—Anti-Jewish Conspiracy Theories are a Weapon Aimed at the Working Class
Today we are witnessing the greatest international wave of antisemitism since the Holocaust.
The fundamental driver is the inhuman and genocidal crimes of Israel against the Palestinians and neighboring peoples that have offended the conscience of all decent persons, provoking a world-wide wave of revulsion and rage. But it is also emerging out of the sharpening political polarization and the rise of rightist and incipient fascist forces.
The rightist government of Israel falsely claims to act and speak on behalf of all Jews in the world, and unfortunately many take the Zionists at their word and fall for the trap. Then the cynical Zionists slander all opposition to Israel as “antisemitism.”
It is relatively easy then for rightist and leftist antisemites to turn just opposition to Israel and Zionism into antisemitism for the purposes of misleading working people in America in order to protect the capitalist ruling class.
Thus the working class has a vital interest for its own sake in opposing the growing poison of antisemitism.
Antisemitism is a capitalist weapon aimed at the working class. Hatred of Jews is merely a tool for that purpose. Zionism and the apartheid regime in Israel, and their slanderous lies against supporters of the Palestinians, are not the fundamental question regarding the extreme danger of antisemitism for the working class.
However, the fact that antisemitism is primarily aimed at the working class does not diminish the need for opposition to reactionary antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Understanding it properly provides a material basis for hundreds of millions of workers around the world to oppose antisemitism in our own interests, which is far more powerful than moralistic appeals by middle-class liberals to mere sympathy.
What Antisemitism Is For
Antisemitism is presented simply as hatred directed against Jews through conspiracy theories that today allege they control mighty US imperialism, or forced the US to go to war against Iran. Historically, it has produced immense suffering, persecution, dispossession, violence, and genocide against Jewish people.
But historically that is not the actual purpose of antisemitism. It is simply a cruel tool of rule, like racism or anti-immigrant xenophobia today. They are not purposes in and of themselves. They are methods to distract and divide the working class.
For centuries antisemitism has been one of the most effective smokescreens and political weapons used by ruling classes against the exploited and oppressed.
Antisemitism was akin to throwing a handful of dust in the eyes of the opponent in a dirty fight.
Its origins lie deep in feudal Europe. Kings, princes, landlords, and church authorities repeatedly encouraged anti-Jewish prejudice as a means of diverting social anger away from themselves.
During periods of economic crisis, debt, famine, war, or social unrest, Jews could be presented by the rulers as convenient and disposable scapegoats.
“Don't sack and burn my lovely Christian castle, go burn the shtetl and some Jews instead!” cried the kings and their Catholic Church. “My fellow Christians, after all they killed Christ! And made me charge you high taxes! (‘And I owe them money for those fancy imports I ordered, the King thought. ‘Now that's one way to cancel my debts,’ he smirked.)
The purpose was not primarily to attack Jews, but to prevent peasants and laborers from directing their anger toward the rulers who actually dominated society.
Under capitalism, antisemitism acquired new forms while retaining the same essential function.
Antisemitism serves to obscure the reality of capitalism, interposing conspiracy theories to hide their system of class rule. Instead of understanding exploitation as a product of capitalism itself, social frustrations are redirected toward an imaginary Jewish cabal.
______
Antisemitism derails and dissipates anger that might otherwise be directed upward against the ruling tormentors into hostility and cruelty directed at convenient distractions.
Historically, antisemitic movements have found particularly fertile ground among sections of the petty bourgeoisie: small business owners, independent professionals, shopkeepers, contractors, and farmers squeezed between large capital above them and labor below them. Burdened by debt, fearful of decline, resentful of powerful corporations on one side and labor militancy on the other, they become especially susceptible to conspiracy theories. The same imaginary Jew is presented simultaneously as the banker foreclosing on their property and the revolutionary organizing their workers.
This contradiction is not a flaw in antisemitic ideology. It is its central feature. The purpose is not explanation but diversion. The corporation disappears. The landlord disappears. The capitalist ruling class disappears, and all their crimes are absolved. In their place stands the mythical figure of "the Jew," blamed for every social problem.
Antisemitism is not a generalized term for hostility toward all peoples who speak Semitic languages. “Semitic” designates a subfamily of the Afroasiatic language family that includes Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Amharic. It does not designate a race or a single ethnic people.
The history of the word makes its meaning clear. The German publicist Wilhelm Marr coined and popularized Antisemitismus in 1879—not as a general label for hostility toward all “Semitic” peoples, but to rebrand traditional Jew-hatred (Judenhass) as a modern, pseudoscientific racial doctrine. That year, Marr published his highly successful pamphlet Der Sieg des Judenthums über das Germanenthum (The Victory of Judaism over Germandom).
Marr portrayed Jews as a distinct and dangerous race whose influence threatened Germany. His crank theory claimed that Jewish emancipation from centuries of legal and social persecution, together with German liberalism, had enabled Jews to control the economy and press and ultimately “subjugate” Germany. By recasting the so-called “Jewish Question” in racial rather than religious terms, Marr and later movements—including the Nazis—argued that Jews could never assimilate and were to blame for all evils.
