Centuries-Old Conspiracy Theories That Fuel Fascism Today

Centuries-Old Conspiracy Theories That Fuel Fascism Today with Mike Rothschild

Refuse Fascism Episode 168

Mon, Aug 28, 2023 7:07AM • 44:01

Mike Rothschild 00:00

​The most durable conspiracy theories really have both a cutting edge feel and a sort of “they’ve been here forever” kind of feel. The foundations of Trump’s base are conspiracy theories, are scapegoating, are blaming other people for things that have happened to them. Conspiracy believers want to think that they are being oppressed, that there is someone going after them, there’s someone keeping them down. So this conspiracy movement, it’s taken control of the Republican Party, it’s taken control of conservatism. It really behooves us to understand what it is about this that repels most people, but attracts a few people.​​

Sam Goldman 00:57

Welcome to Episode 160 of the Refuse Fascism podcast, a podcast brought to you by volunteers with Refuse Fascism. I’m Sam Goldman, one of those volunteers and host of the show. Refuse Fascism exposes analyzes, and stands against the very real danger and threat of fascism coming to power in the United States. I’m glad to be back with you. In today’s episode, we’re sharing an interview with Mike Rothschild, author of a forthcoming book, Jewish Space Lasers: 200 Years of the Rothschild Conspiracy.

Thanks to everyone who is bringing this show to others and keeping that convo going, by commenting on the socials and YouTube. A special shout out to everyone who rates and reviews the show on Apple podcasts, or your listening platform of choice. It really is the number one way to support the show. So after listening to today’s episode, please please go write a review. Give us all the stars on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to help reach others who want to refuse fascism in the name of humanity. Oh, and of course, follow/subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Before today’s interview, we have to talk about some developments from the past couple of weeks as they relate to the continued fascist threat. First, let’s take a moment to touch on the accelerating fascist violence that is proven deadly from coast to coast. On August 18th, 66 year old Laura Ann Carlton, Laurie, known for her generosity of spirit, was shot and killed in Lake Arrowhead, California. Laura, a store owner, was shot and killed over a pride flag that was hanging outside her boutique. We send love to her family, friends and the community that cherished her. Heartbreaking, outrageous, intolerable and completely predictable in a context of a nationally coordinated fascist movement.
This fascist violence is completely linked to the violence against LGBTQ+ people being codified in state houses across the country, unleashing religious fundamentalists, bigots and violent conspiracy theorists to terrorize and even murder those who are part of or support the LGBTQ+ community. It’s on us to lift those who are digging their heads deeper in the sand to confront the reality that the Republican Party is now a fully fascist party that intends to impose through force its genocidal white supremacist, male supremacist, xenophobic, theocratic, divorced from reality insanity over all of society.

Yesterday, Saturday, August 26, a Nazi in his 20s, walked into a Dollar General store on Kings Road in a predominantly Black county in Jacksonville, Florida, and gunned down and killed two Black men and one Black woman. The shooter authored several manifestos detailing his hatred for Black people. He used an AR-15, which was painted with a swastika. Our hearts go out to the families and friends of those he murdered and the entire community. Heartbreaking, outrageous, intolerable and completely predictable in a context of a nationally coordinated fascist movement.

This is the product of fascism that foments and relies upon white supremacy, that is waging a lethal war on all those who they deem subhuman and enables open carry for weapons of war. As Dave Zirin tweeted: “Ron DeSantis has been leading a hate-motivated war against Black people in all marginalized communities in Florida. It’s been vicious, racist and contemptible. So no one should be surprised that violence and deaths flows in the wake of his state sanctioned bigotry. The GOP has let the rabid dogs off the leash with neither the ability nor the desire to get it back on.” Enough is enough. It’s on us to defend people from attacks on their rights and lives by white supremacists, anti Semites, women hating and anti-LGBTQ moms in and out of power.

Moving on to those who would like to hold power, we’ve got to briefly mention the GOP debate, the first in the campaign for the party’s presidential nomination that took place this past Wednesday, August 23, on the eve of Trump’s arraignment for felony RICO charges in Georgia. Hanna Rosen for The Atlantic made this astute comment: “Former President Donald Trump the front runner for the Republican nomination did not show up. And even though the contenders on the stage likely have no chance of winning the nomination, the debate was important in that a lot was revealed about the future of the party.”

