US President Donald Trump holds a campaign rally, at John Murtha Johnstown-Cambria County Airport, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, Oct. 13, 2020. Photo: Reuters / Jonathan Ernst.

It was bound to happen. Someone was going to blame the Jews for the ongoing controversy surrounding the 2020 presidential election. Jew-hatred is like that. As soon as something goes wrong in society, somebody comes forward, points the accusing finger at the Jews, and starts telling a story that blames them for the problem.

The story doesn’t have to make any sense, it just has to make people feel good and give them a scapegoat for their anger.

Maybe someone will beat him to the punch, but by my reckoning, one of the first winners is E. Michael Jones, the antisemite from South Bend, Indiana.

On November 11, 2020, Jones appeared on a local cable access show in Indiana and declared that the problems with the US presidential election are the result of a cabal of oligarchs (i.e. Jews) who seek to undermine representative government in the United States by denying Trump his victory.

“Do we have representative government or not?” he asked during an interview with conspiracy-minded fellow traveler Peter Helland. “Can we elect someone that the oligarchs don’t like?”

Jones names and blames three Jews in particular for Trump’s difficulties.

One is Arnon Mishkin, part of Fox News’ “Decision Desk” that made a controversial decision of calling Arizona in favor of Biden (which ultimately proved correct).

“The Jew who is the head of the ‘Decision Desk’ at Fox News betrayed Trump,” Jones said. “So much for gratitude among this group of people. Another guy who interestingly betrayed Trump is Benjamin Netanyahu, who congratulated Biden on winning.”

Jones also accused Dana Nessel, whom he described as “the Jewish lesbian Attorney General who is also a product of Soros money,” of colluding with the FBI to entrap a defendant in a government-facilitated plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan.

“She held a press conference in which she said we could not have done this without the help of the FBI,” he said. Five days later, the defendants were arraigned, Jones declared, “and the first thing the lawyer says is that the only person who was advocating violence in this group was the FBI infiltrator. So it was an agent provocateur and it was entrapment.”

Toward the end of the segment, Jones tells his viewers that God is in charge and that order will be restored with Trump’s supposed reelection.

“There’s nothing outside of God’s providence,” he said. “This has the resonance of the resurrection. … I mean what was the greatest catastrophe in human history? The Jews just murdered God. On top of that they crucified him.”

Jesus’ followers thought they were on the cusp of a huge victory only to watch him being killed, Jones said. But then upon discovering the empty tomb, they learned Jesus’ death was “the absolute best thing that could ever happen,” he added.

Jones’ implication is that Jews in America did to Trump what the mob did to Jesus.

The controversy surrounding the 2020 presidential election is bad enough, but with his rhetoric, Jones has taken a worldly political crisis and turned it into a cosmological affront that is nigh on impossible to resolve in a pragmatic manner.

Jones’ rhetoric does more than portray Jews as worthy targets of contempt and hostility; it undermines the very fabric of the American republic itself.

Dexter Van Zile is Shillman Research Fellow for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis.