Russian TV station blames Jews for Titanic, Chernobyl and 9/11
The wreck of the Titanic (Picture: YouTube/BW Channel)
Purveyors of antisemitic conspiracy theories are two-a-penny, but one Russian TV documentary has gone a step further than most.
Jews are responsible for the sinking of the Titanic, the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl and the terrorist attacks in the US on 11 September 2001, according to a short film broadcast recently on REN TV.
The documentary is an updated version of an earlier version broadcast in 2012, in which it was alleged that a group of “300 Jews, Illuminati and Freemasons” was behind the sinking of the British ship 100 years ago in order to cause an international crisis and take over the world.
The more recent film switches from past to the present tense and extends the conspiracy to Chernobyl, the collapse of the USSR in 1991 and 9/11, stating that the “Arab terrorists were unjustly blamed for the attacks”.
Commentators said the documentary was an attempt to revive the popularity of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a 19th-century antisemitic forgery created by the Tsar’s secret service, the Okhrana, to whip up antisemitism in Russia.
REN TV is a private network with an potential audience of more than 100 million Russians.
In 2015, the Russian Ministry of Education and Science described the channel’s documentaries as "the most harmful pseudoscientific project (for spreading of myths, delusions and superstitions)" and criticised REN TV for spreading conspiracy theories and distrust of science.