Fascists Are Using Antisemitic Tropes to Target Other Groups

Fascists and other far right groups have found new ways to gain the benefits of antisemitism without the consequences that can come with it. This is their latest iteration.

There is a new face to fascism today. Like any form of insidious ideology, its believers have learned to adapt.

Today, fascists don’t wear swastikas, they wear red hats. They use humor, irony, and “edginess” to make it appear as if they are neither serious people nor are they serious about their aims. This threw off an entire generation of thinkers and leaders, all who declared on national television for a decade that Trump and his followers were clowns not worth taking seriously.

Much of this strategy has been dissected by scholars of fascism and online culture. But one adaptation has flown under the radar, even as it spreads through a vast portion of our discourse: the dismantling and retooling of historic antisemitism.

The core tropes of much of historic antisemitism (shadowy elite puppetmasters controlling the country, the “feminization” of society, blood libel etc) have been transmuted and redirected. Now, it is no longer just Jews at the center of these myths: other groups have become the center of them.

Trans people, Palestinians and others are the targets. In each case, familiar antisemitic tropes are being recycled, with a new scapegoat placed at the center.

This does not mean Jews are being replaced as targets. It means that fascists have learned how to adapt their messaging to obscure their goals. Like every fascist tactic, this one is built to confuse its targets, divide its opposition, and grow while no one is looking.

Here’s how it’s playing out:

Trans People

When I was on Twitter I would repeatedly run into this when trying to call out antisemitism. One prominent example: in 2022, the CEO of Babylon Bee, a satirical conservative “news” website, wrote that comedians’ lives could be ruined if they went after “the most powerful-but-insecure people in the world who mitigate mockery at their expense by self-identifying as oppressed and powerless.” This, in many ways, is a classic antisemitic trope: Jews controlling Hollywood, Jews claiming oppression when they aren’t, etc.

He then clarified to me that he was actually directing this conspiracy theory at trans people. In this incredible imagination, trans people have such incredible power that they can destroy entire careers (a complete fabrication, as Dave Chapelle can attest), are not targeted by the powerful, and are fabricating their oppression.

In this particular case, knowing what I now do about Seth Dillon, it is unlikely that he would ever target Jews this way. But that’s not the point: antisemitic conspiracy theories and tropes are incredibly powerful because they tap into the subconscious desire to create a supervillain with incredible power in order to justify their oppression as well as make sense of the troubles of the world.

But this is more than one experience. In 2023, a conspiracy theory called “transvestigation” became popular in conservative circles. It claims that some of the most powerful and/or popular people in the world are secretly trans and working to control the media and culture at large. People like Michelle Obama, Taylor Swift, and Beyonce have been at the center of these “investigations.” Men are also a focus, where people like Barack Obama and Bill Gates are seen as part of a larger effort to control the world itself.

This overlaps not only with the trope of Jews controlling the media and government, but the idea that Jews are so insidious because they can hide within the white community, destroying it from within. The idea that terrifies this group is that anyone could be trans, a similar concern antisemites have with Jews.

Palestinians and Arabs

The idea that Palestinians and Arabs may be the subject of antisemitic conspiracy theories may sound counterintuitive. After all, they (and their supporters) are most often accused of antisemitism. But this rhetorical complexity is exactly why these conspiracy theories and tropes can spread so easily without being named as such.

A bit more than a year after October 7th, an article was published in the Jewish Journal called “The Inside Story of How Palestinians Took Over the World.”

In it, he describes an interaction he had with a man named Ameer Makhoul, an executive director of an Arab civil rights organization. The writer claims that Makhoul told him that the pro-Palestinian movement would soon “create” pro-Palestinian campus activists, organizations, and PR campaigns. Later, he claims that progressive Jews have been “turned.” In his words, “they are the victims of a propagandized, slow, well-crafted plan, laid out to me by Ameer Makhoul.”

