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Shift gears to the Cardassians, and the tone darkens. They’re the Nazis of this allegory—cold, authoritarian, and fixated on dominance. Their occupation of Bajor, complete with forced labor and cultural erasure, mirrors the Holocaust’s horrors. Gul Dukat’s oily charisma even evokes a certain Führer-like arrogance. The Cardassians aren’t Jewish, of course—they’re the oppressors, the historical foil against which Jewish survival stands out. Their presence in DS9 frames the Bajorans’ struggle as a familiar fight against annihilation.
Now, the Dominion’s players take this Jewish reading to wilder heights. The Changelings, those shapeshifting Founders, lurk unseen, pulling strings across the quadrant. They’re the conspiracy theorist’s dream: a hidden elite controlling the system, akin to antisemitic myths of Jews manipulating global finance. In DS9, they’re not explicitly Jewish, but their shadowy power fits that trope like a glove—mysterious, omnipresent, and untouchable until the war drags them into the light.
Their lackeys, the Vorta, spin a different yarn. These smooth-talkers—Weyoun especially—are the entertainment industry Jews of the allegory, crafting narratives to mask the Changelings’ dominance. They’re the PR wizards, the studio execs of the Dominion, obfuscating truth with charm and lies. It’s a biting take, leaning into old stereotypes of Jewish media influence, but DS9 plays it with sci-fi flair, making the Vorta both comedic and sinister.
The Jem’Hadar, meanwhile, are the golems—created servants bound to their masters. In Jewish lore, the golem is clay brought to life to protect, like Rabbi Loew’s guardian in Prague. Here, though, the Jem’Hadar are a tragic twist: engineered soldiers, enslaved by ketracel-white, fighting for a cause not their own. They’re a slave race with Jewish roots, their strength turned against them—a haunting inversion of the golem’s protective myth.