Question for Kanye – Why the Jews?

After his initial antisemitic outbursts on Instagram and Twitter, Kanye West made a telling remark that went largely unnoticed.

“Do you think that comment came from just out of the blue?” the billionaire rapper asked a photographer who was questioning him about his antisemitic posts.

Indeed, now weeks long into Kanye’s anti-Jewish tirade, that question is strikingly relevant.

At first, many were willing to give Kanye a pass – or at least suspend judgment on his promise to go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE.”

"If you're an honest person, when you read this tweet, you had no idea what the hell he was talking about," opined Candace Owens. "Did he mean defcon 3, which would be a military-defense position? Not an offense…"

Jewish people represent just two percent of America’s population, yet they bear the brunt of more than fifty percent of all religious bias hate crimes in the country. That most conspiracy theories also involve Jews is not a coincidence.

The assailants in the most deadly attacks against Jews in recent years were all deeply invested in anti-Jewish conspiracy theories. Robert Bowers, the Tree of Life synagogue shooter, communicated with white supremacist groups who deny the Holocaust. The same for the Poway synagogue shooter.

One of the assailants who attacked the Jewish market in New Jersey posted Black Hebrew Israelites conspiracy theories. Black Hebrew Israelites claim they are the true Jews; the other “Jews” are imposters sent by the devil.

The hostage-taker at a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas spewed voluminous venom against the Jews. He accused Jews of being behind 9/11, among other conspiracy theories. He specifically chose a synagogue as his target because he thought Jews were so powerful that they could pull strings to free Al-Qaeda operative Aafia Siddiqui from a nearby Fort Worth prison.

Kanye West’s rants tapped into the most classic conspiracy theory about Jews. Jews are secretly in control, manipulating industry, media and governments to fit their global agenda. 

Kanye also positioned himself as a Jew and, as such, declared himself immune to accusations of anti-Semitism. In his “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE” tweet, Kanye informed us it was not anti-Semitic of him to say this because “black people are actually Jew also [sic].”

Further explanation came from a segment of the Tucker Carlson interview that was not aired (but leaked to the public by Vice’s online magazine Motherboard). There, Kanye said a Jew is one of "the 12 lost tribes of Judah, the blood of Christ, who the people known as the race Black really are [sic]."

While the claim that Jews are the usurpers of the identity and birthright of the Blacks is a more recent anti-Semitic trope, it follows a classic pattern of conspiracy theorists, as noted by British comedian and author David Baddiel, writing years earlier in The Guardian:

“... the conspiracy theorist [sees himself as] the good guy, the lone hero, unmasking the secret powers of evil – even if unmasking the secret powers of evil in so many cases seems to involve saying: it’s the Jews.”

Baddiel also explains how Kanye (and so many others before him) can deny accusations of antisemitism:

“So we come to a position whereby for a lot of people, pointing at one small ethnic group and saying they’re responsible for all the worst things in the world is no longer racist. It’s fighting the good fight.”

Dan Cassino, a professor at Farleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey, commissioned a poll four months after the massacre of 20 children and 6 teachers at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

The poll found that 25 percent of Americans believed facts about the shooting were hidden by the government or media. Another 11 percent were unsure. One of the most popular conspiracy theories blamed “Israeli death squads” for the murders.

Similarly, after the bombing of the Boston Marathon, conspiracy theories abounded accusing Jews and Israelis of being behind the terror attack.

Cassino says Jewish conspiracy theories proliferate today for the same basic reasons as they did historically:

“There is a perception of Jews as the Other — a part of society, but still somehow foreign. Couple that with resentment over Jewish success in certain areas of society, and they’ll be blamed for things that are otherwise just ineffable.”

Kanye is the most recent manifestation of that resentment of and paranoid fantasies about Jews. One thing we know for certain: He won’t be the last.