https://mishpacha.com/the-secret-is-out/
A
few months ago, Senator Ted Cruz said, “If it ends up that Biden wins
in November… I guarantee you, the week after the election, suddenly all
those Democratic governors, all those Democratic mayors, will say,
‘Everything’s magically better. Go back to work, go back to school.’
Suddenly, the problems are solved; you won’t even have to wait for Biden
to be sworn in.” Cruz — who knows a thing or two about conspiracy
theories, having been a victim of one in 2016 — was actually just
parroting a theory advanced by his erstwhile victimizer.
But it hasn’t exactly worked out that way. We’re six weeks past the
election and the pandemic is still very much with us and being treated
as such. But that’s the great thing about conspiracy theories: They can
just be trotted out to suit one’s political purposes, and when, with the
passage of time, they turn out to be baseless, no one even remembers
them, and it’s on to the next wild imagined conspiracy.
Remember this one? “Joe Biden is a mere puppet of the radical left to
be used as a tool to burn down the suburbs and impose atheism on
America.” During the campaign, his opponent referred to him regularly as
a “Trojan Horse for socialism.” When asked by talk show host Laura
Ingraham who Biden’s being controlled by, he helpfully clarified that
it’s “people who you’ve never heard of, people who are in the dark
shadows,” and “people who are in the streets, people who are controlling
the streets.”
But being a conspiracy theorist means never having to say you’re
sorry even when the theories turn out to be baseless. So if it turns out
Joe Biden is no one’s marionette, no big deal. After all, didn’t you
hear? He’s not actually the next president since he stole the election.
Although grounded, reality-based people tend to downplay the gravity
of conspiracy theories because they’re just so outlandish, when their
prevalence reaches a critical mass in society, they become a deadly
serious issue indeed. And they have reached that point, as Kevin D.
Williamson writes in National Review:
When I first started writing about QAnon, some conservatives scoffed
that it wasn’t a significant phenomenon, that it had no real influence
on the Republican Party or conservative politics. That is obviously
untrue. Rather than ask whether conspiracy kookery is relevant to
Republican politics at this moment, it would be better to ask if there
is anything else to Republican politics at at this moment. And maybe
there is, but not much.
For the uninitiated, QAnon, which been identified by the FBI as a
domestic terror threat, is a complex, mutating theory centered around
the belief that the outgoing president is a heroic savior secretly
battling to save the world from a Satanic cult of pedophiles and
cannibals connected to prominent Democrats and Deep State denizens. The
president has publicly welcomed its support and has retweeted scores of
its supporters’ posts; dozens of its supporters have run for office and
two were just elected to Congress, with Republican Party help; and
opinion surveys show over half of Republican voters believe its central
elements.
Read those lines again. Five years ago, a novel or movie script based
on this would’ve been rejected as too implausible to attract an
audience; today, we’ve acclimated to it emerging from the Oval Office,
from the same fingers that are on the nuclear button.
The out-of-control spread of conspiracy theories is a grave enough
danger to the health of the nation, but for Jews it is a mortal threat.
It is perilous for us in physical terms, given the fact that conspiracy
theories have been at the very heart of Jew hatred during the entire
history of our people.
And it is equally ominous for us spiritually, because our very
existence as the Am Hashem depends on holding fast to truth, rejecting
falsehood, and insisting on the highest epistemological standards for
discerning between the two. Every Jewish heresy has trafficked in part
or in whole in wildly fantastical or conspiratorial theories, from false
Messianic movements, to Bible critics’ fever dreams of a fabricated
Torah, to contemporary Orthodox feminism’s baseless delusions about a
women-subjugating rabbinic cabal. If you think entertaining outrageous
political conspiracy theories at the Shabbos table is harmless fun that
doesn’t risk corroding the exquisite sensitivity to emes and sheker that
our young people need to subscribe to ikarei hadas — think again.
In recent weeks, however, things have risen to a dangerous new level.
Yuval Levin, senior scholar at the conservative American Enterprise
Institute, writes at The Dispatch:
For our political culture, the Trump era is ending much as it began —
in a hail of delusion and fantasy. Throughout his term, the president
has invented stories of his own victimization and heroism, demanded the
acceptance of lies as tests of loyalty to himself, and elevated baseless
theories from the depths of various internet cesspools. His opponents
have often responded in kind….
Our affinity for partisan conspiracy obviously did not begin with
this presidency…. But the fever has clearly grown much hotter in the
Trump era. We’ve seen not only the party out of power easing its pain
with myths of victimization by shadowy forces but a sitting president
actively blurring the line between fantasy and reality. It should be no
surprise that he is now concluding his presidency by insisting the
election was stolen and beckoning his supporters down a rabbit hole of
unreality and grievance.
And anecdotal indications are that among those going down that rabbit
hole are more than a negligible number of members of our own community.
Our history is replete with a country’s Jews being the victims of blood
libels, but now we face the prospect of something at least as chilling:
Jews, a tiny, vulnerable minority in a country already riven by
partisan hatred and fear, publicly identifying with those promoting a
libel aimed at delegitimizing the country’s rulers.
We can hope that the conspiratorial fever that has seized millions of
Americans these last six weeks will yet break. But if it doesn’t, the
potential implications for Jews are frightening.
Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 841. Eytan Kobre may be contacted directly at kobre@mishpacha.com