Who was the biggest winner in the GOP? [improvised drumroll on table] Fascism, hands down. While none of these candidates come anywhere close to outpacing Trump, in this race to the bottom for front running fascist, none of this should be shrugged off. As the fascist movement advances in state houses across the country and this program of overt white supremacy, patriarchy, xenophobia, becomes even more normalized and entrenched, what’s the danger? We’re talking about the latent dictatorship in which the unchallenged domination of these fascists will be enforced at every level, and by every means at their disposal. We are talking about a slow civil war quickly escalating into a one sided slaughter. We’re talking about the normalization of calls for shooting migrants “stone cold dead,” the invasion of Mexico by the U.S. military while calling refugees an invasion. We’re talking about a stage of candidates largely embracing a national ban on abortions, with only debate on how far or fast take it, and overwhelmingly confirming that if Trump was elected as the candidate, they’d support Trump, even if he was convicted.

This shit, even a decade ago, would have seemed beyond belief to most. Mango Mussolini, not even three years after his attempted coup, has a real shot of re seizing power with all the horror that would bring. The fascism of Trump and his party with its accelerating capacity for organization — yes, organization — toward fascist consolidation, has still been barely named, much less repudiated. This is a time for truth, not delusion, for struggle, not complacency.

Speaking of Trump, we have now all seen Trump’s mug shot taken at the Atlanta jail, on charges related to conspiring to overturn the 2020 election. In four indictments, this has been the first time he has been personally subjected to such public humiliation. But let’s briefly take the temperature of this political legal situation. It would be much more horrifying, it would be a much more horrifying moment, if these state and federal charges had not been filed; if Trump and his co conspirators were not facing the possibility of any accountability for their attempts at violently retaining power fueled by bitter white supremacist resentment and downright delusion, and in doing so consolidating fascism to a much greater degree in the American empire.

If this had been allowed to pass without such investigation and indictments, this would have normalized these events for a significantly larger section of the population than the tens of millions strong fascist base. But even if all these charges lead to timely convictions, nothing here, I believe, legally prevents a second Trump term beginning January 20, 2025. Meanwhile, Trump and the MAGA movement have sanctified this in their martyrdom myth, using this as fuel in their fire to regain federal power at the highest levels and wield it without restraint. This has enshrined Trump’s place as the leading GOP contender.

There is no simple judicial solution to fascism, but as we see all too often, the terms set by the ruling class opposition constrain not only the actions, but even the imagination of justice loving people in this country. This cannot continue. Meanwhile, as Paul Street writes in a recent Substack article, “The second problem is that America has a Christian white nationalist fascism problem that is bigger than Trump. Amerikaner Trumpism/fascism has an insidious white heartland life that will continue on if and when Trump politically or physically dies. A revanchist section of the American ruling class and a good quarter to 30% of the populace has crossed over into neo-fascist space, a topic I’ve written about at length. Trump could expire tomorrow and Trumpism/fascism would persist in search of new maximalist fuhrers, while wreaking arch reactionary racist, sexist, nativist, anti-LGBT, authoritarian, eliminationist and potentially genocidal havoc across the land.” I encourage folks to listen to our last episode for more from me on the indictments and how we relate to them.”

I want to frame this conversation with Mike a little bit. I’m excited for you to hear it. He’s done invaluable work on the history of these conspiracy theories and the world their believers think they inhabit, and I want to provide some more political context for why this matters so much right now. One thing I’d like y’all to do is listen to previous episodes of this show, where we discuss this, especially the one with Mia Bloom, and her book Pastels and Pedophiles: Inside the Mind of Q-Anon, and one where we interview Federico Finkelstein about his book A Brief History of Fascist Lies.

