Zionist Occupation Government conspiracy theory

The Zionist Occupation Government, Zionist Occupational Government or Zionist-Occupied Government (ZOG), sometimes also called the Jewish Occupational Government (JOG), is an antisemitic conspiracy theory claiming that Jews secretly control the governments of Western states.<ref name=":2">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name=":3">Template:Cite book</ref> It is a contemporary variation on the centuries-old belief in an international Jewish conspiracy. According to believers, a secret Zionist organization actively controls international banks, and through them governments, to conspire against white, Christian, or Islamic interests.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite book</ref>

The expression is used by white supremacist, white nationalist, far-right, or antisemitic groups in Europe<ref>Template:Citation.</ref> and the United States.Template:Sfn<ref>Template:Citation</ref><ref>Template:Citation</ref> Additionally, some contemporary militant, authoritarian, and theocratic Islamist and Islamic extremist organizations, including Salafi-jihadist terrorist cells, have used the term "ZOG" in propaganda campaigns. The word Zionist in "Zionist Occupation Government" is used to equate being Jewish with the ideology of Zionism. As such, Zionists are depicted by the theory as conspiring for Jews and Israel to control the world.Template:Sfn

Conspiracy

Scholar Jeffrey Kaplan described the notion of ZOG in 2000 as "at once the most caricatured and the most characteristic facet of the American radical right wing today."Template:Sfn The ZOG conspiracy theory is that Jews secretly control the governments of Western states.<ref name=":2" /><ref name=":3" /> Kaplan defined it further as "a deeply Manichaean conceptualization of the federal government and of what is seen as its Jewish puppeteers", who are often directly personified as the Jewish organization the Anti-Defamation League.Template:Sfn "ZOG" is conceptualized by its believers as a kind of secret all-powerful government entity, sometimes of the whole world.Template:Sfn

The association of Jews with the control of economic forces is the modern resurgence of an old stereotype, that of the "greedy Jewish merchant", that has been present in the Christian world since the Middle Ages.<ref name=":0" /> The conspiracy theory illustrates a specifically American far-right agrarian preoccupation, namely the vital possibility of extinction allegedly faced by the rural world, seen as the backbone of America, a danger caused by a remote, centralized and power-hungry metropolitan elite corrupted by "alien" influences.<ref name=":12">Template:Cite book</ref> The ZOG concept is an evolution of early conspiracy theories of Jewish control over the world.Template:Sfn Activists imagined a variety of plots gravitating around the original conspiracy theory—for instance, that as many as 4,000 Jews were warned of the September 11 attacks. Believers also claim that ZOG-like forces control American foreign policy. Despite their singularities, most ZOG theories involve the idea of a Jewish power over finance or banking, including one imagining Jewish control of the Federal Reserve.<ref name=":0" />

Alternate names for it include Zionist Occupational Government,Template:Sfn or Zionist-Occupied Government, or the Jewish Occupational Government (JOG).<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>

History

Template:See also In late 19th-century France, the insinuation that the French government was in the power of the Jews was a commonplace claim in anti-republican discourse.<ref name=":12" /> Early ideological influences on the conspiracy include the antisemitic The Dearborn Independent and the forged tract The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.Template:Sfn

The origins of the ZOG conspiracy specifically are instead connected to the American civil rights landscape and particularly anti-hate Jewish activist groups.Template:Sfn Before the primacy of the Anti-Defamation League, the 1940s Jewish group the American Jewish Congress was more prominent.Template:Sfn The AJC, in an effort to stop antisemites like Gerald L. K. Smith and George Lincoln Rockwell from getting attention and therefore more power, encouraged a "quarantine" of them in the media, by encouraging Jewish groups and newspapers to not react to their provocations.Template:Sfn Jeffrey Kaplan identified Rockwell's frustration with this policy as being the true moment of the ZOG idea's conception, with this serving to reinforce his followers beliefs in a Jewish conspiracy, believing that the policy was evidence of collusion between these groups and the government.Template:Sfn

An early appearance of the term was in a 1976 article, "Welcome to ZOG-World", attributed to an American neo-Nazi named Eric Thomson, but Canadian white nationalists also used the term.<ref>Template:Citation.</ref> The concept (although not the term itself) is a major theme in the 1978 book The Turner Diaries by William Luther Pierce, founder of the National Alliance, a white nationalist organization.<ref name=":12" /><ref name=":1" /> Pierce himself identified the American government as "ZOG".<ref>Template:Citation</ref>

The term surged in usage among the far-right in the 1980s and on to the 1990s.Template:Sfn It was spread through white power music in Europe and America, particularly in Sweden.Template:Sfn The term came to the attention of a larger audience in a 27 December 1984 article in The New York Times about robberies committed in California and Washington by a white supremacist group called the Order of the Silent Brotherhood. According to the Times, the crimes "were conducted to raise money for a war upon the United States government, which the group calls 'ZOG', or Zionist Occupation Government."<ref name=":12" /><ref name=":1">Template:Cite news</ref> In 1985, the Oregon-based far-right group Posse Comitatus claimed: "Our nation is now completely under the control of the International Invisible government of World Jewry."<ref>Christian Posse Comitatus Newsletter, n.d. quoted in Template:Citation.</ref>

The belief is also used among Christian Identity adherents.<ref>Template:Citation</ref> The Order was an offshoot of Aryan Nations, an organization founded in the early 1970s by Richard Girnt Butler, who since the 1950s had been associated with another antisemitic group, the Church of Jesus Christ–Christian. Both these groups trace their origins to antisemitic activists such as Gerald L.K. Smith and have interacted with the Ku Klux Klan. The term appeared extensively in Aryan Nations literature. In 1985, the Anti-Defamation League reported that Aryan Nations had set up an electronic bulletin board system called "Aryan Nation Liberty Net" to offer information for the locations of Communist Party USA offices and "ZOG informers".<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

In 1996, Aryan Nations posted on its website an "Aryan Declaration of Independence" saying that "the history of the present Zionist Occupied Government of the United States of America is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations [...] [all] having a direct object—the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states." Claiming that "the eradication of the White race and its culture" is "one of its foremost purposes", the ZOG is accused of relinquishing powers of government to private corporations, white traitors and ruling class Jewish families. It accused ZOG Jews of subverting the constitutional rule of law; responsibility for post-Civil War Reconstruction; subverting the monetary system with the Federal Reserve System; confiscating land and property; limiting freedoms of speech, religion and gun ownership; murdering, kidnapping and imprisoning patriots; abdicating national sovereignty to the United Nations; political repression; wasteful bureaucracy; loosening restrictions on immigration and drug trafficking; raising taxes; polluting the environment; commandeering the military, mercenaries and police; denying Aryan cultural heritage; and inciting immigrant insurrections.<ref name=":12" /><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Since 1996, the term has spread in usage. It is now popular with many other antisemitic organizations. Swedish Neo-Nazis say that Jews—in what they call the Swedish Zionist occupied government—are importing immigrants to "dilute the blood of the white race".<ref>Template:Citation.</ref> The antisemitic website Jew Watch claims that the entire spectrum of Western nations and other countries are being ruled by "Zionist Occupied Governments".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Slovak politician Marian Kotleba, whose party (People's Party Our Slovakia) won two seats in the European Parliament in the 2019 election,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> claims that the "Z. O. G." controls Slovak politics.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

See also

• The Eternal Jew (film)
• The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century
• The International Jew
• New World Order conspiracy theory
• QAnon

References

Works cited

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