Earlier this month the Antisemitism Policy Trust published Conspiracy Theories: A Guide for Members of Parliament and Candidates. You don’t really need me to explain what it’s about; the clue is in the title.
The guide was commissioned by Penny Mordaunt, the Leader of the House of Commons, who launched it alongside her Labour Shadow, Lucy Powell. As Mordaunt rightly said, “Such theories are a real threat not just to democracy, but to the wellbeing of our constituents. They are a form of radicalisation, they are spreading and we must do everything we can to combat them.”
Indeed. You might well think it’s a sorry state of affairs that parliamentarians of all people need to be spoon fed a list of conspiracy theories so that they can be alert to them, but that’s undeniably the state we are now in. Indeed some MPs are among the worst peddlers of these ideas, such as Andrew Bridgen who was expelled from the Conservative Party last April for spreading "dangerous" anti-vaccine conspiracies.
I know first-hand how these ideas seep into the mainstream. Last year I met someone on a dating app. She was bright and witty, with a high-powered City job. We met for dinner. All seemed good – we were getting on well – until over the main course she started to tell me how Covid wasn’t real but was part of Bill Gates’ plan to turn people into sheep via the vaccine. 5G also got a mention. We didn’t meet again.
It’s a detailed booklet which covers conspiracy theories under ten broad topics: antisemitism; global control, the Great Reset and the World Economic Forum; QAnon; the Great Replacement; Covid-19; 5G; the Ukraine War; climate lockdown; the 15-Minute City; and chemtrails. Each of these is discussed by an expert and the chapters are uniformly well written and worthwhile.
The pamphlet includes a series of case studies, all of which are important. It also ties some of the conspiracies together, pointing out that antisemitism is so often the thread which links these ideas.
But for all that, it’s an extraordinary document. Something is missing. Something so fundamental, so key and so important to the idea of conspiracy theories that it dwarfs everything that is in the pamphlet: Islamism.
There is no discussion of Islamism in a pamphlet about conspiracy theories.
It defines a conspiracy theory as “an explanation of historical, ongoing, or future events that cites as a main causal factor a group of powerful persons, the conspirators, acting in secret for their own benefit against the common good.”
Let me spell it out. You will not find a single Islamist – not one, not now and not ever before – who does not believe that the above definition of a conspiracy applies to the Jews. Islamism is the most widespread, most potent and most dangerous of all conspiracy theories. Islamists kill people. In large numbers. Regularly. And they seek to kill many more in pursuit of their aims. It is beyond belief that a document discussing the danger from conspiracy theories does not include any reference to the only conspiracy theory that has succeeded in killing a large number of people and which fixates on Jews.
It’s like a biography of Henry VIII without mention of his wives.
When you read what the paper has to say about the link between conspiracies and Jews, it becomes all the more extraordinary an omission. The authors rightly put it this way: “Numerous conspiracy theories are rooted in anti-Jewish racism. The common notion shared by many conspiracy theories, of a secret cabal that seeks world domination by controlling world events, promoting conflicts and financial instability, can find its roots in age-old antisemitism. Commonly-used phrases in conspiracy theories, for example, ‘Global Elite,’ have historically acted as code words for Jews, although these days may be used to refer to any group of people.”
The omission of Islamism is so huge and so obvious that it surely means something. Which brings us to last year’s Prevent review by Sir William Shawcross. His 2023 Independent Review of Prevent was a landmark in counter-extremism work, examining both the failings of the Prevent programme and the actual threats posed by a number of extremist groups. His overall finding was that there was too much focus on the far-right, to the detriment of…here it comes: focus on Islamist groupings. See the pattern?
Earlier this year Sir William said the risk of a terrorist attack has actually increased since publication of his review because there has been next to no progress in implementing its recommendations. Before October 7, for example, his review stressed the vital need to tackle support networks for Hamas. We see the prescience of that on London’s streets now as the hate marchers go about their business.
Whether it’s the Home Office (and much of Whitehall more generally) or some elements within the Jewish community, there is all too often a dangerous unwillingness to face up to the extent and scope of the Islamist threat. It’s often a product of naivety – the idea that somehow if we are nicer to each other things will turn out better, rather than understanding the deadly aim of Islamists. It can also be part of a wider ideological battle – the belief that fighting and defeating “the right”, both within and without the Jewish community, is the most important priority. If that necessitates underplaying the Islamist threat so as to be able to portray those who do not underplay it as extreme, so be it.
(In that context, it is at the very least interesting to note that the report was commissioned by Penny Mordaunt, who in 2021 infamously ignored the government’s ban on dealings with the Muslim Council of Britain and met its general secretary, Zara Mohammed, posting on social media that it was “great” to have met her and that she was “looking forward to working with her”.)
This is not an intellectual game. This is about our lives, our society and future. We need intellectual honesty above all else.
