(from p/17sOj2BOuO)

First fail at 1:00: WP says of Zoroaster, "While many scholars today consider a date around 1000 BC to be the most likely, others still consider a range of dates between 1500 and 500 BC to be possible." Abraham cut a monotheistic covenant in 1969 BC and this accords with Egyptian history, though people fight that Biblical fact. Making Zoroaster the first Zionist or monotheist works in no way for me except alliteration.

Like that swastika inside the zodiac? Almost historical.

2:00 The idea that Israel had nothing about a Messianic millennium until they got it from Cyrus who got it from Zoroaster is just silly. You'd have to cut off half of Isaiah and say Isaiah didn't write it in the 8th century, you'd have to throw out Abraham and Moses entirely, and you'd have to assume that Cyrus actually had all the developed doctrine instead of the Hebrew kings and prophets. I do see that Zoroastrianism sometime got around to having a theory of millennia (likely related to the Sumerian focus on sars of 3600 years), and hints of a redemptive figure Saoshyant mostly developed in AD, but there's no data that make that any different from the data that come to us by Abrahamic tradition.

3:00 Having tried to import this strand via Iran, he goes into a spiel of a second strand, mystery religions, that Jews supposedly also got there. This may be modern Masonic theory but has zero evidence. Each manifestation of a mystery religion is unique, they may be connected even, but it's just a common satanic spirit constantly seeding confusion to see what sticks to the wall.

Second fail at 4:00: The restored temple concept is seen as Persian, the OT as written all in the 6th century and later, and most specifically the (hexagram) "seal of Solomon" as coming from there too. No, I've documented that the "seal of Solomon" was originally an Arabic tradition about 3rd century AD, it was then connected with the hexagram in a later development, and there were no hexagrams in Judaism in the 6th or any century BC.

5:00 At least he's right about the swastika, as the Jews had it as a sign of peace on their tombs probably 1st century BC, long before the hexagram. But, third fail, he refers to Bahai, Theosophy, and JWs, and then "other Christian sects". Just no. They all stole it from us and left us. Their agreement with us doesn't prove that the Bible is lying or our faith is pagan.

6:00 After all the inaccuracy, a fully accurate view of millennialism in NatSoc, complete with the three-reich theory, after seeding us with Aryans and swastikas? Really? Are Nazis Zionists too then?

Then in a bizarre panoply we are told that German Templers seeded Palestine in the early 19th century, Germans in 1930s Palestine became Nazis but helped rebuild Haifa to new glory, Netanyahu out of context says Hitler wanted to expel rather than exterminate the Jews, and some background arises on the Haavara initiative the Jews were advantaged by. This part I can hardly keep track of. Churchill is read at length to the effect of casting secular Jews promoting communism (bolshevism) against religious Jews promoting "Zionism"; and German propaganda read at length to the effect of dissuading Britain from fighting them rather than Communism. As one not politically shrewd, what am I to make of all this? To me, Bolshevism and Balfourism both advanced their own agendas through much the same events via relatively direct invitation from the countries attacked, while those poor Nazis and Italian Fascists were beaten back from the folly of imposing their will on neighboring countries without real invitation.

The rabbi comes in to tell me that Mein Kampf says Hitler hated Jews because so many were communists trying to take over. So the rabbi agrees with Hitler, raising an Orthodoxy standard against secular Jews? Well, we knew Judaism was not monolithic. But am I supposed to group together all the millennialists then? Theosophists, Nazis, rabbis, Zoroastrians, Muslims, myself? There is no coalition here, even if all are equally opposed to "communists".

It gets weirder! Secret societies are now split by a hidden hand? Destruction of values means that noble "knights" have now become ignoble "lodges"? (Refuses to elaborate further.) Does he mean "communism equals bad" and now those Masons he seems so sympathetic to are being hurt by its relativism and they need to get more Zionist and millenarian? By lodge rules, we can't know!

