Who Is Out to Get Whom?

 
After Saturday's post, commenter Alex said:

But surely nothing can hold a candle to all the bizarre right-wing conspiracy theories that are floating around out there. Like the one about the UN being part of some evil plan to undermine the US and create a single world government. Or the one about the liberal-bias of the media. Or the one about how American universities conspire to keep out conservative academics.

No one can deny that the Right has hosted a fever swamp of conspiracy theories, from the Illuminati to the Trilateral Commission.

But the elephant in the room on this issue is the Great Global Zionist Conspiracy, which used to be the exclusive property of the far right. In the synergy of what David Horowitz has called the "Unholy Alliance" between the Left and the Islamists, the extreme anti-Semitic memes have migrated to the Left. Ariel Sharon has George Bush hypnotized; the Jews control the government and manufactured the "War on Terror" to destroy Islam; globalization is a plot by the Jews to control the world. With "neocon" a code word for "Jew", the Left has taken over the salient features of Jew-hatred and made them their own, and so made common cause with misogynistic, bloodthirsty, totalitarian theocrats and terrorists.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.