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      Buffalo shooting: how white replacement theory keeps inspiring mass murder | Jason Stanley

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      Buffalo shooting: how white replacement theory keeps inspiring mass murderJason StanleyThis once fringe ideology, which was at the heart of Nazism, has gained mainstream traction thanks in part to the likes of Tucker Carlson on Fox News On Saturday, 18-year-old Payton Gendron parked his car in front of the entrance to a Tops Supermarket in a Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York. Exiting the car wearing metal armor and holding an assault rifle, he shot and killed a female employee in front of the store, and a man packing groceries into the trunk of his car. After entering the store, he murdered the store’s guard, and by the end of his killing spree, he had shot 13 people, killing 10 of them.Eleven of the people he shot were Black, and two were white. As the manifesto he left behind makes clear, this was fully intentional. The first listed goal in his manifesto was to “kill as many blacks as possible”.Gendron was a meticulous planner. He live-streamed his massacre, and the video begins with him following to the letter the beginning of the plan he lays out in the manifesto.. But the manifesto – which is meant to inspire and instruct subsequent attacks – also outlines the ideology that inspired the murders. Gendron was motivated by a classic version of White Replacement Theory, the view that a cabal of global elites is trying to destroy white nations, via the systematic replacement of white populations. According to White Replacement Theory, the strategies employed by these “global elites” include the mass immigration of supposedly “high fertility” non-whites, and encouraging intermingling between members of non-white races and whites. Gendron was deeply influenced by a series of recent mass killers who were animated by white replacement theoryincluding Brenton Tarrant, whom Gendron openly acknowledges as his model. In Christchurch, New Zealand, Tarrant massacred 51 people at a Mosque in the name of White Replacement Theory, also live-streaming his actions.Gendron’s manifesto begins in a similar fashion to Tarrant’s, by decrying the “white genocide” that will result from the supposedly low fertility rates of white populations and the high fertility rates of non-white immigrants brought in to “replace” them. It is more openly anti-Black than Tarrant’s manifesto – it is a deeply American version, with roots in Jim Crow and lynching. It is also vastly more explicitly antisemitic. Ten pages of Gendron’s manifesto are devoted to arguing for a genetic basis for the racial IQ gap, as well as (ironically) a genetic basis for higher rates of violent crime. It’s clear that Gendron closely follows various academic debates about race, IQ, and crime. According to the ideology guiding Gendron, Black people are not intelligent enough to engineer the replacement of whites, and the destruction of their civilization. The real actors behind White Replacement, according to Gendron, are the Jews, a topic which occupies the subsequent 29 pages of his manifesto.Gendron’s lengthy section on Jews purports to document Jewish hatred of non-Jews. It includes a section of Talmud quotes supporting Gendron’s thesis that Jews hate Christians, and a section documenting supposed control of academia, media, and industry (focusing on the pharmaceutical industry). Gendron ties Jews to child abuse and pedophilia. The section mocks a supposed Jewish fixation on environmental causes of Black crime. Gendron argues that Jews are behind Black social and political movements and organizations, including the NAACP and Black Lives Matter.Gendron also argues that Jews are behind the movement for transgender inclusivity, supposedly sponsoring transgender summer camps for “Scandinavian style whites”.The section ends by blaming Jews for creating “infighting” between people and races. The example Gendron’s manifesto provides is that “Jews are spreading ideas such as Critical Race Theory and white shame/guilt to brainwash Whites into hating themselves and their people”.The ideology that motivated Gendron’s mass murder in Buffalo, White Replacement Theory, has a lengthy and blood-soaked 20th century history. Since 2011, it has been the explicit motivation for over 160 murders, including Norway’s Anders Breivik’s slaughter of 77 people, mostly immigrants, in 2011, Dylann Roof’s mass murder of Black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, the Tree of Life Synagogue killings in 2018, and the murder of 23 people, mostly immigrants, in El Paso, Texas, in 2019.Mass atrocities do not occur in a vacuum. They are enabled by a present normalization of a lengthy previous history, a process that the philosopher of mass killing Lynne Tirrell labels the social embeddedness condition. White Replacement Theory was the dominant structuring narrative of Nazi ideology. Adolf Hitler also announced his genocidal intent in a lengthy manifesto about the supposed Jewish threat to white civilization, entitled Mein Kampf, which