I have repeatedly watched the “documentary” Europa: The Last Battle. I don’t recommend you do the same. It is, in its own words, a pro-Nazi – or, as they prefer to be called, a “pro-national socialist” – production. Running to 12 hours long, it touches on every topic, antisemitic trope and conspiracy theory possible, all of which have been debunked multiple times by dozens of authors. Why, then, have I decided to cover it?
Pieces of this “documentary” keep popping up on Twitter and TikTok, each time used as a piece of propaganda by the far-right. Therefore, it is essential to discuss it not all at once but as a “series” of one-shots, each more or less self-contained, just as it appears on social media. So, where do you start with something as big, horrible, and influential as this?
I want to start with the concept of race, as it is key for the key assertions and narratives within Europa. This “documentary” proposes that Judaism is a race, not just a religion, and a monolithic group to boot. Therefore, any person associated with a Jewish person or with Jewish ancestry should be immediately suspected of wrongdoing. This is clear in the way that Europa discusses the figure of Karl Marx – specifically, the fact that he had Jewish ancestry. According to a graphic that appears in the “documentary”, Marx didn’t just have parents who belonged to the religion; he was a “super Jew”: descended from dozens of top-tier Rabbi ancestries.
In putting this forth, the “documentary” argues that Marx resulted from centuries of planning to create the perfect being to spread the message of communism. The implication is clear: that both communism and Zionism were a creation of the Jews to take over the world. The accusation that Communism is a Jewish ploy to control the world is as old as it is ridiculous – to the point that it is actively self-defeating. After all, if this were at all true, why would they have allowed the Soviet Union to fall?
In reality, Marx’s father was a convert to Christianity and, according to our information, raised his family in a non-religious environment. None of his upbringing, writings or speeches show an “inclination” for “Jewry” (in the words of Europa) – nor do those of Trotsky, who was viciously attacked because of his Jewish heritage even though he, according to his biographer and life, dissociated more and more from religion.
The movie’s entire logic is that even if a person has ever had one encounter or one parent or relation to a Jewish person, that must have corrupted them forever. For example, it argues that Stalin had Jewish wives, which is therefore proof that the Jews were controlling him. In reality, none of Stalin’s wives were Jewish; there is a rumour that Stalin supposedly had a third wife, but there is no documented evidence of her existence (and therefore no documented evidence of her race or religion), and even if she did exist, their marriage couldn’t have been for long, or it would have been far more well known.
Europa also looks at Moses Hess, taking his work out of context and even outright lying to claim that Hess foresaw a conflict between the Aryans and the Semites in his book “Rome and Jerusalem”. Hess’s book argues that the Germans and Jews are separate races, and as such, the Jews could never truly assimilate into the country, so the solution would be immigration to Palestine, the actual land of the Jews. This was in the 19th century, a period of intense nationalism and considerable debate within the Jewish community about whether the Jews could assimilate, and whether they should. Hess argues at the time that they couldn’t and shouldn’t. At no moment does he call for any violence against the any race, as Europa claims; his belief was in the incompatibility of assimilation, because he believed the Jews would always be considered strangers in Germany. This is just an example of one of the lies of the “documentary”.
The way in which the lies are presented in Europa also adds to their misleading quality. Constantly, throughout the film, text appears quickly on screen to cite what they claim is the supposed source, but the fleeting nature of the reference makes it hard for the viewer to verify. The film repeatedly quotes the maxim “Jewry is the Mother of Marxism”, which they cite as originating from Le Droit de Vivre on May 12, 1936. Le Droit de Vivre is a French newspaper – I checked it, but there was no May 12 edition of the paper in 1936 because Le Droit de Vivre is not a daily newspaper; it’s a weekly one. The paper does have editions on May 9 and May 16, but neither includes this supposed quote about Karl Marx – but even if they did, it would hardly be surprising, given that the journal in question was an explicitly antisemitic newspaper!
Elsewhere, Europa quotes Karl Marx himself:
“THE CLASSES AND THE RACES, TOO WEAK TO MASTER THE NEW CONDITIONS OF LIFE, MUST GIVE WAY… THEY MUST GIVE PERISH IN THE REVOLUTIONARY HOLOCAUST.”
Researching the origin of this quote, writer Otavio Pinto tracked it down to discover it is the combination of two quotes, which have been deliberately taken out of context and mistranslated. This butchering of history is the work by historian George G. Watson, who makes an appearance in Europa to tell viewers that Marx considered certain races to be Racial Trash.
The objective of each of these lies and associations is to introduce and cement for the viewer the notion that Jewish people, and the Jews as a race, are responsible for the evils of the world and that they have planned everything. For Europa, race is a firm, immutable fact, so much so that even those who claim otherwise are lying because they, too, must secretly really think about everything in terms of race.
The further objective is to argue that, if all this is true, then the oppressed Jews have an excellent reason to be oppressed and that the viewer is justified in feeling the antisemitic sentiments this “documentary” and its makers are trying so hard to entrench.
