I’m wondering how you get from the premises “some Jews were bankers” and “some bankers did bad things” to Bill’s conclusion about the Jews. The logic strongly reminds of this: http://xkcd.com/385/ , and I would not characterize it as reasonable.
Regarding “Jewish Bolsheviks”, while a number of prominent Bolsehviks were Jewish, most politically active Jews in Russia had not been Bolsheviks (the Bund dwarfed any of the other socialist parties for a long time), and in fact the main distinction between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks at the time of the split, rather than ideology, was ethnicity; about 86% of the Bolsheviks were ethnic Russian and only about 37% of the Mensheviks; Jews and Georgians who had been SDs were much more likely to be Mensheviks. Furthermore, by the time period that is relevant to this discussion, Stalin had largely purged the prominent Jewish Bolsheviks from the Soviet leadership.
I’m wondering how you get from the premises “some Jews were bankers” and “some bankers did bad things” to Bill’s conclusion about the Jews. The logic strongly reminds of this: http://xkcd.com/385/ , and I would not characterize it as reasonable.
Regarding “Jewish Bolsheviks”, while a number of prominent Bolsehviks were Jewish, most politically active Jews in Russia had not been Bolsheviks (the Bund dwarfed any of the other socialist parties for a long time), and in fact the main distinction between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks at the time of the split, rather than ideology, was ethnicity; about 86% of the Bolsheviks were ethnic Russian and only about 37% of the Mensheviks; Jews and Georgians who had been SDs were much more likely to be Mensheviks. Furthermore, by the time period that is relevant to this discussion, Stalin had largely purged the prominent Jewish Bolsheviks from the Soviet leadership.