[Antisemitic conspiracy theories on the fringe of the movement for
a ceasefire in Gaza make it harder to effectively diagnose the problem
and challenge power. ]
[[link removed]]

WHY CONSPIRACY THEORIES ARE CORROSIVE TO SOCIAL MOVEMENTS — AND
WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT  
[[link removed]]


 

Shane Burley
January 12, 2024
Waging Nonviolence
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Antisemitic conspiracy theories on the fringe of the movement for a
ceasefire in Gaza make it harder to effectively diagnose the problem
and challenge power. _

Conspiracy Theory Overlap Diagram, by Vince_Lamb (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

 

“Be forewarned that this has left me very disillusioned, and I felt
the same way as I felt when deconstructing Christianity,” said one
TikTok creator, speaking into her phone camera. She was one of dozens,
if not hundreds, of young people whose recent videos went viral after
reading one particularly striking bit of agitprop: Osama Bin Laden’s
2002 “Letter to America
[[link removed]].”
The letter, which had been published by _The Guardian _until they
deleted it, outlines a relatively straight-forward critique of
American foreign policy, laced with extreme social conservatism and
vast conspiracism. 

For the mostly Gen-Z readers, the letter was new, but it has been
added to university syllabi and passed around the blogosphere for
decades. The disillusionment these first-time readers were
experiencing was presumably the reality that Bin Laden did not
orchestrate 9/11 simply because he “hates our freedom,” but that
Western powers have engaged in real crimes, with the U.S. as the
primary culprit. But for anyone who knows their way around American
history, Bin Laden’s critique is thin and obvious, and the diagnosis
strays into familiar tropes.

“These governments have surrendered to the Jews, and handed them
most of Palestine, acknowledging the existence of their state over the
dismembered limbs of their own people,” wrote Bin Laden, who blamed
Jews for just about every violation. “You are the nation that
permits usury, which has been forbidden by all the religions … the
Jews have taken control of your economy, through which they have then
taken control of your media, and now control all aspects of your life
making you their servants…”

The piece does what populist, conspiracy tracts have always done: It
takes real instances of oppression and spins them into an easily
digestible, and false, narrative so that those making sense of the
horrors can point fingers. While not a particularly novel take, Bin
Laden’s references to Palestine made it relevant today, and if you
have never encountered any deconstruction of America’s foreign
policy, it may shock you.

But the idea that the letter offers a biting critique misunderstands
the purpose of dissent: Opposition to the current state of the world
is not synonymous with fighting for a liberatory future. And the
inability to parse out this reality has revealed instability across a
radical left that often clamors after any ally in the struggle against
systemic injustice. Without safeguards and clarity on the mission,
nearly any voice against the status quo can be mistaken for a friend
— including those who want to replace it with something even more
deadly or whose analysis relies on conspiracy theories.

REVOLTS FROM BELOW

History is a staccato of uprisings and revolts, nearly instinctual
rejections of various systems of peonage and slavery. The question
about uprisings is not _if_ they will happen, but what form they
will take. The conditions that bring about struggle, such as the
exploitations that inspired peasant uprisings across feudal Europe or
the explosive growth of the labor movement around the turn of the 20th
century, are always legitimate, but not every expression of resistance
is valid. The same labor movement that fought for the weekend also
stood against non-white immigration and, at times, went on strike to
“protect” white workers from integration. 

Experiencing a crisis does not immediately grant someone special
insight into the causes of their conditions, and there is a long
history of communities turning their anger on marginalized people
rather than the powerful.

This is endemic to fascism’s rise. In countries where economic
deprivation and crisis were explosive, many succumbed to revolutionary
impulses that promised to address society’s failures while also
validating the worst impulses established by colonialism and white
supremacy. 

The culture of conspiracy theory can exist on the left when political
acumen is not valued and rebellion of any type is understood as a net
positive.

As French-Israeli scholar Zeev Sternhell chronicled, fascist movements
actually emerged out of a dissenting socialist trend: They wanted to
destroy the system so badly that they cared little for the mechanism
or outcome of that destruction. These “national syndicalists”
replaced class as the historical change agent with “nation,” thus
redirecting the dramatic anger the masses held towards their
stagnating societies away from a class struggle and onto a racialized,
authoritarian nightmare. They certainly wanted revolution, just not
the type the left typically desires.

