laws, which are bad enough now.

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But the ones that
were enacted in 1924

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and maintained right
through the Holocaust,

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those were pretty serious.

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In fact, you probably
know the stories.

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But ships were turned
away bringing refugees

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who thought they could make it.

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There's some strange
stories if you look at it.

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00:09:03,676 --> 00:09:04,911
They're kind of suppressed.

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But one quite
interesting story--

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00:09:10,283 --> 00:09:12,209
it's worth looking at
if you're interested--

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00:09:12,209 --> 00:09:14,554
has to do with Japan.

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The Japanese fascists
were kind of-- only

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00:09:22,749 --> 00:09:26,032
had limited understanding
of the Western world.

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00:09:26,032 --> 00:09:28,200
Japan had been pretty isolated.

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So the fascist leaders, the
generals in Japan in the 1930s,

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00:09:33,472 --> 00:09:36,242
were pretty much
influenced by Germany.

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And they read German
propaganda, Nazi propaganda,

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00:09:41,747 --> 00:09:44,550
about how Jews are
running the world.

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00:09:44,550 --> 00:09:48,487
And they were very eager to get
the Americans off their back.

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They didn't want a conflict
with the United States.

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So they concluded
that the way to get

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the Americans off
their back is by doing

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00:09:55,461 --> 00:09:57,597
something nice for the Jews.

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00:09:57,597 --> 00:10:01,934
And this, in fact, fit
with Japanese history.

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00:10:01,934 --> 00:10:05,004
Because in the early
part of the 20th century,

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00:10:05,004 --> 00:10:07,740
there was a Russo-Japanese war.

197
00:10:07,740 --> 00:10:12,631
And wealthy Jews who were very
anti-Russian-- because Russia

198
00:10:12,631 --> 00:10:16,037
was very anti-Semitic--
were funding and supporting

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00:10:16,037 --> 00:10:17,149
the Japanese.

200
00:10:17,149 --> 00:10:20,620
Jacob Schiff and others.

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00:10:20,620 --> 00:10:23,489
Japan considered that that
was part of the reason why

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00:10:23,489 --> 00:10:25,291
they were able to win the war.

203
00:10:25,291 --> 00:10:27,059
So they had their
own connections

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00:10:27,059 --> 00:10:29,395
with the international
Jewish conspiracy

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00:10:29,395 --> 00:10:31,764
that runs the world that
they were picking up

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00:10:31,764 --> 00:10:33,699
from Nazi propaganda.

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00:10:33,699 --> 00:10:37,970
So they concluded that the way
to mollify the United States

208
00:10:37,970 --> 00:10:44,276
was to bring Jews from
Eastern Europe to Japan.

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00:10:44,276 --> 00:10:49,015
And there was a period
of the Nazi Russian pact

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00:10:49,015 --> 00:10:50,883
where people could move.

211
00:10:50,883 --> 00:10:53,319
And in fact, there was
a considerable number

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00:10:53,319 --> 00:10:58,124
of Polish Jews, very
orthodox Polish Jews.

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00:10:58,124 --> 00:11:04,363
The kind you see with
black hats and white shirts

214
00:11:04,363 --> 00:11:06,298
and you know, all of this.

215
00:11:06,298 --> 00:11:10,870
They were brought
from Poland to Japan,

216
00:11:10,870 --> 00:11:13,172
which was a feudal society.

217
00:11:13,172 --> 00:11:15,808
The cultural contact
was incredible.

218
00:11:15,808 --> 00:11:18,477
There's all sorts of
interesting stories about it.

219
00:11:18,477 --> 00:11:21,147
But the point here
is that the Japanese

220
00:11:21,147 --> 00:11:25,418
assumed that if they brought
Polish Jews to Japan,

221
00:11:25,418 --> 00:11:28,988
the American Jewish community
would welcome them here.

222
00:11:28,988 --> 00:11:31,457
They didn't want them to
stay in Japan, of course.

223
00:11:31,457 --> 00:11:33,893
They thought they'd go
on to the United States.

224
00:11:33,893 --> 00:11:35,861
They stayed in Japan.

225
00:11:35,861 --> 00:11:39,532
Nobody wanted them here,
including the Jewish community.

226
00:11:39,532 --> 00:11:41,767
And there's plenty
of stories like that.

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00:11:41,767 --> 00:11:47,039
As soon as you start to
lift the veil very slightly,

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00:11:47,039 --> 00:11:49,315
you find it everywhere.