Prominent among contemporary forms of irrationalism is the practice of conspiracy-mongering: finding that a secret and/or mysterious combination of interests has been at work in producing some event - and finding this not on the basis of any careful accumulation of evidence but by reference to scraps of information, misinformation, ungrounded speculation, and so on. It's a practice that does nothing useful for the mental balance either of those who engage in it or of those who believe them. There is, however, one other group of people that stands to suffer from the activity of conspiracy-mongering: Jews. So argues Oliver Kamm in this column in the Jewish Chronicle.
One might suppose that inventing a conspiracy is in itself neutral as between ethnicities: since it is entirely confected by its inventors, the particular conspiracy might potentially implicate anybody. But while that is true as a matter of logic, as a matter of history the notion of the Jews as being possessed of a power they deploy behind the scenes to manipulate others has a long pedigree. This is not a prejudice and lie associated - indiscriminately, so to say - with every ethnic group. Racial and ethnic prejudices may all be hateful but they aren't all the same in how they mischaracterize the groups they're directed against.
