Well, we disagree over the usage of 'special interests', and as you say, it's difficult to gather objective data to support or refute either view. It's obviously a vague phrase that could be (and occasionally has been) used to dogwhistle many things, but that doesn't mean that a sentence attacking "special interests" is inherently as offensive as a sentence attacking a specific ethnic or religious group. That is the only point I'm making here, which I suspect you don't even disagree with. Even in the case of a dogwhistle, the whole point of a dogwhistle is that it is less immediately and unambiguously offensive than a straightforward statement of a prejudiced viewpoint.

By the way I'm not 'caught up' on 'Jews'. It's just that 'Jews' is one of the words that the authors of the hoax article replaced.