Antisemitic trope

Antisemitic tropes, also known as antisemitic canards or antisemitic libels, are antisemitic allegations about Jews as an ethnicity or Judaism as a religion.
Since the 2nd century, malicious allegations of Jewish guilt have become a recurring motif in antisemitic tropes, which take the form of libels, stereotypes or conspiracy theories. They typically present Jews as cruel, powerful or controlling, some of which also feature the denial or trivialization of historical atrocities against Jews. Antisemitic tropes mainly evolved in monotheistic societies, whose religions were derived from Judaism, many of which were traceable to Christianity's early days. These tropes were mirrored by 7th-century Quranic claims that Jews were "visited with wrath from Allah" due to their supposed practice of usury and disbelief in his revelations. In medieval Europe, antisemitic tropes were expanded in scope to justify mass persecutions and expulsions of Jews. Particularly, Jews were repeatedly massacred over accusations of causing epidemics and "ritually consuming" Christian babies' blood.
In the 19th century, allegations about Jews plotting "world domination" by "controlling" mass media and global banking spread, which mutated into modern tropes about them being behind liberalism, capitalism and eventually a major libel that Jews "invented and promoted communism". These tropes fatefully formed Adolf Hitler's worldview, contributing to World War II and the Holocaust, which killed 6 million Jews and millions of others. Since the 20th century, the use of antisemitic tropes has been documented among various groups including some that self-identify as "anti-Zionists".
Most contemporary tropes feature the denial or trivialization of anti-Jewish atrocities, especially the denial or trivialization of the Holocaust, or of the Jewish exodus from Muslim countries. Holocaust denial and antisemitic tropes are inextricable, typical of which is the libel that the Holocaust was "fabricated" or "exaggerated" to "advance" Jews' or Israel's interests.

Political tropes

World domination

The publication of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in 1903 is usually considered the beginning of contemporary conspiracy theory literature. The trope embodied by the book is manifested in both writings and imagery, where Jews are accused of plotting world domination nefariously. Typical examples include Nazi-originated cartoons depicting Jews as a giant octopus reaching across the globe. A 2001 Egyptian reprint of Henry Ford's antisemitic text The International Jew had the same octopus imagery on the front cover.
Among the earliest refutations of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a forgery were a series of articles printed in The Times in 1921, which revealed the forgery's content to have been plagiarized from the unrelated satire The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu. The Russian imperial state popularized the forgery to discredit the Bolsheviks by accusing Jews of organizing the Russian revolution. The forgery scapegoated Jews as the leading subversive force to try to dispel mass revolt and keep the empire united.
Later, the trope spread westward when the Great Depression and Nazism's rise catalyzed its dissemination. A Polish equivalent goes by Judeopolonia, which posited an imaginary Jewish domination of Poland. Contemporarily, the trope often goes by Zionist Occupation Government, which accuses the Jews of "controlling Western governments" for selfish ends, like benefitting Israel. The ZOG is widely peddled by antisemites, such as the Neo-Nazis, white nationalists, Islamists and black supremacists.
Malcolm X, a well known Black American activist, believed in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which he introduced to the Nation of Islam for circulation among their Black American audience. In 2003, the Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed drew a standing ovation at an OIC conference after alleging:
The New Black Panther Party, a black separatist group, has actively peddled the myth. Prior to a 2006 Democratic primary runoff in the U.S. state of Georgia, the NBPP alleged
When the NBPP-backed candidate Cynthia McKinney lost to her rival Hank Johnson, NBPP's members alleged "Jewish electoral domination".
In April 2017, Politico magazine published an article alleging "links" between the then–U.S. President Donald Trump, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and Jewish religious group Chabad. Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League condemned the article as "evok age-old myths about Jews". In December 2023, Australian Green MP Jenny Leong, echoed Mahathir Mohammed's 2003 speech at a Palestine Justice Movement forum:
Leong apologized after being condemned. Whereas, the "Jewish power" myth is often veiled as the "criticism" of "Jewish plutocrats" allegedly behind political changes. For instance, QAnon conspiracy theorists believe in the existence of a "satanic cabal" of global elites "drinking children's blood" to achieve "world domination". Two-time heavyweight world champion Tyson Fury also believes in a "Zionist plot" to "lower" public moral standard via the media and finance. As per Argentine-Israeli educator Gustavo Perednik, antisemites often pass off their aggressive instinct as a "struggle" of "the oppressed" against the "powerful" to maximize its appeal to left-wing audience.

