Antisemitism’s recent rise a vast, well-funded campaign

Does a shadowy web of influence, supported by wealth and global fealty to a controlling religious group, exist? Are people and communities being influenced by a malign cabal sowing polarization and hatred?

Does a hidden hand control economies, media and political engagement of many, wide-ranging others?

Canadian author, lawyer, commentator, political consultant and punk musician Warren Kinsella believes this to be the case, detailing it in his newest book, which is sure to be controversial. But the cabal in question (spoiler!) is not the Jews, but Iran.

Kinsella has published both fiction and non-fiction about Canadian connections in politics, extremism and punk rock, including 1997’s Web of Hate: Inside Canada’s Far Right Network.

The Hidden Hand traces the startling explosion of antisemitism since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 pogrom against Israel.

Before the attacks, Kinsella shows, Tehran planned social media campaigns and protests focusing on Palestinian victimhood and Israeli “apartheid” and “genocide.”

The antisemitic social media onslaught continues — a win for bigoted groups such as neo-Nazis, Holocaust deniers and Islamic extremists, who rarely won Western converts or elections but spread hatred and radicalized people online.

“Much of the haters’ lexicon,” Kinsella writes, expresses “a precise message using words and images that are deliberately imprecise.” Such propaganda “lets language do our thinking for us.”

He presents a pollster’s concerns about the internet blitzkrieg. “More than a third of Generation Z… and 20 per cent of Millenials” — significant numbers of Canadians between 18 and 42 — now favour “the destruction of Israel.”

Many in these generational cohorts have been swayed by fatalism about the future, “telling polling firms about their cynicism and despair,” and have “become susceptible to propaganda churned out by… bad actors, including Islamic jihadists like Hamas.”

Kinsella offers particular criticism for TikTok for favouring antisemitic content: “On TikTok, hashtags such as #StandWith Israel got two million views. Meanwhile, #StandWithPalestine got an extraordinary 37.7 million views.”

Kinsella’s chapter “Follow the Money” is particularly, devastatingly, convincing.

Protests began to spring up around the world even during Hamas’ attacks — before Israel’s military response. Well-organized protests are not cheap, requiring “slickly rendered signs and banners, lots of food and drink, transportation, and even… what sounded like professional talking points.”

Crowds on Demand, a California firm, contends that “the practice of paying people to show up at protests is… widespread.”

Since Oct. 7, 2023, pro-Palestinian activity has been well funded, partly by “a network of progressive non- profits, pro-Palestinian and leftist charities, and offshore bank accounts.” U.S. and Canadian government support of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) has sometimes gone to such demonstrations.

Kinsella follows the money after one B.C. organization, the Plenty Collective, “left a website portal open,” showing that it was “handing out tens of thousands of dollars to anti-Israel protesters.”

The Plenty Collective had received funds from the Victoria Foundation, a respected B.C. charity, “reportedly furious” that their community grants to the Victoria-based Belfry Theatre went on to the Plenty Collective, ironically “to implement queer community building.”

“Honest Reporting Canada simultaneously discovered that the federal government had supplied… the Pride Centre of Edmonton” with funds, Kinsella notes. The Pride Centre had signed a letter calling the rape of Israeli women and girls “unverified,” and denouncing “so-called Canada” as complicit in genocide.

The Hidden Hand focuses on the wide-spread ramping up of antisemitism, at the primary instigation of Iran, funded also from many Western entities which should be antagonistic to Tehran’s theocratic, apocalyptic goals: destruction of Israel and establishment of a worldwide caliphate.

This perspective has not been covered adequately for years, adding to the various fogs of war of the last half century.

Bill Rambo is a mostly retired teacher living in Landmark.