was published in 1924. Hitler also was obsessed by mass immigration, and the threat it posed to “white civilization.”Currently, White Replacement Theory has been mass popularized and normalized, perhaps chiefly by the American political commentator Tucker Carlson. It is rapidly moving to the center of the mainstream narrative of America’s Republican party. In this form, it appears stripped of its explicit connection to antisemitism. You will not find Tucker Carlson asserting that the Jews are behind the mass replacement of American whites that he bemoans regularly in what is regularly the most watched cable news show in the United States among adults 25-54.But what Carlson has been doing is spending an entire year repeating a conspiracy by Christopher Rufo that says that American education has been infected by a pro-Black ideology (CRT) that was created by German Jewish Marxist intellectuals (the Frankfurt School). And that while the CRT version of this conspiracy theory is new, it is a direct descendent of the “cultural marxism” conspiracy theory, which was a primary topic of Breivik’s manifesto.The fact that Carlson does not mention American Jews as a target by name should be cold comfort to American Jews. Every single right wing anti-Semite in America who watches Tucker Carlson’s show hears him as denouncing Jews when he regularly platforms the 20th century’s worst anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.Some American Jews hope that by identifying as white, and lending their support to racist narratives about IQ and crime, they can diminish rightwing American antisemitism. This is a terrible error. American Ku Klux Klan ideology in the 1920s strongly overlapped with Nazi ideology, placing Jews at the center of a conspiracy fomenting a supposed race war to overthrow white civilization. American Jews who support Tucker Carlson and his ilk, that is, others who repeat the White Replacement narrative, are supporters both of anti-Black racism, and antisemitism in its most violent form.It is in the tracts of the 20th century’s most explicit antisemites that we find the development of White Replacement Theory, who used it to justify the mass killing of Jews. Gendron’s manifesto reveals yet again the unbreakable historical link between anti-Black racism and antisemitism. Any supporter of White Replacement Theory is a clear enemy of the Jewish People.America has many mass shootings. But this mass killing of Black Americans in a Buffalo supermarket must serve as a wake-up call to our country. White Replacement Theory is deeply ingrained in the worst aspects of American and European history. With its attacks on “Critical Race Theory”, this is a fact that the American political right is deliberately and knowingly trying to erase from our collective consciousness, so they can appeal to it again as a political weapon against liberal democracy.As Gendron’s manifesto makes clear, White Replacement Theory is not just an attack on minorities. It is a weapon directed by fascists at American democracy itself.TopicsUS newsOpinionBuffalo shootingNew YorkAntisemitismRaceUS politicsThe far rightcommentReuse this content More

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      Republican hopes to ride far-right rage into Idaho’s governor’s office

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      Republican hopes to ride far-right rage into Idaho’s governor’s office Lieutenant governor Janice McGeachin is building a coalition including white nationalist and far-right militia backing, in what she tells supporters is ‘the fight of our lives’As the far right in America seeks to increase its political influence, including by seeking elected office, one figure is emerging as potentially its most powerful figure: Idaho’s lieutenant governor, Janice McGeachin.McGeachin is running for governor of the state and building a coalition including white nationalist and far-right militia backing, in what she tells her supporters is “the fight of our lives”.Last month at the America First Political Action Conference, a white nationalist conference, McGeachin praised attendees: “Keep up the good work fighting for our country,” she said in a pre-taped address.“I need fighters all over this country that are willing stand up and fight,” McGeachin continued, urging attendees to push out moderates in the Republican party. “Even when that means fighting amongst our own ranks because there are too many Republicans who do not exhibit the courage that is needed today for us to fight and protect our freedoms and our liberties. We are literally in the fight for our lives.”Three years after attending the the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, the far-right provocateur Nick Fuentes created the white nationalist conference AFPAC in the hopes of branding it a far-right alternative to the more mainstream conservative gathering CPAC. Fuentes is a well-known white nationalist and notorious antisemite who mocks how Jews were murdered in the Holocaust while also denying the Holocaust occurred.McGeachin has a history of giving speeches and mingling at far-right rallies, often riding the wave of