Antisemitism Meets Transphobia
White nationalists and anti-trans feminists use the same conspiracies to target trans and Jewish folks.
BY BEN LORBER, HERON GREENESMITH APRIL 28, 2021 9:30 AM

We live in an age of conspiracy theories. In the wake of the January 6 insurrection in the U.S. Capitol, and with movements like QAnon on the rise, it’s clear that millions across the United States subscribe to theories that a diabolical cabal of elites is secretly controlling society, and that they are willing to take violent action against these imagined enemies.

These types of conspiracy theories have long been a cornerstone of antisemitism—which insists that this cabal is Jewish—and today, they’re seeping into antitransgender activism as well. Now, more than ever, antisemitism and transphobia are becoming deeply connected, making it vital for progressives to fight both together.

On the radical right, white nationalists are obsessed with fears of “white genocide”—the imagined fast-approaching biological extinction of the “white race”—and are convinced that Jewish activism is the prime mover of this existential threat. One of the main ways they believe Jews advance “white genocide”—in addition to engineering increased immigration of Black and brown people, orchestrating racial justice movements, controlling the government and giant corporations, using space lasers to start California wildfires, and other dastardly schemes—is by liberalizing societal attitudes around gender and sexuality in colleges and universities, media, and other cultural institutions.

In order to “secure the existence of our people and a future for white children,” as their slogan goes, white nationalists believe they must defend a status quo rooted in patriarchal violence—undergirded by cis-heteronormative gender roles, straight white nuclear families, a culture of warrior masculinity, and more—from Jews, who foster feminism, LGBTQ+ liberation movements, and multiculturalism to undermine this “natural order.” Movements for transgender justice, white nationalists believe, represent a key cultural front of Jewish-backed “white genocide.”