Undirected populism tends to reproduce our society’s bigotries and
biases. For the West, antisemitism was a primary folk narrative to
explain dislocation and alienation: “It was the Jews who were
responsible for widening inequality and political
disenfranchisement.” This belief has deep roots in Christian empire.
And when modernity emerged and people were looking to explain new
systems of abstraction, many turned to older antisemitic theories and
simply secularized them. As European colonialism spread across the
globe, it also exported many of its ideas, which explains why
antisemitic conspiracy theories are found far from antisemitism’s
Christian origins. 

During populist uprisings, it’s common for antisemitism to replace
grounded political analysis. These ideas are often not the result of
intentional misdirection by antisemites, but present
because antisemitism
[[link removed]] remains
a part of the Western populist imagination. Marxist scholar Moishe
Postone called this “structural antisemitism” because the
complicated way that capitalism works often confuses the public as to
where the center of power lies, and what kind of figures should be
seen as uniquely pernicious. The same principle works for most forms
of scapegoating, such as when economic conflict is channeled into
anti-immigrant xenophobia.

 How the left is reclaiming the fight against antisemitism
[[link removed]]

This culture of conspiracy theory and blame-setting is endemic to the
political right, which needs to channel working-class anger away from
those in power and onto a marginalized community as a patsy. Since the
right is not interested in challenging the wealthy or petitioning the
powerful, they redirect disaffection onto a mirage.

This dynamic can also exist on the left when political acumen is not
valued and rebellion of any type is understood as a net positive. The
left has changed dramatically over the past 30 years, moving into more
spontaneous formations like Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter and
mass antifascist actions. This has created a vacuum where movements
need support, training and political development. Communities now
organize more horizontally, and there is no turning back the clock on
this development, at least in the near term. But when these movements
lack any clear plan to achieve liberation, activists can also misread
the issue, relying on conspiracism instead of analysis and finding
friends where none exist.

WAR CONSPIRACIES

The confusion about how to challenge power — and the battle between
conspiracy theory and a real mapping of power — has shown up in
countless social movements, including some fringe cases in the
movement for a ceasefire in Gaza. For example, in a Nov. 27 testimony
before the Oakland City Council’s hearing on a proposed ceasefire
resolution, one person said that “Israel murdered its own people on
Oct. 7.”

This unfounded proposition, which has shown up in other news outlets
and commentary on the war, was that many, if not most, of the Israelis
were actually killed by the IDF. It often comes with different
implications, such as the idea that the IDF was catastrophically
careless and then blamed Hamas or that it was a false flag attack to
justify the bombing of Gaza.

It is clear that some casualties
[[link removed]] on
Oct. 7, including those from a tank attack and possibly
from helicopter fire near the rave
[[link removed]],
could have happened as a result of reckless IDF behavior, but there
seems to be little evidence that this is a particularly sizable
portion of those killed. 

However, ostensibly socialist news outlets like Max
Blumenthal’s _Grayzone_
[[link removed]] have
focused heavily on trying to undermine the claims of Hamas atrocities,
assigning Jewish casualties to Israeli Defense Forces. The suggestion
from much of this discourse is that the killing of Israelis was either
mostly by the IDF or that Hamas killings were largely manufactured,
thus displacing any concern that may emerge about what was done. 

This framing creates multiple problems, such as hinging opposition to
the assault on Gaza on who is responsible for Israeli deaths — or
the callous denial of Jewish victimhood — rather than Israel’s
disproportionate use of violence. This shifts the messaging away from
challenging Israel’s genocidal assault on its own terms and turns it
into a convoluted debate about shadowy military orders and hidden
directives. 

Despite being one of the most well documented attacks in recent
history, many seem to think that acknowledging Hamas violence will
undermine their justifiable charges of genocide against Israel. But
that is not the case. Being critical of Hamas’ brutal attack on Oct.
7 does nothing to undermine the movement against Israel’s ethnic
cleansing of Palestine. But any introduction of falsehoods simply
fractures a movement’s global vision of justice.

When this happens, it can help even more wild conspiracy theories to
circulate, such as a popular TikTok video
[[link removed]] —
seen by over 300,000 accounts before being plucked from the platform
— claiming the Hamas attack was created by the media. 

