Space lasers and old hatreds. How Jews often serve as canaries in the coal mine of bigotry

For years, I’ve complained about my missing jetpack. Call this a first-world gripe, but I always believed that we American children of the 1960s were promised jetpacks. You know, like the Jetsons. It was our national birthright.

Alas, only a car is parked in my garage – worse, an old-fashioned gasoline kind. How dull. So, imagine my surprise to recently learn that, as a Jewish American, I also missed out on another high-tech entitlement: I have no space laser. Only this futuristic lament bespeaks age-old hatred.

The twitterverse and meme-o-sphere exploded in recent weeks over the bizarre claims of the QAnon cult and, especially, of one of its xenophobic devotees who frighteningly now sits in the U.S. Congress. According to this sagacious lawmaker, not only should I have a space laser at my disposal, but my finger should be poised to reduce our national parks to ashes.

Why? It’s not clear. But this delusion is not about logic. It’s about bigotry. And it is deeply worrying that so many Americans, some even in government, believe that we Jews have hidden among our Hanukkah candles and yarmulkes the Xbox-like controller to a Rothschild-funded space weapon.

It’s easy to mock antisemitic space lasers. But such dimwitted rants are part of a wider toxic stew that includes racism, misogyny, and homophobia. Conspiracy theories are silly until those who find credibility in such rubbish storm Congress with guns, confederate flags, and zip ties. Jewish space lasers are the QAnon equivalent of mammy cookie jars, naughty on the surface but arising from a deep hatred of difference and diversity. They are like “fag” jokes, easy to brush off as the blather of simpletons, at least until young Matthew Shepard is lashed to a cattle fence one cold night in Wyoming and beaten to death.

Antisemitism is an old hatred. Only misogyny can claim a longer lineage. The two go hand-in-hand. It was no surprise that the space-laser-believing mob that assaulted the Capitol last month was keen to hunt down Nancy Pelosi and other female leaders. These vile men – largely white men, I add – had more on their minds than a chat about competing legislative agendas.

The many canards hurled at Jews over the centuries attest to the unbounded creativity of human ignorance and intolerance: well poisoners, coin clippers, eucharist desecrators, ritual murderers of children during Passover, and more, not to mention horns and tails.

Jews allegedly peddle lies about the Holocaust, organized the trans-Atlantic slave trade, masterminded 9/11, and unleashed communism. With our greedy paws ensnaring banks and the media, we work hand-in-glove with the Illuminati to create a New World Order, funded, of course, by the House of Rothschild. All this, like the medieval belief that Jewish men menstruated, is ludicrous. But it has proven deadly again and again.

Racists on the political right accuse Jews of serving as a fifth column undermining white culture. Those on the left see us as false minorities who undermine people of color. Indeed, any conspiracy theory that doesn’t include Jews hardly seems worth the name or effort.

But here’s the rub: Jews often serve as canaries in the coal mine of bigotry. That’s why the accusation of space lasers is pointed not only at Jews. It is also aimed at anybody who is different — which is really anybody at all. You don’t need to be Black, Asian, gay, Muslim, or female. You just need to be unique or different, in a word, human. That is the true enemy of bigotry: the very cultural diversity that defines our humanity.

We all laughed at Jewish space lasers. Those who tout such foolishness certainly deserve ridicule. But beware that these folks are not merely court jesters. For those who point space lasers at Jews today will undoubtedly find an equally ridiculous claim to justify targeting you tomorrow. Then you will not be laughing.

Eric K. Silverman is a Scholar, Women’s Studies Research Center, Brandeis University, a Research Scholar and Writer, The Rhodes Project (rhodesproject.com), and a former Research Professor of Anthropology, Wheelock College.