The disturbing resurgence of antisemitic conspiracy theories

Late last year, Malik Faisal Akram travelled from the UK all the way to Dallas with the intention of taking Jewish people hostage in a synagogue. He bought himself a gun and, on 15 January, enacted his plan at the Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas.

Fortunately the hostages escaped unharmed. But why did Akram fly 4,500 miles to take Jews hostage, when he lived on the doorstep of Britain’s second-biggest Jewish community in Manchester?

The answer lies in the murky world of antisemitic conspiracy theories, and a centuries-old belief in mysterious Jewish power that can still motivate people to kill.

Akram was trying to secure the release of Aafia Siddiqui from a Texas prison. Siddiqui, who was jailed for 86 years in 2010 for attempting to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan, had a long association with al-Qaeda. There have been several previous attempts by terrorist groups to obtain her release, including one 2013 plot to kidnap Jews in Nepal as bargaining chips.

However, having flown to Texas where Siddiqui is imprisoned, Akram did not take hostages in a government building, or a church, or some random shop or restaurant. He wanted Jewish hostages, because he believed that Jews controlled the US and had the power to release Siddiqui.

Other terrorist attacks on Jews in recent years have also been fuelled by antisemitic conspiracy theories. Robert Bowers, who killed 11 people at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, believed that Jews were to blame for non-white immigration into the United States. The following year, Stephan Balliet murdered two people after attacking a synagogue in Halle, Germany. In a short video he made of the attack, Balliet explained that the Jews were responsible for feminism.

Three terrorists attacking three different synagogues on two continents in the past four years, all motivated to violence by conspiracist beliefs about Jews. Bowers and Balliet were neo-Nazis while Akram was a jihadist, but they had a shared belief in where real power lies in this world: with the Jews.

This is the backdrop to the year-on-year increases in antisemitism in Britain recorded by my organisation, the Community Security Trust (CST). Five of the past six years have seen record annual totals for antisemitic hate incidents reported to us from across the Jewish community.