Once conspiracy theories enter the fray they often cross-populate with
seemingly unrelated topics, as well. This has led to allegations
of connections between Israel’s bombing campaign and the war in
Ukraine
[[link removed]] both
being seen as possibly the machinations of a new world order. 

Given the IDF’s history of duplicity and denial of war crimes, there
are reasons why distrust should be endemic. As Israel enacts one of
the most brutal, one-sided assaults in the country’s history —
the biggest displacement since the nakba
[[link removed]] —
there are reasons that people are motivated to reframe the narrative
away from the Western media’s complicity in Israel’s killings.
Watching news outlets spin Israel’s violence as self-defense can be
maddening, so it’s understandable why people would want to use any
possible narrative to puncture their framing.

But Israel has also chosen to conduct its indiscriminate violence in
plain sight. No conspiracy theory is required. If we are unable to see
where the conflict comes from — to understand the historical,
economic and political forces involved — conspiracism becomes an
easy way to explain something that demands an intense amount of
context. 

 How the far right is trying to manipulate the crisis in Gaza
[[link removed]]

The conspiracy theories and misinformation have been as extreme in
the other direction
[[link removed]] as
well. False claims circulated about Hamas, such as the untrue
allegation
[[link removed]] that
militants had “beheaded babies,” that a baby was “cooked in an
oven” or that Gazan suffering and casualties have been exaggerated.
There is also an emerging far-right conspiracy theory in Israel
that it was the pro-democracy protesters
[[link removed]] who
staged the attack as a false flag. 

It is exactly these types of claims that create even more distrust
among those witnessing the violence, making it harder for people to
find clear reporting to believe and facts to depend on. All of this
has become even more severe as AI generated images and “deep
fakes”
[[link removed]] give
us a window into what the future of online conspiracy holds for us.
The extensive misinformation
[[link removed]] has
been used to mask, or even justify, Israel’s emerging genocide in
Gaza. This is clearly verifiable
[[link removed]] and
does not require extrapolation beyond the evidence. 

When we include unprovable claims or assume extraordinary covert means
beyond those verifiable in normal statecraft, we undermine our own
analysis and allow for latent falsehoods and bigotries to replace
grounded outrage. Those on the left can also frame any resistance to
imperialism — even by far-right political and racist theocratic
political movements — as allies simply by virtue of their attack on
the imperial antagonist. 

Avoiding this dangerous dynamic requires the left to build a vision
and set of principles, an insight about the kind of world we want to
fashion once we usher away the institutions that are propping up the
unacceptable status quo. Simply picking the least objectionable side
in a conflict between despotic powers or empowering anyone who can
strike a blow to the halls of power is not enough. 

Establishing this consistency requires the left to return to political
arguments, reading groups, liberation schools, teach-ins and serious
debate hashed out in late night meetings. This is what will move the
justifiable instinct that something is wrong to an accurate diagnosis
that begs workable action. Without a clear picture of how our world
has failed, any demagogue can capture the energy of the disaffected by
offering a solution that creates even more profound problems. Our
mission is not to simply destroy the old world. It’s to build a new
and more just one in its place.

_Shane Burley [[link removed]] is a
writer and filmmaker based in Portland, Oregon. He is the author of
"Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It" (AK Press). His work as
appeared in places such as Jacobin, AlterNet, In These Times,
Political Research Associates, Waging Nonviolence, Labor Notes,
ThinkProgress, ROAR Magazine and Upping the Anti. Follow him on
Twitter: @shane_burley1._

_Waging Nonviolence [[link removed]] is a
nonprofit media organization dedicated to providing original reporting
and expert analysis of social movements around the world. With a
commitment to accuracy, transparency and editorial independence, we
examine today’s most crucial issues by shining a light on those who
are organizing for just and peaceful solutions._

_Through on-the-ground movement coverage and commentary that draws on
both history and the latest research, Waging Nonviolence works to
advance the public’s understanding of movements and their key role
in shaping politics. Our stories inspire readers to realize the
powerful agency they possess._

* conspiracy theories
[[link removed]]
* Antisemitism
[[link removed]]
* Fascism
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]