We are very much trained in this society to believe that our way of thinking is tied immutably to our individuality or some broader human nature, but over the last few years, we’ve seen story after story of regular people such as Ashli Babbitt, who quite suddenly tripped down some rabbit hole and end up storming the Capitol, murdering people or simply leaving their whole life behind, all in pursuit of Q’s storm, Trump’s righteous return to the White House, or some related deranged conspiracy theory. This isn’t just happening to occur to all these individuals at the same time. Our society is facing deep crises, and the fabric that has held the United States together since the end of the first Civil War is disintegrating.

To the limited extent that critical thinking, scientific understanding, media literacy, have been accepted in this country, they are not in the interests of the fascists aiming to remake our society. We’ve seen real policies in education and media law, as well as material support for stupefying and de politicizing influencers, across art, music, politics, academia, as just the tip of the iceberg, and what has actively been done to dislodge a huge section of our society from any form of rational thinking, and undermine critical thinking and science across our whole culture. Which doesn’t mean there is a cabal of malicious actors sitting in a room somewhere, thinking up all the ludicrous conspiracy theories, but it does to deep seated issues endemic to the United States, and the convergent interests of people who do wield power and influence in this country — most obviously, but not only, Donald J. Trump.

All this also brings me to, one note on something Mike says in the interview. It’s true that many disasters and atrocities that conspiracy theorists obsess over, are the result of much more chaos, failure and contingency than they are of complicated evil conspiracies. But we should also recognize a third factor, which is the dynamics of the capitalist imperialist system, which often compels people and resources towards convergent and yes, often nefarious aims. In this moment, more than ever, it’s vital for people to learn the tools of critical thinking and scientific analysis, not to look for simple answers that confirm our petty grievances, but to understand how our society is structured, how history has brought us to this moment, whether it has to be this way, and if we could really change things beyond winning some beef on Twitter.

As an aside, it must be said that sometimes there really is a conspiracy to spread conspiracy theories. The poisonous anti semitic blood libels, and related conspiracies underlying multiple genocides, both slow and fast, was the stock and trade of massive organized institutions like the Catholic Church for centuries. They’ve been used by extremely powerful rulers, from kings to czars, to modern day imperialists to take people’s anger and fear, insecurity and confusion away from its root cause — those rulers and their systems — and direct it towards an already oppressed minority. Now, here’s my interview with Mike.

Today, we’re talking antisemitic conspiracy theories with journalist author and the foremost expert in this ever changing QAnon conspiracy theory world, Mike Rothschild. He has a forthcoming book titled, Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories. It’s available for pre order now and will be released September 19. To be clear — gonna put this right up front — Mike isn’t related to the banking family guys. [MR: chuckles] He’s also a writer for The Daily Dot where he explores the intersections between internet culture and politics through the lens of conspiracy theories, and he has a new article up there, I think today as we’re recording, August 23. As a subject matter expert in the field of fringe beliefs, Mike has been interviewed by many places you go to, like The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, Yahoo, among many others. Welcome, Mike. Glad to have you on.

Mike Rothschild 15:15

Thank you. Thank you. I hope I can live up to that intro.

Sam Goldman 15:19

With the current rise of antisemitism, your book that comes out next month, looks at how one Jewish family, the Rothschilds, became a lightning rod for conspiracy theories for centuries and how these conspiracies persist to today. The Rothschild banking family has been at the center of these centuries long conspiracy theories that play on stereotypes of Jewish power, connection to money. There is no shortage of horrors the Rothschilds have been blamed for: the American Revolution, check; financing Nazis, check; sinking the Titanic, check; and of course COVID-19, check — they’ve all been blamed for it. So Mike, while not giving your book away, I thought that we should start out with: What is the basics of the Rothschild conspiracy and where did it come from?

Mike Rothschild 16:17

Essentially, the Rothschild family rose out of the Jewish ghetto in Frankfurt; essentially a walled city with about 3000 inhabitants. It was literally called the Judengasse, it was the Jews’ lane. And there were a number of prominent Holy Roman Empire banking families there, and they were engaged in making small loans, changing money denominations, collecting coins and metals. Mayer Anselm Rothschild, who was the patriarch of the Rothschilds, essentially started off as just one of those people, and he grew in stature and grew in power over the next decade or so, and by the time the Napoleonic wars started, a couple of his sons had moved to some of the other major banking capitals of Europe.

