Excerpted from Facing History and Ourselves “Antisemitism and It’s Impacts” Explainer

Why Does Antisemitism Persist?

In addition to humans creating divisions in their societies, often based on racist beliefs, antisemitism exists in part because Jews have served as scapegoats—those who are irrationally blamed for societal problems—for over two thousand years. With scapegoating comes the creation of conspiracy theories.

Conspiracy theories attempt to explain the occurrence of harmful events, social changes, or even everyday circumstances we don’t like by blaming them on a small group of people. According to the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, classic antisemitism links Jews to forces of evil. Some common antisemitic conspiracies include the false belief that “the Jews” control the government, banks, and media, and the false belief that Jews are responsible for spreading disease, such as COVID-19.

Philosophy professor Kwame Anthony Appiah describes conspiracy theory as “a way of fitting all things that don’t fit together, together. It’s a way of making sense of the world by saying, ‘Well, that can’t be an accident, so I have to have a story about why it connects. And so someone offers me this preposterous story, but at least it connects two things.’ Once you’ve got this sort of mindset, you can see the evidence wherever you look. Understanding the world is hard. . . and getting explanations is difficult. And making them up as opposed to finding the right ones is easier than finding the truth.”

Antisemitic conspiracy theories rely on tropes*—widely shared ideas, stereotypes, phrases, images or stories. Tropes can be neutral, like common movie or literary tropes, but antisemitic tropes cause great harm. 

When someone uses code words to communicate a racist trope with others who share the same belief in order to avoid being called out or censored for hate speech, this tactic is called dog whistling. Dog whistling often occurs on social media and in public speeches. Antisemitic dog whistles include referring to “the Hollywood elite” with the intent to promote the conspiracy theory that Jews control the entertainment industry or claiming there is a Jewish “cabal” (secret political group) that controls global outcomes and referring to them as “Zionists.”

The Issues: Antisemitism