You're accusing me of something I did not do, and then you're trying to blame me for antisemitism," says Greene. "You are such a liar. You need to stop." The result is an increasing presence of and tolerance for right-wing anti-Semitism in American public discourse. Notions like assigning blame to wealthy Jews like George Soros for non-white immigration, an idea that has its origins on the far-right anti-Semitic fringe, are not only acceptable but echoed by Republicans at the higher level. MALCOLM NANCE, New York Times bestselling author of They Want to Kill Americans: The Militias, Terrorists, and Deranged Ideology of the Trump Insurgency Greene wrote that "oddly there have been all these people who have said they saw what looked like lasers or blue beams of light causing the fires, and pictures and videos."

With the current rise of antisemitism, this important book looks at how one Jewish family —the Rothschilds—became a lightning rod for the conspiracy theories of the last two centuries, and how those theories are still very much alive today. A video posted on Greene's YouTube channel on January 21 shows her confronting David Hogg, who survived a 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Seventeen people were killed in the shooting.

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A recurring theme of this book is just how much antisemitic propaganda is just plagiarized from earlier antisemitic writings. What do you make of this just blatant unoriginality throughout? Looks like Reps. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., and Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., are not too afraid of the ... [+] space laser while standing outside. (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images) CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images While a writer may seek to dissociate him- or herself from the ‘outdated’ trends within the conspiracy tradition, including the focus on the Jewish provenance of the alleged plot, they nevertheless continue to operate in an ideological space with a long antisemitic tradition,” he writes.

Anyway, it is true that Marjorie Taylor Greene and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez play equivalent roles within their respective parties. MTG holds down her party’s right flank, and AOC holds down her party’s left flank. You can somewhat deduce the corresponding beliefs of the two parties’ mainstream contingents by moving somewhat to the center of each. Most Democrats are skeptical of defunding the police and question the feasibility of transitioning to a state-run health-care system. Most Republicans are probably quite skeptical that the California wildfires were intentionally set by a Jewish space laser. While the “Jewish Space Laser” theory has been a source of humor for many in the Jewish community, Rothschild warns against taking it lightly. The act of blaming a wealthy Jewish family for a natural disaster has historical precedents, often used to justify violence against Jewish communities. Dismissing such theories as mere jokes or attributing them to ignorance can be dangerous, as they normalize and perpetuate harmful stereotypes. I would certainly talk about the decline of the Rothschilds as powerbrokers. The Rothschilds are now just another wealthy family. Their name is really well-known, but it’s not for anything that they’re currently doing. I would also probably talk about the history of Judaism in general, how Jews came from impoverished communities just the same way anybody else does. You get that a lot online, where I’ll talk about how historically, many of the Jews of Europe were in deep poverty, and people will say, “Oh, Jews weren’t in poverty.” I’m like, have you seen Fiddler on the Roof? The Jewish people are just as capable of being poor or making bad decisions as anybody else. It’s just the myth that has dragged behind this religion for so long. That completely distorts what people think about them.The Republican-led chamber voted to remove Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday after some accused her of antisemitism for having suggested that GOP support of Israel was funded with money from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from Georgia has courted controversy on various issues by promoting QAnon conspiracy theories, alongside a history of anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic remarks. Years-old views, including a Facebook interaction in which she agreed with a comment that the Parkland shooting was a "false flag" staged event, and a video in which she pushed 9/11 conspiracy theories, have been unearthed. And in any climate where conspiratorial thinking is prominent, Jews will inevitably become the target. In the polluted right-wing media ecosystem, where conspiracy theories are omnipresent, anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists will have an easier time getting a hearing for their ideas. One way or another, ideas from the fringe right slip into conservative media outlets like Fox News and, from there, straight into GOP legislators’ ears.

But, as Solaren — the company behind the supposed galactic weapon pointed out on Friday — the self-declared bibliophile clearly didn't read everything about the project. To be clear, the story, which I wrote, did not say she used the words “Jewish space laser.” It accurately reproduced her entire post blaming the Rothschilds, and I noted that “the Rothschild family has featured heavily in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories since at least the 19th century.” But then, just as suddenly as it had gained a foothold on social media, the humour stopped. The abrupt halt to some very clever exchanges came when the Republican caucus refused to punish, criticise or condemn Greene in any fashion. Instead, they gave her a standing ovation. They did so after she told them that she had only been “curious” about some of the ideas she had posted and didn’t really know what space lasers were. Though her explanations beggared the imagination – her space laser post was long and detailed – it was enough for her colleagues.The early Church taught that “the Jews” conspired to kill Jesus — even though Jesus and his apostles were all Jewish and the Romans who actually executed him in the story were not. This, according to Lipstadt, was in part a strategic choice: Christianity had become a competing religion to Judaism, and its leadership wanted to marginalize the older, more deeply rooted tradition. What better way to do that than to blame Jews for killing the literal savior, casting remaining Jews as Christ-denying heirs to a dark conspiracy? While any claim of ignorance by Greene has inherent plausibility, this hardly resolves the matter. She has also shared a video with a different classic anti-Semitic and explicitly racist conspiracy theory, claiming that “an unholy alliance of leftists, capitalists, and Zionist supremacists has schemed to promote immigration and miscegenation, with the deliberate aim of breeding us out of existence in our own homelands.”