Peter Rachman belonged to a world that polite society did not approve of, though it pruriently enjoyed reading about it. But the coinage “Rachmanism” is now inscribed in the English language as shorthand for rapacious, unscrupulous landlordism. Today, in an age when both the Labour and Conservative parties have been roiled by credible charges of anti-Semitism among their members, we might reflect on how a Holocaust survivor, Polish patriot, and ex-serviceman was transformed by Britain’s popular press of the 1960s into a veritable Bond villain, a fantastical schemer and exploiter. Rachman was hardly a Rothschild, yet his name is still invoked as a byword for sordid capitalist exploitation. How much has changed?
Source : The Real Meaning of ‘Rachmanism’
