Lifting the Curtain on Antisemitism—Episode 2: Conspiracy Theories, Antisemitism, and the Politics of Holocaust Memory with Valentina Pisanty and Jelena Subotić

Guest host Natasha Roth-Rowland talks to scholars Valentina Pisanty and Jelena Subotić about the anatomy and function of conspiracy theories and the role of antisemitism within them. How do conspiracy theories come about? Why do they so often revolve around false narratives regarding Jewish people, power, and control? How are they used to discredit movements for justice? And what role do the politics of Holocaust memory play? By taking a look at the history of antisemitic conspiracy theories and examining their role in our contemporary politics, Jelena and Valentina teach us to recognize them, how to understand them, and how we might challenge them.

Natasha Roth-Rowland is director of research and analysis at Diaspora Alliance. She has a PhD in History from the University of Virginia, where she wrote her dissertation on the Israeli- and American-Jewish far right, and is a former editor at +972 Magazine. She lives in New York with her wife and daughter.

Valentina Pisanty teaches Semiotics at the University of Bergamo. She has published articles and essays on Holocaust denial, Fascist racism, political discourse analysis, narratology, humour, interpretive semiotics, the rhetoric of memory-making and the semiotics of testimony. Her books include: Antisemita, una parola in ostaggio (Bompiani, 2025), The Guardians of Memory and the Return of the Xenophobic Right, Primo Levi Editions, 2021); Abusi di memoria: negare, banalizzare, sacralizzare la Shoah (Bruno Mondadori, 2012); La Difesa della Razza: antologia 1938-1942 (Bompiani, 2006); Semiotica e interpretazione (with Roberto Pellerey, Bompiani, 2004); L'irritante questione delle camere a gas: logica del negazionismo (Bompiani 1998, new edition 2014).

Jelena Subotić is Distinguished University Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University in Atlanta. She is the award-winning author of three books: Yellow Star, Red Star: Holocaust Remembrance after Communism (2019), Hijacked Justice: Dealing with the Past in the Balkans (2009) and The Art of Status: Looted Treasures and the Global Politics of Restitution (2025), as well as a co-editor of Politics, Violence Memory: The New Social Science of the Holocaust (2023).

Resources

• Eco, Umberto. The Prague Cemetery. Translated by Richard Dixon. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011.
• Pisanty, Valentina. The Guardians of Memory and the Return of the Xenophobic Right. Translated by Alastair McEwen. New York: Centro Primo Levi New York, 2020.
• Subotić, Jelena. Yellow Star, Red Star: Holocaust Remembrance After Communism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019.

Lifting the Curtain on Antisemitism is a collaboration between Political Research Associates and Diaspora Alliance. The show is produced by Olivia Lawrence-Weilmann. This episode was guest hosted by Natasha Roth-Rowland. Original score by Aakash Desai. Artwork by Zoe Newton. Our fact checker is Natasha Roth-Rowland. Sound design and mixing by Thick Skin Media. Also thank you to Natasha Roth-Rowland, Simone Zimmerman, Em Hilton, and Koki Mendis for your insights and thought partnership.