If this was used to describe someone like George Soros, people would rightfully call this an antisemitic conspiracy theory. In this case, it is about Makhoul, but as the title of the piece suggests, it is about a claim that Palestinians have taken control of the media and academia. It is a conspiracy theory even assuming the writer had such a meeting and accurately described the interaction: a powerful individual orchestrating global media, academia, and activism to brainwash the youth and subvert Western society.

The writer is not alone in this thinking. In fact, it has reached the highest levels of our government and become, in essence, policy.

I am referring to Project Esther, written by the the people behind Project 2025. Project Esther essentially argues that there is a pro-Hamas cabal of puppetmasters that are behind and funding pro-Palestinian protests on campus. Essentially, they see it as an alliance between American funders, including George Soros, and Arab countries in order to turn America into an Islamist, communist, anti-democratic state.

Project Esther bills itself as protecting Jews from antisemitism when, in fact, it is built around a conspiracy theory that mimics antisemitic conspiracy theories. And part of that conspiracy theory is lumping in Arabs along with progressive Jews as the puppetmasters controlling academia.

Examples go far and wide, affecting multiple groups in addition to these. The pattern is the same: the idea of a secret shadowy cabal controlling the media, government, and academia has evolved, with the focus on the group most hated by a specific niche.

But Why?

Those are the operations, the mechanics, and the targets. But the question remains: why? What is gained by focusing on other groups? In many ways, the power of these conspiracy theories and tropes is that they are uniform in targeting Jews. It gives one simple target, allowing for a justification to target the scapegoats like immigrants and Black people that play other parts in the fantasies of bigots.

There are three core reasons that this evolution has occurred, and they each feed each other.

First: The fragmentation of our media and the bizarre twists and turns of the very many extremist groups that exist both online and offline has created a sort of reverse pluralism, in which conspiracy theories and bigotries mutate at an incredibly rapid clip. It is this diversity of hate that needs to be contended with in a way that our society is not used to.

Unlike, for example, the Nazi movement, which had a more or less coherent and specific ideology and structure, modern fascism is built on multi-pronged perspectives and movements all aligned together. This is just one example of how that dynamic plays out.

Second: Although this is rapidly changing, antisemitism is still one of the most taboo forms of bigotry in America. 90% of Americans believe that “Antisemitism affects society as a whole; everyone is responsible for combating it.” This view has also largely remained bipartisan: voters and politicians on both sides of the aisle have largely strongly maintained they are against antisemitism.

Meanwhile, 38% of Americans and 66% of Republicans believe that society has gone too far in its acceptance of trans people.

22% of Americans have negative views of Muslims. The number is 6% for Jews. And, crucially, Muslims are far more hated among Republicans than among Democrats.

Antisemitism is also more likely to lead to institutional consequences, while issues like transphobia stay widespread in the workforce.

Does this mean antisemitism is not a serious issue? Absolutely not: antisemitic violence is more widespread than other forms of religious-based violence, for example. And beliefs in antisemitic tropes are not only widespread, they are increasing.

The difference here is that explicit antisemitism still remains strongly taboo and that consequences for antisemitism still remain relatively high.

In other words, the public rhetoric of and institutionalization of explicit anti-Jewish hatred are taboo, but grassroots hate persists. And that hate remains violent.

These distinctions matter because they shape how bigots are able to express their hate. For those who do have explicit hate for Jews, the method their hate is expressed has had to adapt, especially since their hate is the only taboo one left on the right.

They have largely had to rely on code words like “globalists” and “Zionists” or using stand-ins like George Soros to spread their hate, with the goal being to eventually turn people antisemitic once they’ve bought into the overall antisemitic mythology.

A depiction of the process by which people fall into overt Jew hatred, starting from the less obvious forms of bigotry. See my Instagram post for the full explanation.

Their work has been remarkably effective: 41% of Americans believe that “regardless of who is officially in charge of the government and other organizations, there is a single group of people who secretly control events and rule the world together.” And half of Americans as well as 70% of Republicans believe in the Great Replacement conspiracy theory.

This contrast between small numbers of explicit hate against Jews and massively widespread belief in antisemitic conspiracy theories lies at the heart of the puppetmaster trope to other minority groups.

