Jews and Muslims in the White Supremacist Conspiratorial Imagination - Hardcover

by Ron Hirschbein (Author), Amin Asfari (Author)

Jews and Muslims in the White Supremacist Conspiratorial Imagination explores how Jews and Muslims are stigmatized and endangered by the same conspiratorial template.

Supremacists imagine that Jews and Muslims secretly strive to replace white, European civilization with an unspeakable tyranny. The authors, a Jew and a Muslim, analyze the nature of the conspiracism that targets their communities. They historicize the supremacist conspiratorial imagination, narrating the paranoia on a continuum, from modernity to the postmodern. They begin with the texts of modernity, following them through to the dark areas of the Internet and examining their violent denouement in synagogues and mosques. The book investigates the classic text The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and neoclassic variations such as QAnon. It turns to Islamophobic responses to 9/11 such as paranoia regarding the Muslim Brotherhood and the doppelgänger of The Protocols, namely The Project. The authors conclude by questioning how "ordinary" people, prompted by paranoia and recognition hunger, resort to violence and murder. Admittedly, the authors are not certain--certainty is for conspiracists. But they may have a piece of the puzzle.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of conspiracy theories, antisemitism, Judeophobia, Islamophobia, political science, history, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and criminology.

Author Biography

Ron Hirschbein is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at California State University, Chico, USA, where he created and headed the Peace Institute. He also served as a Visiting Professor at University of California campuses in Berkeley and San Diego, and at the United Nations University in Austria.

Amin Asfari is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminology in the School for Professional Advancement at Regis University, USA.