The following article has been published in the Times of Israel Blogs by ECAJ Research Director, Julie Nathan.

Antisemitism is at its core a con­spir­acy theory. It is based in the irra­tion­al belief that “the Jews”, a numer­ic­ally tiny and his­tor­ic­ally mar­gin­al­ised ethnic and religious group, have been con­spir­ing to cause harm to others, under­min­ing and manip­u­lat­ing, for their own nefarious purposes. It is not what Jews do or not do, but what anti­semites ascribe to Jews.

The deluded ima­gin­ings of anti­semites are beyond reason and know no bounds. It is about myth­o­lo­gic­al Jews rather than real Jews. Antisemitism is premised on two myths: that “the Jews” are innately evil and immensely powerful. Most of the pre­dom­in­ant and deadly myths about Jews involve con­spir­acy theories – the belief that Jews, more commonly expressed as “the Jews”, conspire to harm others.

The accus­a­tion that “the Jews” are “Christ-killers”, cemented into Christian theology by St John Chryso­stom from 386 CE, is based on two ideas: that as “Christ-killers”, the Jews were both intrins­ic­ally evil and abso­lutely powerful, to be not only willing, but able, to kill the Christian deity. This became the seed-bed of anti-Jewish accus­a­tions and con­spir­acy theories about Jews down through the centuries. It took hold and developed deep roots in the psyche of European Chris­ti­ans.

The Blood Libel accus­a­tion arose in the Middle Ages, in 1144. It was believed that Jews killed Christian children and used their blood in the making of matzah, the special bread eaten during Passover. The myth was spread from pulpit and market. Some popes tried to denounce it as the lie it was. Jewish law and practice forbade the con­sump­tion of any blood, even a speck of blood in an egg rendered the egg ineligible for con­sump­tion. And yet, millions of European Chris­ti­ans believed the lie, and acted on it – by murdering Jews.

The charge of “Desec­ra­tion of the Host” arose within thirty years of the Catholic Church adopting, in 1215, the belief in tran­sub­stan­ti­ation, that the Eucharist wine and bread became the actual blood and body of Jesus of Nazareth. Jews were accused of con­spir­ing to steal and torture the wafer, by sticking pins into it, as a means of torturing Jesus. The fact that Jews did not believe in tran­sub­stan­ti­ation or voodoo was irrel­ev­ant to the Christian author­it­ies. For over four centuries, Jews were executed and massacred, often by being burned, in the mul­ti­tudes.

The Black Death that killed tens of millions of people, a third of the pop­u­la­tion in Europe, from 1347 onwards was often blamed on the Jews. A myth was developed that the bubonic plague was caused by an inter­na­tion­al con­spir­acy of Jewry to poison and destroy Christen­dom. The Jews were accused of poisoning the water-wells. In frenzied retali­ation, whole Jewish com­munit­ies through­out Europe were slaughtered ― more than 200 Jewish com­munit­ies were wiped out. We now know that the bubonic plague was caused by plague-infected fleas on rats. But the trope of Jews as well-poisoners and plague-spreaders remains alive even today.

Communism was char­ac­ter­ised as a Jewish con­spir­acy to undermine and destroy cap­it­al­ism. The most popular ‘evidence’ produced was that Karl Marx, one of the most prominent communist ideo­logues, was born a Jew. The fact that he was converted to Chris­tian­ity at age six is con­veni­ently ignored. And so is the fact that Communism has dev­ast­ated Jewish com­munit­ies wherever it has ruled, including millions of Jews in the USSR, and yet communism is still touted as being a “Jewish plot”. At the same time as being accused of being behind communism, Jews were also accused of being behind cap­it­al­ism – con­trolling the banks, inter­na­tion­al finance, stock exchanges – and were portrayed as Shylock and Fagin.

The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, first published in 1903, was a document fab­ric­ated by the Russian secret police, as a weapon to be used against Jews in Russia, and to deflect anti-Czarist sentiment. The Protocols purported to set out a secret plot by leaders of “inter­na­tion­al Jewry” to take control of and rule the world. In short, it claimed that Jews aimed to influence, infilt­rate and take control of gov­ern­ments, the media, and the banks; Jews were sup­posedly plotting to undermine and corrupt religion, morality, culture and society. The Protocols have been cited repeatedly by those advoc­at­ing violence or even genocide against the Jewish people, from Russian pogrom­ists to Hitler and Hamas.

National Socialism (Nazism) is con­struc­ted around a racial theory and a con­spir­acy theory. Nazi ideology sub­scribes to the long-dis­cred­ited pseudo-sci­entif­ic racial theories of a superior “Aryan race” and a sub-human “Jewish race”. Despite regarding Jews as “sub-human”, Nazi ideology sub­scribes to con­spir­acy theories that “the Jews” were so powerful that they manip­u­late and control gov­ern­ments, finance and media, with the aim of totally dom­in­at­ing the world. Nazism therefore des­ig­nates “the Jews” as the most dangerous threat to the “natural supremacy” of the “Aryan race”. Nazis believe that for “the Aryan race” to assert its “natural supremacy”, Jews must be anni­hil­ated from the earth. The Nazis and their col­lab­or­at­ors were able to round up and murder six million Jews – and the Jews, despite Nazi belief in “Jewish power”, were powerless to stop the genocide.