Arabs played no part in Marr’s writings or political campaign. His organization was called the Antisemiten-Liga (League of Antisemites), and its sole purpose was to promote hatred of Jews. The word’s etymology may appear broader than its established meaning, but its history leaves no legitimate doubt: antisemitism means hostility toward Jews.
European feudal rulers and the Catholic Church institutionalized and repeatedly exploited Jew-hatred as an instrument of scapegoating, expropriation, and social control. Popular anger arising from taxation, indebtedness, famine, war, and oppression could be redirected away from kings, nobles, and church authorities and toward a vulnerable Jewish minority.
“Do not sack and burn my Christian castle—go burn the shtetl and its Jews instead!” was the political logic. “They killed Christ! They made me tax you! And,” the king might privately add, “I owe them money. A massacre is one way to cancel my debts.”
Contemporary antisemitism serves the same political purpose. The absurd claim that Israel or “the Zionists” control mighty U.S. imperialism absolves Washington and Wall Street of responsibility for their own crimes. Israel—or simply “the Jews”—is thus blamed for the American war against Iran and for policies consciously pursued by the U.S. ruling class in defense of its own imperial interests.
The Zionists and Israeli government, for their part, cynically declare that opposition to Israel, Zionism, or Israel’s genocidal crimes is inherently antisemitic. This slander is intended to intimidate Israel’s opponents, suppress solidarity with the Palestinians, and shield the Israeli state from accountability.
At the same time, Israel’s crimes and its insistence that it represents all Jews provide antisemites with powerful new material. Israel falsely identifies Jews everywhere with the actions of a state and government they neither control nor necessarily support. Antisemites accept that identification and blame Jews collectively for Israel’s crimes. Israel is making the world unsafe for Jews.
Solidarity with the Palestinians therefore requires opposition both to Israel and Zionism and to every manifestation of antisemitism. Antisemitism strengthens Israel’s claim that Jews can be safe only in a militarized Zionist state. It also strengthens the right-wing enemies of working people, who use conspiracy theories about Jews to divert anger away from Wall Street, Washington, and capitalism itself.
THE PURPOSE OF ANTISEMITISM
—Anti-Jewish Conspiracy Theories are a Weapon Aimed at the Working Class
Today we are witnessing the greatest international wave of antisemitism since the Holocaust.
The fundamental driver is the inhuman and genocidal crimes of Israel against the Palestinians and neighboring peoples that have offended the conscience of all decent persons, provoking a world-wide wave of revulsion and rage. But it is also emerging out of the sharpening political polarization and the rise of rightist and incipient fascist forces.
The rightist government of Israel falsely claims to act and speak on behalf of all Jews in the world, and unfortunately many take the Zionists at their word and fall for the trap. Then the cynical Zionists slander all opposition to Israel as “antisemitism.”
It is relatively easy then for rightist and leftist antisemites to turn just opposition to Israel and Zionism into antisemitism for the purposes of misleading working people in America in order to protect the capitalist ruling class.
Thus the working class has a vital interest for its own sake in opposing the growing poison of antisemitism.
Antisemitism is a capitalist weapon aimed at the working class. Hatred of Jews is merely a tool for that purpose. Zionism and the apartheid regime in Israel, and their slanderous lies against supporters of the Palestinians, are not the fundamental question regarding the extreme danger of antisemitism for the working class.
However, the fact that antisemitism is primarily aimed at the working class does not diminish the need for opposition to reactionary antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Understanding it properly provides a material basis for hundreds of millions of workers around the world to oppose antisemitism in our own interests, which is far more powerful than moralistic appeals by middle-class liberals to mere sympathy.
What Antisemitism Is For
Antisemitism is presented simply as hatred directed against Jews through conspiracy theories that today allege they control mighty US imperialism, or forced the US to go to war against Iran. Historically, it has produced immense suffering, persecution, dispossession, violence, and genocide against Jewish people.
But historically that is not the actual purpose of antisemitism. It is simply a cruel tool of rule, like racism or anti-immigrant xenophobia today. They are not purposes in and of themselves. They are methods to distract and divide the working class.
For centuries antisemitism has been one of the most effective smokescreens and political weapons used by ruling classes against the exploited and oppressed.
Antisemitism was akin to throwing a handful of dust in the eyes of the opponent in a dirty fight.
Its origins lie deep in feudal Europe. Kings, princes, landlords, and church authorities repeatedly encouraged anti-Jewish prejudice as a means of diverting social anger away from themselves.
During periods of economic crisis, debt, famine, war, or social unrest, Jews could be presented by the rulers as convenient and disposable scapegoats.
