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| Newsletter 10/24/2024 |
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Conspiracy Watch diligently curates and produces comprehensive materials and resources for understanding conspiracy theories. If you want to help us bolster our efforts...
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Antisemitism and US presidential elections: a long history of hateful synergies
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From the Civil War to Donald Trump, anti-Jewish sentiment and American elections have gone together
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Seen, Heard, Read...
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Stay informed with our curated collection of noteworthy updates and insights from the world of conspiracy theories. Uncover the latest trends, explore intriguing perspectives, and broaden your understanding. Delve into our recommended content that keeps you in the know.
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DONALD TRUMP. The former President eyeing a second White House term has been revealed as an admirer of the dictator who directed the Holocaust, Adolf Hitler. The revelations came from his former White House chief of staff and Homeland Security Secretary, retired Marine General John Kelly. In articles and interviews published in The Atlantic and The New York Times, Kelly said that Trump had commented more than once: “‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too”. He also said he needed “German generals” like Hitler’s. “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had,” Trump told Kelly, as reported by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic. Kelly said Trump fits the definition of a fascist, has expressed repeated admiration for a wide variety of authoritarians and dictators both historical and contemporary, and would rule like a dictator. “Well, looking at the definition of fascism: It's a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy," he told The New York Times. “It’s hard to say” Trump does not fall into the category of a fascist, commented Mark T. Esper, who served under Trump as secretary of defense. The declarations came after an alert by retired Gen. Mark A. Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a new book by The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward that the former president is “fascist to the core.” Trump, enraged, lashed out on Truth Social media and X, deriding Kelly as a “total degenerate,” “weak” “jello” “low life” dumb and a “bad general”. The Vice President, Democratic nominee Kamala Harris picked up on Trump’s initial comments and urged voters to listen to the warning bells from people who have worked with Trump that his beliefs are “incredibly dangerous.” “It is deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous that Donald Trump would invoke Adolf Hitler,” the VP said. “The man who is responsible for the deaths of 6 million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Americans. All of this is further evidence for the American people of who Donald Trump really is” (Sources: The Atlantic, October 22, 2024; The New York Times, October 22, 2024; The Washington Post, October 23, 2024).
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ELON MUSK. The proprietor of X, billionaire Tesla founder Elon Musk is laying the groundwork to cast doubt on the election results if his favored candidate Donald Trump loses. He used in-person rallies across Pennsylvania over the weekend to peddle lies about the integrity of the election. Even though no voting machines in the United States are directly connected to the internet, Musk repeatedly claimed that they can be easily hacked and that artificial intelligence makes it simpler to do so. “His feed on the decapitated social media site he now calls X is a cesspool of misinformation and incitement meant to encourage vigilante vote-integrity investigations,” wrote The Washington Post editorial board. Musk, whom Trump says he will appoint as his “Secretary for Cost-Cutting” has been identified as the greatest promoter of anti-immigrant conspiracy theories on his X platform as he posts frantically in the final days of the election campaign. He has shared content strikingly similar to images shared of so-called immigrant invasions during the 2016 Brexit referendum campaign in 2016. The Brexit referendum was revealed to have been a target of Russian disinformation warfare, in sync and even direct collaboration with far right influencers like Nigel Farage and right-wing media. Mus shared a front page image from the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post claiming the United States was the “Land of the Free Lunch” being overrun by migrants. With less than two weeks before election day, a resurgence in conspiracy theories and misinformation about voting is forcing state and local election officials to spend their time debunking rumours and explaining how elections are run at the same time they’re overseeing early voting and preparing for November 5. In the past week, radical Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene claimed a voting machine had changed a voter’s ballot in her Georgia district during early voting (Sources: The Washington Post, October 22, 2024; AP, October 23, 2024).
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TUCKER CARLSON. Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson compared Donald Trump’s potential return to the White House to a father about to give a "vigorous spanking" to a naughty child. Speaking toa far right Turning Point USA event in Georgia, Carlson said: "There has to be a point at which Dad comes home. Yeah, that's right. Dad comes home. And he's pissed. Dad is pissed. "He's not vengeful. He loves his children. Disobedient as they may be, he loves them, because they're his children. They live in his house. But he's very disappointed in their behavior. And he's going to have to let them know." He added: "When Dad gets home, you know what he says? 'You've been a bad girl. You've been a bad little girl, and you're getting a vigorous spanking right now. And no, it's not going to hurt me more than it hurts you. No, it's not. I'm not going to lie. It's going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me. And you earned this.'" A major theme of Trump's campaign has been that, if elected, he would punish and deliver retribution against his political enemies. The former president claims that the criminal cases he is facing, and the one he was convicted for in May, are politically motivated, despite there being no evidence of this. He also continues to claim, without evidence, that he won the 2020 election and that Joe Biden stole it from him with widespread voter fraud. In September he wrote on his social network, Truth Social: "WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again." More recently he has spoken of the “enemy within” and his plans to use the military against his political critics and opponents (Sources: Newsweek, October 24, 2024).
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ANTISEMITISM FRANCE. A man wearing a sports jersey with the words “Anti-Jew” written in French was photographed this week riding the Paris metro, prompting an investigation by law enforcement and outcry from Jewish leaders who lamented what they described as public indifference to surging antisemitism in France. The photo was taken on line 13 at the Saint-François-Xavier station on Monday and later shared on X/Twitter by Sandrine Sebbane, an editor at RCJ radio station. “I was alerted today about a photo of an individual wearing a shirt with a sinister ‘Anti-Jew’ slogan on a metro train,” tweeted Valérie Pécresse, president of the Île-de-France region. “We are currently proceeding with the RATP Group [France’s state-owned public transport operator] teams to check and identify this individual and to initiate the necessary criminal proceedings. Antisemitism has no place in our country.” France has experienced a record surge of antisemitism in the wake of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s October 7 massacre across southern Israel last year. Antisemitic outrages rose by over 1000 per cent in the final three months of 2023 compared with the previous year, with over 1,200 incidents reported — greater than the total number of incidents in France for the previous three years combined. This year, anti-Jewish hate crimes in France have continued to skyrocket. Last week, a visibly Jewish teenager was assaulted by two youths as he was leaving a metro station in the northwest suburbs of Paris. Days earlier, on the one year anniversary of the October 7 atrocities, three men brutally attacked a Jewish woman at the entrance to her home in Paris. The victim stated that the assailants threatened her with a box knife, made antisemitic threats, and mentioned the events of Oct. 7. Last month French police arrested a 33-year-old Algerian man suspected of trying to set a synagogue ablaze in the southern French city of la Grande-Motte.In another egregious attack that has garnered international headlines, a 12 year-old girl was raped by three Muslim boys in a different Paris suburb on June 15. The child told investigators that the assailants called her a “dirty Jew” and hurled other antisemitic comments at her during the attack. In response to the incident, French President Emmanuel Macron denounced the “scourge of antisemitism” plaguing his country (Source: Algemeiner, October 23, 2024).
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