Isidor Steinhardt and his sons flanking him: Richard and Arthur
Be careful when you listen to stories of Pakistani men grooming white girls in Leicester. Be very careful. There is history there. The history of the link between accusations of white slave trade and anti-semitism and the link between white slavery and poisonous orientalism.
In Mein Kampf Hitler worked himself into a frenzy of anti-semitism and at the peak of this frenzy he refers to the way young non-Jewish women were prostituted by Jewish pimps. There is a dangerous history of confusing poverty and crime with the fomentation of racist hatred. Notice the arguments made by the British National Party that say Black men are more likely to be criminals.
Now we are told men of Pakistani origin are pimps and abusers because they are Pakistani.
In a sense my Great Grandfather Isidor was also a victim of this old black ops technique. Your enemy is always a baby eater, isn't he? That's what the population is told. And when incidents and events align, and match prejudices, the white extremist racists say: I told you so!
My grandfather was positioned almost at the apex as a hate figure for anti-semites in Vienna. He exemplified some, but not all, of what the racist Austrians most hated.
Though he was not a Social Democrat at all, Isidor rose to become the foreign editor of the Neue Frie Presse. The Neue Frie Presse was probably the most prestigious newspaper in Europe, but it was owned by Jewish people and many members of its staff were Jewish. It was also nominally Social Democratic. Herzl, the founder of Zionism was its Paris correspondent during the trial of Captain Dreyfuss.
Isidor also wrote for Wienner Tagblat and Prester Lloyd. He was was also the stringer for the Daily Mail in Vienna (and remember that the Mail was quite positive about the Nazis).
In his autobiography Stefan Zwieg, the writer, remarked that the highest possible accolade for any artist was to get a positive review in the Neue Frie Presse. And for a writer it was to be published in it. What was in the paper was discussed in all the cafes in Vienna. Of course Isidor knew Zweig. They must have come across each other at work. They both had Czech connections and Zweig was from Zemun. Zemun was where Isidor was based during the Bosnian crisis.
Hitler mentions reading the Neue Frie Presse and the Weiner Tagbla with respectt, both papers Isidor wrote for at the time, until his synapses eventually misfired in a particular way that made him decide that Social Democracy and Communism were actually 'Jewish'.
He also partly exemplifies another fascist myth. That it was actually the Jews who caused WWI. References to Isidor are found in several books written about the Bosnian Crisis. Isidor features in several books, one by Josef Goricar and Lyman Beecher Stowe titled: The Inside Story of Austro-German Intrigue: or, How the World War was brought about. He was at the heart of the process the foreign Minister, Alois Lexa Aehrenthal set in motion to annex Bosnia. He was completely loyal to Austria and opposed to Serbia.
Finally, Isidor was opposing head on the foreign policy aims of the British. They wanted to create a Yugoslav state and they supported the young Turks. In both areas Isidor opposed them in the Viennese newspapers and the British were aware of his participation in Aehrenthal's schemes. Aehrenthal was also an owner of the Neue Frie Presse, a paper Isidor wrote for.
When Isidor comes to their attention, a minor British diplomat writes to Lord Grey, the British Foreign minister who spent more time fishing than he did on devising foreign policy and calls Isidor a 'Yellow' journalist of the very worst sort, and says that there were even rumours that he was involved in the White Slave trade. Aehrenthal came in for similar treatment from the Russian foreign Minister Count Izolvsky, who called Aerenthal, who later became an Austrian Count, 'that dirty Jew'. There is a picture of Isidor with Aerenthal together at Aehrenthal's castle Bachlau in 1912, the site of the secret meetings with Count Izolvsky.
Isidor was based in Sarajevo from the time of the annexation and kept up his stream of attacks against Serbia until 1914. In 1914 he was on the steps in Sarajevo in the famous picture, waiting for the Archduke Ferdinand, just before the Archduke was assassinated.
Isidor exemplified the Jews that the anti-semites targetted in all but three respects. He was not left wing, despite the fact that he edited the foreign news and wrote for the Neue Frie Presse. His family were not refugees from pogroms further to the east. Many of the refugees lived in dire poverty. They dressed differently. They didn't speak good German. He was assimilated; he was not religious in any way, and he was fiercely loyal to the Austro-Hungarian empire and the monarchy.
It was his loyalty to Austro-Hungary that caused him to be a foil for Aehrenthal. Loyalty to an empire that had not persecuted him but allowed him to become a well know journalist. Shouldn't this have been laudable and comprehensible for the anti-semitic Austrians?
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