Indestructible Tropes Remain
The Anti-Semite’s Best Friend
Old anti-Semitic tropes never die, they don’t even fade away; they just get recycled.
Persecution of Jews as old as history has always been grounded by the idea that Jews participate in secret and sinister plots to exert wide-ranging control throughout the world
The latest conspiracy claims have triggered right wing arguments that the Jews were to blame for the sinking of a US naval ship by Israeli jets nearly six decades ago.
Meanwhile, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has reported that major world events, like the US-Israeli war in Iran, are being exploited to promote anti-Semitic narratives, normalize extremist rhetoric, blur the distinction between fringe conspiracy and political commentary and mobilize action under the fake banner of anti-war sentiment.
As predictable as the sunrise and sunset, anti-Semitism is again growing in the US and around the world. It started with one of the earliest recorded incidents of “the world’s most hated people,” recounted in the Book of Genesis in which Ephron the Hittite held up selling land to Abraham in an act of extortion and Jew-hatred.
The antagonism has continued from the Egyptian enslavement of the Israelites and morphed into new forms in more recent times, like the 1939 rally of the German American Bund at Madison Square Garden where around 20,000 people listened to anti-Semitic rants in a background of Nazi and American flags.
Anti-Semitism has not abated. In 2025, the Anti-Defamation League released the results of a survey of 58,000 adults from 103 countries taken in 2024, estimating that 2.2 billion people, representing 46 percent of the world’s adults, harbor deep anti-Semitic attitudes.
The latest plan for a murderous anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist attack was foiled when the commander of an Iranian-backed militia was charged this week with planning to attack a New York synagogue. The commander, Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi, who had organized at least 20 attacks in Europe and Canada, had also planned to kill Americans and Jews in Los Angeles and had set his sights on a synagogue in Manhattan, authorities said.
Al-Saadi also is accused of involvement in two recent attacks in Canada: An attack on a synagogue and a shooting at the U.S. consulate in Toronto in March.
The Past Is Not Past
“The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” William Faulkner wrote in his 1950 novel, “Requiem for a Nun.” “All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity.”
On June 8, 1967, Israeli planes and patrol boats struck the USS Liberty, an American intelligence-gathering vessel at the height of the Six-Day War between Israel and the Arab nations. A total of 34 crew members were killed and another 171 were wounded. The attacks against the Liberty were in international waters off the Sinai Peninsula, about 25.5 nautical miles northwest from the Egyptian city of Arish.
The assault, which lasted 23 minutes, included air strafing and napalm bombing by four Mirage III and Super Mystères fighters, and gunfire and torpedo launches from motor boats. Israeli forces ended the attack after the torpedo struck and the ship was apparently sinking.
The Israelis claimed that they had mistaken the US ship for the El Quseir, an Egyptian vessel of similar design. A 1981 report by the US National Security Agency/Central Security Service, however, found that the El Quseir was around one-quarter of the Liberty’s tonnage, about one-half its length, and offered a “radically different silhouette.”
“To claim that the Liberty closely resembled the El-Kasir was most illogical,” according to the report, which said that the attack by Israeli torpedo boats, after the vessel was or should have been identified by Israeli military forces, “manifests the same reckless disregard for human life.”
At the time of the attack, the USS Liberty was flying the American flag and its identification was clearly indicated in large white letters and numerals on its hull.
The NSA’s Deputy Director read the decision of the Israeli Defense Forces Preliminary Inquiry, and summed up his personal feelings on the inquiry, calling it “a nice whitewash.”
Israel quickly apologized and paid compensation totaling $13 million to the wounded, to the families of those killed, and later to the U.S. government for damage to the ship. A CIA investigation concluded there was “little doubt” that the attack was a case of mistaken identity. Subsequent inquiries over the years reached the same conclusion.
The captain of the USS Liberty, William Loren McGonagle, was later awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
In 2004, Ward Boston, chief counsel to the Naval Board of Inquiry that investigated the attack, signed an affidavit that President Lyndon Johnson and secretary of defense Robert McNamara had ordered that the assault be ruled an accident.
Speculation about Israeli motivation varied. The US National Security Agency/Central Security Service investigation found that some believed “that Israel expected that the complete destruction of the ship and killing of the personnel would lead the U.S. to blame the U.A.R. for the incident and bring the U.S. into the war on the side of Israel.”
Others thought Israeli forces wanted the ship and men out of the way in order to deny the U.S. any intelligence on Israel’s preparations to attack Syria, an attack the U.S. might try to prevent.
Staying Alive
The fuel for keeping the conspiracy alive has come mostly from two former Liberty crew members: Phil Tourney and Joe Meadors, both now in their 70s. Both have gained followings after they claimed the attack could not have been accidental. Tourney spoke at a Holocaust denial event in 2002. In December 2024, Candace Owens interviewed him on her show. Antisemitic podcaster Stew Peters featured him the same month.
There are plenty of reasons to conclude that Israel intentionally tried to sink the USS Liberty. But to conflate anger at Israel with anger at Jews is the stuff of bigots. Similar to other tropes, like the blood libel, the sinking of the USS Liberty in 1967 has been perverted and exploited to allegedly prove the power and danger that Jews pose to the world, a perspective that continues to reverberate in the anti-Semitic community.
Tropes are used as propaganda tools for influencers, podcasters and activists who continue to repeat the claims of a Liberty conspiracy to online followings of millions of anti-Zionists and anti-Semites. They include such staunch Israeli opponents and anti-Semites like Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson and Stew Peters, white supremacist David Duke, former congresswoman and anti-Israel conspiracy theorist Cynthia McKinney and anti-Israel activist Alison Weir.
