The Tree of Life shooter espoused an antisemitic version of the “white genocide” conspiracy theory that is among a whole host of antisemitic conspiracy theories promoted by the Republican Party in its “globalist,” “antifa,” and QAnon conspiracies. The basic logic of these racist conspiracy theories is that a shadowy cabal headed by Jews (often George Soros) is behind a plot to destroy “traditional” white America; this is a direct descendant of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an antisemitic conspiracy that became an important part of Nazi propaganda in the 1930s.
While these conspiracy theories are bogus and absurd — democracy is obviously not a Jewish trick but a struggle towards a better future for all — antisemitic lies take aim at the institutions that ought to create a free and fair society for everyone.
The danger in antisemitic conspiracy theories lies not only in the direct threat they pose to Jewish communities, but also in the way fascists and authoritarians have used them as tools to undermine democracy.
The Jim Crow regime gives a decent indication of how these worked in the U.S., with similar mechanisms targeting Black, Asian, and Jewish Americans along with other ethnic groups that varied based on local demographics. These led to the targeting and persecution of Jews in New York, where the police commissioner claimed that they were responsible for half of all crime, charges similar to those levied at Black Americans in the Deep South and Asian Americans in the western U.S.
As a historian who studies white supremacy, its impact on the state, and ways to combat it, it is clear not only that antisemitism harms Jewish communities, which it does, but that it is almost universally tied to larger efforts to remake the body politic. We can look not only at the eugenic ethnostate of Jim Crow as an expression of this principle, but also as one that shows its reach in the ways that it inspired the Nuremberg Laws and “final solution” in Nazi Germany.
And in fact, this point that antisemitism undermines democratic protections more broadly is not lost on Jewish civil rights activists themselves — either historically or in the present — who have been among the most outspoken civil rights activists of the last century.