the latest rightwing outrage. Last year at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, McGeachin gave a rousing speech at a mask-burning event on the Idaho capitol steps, where children burned masks in front of their parents.The Guardian reported last year on the growing civil war inside the Republican party in Idaho, when McGeachin imposed a ban on masks while the governor was out of state. McGeachin also created a taskforce to look into claims of “indoctrination” in schools in order to project children from “the scourge of Critical Race Theory, socialism, communism and Marxism” according to documents obtained by the Idaho Statesman newspaper.This month McGeachin also jumped on the cause of the trucker convoy protest, speaking at a locally planned convoy rally in Idaho. According to local TV station KTVB about 500 people showed up to protest against Covid-19 mandates, though Idaho has none. McGeachin told the crowd “Sometimes they refer to us as being ‘extreme’ for our views,” before reading out loud a quote from Barry Goldwater defending extremism in pursuit of liberty. “We are a free nation and it is so important that we stand now and continue to fight for that freedom and that liberty that makes this country so great,” she said.McGeachin has also attended a gathering where she was endorsed by a rightwing militia figure whom she had apparently made political promises too. In a video previously obtained by the Guardian Eric Parker – who was charged over his role in the standoff in 2014 at Bundy Ranch in Nevada where he was pictured pointing an assault rifle at federal agents – reminded McGeachin that she once told “if I get in, you’re going to have a friend in the governor’s office”.Experts who follow the far right in the US believe McGeachin represents a serious threat, especially as more militia-affiliated groups have started to enter local government in the US, such as in California’s Shasta county.“From her recent speech at AFPAC, continued embrace of white nationalism and endorsements from prominent antisemitic leaders to her longstanding ties with paramilitaries, it couldn’t be clearer that McGeachin is a danger to the rule of law, Idaho communities and democratic institutions,” said Amy Herzfeld-Copple, deputy director of programs at Western States Strategies, a non-profit that works for inclusive democracy through nonpartisan education and advocacy.A total of 31 faith leaders in Idaho recently signed an open letter calling for McGeachin to resign. Rabbis, reverends, pastors and others of different faiths across the state warned in the letter of the “staggering consequences of ignoring extremism” and describe a “rising tide of antisemitism here in Idaho”.The letter cited recent acts of vandalism including at the Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial in Boise. It said: “By associating with alt-right actors and groups like AFPAC in addition to your ties to militia groups that advocate for political violence and harassment in Idaho, you have proven you are not fit to hold elected office, let alone serve a heartbeat away from becoming Idaho’s next governor.”Rabbi Dan Fink of Ahavath Beth Israel in Boise, who co-signed the letter, said in an interview with KTVB that he was courted by McGeachin earlier this year, to help with a campaign against antisemitism.“The dissonance was so extraordinary. I both hurt and at some level, had to laugh because it was surreal,” Fink said in the interview, appalled that McGeachin would share a stage with a Holocaust denier while trying to enlist a rabbi’s help. “That you have the chutzpah to reach out to me and say ‘help me on antisemitism’ while going out and glorying in the presence of antisemites is extraordinary,” Fink said.Herzfeld-Copple said it was not clear how deep McGeachin’s popular support was in Idaho.“McGeachin is a troubling anti-democracy figure in our region seeking to build a national profile with violent and bigoted social movements that increasingly see her as their access to power. But we know these extremists are a minority and Idahoans have routinely rejected those who court white nationalists,” said Herzfeld-Copple.But far-right controversy is never far away from McGeachin and this week she took the highly unusual step of intervening on behalf of a far-right group in a child welfare case involving a 10-month old baby who is the grandson of a campaign consultant for the militia leader Ammon Bundy, founder of the far-right group People’s Rights.The child had been taken away from the parents after officials determined the child was “suffering from severe malnourishment” and in imminent danger. But the Idaho Statesman obtained text messages between McGeachin and Governor Brad Little showing McGeachin seeking to intervene in the case. “Is this true? Call off this medical tyranny tell the hospital to release the baby to his parents,” she wrote.Bundy himself was subsequently arrested this week for trespassing at St Luke’s hospital, where he went to protest with scores of supporters over what he called a “medical kidnapping”.