Conspiracy U

b y S c o t t S h a y

Reviewed by Jonathan Allin Shay’s “Conspiracy U” focuses on the widespread belief in Zionist Conspiracy Theories, and how they have become presumed fact in his own University, Northwestern. He examines two Northwestern professors: both are acknowledged scholars, both believe there is a global Zionist conspiracy, both are pro-Iran.

Steven Thrasher is left wing and anti-white, a professor of journalism. His subject is gender studies, LGBTQ+ in the USA, and his articles have made major contributions in public health, for example AIDS amongst people of colour. Thrasher is a Holocaust minimiser. In his view Zionists are “hyper-whites” who are strengthening white power and are oppressors of people of colour who are the ultimate victims of Zionist Conspiracy Theories. Thrasher supports Iran, despite its murder of tens of thousands of gay men, and still supported Isis in 2015. He invents atrocities to buttress his beliefs: he has accused Israel “of using drones to gas Gazans” which makes the reader think of Zyklon B, mustard gas, Holocaust, Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad. The truth is that the drones were delivering tear gas to stop Gazan militants from crossing the 1967 border to kill Israelis. Thrasher is not mainstream, but his role model, Angela Davis, is. Page 32

Thrasher includes Davis’s “Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement” in his NYU classes on race in America. Davis herself only appears on sympathetic media and does not participate in debate. Her revealed truths are dogma.

Arthur Butz is right wing. He is an electrical engineer of considerable prowess, for example solving Hilbert’s space filling problem. Butz is a Holocaust denier, believing that Zionism is the motive for the “legend” of the Holocaust. He requires that American and Jewish American interests are diametrically opposed and that the latter are illegitimate, though doesn’t think the same about say German Americans. His book, “The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry”, was first published In 1976. It was little known before the 24/7 internet but is now considered a classic by the far-right. Amazon eventually removed the book, along with other Holocaust-denying titles, in 2017. Butz is listed on Google (“do no evil”) Scholar, https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=aGfw0EsAAAAJ&hl=en, with references to his non-academic publications, including “Hoax”. He is part German: his book and articles claim Zionism is a sinister political movement aimed at despoiling Arabs, but primarily at duping and robbing the world, especially the Germans, who he regards as the primary victims of Zionist Conspiracy Theories. He relegates Russians as inferior whites, thinks white Americans are too stupid to understand Jewish Conspiracy Theories, whilst elevating the Germans. Jews are fake, deviant whites, undermining white supremacy, not a people on their own terms (David Baddiel pointed out a similar contradiction in “Jews don’t count”). For Butz, the Jews’ sin isn’t colonialism, but parasitism. Butz was granted tenure two years before he published “Hoax”.

The Left-Right dichotomy is interesting. Both claim Zionists use the Holocaust illegitimately, however the far-right denies the Holocaust. The far-right feigns to be more “scholarly”, for instance its use of the Institute for Historical Revival. However Shay regards the far-left as Page 33

more dangerous, with a greater impact on academia than the far-right. He sees a direct line between communist anti-Zionist Conspiracy Theories and younger US scholars such as Thrasher. The far-left have a strong influence over main stream media: a generation of New York Times reporters have gone to universities where prejudice against Jewish self determination is unquestioned and unquestionable, thereby making anti-Jewish prejudice undetectable. Alice Walker, author of “The Color Purple”, rightfully a classic, in a New York Times interview in 2018, defended and recommended David Ike’s hateful book “And the Truth Shall Set You Free”. Yet the New York Times allowed this to go unchallenged.

Social Sciences and Humanities do appear to be breeding grounds for Zionist Conspiracy Theories: Northwestern’s Jessica Winegar, a professor in the department of Anthropology and a strong anti-Zionist, claims the Zionist conspiracy shuts down freedom of speech and silences opponents, and that there is compulsory Zionism in the university. Yet she has had a completely unhindered platform.