Controlling the media

Another common antisemitic trope is that "the Jews control the media and Hollywood". In Eastern Europe, the Czech politician Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, believed that Jews "controlled the press", despite his previous objection to antisemitism during the Hilsner affair. In Western Europe, Arthur Griffith, the founder of the Sinn Féin party decisive to Ireland's independence, was subscribed to the "Jewish media control" trope. Griffith alleged that Dublin newspapers were
Griffith's antisemitism is still present in the party. For instance, lower house parliamentarian Réada Cronin alleged in 2020 that Jews were "responsible for European wars" and "Adolf Hitler was a pawn of the Rothschilds not have been too far wrong". In the United States, J.J. Goldberg, The Forward's editorial director, published a study of such trope in 1997. He concluded that Jewish Americans "do not make a high priority of Jewish concerns" despite holding prominent positions in the American media industry. Variants on this theme focus on Hollywood, the press and the music industry.

White genocide conspiracy theory

Since 2015 when the European migrant crisis happened, the White genocide conspiracy theory has gained traction among white nationalists. Jews are often accused of facilitating unrestricted non-white immigration to alter the fabric of White-majority societies. Such libel is often peddled in conjunction with older myths, like the "Jewish power", to raise its plausibility among the targeted audience. Much of such sentiment stems from an extinction anxiety about the majority White population becoming outnumbered by the non-white population, who are often assumed as "foreign" and "incompatible" with the mainstream. Elon Musk, the current owner of X, has also been accused of endorsing the theory, when he showed approval of the theory in a tweet.
In the US, there have been several terrorist attacks associated with the belief in the theory, the most recent of which include the 2017 Unite the Right rally, where dozens of casualties occurred in a car ramming attack, and the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, where 11 were killed and 7 injured. The SPLC noted,

Economic tropes

Controlling the global financial system

The ADL documented several tropes that had associated Jews with banking, including the myth that "global banking is dominated by the Rothschild family" traceable to the medieval prevalence of Jews in moneylending.

Usury and profiteering

In the Middle Ages, Jews were restricted from most professions and pushed into marginalized occupations, such as tax collection and moneylending, due to the Roman Catholic Church's prohibition on Christians charging interest for loans. In 1179, the Third Council of the Lateran threatened excommunication for any Christians lending money at interest, prompting borrowers to turn to Jews for loans. Natural tension between gentile debtors and Jewish creditors reinforced pre-existing anti-Jewish biases. In England, the departing Crusaders were joined by debtors in the massacres of Jews at London and York in 1189–1190. In 1275, Edward I of England punished Jewish creditors by passing the anti-usury Statute of Jewry. Many English Jews were arrested, 300 of whom were hanged. In 1290, all Jews were expelled from England. German-American Jewish historian Walter Laqueur noted,

Association with capitalism

Building on older tropes of Jews controlling finance and being inherently driven by greed, from the 20th century Jews were blamed for the exploitation of people under capitalism and were claimed to control the institutions that were driving capitalism.

Propagation of communism

In the 20th century, newer allegations of Jews masterminding the propagation of Communism emerged, including The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Judeo-Bolshevism was popularized by Hitler's to conflate Jews with communists and present them as an existential threat to justify the Holocaust. A Polish equivalent of this trope is Żydokomuna, which accused "most Jews" of having "collaborated with the Soviet Union" in "importing communism" to Poland. Candace Owens, a twenty-first century American conservative pundit, alleged that "Stalin was a Jew" and his followers were "part of a Jewish cabal".

Kosher tax

The "Kosher tax" trope claims that food producers are "forced" to pay an exorbitant premium to indicate that their products are kosher, which is allegedly passed on to consumers by price increase. It is mainly spread by white supremacists. Refuters contended that food producers would not engage in the certification process if it was not profitable to obtain the "kosher certification", which is actually a voluntary business decision, while the "resultant" increased sales would lower the average cost.