Specifically, his son Nathan was in London and his son James was in Paris. The Rothschilds cemented their role as the kind of kings of European finance by helping to essentially fund the war against Napoleon. There was a very complicated system of smuggling gold back and forth across the English Channel. This was sold off, or loaned, to finance the armies of Wellington that eventually met at the Battle of Waterloo. By the time the Napoleonic Wars ended, the Rothschilds were one of the most powerful families in Europe, and when Nathan Rothschild died in 1836, he was the richest man in the world.

So the Rothschilds grew in stature and wealth very quickly. And of course, that is a Petri dish for myth, and then conspiracy theory. As I write about in the book, for the first maybe four decades of the 1800s, the Rothschild myth was kind of some sort of subtle parody — you know, cartoons and mentions in novels — it was very hands off. It wasn’t particularly anti semitic. But when you start to see the rise of socialism, and in particular in France in the 1840s, it caused a spike in anti semitic activity. This really came to a head in the late 1840s, with the revolutions of 1848, and a pamphlet war in Paris that was kicked off by an anonymous pamphlet that accused Nathan Rothschild of knowing the outcome of the battle of Waterloo and essentially using it to take control of the British Empire. And that one accusation in this all but forgotten pamphlet really was the start of the Rothschild conspiracy theory industry.

Sam Goldman 18:31

What motivated you to write this book? Why this topic now?

Mike Rothschild 18:35

In the other work in conspiracy theories I’ve done, the Rothschild name comes up all the time — usually attached to these just bizarre myths and rumors and conspiracy theories. Things like: The Rothschilds own all but three or five or seven central banks in the world, and we’re always at war with the countries where they don’t own the central bank; or the Rothschilds have $500 trillion; or they financed both sides of every war since the American Revolution; or Hitler was a Rothschild; I mean, just ridiculous stuff. But what I really wanted to do was figure out who this family was. I really knew who they were not; they were not the trillionaires who run all the central banks and count Hitler is one of their cousins. But I wanted to kind of figure out who they were.

One of the first things I did was I reached out to family members to talk to them, and, of course, none wanted to talk about it. The family just doesn’t address these rumors at all. There’s really nothing for them to gain when talking about this stuff. So I really had to go into primary sources into the books and the movies and then the podcasts that have been created, spreading these myths, and really trying to pull apart who this family is, who they’re not, and why this name comes up over and over and over. And of course, I’ve got that very tenuous personal connection of having the last name but having absolutely no relation to the Frankfurt Rothschilds whatsoever.

Sam Goldman 19:57

Beyond academic interests of wanting to get to the truth, how do you see it as an important topic that those who aren’t consumed with this myth should be trying to understand?

Mike Rothschild 20:14

We’re really seeing a very pronounced spike in public anti semitism right now. We’ve got synagogues being attacked — obviously, we have the Tree of Life synagogue shooting, even just in the last couple days in Los Angeles, there was a concerted attack on multiple kosher restaurants in Los Angeles. You’ve got these very small, very vocal groups like the Goyim Defense League, who get a lot of press for sending out fliers of all the Jews in the entertainment industry. So I really wanted to understand why this is happening again, why it cycles back over and over and over to the same people.

What I also really wanted to understand is how George Soros fits into all of this, because of course, Soros is seen as the the boogeyman; the funder of Antifa, the funder of the January 6th insurrection — every bad thing that’s happened in the last 20 years is traced to George Soros. There is a school of thought that says that Soros is just the Rothschilds of the 21st century. And of course, the Rothschilds are the Rothschilds of the 20th century and the 19th century. So I really wanted to connect all of it, and see how conspiracy theories about George Soros today are really just an extension of conspiracy theories about Nathan Rothschild 150 years ago.

Sam Goldman 21:29

When we think about the Rothschilds at that conspiracy theories peak, if you will, who is benefiting from this conspiracy theory?

Mike Rothschild 21:38

Well, there have been a great deal of books and then later videos and podcasts specifically attacking the Rothschilds, and a lot of these have sold extremely well; there’s a lot of money to be made in weaponizing conspiracy theories. One of the books I look at is a kind of forgotten book now, but it’s hugely popular in France at the end of the 1800s, a book called Jewish France. It’s about 1400 pages. It is absolutely unreadable. It is totally inscrutable. It sold half a million copies the first year it was out. It was the most popular book in France in 1890. It made its its author, celebrity, a superstar.

