Donald Trump speaks at an event meant to raise awareness of antisemitism. Photo by Getty Images

Contributing Columnist Jay Michaelson September 23, 2024

Conspiracy theories are never good for the Jews.

Though they begin in different places — finance, media, politics, entertainment — conspiracy theories almost always end in antisemitism. Sometimes, as in European/white nationalism, holocaust denial, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, or Kanye West and Candace Owens, the antisemitism is explicit. Other times, as in the Right’s scapegoating of George Soros or Donald Trump’s infamous 2016 ad targeting “powerful elites” and depicting Soros, Janet Yellen and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, it’s right there on the surface but still somehow deniable.

And sometimes, the antisemitism of conspiracy theories is implicit, but symbolically clear, like talk of un-American elites who undermine the nation’s stability or use their positions of power to favor one candidate over another. We all know who these people are, right? Antisemitism is the ur-conspiracy, Jews the consummate outsiders within.

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And yet, some of the loudest self-appointed defenders of the faith are now drinking from the conspiracy theory well.

First case in point: Bill Ackman, who is now pushing a completely baseless conspiracy theory that ABC News provided Kamala Harris’ campaign with sample questions before her debate with Trump. Ackman has even posted a fake (and typo-filled) affidavit supposedly by an ABC whistleblower who later died in a suspicious car crash.

The obvious phoniness of this “affidavit” is laughable and Ackman and Elon Musk, who also posted it with approval, look like fools for promoting it. Freierim, we’d call them in Hebrew.

For the record, an analysis by Mediaite traced the affidavit’s source to a website called County Local News, which NewsGuard, a media reliability ratings firm, included in a report about AI-generated content farms, saying its headlines “read like that of an AI parody.” As does the affidavit.

From there, it was posted to X by an anonymous user with the screen name ‘Black Insurrectionist’ and then went through the MAGA sewer, getting promoted by Tenet News — now indicted for being a front for Russian propaganda — and a fake news site called “Leading Report.” 

That last site is where Ackman got the story from. Which is itself quite remarkable: a billionaire booster of Donald Trump, who orchestrated the ouster of Harvard’s president, is getting his “news” from a widely-debunked conspiracy rag which has promoted misinformation and absurd conspiracy theories for its entire existence, including some promoted by, according to the Department of Justice, a Putin front operation. This point alone should make any reasonable observer question Ackman’s actions at Harvard as well. 

Obviously, ABC News has categorically denied the allegations.

Given that Ackman was willing to accept such an obvious fake “affidavit,” perhaps he’s not aware that believing in sinister media conspiracies is a gateway drug to antisemitism. But he should be, especially since he has gone to such length to decry antisemitism when it comes from misguided campus activists. Ackman has gone from being a target of conspiracy theories — after all, he is a wealthy Jewish donor who pulled the strings at a leading university — to promoting them.

Not to be outdone, Trump himself managed to spread antisemitism at an event dedicated to fighting antisemitism.

First, Trump complained that Jews would be to blame if he loses the election:

I’ll put it to you very simply and as gently as I can: I wasn’t treated properly by the voters who happen to be Jewish. I don’t know. Do they know what the hell is happening if I don’t win this election? And the Jewish people would really have a lot to do with that if that happens, because at 40% that means 60% of the people are voting for the enemy.

These comments rightly garnered condemnation across the Jewish world. As the American Jewish Committee put it in their statement, “Whoever a majority of the Jewish community votes for, Jews — roughly 2% of the U.S. population — cannot and should not be blamed for the outcome of the election. Setting up anyone to say, ‘we lost because of the Jews’ is outrageous and dangerous. Thousands of years of history have shown that scapegoating Jews can lead to antisemitic hate and violence.”

But Trump didn’t stop there.

Less widely reported were his troubling statements that ‘Israel’ has to defeat Kamala Harris. Turning to Miriam Adelson, who has committed to spend $100 million to help Trump win, he said:

Now, we’re going to defeat Kamala Harris. You have to defeat Kamala Harris. More than any other people on Earth, Israel, I believe, has to defeat her. You know that? And I’ve never said this before. And I’m thinking, Miriam, more than any people on Earth, Israel has to defeat her. I really believe that. It’s a disaster for Israel, and you know why.

This is, in my view, even more ferkakte. Here is a presidential candidate calling on a foreign country to influence an American election (even if we allow for Trump’s weird conflation of ‘Jews’ and ‘Israel,’ which has happened many times in the past). Could you imagine if Harris said something like that? “France has to defeat him. He’d be a disaster for France?”

Especially, as we now know, Israel really did collude with the Trump campaign to help him win in 2016. Isn’t this Trump urging Adelson, who of course has close ties in the Netanyahu government, to get them to do so again?

And then there’s the elephant in the room: that Adelson is obviously supporting Trump because she thinks he’d be good for Israel. Isn’t this just what left-wing antisemites say — that wealthy Jewish donors influence American politics for the benefit of Israel? Is that not exactly what Adelson is doing, and what Trump is urging her to do more? 

Of course, Americans can support politicians for any number of reasons, and corporate donors do as well. But in terms of sheer scale and chutzpah, it’s hard to find any parallel to this moment in American politics, in which a presidential candidate urges a foreign country to help him win the election, speaking directly to someone with direct influence on that country’s leadership. 

I don’t know which is worse: right-wingers blaming Jews if Trump loses, or left-wingers blaming Jews if Trump wins. 

But maybe that’s the point. Whether it’s Candace Owens blathering about Jacob Frank or Bill Ackman becoming the Jewish My-Pillow Guy, anyone with a knowledge of history knows where this kind of tin-hat nonsense inevitably leads. And it’s not good for the Jews.

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