How are Jews like me effected by being targets of antisemites who believe conspriacy theories about Jews? Now there’s a scientific study. By Hal Brown, MSW

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Clicking on the above story merely takes you to this paragraph:

New research published in the British Journal of Psychology shows that Jewish individuals who believe antisemitic conspiracy theories are prevalent in society experience increased feelings of threat and a tendency to avoid those outside their group. This study, one of the first of its kind, sheds light on the often-overlooked consequences of conspiracy theories on the groups they target. While a significant amount of research has been done on why people believe in conspiracy theories, there has been little focus on how these theories affect the groups they target. Conspiracy theories can be ha…Read More

To learn what the referenced study showed you have to go to the PsyOp website article here which summarized the reseach which was published in the British Journal of Psychology (link).

Excerpt:

New research published in the British Journal of Psychology shows that Jewish individuals who believe antisemitic conspiracy theories are prevalent in society experience increased feelings of threat and a tendency to avoid those outside their group. This study, one of the first of its kind, sheds light on the often-overlooked consequences of conspiracy theories on the groups they target.

While a significant amount of research has been done on why people believe in conspiracy theories, there has been little focus on how these theories affect the groups they target. Conspiracy theories can be harmful, often targeting specific groups with accusations of secret, malevolent actions. This new study aimed to understand the impact of such beliefs on Jewish individuals, a group frequently subjected to conspiracy theories.

“We can’t fully appreciate how conspiracy theories divide society unless we consider how the targets of these beliefs are affected,” explained study author Daniel Jolley (@DrDanielJolley), an assistant professor in social psychology at the University of Nottingham. “Whilst research exploring the consequences of those who subscribe to conspiracy theories is undoubtedly important, a notable oversight is the research examining the perspective of the targets of conspiracy theories. Our work therefore sought to explore how conspiracy theories about social groups can have significant negative effects on their members.”

I am a member of a targeted group. The word “targeted” currently has a chilling meaning.

The RawStory article allowed readers to write comments. As I write this there are only four. One of them is mine. I wrote it in part as a reaction to the comment posted by kcwookie. I agree with what stingray68 posted.

  • Hal-Brown-MSW 31 minutes agoJews around the world have a good reason to be concerned that there are people want them exterminated. They may react with different degrees of anxiety but knowing that it’s possible that a violent person may target them or their loved ones because they are Jewish is realistic. This is not about discrimination and feeling bad or feelings ofself-worth being damaged about it as a commenter wrote. It is about knowing there are people who may be inclined toward violence, possibly in your community, who believe the Hamas genocidal agenda against the Jewish people not just in Israel but around the world. 0 0Reply•Share ›
  • stingray68 an hour agoTypical of anti-semites is the belief that groups attacking Jews are always the bigger victims so Jews always deserve the violence inflicted upon them. This is a belief system that goes back to ancient times and infects every ideology, from far right to far left. 1 0Reply•Share ›
  • kcwookie an hour agowow, abusing and discriminating against people makes them feel bad, and consider their worth, since when did that become news? we’ve known that for about ever. How about the Palestinians who are being discriminated against are there emotions and feelings and self-worth being damaged to or is it just a Jew? 0 0Reply•Share ›

The PsyOp website summary of the original British Journal of Psychology article is good, but it doen’t give examples of the conspiracy theories about Jews some people believe. These have been expressed more frequently since Oct. 7th. Here are the two beliefs published in the journal:

…A recent representative survey found that [(the majority of) vs. (only a minority of)] non-Jewish people believe that many Jewish employees in the Twin Towers were not at work on September 11th, suggesting that they were pre-warned by Israeli intelligence that the attacks were going to happen….

…Perhaps unsurprisingly, therefore, a recent representative poll of non-Jewish people showed that a [(majority of 58%) vs. (minority of 12%)] believed that Jewish people have been in control of other international affairs for decades…

Something else not referred to in the PsyOps summary of the journal article which is very relevant is the following six word sentence which jumped out at me as if was underlined in red (click below to enlarge):

 Conspiracy beliefs may inspire violent extremism (e.g. Jolley & Paterson, 2020; Rottweiler & Gill, 2022) .

As I write this MSNBC is reporting on this story: Man accused of firing shotgun outside synagogue in upstate New York is taken into custody, police say.

All of the news since Oct. 7th has effected me in several ways. I am a generally non-obervant Jew who never even went to Hebrew school like all of my friends did. Growing up I only set foot in a synagogue for bar mitzahs and in high school when a female friend’s orthodox father dragooned my into being the required 10th Jewish male at a minyan. My famiy lit the shabbat candles every Friday night and I said the blessing in Hebrew. We celebrated both Hanukkah and Chirstmas. My father was an Army corpsman in World War II. The Holocaust was often discussed in my family.

I grew up feeling Jewish and this feeling persists to this day. Because of the recent developments I feel more Jewish than I ever have in my life.

Here’s a link to the journal article.

