I have a new essay up on The Daily Beast today. Here is the gist:
Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories Are Going Mainstream
Shortly after the vicious stabbing of Indian-British-American author Salman Rushdie, Prof. Nader Hashemi, a specialist on Islam-West Relations, opined on the Iran Podcast that Israel was probably behind the life-threatening attack, as an attempt to derail renewed nuclear negotiations with Iran.
In fact, there is precisely zero evidence that Israel had anything to do with the vicious attack on Rushdie, or that Mossad agents have made a practice of luring young Muslims into terrorism. Hashemi’s assignment of likely blame is about a half-step away from the enduring accusation that Israel was behind the 9/11 attacks.
Hashemi’s image of a conniving Israeli operative, exercising nefarious control over an apparent act of Islamic terrorism, is a classic conspiracy theory that could have been lifted, with only a few vocabulary changes from a contemporary introduction to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Experts on Iranian politics have pointed out that the Islamic Republic often attempts to shift blame to Israel, only occasionally saying the “antisemitic parts out loud.”
Hashemi, I’m sure, is a person of good will, with no ill intentions. But that makes it even more troubling that he would reflexively turn to an anti-Jewish stereotype without recognizing its bigoted implications (even when pointed out to him). Instead, he has doubled down. He described his Mossad attribution as part of a “nuanced and critical discussion of world politics.” Criticism of the theory, he complained, was “an attempt to silence public debate,” presumably over whether Rushdie’s stabbing had indeed been part of a cunning Israeli plot.
That is the beauty of a conspiracy theory. It is all nuance and no proof.
You can read the entire piece at THE DAILY BEAST.
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