Conspiracy-fueled right wing violence sweeps the U.S. (again)

The mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh comes amid a wave of rightwing violence across the US fueled by conspiracy theories. It is also part of a long history of white supremacist terror aimed at American Jewish communities.

The murder of 11 people and wounding of six, allegedly by Robert Bowers, 46, came a day after the arrest of Cesar Sayoc, 56, for a mail bombing campaign that targeted liberals including George Soros. A prominent Jewish billionaire, Soros has in recent weeks been the target of heightened conspiracy-minded rhetoric from prominent Republicans including Donald Trump.

A social media post that appeared to be Bowers’ last before the attack was an attack on HIAS, a Jewish-run refugee charity, which he accused of working to “bring invaders in that kill our people”.

This belief is in keeping with white supremacist “white genocide” narratives, which hold in part that Jews are orchestrating the “demographic replacement” of white people by means of immigration.

It also resembles recent conspiracy-minded comments by mainstream Republicans about the so-called “caravan” of Honduran refugees which is currently hundreds of miles from the US southern border.

On 17 October, the Florida congressman Matt Gaetz sent out a tweet that read: “Footage in Honduras giving cash 2 women & children 2 join the caravan & storm the US border @ election time. Soros? US-backed NGOs? Time to investigate the source!” While attempting to explain the tweet, he made a similar charge about Soros and the Balkans.

It was also reported last week that the Iowa congressman Steve King had aired white-nationalist style views about demographic replacement in an interview with a far-right Austrian website.

On Saturday, Heidi Beirich, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which monitors hate groups, said Gaetz’s tweet was a “soft version” of the white genocide theory.

Beirich added that “sections of the far right, including the president, have fallen into a fever swamp” concerning Soros. Earlier this month, Trump tweeted the assertion that the financier paid activists protesting against the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the supreme court. During the 2016 election, his final campaign ad connected Soros and the then Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen with a supposed “globalist” establishment conspiracy.

Beirich said those who deploy such rhetoric “absolutely bear a moral responsibility” for acts of antisemitic violence such as that which took place in Pittsburgh.