US Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) leaves a meeting of the House Republican Conference in the US Capitol on Wednesday, June 4, 2025. Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect

There is a pattern that appears repeatedly across European and Middle Eastern history — especially when ordinary people feel the ground beneath them shifting in ways they cannot control.

Economic instability. Political fragmentation. War. Technological upheaval. Institutional distrust. Fear of decline.

And then comes the search for a “villain” large enough to explain the feeling.

For centuries, Jews have repeatedly served that role.

Not because Jews uniquely possessed power. Every era had monarchs, aristocracies, industrial and military elites, clergy and political machines that were certainly not Jewish. But Jews repeatedly occupied a different role in the political imagination: the hidden hand. The mysterious “they” supposedly behind events.

We saw it in medieval Europe and throughout history, and the phenomenon intensified in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Jews were depicted at once as hyper-capitalist exploiters and anti-capitalist revolutionaries, and also as rootless cosmopolitans and clannish infiltrators.

The accusations were incoherent because coherence was never the point. Jews became a civilizational scapegoat onto which societies projected their anxieties during periods of instability and decline.

The same pattern later emerged across parts of the Arab world following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

Which brings us to the reaction surrounding Thomas Massie’s electoral defeat in Kentucky.

To be clear, criticism of lobbying organizations – including AIPAC – is entirely legitimate within democratic politics. AIPAC did spend enormous sums on the race. So do many other powerful interest groups across American politics, including over $5.5 million by pro-Massie Super PACS.

But the reaction online frequently moved far beyond ordinary criticism of lobbying, campaign spending, or foreign-policy influence.

The discussion did not remain confined to conventional arguments about money in politics. It metastasized almost instantly into something much older and more familiar.

“Israel controls Congress.”

“Jews buy American elections.”

“Kentucky chose Israel over America.”

“The Zionists own Washington.”

What was striking was not merely that fringe figures said such things. It was how openly this rhetoric now circulates across both parts of the populist (or “woke”) right and segments of the activist left.

Particularly alarming was rhetoric from prominent political influencers like Cenk Uygur, whose post-Massie commentary generally sounded less like electoral analysis and more like political demagoguery against “the Israel lobby” as an embedded enemy within the American system itself.

In perhaps the most inflammatory example, Uygur responded to Massie’s defeat by declaring that America is now effectively “occupied,” that “Israel controls our government,” and that politicians who support Israel are not “actual Americans” but rather “servants of Israel.” He urged Americans to “fight” to “free America from Israel’s control,” describing the struggle in revolutionary and quasi-national liberation terms.

This was not ordinary criticism of lobbying, campaign finance, or foreign policy.

It was the language of internal enemies, dual loyalty, national betrayal, and civilizational struggle – rhetoric with an extraordinarily dark historical pedigree when directed at Jews.

That distinction matters historically.

There is a profound difference between arguing that a lobbying organization exerts excessive influence – something routinely said about countless organizations in American politics – and framing “Zionists” or Jews as a hostile internal force controlling the nation itself.

The latter rhetoric echoes one of history’s oldest and most dangerous political traditions.

Maureen Galindo, the leading Democratic congressional candidate emerging from the March primary in Texas’s 35th Congressional District, publicly fantasized about using ICE detention camps for “Zionists.”

And then came Massie himself.

In his concession speech, Massie “joked” that he had difficulty reaching his opponent – a retired Navy SEAL and Kentucky farmer – because the man was “in Tel Aviv.” The implication was obvious.

But the reality is that there were entirely rational explanations for Massie’s defeat that required no theories about Jewish or “Zionist” control over America.

He spent years antagonizing Donald Trump inside a Republican Party increasingly organized around loyalty to Trump himself. He faced a decorated Navy SEAL in a heavily Republican district. He accumulated relatively few major legislative accomplishments despite years in Congress. And on several high-profile issues, he aligned himself with parts of the populist left in ways that alienated portions of his traditional base in a state that Trump won in 2024 by over 40%.

None of those realities require secret Jewish control over American politics to explain electoral outcomes.

And that broader context matters because we are once again living through one of those periods of historical turbulence in which conspiracy thinking flourishes.

Artificial intelligence threatens industries and professional classes. Institutional trust is collapsing. Young people increasingly doubt they will live better than their parents. Social cohesion is weakening across much of the West.

In such periods, conspiracy theories become psychologically comforting because they simplify complexity. And historically, Jews often become the target.

Because societies that normalize the idea that Jews are secretly manipulating the nation rarely stop there.

Historically, the rhetoric metastasizes from political accusation into civilizational suspicion – the idea that Jews are not merely influential, but fundamentally alien, disloyal, and corrosive to the national body itself.

That progression appeared in medieval Europe, czarist Russia, fascist movements, Stalinist systems, and parts of the modern Middle East.

And repeatedly, it ended in violence – expulsions, pogroms, imprisonment, ethnic cleansing, and mass murder.

That is why the reaction to Massie’s defeat matters far beyond a single congressional race.

History shows how quickly the progression can move once the taboo begins to collapse – from “the Jews control politics,” to “the Jews are betraying the nation,” to demands for confrontation, exclusion, detention, expulsion, and eventually violence itself.

When prominent figures begin speaking about “Zionists” as an internal enemy class, when detention-camp rhetoric enters mainstream political discourse, and when political defeats are instinctively reframed through Jewish conspiracy narratives, the distance between inflammatory rhetoric and violent action becomes dangerously small.

History has seen this movie before. It has a terrible ending.

Micha Danzig is an attorney, former IDF soldier, and former NYPD officer. He writes widely on Israel, Zionism, antisemitism, and Jewish history. He serves on the board of Herut North America.