“Nearly every day, McGeachin’s actions become more dangerous. She contradicted pleas from law enforcement and hospital officials and used her government Facebook page to discuss a confidential child welfare case, contributing to a mob of Ammon Bundy supporters that caused a lockdown at Idaho’s largest hospital, compromising delivery of patient and emergency care,” said Herzfeld-Copple.Experts who monitor the far right note that while there is a growing number of far-right legislators at the state and federal level, such as the Arizona state sentator Wendy Rogers, who has admitted to being a member of the Oath Keepers militia, or the Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who spoke at the same white nationalist conference as McGeachin amid chants of support for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.If McGeachin were to win the race and become governor in Idaho it would be a major victory for far-right politics in America.“There are a lot of implications for having someone in the executive branch giving the stamp of approval to far-right paramilitary groups and white nationalists,” said Devin Burghart, executive director of Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights.“In recent years it is unprecedented to see a lieutenant governor doing things like participating in a white nationalist conference or weighing in on a far-right-driven child endangerment issue, we haven’t seen that high a level of support for the far right since the days of the Council of Conservative Citizens, the lineal descendants of the White Citizens Council in the south.” said Burghart.Burghart warned that state politics and far-right extremism in the sparsely populated west of the US is often forgotten in the national political conversation, but it can have major consequences.“What happens out here in the west becomes a model, a testing ground for far-right activism. And what happens out here in the west doesn’t stay in the west, it migrates around the country, said Burghart.TopicsIdahoUS politicsRepublicansThe far rightAntisemitismfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Nearly one in five applicants to white supremacist group tied to US military

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      Nearly one in five applicants to white supremacist group tied to US militaryLeaked documents show that about 18 out of 87 applicants, or 21%, to Patriot Front were currently or formerly affiliated with military Nearly one in five applicants to the white supremacist group Patriot Front claimed to hold current or former ties to the US military, according to leaked documents published and reviewed by the Southern Poverty Law Center and alternative media collective Unicorn Riot.Some 18 out of the 87 applicants, or 21%, said they were currently or previously affiliated with the military. One applicant, who claimed to be a former Marine, also said he currently worked for the Department of Homeland Security, according to the SPLC’s Hatewatch, a blog that tracks and exposes activities of American rightwing extremists.A white supremacist and neo-fascist hate group, Patriot Front emerged as a rebrand of the neo-Nazi organization Vanguard America in the aftermath of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.According to the SPLC, the Patriot Front “represents one of the most prominent white supremacist groups in the country” and is led by Thomas Rousseau, a 23-year old man based in Dallas, Texas. “A nation within a nation is our goal. Our people face complete annihilation as our culture and heritage are attacked from all sides,” Rousseau once said.In January, Unicorn Riot published over 400 gigabytes of data that included “ostensibly private, unedited videos and direct messages [that] reveal a campaign to organize acts of hatred while indoctrinating teenagers into national socialism (Nazism),” the journalist collective said.Group members and applicants expressed an open admiration for Nazi ideologies, with the latter expressing various motivations for joining the group.One applicant, who said he lived in San Diego, claimed to be a current DHS employee and told Patriot Front he was inspired to join after he “found out about the Jews while in the marines”.Another applicant used derogatory language about LGBTQ+ people and said he “first saw” them during his time in the military.Someone else from Salt Lake City said he “shifted focus and questioned things” after his second deployment and went from being a Republican to joining the far right.Applicants also touted their various skill sets, including “great land-navigation, great physical fitness, able to clear rooms” and “basic medical training”. Others said they had been “trained in firearms”. One claimed to train people in “marine corps martial arts” and said he was the leader of the Kansas Active Club, an affiliate of the Rise Above Movement, a Southern California-based SPLC-designated hate group.