You skip ahead a few generations and you have a book like None Dare Call it Conspiracy, the classic paranoia book of 1971. That book sold 5 million copies. It was a huge influence on people like Alex Jones. So, when you talk about benefiting, there is a real financial benefit for a lot of the people who do this. They make a lot of money, and they get a lot of cachet in these communities. But there’s also a societal undercurrent. Conspiracy believers want to think that they are being oppressed, that there is someone going after them, there’s someone keeping them down. And it psychologically benefits a lot of these people to assign that role of the puppet master to a wealthy, powerful Jewish family, and there is no more wealthy or powerful Jewish family than the Rothschilds.

Sam Goldman 23:03

I’m sure you’ve heard that if we just ignore it, it will go away about a host of things, including conspiracy theories. I’m hoping that you can touch on why that is not how it works, and why instead we should, for example, be trying to understand it — reading and, and our cases, as listeners, let’s say reading — in your case, writing — about this topic. There are those who might say: Oh, well, you’re legitimizing by even covering it, [MR: absolutely] which is ludicrous.

Mike Rothschild 23:34

I’ve always felt like there is a really fine line between covering a fringe topic and platforming a fringe topic. We’ve seen many, many examples of platforming, a fringe topic, in the guise of covering it, you have somebody, like, printing large tracts of a mass shooter manifesto and trying to analyze it for what it really says, or unthinkingly giving interview time to a major conspiracy theory influencer because: Oh, we have to hear both sides of it. We don’t. That’s not true. At the same time, I think we know, as you said, this idea of: Just ignore it, and it’ll go away; Don’t give it oxygen, don’t feed the trolls. We know that doesn’t work.

We’ve seen that with things like QAnon, where for the first year QAnon existed, I pitched stories about it all the time. It was like: Oh, we don’t want to cover that; We don’t want to give that any attention. Well, it’s growing, and it’s pulling in more people, whether we pay attention to it or not. So it really behooves us to understand what it is about this that repels most people, but attracts a few people. I think digging into the Rothschild conspiracies is very similar to that.

Now, I say in the introduction to the book, this is not an invitation to go reading some of the sources that I dug into. A lot of these books are horrible. They are antisemitic, they are racist, they’re misogynistic, they’re really badly written. They’re really not worth your time. There’s nothing that you’re going to get out of reading it yourself. But I feel like, for me, because I’ve gone through this so much, I sort of understand how to read this stuff, finding the through lines from where these books were — whether it’s 150 years ago or last year — to where we are today, is really, really meaningful to understanding where we’re going as a society and how fringe culture has become mainstream.

Sam Goldman 25:21

I was wondering how, you as someone who studies and analyzes conspiracy theories and their persistence, how do you go about explaining to folks or how should we understand the difference between a conspiracy theory and an insightful investigation?

Mike Rothschild 25:41

It is a fine line.

Sam Goldman 25:43

Especially when it’s unpopular, [MR: sure] like when you’re going against widely held beliefs.

Mike Rothschild 25:48

It’s a really fine line. I get people who are like: Oh, you don’t want people thinking for themselves? You know, people researching? Well, no, of course not. But I want people to be reading trustworthy sources and not falling back on tropes and anti semitism to explain what’s going on. These subjects that we’re dealing with, are really, really complicated, but at the same time, they can also be really simple. A lot of what happens in the world when you’re looking at something like the explosive growth of COVID-19, or something like that, so much of it comes down to just human failure, and incompetence, and overly mutated bureaucracy and greed and things like that. These very basic human values.

There doesn’t need to be a bunch of guys in a dark room with cigars and brandy, plotting how they’re going to take control over the world. We want to think that there is that because we want someone to be in control. But most of the time, nobody knows what’s going on. Nobody has any idea what to do about this stuff that’s happening. And a lot of people are very good at exploiting it and making a lot of money off it. For me, what I try to do is kind of steer people away from the default that it has to be a conspiracy, it has to be a plot. There has to be chicanery here. A lot of times, it’s just failure and incompetence and bad luck. I always feel like we should start there. Sometimes things are a conspiracy, but most of the time they’re not.