The Southern Poverty Law Center described the conspiracy claims as a “rallying cry” for anti-Semites. Iranian government-affiliated social media accounts have promoted Liberty conspiracy theories to incite hatred of Israel and Jews. In 2018, former NFL quarterback Brett Favre and comedian Andy Dick issued apologies after a neo-Nazi group, the Goyim Defense League, tricked them into recording cameo videos containing coded antisemitic messages referencing the Liberty.
In his November 2024, monthly newsletter, the ultra-right wing lawmaker, Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., mentioned the sinking of the U.S.S. Liberty and the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. The Anti-Defamation League responded that Gosar’s reference to the USS Liberty incident as part of a broader critique of the intelligence community in his newsletter “is misguided at best and antisemitic at worst.”
Sarah Kader, deputy regional director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Arizona chapter, said in a statement that “The USS Liberty incident has been historically misused by conspiracy theorists and antisemites to promote harmful narratives targeting the Jewish community and the U.S.-Israel relationship.”
Kader said that conspiracy theories about the USS Liberty have been repeatedly debunked and by referencing it in this context, “Gosar perpetuates falsehoods that feed into antisemitic tropes and undermines public discourse.”
Gosar also referred in a 2024 newsletter to the USS Liberty incident as a “false flag” operation by Israel and the U.S. intelligence community to draw the US into the Arab-Israeli War.
In 2023, Gosar’s newsletter linked to an article on a website that had previously posted a video by a infamous Holocaust denier and featured the same coded language used by neo-Nazis. The newsletter also linked to a website with an author who promoted a book that claims the Holocaust was a “fraud.”
In 2021, Gosar promoted the work of known white nationalist Vincent James Foxx, who became the unofficial propagandist for a neo-Nazi fight club.
Gosar has promoted the “great replacement theory,” a conspiracy popular among white supremacists and Christian nationalists. The completely debunked theory claims that Jews are in the lead of a movement to gain power by replacing white Americans with immigrants. The theory has inspired violence by a number of mass killers against Jews.
After war began in Gaza in October 2023 following the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, demonstrators were at a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Tampa, Fla., carrying a sign reading “Google USS Liberty.” In Alabama around the same time, White Lives Matter members staged a roadside demonstration that included a sign urging people to “Research Who Attacked the USS Liberty.” A few weeks later, protesters at an event on Staten Island displayed a sign reading “America look up USS Liberty #WAKEUP.”
Alison Weir, an American activist and writer, has alleged that Israel’s supporters in the US are responsible for involving America in wars and that Nazi and Zionist leaders collaborated during World War II.
Weir has been on broadcasts with white supremacists and Holocaust deniers including Christian Identity leader and conspiracy theorist Clayton Douglas, designated as a hate advocate by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Weir, who also is director of the anti-Israel organizations “If Americans Knew” and the “Council for the National Interest,” is behind a series of billboards that read “Help the USS Liberty Survivors Attacked by Israel.” The billboards have appeared so far in California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
Weir’s Council for the National Interest, a group that opposed US aid to Israel, previously employed billboards with a 2013 campaign called “Stop the Blank Check to Israel.”
Former Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., referred to the Liberty attack after she was a passenger on a boat that was rammed by Israeli naval forces to stop it from delivering medical supplies to Gaza in January 2009. McKinney drew a parallel with the attack on the USS Liberty.
“People would like to forget the USS Liberty but I haven’t forgotten the USS Liberty,” McKinney said in an interview aboard the ship in which she was a passenger.
McKinney lost her bid in February in a special election to Georgia’s 14th Congressional District. She was a candidate to fill the seat vacated by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.
Following Trends
As the US and Israeli war in Iran continues, the ADL Center on Extremism (COE) has reported a surge in anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist and conspiratorial commentary.
COE is tracking a series of emerging rhetorical trends including that the strikes on Iran were conducted to serve Jewish or Israeli interests at the cost of American lives. Among those promoting the conspiracy is Candice Owens who posted that “no one ever should sign up for [the] United States military outside of those who wish to join the IDF… We are an occupied nation.”
Owens also has repeated the conspiracy theory that Israel was behind the 9/11 attacks with a video of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking on Fox News and the baseless claim: “You murdered 3,000 Americans on 9/11.”
Owens is a far right political commentator, author, and conspiracy theorist. Since 2023, she has espoused anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
Another common theme that has grown since the war, is that Jews or Zionists have seized control of U.S foreign policy. Among those spreading the conspiracy is popular left wing streamer Hasan Piker, known online as Hasan Abi. Owens is among Piker’s millions of followers.
Right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson used the attacks in Iran to promote the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory of Israeli involvement in 9/11. During his March 2 program, Carlson said that Israel had advanced knowledge of 9/11 and is covertly manipulating American foreign policy.
Carlson also repeated the classic anti-Semitic trope that American Jews are loyal to Israel and not the US. He accused U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, and others, of “loyalty to Israel over the United States,” and that “a bunch of people in the U.S. government… do not put the United States before the interests of Israel.”
White supremacist podcaster Nick Fuentes, who famously dined with trump at Mar-a-Lago, said “the Jews” are responsible for the conflict in Iran. Fuentes argued his show is “the only show that will talk about the Jewishness of all this.”
“Tucker Carlson says it’s got nothing to do with Judaism, really? This Jewish war of aggression by the Jewish state? For Greater Israel on the Jewish holiday of Purim, against the Jewish enemy, the Amalekites, has nothing to do with Judaism? I guess, bro…,” Fuentes said.