Suddenly we speak of the "Jewish Messianic movement", by which he means not me (Hebrew-roots) but rabbinical Messianism, which now means Schneersohn Chabad. He swirls through Luria to Zevi (1666) to Frank to Weishaupt and Rothschild, with heavy ads for his book. Problem was, gnosticism in the first centuries AD already anticipated every aspect of "redemption through sin" philosophy, no news.

Somehow there is a stall around 30:00 on the concept that Sabbateans invented matrilineality and before that Judaism was a religion. Well, it was really always both, and that is true in Christianity too: you're either born into it or you're adopted (converted) into it, but it's a real family. It's probably a history fail to deny matrilineality before Zevi, and certainly the Orthodox agree on matrilineality so it's not like that divides them from the secular. WP: "Close to all Jewish communities have followed matrilineal descent from at least early Tannaitic (c. 10–70 CE) times through modern times." Fourth fail.

If Moses Mendelssohn invented secular Judaism, well, yes today we have Reform and Reconstruction, yes Orthodox and Conservative don't like them. So by 35:00 we get over five minutes of phone video of a speech bringing in these, and Nathan of Gaza, suggesting that we can credit Sabbataeans with remaining "racial Jews" while infiltrating all kinds of orgs for secular Jewish communistic goals.

Well, look, I don't care if communists/socialists are Jews or not, what I care about is that they don't have consent of the governed. Acts 2-5 is a communal organization where everything worked because the leaders had consent of the governed. Every other form of communism is an epic fail.

The video collapses into another whirlpool of loosely collated names that I don't care to try to track, from Cyrus's Persian mystery as the source of some imagined consistent kabbalah that made it all the way through to present-day illuminatist power. We see Schneersohn (I guessed it!) calling for Messiah to come immediately. And we depart (is he eating Thai to that Ave Maria?!) with the injunction that the new world order is set up by these communists to bring utopia via sin.

Is the idea that all the millennial threads then are the "good" side and all the secular threads are the "bad" side? I don't buy that at all. Is the idea that millennium is good but the Orthodox idea of messiah (Schneersohn) is better than the Reform idea of messiah (Zevi and Frank)? OP seems exceptionally gnostic and thus dualist about that! He leaves us with no means of combating the "bad" messiah, nor any clear moral compass for picking among a smorgasbord from Blavatsky to Marx. Graph, please message me you disown the lodge.

Folks, it's pretty simple IMHO. God has always given truth through an unfolding but constant message. Love good, hate evil. That brings you to him as your Savior and his appearing in Jesus as your Messiah. Then you, like I, don't need to sweat what the crazy world does. The current culture war indeed pits everyone against each other to try to claim their own Zion, whether the physical one or some conceptual kingdom. But Jesus makes clear his kingdom is within you plus he will come back and fix the physical too. We don't need to worry about world-shaking destruction arising from either the rampant sinners or the literalist Orthodox who haven't found their Messiah yet. Our lives are already secure even if the world falls. I see no guiding logic in this buffet, no hope after attempting to shake the faith we have in our written revelation, but my life is secure against even that manifestation of idiopathy.

(to u/Graphenium)

Okay, the four fails I counted are (1) 1:00 Zoroaster living about 3500 years ago and already preaching a plan of "glorious transformation and perfection of the earth", (2) 4:00 the "seal of Solomon" existing as a hexagram in 6th century BC concept, (3) 5:30 reference to Bahai, Theosophy, and JWs, and then "other Christian sects" as if there's no error in lumping these together, (4) 30:00 Sabbateans made Judaism no longer a religion but a race only. Those are pretty bald statements that scrape pretty heavily across established historical facts.

"Jew" first meant son of Judah only, then it meant citizen of Judea, then it meant descendant of a Judean including by naturalization/conversion, and now it theoretically includes all descendants of Judah's brothers if they can be counted the same way. Through that polity shift it was always understood that Jews practiced Judahite behavior and trained their children and proselytes too as well; and it was understood that the family of Jews could disown/excommunicate rebels from that behavior. When the Sabbateans said conversion to Islam is part of being Jewish there were "excommunications" but they could not be maintained consistently indefinitely. So I think the modern theory is that the rabbis continue to maintain definition of Jewishness and to excommunicate those discovered not to be within the pale, but to recognize that 90% are secular and yet haven't lost their Jewishness by a broad, consistent standard. That is, they are still "those under duty to practice Judahite behavior" but who, practically, don't do so, don't get called out on it due to mercy, and are invited to grow back into it. If the majority of those recognized rabbinically as Jews believe "Jew is ethnic", the rabbis still seem to have some hold over policy at the Israeli Supreme Court such that this wide belief doesn't reflect legislation or tradition.