‘We are desperate for new people’: inside a hate group’s leaked online chatsRead moreIn addition to alleged military affiliations, the leak also revealed that the group targets minors. According to Unicorn Riot, Patriot Front recruits “members through the internet who are still legally minors, indoctrinating them with white supremacist ideology and even encouraging them to lie to their parents so the group can transport them across state lines for fascist events”.Patriot Front’s official policies require members to be at least 17 and a half years old, but it “goes by a case by case basis” with certain members being below that age.In the past year, there has been growing concern surrounding the far-right radicalization of current and former military members. More than 80 defendants charged for their affiliation with the deadly January 6 riots have been found to have ties to the military, with most being veterans.Last March, the Pentagon released a report that cited domestic extremist groups posing an increasing threat to the military by attempting to recruit service members and in certain situations join the military to gain combat experience.“Military members are highly prized by these groups as they bring legitimacy to their causes and enhance their ability to carry out attacks,” the report said. “In addition to potential violence, white supremacy and white nationalism pose a threat to the good order and discipline within the military,” it added.In October, a House panel convened to discuss ways to address veterans being increasingly targeted for recruitment by extremist groups.“They provide them with a tribe, a simplistic view of the world and its problems, actionable solutions and a sense of purpose, and then they feed these vulnerable individuals a concoction of lies and an unrelenting narrative of political and social grievance,” retired Marine Lt Col Joe Plenzler said at the panel.A study last year by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that in 2020, 6.4% of all domestic terror attacks and plots were committed by active-duty or reserve personnel, up from 1.5% in 2019 and none in 2018.TopicsThe far rightRaceAntisemitismUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Trump condemned by Anti-Defamation League chief for antisemitic tropes

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      Trump condemned by Anti-Defamation League chief for antisemitic tropesJonathan Greenblatt says that ‘insinuating that Israel or the Jews control Congress or the media is antisemitic’ The chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League led condemnation of Donald Trump after the former president used antisemitic tropes in remarks about American Jews and Israel.Mark Meadows was at the center of the storm on 6 January. But only Trump could call it offRead more“Insinuating that Israel or the Jews control Congress or the media is antisemitic, plain and simple,” Jonathan Greenblatt said. “Unfortunately, this is not the first time he has made these offensive remarks.”Trump was speaking to the journalist Barak Ravid, author of a book on Trump and the Middle East. Parts of the interview aired on Friday on a podcast, Unholy: Two Jews on the News.“It’s a very dangerous thing that’s happening,” Trump said. “There’s people in this country that are Jewish and no longer love Israel. I’ll tell you, the evangelical Christians love Israel more than the Jews in this country.”Trump also used a line he has delivered before – to a Jewish audience in 2019 – about Israel and Congress.“It used to be that Israel had absolute power over Congress,” he said, “and today I think it’s the exact opposite. And I think Obama and Biden did that. And yet in the election, they still get a lot of votes from the Jewish people. Which tells you that the Jewish people, and I’ve said this for a long time, the Jewish people in the United States either don’t like Israel or don’t care about Israel.”Trump also said “they’re Jewish people that run the New York Times” and claimed the newspaper “hates Israel”.On Twitter, Greenblatt said: “Once again, former President Trump has linked his lack of strong support among most US Jews to their feelings about Israel and used classic antisemitic stereotypes about Israeli and Jewish control of Congress and the press to bolster his argument.“It’s sad that once again we have to restate this point, but the vast majority of American Jews support and have some type of connection to Israel, regardless of which political candidate they vote for.“Let me be clear: insinuating that Israel or the Jews control Congress or the media is antisemitic, plain and simple. Unfortunately, this is not the first time he has made these offensive remarks.”The American Jewish Committee said: “Why is Mr Trump once again fueling dangerous stereotypes about Jews? His past support for Israel doesn’t give him license to traffic in radioactive antisemitic tropes – or peddle unfounded conclusions about the unbreakable ties that bind American Jews to Israel. Enough!”Notably, Republicans who have condemned Democrats including the Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar for allegedly using antisemitic tropes did not rush to respond to Trump’s remarks.Amid widespread anger, the former Obama adviser Ben Rhodes said: “If Ilhan Omar said the same things Trump did it would dominate politics and media for a week, statements issued from every organisation, (bipartisan) resolutions in Congress, etc. What bullshit.”Bill Pascrell, a New Jersey Democrat, said: “There can be no question that the words by Donald Trump are vile, despicable antisemitism … This level of hate is not just tolerated but invited by the modern GOP.”Ilhan Omar and the weaponisation of antisemitism | Joshua LeiferRead moreQasim Rashid, a human rights lawyer and radio host, said: “While American Jews represent only 2% of Americans, FBI data shows Jews suffer more than 60% of religiously motivated hate crimes.