The Hidden Tyranny – The Harold Wallace Rosenthal fake interview and fabricated quotes

On August 11, 1976, passengers preparing to take an El Al flight from Yeşilköy International  Airport (renamed as Atatürk International Airport), Istanbul, to Tel Aviv were attacked by armed members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. As the last group of passengers were departing the airport the terrorists opened fire with submachine guns and threw hand grenades at the airport bus transferring them to the plane. Two Israeli tourists, Ernest Eliash and Shlomo Weisbach, died from gunshot wounds while Japanese tour guide Yutaka Hirano and Harold Wallace Rosenthal, a 29 year old rising figure in US politics, were killed by the exploding grenades. Over twenty other passengers were also injured.

Harold Rosenthal was travelling from the US to Jerusalem, via Turkey, to attend a work seminar when the attack took place. He was a senior aide to Sen. Jacob Javits and like the Senator, who was known for his work on civil rights and had played a key role in the Senate’s passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Harold had dedicated his life to public service, specialising in international relations.

To honour his memory The Harold W. Rosenthal Fellowship was established the following year, which supports outstanding US students who strive to work towards better government and a stronger democracy. It provides summer placement in Congressional or Executive Branch offices, along with financial assistance, to give its recipients unprecedented work experience. But Harold’s name would also become synonymous with a much darker culture, one created to perpetuate hate, not the civic-minded legacy Harold had rightfully been awarded in 1977.

Nearly two years after the terrorist attack Walter White Jr., the head of the white supremacy organisation ‘The Western Front’, released a pamphlet entitled “The Hidden Tyranny: The Issue That Dwarfs All Other Issues” which he claimed was the transcript of a recorded interview he conducted with Harold just a month before his death.

Relying heavily on antisemitic tropes from forgeries such as ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’, White’s ‘interview’ portrays Harold as the ‘stereotypical’ Jew discussing the Jewish aim of world domination. He would even go as far as claiming Harold Rosenthal was murdered by Israeli officials, under the cover of a false flag operation, for giving the interview and exposing their dastardly master plan.

To continue spreading White’s work, in 1998 the 11th Hour Remnant Messenger, an Antisemitic Christian organisation with links to the Aryan Nation, reprinted and distributed The Hidden Tyranny to 9000 Idaho households, introducing a new generation to antisemitic conspiracy theories.

White’s claims were so preposterous even anti-Jewish websites questioned the legitimacy of the interview and in 2010 Tom Metzger, the former California grand dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, wrote in his publication, The Insurgent, that White was renowned for concocting outlandish stories and the Rosenthal interview was, in fact, ‘bogus’.

Despite White never being able to provide the tapes he claims contained the interview, in their willingness to believe The Hidden Tyranny is a bona fide account of an interview with a Jew, in the heart of Government, ‘quotes’ about Jews controlling the courts, media, education and even the American people themselves appear daily on social media. The Hidden Tyranny would even be quoted in the low budget antisemitic film, “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America“, which was released in 2018.

The most commonly shared Antisemitic, social media meme posted by extremist accounts, with an almost giddy fervour, is an attempt to portray the Jewish religion as demonic. It claims that during the interview Harold said “Most Jews do not like to admit it, but our god is Lucifer… and we are his chosen people”, but demonstrating how little they knew about Harold and the man he truly was, the meme was created using a photo of Senator Jacob Javits, alongside the fabricated quote.