TORONTO — Many of the paranoid themes in the pantheon of modern conspiracy theory come straight from the pages of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the early 20th century antisemitic Russian tract, a Canadian journalist says.
Jonathan Kay
The unsubstantiated notion that evil forces, namely Jews, seek to achieve global domination by fomenting strife and instability was popularized by this notorious czarist forgery, Jonathan Kay argued last week in a lecture at Beth Tzedec Congregation to publicize his forthcoming book, Among the Truthers.
Kay, an editor and columnist at the National Post, said that the Protocols – which has been translated into numerous languages and which he described as “a terrible, terrible document” – has been a template for anti-Jewish conspiracy theorists since its publication in 1903.
The Protocols became popular after the Bolshevik Revolution and World War I, he said.
With societies traumatized by these cataclysmic upheavals, people looked for “simple explanations” and scapegoats. They found them in the Protocols, which blamed Jews for the world’s troubles.
“Jews were a convenient target,” said Kay.
In a note of caution, he said that most contemporary conspiracy theorists are not antisemitic and that some are even Jewish.
But the conspiracy movement – a sub-culture on the Internet – always attracts antisemites who fervently believe that a small and malignant cabal of Jews control the world.
According to Kay, conspiracy theories are extremely pervasive in popular culture.
He said he was prompted to write Among the Truthers, which is scheduled to be published in the spring, after the Liberal party in Canada dismissed a candidate running in the 2008 election who claimed that 9/11 was planned by the Mossad and the United States rather than Al Qaeda.
In general, conspiracy theorists maintain that reality is an illusion, that unseen agents, from the CIA to the Masons, manipulate current events and that the mainstream media is complicit in their dark schemes.
While conducting his research, Kay stumbled upon antisemites in the “craziest corners” of the conspiracy movement. He met antisemitic UFO enthusiasts, as well as a left-wing anti-Zionist who dabbled in Holocaust denial.
But “enlightened” conspiracy theorists renounce and denounce anti-semitism so as to preserve their respectability, Kay said.
He went on to say that the recession of 2008 created a new conspiracy theory that U.S. President Barack Obama is a Muslim who wants to impose Islamic law on American society and destroy capitalism in the United States.
“This is crazy,” said Kay.
Radical Islamists obsessed with Zionism and Jews are also fond of conspiracy theories.
Conspiracy theorists in the United States can’t be ignored because they insinuate themselves into mainstream politics, he said, citing members of the right-wing Tea Party and advocates of anti-Zionism.
Though a small proportion of conspiracy theorists are mentally unbalanced, the majority are quite sane, he pointed out.
The belief in conspiracy theory is thus a “political pathology” rather than a mental health problem.
Real conspiracies, however, have come and gone, he said, citing Al Qaeda’s plot to destroy the World Trade Center in Manhattan in 2001 and the Watergate scandal in the 1970s that forced the resignation of Richard Nixon, the president of the United States.