“Don't sack and burn my lovely Christian castle, go burn the shtetl and some Jews instead!” cried the kings and their Catholic Church. “My fellow Christians, after all they killed Christ! And made me charge you high taxes! (‘And I owe them money for those fancy imports I ordered, the King thought. ‘Now that's one way to cancel my debts,’ he smirked.)
The purpose was not primarily to attack Jews, but to prevent peasants and laborers from directing their anger toward the rulers who actually dominated society.
Under capitalism, antisemitism acquired new forms while retaining the same essential function.
Antisemitism serves to obscure the reality of capitalism, interposing conspiracy theories to hide their system of class rule. Instead of understanding exploitation as a product of capitalism itself, social frustrations are redirected toward an imaginary Jewish cabal.
______
Antisemitism derails and dissipates anger that might otherwise be directed upward against the ruling tormentors into hostility and cruelty directed at convenient distractions.
Historically, antisemitic movements have found particularly fertile ground among sections of the petty bourgeoisie: small business owners, independent professionals, shopkeepers, contractors, and farmers squeezed between large capital above them and labor below them. Burdened by debt, fearful of decline, resentful of powerful corporations on one side and labor militancy on the other, they become especially susceptible to conspiracy theories. The same imaginary Jew is presented simultaneously as the banker foreclosing on their property and the revolutionary organizing their workers.
This contradiction is not a flaw in antisemitic ideology. It is its central feature. The purpose is not explanation but diversion. The corporation disappears. The landlord disappears. The capitalist ruling class disappears, and all their crimes are absolved. In their place stands the mythical figure of "the Jew," blamed for every social problem.
ORIGIN OF ANTISEMITISM
Antisemitism is not a generalized term for hostility toward all peoples who speak Semitic languages. “Semitic” designates a subfamily of the Afroasiatic language family that includes Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Amharic. It does not designate a race or a single ethnic people.
The history of the word makes its meaning clear. The German publicist Wilhelm Marr coined and popularized Antisemitismus in 1879—not as a general label for hostility toward all “Semitic” peoples, but to rebrand traditional Jew-hatred (Judenhass) as a modern, pseudoscientific racial doctrine. That year, Marr published his highly successful pamphlet Der Sieg des Judenthums über das Germanenthum (The Victory of Judaism over Germandom).
Marr portrayed Jews as a distinct and dangerous race whose influence threatened Germany. His crank theory claimed that Jewish emancipation from centuries of legal and social persecution, together with German liberalism, had enabled Jews to control the economy and press and ultimately “subjugate” Germany. By recasting the so-called “Jewish Question” in racial rather than religious terms, Marr and later movements—including the Nazis—argued that Jews could never assimilate and were to blame for all evils.
Arabs played no part in Marr’s writings or political campaign. His organization was called the Antisemiten-Liga (League of Antisemites), and its sole purpose was to promote hatred of Jews. The word’s etymology may appear broader than its established meaning, but its history leaves no legitimate doubt: antisemitism means hostility toward Jews.
European feudal rulers and the Catholic Church institutionalized and repeatedly exploited Jew-hatred as an instrument of scapegoating, expropriation, and social control. Popular anger arising from taxation, indebtedness, famine, war, and oppression could be redirected away from kings, nobles, and church authorities and toward a vulnerable Jewish minority.
“Do not sack and burn my Christian castle—go burn the shtetl and its Jews instead!” was the political logic. “They killed Christ! They made me tax you! And,” the king might privately add, “I owe them money. A massacre is one way to cancel my debts.”
Contemporary antisemitism serves the same political purpose. The absurd claim that Israel or “the Zionists” control mighty U.S. imperialism absolves Washington and Wall Street of responsibility for their own crimes. Israel—or simply “the Jews”—is thus blamed for the American war against Iran and for policies consciously pursued by the U.S. ruling class in defense of its own imperial interests.
The Zionists and Israeli government, for their part, cynically declare that opposition to Israel, Zionism, or Israel’s genocidal crimes is inherently antisemitic. This slander is intended to intimidate Israel’s opponents, suppress solidarity with the Palestinians, and shield the Israeli state from accountability.
At the same time, Israel’s crimes and its insistence that it represents all Jews provide antisemites with powerful new material. Israel falsely identifies Jews everywhere with the actions of a state and government they neither control nor necessarily support. Antisemites accept that identification and blame Jews collectively for Israel’s crimes. Israel is making the world unsafe for Jews.
Solidarity with the Palestinians therefore requires opposition both to Israel and Zionism and to every manifestation of antisemitism. Antisemitism strengthens Israel’s claim that Jews can be safe only in a militarized Zionist state. It also strengthens the right-wing enemies of working people, who use conspiracy theories about Jews to divert anger away from Wall Street, Washington, and capitalism itself.
___________
Ultraright: Main Source of Jew Hatred
https://world-outlook.com/2026/09/21/ultraright-main-source-of-jew-hatred-1/
Why Opposition to Zionism is Not Antisemitism
https://world-outlook.com/2024/05/11/why-opposition-to-zionism-is-not-antisemitism/