Racism in the 21^st century has focussed on opposing non-white immig­ra­tion into white-majority countries, and calls to expel those not of European ethnicity. This is framed within the ideology known as “white-genocide” – the belief that the European races are delib­er­ately being turned into a minority in their own countries.

An example of this racism is seen in graffiti in Sydney, in March 2019, that targeted four ethnic com­munit­ies, namely east Asians, south Asians, Africans, and Jews: “Gooks Fuck off”, “Pakis Go home”, “Niggers Go home”, and “Kill the Jews”. The incon­gru­ity in this graffiti is stark – deport Asians and Africans, but kill Jews. What is behind this kind of thinking?

National Socialism (Nazism), and with it, alle­gi­ance to Adolf Hitler, is increas­ingly becoming a major ideology within the right-wing extremist milieu, with many people moving from civic pat­ri­ot­ism to racialist nation­al­ism, embracing “race-war”, “white-revolu­tion” and the genocide of the Jewish people. Seventy years after the defeat of Nazi Germany, a regime that instig­ated WW11 and a racist genocide, its ideology is being adopted and promoted.

Antisemitism is a form of racism, and it has its own unique char­ac­ter­ist­ics. The portrayal of Jews by racists is starkly different to por­tray­als of other minority com­munit­ies. While Jews, and other ethnic minor­it­ies, are portrayed as inferior, foreign, and dirty, Jews are given addi­tion­al ste­reo­types, the polar opposite to the general portrayal of minor­it­ies. Jews are con­sist­ently portrayed as the hidden hand, the power behind the curtain, the manip­u­lat­or, the string-puller, and the puppet master. Anti­semites believe that “the Jews”, despite their numerical insig­ni­fic­ance, are the most powerful people on the planet, so powerful that they sup­posedly control the US, the EU, the UN, Russia and China. Some even believe that “the Jews” control nature and can whip up tsunamis or train sharks to attack gentiles.

In tandem with the belief of “the Jews” as being inor­din­ately powerful, is the corollary, that “the Jews” are evil, abso­lutely evil, that it is in their very blood to be so. This is not a new concept. Christian teaching for centuries, and still today in some Christian circles, portrayed “the Jew” as “Christ-killer” – powerful enough and evil enough to have killed the Christian deity. For a thousand years, Jews were also portrayed as drinking the blood of Christian children, of torturing Jesus by sticking pins voodoo-style into the Christian Eucharist wafer, of poisoning the water-wells of Europe to cause the Black Plague as a means to anni­hil­ate Christen­dom, and of being behind other evil and murderous plots. Such lies resulted in countless innocent Jews being slaughtered, and whole Jewish com­munit­ies massacred.

Jew-hatred is based on an irra­tion­al mindset and framed in con­spir­acy theories – it is based on belief in an imaginary mythical being that does not actually exist, except in the minds of anti­semites. Jew-hatred is not based on who Jews actually are, but on belief in the myth­o­lo­gic­al Jew. It is this – the fantasy of the all-powerful and all-evil Jew – that drives ordinary people to the belief that the Jewish people are not only a threat to the society, race, country or religion, but are an exist­en­tial threat to humanity, and so must be elim­in­ated from the world, in some deluded cosmic struggle to survive.

On internet sites, such as Gab and Telegram, favoured by extrem­ists, where people are free to post their views with almost absolute impunity, it is so common that it has become normal to see expres­sions of racist hate, vili­fic­a­tion, and calls not just for the mass murder of Jews, but for the exterm­in­a­tion of Jews.

On these sites, many of these con­spir­acy theorists shout with glee about how “the Jews” will ‘pay for what they’ve done’, that “the Jews” ‘won’t be in charge much longer’, that they will be over­thrown, and that they will face the full wrath of what’s coming. There are repet­it­ive and con­sist­ent calls to kill Jews, and to “have a real Holocaust this time”.

