Does Your Anxiety Support a Conspiracy Theory
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Cindie Chavez – ©2018
Last Friday night I sat in a small Synagogue attending a service designed to call the community together to stand in solidarity with the Tree of Life Synagogue. Jews and non-Jews alike mourning the tragic loss that resulted from the terrorist acts of a shooter in Pittsburgh, PA, the week prior on Oct 28, 2018.
As I sang, prayed, and listened to the readings I thought about how fragile life can be, how fleeting, how unpredictable. I thought of the members of the congregation in Pittsburgh, one moment celebrating a new baby in the community, the next minute gunshots stealing the life away from those same celebrants.
Eleven lives, gone in a flash, and so many more devastated and changed forever because of this senseless act of violence. The shooting is said to be the deadliest attack on Jews in American history.
I listened as the Rabbi spoke about his experience years ago as a young college student exploring Europe. He related that when he would visit historic sites where the events of the Holocaust took place, he would think to himself that he was glad these things were no longer current events, these happenings were resigned to history now. This horror was in the past.
Until it wasn’t. I listened as he recounted that his college trip took him to Spain, where he was in his hotel room and heard a loud commotion outside. As he looked out his hotel room window to see what was happening, he witnessed a crowd angrily shouting, and although he didn’t understand the words he recognized the vitriol, the violent intent.
The screaming crowd gathered outside his window were waving Nazi flags.
He described his trepidation, saying that he remained in his hotel room until the next day, thinking “I’m so glad that I live in America where this could never happen.”
I’ve had that thought as well. “It could never happen here.” Until it did.
Tomorrow is the 80th Anniversary of the “Night of Broken Glass”, or “Kristallnacht” as the Nazis referred to it – the horrific night in which 267 Synagogues and more than 7,000 Jewish businesses were destroyed, damaged, burned to the ground, and 30,000 Jewish men arrested and incarcerated in concentration camps.
When I ponder these numbers, it seems unfathomable. It is overwhelming.
It could never happen here, I think.
It could never happen again, anywhere, I think.
And then I turn on the news and hear the President of the United States, and other government officials spouting hateful rhetoric and anti-Semitic dog whistles and I wonder – Could it happen here? Could it happen again?
Anti-Semitism is racism, yes, and anti-Semitism is on the rise. Jews make up 2% of the population and are the recipients of 50% of the hate crimes recorded. Last year, The Anti-Defamation League reported, anti-Semitic incidents rose almost 60%, the largest single-year increase on record.
However, anti-Semitism is something else as well – besides being racist it is also a conspiracy theory. An ancient one – the conspiratorial idea that the world is secretly being run by a cabal of Jews. You might hear these ideas spoken of as jokes or innuendo – “the Jews run the media”, or “the Jews own Hollywood”, or “the Jews run all of the banks” – but they are not jokes, they are lies that are intended to further these ideas. In their small numbers, the Jews have been convenient scapegoats for centuries.
And when these types of ideas and rhetoric become normalized, actions like that of the Pittsburgh shooter result.
At this point, it seems that not a day goes by that we don’t hear some sort of racist dog whistle coming from the White House and those who support this administration. And as we witness the rise of racism and anti-Semitism, we must be aware of how this conspiracy theory works. It is essential that we renounce such rhetoric and hateful ideology.
Ideological and political dog whistles convey a message meant only for those that support the message being imparted. Dog whistles make a sound only dogs can hear.
When the right wing speaks of “globalists” and claim that anyone protesting the current administration is being paid by George Soros, (or that George Soros is funding a caravan of migrants towards our border) it’s a dog whistle – the hidden message is that the Jews are behind it, calling the shots. White-supremacists and anti-Semites hear this whistle loud and clear.
When the white supremacists that marched in Virginia at the Unite the Right rally chanted “The Jews will not replace us” they were echoing this sentiment – implying that the Jews were in control of things and going to take their jobs away and “replace them” with non-white people.
Dog whistles are hidden messages intended for those who already buy into the conspiracy. But they also serve a two-fold purpose in that they stir up fear and anxiety in those who are oblivious to the conspiracy.
Fear-mongering is intended to inflame the emotions, fears, and anxiety of good people to ensure they cast their ballots in the box that serves the ones doing the fear-mongering.
I don’t for one minute believe that every person who is stirred to feel fear is complicit in anti-Semitism or any other conspiracy. But unfortunately, whether a person claims to be a racist or not, whether someone claims to hate Jews or not – their anxiety can still be used to fuel the fire of anti-Semitic conspiracies and propaganda.
This same conspiracy is responsible for the demise of six million European Jews during the Holocaust. We must not be ignorant of such devices.
In the words of Martin Luther King Jr, “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
Ignorance is bliss. Until it isn’t.
We must learn from history. We must never forget.
More by Cindie:
Cindie Chavez is known as “The Love & Magic Coach”. She is the creator of MOONTREAT™ – and she has some great free stuff for you at her website: www.cindiechavez.com
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