Conspiracy and Antisemitism in Contemporary Political Attitudes

The rise of populist politics around the world has been accompanied by a startling growth of mainstream conspiracy theorizing and antisemitism. Yet, while conspiracy, antisemitism, and populist politics seem to be related, we have little information about the causal relationships between them. Plausible explanations can link any of these three factors to one another in any configuration of causal relationships. In this exploratory research, I employ a series of experimental methods to begin teasing out these relationships while sketching the contours of the broader societal story. Drawing from multiple pre-registered survey experiments conducted in the United States and the United Kingdom, I find strong mutually reinforcing relationships between antisemitism and conspiracy theorizing. Among supporters of Joe Biden in 2020, I find evidence that exposure to conspiracies increases perceptions of Jewish political and economic power. And among supporters of Donald Trump in 2020, I find that exposure to benign vignettes about Jews increases conspiratorial thinking.