There is a very specific psychological process behind the “Jews control the world” trope that antisemitic persons subscribe to. Let’s break down the process: By way of background, millennia of anti-Jewish propaganda creates a conditioned stimulus - conditioned response effect. First, they’re exposed to an event (conditioned stimulus). Because of their programmed internal bias, they automatically draw assumptions about Jews being somehow guilty in relation to the event (conditioned response). Second, they engage in confirmation bias—“the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs”—by looking for information that tends to support their demonized perception of Jews. Third, they draw conclusions on what they falsely determine to be “facts, research, and evidence” (which is in fact just confirmation bias), that the Jews are in fact entirely at fault for the event. Fourth, they begin to observe that certain media outlets or commentators contradict their narrative and portray the event in a much more balanced way, or in a way that may exonerate Jews from the unfair charges levied against them. Here, they enter a state of cognitive dissonance: the discomfort felt when one’s perceptions or beliefs are inconsistent with reality, thus compelling their desire to end the psychological disturbance. Finally, because they cannot reconcile these two things—the contradiction between perception and reality—the solution to alleviate this uncomfortable state is not to admit that they were wrong (which may cause even more discomfort in identifying themselves as hateful) but to reason that they are most certainly correct, and that the only explanation for this contradiction is that Jews control the world, the media, and the narrative, and are dictating that narrative in their favor (full blown conspiracy psychosis). At this stage, If they suffer from an intense savior complex, they may make it their mission to “expose” this “truth about Zionists” to the world, hoping the gnawing feeling of internal deregulation will be resolved by doubling down against it. At bottom, they just cannot accept that their “truth” about Jews is fundamentally hatred, bigotry, bias, and cold, hard antisemitism. It’s been thousands of years in the making and always ends in bloodshed - when are we implementing programs to dismantle this in schools?
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