Today is the second day of Hannakah. Yesterday one person decided to fire a shotgun in front of a synagogue. Who knows what we’ll see when we tune into the news later today.

Read comment(s) below.

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2 responses to “How are Jews like me effected by being targets of antisemites who believe conspriacy theories about Jews? Now there’s a scientific study. By Hal Brown, MSW”

  1. hhcovitz Avatar
    hhcovitz

    AntiSemitism elicits mostly sadness in me … of course concern and a tendency to keep “my doors” locked. My college-aged grand-daughters are getting it in the face, though. “Gas the Jews … Finish the Job … Genocide to the Jews.” At New School, at Bennington, another fearful of grad school at So. Illinois … a blue and white dot in a Sea of Red. When my wife and I drove out to Colorado, last September, what jarred me most were the 50-60 foot white shiny crosses at the state lines of 2 or 3 states … Might as well be a sign: “Yo, Boy … if you’re not White and Christian, better turn back to from whence you done come!” Being a Jew in Amerika! There’s a Yiddish expression: Schver tzu’zay a Yid … It ain’t no walk-in-yhe-park being a Yiddel. Keep yer head down, Brother! Howard H. Covitz, PhD ABPP NCPsyA Link for Zoom Meetings https://us02web.zoom.us/j/9322099432 Meeting ID: 932 209 9432

    Psychoanalysis, Psychoanalytic Therapies and SupervisionLatham Parkway, Elkins Park, PAWalnut Street, Philadelphia, PA215-635-5368215-740-4825 hhcovitz@aol.com Please note that I cannot guarantee the security of private information that we exchange by email and I do not always check this email daily.  For these reasons, I kindly suggest we reserve any sensitive, detailed or urgent communications for telephone or in-person communication. Thank you.

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  2. bugzbennyk Avatar
    bugzbennyk

    What Howard Covitz said. Every bit of it.
    The most subtle antisemitic remark is the utterance, “Sooo… what kind of a name is {your last name here}?”
    A book that I did not know about is from 1543. Martin Luther had attempted to pretend he was a friend of the Jewish community, but he then turned away from that and wrote “The Jews and Their Lies.” Although the Lutheran church formally dissociated itself from this tract in 1980, the book still can be purchased in reprint form on Amazon.
    You can also buy “Mein Kampf” there, as well.
    Take a small-minded person, mix in a life of habituation toward overly simplistic thinking, a teaspoon each of illiteracy, Fox News, Tik Tok, alcohol, tobacco and firearms, and throw them all together in a group…
    Alfred Nobel would be both proud of the chemistry experiment, and saddened by the effects of the rediscovery of explosive potential.
    My late brother dealt with antisemitism his entire life. My fate, yours, Howard’s and every Jew I know will likely wrestle this anaconda.
    What the evidence-based effort you shared provides is substantiation of every feeling Jews have experienced when trying to operate outside of the “eruv”, the imaginary and sometimes physical shroud that connects the world’s Jewish community.
    What Hamas did was bring the violence back. Plain and simple. Every time another attack occurs, it exacerbates the lesion. Every time a Jew gets exposed to another anti-Semitic dig or barb, it hurts our community even more.
    Rabbi Joseph Telushkin wrote “Jewish Literacy” as a powerful volume of basic Jewish understanding, to be read by Jews, so that we could understand the nature of being hunted. We will always be hunted for the sport of it. It is ever so, and the allegory of our “avoth v’imahot” – our liturgical ancestors, written about in Genesis, (for your readers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and their wives, Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel) is that the slights and missteps of early families lead to lifetime hatreds, vitriol that remains undiluted over millennia.
    It is not news, but old remembrances, old pain, old cultural reminders that “schver tzu’say a Yid…(it will always be hard to be a Jew)” is our lot.
    The more we try to blend in, the brighter we shine, and the more prominently we stand out. It is the blessing and the curse.
    To expect ease as a Jew in any country on this planet is in itself a mythology – I include eretz Yisroel in that because even there, even now, even at any hour, Jews must fight for survival as such. You will never be respected for permitting the slaughter. You will never be given level footing, even if you have money, power, prominence and influence.
    We all live with the reality that others will do everything they can to spread misinformation about us, perpetuate the horrors of the past, reanimate dead antiSemitic ideas, all the while making inroads to delegitimize historical facts.
    Sometimes, anti-Semitism percolates into our own households. Peer influences, intermarriages, continued ignorance, continued admixtures as I mentioned when opening this comment, all make for the set-up.
    We have a story. We need to review it internally, stay in touch with our faith, our books, our families. Isolating us, diminishing us, marginalizing us has always been the thrust of the anti-Semite.
    “Schver tzu’say a Yid”
    Or, as Albert Brooks offered in his latest autobiographical documentary, “Others see a choice, I’ve only seen one road…”
    A world full of bulvans.
    Shalom. Don’t hide. Be you. Fight back. Don’t be a victim.

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