The piece has been pub­lished in The Times of Israel Blogs  and J‑Wire by ECAJ Research Direc­tor Julie Nathan.

Con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about ‘the Jews’ are ancient, per­va­sive and often geno­ci­dal in what they advo­cate. They are fab­ri­ca­tions borne out of a malig­nant big­otry that seeks to place all the world’s prob­lems at the feet of one numer­i­cal­ly small peo­ple, the Jew­ish peo­ple. Jews have been blamed for killing Jesus, mur­der­ing chil­dren to con­sume their blood (the Blood Libel), caus­ing the Black Plague, con­trol­ling gov­ern­ments, finance and media, per­pe­trat­ing the 9/11 ter­ror­ist attacks, wars and oth­er acts of ter­ror­ism, and being behind civ­il rights for minori­ties, tsunamis, “White Geno­cide”, and more recent­ly, the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic.

The lat­est iter­a­tion of these absur­di­ties is the canard that ‘the Jews’ are behind the Aus­tralian indige­nous Voice ref­er­en­dum. The accu­sa­tion is based on a false belief that ‘the Jews’ seek to destroy Euro­pean-eth­nic Aus­tralians, and that giv­ing a ‘Voice’ to Australia’s indige­nous pop­u­la­tion is one way to advance that goal. Regard­less of one’s views about the Voice, the accu­sa­tion not only diverts pub­lic focus from con­sid­er­a­tion of the mer­its or oth­er­wise of the Voice pro­pos­al, but also vil­i­fies and threat­ens Aus­tralian Jews.

Dis­course blam­ing ‘the Jews’ for the Voice has been occur­ring on extrem­ist social media sites and web­sites for many months. Jew-haters have been dri­ving it and push­ing this con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry. The the­o­ry is that Jews are so pow­er­ful and evil that they con­trol the gov­ern­ment and force the gov­ern­ment to make deci­sions that are not in the best inter­ests of Aus­tralians, but are in the inter­ests of only Jews. While ever such dis­course occurs on fringe extrem­ist sites, such as Telegram, it remains some­what con­tained. How­ev­er, under the own­er­ship of Elon Musk, Twit­ter has become a plat­form that allows extrem­ists to post hate­ful and vil­i­fy­ing con­tent; as attest­ed to by the many neo-Nazis and oth­er racists who have flocked back to Twit­ter.

Antho­ny Albanese, the Aus­tralian Prime Min­is­ter, has a Twit­ter account, ‘AlboMP’. On 30 June 2023, he made three posts, each one includ­ing text and a pho­to to rein­force the breadth of sup­port for a Yes vote in the upcom­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al ref­er­en­dum on the Voice for indige­nous Aus­tralians. The pho­tos depict­ed the Prime Min­is­ter engag­ing with mem­bers of the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, includ­ing with two Jew­ish com­mu­nal lead­ers and a Jew­ish MP. The posts empha­sised that the Voice had the sup­port of many “mul­ti­cul­tur­al and faith groups” includ­ing “many Jew­ish groups.” Many of the com­ments in response to Albanese’s posts claimed that Jews con­trolled the gov­ern­ment, that the Voice is orches­trat­ed by ‘the Jews’, and raised issues irrel­e­vant to the Voice such as Pales­tine. The main post had over 125,000 views and hun­dreds of com­ments.

A small selec­tion of the crude­ly anti-Jew­ish com­ments in response to Albanese’s posts include the fol­low­ing.

• “Of course Jews sup­port it, this was their idea in the first place. That Jew you’re shak­ing hands with (Mark Liebler) was the main archi­tect of the Voice. Jew­ish Pow­er in Aus­tralia is more secure if White Aus­tralia is weak­ened, and you are com­plic­it in it. Trea­so­nous.”
• “Of course they will, they run the finan­cial world and wouldn’t miss ruin­ing Aus­tralia for any­thing!”
• “Jews were also over-rep­re­sent­ed in Australia’s com­mu­nist move­ment. Why are they so often involved in pro­mot­ing caus­es (such as the Voice) that run counter to Aus­tralian inter­ests?”
• “go research the Jew­ish law book the TALMUD Than you will under­stand who’s behind it all.”
• “Zion­ist occu­pied gov­ern­ment.”
• “Thanks for expos­ing the agen­da push­ers.”
• “At least you are trans­par­ent about who pulls your strings. Prob­a­bly a few sheck­les in it for you too.”
• “Why would you speak to rep­re­sen­ta­tives of a for­eign coun­try regard­ing a mat­ter affect­ing the con­sti­tu­tion of Aus­tralia? Which coun­try do you work for?”

