When Donald Trump declared he would “drain the swamp” by ending political corruption and dismantling the shadow government pulling the strings in Washington, he was drawing on two significant streams of American political thought.
The first is a deep distrust the majority of American voters have toward their government. This distrust is owed in no small part to the covert CIA operations that occurred during the Cold War. Dehumanizing projects such as MKUltra, which used psychological torture in the attempt to create mind-control procedures, came to light after hundreds of lives had been destroyed and families ripped apart.
The Watergate scandal and the numerous government lies about the extent of the Vietnam War and the narrow potential for victory shattered trust in the government for an entire generation. Deep-state anxieties are very real in America, all across the political spectrum, and Trump’s pledge to “drain the swamp” resonated with voters who might not have otherwise voted for him.
Yet there is another strand of American political thought, that of the far right, which feeds on conspiratorial thinking that has a history of antisemitism and also shaped the Trump rhetoric about “draining the swamp.”
“The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” spread rapidly throughout early-20th-century Europe because there was a widespread belief in a secret society of Jewish masterminds who had long been plotting the end of Christian civilization. The United States is both geographically and politically distant from the religious tensions that had long been plaguing Europe, particularly Protestant-Catholic tensions, Christian-Jewish tensions and Christian-Muslim tensions in some parts.
When the global fear of an underground cabal that was pulling the strings of world governance landed in the United States, one of the greatest conspiracy theories of all time took shape around it: the Illuminati.
The Illuminati was a society of intellectuals that Adam Weishaupt formed in Bavaria in 1776. Men such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe came together to oppose the growing influence of superstitious beliefs, the state and religion, in favor of rationalism and ending the abuses of those who held power – sometimes through rather controversial means. The group was short-lived due to internal strife and external suppression, and was officially outlawed a few years after its founding.
Though there is no evidence that the Illuminati survived longer than a decade, the writers Augustin Barruel and John Robison spread the idea that the group went underground and masterminded the French Revolution, which threatened to upend the established order in Europe.
Belief in this underground secret society that was masterminding the downfall of religion became tantalizing and contagious. When the works of Barruel and Robison crossed the Atlantic at the turn of the 19th century, some of America’s most well-known church leaders preached against the Illuminati to their congregations.
The paranoia of the Jewish cabal presented in “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” merged with the fascination surrounding all things Illuminati. This created a toxic mix in American conspiracy culture.
Today, a centerpiece of Identity theology is known as Zionist Occupied Government. It claims that a group of Jewish leaders is pulling the strings of power throughout the Western world, including in America. As such, the American government is not truly democratic, but is serving as a proxy government for Israel.
This belief is demonstrably false. However, many of the far-right agitators who assembled in Charlottesville for the Unite the Right rally in August 2017 firmly believed in the Zionist Occupied Government conspiracy and expressed their belief when they marched through the city chanting, “Jews will not replace us!”
The belief in a Jewish cabal at the center of world events took a new form with the emergence of the QAnon conspiracy theory during the Trump presidency. The central claim of QAnon is that Trump was working to expose a ring of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who held high-level positions throughout America’s government.
Again, this belief is demonstrably false. But it was potent enough to captivate as many as 20% of America’s voters during the 2020 election.
Understanding these conspiratorial beliefs, their antisemitic origins, and their connections to the far right is critical to addressing the upheaval throughout the world that surrounds America’s arming of the Israeli Defense Forces in the slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
Jews are not pulling the strings of power in the American government. Many Jews oppose the war and ever since the October 7 attack, have been pushing for the Israeli and American governments to prioritize the freeing of hostages, not the carpet-bombing of Gaza.
A more productive conversation could be had around Christian Zionism and how the political capital held by America’s religious right has been influencing policies toward Israel since the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
These leaders are not in a Deep State. They are out in the open, many leading televised church services that reach tens of thousands of people every week.
Keri Ladner received her doctoral degree from the University of Edinburgh. She is the author of End Time Politics: From the Moral Majority to QAnon.
