How conspiracy theories about the famous Rothschild family tell the history of antisemitism

The best ideas are timeless: Treat others how you want to be treated. Help people less fortunate than yourself.

Unfortunately, many of the worst ideas are also timeless as well. And antisemitism is certainly one such idea.

While many different people have been targeted by antisemitic conspiracy theories, the Rothschild family of Germany has a particular favorite among the world’s lunatics for centuries and more recently by the QAnon cult which has managed to recycle many old conspiracies for the internet age and invented some new ones as well.

There are so many conspiracy theories about the Rothschilds that you could fill a book with them all, and my guest on this episode has done just that.

Mike Rothschild isn’t related to the family that’s been the focus of so many bad ideas, but he does have a lot of experience focusing on conspiracy theories, having previously written a book about QAnon. His most recent book, which we’ll be discussing, is called Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories.

The video of this episode is available. The transcript of the audio follows. It is automatically generated and is provided for convenience only.

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Transcript

MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: Welcome to Theory of Change, Mike. Thanks for being here.

MIKE ROTHSCHILD: Thank you for having me.

SHEFFIELD: Okay, well, so, I have to imagine that you have two reasons why you became interested in this book as a topic. On