Sam Goldman 27:12

I wanted to look at the connection between what you’ve written a great deal on, QAnon, and anti semitic conspiracies that have been around for hundreds of years. How do these intersect? And in the past year, do we see any new mutations that we should be paying attention to from the QAnon world?

Mike Rothschild 27:36

QAnon itself is extremely antisemitic. I think the second Q drop ever is a reference to George Soros. There are references to the Rothschild family and their, you know, human hunting lodges. One of the Q drops — I don’t want to say which one — is a reprint of a hideously anti semitic cartoon from 8chan. This is a movement steeped in Jewish tropes and Jewish scapegoating. But it’s really not that different from the kinds of cartoons and conspiracy theories that would be published in Nazi newspapers, that were published in pamphlets between the wars, that were published in some of the books I’ve talked about.

These are just iterations that work better with today’s, you know, 4chan, MAGA culture. Other iterations have worked better with cultures in the past. Using new tools, you know, conspiracy theorists are really good at adopting new technology; whether that’s color duplication of photos, whether that’s creating VHS tapes, or whether that’s using the internet using social media. There’s always going to be somebody who figures out a way to do that, and push conspiracy theories, and very quickly, those theories are probably going to be anti symmetric.

Sam Goldman 28:46

When I was first learning about QAnon — so sad that these need to be things we learn about [MR: aha] — I was just struck with — there’s newness in certain language, but — so much of it is so old; the blood libels, and all of that, that were taken up by like religious institutions, not a fringe conspiracy movement. So I think that it’s fascinating, in a horrifying way just to be clear to listeners, how both timeless and of this time conspiracy theories can be

Mike Rothschild 29:19

The most durable conspiracy theories really have both a cutting edge feel and sort of they’ve been here forever kind of feel. I really first became concerned about QAnon when I started to realize that it was a very similar kind of guru driven hopium — it’s a word you find a lot in the circles, that sort of addictive hope. It was very similar to these currency scams that I’d written about, that had been going on for decades. These things where the Iraqi Dinar is gonna revalue and make you an instant millionaire. Or, if you pray to the right people, there’s going to be a prosperity packet sent to your house and it’ll give you all the money you’ll ever need.

Q is very similar to that. There’s a guru who knows everything, who knows when the great event is about to happen, who can kind of tantalize you who can keep you on the hook for it, who will give you a reason why it doesn’t happen, but, you know, reassurances that it will happen soon. And of course, that goes back to millennialist movements. That goes back to the Millerites and the great disappointment. This is not an internet thing. It’s not a Trump thing. There’s always going to be some higher figure who is tapped into the secret knowledge and is sharing it with you for a low, low price. Q had all those hallmarks, but there wasn’t a great transformation of society where everybody will benefit. There wasn’t a financial windfall. You would have good feelings when you watched Hillary Clinton and George Soros hanged at dawn at Guantanamo Bay once the storm is unleashed.

I realized there is never going to be a storm, but there will be people who think there’s going to be a storm and who are going to get tired of waiting for the storm and who are going to take it upon themselves to make it happen. And that’s pretty much what has happened in the last few years. I really saw that kind of unbridled utopianism sort of curdling into violence, and I saw it happening before there was any violence and then the violence really started [SG: …and is not waning either]. No, not waning at all.

Sam Goldman 29:19

Beyond the general more — hate this word, but I’m gonna say it — timeless trend of conspiracy theories, this kind of thinking is having a particular impact today in relation to the the rise and strengthening of what on the show we would refer to as a fascist movement, the MAGA movement and Donald Trump’s ascension. What role do you see conspiracy theories playing in relation to this movement that is not stopping, is not slowing down, that is now cohered around a conspiracy of of a stolen election?