“Donald Trump’s reckless antisemitism further endangers Jewish Americans, and the GOP proudly standing by him makes them complicit. Unacceptable.”Like many other authors, Ravid interviewed Trump at Mar-a-Lago after his defeat by Joe Biden in the 2020 election and his attempts to overturn that result including stoking the deadly attack on the US Capitol on 6 January.Ravid’s interview has already made news, after Trump reportedly said of the former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a key ally when in power: “Fuck him.”According to Axios, Trump said: “The first person that congratulated [Biden] was Bibi Netanyahu, the man that I did more for than any other person I dealt with … Bibi could have stayed quiet. He has made a terrible mistake.”TopicsDonald TrumpAntisemitismUS politicsUS CongressRepublicansIsraelnewsReuse this content More

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      Republicans grapple with Marjorie Taylor Greene: Politics Weekly Extra

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      Jonathan Freedland and Joan E Greve look at what it might take for the Republican leadership to properly punish Marjorie Taylor Greene for the outrageous and offensive comments she continues to make

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      In May Democrats and Republicans condemned Marjorie Taylor Greene’s comments comparing Covid face mask mandates to Jewish people being forced to wear a yellow star during the Holocaust. Republicans stopped short of punishing the far-right Georgia congresswoman, though, unlike their decision to oust the veteran party member Liz Cheney from her House leadership position. Cheney was voted out because she continued to publicly reject Donald Trump’s lie that he had won the 2020 presidential election, and because she had voted to impeach Trump over his role in the 6 January insurrection. So why were these women treated so differently? Send us your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts More

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      Jews fear what follows after Republicans applauded Marjorie Taylor Greene | Deborah Lipstadt

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      For a few days last month, in a little corner of the internet where topics of Jewish interest are discussed, Jewish space lasers were trending.The discussion was prompted by speculation from the newly elected Georgia Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene based on “research” she had conducted, that wildfires in California had been caused by a project to explore “solar generators” tenuously associated with Rothschild, “an international banking firm”. Once that assertion became public, the floodgates opened and cynics, humorists and pundits – the Jewish community is blessed with an abundance of them – took ownership of this meme and began to explore every aspect of the lasers. Were they an appropriate batmitzvah gift? Did people who observe kashrut need separate lasers for dairy and for meat? Was a special one necessary for Passover? If buying in bulk, could they be obtained wholesale?Of course, the Jewish community is a place where there is always a surfeit of opinions. Not surprisingly, some observers doubted whether this was a matter for humour, arguing that it was not acceptable to laugh at such a dangerous – albeit absurd – claim. They argued that however far-fetched – a word that some pundits claim must have a Yiddish origin – Greene’s assertions might be, they were not a laughing matter.The doubters were quickly reminded that Jews have developed a fine art of laughing at their sorrows, even while trembling with fear. Surprising though it may be, in Nazi Germany Jews crafted jokes about the horrendous circumstances in which they lived. Consider this classic. Berlin 1938: two Jews were sitting on a park bench reading newspapers. One was engrossed in the Jewish communal paper, while the other occupied himself with the Nazi party’s official paper. The first, seeing his companion’s choice of reading material, expressed amazement that he would read a paper rife with antisemitic propaganda. The second explained that if he read the Jewish newspaper all he would find was news of Jews’ trials and tribulations. But if he read the Nazi paper, he learned that Jews controlled the banks, the media, foreign governments and every other important global institution. One depressed him, while the other made him feel powerful.But then, just as suddenly as it had gained a foothold on social media, the humour stopped. The abrupt halt to some very clever exchanges came when the Republican caucus refused to