The 9/11 terrorist attacks on the USA in September 2001 by Islamist ter­ror­ists spurred a con­spir­acy theory that “the Jews” were behind the attacks. It was often portrayed as a plot by “the Jews” to foment war between the Christian West and the Muslim world. Rumours that Jewish workers at the World Trade Centre had been fore­warned and so did not come to work that day sprouted, despite the fact that of the 2,606 people murdered that day in the World Trade Centre itself, over 400 were Jews, ie one in six deaths.

Within the con­tem­por­ary Islamic world, there has been many bizarre con­spir­acy theories. Israel/Jews were blamed for the 2004 tsunami in Asia which killed over 200,000 people, mostly Muslim. In 2008, Israel was accused of being able to train rats to bite only Arabs but to leave Jews alone. In 2010, Israel was accused of training sharks to attack people at an Egyptian resort to destroy the tourism trade. Some Islamic clerics preach that Jews are evil and conspire to dominate the world, and so must be destroyed. Islamist groups like the Muslim Broth­er­hood, Hamas, Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda, Daesh (ISIS), and others, seek to destroy and eliminate the Jewish people as they believe that “the Jews” conspire and plot to destroy not only Islam, but humanity – ideas often based on the writings of Sayyid Qutb and Nazi ideology, as well as Islamic texts.

The theory of “White Replace­ment” (sometimes called “White Genocide”) is the false belief that there is a global con­spir­acy, usually described as orches­trated by “the Jews,” to “import” non-Europeans ― espe­cially Africans, Asians and Arabs ― and Muslims into Europe, North America and Aus­tralasia for the express purpose of sub­jug­at­ing and decim­at­ing the European races and des­troy­ing Western civil­isa­tion. Those who subscribe to the “White Replace­ment” myth believe that through such mass immig­ra­tion, people of ethnic European back­ground will become a minority group, out­numbered and dominated ― that is, replaced ― in countries where once they were a majority of the pop­u­la­tion.

No matter how trivial or important a matter, a way is found to cast “the Jews” as being the plotters or puppet-masters, the manip­u­lat­ors or the hidden hand. No matter how irra­tion­al or non­sensic­al the claim, it is often hard to dislodge such beliefs from the mind of an antisemite. Logic and facts have no influence on such a mindset.

The default position is that if a Jew, even one Jew, is involved, then that is enough to claim it as “evidence” of it being a “Jewish plot”. Jews are not seen as doing anything normal or mundane – Jews, indi­vidu­ally and col­lect­ively, are seen, by con­spir­acy theorists and anti­semites in general, as always having a hidden agenda and per­ni­cious purpose.

Jews are a mere 14 million people in the world, com­pris­ing 0.2 % of the world’s pop­u­la­tion of 7.8 billion people. And yet, Jews are con­sidered to be so powerful that they manip­u­late and control countries like the USA, Russia, Saudi Arabia, China, and even Iran, and control most, if not all, of the banks and media through­out the world.

A con­spir­acy theory is the belief that events are not random or con­sequen­tial, but rather are orches­trated by people who are manip­u­lat­ing events for their own malevol­ent agenda. This type of mental gym­nastics and cognitive dis­son­ance appeals to people who fear the ran­dom­ness and therefore the power­less­ness over many life events, from disease to auto­mobile accidents to tsunamis. But it has two main benefits to them. Firstly, it makes them feel secure in the idea that all bad things are orches­trated, that nothing is random, and therefore all evil is pre­vent­able. Secondly, it makes them feel smug and intel­li­gent because they believe that they are the only ones clever enough to see ‘the truth’. The great majority of con­spir­acy theories place “the Jews” as the con­spir­at­ors orches­trat­ing evil in the world.

There are indeed many problems through­out the world – poverty, cor­rup­tion, hatred, racism, violence, wars, domestic violence, child abuse, exploit­a­tion, slavery, and many more. Such problems can only be addressed by knowing the causes and how to work to fix them. Con­spir­acy theorists are never going to solve one problem, no matter how small, because they blame some mythical culprit, an imagined being. All that con­spir­acy theorists manage to do is threefold: to show that their own deranged mind is imper­vi­ous to reason, to make life uncom­fort­able, and often deadly, for the innocent people they target, and to divert attention away from the real causes of problems in society. They are thus aggrav­at­ing societal problems and hence become a problem them­selves.

Where ignorance and hatred rule the human mind and heart, people will believe the most deluded and irra­tion­al things. In the end, antisemitism tells more about the antisemite than anything about Jews.