Mike Rothschild 32:08

Donald Trump did not rise in political prominence because he ran for governor or because he had really great ideas about taxes and foreign policy, he started to attract the attention of more mainstream conservatives when he started questioning where Barack Obama was born. He started talking about the dancing Israelis on 9/11. He would talk about how a plane crash killed the you know, Hawaiian official responsible for Obama’s birth certificate.

Donald Trump was our first conspiracy theorist president. And for a long time, I mean, really forever, conspiracy theorists loathed whoever had the White House. Of course, they loathed Obama, they loathed Bill Clinton, but they hated the Bushes too. Maybe they liked Reagan, going back to the 80s, but for different reasons. There was always like: We distrust the person in power; The federal government can crush you at any time; When the federal jackboots come to your door, you gotta aim for the head. Trump inverted all of that. Trump was the President who gained these people’s trust, and the conspiracy theory community embraced him, he embraced them, they sort of took each other to the top, and it hasn’t really gone away.

The foundations of Trump’s base are conspiracy theories, are scapegoating, are blaming other people for things that have happened to them. When Trump lost the election and immediately started talking about how he actually won the election, he created a new reality, and had primed millions and millions of people to immediately believe that this new reality that he created on the spot was a real thing. It was a year of conspiracy theories about how they were going to steal the election; how Biden was this decrepit husk who couldn’t get five people to a campaign rally — the only way he could beat Trump was if he cheated. Well, he beat Trump, so he cheated.

This wasn’t something that just appeared overnight, this was a very carefully laid plan. I don’t know how much of it was planned out and how much of it was just Trump and his people doing their thing and knowing that they would have this big cadre of believers who would go along with it. So this conspiracy movement, it’s taking control of the Republican Party, it’s taking control of conservatism. It’s taking control of how we perceive banking, and health and entertainment. We’re now at this point where it’s okay for somebody like Ron DeSantis, to talk about slitting throats and for you to routinely call anybody who disagrees with your pedophile. That wasn’t okay even like 10 years ago.

But now because we are so driven by anger and paranoia and conspiracy, we’ve kind of taken all the guardrails off of our discourse and most of us just yell at each other on Twitter, and a few people pick up a gun and go do something about it. So we’ve entered this really, really dangerous moment, and we’ve gotten there by mainstreaming stuff that was not talked about in polite society really even up until about a decade ago.

Sam Goldman 35:03

How do you, if you do, see a way out of that?

Mike Rothschild 35:06

Societally, I think that’s really difficult. There have been attempts at Mass de radicalization, and they’re they’re very difficult. Because everyone’s path into a conspiracy theory or into extremism is different, so everybody’s path out of a conspiracy theory or extremism is difficult. For getting out of it, I really think it has to start with us. It’s with the individual person, and how they conduct themselves, how they share information.

When you see a story that looks like it’s too good to be true, don’t share it because it may not be true. Even if you want it to be true, decrease the disinformation and the paranoia and the anger in your own world. Don’t get into stupid arguments with people on Facebook. Don’t share Marjorie Taylor Greene’s latest dumb typo to make fun of her because she wants you to do that. She wants you to share that. She wants the viral engagement and to be thought of as stupid because I don’t actually think she is stupid. Take yourself out of the mix of this. Just be a better consumer and sharer of information.

Sam Goldman 36:12

While we talked about Trump and the role he’s played, and is still playing [MR: right] as the remaining GOP front runner by miles. A leader who has not been banned or prevented from continuing his campaign. A man who has continued to be backed up and defended by a thoroughly fascist GOP and escalating threats of violence. It is, I think, important to remember, and something that we’ve talked about on this show in previous episodes, is in relation to the indictments, people constantly looking for, like, this will be the end of this conspiracy theory; this is going to tamp back that rabid base.

Looking at the reality that this is a base that — you use different words, but we’re getting at this, that — it’s immunized from facts and evidence. And this indictment and then the next day’s this indictment is the only more proof that the deep state is out to get their last hope and savior, and they’re preparing or carrying out this battle. While that is our current reality, Trump is also not the first fascist leader to embrace conspiratorial thinking as part of their movement. I was wondering if there are any key connections between conspiracy theories and fascism historically that you think people could benefit from remembering or learning about for the first time?