Because while one has to play games to direct hate at Jews, using codewords and other such nonsense, one can simply explicitly name trans people as the source of all problems without the pushback or professional consequences that come with it.

This makes it far easier to make these conspiracy theories as a whole acceptable, because at some point people will wonder who the puppetmasters really are. Thus a “transvestigation.”

This is even more effective in cases such as Project Esther where this bigotry is perversely framed as protecting Jews.

Third: All that said, it would be quite easier to simply not use antisemitic conspiracy theories at all. Why not just name immigrants as the source of your problems without talking about the deep state trying to replace white people? Trans people are already hated plenty, why put them at the center of a puppetmaster conspiracy theory?

The answer: because antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories are useful. They are useful for those in power, and they are useful for bigots.

Fascism and extreme nationalism require an all-powerful figure to take the place of those actually in power. This allows them to redirect blame to others: they aren’t the cause of inequality, it’s the Jews. And since both ideologies require perpetual victimhood combined with a strongman image for the leader, a super-intelligent shifty power-hungry group considered sneaky but not masculine must be considered this source of evil. And, in the case of conspiracy theories like the Great Replacement, there has to be an explanation for how brown and Black people can both be inferior to white people while also winning in the battle of civilizations. That requires a powerful third party.

This all becomes particularly true in pro-Israel spaces where explicit antisemitism just simply is not possible. Since they are often based in far right ideology, they largely still depend on conspiracy theories. Thus their embrace of Soros conspiracy theories and more. But this focus on Palestinians allows them to name a group more broadly while simultaneously claiming any critique of their claim is… antisemitic.

Finally, there needs to be a group that can shapeshift and appear to be part of the dominant race. Thus the paranoia around people who are secretly trans, for example.

These three elements combined are the perfect recipe to find other targets in addition to Jews to see at the source of conspiracy theories and tropes. And that’s exactly what’s happening.

What Does This Mean for Jews?

Does this diminish actual antisemitism directed at actual Jews? It could be easy to believe that, but the truth is the exact opposite.

The simple reality is that this method of fragmenting the source of conspiracy theories has allowed them to become more widespread. The reason is the same as the reason codewords and figureheads are used: naming Jews at the beginning of the process makes it hard. Naming the later is far easier.

And no matter what, the historical reality of antisemitism means that as those numbers go up, explicit hatred of Jews goes up. The compounding effect means that all bigotry rises together, and that, in the bigger sense, Jews end up becoming the overwhelming majority focus in the end.

This is also partly due to the fact that many bigots purposefully combine the source of these tropes. Project Esther names Arabs and Soros’s Open Society Foundations as the source of the pro-Hamas cabal. And some versions of the transvestigation conspiracy theory claim that Jews are working together with the secretly-trans celebrities.

Ultimately, the antisemitic mythology is exactly that: Jews will likely always be associated with them, not least because there are extremist groups that will see to that. But this newfound approach allows for them to hit three birds with one stone: spread their conspiracy theories, hurt other groups even more, and make hatred of Jews more likely in the end.

It is not a coincidence that explicit antisemitism is rising alongside this trend: there is a direct, causal connection.

What this means in the end is what many of progressives like myself continue to try to clarify to others: we will not solve antisemitism or any other form of bigotry by focusing on only one group. It can only happen through concern for others as well.

This is one of the many examples proving exactly that. If it was as taboo to be explicitly transphobic as it is to be explicitly antisemitic, it would be harder to spread these conspiracy theories. They would have been stopped much earlier.

While fragmentation aids bigots in spreading their hate, our fragmented approach to fighting hate continues to diminish our ability to fight it.

After all, it is likely that many who hear the ideas shared in this article will think that it is diminishment of antisemitism to even state these ideas. That’s connected to a framework that pits the safety of groups against each other, where concern for other groups is seen as a diminishment of our own.

This is exactly the kind of division that bigots rely on. Which is why solidarity is the key to wrecking their plans.