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.