Should We Be Surprised by Right-Wing Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories?

The special character of contemporary antisemitism is that it emanates from both the right and the left. Just a few years ago, the “new antisemitism” seemed to be a strictly left-wing affair, tied to the Israel-Palestine conflict and informed by the “Red-Green Alliance” between the Western Left and Islamist groups. Right-wing Israeli and Jewish commentators emphasized that fact and added it to the advantages of identification with the Republican Party and other conservative groups.

But in the last year and a half, this picture has been fractured by the emergence of virulently antisemitic right-wing “influencers” such as Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes and the cover they are provided by political and media figures such as Vice President JD Vance and Tucker Carlson.

Many commentators have expressed surprise at this development. Yet should this really be surprising? Hadn’t xenophobia, anti-immigrant sentiment and discrimination against various groups (starting with Native peoples and African chattel slaves) been intrinsic to America, at various times and in various circumstances, since its inception? Furthermore, conspiracy theories demonizing Jews and others may be a deeply rooted byproduct of modernity.

One strong tradition in American politics, once associated with Southern Democrats but, since the 1960s, increasingly tied to the Republicans, holds that true membership in American society, with its rights and privileges, belonged to white, Protestant men, especially those who had been part of the American social fabric for generations. Such membership is not open to all people of any background who enter into the American social contract, but rather to a group with specific racial, ethnic, religious and gender characteristics.

On the margins of this restricted conception of belonging were organizations and movements that were more extremist in their racism, antisemitism and advocacy of conspiracy theories – the Ku Klux Klan in the 1880s and 1920s, Father Coughlin and the American Nazi Party in the 1930s; and Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-Wisc.) and the John Birch Society in the 1950s and ‘60s.

While these extremist actors and movements have only intermittently become significant political factors, they should not be relegated to the “lunatic fringe.” Rather, they are structurally related to the “more moderate” mainstream.

A key trait of extremist groups is that they traffic in conspiracy theories, especially those involving Jews. Since the Middle Ages, Jews and other groups, such as Freemasons and witches, have often been described as secret players in a conspiracy to take over the world and enslave, dispossess, or even kill other populations. According to these theories, Jews play this role as agents of the devil or some other principal of cosmic evil.

Such thinking seems to be a result (in one fashion or another) of anomie or anomia, a concept first advanced by Émile Durkheim, the late 19th-century “father of sociology.” It refers to a social state of normlessness, that is, when the social norms that permit social interaction are unknown (or cannot be known), unclear or unable to be implemented. Durkheim showed that in such situations where individuals are cut off from social life, they will, among other things, engage in self-destructive behavior. This situation can be caused, among other factors, by rapid change in both negative and positive directions, either rapid impoverishment or rapid enrichment.

In essence, anomia means that the social world has stopped making sense. In such a situation, one might be susceptible to the suggestion that the forces governing the social world are hidden and generally malevolent, perhaps a conspiracy brewed by witches or Jews. Some have suggested that belief in conspiracy theories grants a feeling of having privileged knowledge, together with a sense of control.

It has been hypothesized that the outbreak of one grand, hugely murderous conspiracy theory, the European witch craze (1480-1650),  which resulted in the execution of 50,000 women and men, was linked to widespread moral confusion and anomie – feelings of living in an alien and indifferent universe in which, because of the religious wars, death and destruction became ends in their own right.

The emergence of conspiratorial antisemitism around the turn of the 20th century, embodied, above all, in “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” also seems to be related to moral and social chaos and anomie. This arose from rapid industrialization and urbanization in Europe, especially in Germany, and later from the mass, mechanized killing of World War I.

Today, too, there appears to be a great deal of moral confusion and the widespread feeling that American society does not enable a meaningful and productive life. This is evident in the “deaths of despair” of middle-aged, lower-class white men, the epidemic of Fentanyl addiction across all classes, and the feeling of Gen-Z young adults that they will never achieve the fundamental attributes of American middle-class existence – one’s own home, good health insurance, adequate retirement savings.

We should not be surprised that conspiratorial antisemitism has reemerged in the current circumstances. But there is a deep reason that ties it specifically to the right. One of the major and recurrent generators of anomie since the end of the Middle Ages has been the clash of traditional markers of collective identity – race, ethnicity, religion – with the increasingly rationalized and technological means of production on the one hand, and the increase of social criticism based on liberal reason that traces back to the 18th-century  Enlightenment and extends to the current “progressive”  ideology.  The contemporary “woke” mindset applies the rational, liberal ideals of equality and freedom to new areas of criticism – not only to gender, but to sexual orientation and behavior. Whether such criticism has value or utility can be contested, but it has certainly contributed to a pervasive moral confusion and lack of normative clarity.

Today’s anomie and the conspiracy theories that spring from it (including about Jews) may be an ironic byproduct of modernity. We should not be surprised by them, but rather focus our energies on mitigating them as we do with other unwanted byproducts of modernity, like other various forms of pollution.

Dr. Shlomo Fischer teaches sociology in the School of Education at Hebrew University and at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.