Many people of renown have their prejudices: Kant was a masterful philosopher and a bigoted slanderer of non-Europeans. Confucius, still famed for his wisdom, also expressed Chinese superiority. Kocc Barma Fall, a seventeenth-century West African philosopher celebrated for his proverbs, expressed misogynistic views about women. James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA for which he won the Nobel Prize in medicine, has made repeated racist and sexist comments. Alice Paul, who led the national suffragette movement in the United States, did not let Black women participate.

We need to be wary of someone talking outside of their speciality; they may talk with confidence and gravitas, but could be talking nonsense and may fail to maintain high academic standards, such as foregoing peer reviews. A while ago in this magazine I discussed “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins: he was a competent evolutionary biologist, but a failure as a theologian.

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Shay builds his analysis of Zionist Conspiracy Theories around Northwestern’s motto

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

Philippians 4:8: Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians Shay is very comfortable with this motto and shows how it can be used as a yardstick to measure the likely truth or falsity of a theory, and the need to be open to criticism of our own theories. The motto can, and should, be applied to any theory, academic or otherwise, and to set the standard for scholarship.

Shay also uses “The Golden Rule”: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. Major world religions, not just the monotheistic faiths but the philosophical traditions of China, India, and Tibet, as well as the traditional wisdom of many Native American and African cultures, subscribe to the Golden Rule. Shay prefers (and I agree with) Hillel’s more modest version: “What is hateful to you don’t do to your fellow”.

Aristotle describes three ways of persuasion:

• Logos: arguing with logic and from facts

• Ethos: an appeal to the trustworthiness or authority of the persuader, “I have x years of experience”, “I know better than you”, “trust me, I’m a doctor” • Pathos: pure emotional appeal. Appealing to the listener’s fear of the “other” or using emotive terms to sell a false truth (as above, the use of “gas” by Israelis)

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Modern marketing will use all three, legitimate academia can use only logos.

Shay makes a careful distinction between Conspiracy Theories and genuine conspiracies. The former have no logic and no, or negligible, foundation in ascertainable fact, and can be debunked with the minimal of investigation. The latter can be shown as most likely to be true or false based on balanced investigation and evidence. Conspiracy Theories use one overarching cause to explain a complex situation, and any evidence that conflicts with the theory is treated as evidence of a coverup. A Conspiracy Theory assumes a high degree of cooperation and secrecy amongst the theorised conspirators, which very few organisations can manage, certainly not over the century or more of Zionist Conspiracy Theories. Conspiracy Theorists comprise both true believers and conscious manipulators driven by an ulterior motive, who will view the world in Manichean terms: conspirators are totally evil and the victims totally good.

Theories about conspiracies are compatible with Northwestern’s moto and the Golden Rule, Conspiracy Theories are not.

Conspiracy Theories bring out the worst in people, the opposite of the Golden Rule. Someone caught up in a Conspiracy Theory is probably not acting from malice: Shay quotes his Father “meshuganah gornisht bolbe brings out dybbuks in nuchshleppers” or “crazy, worthless, stupid, made-up tales bring out the demons in susceptible unthinking people”. But Conspiracy Theory believers are perhaps like dried grass that can be ignited, and itself consumed, by a single spark.

Shay makes the point that wide-spread prejudice against a group is a step towards a Conspiracy Theory, which in turn is the harbinger of genocide: examples include the Tutsis, the Armenians, the Uyghur.

Shay is careful to define Zionism as the desire of the Jewish people for self determination in their ancestral homeland. There is undeniable evidence that Jews have lived in Israel for 3000 years and that despite

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numerous occupations and expulsions, Jews have maintained a large, mainly a majority, presence, in Israel. 4th century Rome renamed the Land of Israel to Palestine, with the Jews in the majority until the Arab conquests in 7th century. Over the next few hundred years Arabs become the majority through imperial policies that favoured Arab settlement of Christian and Jewish communities and the dominance of Arab culture, language, and religion.

He compares the Jewish people to the Finns, Armenians, Greeks, those of the Balkan states, and others who have achieved self-determination. The Armenians in particular were subject to genocide by the Ottoman/Turkish state. However Armenia had Russian support, whereas neither the Ottoman nor British empires were supportive of Jewish immigration to Palestine/Israel.