Mike Rothschild 37:40

Oh, absolutely. It’s really, really important to understand that Trump is not the first leader who’s done this, he will not be the last leader who does this. This is always going to work at a certain time with a certain type of person. What you really have in these sort of historical links between the rise of the far right in the west right now and the rise of fascist governments in the 30s is a harnessing of anger and of blame. If you look at what drove Hitler to power, it wasn’t kill all the Jews. That didn’t happen, really up until the early 1940s.

For a long time, and really, with the rise of the Nazi party, it was anger at betrayal, feeling like the German government had stabbed the German soldier in the back in 1918, by robbing them of victory, even though no allied soldier would ever set foot in Germany. Then the economy crashes, and one point I think, in 1931 — I write about this in Jewish space lasers — a third of the German male population is unemployed. A lot of these guys are veterans, they’re angry, they wonder what they fought for. Nobody is leading them, nobody knows what’s going on, and then here is a demagogue who steps in and says, I’m going to tell you exactly what’s going on.

I’m gonna tell you exactly who’s to blame for it, and I’m going to tell you exactly what we’re going to do about it. It has nothing to do with get rid of all the Jews. It’s not about that. It’s about harnessing anger and harnessing a need for blame. Every single person, ever, is going to get angry sometimes, there’s going to be something in their life that goes wrong, and they’re going to have an urge to blame somebody else for it. Demagogues, dictators, are really, really good at taking that anger, taking that need to pin this on somebody else, and focusing it on their own personal enemies. When the banks of Europe failed in 1931, it was not just the Jews who did it, but it was the Jews and their western bootlickers, who were blamed for it. So it’s about anger, and it’s about blame, and it’s about giving people something to focus on that absolves them of their own role in their problems.

Sam Goldman 39:53

As we move to close out our chat, I wanted to ask if there was any questions that I didn’t ask ski gear that you wish I asked, you can say it.

Mike Rothschild 40:02

[chuckles] I think for a show that is really focused on fascism’s modern iteration, it’s really nice to be able to talk about how fascism’s past iterations have fueled that. People — ya spend a lot of time comparing Trump to Hitler, and I don’t think that comparison really works because they’re really different in kind of how they operate and what they want. But the forces that make them popular are the same, and I think if we understand how they worked, then and how people can become susceptible to them, and we’re pulled into them then, then we can understand how they work now and how to hopefully keep people from being pulled in by them now.

Sam Goldman 40:43

I want to thank you so much for coming on and chatting with me and sharing your expertise, your perspective, and of course, your time. Folks should go and pre order your book. How can they do that?

Mike Rothschild 41:00

You can go to any reputable website that sells books, preferably your local bookstore. You can order it in hardcover, you can order it in ebook, there will be an audio book, it’s not available yet, but it will be very soon. Wherever you get it is great.

Sam Goldman 41:16

And the title again, is:

Mike Rothschild 41:19

Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories. And you will be able to tell it very easily because it’s the only book I know of with a cover full of menorahs shooting lasers at an all seeing eye.

Sam Goldman 41:32

And it’s going to be released September 19th. [MR: September 19th. Yes.] So folks should get it, read it, and then write me about it. And write Mike. And speaking about how, if folks want to read even more from you — they’re gonna read the book, and then they want to hear more from you — where should they go?

Mike Rothschild 41:51

I’ve got another book about QAnon called ‘The Storm is Upon Us’, that’s out in hardcover paperback ebook audiobook. You can find me on Twitter — I don’t use that other name — you find me on Twitter @RothschildMD. I’m still out there fighting the good fight and trying to keep the forces of disinfo from taking over the place entirely.

Sam Goldman 42:11

Thanks so much, Mike.

Mike Rothschild 42:12

Thank you.

Sam Goldman 42:13

Thanks for listening to Refuse Fascism. Got thoughts or questions off this episode? We want to hear ’em. Ideas for topics or guests? Yes, please! Send them to us. Have a skill you think could help? We want to know all about it. Reach me at the site previously known as Twitter @SamBGoldman, or you can drop me a line at [email protected]. We are also on Mastadon, Threads, Bluesky, all @RefuseFascism. You can also leave us a voicemail. See show notes for that.

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