A common thread between all Alt-Right groups are conspiracies. Some can be traced back to the medieval ages while others were created more recently. To understand the Alt-Right, it is essential to know where many of their more prominent beliefs came from.
At the root of many Alt-Right conspiracies is a fear of Jews. This fear can be traced back centuries to biblical origins. While there are a few biblical origins, I will only be focusing on one of the more popular ones. Every Passover there was a tradition that the governor (in this case Pontius Pilate) had to commute the death sentence of a person who the commoners chose. While Jesus was imprisoned awaiting his crucifixion one of these pardoning events occurred. The crowd chose Barabbas over Jesus, dooming Jesus to death. Barabbas was a common criminal and terrorist (he was believed to be part of the revolutionary Sicarii group) in the Roman-occupied Jerusalem. Some interpret the crowd that saved Barabbas as being made up of Jews who hated Jesus; but today, this passage has been interpreted differently, and it is now believed that the crowd was made up of Barabbas’s supporters and not a crowd of common people. Even so, anti-semites have clung onto this story as one of their reasons for hating Jews.
Fig. 1 “Give Us Barabbas”
From this here, we can see other conspiracies emerge. “Poisoning the well”, a term that is still commonly used, came from the belief that the Black Death stemmed from Jews poisoning wells. They were also accused of assisting Lepers in poisoning wells to spread leprosy. It should be clear by now that Jews were common scapegoats for atrocities and disease even well before World War II.
There are Two more important conspiracies that have survived in some form that I will cover. The first mention of “blood libel” appeared in the 12th century when a young boys body was found and a monk named Thomas of Monmouth blamed Jews for the murder to mock Jesus’s crucifixion. The belief didn’t catch on until a few years later after the young boy was venerated and a cult grew around him spreading the idea that every year Jewish leaders chose a country and town where they would abduct a young boy and committed blood libel. Blood libel involved bleeding the young boys out and drinking their blood or baking it into hamantaschen (a sweet pastry). It was also believed that Jews committed acts of pedophilia during blood libel.
Fig. 2 Blood Libel
A final historical conspiracy, one that is still one of the most prominent conspiracies today, is Jews controlling the world. One of the most powerful and rich Jewish families, the Rothschilds (they were bankers), have had conspiracies swirling around them for centuries. It was a common belief that they controlled the government and all the money in Europe. Rothschild conspiracies started when a pamphlet titled “The Rothschild Libel” began spreading. The pamphlet claimed that Nathan Rothschild, the founder of the London branch of the Rothschild banks, was at the Battle of Waterloo and witnessed Napoleon’s defeat. He then rushed back to London, getting there before the news of the loss reached the British shores. He used what he knew to game the stock market and as the pamphlet describes “In a single coup…he gained 20 million francs”. Rothschild conspiracies and conspiracies about other powerful and rich Jewish families have continued to spread ever since.
Fig. 3 
Today this belief has survived but has been hidden under layers of dog whistles (a coded message communicated through words or phrases commonly understood by a particular group of people, but not by others). The dog whistle, in this case, is the term “globalist”. Members of the alt-right and even some members of the mainstream media (i.e. Tucker Carlson) have used the term to refer to an enemy of America. They don’t explain who the globalists are, but they fear that the globalists will tear down the borders of America and the world and will destroy “white culture”. The term globalist is a stand-in for a secret cabal of Jews who some believe rule the world.
A favorite globalist of the Jewish figure of the Alt-Right who has appeared in many conspiracies recently is George Soros. A Jewish billionaire who lived through the Holocaust and has helped fund democratic revolutions and movements in other countries. A common belief in the conspiracy theorist sphere is that Soros pays for protests and protestors in America. This devalues the message protests are trying to get across because some people believe the protestors are paid, actors.
Next week I will go more in-depth about how these historical conspiracies tie into modern conspiracies.
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