For many within these milieus, the Covid-19 pandemic has become a gift, an incred­ible oppor­tun­ity for them to recruit people to the cause. Covid-19 and gov­ern­ment responses to it have increas­ingly become a focal point of social unrest, scep­ti­cism and con­spir­acy theories. This presents the oppor­tun­ity to attract and galvanise an array of racists, con­spir­acy theorists, and anti-gov­ern­ment activists, to the antisemitic cause. From early 2020, Jews were blamed for creating the virus, often claimed to be a way to poison much of humanity and to destroy western economies, all in order to bring about full Jewish control of the world.

Many con­spir­acy theorists are promoting the belief that Covid-19 does not actually exist, or if it does, it is no worse than the common cold. There the belief splits into two main inter­re­lated strands. One, that the vaccine is the poison, and it will mutate human genes, making people sterile and servile. Two, that gov­ern­ment responses, namely mask-wearing and lockdowns, are a testing ground for how far demo­crat­ic­ally elected gov­ern­ments can go in bringing in author­it­ari­an laws, and to see whether people will comply with or resist such laws. The end game is seen as mass depop­u­la­tion of the world, through the vaccine, and turning the world into a police state – all claimed to be plotted and manip­u­lated by “the Jews” for their own nefarious ends.

The anti-lockdown protests worldwide in 2021 – opposing measures such as mask-wearing, vac­cin­a­tion, stay at home orders and more – have attracted tens of thousands of people in cities across the Western world. The pro­test­ers are a con­glom­er­ate of disparate views from long-time anti-vac­cin­a­tion cam­paign­ers, new-agers, liber­tari­ans, and the perennial con­spir­acy theorists, as well as ordinary people caught up in the hype and fear of a pandemic. These people are angry at ‘the system’, and many protests have involved violent clashes with police. These pro­test­ers present a large force of tappable material for extremist groups.

On the streets, antisemitic placards and stickers have sought to “awaken” people to the supposed Jewish role in this pandemic. An antisemitic placard “Don’t Submit to the Zionist World Order”, held by a known Nazi supporter, was at the anti-lockdown protest in Sydney on 24 July. Stickers of the Star of David with “9 11” inside and a QR code linking to a video blaming “the Jews” for 9/11 were plastered around the Melbourne protest site just prior to the protest of 21 August. At the same protest, there were multiple placards with the word “Qui??” (French for “who”). ‘Qui’ in this context is a code asking who is behind this, and the pre­scribed answer is: “the Jews”. The Qui meme ori­gin­ated with the French retired army general, Dominique Delawarde, in June, who, when asked about who con­trolled the inter­na­tion­al media, answered with coded language used for “the Jews”.

The danger lies in fringe indi­vidu­als and groups, espe­cially neo-Nazis and other right-wing extrem­ists, infilt­rat­ing and infecting the self-pro­claimed “freedom” street pro­test­ers to adopt antisemitic ideas, and turning anti-lockdown pro­test­ers into foot soldiers for a ‘race-war’ and an open rebellion against demo­crat­ic­ally elected gov­ern­ments.

Their aim is to incor­por­ate a racist ideology into the appetite for civil unrest amongst thousands of people taking to the streets. Already, there are calls for politi­cians and police to be attacked, killed and “strung up by their feet”. These neo-Nazis aim to overthrow the gov­ern­ment, take control, and turn the country into a Nazi total­it­ari­an dic­tat­or­ship, and remove those they consider racial outcasts, including by mass deport­a­tion and genocide.

It is hoped that our gov­ern­ments and law enforce­ment agencies are fully cognizant of these threats, and take effective action to counter any form of extremism. Our demo­crat­ic way of life, our freedoms, and our well-being, depend upon it.

Julie Nathan is the Research Director at the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry, the peak rep­res­ent­at­ive body of the Aus­trali­an Jewish community, and is the author of the annual ECAJ Report on Antisemitism in Australia.