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Antisemitism Is a Conspiracy Theory
(Telegraph-UK) Nicole Lampert - What underlines the obsessive popularity of antisemitism? Antisemitism isn't just racism but a conspiracy theory, an entire way of viewing the world which really has nothing to do with Jews at all. Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in 1946: "If the Jew did not exist, the antisemite would invent him." He realized that the Jew is simply a cypher for the ills of society, the international bogeyman. Understanding this makes antisemitism's enduring appeal clearer. Antisemitic conspiracy means everything can be - and is - blamed on the Jews. The villain is always the same. A striking, chilling example is a paper just published by the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) that partly blames Zionists for the 2024 Southport anti-immigration riots, the largest incident of social unrest in England since 2011. The riots followed a targeted stabbing at a dance class in Southport on July 29, 2024, which resulted in the deaths of three young girls. In the paper titled "The United Kingdom's first anti-Muslim pogroms in a context of genocidal Islamophobia in Gaza," University of Liverpool human geography lecturer Dr. Kawtar Najib brings Jews into an event that had nothing to do with us by claiming "Zionism" has inspired far-Right racism. She wrote that activist Tommy Robinson had encouraged the riots and claimed that "Robinson's financiers" were linked "to the Zionist entity. There is therefore a sort of strategic consensus between Zionist groups and fascist groups." It is depressing and frightening that an academic at a top British university is openly spreading hatred against Jews, but we already knew how common that is. Even more frightening is that the paper was peer-reviewed by two people. And it was then published by an editor. None of whom saw a problem with the crankery it contained in trying to make out that Jews had anything to do with the riots. They accepted a paper which aligned Jews with fascists - as if fascists didn't hate Jews?