punish, criticise or condemn Greene in any fashion. Instead, they gave her a standing ovation. They did so after she told them that she had only been “curious” about some of the ideas she had posted and didn’t really know what space lasers were. Though her explanations beggared the imagination – her space laser post was long and detailed – it was enough for her colleagues.She made no public apology, neither to the gathering of Republican colleagues or on the following day, when she spoke on the House floor. She contended that the comments for which she was being criticised were “words of the past”, as if they had been made decades ago. In fact, some were just a few months old.Some people were shocked by Taylor’s comments. I was not. Having spent decades studying, teaching, researching and fighting antisemitism, Greene’s claims were familiar territory. All of them – space lasers, 9/11, school shootings, Trump’s election loss and so much else – shared a common theme: conspiracy.In her QAnon-inspired worldview, behind them all was a small group of inordinately powerful people who had global – not national – loyalties. They conspired against the common welfare to advance their own interests. They mutilated babies. They amassed power and money in order to harm good, hard-working and, one can fairly assume, Christian folks. This is the foundation stone of classic antisemitism. There are certainly non-Jews in the swamp Greene wants to “drain”. But ultimately it is Jews who are the puppeteers.Antisemitism is a prejudice, akin to so many others. Just like racism and an array of other hatreds, it relies on stereotypes and assumes that all members of the group share those characteristics. Antisemitism has unique characteristics that differentiate it from other hatreds. The racist “punches down” and loathes persons of colour because they are apparently “lesser than” the white person. They are, the racist proclaims, not as smart, industrious, qualified or worthy. In contrast, the antisemite “punches up”. The Jew is supposedly more powerful, ingenious and financially adept than the non-Jew. Jews use their prodigious skills to advance themselves and harm others. The Jew is not just to be loathed. The Jew is to be feared.Every act of antisemitism – from shoving a Jew on the street to murdering them en masse – has this conspiracy at its roots. It was what prompted people in the middle ages to believe that Jews had poisoned the wells in order to spread the plague. It was at the heart of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a well-known forgery that purported to be the records of a meeting of powerful Jews who were scheming to control the world’s finances. Nazi antisemitism was founded on the notion that Jews were engaged in a deadly conspiracy against the German people. They had, the Nazis charged, “stabbed Germany in the back” during the first world war, thereby engineering its loss.I don’t believe Greene is advocating physical violence against Jews. It was hard, however, not to be struck by her choice of words when she spoke on the House floor to argue that these were no longer her views. Rather than apologise, she condemned the attacks on her as an attempt to “crucify” her. Crucify?Irrespective of her personal views about Jews, there is no doubt, however, that she is reinforcing and spreading a dangerous notion. She may not pick up the rock or gun to harm a Jew, but she is giving ammunition to those who will. And this kind of hatred and violence may start with Jews, but it never ends with them. And if it begins with others, it will eventually lead to Jews. History makes that clear.The UK recently witnessed how seamlessly various manifestations of antisemitism flowed from the fringes of a political party into the centre. That was, of course, from the left of the political spectrum. One has to wonder, if after the embrace Greene has received from her colleagues, we will not witness the same thing in the Republican party. This time it will come from the right. Both give witness to the ubiquitousness of antisemitism. It has no political favourites.Ultimately, however, this is about something more all-encompassing than even antisemitism. It is about an attack on democracy and the institutions that undergird that democracy. Conspiracies, such as those peddled by QAnon, are not just infused with antisemitic symbolism and themes, but are designed to create doubt about democratic institutions including Congress, the courts, financial agencies, electoral processes, the media and anything that is even obliquely connected to democracy.Every act of prejudicial physical violence begins with words. Greene has provided an endless array of such words. Her Republican colleagues, rather than stand and applaud, should recognise that and act upon it. There are people who spread hatred and prejudice and there are those who enable the spread of hatred and prejudice. Not just Greene, but also the Republicans who have failed to condemn her are enablers. They will ultimately bear responsibility for the consequences.In the fight against hatred and evil, neutrality is not an option. There are no bystanders. More