“The Europeans killed six million Jews out of 12 million. But today the Jews rule this world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them.…We are up against a people who think. They survived 2000 years of pogroms not by hitting back, but by thinking. They invented and successfully promoted socialism, communism, human rights, and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so they may enjoy equal rights with others. With these they have now gained control of the most powerful countries and they, this tiny community, have become a world power. We cannot fight them through brawn alone. We must use our brains also. Of late because of their power and their apparent success they have become arrogant. And arrogant people, like angry people, will make mistakes, will forget to think.”

The prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, a medical doctor turned politician, made those remarks October 16. This week, President Bush’s spokesman said the president had rebuked Dr. Mahathir for the remarks. In an interview published yesterday in the Bangkok Post, Dr. Mahathir complained that his remarks had been taken out of context. “They picked up one sentence where I said that the Jews control the world,” he complained, saying the reaction proved “they do control the world.”

The New York Times yesterday published a piece by its columnist Paul Krugman that, after making a perfunctory criticism of Dr. Mahathir’s attack on Jews, lauded the Malaysian bigot and sought to blame his remarks on President Bush’s support for Israel. “Not long ago Washington was talking about Malaysia as an important partner in the war on terror,”Mr. Krugman wrote in the column, which was headlined “Listening to Mahathir” and carried a subheadline, “Anti-Semitism with a purpose.”

Mr. Krugman went on, “Now Mr. Mahathir thinks that to cover his domestic flank, he must insert hateful words into a speech mainly about Muslim reform. That tells you, more accurately than any poll, just how strong the rising tide of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism among Muslims in Southeast Asia has become. Thanks to its war in Iraq and its unconditional support for Ariel Sharon, Washington has squandered post-9/11 sympathy and brought relations with the Muslim world to a new low.”

To understand the folly of this argument, it pays to look to events that took place before Mr. Krugman became a New York Times columnist, when he was still trying to eke out a living as an economist and paid Enron adviser. A December 1997 report from the World Jewish Congress sketched the story.

“There are almost thirty years of recorded anti-Jewish antipathy from Mahathir,” the World Jewish Congress wrote in 1997. The World Jewish Congress cited a 1970 book by Dr. Mahathir, “The Malay Dilemma,” in which he wrote, “the Jews for example are not merely hook-nosed, but understand money instinctively.”

Dr. Mahathir has been Malaysia’s prime minister since 1981, and since then, he’s consistently spoken out against the Jews. Throughout the 1980s, the World Jewish Congress reports, Dr. Mahathir spoke of foreign and critical newspapers being controlled by Jews. In 1984, the New York Philharmonic canceled a visit to Malaysia rather than agree to the Malaysian government’s demand that it drop its plans to play Ernest Bloch’s “Hebrew Rhapsody for Cello and Orchestra.”

In a 1986 speech, according to the World Jewish Congress report, Dr. Mahathir said, “The expulsion of Jews from the Holy Land 2,000 years ago and the Nazi oppression of Jews have taught them nothing. If anything at all, it has transformed the Jews into the very monsters that they condemn so roundly in their propaganda material. They have been apt pupils of the late Dr. Goebbels.”

In 1994, the Malaysian film censor, who operates under the prime minister’s supervision, refused to allow the Steven Spielberg film “Schindler’s List” to be shown in Malaysia because it offered too sympathetic a portrayal of Jews. In 1997, Dr. Mahathir criticized currency trader George Soros for destabilizing Malaysia’s currency, the ringgit. “We do not want to say that this is a plot by the Jews, but in reality it is a Jew who triggered the currency plunge, and coincidentally Soros is a Jew. It is also a coincidence that Malaysians are mostly Moslem. Indeed, the Jews are not happy to see Moslems progress. If it were Palestine, the Jews would rob Palestinians. Thus this is what they are doing to our country,” Dr. Mahathir said at the time, in widely reported comments cited by the World Jewish Congress.

In other words, Dr. Mahathir was an anti-Semite in 1970, during the Nixon administration, when he wrote of the “hook-nosed” Jews. He was an anti-Semite in 1984, during the Reagan administration, when he wouldn’t let the New York Philharmonic play, and in 1986, when he called Jews “monsters.” He was an anti-Semite in 1994, during the Clinton administration, when he banned “Schindler’s List” and in 1997, when he attacked George Soros as a Jew robbing his country. And, yes, he is an anti-Semite today, during the administrations of George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon.

No doubt readers of the Times will be able to figure out Mr. Krugman’s purpose in seeking, as Mr. Krugman did, to blame Mr. Bush’s Israel policy for Dr. Mahathir’s anti-Semitism. But the columnist made a classic error. It is neither Mr. Bush nor Mr. Sharon nor Israel nor the Jews who are to blame for Dr. Mahathir’s, or anyone else’s, anti-Semitism. The blame attaches, as it has always, to the anti-Semite, the anti-Semite alone.