Self determination is in contrast to imperialism, which involves conquering territory, subjugating the indigenous peoples, supressing their culture and language. Zionist Conspiracy Theories regard Israel as a European imperialist movement, which it patently is not. The idea that Jews are uniformly “white” is absurd. Jewish history and ethnicity is far richer.

The left wing in particular carefully ignores non-European imperialism, such as that from China, Soviet, and Arab nations, and their record of oppression and abuse of human rights. The Zionist Conspiracy Theorists see no contradiction in condemning the Jews for wanting selfdetermination whilst at the same time supporting Palestinian Arab selfdetermination.

Shay makes it clear that anti-Zionism is also thinly veiled antisemitism, and that anti-Zionism predates the State of Israel. Martin Luther King Jr understood this when he said “when people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking anti-Semitism”. King in general was a supporter of Israel and Zionism, with an insightful view on the problems of the West Bank and Gaza

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(https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/martinkramer/files/words_of_marti n_luther_king.pdf);

Zionist Conspiracy Theories portray Zionists as being uniformly Satanic, and having fantastic unity and unprecedented power. They ignore the imperial past of the Arabs. The reality is that Zionists comprise a motley group from left and right, orthodox and secular.

Shay’s book covers much useful material: the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement that split up the Ottoman empire to define the modern map of the Middle East: Syria, Iraq, Jordan; The November 1975 UN resolution UNR 3379 “Zionism is racism”, that equates Zionism with racism, and Arafat’s behaviour at that meeting; the establishment of the Arab League that led to African states switching their alignment from Israel to the Arab countries; Hitler’s conspiracy with the Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, to murder Jews in British Mandatory Palestine, as well in Europe; the treatment of Jews in Arab lands both prior to and since 1948 in comparison to the recognition by Israel of Arab, Moslem, and other minorities, and their cultures; the deconstruction of ancient Jewish texts and archaelogy.

And, perhaps most troubling, the support by Jews of Zionist Conspiracy Theories.

Who is the book for? Shay makes the point that changing the minds of those promulgating a Conspiracy Theory is unlikely to succeed, rather we need to address those caught up in Conspiracy Theories. But Shay also makes the telling point that those Jews who go through the University system are in a system where Zionist Conspiracy Theories are assumed fact, presented by people of standing, and so likely to be taken on board by Jewish students. Most Jews get their information from college and US news sources: only 45% of American Jews have visited Israel. Given the prevalence of Zionist Conspiracy Theories circulating in campuses, it’s not surprising that many university and college Jews have been persuaded.

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Conspiracy Theories are aided by “freedom of speech” (or “freedom of expression”). A quick Internet search suggests that the laws around freedom of speech are a mess, lacking precision and clarity. This allows a Conspiracy Theorist to argue that they can say anything, whilst institutions such as Northwestern will do little because of their fear of infringing on right to freedom of speech.

Northwestern’s response to antisemitism has been poor. Shay describes in detail how Northwestern has failed to live up to its own motto, that the institution shows a greater concern for image and for the support of large donors such as Qatar, than for truth. Their response to the publication of “Hoax” was a banal statement about freedom of speech, they supported Israel Apartheid Week, and they have lacked the leadership to ensure genuine debate and academic standards.

I imagine the situation in Cambridge, in the UK, and in Europe is not so very different. We are in a situation where an entire Jewish generation is adopting an anti-Zionist stance automatically and without thought.

So in the first instance our own children need to be targeted or they will be lost to us. A book like Shay’s must help them from unthinkingly accepting Zionist and other Conspiracy Theories.

Shay does need to ensure he’s not caught in his own snare. Whilst the book is generally well referenced, there are important occasions when he appears to slip: he states “Hamas routinely uses hospitals and other medical facilities to store weapons and launch missiles...”, but provides no references to back the assertion.

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“Peace will have to be negotiated by both sides, but it will never come by fabricating a false history” “Our collective future depends on permitting facts to disprove theories, instead of allowing theories to negate facts” “Write down what should not be forgotten”, which was Shay’s inspiration for the book

Page 40 Clara Hassan, aged 8