Catholics (and others) have the same problem: even if a majority of Catholics believed some incorrect folk view about Catholicism, that wouldn't undermine the official pronouncements as being official. If we assume that both groups are assailed by insincere infiltrators who want to change the official judgment by majority pressure, then there is a war between the conservative upholders of the tradition and those who identify with the tradition but call for broad reform as if it accurately represents the tradition. There is not evidence that Khazar conversion hurt this tradition; there's a little evidence that Sabbatean/Frankist doctrine has weakened the tradition a bit such that its need to fight now is critical.

As a Messianic, I know anyone can call himself messianic and claim it, so I ask a person do you mean MJAA or UMJC or OMJRA or what? As a Presbyterian, I ask do you mean PCA or PCUSA or OPC or what? Otherwise the word, just like "Jewish", means whatever you want. And if you lowercase "Jew" it means something else entirely again. So if you mean "Jew" as defined by the continuous body of rabbinical Judaism, no it hasn't changed, and on this OU and UOR and RCA all agree. If you mean "Jew" as defined by anyone, all such words change and the change is not meaningful to exact speakers.

Other points. Sepehr seems unaware of the Hebrew-roots movement, he focuses on "messianism" within Jewish Orthodoxy, which is of course in your second category of religious Zionists. When he treats of Christian and other messianic expectations those are also lumped as if Zionists. The battle between globalists and Israeli nationalists is relatively minor, because (unlike us) Israel has a fluid Constitution and Basic Law that allows syncretist infiltration, so it won't manifest that way. Rather, I infer from Ezekiel and Isaiah that globalists and leftward nationalists will unite using aggression by (say) Russian nationalism as a pretext. (It would be interesting if the Jews were then ejected out of Israel.)

The real battle is between satanists/atheists, who generally seek immediate power, and people of good will, who generally are optimistic about future peace. These alignments are too broad and loose to characterize with Sepehr's clashing brushstrokes. It seems to me disingenuous to say the "Hidden History of Zionism" is that Zionism is really a good thing and it kinda bubbles up variously because of this (much more important and definable) giant monolithic leviathan of secular communism by some Jews that ruins everything, even peaceful music-loving Masons.

Secret societies, by their definition, were never identified with the transparency of people of good will. If you want a professional guild, you organize it transparently, not secretly, we have many such today. If you allow secret oaths, you contain the seeds of your own destruction because you never know when your "friends" will take another secret oath against you. Definitional.

WWII is so complicated that it gets in the way of (what we think of as) statements of fact. Germany seized Poland and had "invited" the Soviets to manage Eastern Poland after the Polish government fled. Ukraine, like other regions, transferred from the Russian Empire to the Soviet Union, but was briefly invaded by Germany. Germany invaded France and then cut a client deal with crippled Vichy France. Japan invaded America. So I don't see that the basic nonaggression principle fails to distinguish the two sides. I'm pretty sure we can make cases that the Allies failed and initiated aggressions somewhere too, but the issue is the balance between philosophies there.

I'm told that the Ottomans joined the Central Powers in WWI and so the Allies established a revolt against the Ottomans by invitation of the Arabs 1916, but the division of the land into British mandates did not appear to the Arabs to honor their agreement with Henry McMahon for the British (called British "reneging" by WP). I was not fully aware of this so it invites further investigation, but it agrees with what I just said about there being exceptions where the nonaggression principle was dishonored by the "good guys". If I said all I knew about Pearl Harbor, it would bring us right back to distrust of all the guys we have today except Jesus.