The Antisemitic Backlash to Financial Power: Conspiracy Theory as a Response to Financial Complexity and Crisis

Abstract

This article argues that the role of antisemitism in the populist backlash to financial power represents an empirical blind spot in IPE. I argue that the uncertainty and complexity of finance is such that attributing responsibility for financial crises and disruption is difficult within the conventional narratives people use to make sense of power. When people struggle to gain traction over the scale and workings of a system that is opaque, complex, entrenched, and seemingly unassailable, their reactions to the economic dislocation that financial power brings about find targets among already marginalised groups. This has, in turn, fuelled opposition to financial power from both the right and left that draws upon–sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly–antisemitic tropes and narratives. A longer historical lens on populist reactions to financial innovation reveals the longstanding connections between antisemitic myths and tropes and backlash to financial power. This dynamic should be understood as constitutive of financial power to the extent that it displaces criticism and responsibility away from the complex networks, systems, and structures that sustain financial capitalism. It also illustrates the need to contextualise the present moment and its multiple crises in a longer history of financial crisis and change.