Some com­ments on oth­er Twit­ter accounts includ­ed: “The Jew­ish Voice to Par­lia­ment”; “#VoteNo to the Jew­ish voice”; “The goy­im know” and the satir­i­cal­ly word­ed “Just a total­ly organ­ic cohen­ci­dence for the bet­ter­ment of Aus­tralia and total­ly not the lat­est chap­ter in the thou­sands year old hate and attempt­ed destruc­tion of white peo­ple.”

There were sev­er­al images post­ed on Twit­ter, includ­ing on Albanese’s page. The most pop­u­lar image, post­ed many times on var­i­ous pages, had the head­ing of “Labor want an Indige­nous Voice to Par­lia­ment but…” and indi­vid­ual pho­tos of four named peo­ple, com­posed of an Abo­rig­i­nal man and woman, Antho­ny Dil­lon and Bess Price, with the text “Not His Voice” and “Not Her Voice”, and two promi­nent Jews, Mark Leibler and Julian Leeser MP, and the text “His Voice” for each Jew. This image was also pop­u­lar on Telegram, an extrem­ist site.

Anoth­er image had the text “All the major cre­ators, financiers and sup­port­ers of the Voice to Par­lia­ment are Jew­ish. Ask your­self why .38% of Australia’s pop­u­la­tion is using 3% as a bat­ter­ing ram against the rest of the coun­try. Every sin­gle time” and the pho­tos and names of sev­en promi­nent Aus­tralian Jews plus Thomas Mayo (an indige­nous activist with the Voice, who it is claimed has some Jew­ish ances­try), and all eight peo­ple have a blue Star of David on their pho­to to iden­ti­fy them as Jews. The fig­ures .38% and 3% refer to the Jew­ish and Abo­rig­i­nal per­cent­ages, respec­tive­ly, of the Aus­tralian pop­u­la­tion.

A third image added text to the pho­to, orig­i­nal­ly post­ed by Albanese, which read: “Mark Leibler. Jew­ish Tax Lawyer and archi­tect of Abo­rig­i­nal Voice to Par­lia­ment.” A fourth exam­ple is a car­toon sequence of some­one in a t‑shirt say­ing “We know who is real­ly behind the Voice to Par­lia­ment!”; a suit­ed male with a cig­ar anx­ious­ly asks “Who is?”; the answer giv­en is “Inner city Left­ies!”; and the suit­ed char­ac­ter, now iden­ti­fied as Jew­ish by the Jew­ish reli­gious head cov­er­ing, responds with “Phew!” to sig­ni­fy his relief that the sup­posed “Jew­ish plot” remained a secret.

On Telegram, Thomas Sewell, leader of the neo-Nazi group Nation­al Social­ist Net­work, wrote: “Well the jews (Liebel­er and Less­er I believe) that are behind this 2023 polit­i­cal maneu­ver­ing to fur­ther destroy the inter­ests of White Aus­tralians have apt­ly named this jew­ish con­trolled danc­ing mon­key dic­tate “The Voice”.” Oth­er posts on Telegram includ­ed: “Joel Davis and Blair Cot­trell did a good deep dive into the Jew­ish influ­ence behind the ‘Abo­rig­i­nal’ Voice to Par­lia­ment with a focus on Mark Leibler”;  “we go behind The Abo­rig­i­nal Voice and look at one of its key archi­tects, influ­en­tial Jew­ish activist, cor­po­rate Tax lawyer and polit­i­cal pow­er bro­ker Mark Leibler”; “This is what the Jews behind the Abo­rig­i­nal Voice to par­lia­ment have in store for Aus­tralia”; and “Albo’s hand­ed us an oppor­tu­ni­ty to red pill peo­ple on the Jew­ish involve­ment in the Voice.”

While some promi­nent Aus­tralian Jews, along with many oth­er Aus­tralians, have been very sup­port­ive of the ref­er­en­dum, it is absolute­ly absurd to claim it is orches­trat­ed or run by ‘the Jews’. The con­spir­a­to­r­i­al mind­set only needs one Jew or a hand­ful to be involved in some­thing for a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry of a “Jew­ish plot” to form and take hold. Such is the inca­pac­i­ty of con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists to dis­tin­guish between fact and fan­ta­sy and engage in ratio­nal debate.

The dan­ger lies in the twin threat posed by such con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries: first­ly, vil­i­fy­ing and demon­is­ing the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty; and sec­ond­ly, under­min­ing the con­test of ideas that is essen­tial to the work­ing of a lib­er­al demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety. In this instance, it pos­es a third threat – tak­ing the focus away from prop­er dis­cus­sion of the Voice ref­er­en­dum. Con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries need to be exposed for the insid­i­ous fol­ly they are and coun­tered to neu­tralise the dan­ger­ous threats they pose.